Trump Diverting $3.6 Billion from Military to Build Border Wall
The Department of Defense has approved a plan to divert $3.6 billion to pay for the construction of parts of President Trump’s border wall, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday. The money will be shifted from more than 100 construction projects focused on upgrading military bases in the U.S. and overseas, which will be suspended until Congress provides additional funds.
In a letter addressed to Senator James Inhofe, chair of the Armed Services Committee, Esper said that in response to the national emergency declared by Trump earlier this year, he was approving work on 11 military construction projects “to support the use of armed forces” on the border with Mexico.
The $3.6 billion will fund about 175 miles of new and refurbished barriers (Esper’s letter does not use the term “wall”).
Esper described the projects, which include new and replacement barriers in San Diego, El Paso and Laredo, Texas, as “force multipliers” that, once completed, will allow the Pentagon to redeploy troops to high-traffic sections of the border that lack barriers. About 5,000 active duty and National Guard troops are currently deployed on the border.
Months in the making: Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the southern border on February 15, 2019, came in the wake of a showdown with Congress over funding for the border wall. The president’s demand for $5.7 billion for the wall sparked a 35-day government shutdown, which ended when Trump reluctantly agreed to a deal that provided $1.375 billion for border security. By declaring a national emergency, Trump gave the Pentagon the legal authority to move billions of dollars around in its budget to address the purported crisis. Legal challenges to the emergency declaration are ongoing.
Conflict with lawmakers: Congress passed a resolution opposing the national emergency declaration in March, prompting Trump to issue the first veto of his presidency. Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee reiterated their opposition to Trump’s move Tuesday, saying in a letter, “As we have previously written, the decision to take funds from critical military construction projects is unjustified and will have lasting impacts on our military.”
Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer was more forceful, saying in a statement, "It is abhorrent that the Trump Administration is choosing to defund 127 critical military construction projects all over the country … and on U.S. bases overseas to pay for an ineffective and expensive wall the Congress has refused to fund. This is a subversion of the will of the American people and their representatives. It is an attack on our military and its effectiveness to keep Americans safe. Moreover, it is a political ploy aimed at satisfying President Trump's base, to whom he falsely promised that Mexico would pay for the construction of an unnecessary wall, which taxpayers and our military are now being forced to fund at a cost of $3.6 billion.”
A group of 10 Democratic Senators said in a letter to Esper that they “are opposed to this decision and the damage it will cause to our military and the relationship between Congress and the Department of Defense.” They said they also “expect a full justification of how the decision to cancel was made for each project selected and why a border wall is more important to our national security and the well-being of our service members and their families than these projects.”
Politico’s John Bresnahan, Connor O'Brien and Marianne LeVine said the diversion will likely be unpopular with Republican lawmakers as well. Republican Senators Mike Lee and Mitt Romney expressed concerns Wednesday about funds being diverted from their home state of Utah. "Funding the border wall is an important priority, and the Executive Branch should use the appropriate channels in Congress, rather than divert already appropriated funding away from military construction projects and therefore undermining military readiness," Romney said.
The Pentagon released a list of construction projects that will be affected late on Wednesday (you can review a screenshot tweeted by NBC News’ Alex Moe here).
An $8 billion effort: In addition to the military construction funds and the money provided by Congress, the Trump administration is using $2.5 billion in drug interdiction money and $600 million in Treasury forfeiture funds to support the construction of barriers on the southern border, for a total of approximately $8 billion. (More on that here.)
The administration reportedly has characterized the suspended military construction projects as being delayed, but to be revived, those projects would require Congress approving new funding. House Democrats have vowed they won’t “backfill” the money.
The politics of the wall: Trump has reportedly been intensely focused on making progress on the border wall, amid news that virtually no new wall has been built during the first two and a half years of his presidency. Speaking to reporters at the White House Wednesday, Trump said that construction on the wall is moving ahead “rapidly” and that hundreds of miles will be “almost complete if not complete by the end of next year … just after the election.”
CVS Quit Selling Cigarettes, but It’s Found a Patch for Sales
CVS executives knew that some of their sales would go up in smoke when they decided last year to stop selling cigarettes. The press release announcing that all 7,600 CVS stores nationwide would stop selling all tobacco products acknowledged that sales would take a hit. Still, the company said, “This is the right thing to do.”
The costs of the decision are now becoming clear. CVS Health’s general merchandise sales slumped 7.8 percent last quarter on a same-store basis, the company said Tuesday. The company claims non-pharmacy sales would have stayed the same if tobacco sales — and the other products cigarette buyers added to their baskets — were removed from sales figures for the same quarter in 2014.
Related: Why Smoking Is Even Worse Than We Thought
Same-store sales in the pharmacy category climbed 4.1 percent, boosting overall same-store sales growth to 0.5 percent compared with the second quarter of last year, down from a 1.2 percent year-over-year increase the previous quarter. Net revenue overall grew by 7.4 percent to $37.2 billion, helped by pharmacy services revenue that surged 11.9 percent ($2.6 billion) to $24.4 billion. The company has reportedly increased its market share in the health and beauty categories (it did, however, narrow its full-year earnings forecast).
So even as the move to drop cigarettes has cost the company, its bet on health as the source of future growth may be starting to pay off. CVS stock dropped in the wake of its earnings announcement, but shares are still up more than 15 percent on the year and 44 percent over the past 12 months.
Is the American Dream Dead? Most Parents Think Their Kids Will Be Less Well Off
Parents think their children will be happier and healthier in the future as adults, but also less well off, according to a new report commissioned by insurance company Haven Life.
Only one in eight Americans believe that their children will be better off financially, when compared to their parents. More than half of American parents believe their children will have less disposable income in the future, and only one in five Americans believe their children will enjoy greater quality of life.
Related: Should You Leave Your Home to Your Kids?
On the other hand, more than 60 percent of adults believe that future generations will lead “as healthy or healthier” lifestyles than adults today. And half of them think their children will grow up to be more environmentally conscious adults who lead greener lifestyles. More than half believe that this future generation will be more ethnically and racially diverse.
The study was done by YouGov for the Haven Life Insurance Agency. YouGov conducted an online poll with a representative sample of 1,124 U.S. adults in the first quarter of 2015.
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Travel Nightmares: How to Avoid Getting Bumped from Your Flight
You're finally on your way out for a summer vacation. The flight was booked months ago. Your bags are packed and ready. You arrive at the airport the recommended 90 minutes before the scheduled departure time (because it's a great long trip, and you've decided to check your bags). After enduring the inhumanity that is the TSA line, you get to your gate. Of course, everyone else has done the same thing, and you hear the familiar strains of "this flight is overbooked, we are offering a travel voucher if you are willing to fly on a later flight."
But you ignore that, as always, because, well, your bags are already on the plane, and you don't want to miss even a second of your long-awaited time away. Still, that $300 voucher sounds tempting. You could use it to help defray the cost of holiday travel in a few months.
Don't do it. Resisting that temptation can be even more rewarding: If the worst still happens and you get involuntarily bumped, you can get a full refund of your ticket price plus up to $1,300 in added compensation.
The AirHelp inforgraphic below lays out the basic dos and don'ts of dealing with an overbookd flight. You can also find more from AirHelp here.
(h/t lifehacker.com)
Blame China for Your Costly Lobster Roll
Looking for authentic, down-home Maine lobster? Head to China.
The upsurge in demand for lobster in China this year has caused the price of the succulent marine crustacean to shoot up to record highs in the U.S., according to Bloomberg News. Wholesale prices for lobsters have clawed 32 percent higher over the last year.
Lacking a lobster industry itself, China used to rely on Australian imports to meet the demand from an expanding middle class that views lobster as a status symbol. But in 2012, as catches off of Western Australia began dwindling and prices of lobster fell in the Gulf of Maine, China changed its main supplier to the U.S.
Related: McDonald’s Aims for a Classier Crowd with Lobster Rolls
Lobster exports from the East Coast are the main reason for the hike in fish and seafood exports to China in recent years, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Over the past seven months, about 60,000 live North American lobsters a week make the 7,500-mile trek halfway across the world. The lobsters must still be alive by the time they arrive in China or else they lack appeal, so they’re packed in wet newspapers and Styrofoam coolers for a trip that must be made in 18 hours or less, according to Bloomberg.
Another reason for the surge in prices was the bitterly cold winter this year, which slowed the catch in Canada and delayed the summer harvest in Maine.
Holding off on your lobster roll until next summer in the hopes that prices will wane? Don’t count on it. The Chinese middle class is still growing rapidly, and the country already consumes 35 percent of the world’s seafood — a number likely to increase.
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Meet Blade, the Uber for Helicopters in NYC
Uber may be convenient, but New York’s Hamptons set doesn’t always have the time or patience to deal with the traffic getting out to their summer spots on Long Island’s East End.
Blade, which calls itself “the first digitally driven short distance aviation company,” says it has a solution for those who want to get to East Hampton within the hour, or Southampton in 35 minutes: Ordering their own chartered helicopter via an app.
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Once you download the app, you can select your flight time, chill out in a Blade lounge at a Manhattan heliport and then enjoy “a snack, a drink, a newspaper and lots of other fun things” on your flight. Passengers are allowed one carry-on weighing 25 lbs. maximum — but no golf clubs.
The service, which launched in May 2014, doesn’t come cheap, at $595 per seat to go to Quogue, Southampton, East Hampton, Montauk or Fire Island. Blade can also be booked for trips to Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod and some other destinations in the Northeast as well as to the New York area’s major airports.
The website advises that if your flight is grounded due to bad weather, you’ll be offered a ride to your destination in a chauffeured Mercedes at no extra cost.
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