Media

100 Days into President Donald Trump’s presidency, America has witnessed a dramatic shift on many fronts. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, that Trump is filling the swamp with the same hate induced agenda that we witnessed during his campaign. And as a result, we are now witnessing firsthand aggressive shifts in policies that impact America’s standing abroad with our allies and here at home. Radical efforts to take away healthcare from millions of Americans with the now failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, to the also now blocked Executive Orders that would have proven disastrous for America by banning Muslims, refugees, and travelers from entering the country. Ongoing is the challenge to resist the Trump administration’s policy and rhetorical attacks on immigrant communities around the country. With its anti-immigrant agenda, the administration has set loose the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Customs Border Patrol (CBP) agents to target immigrant families through raids, detentions and deportation with no oversight or accountability, policies that are unacceptable and unaligned with the values that make our country successful.

Freshman Rep. Adriano Espaillat, 62, a New York Democrat, talks about public housing, baseball, and his grandson’s love of cars. Q: What has surprised you about Congress so far? A: It’s a huge operation. It’s a great huge, large institution and for you to put your arms around it. You have to be very specific and develop a niche in every area you want to excel in, that’s close to your heart, something that’s good for our district, and it’s all local, obviously. Housing is what I’ve chosen. Public housing is very broad. The White House is public housing. The president doesn’t pay rent. He has cold and hot water every day. He doesn’t have any mold in the bathroom or leaks in his pipes. We pay his rent and that’s public housing. We should have a level of commitment to tenants who live in public housing.

House Democrats from Oregon, New York and Virginia proposed a bill last week — the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act — that, if passed, would turn ICE’s current guidelines into a law that actively prohibits officials from conducting arrests, interviews, searches or surveillance at these “sensitive” locations. (It’s unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled House.) Bonamici sponsored the bill with Reps. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), José E. Serrano (D-N.Y.), Don Beyer (D-Va.) and at least 20 other co-sponsors.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) accused the Trump administration Tuesday of gambling with American lives after Trump threatened to pull federal funding for law enforcement in so-called sanctuary cities. "By yanking funding away and clawing back funding away from law enforcement, we're putting average Americans at risk," he said during an interview on CNN's "New Day." "In fact, it's almost like putting a gun to the head of Americans and playing Russian roulette."