L.A.'s mayor joins Larry on the show today to update listeners on a variety of issues affecting the city. We also debate a new initiative to strip immigration "cheaters" of their citizenship; review a new conclusion on the classic psychological experiment dubbed "the marshmallow test,"; and more.
Immigrants with falsified documents could have their citizenship revoked by new, LA-based investigative team
The U.S. government agency that oversees immigration applications is launching an office that will focus on identifying Americans who are suspected of cheating to get their citizenship and seek to strip them of it.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director L. Francis Cissna told The Associated Press in an interview that his agency is hiring several dozen lawyers and immigration officers to review cases of immigrants who were ordered deported and are suspected of using fake identities to later get green cards and citizenship through naturalization.
Cissna said the cases would be referred to the Department of Justice, whose attorneys could then seek to remove the immigrants’ citizenship in civil court proceedings. In some cases, government attorneys could bring criminal charges related to fraud.
Until now, the agency has pursued cases as they arose but not through a coordinated effort, Cissna said. He said he hopes the agency’s new office in Los Angeles will be running by next year but added that investigating and referring cases for prosecution will likely take longer.
Proponents say this program will remove citizenship from people who intentionally falsified records and shouldn’t have become citizens in the first place. But some immigration attorneys fear that immigrants who made mistakes on their papers will be swept by this process and won’t have the finances to fight back through the justice system.
We contextualize the program and weigh the pros and cons.
With files from the Associated Press.
Guests:
Matthew Hoppock, immigration attorney who has been tracking data on denaturalization
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at Center for Immigration Studies
Let the bidding war begin: Comcast launches $65 billion offer for 21st Century Fox, dwarfing Disney’s bid
Competing bids from Comcast and Disney for the bulk of Twenty-First Century Fox come as the media landscape changes and companies get more involved in both creating and distributing content.
X-Men and other movies from Fox's studios would help beef up Disney's upcoming streaming service. Comcast, already a major cable operator, would get a larger portfolio of cable channels including FX and National Geographic. Comcast's $65 billion cash bid Wednesday is higher than what many analysts were expecting and tops Disney's all-stock offer, valued at $52.5 billion when it was made in December.
Disney is expected to make a counter offer. Each bid raises different regulatory concerns, though this week's approval of AT&T's takeover of Time Warner signals that regulators might have a hard time stopping mega-mergers.
With files from the Associated Press.
Guest:
Edmund Lee, corporate media reporter for the New York Times, covering media, tech and telecom who has been reporting on Comcast’s bid to acquire 21st Century Fox; he tweets @edmundlee
Honk if you think sounding the horn in support of a protest is protected under the First Amendment
If you’ve ever honked in support of a political protest, you’re technically breaking California law – a law the ACLU is fighting to get struck down as unconstitutional.
Technically, under the California Vehicle Code, horns can only be honked for reasons of safety or as part of a car’s alarm system. But the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties says that honking in support of a protest is a form of speech, protected under the First Amendment and the California Constitution.
The suit was filed in San Diego federal court earlier this week on behalf of Susan Porter, who got a ticket for beeping in support of a protest outside of one of the offices of U.S. Representative Darrell Issa.
Does honking a horn in support of a fundraiser or protest qualify under freedom of speech? What are legitimate versus illegitimate uses of car honking?
We know you Angelenos have some car-honking stories to tell. Call us at 866-893-5722.
Guest:
David Loy, legal director of the ACLU Foundation of San Diego and Imperial Counties, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of Susan Porter
Beyond the state flag: Petition to bring back grizzly bears to CA grows
It’s been nearly a century since the last grizzly bear sighting in California was reported.
Before their Golden State extinction, some 10,000 grizzlies roamed the Sierra to the Pacific Ocean. Now, there are only an estimated 1,500 grizzly bears remaining in the country as a whole, mostly in parts of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.
In 2014, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife to bring back the bears to California. Since then, the petition has reached more than 15,000 signatures and a similar push to reintroduce grizzlies has made its way to the North Cascades in Washington.
Advocates say there is enough land to support both humans and a small population of grizzlies in the state, while opponents point to their fearsome reputation and dangers for hikers and nearby residents. Just last year, the grizzly bear was also removed from the endangered species list, losing 42 years of Yellowstone protections.
How viable would bringing grizzlies back to their natural California habitat be? Is it feasible? Where would they be reintroduced and how would those efforts be determined?
Guests:
Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director at the Center for Biological Diversity; he tweets
Charlton H. Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Casey Schreiner, Los Angeles-based creator and editor-in-chief of the site, www.modernhiker.com and author of “Day Hiking Los Angeles”; he tweets
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti check-in: homeless crisis, city street repairs, choice of new LAPD Chief and more
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled his yearly budget in April where he promised major progress in the reconstruction of the city’s worst roads.
The Mayor proposed a spending plan that calls for the city to collect $70.7 million in street damage restoration fees in 2018-19. But that is not the only challenge the city is facing. Garcetti signed an executive directive last month to speed up a program to place temporary homeless shelters across the city to address an increasingly pressing homeless crisis.
Larry sits down with Mayor Garcetti to discuss the challenges with placing such shelters along with a range of other topics, from housing for lower income residents and pension fund obligations to how the Mayor picked up new LAPD Chief Michel Moore.
Guest:
Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles
The latest on the inspector general report on Comey and Clinton email probe
The Justice Department's watchdog faults former FBI Director James Comey for breaking with protocol in his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, but it says his decisions were not driven by political bias ahead of the 2016 election, according to two people familiar with the findings.
The report from the inspector general also criticizes Comey for not keeping his superiors at the Justice Department, including then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, properly informed about his handling of the investigation, said the people, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the report was not yet public.
The report's findings are to be made public later Thursday. They represent the culmination of an 18-month review into one of the most consequential FBI investigations in recent history. Overall, the inspector general found problematic political discussions among FBI personnel but found none of the decisions in the Clinton email case were politically motivated.
With files from Associated Press.
Guest:
Billy House, congressional correspondent for Bloomberg News
What a new take on the marshmallow test says about kids, gratification and future success
The marshmallow test is considered one of the most famous studies on delayed gratification.
It was a series of tests lead by psychologist Walter Mischel in the 1960s, which offered a child a choice between one marshmallow immediately, or two marshmallows if they waited about 15 minutes. An experiment in patience, the research followed less than 90 preschool children, who were enrolled in Stanford’s campus preschool. It also followed the participants to see how they did later in life. The findings pointed to the participants becoming higher achievers, including a correlation with better SAT scores.
But a new group of researchers are trying the marshmallow test again. This time, they’ve tracked data from kids of different races, ethnicities and parents’ education, and have pooled information from a group of more than 900 participants.
The new study found that there may be parallels between instant gratification and a child’s socio-economic background. Sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco wrote in The Atlantic that “daily life holds fewer guarantees... And even if their parents promise to buy more of a certain food, sometimes that promise gets broken out of financial necessity.”
Larry speaks to Calarco and the new study’s lead author today, to learn more about the findings.
Guests:
Tyler Watts, research assistant professor at New York University and lead author of the study, “Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes”; he tweets
Jessica Calarco, assistant professor of sociology at Indiana University; she wrote the recent article for The Atlantic, “Why Rich Kids Are So Good at the Marshmallow Test”