WTF Just Happened Today

Monday, March 15, 2021

Subscribe: Get the Daily Update in your inbox for free

1/ Biden deployed FEMA to the U.S.-Mexico border to help shelter and transfer thousands of unaccompanied migrant teens and children, who are currently being held in Customs and Border Protection detention facilities and tent shelters. There are roughly 4,000 children currently in CBP custody – a 25% increase from a week earlier. The Biden administration has struggled to expand Health and Human Services shelter capacity, where about 8,500 teens and children are currently being held. Unaccompanied minors continue to arrive more quickly than HHS officials can match them with sponsors. The current average time children spend in facilities designed to hold adults for 24 hours, has increased to 117 hours – 45 hours longer than the legal limit. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that a CBP facility is “no place for a child,” but that border agents are “working around the clock in difficult circumstances to take care of children temporarily in our care.” The White House, meanwhile, has declined to call the situation a “crisis” or label it a national emergency, which Trump did in 2019 to circumvent Congress and fund his border wall with money lawmakers refused to give him. (New York Times / NBC News / ABC News / Washington Post / Vox / CNN)

2/ FEMA will temporarily house up to 3,000 migrant teenage boys at a Dallas convention center in an effort to alleviate overcrowding at border facilities in South Texas. The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center will be used for up to 90 days starting this week. (Associated Press / Washington Post)

3/ The CDC’s Covid-19 guidance during the Trump administration was not grounded in science or “primarily authored” by staff, according to a review ordered by Biden’s CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, as part of her pledge to restore public trust in the agency. The review found that some guidance “used less direct language than available evidence supported,” “needed to be updated to reflect the latest scientific evidence,” and “presented the underlying science base for guidance inconsistently.” (Washington Post / CNN)

4/ The CDC warned that the U.S. could see another surge in Covid-19 cases as states relax restrictions and Americans return to airports for spring break travel. “I’m pleading with you, for the sake of our nation’s health,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said. “Cases climbed last spring, they climbed again in the summer, they will climb now if we stop taking precautions when we continue to get more and more people vaccinated.” The Transportation Security Administration, however, has...

Visit WTF Just Happened Today? for more news and headlines, brought to you by Matt Kiser. The WTFJHT Podcast is narrated and produced by Joe Amditis.