Friday News Roundup - Domestic

This week, multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein was charged with federal sex trafficking crimes involving underage girls in New York. Epstein has pleaded not guilty.

Here's more from The Miami Herald's Julie Brown:

Eleven years after receiving federal immunity as part of a strikingly lenient plea agreement, Epstein stands charged with one count of sex trafficking and one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. If convicted, he could face up to 45 years in prison.

The indictment involves three unidentified underage victims, one in New York and two in Florida — but prosecutors said the case could potentially involve dozens and perhaps hundreds of other women whom investigators suspect Epstein abused as teenagers in both Florida and New York from 2002 to 2006.

As of Friday morning, former Miami U.S. attorney and current labor secretary Alexander Acosta will resign.

Acosta was criticized for his handling of the case in 2008, when federal prosecutors struck a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein. President Trump defended Acosta and Acosta defended himself, but it wasn’t enough to save his job, in the end. Many top Democrats in Congress called for his resignation as well.

We're also following the latest at the southern border. Nationwide ICE raids are set to begin this weekend, several weeks after the president's endorsement of impending operations.

Meanwhile, according to figures released by Customs and Border Protection, border arrests sharply declined last month. Some officials attribute the drop to new border security measures implemented by U.S. and Mexican authorities.

Those aren’t the only figures we’re watching. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose above 3,000 for the first time this week. The Nasdaq Composite and Dow Jones Industrial Average also reached new heights. What do these record highs indicate about the state of our economy?

And in 2020 news, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) has ended his bid for the Democratic nomination for president, and California billionaire Tom Steyer has begun his own.

We cover all this and more.

Text by Kathryn Fink.

GUESTS

Domenico Montanaro, Lead political editor, NPR; @DomenicoNPR

Laura Meckler, Education reporter, The Washington Post; @laurameckler

Astead Herndon, National politics reporter, The New York Times; @AsteadWesley

For more, visit https://the1a.org.

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