Q. I was going to start withdrawing from my retirement savings after I turn 70 on June 15, 2020, but heard that the required age for withdrawals is now 72. I have $1,234 per month from Social Security. Should I let the retirement money grow?

Retired

A. Youre correct about the change in the age when you have to take Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from your retirement accounts.

The SECURE Act, which stands for Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act, was enacted at the end of 2019.

It changed the date at which distributions must be taken from retirement accounts to age 72 from age 70 , said Claudia Mott, a certified financial planner with Epona Financial Solutions in Basking Ridge.

This includes traditional and rollover IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s and 457 plans.

The withdrawals made from these accounts are typically considered taxable income and will be reported as such on your personal income tax return, she said. Roth IRAs do not have minimum age distribution requirements.

Mott said the decision about whether to take distributions now or delay until you reach age 72 depends in large part on whether you need the money now or can afford to hold off.

If you have income from sources other than Social Security and are able to meet your living expense needs comfortably, then the decision to wait may make sense, she said. Depending on how the account is invested, the additional time may enable the value to increase, especially in light of the decline the stock market has experienced thus far in 2020.

At age 72, a required distribution will be calculated based on the previous year-end value of the account, Mott said, but if you need of additional income, you can take any amount you wish from the account now bearing in mind that taxes should be withheld from the distribution to avoid an unwelcome tax bill when you file for 2020.

When you reach age 72, youll have to take at least the RMD.

Another factor to consider is how these distributions will impact your overall income picture as this could alter that amount you must pay for Medicare as well as your income tax bracket, Mott said.

She said Medicare uses a two-year look back to determine whether an additional premium will be paid by each individual and couple.

For 2020, the individual income limit based on 2018 tax data that will avoid an IRMAA Income Related Monthly Adjustment Amount is $87,000 and $174,000 for a married couple filing jointly, Mott said. Your tax professional should be able to provide guidance on the right amount of tax to withhold on your retirement account distributions, how the income will affect your tax rates and what your overall income picture may look like for future Medicare planning purposes.

Email your questions to Ask@NJMoneyHelp.com.

Karin Price Mueller writes the Bamboozled column for NJ Advance Media and is the founder of NJMoneyHelp.com. Follow NJMoneyHelp on Twitter @NJMoneyHelp. Find NJMoneyHelp on Facebook. Sign up for NJMoneyHelp.coms weekly e-newsletter.

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Should I wait before taking money from my retirement account? - NJ.com

ByHamish Preston,Associate Director, U.S. Equity Indices, Indexology Blog

One of the main risks for retirees is not having enoughinflation-adjustedincomein retirement to support their desired standard of living. The S&P STRIDE (S&P Shift to Retirement Income and Decumulation) Indices attempt to solve this problem byfocusing explicitly on reducing the volatility of income rather than reducing the volatility of returns.

In order to help market participants track the cost of a stream of inflation-adjusted retirement income, we recently published our firstCost of Retirement Income dashboard. (You can sign up for future editionshere.) The dashboard uses the same cost of retirement income measure as our STRIDE indices:the present value of an inflation-adjusted stream of cash flows equal to $1 per year, starting at various retirement dates (vintages) and ending 25 years later.

Exhibit 1 shows that the cost of retirement income increased for all but two S&P STRIDE vintages in the last three months. For example, the cost of 25 years of retirement income beginning in January 2025 increased from $23.05 to $24.54 in Q1 2020. Significant market drawdowns in Q1 2020, coupled with declines in U.S. Treasury yields, presented severe challenges for market participants looking to secure a desired level of inflation-adjusted retirement income.Pre-retirees were particularly impacted given the greater sensitivity of longer-dated vintages to real interest rates, which declined as the U.S. Federal Reserve cut its policy rate in response to the spread of COVID-19.

The dashboard also tracks the hypothetical distributions from post-retirement vintages of the S&P STRIDE indices (see Exhibit 2). For example, the annualized proportion of last months hypothetical distributions in terms of decumulation points to the indexs beginning value was 3.26%. Notably, the decumulation rate is higher than the S&P 500s 2.34% indicated dividend yield.

Finally, the dashboard reminds us that not all retirement strategies have an explicit focus on providing inflation-adjusted retirement income. Exhibit 3 shows that nearer-dated S&P STRIDE indices had significantly higher allocations to Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) than the consensus asset mix embodied in the S&P Target Date Indices. For example, the S&P STRIDE 2020 indexs TIPS allocation (77.2%) was 14 times higher than the S&P Target Date 2020 index (5.5%) at the end of March 2020. This is a result of the S&P STRIDE indices focus on income rather than return volatility, and it impacts asset allocations across the traditional glidepath approach.

For more information, please see theS&P STRIDE Index Series Methodologyand theS&P STRIDE Supplemental Data Guide.

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Tracking The Cost of Retirement Income - ETF Trends

Announced today, Austrian Airlines is to retire half of its Boeing 767 fleet as it deals with its post-pandemic future. The Lufthansa Group airline has been working out how to return from a complete grounding of scheduled services.

Earlier in April, we reported that the CEO of Austrian Airlines didnt think that passenger demand would return to normal until 2023 at the earliest. As a result, the airline has been working out how its post-pandemic future will look. Today, the airline revealed that aircraft would be retired to deal with the crisis. Lufthansa has already committed to retiring some of its aircraft.

To cope with the projected drop in demand, Austrian Airlines will be retiring half of its Boeing 767 fleet. Austrian Airlines is the only Lufthansa Group airline to operate the Boeing 767 still. The airline operates six such aircraft. Some of these are among the oldest aircraft in the entire Lufthansa group. Only 14 Lufthansa A320 aircraft are more aged than Austrians oldest 767s.

Advertisement:

Austrian is to retire three 767 jets. These are:

The retirements will leave Austrian with just three remaining Boeing 767s, according to Planespotters. These are:

As a result of the retirement, the average age of Austrians Boeing 767 fleet will drop from 24.2 years to 20.5 years old. Moreover, the average age of the airlines entire fleet will drop to 14.6 years.

By retiring aircraft, Austrian Airlines will be cutting its capacity by around 20%. Several smaller aircraft will also be withdrawn. The retirement will encompass the airlines entire fleet of seven Airbus A319 aircraft. Additionally, 18 Dash turboprops will be retired early.

The airline predicts that between 25% and 50% of its demand will be lost this year. It expects that traffic will have recovered to 75% of the pre-pandemic level by the end of next year. Demand will then, hopefully, increase to 100% by the end of 2023.

As such, during 2022, the airline expects to be operating with 60 aircraft, just three-quarters of its pre-crisis fleet. However, because the focus is on retiring smaller aircraft, only 20% of the airlines capacity will have been withdrawn. The airlines CCO, Andreas Otto, mentioned that Austrian will will part with the oldest and smallest aircraft for ecological reasons.

Austrian Airlines isnt the only airline in the Lufthansa group to be parting with aircraft. Its parent airline Lufthansa has already announced the immediate retirement of 18 aircraft. The figure includes seven Airbus A340-600s, six Airbus A380s, and five Boeing 747-400s. The airlines retired A340s are being sent to an aircraft graveyard in Teruel.

Will you miss Austrians retired aircraft? Let us know what you think and why in the comments!

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Austrian Airlines To Retire Half Of Its Boeing 767 Fleet - Simple Flying

Its been a rough couple of months for all investors, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -2.31% and S&P 500 SPX, -2.77% and Nasdaq Composite COMP, -3.14% indexes plunged more than 30% from their all-time highs before bouncing back nicely through last week. (They sold off again Monday, but were higher midday Tuesday.)

And no one was hurt more than the 73 million baby boomers, the generation born between 1946 and 1964, nearly half of whom already are retired, while millions more are right on the cusp. By some measures, Gen Xers, those born between 1964 and 1980, are in even worse shape. For both this marks the third wealth-destroying major bear market in the past 20 years, and some of us think we havent hit bottom yet.

One reason for this is that target-date retirement funds, which have become the retirement savings and investing vehicle of choice for many boomers and Gen Xers, have been hit hard in the recent bear market. Typically, these funds decrease their allocation to stocks as the funds get closer to the retirement target date. But some of the most popular funds that have a retirement target date of 2020 hold 50% or more of their assets in stocks.

Target-date funds now account for $1.8 trillion in assets, according to Sway Research, predominantly in workplace defined-contribution, or 401(k) plans. Vanguard Group is the leader with 37% of the market, while Fidelity and T. Rowe Price follow with around 12%-13% each. That means almost two of every three dollars in target-date funds are managed by the Big Three.

From Feb. 20 through March 20, which coincided with almost all of the recent market selloff, target-date 2020 funds from Fidelity FFFDX, -0.60%, Vanguard VTWNX, -0.78% and T. Rowe Price TRRBX, -0.94% lost 19%-22% of their value, according to Morningstar Inc. (After the recent rally, theyre 11%-14% off their highs.)

Vanguard had the lowest equity allocation50% domestic and international stockswhile T. Rowe Prices 2020 target fund had 58% in equities. These firms 2025 target funds had 59%-64% of their holdings in equities, according to the firms websites.

The rationale, of course, is that with increasing life expectancy, investors need to hold more stock to generate the growth theyll need over long retirements to keep from running out of money. But 50% in stocks has proven too risky for people who are retiring now, and investors should hold less stock or keep two to three years of retirement living expenses in cash as insurance. (The right kind of annuity can help, too.)

Americans in general have roughly 50% of their individual retirement accounts (IRAs) in equities, although the equity percentage of the balanced funds they own raises that past 55%. Stock holdings, however, drop when people turn 60, according to a study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), and hover between the high 40s and mid-50s for the rest of their lives.

Of course, just because everybodys doing it doesnt make it right. Ronald J. Surz, president of Target Date Solutions and of its parent company, PPCA, Inc., based in San Clemente, Calif., has long railed against the dominant industry practice of having 50% or more in stocks at the retirement target date. He believes that even five years before they retire, investors enter the risky zone, where they have to pay more attention to preserving than accumulating capital. Thats because sequence of returns riskdrawing down diminished retirement funds in the midst of a bear marketcan force retirees to tighten their belts way more than they expected.

So, weve got a lot of people in the risk zone, more than we ever had before, most of whom I think dont really realize that theyre taking more risks than they can afford, Surz told me in a telephone interview.

Instead, Surz recommends a different glide path to retirement and beyond, based on research by Wade D. Pfau and Michael Kitces, which found that reducing equity exposure to 20%-40% at retirement, then building it back up as retirement proceeds would maximize their level of sustainable retirement income, and/orreduce the potential magnitude of any shortfalls in adverse scenarios.

Surzs proprietary SMART Target Date Fund index, based on those concepts, lost only 2% in the selloff, although it did lag in the latter years of the recent long bull market. John Hancock also has some more conservative target-date funds which lost at least 5 percentage points less than Vanguard, Fidelity and T. Rowe Prices 2020 funds in the recent selloff. But as Surz points out, investors dont choose their target funds; theyre stuck with the 401(k) provider their employers pick for themand thats mostly the Big Three.

Target-date funds have a lot going for them, and theyre certainly better than the flawed judgment of individual investorsexcept when they get to retirement itself. Thats why I think the Big Three need to do a big rethink. Theres got to be a better way.

Howard R. Gold is a MarketWatch columnist. He owns target-date funds from Vanguard and Fidelity. Follow him on Twitter @howardrgold.

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Target-date funds are failing those on the cusp of retirement - MarketWatch

Phil Drake, Great Falls Tribune Published 10:49 a.m. MT April 21, 2020

HELENA Eric Feaver, longtime employee labor leader, has announced his retirement and Amanda Curtis, a former state lawmaker and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate,will replace him as president, union officials said Tuesday.

Feaver announced his decision over the weekend at the third annual conference of the Montana Federation of Public Employees (MFPE) which was held online Friday and Saturday due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The MFPE is Montanas largest union with 23,000 members.

Eric Feaver(Photo: Courtesy Montana MEA-MFT)

Curtis, who had served as second vice president, was elected as MFPEs next president. First Vice President Bill Dwyer was re-elected, current MFPE Treasurer Rich Aarstad was elected second vice president, and Michelle Wheat was elected MFPE treasurer. They will take office June 15.

Feaver was a fixture at the state Capitol, often attending legislative meetings and sessions and letting lawmakers know what the union thought of proposals and decisions. He often found himself at odds with elected officials.

We are unique, we are diverse.In the Montana context, we are huge and we have a huge responsibility to see that the labor movement in this state goes forward, Feaver said, according to a news release. If we fail or if we are killed by the political processes by the things that have occurred in states like Iowa and Wisconsin and Michigan, the labor movement will die in Montana. It rests on our shoulders to bear the burden of the labor movement and to defend it.

The conference drew nearly 500 member leaders, a record number of attendees, organizers said. Members also voted on constitutional amendmentsand approved the years budget.

Amanda Curtis(Photo: STATE OF MONTANA)

Feaver became president of the Montana Education Association (MEA) in 1984 and guided its throughits merger with the Montana Federation of Teachers (MFT) in 2000, according to a news release.He was elected president of the newly formed MEA-MFT.

Then, in 2018, Feaver oversaw the merger of MEA-MFT with the MPEAto form the Montana Federation of Public Employees (MFPE).

Feaver discussed the merger with the Tribune in 2018.

I think numbers matter. I would like to be a union of this size than not, he said.Having a large number of employees paying dues for a union is a powerful statement, and we intend to show that.

One of the best things about my job is that there is always a reason to come to work, he said in that interview. It keeps the adrenaline pumping. Every now and then, when we lose, it makes us all the more anxious to win the next time.

Curtis is a Butte educator, former state legislator and nominee for U.S. Senate.

This union has a 138-year history and were going to continue for another 138 years and centuries after that regardless of whos in governance, she told MFPE delegates. Were going to keep protecting pensions, bargaining better pay, benefits, and working conditions, and getting our members elected to office.

Members include K-12 public school teachers and support staff; state, countyand municipal employees; higher education faculty and support staff; Head Start employeesand health care personnel.

Reporter Phil Drake is our eye on the state capitol. For tips, suggestions or comment, he can be reached at 406-231-9021 or pdrake@greatfallstribune.com.

Read or Share this story: https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2020/04/21/eric-feaver-retire-montanas-largest-union-amanda-curtis-take-reins/2996695001/

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Feaver to retire from state's largest union, Curtis to take reins - Great Falls Tribune

Carveth Care Centre personal support workers Cherry Reyes and Cheryl Reston wear personal protective equipment before supporting residents at the Gananoque facility. (Supplied Photo) Submitted / Submitted Photo

KINGSTON With high rates of COVID-19 and subsequent deaths at retirement homes in Almonte, Bobcaygeon and other areas in the province, Kingston-area retirement and long-term care homes have pretty well managed to keep the coronavirus at bay.

According to Public Health Ontario, as of Sunday afternoon there were 114 outbreaks in Ontarios long-term care homes and 249 deaths among residents or patients at those homes. After not having any cases in the Kingston area for the past couple of weeks, Providence Manor in Kingston reported one new case on Monday.

Brett Gibson, the co-owner of Gibson Family Healthcare with his sister Lisa Burgess, said in an interview that at their two homes Carveth Care Centre in Gananoque and Helen Henderson Care Centre in Amherstview its mostly good preparation, but also a little bit of luck, that is keeping COVID-19 out.

Gibson, also the mens hockey coach for the Queens Gaels, sees similarities between coaching hockey and managing the coronavirus.

I think with coaching, this role is quite similar. My sister and I have put plans in place and you plan for the worst and hope for the best, and I think the plans that weve done have allowed our front-line staff to perform on demand, because weve communicated to them right from the beginning, he said.

From an early start date, theyve been very diligent, and with an early start date, theyve been sticking with the plan. Its very similar to coaching: You put plans in place and you hope your players stick to those plans, and the preparation is whats going to lead to the performance.

Carveth has 104 residents in its long-term care home and 38 in its retirement home, while Helen Henderson has 104 in its long-term care section and 65 in its retirement home.

Some of the mitigation controls at both facilities include one entrance in and out of the building, with no outside visitors. Everyone wears surgical masks inside the buildings, social distancing is being practised, and people visiting loved ones inside can no longer go up close to the window of their room. Theres now a painted line on the grass two metres away from the building.

Staff member Angela Ballantyne, a personal support worker at the Carveth Care Centre in Gananoque, checks on a resident in an undated photo. (Supplied Photo) Submitted / Submitted Photo

Our dining rooms are now spread out at both nursing homes, so theyre six feet apart when our residents are eating, and our recreation programs have gone down to a bare minimum, Gibson said.

Gibson knows the facilities he and his sister manage have been lucky with their mitigation techniques while some other homes have not.

There is luck involved. This virus is a deadly virus and I dont think anyone intentionally wanted to infect any of these homes, he said. There also is a lot of preparation, and I think that has a lot to do with the successes. You obviously have to have luck, but you can put a lot of measures in place to make sure youve earned that luck.

I think these (other) homes were prepared and they got unlucky some of them.

Gibson said he and his sister keep good lines of communication with residents and family members. Those measures include regular email updates.

They have a line where its directly coming from the top, Gibson said.

Dr. Ashok Chadha, the general manager and director of care at the Windsor Retirement Residence in Amherstview, said COVID-19 did not enter the facility due to the early lockdown and other safety protocols he put in place well before the government orders to do so came in mid-March.

We were the first in doing basically everything, Dr. Chadha said. We were way ahead of the authorities and government.

Chadha said he started educating residents of the 81-unit facility about COVID-19 in January.

They were well prepared. Were the first ones to talk about lockdown and the first ones to bring in screening guidelines and stayed ahead of things before they went widespread in the province, he said.

Chadha said staff members also had to stop working at other long-term care homes early in the outbreak to prevent the spread of the virus. He also banned outside agencies and contractors from coming into the Windsor.

Mitigation protocols include wearing masks throughout the facility and social distancing. Residents are allowed to walk outside in the private, fenced grounds as long as family members dont come on the property.

Chadha was also concerned about the residents anxiety and mental health during the new quarantine measures.

We were also very proactive in taking steps to talk to them more and give them breathing exercises, he said. Our residents are just not limited to stretching their arms on the balcony. They can go out and walk.

If this thing continues for a month or another two months, its going to take its toll on their mental health.

Despite the lockdown, residents have been able to keep up their recreational activities as long as social distancing is respected.

Our ultimate goal is their safety and well-being, Chadha said.

imacalpine@postmedia.com

twitter.com/IanMacAlpine

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Local retirement homes determined to keep COVID-19 out of facilities - The Kingston Whig-Standard

What is Ann Coulter marital status ? ( married,single, in relation or divorce): Single How many children does Ann Coulter have ? (name): 0 Children Is Ann Coulter having any relationship affair ?: Yes7 affair Is Ann Coulter Lesbian ? Don't Know

Ann Hart Coulter is an American conservative social as well as a political commentator, lawyer, syndicated columnist and also a writer. Frequently she appears on radio, television and also as a speaker at public and private events. Her father John Vincent Coulter was an FBI agent and her mother Nell Husbands Coulter was a native of Paducah. In 1984 she had completed her graduation from Cornell with B.A in history.

She has never been married nor has any children. But she has been engaged several times. She had dated many guys. She had dated a founder as well as a publisher and a conservative writer. After that she began dating a former president of the New York City Council. Besides her affairs she likes to study books. She also likes music.

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Ann Coulter wiki, affair, married, Lesbian with age, height ...

The media are outraged that President Trump is talking about re-opening the country, following their previous position that he sure was taking his sweet time at opening up the country.

Fortunately, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions death forecasts from the Wuhan coronavirus have shrunk from 1.7 million Americans in mid-March; to 100,000 to 200,000 two weeks ago, provided there were massive suppression efforts; to most recently 60,000.

Every week, it seems, were another two weeks away from the apex.

According to a model recently published in The New York Times, if Trump had issued social distancing guidelines just two weeks earlier on March 2, rather than March 16 instead of 60,000 Americans dying from the Chinese coronavirus (projected!), only 6,000 would have died.

If thats what a two-week quarantine would have done, then how about a four-week quarantine?

By the end of the month, 90% of the country will have been shut down, quarantined and socially distancing for FOUR WEEKS. A majority of Americans have already been under these self-isolation rules for three weeks. (And most of the rest live in rural communities 16 miles from one another.)

Two weeks is the magic number. Test positive for the Wuhan: self-quarantine for two weeks. Come into contact with someone who has it: self-quarantine for two weeks. Traveling from New York, New Jersey or Connecticut: self-quarantine for two weeks.

With cold and flu viruses, people develop symptoms after just five days. But to be extra safe, were assuming the Wuhan virus can be transmitted for a full two weeks after contact.

After two weeks, youre either sick or the infection has passed through you with no symptoms.

Again: Its been three. Does social distancing work or doesnt it?

After four weeks of self-isolation, wont 90% of the country be Wuhan-free? Or are we in a sci-fi movie with a virus that can live forever without a host?

For the tiny percentage of the country not in self-isolation for the past three weeks, either because they are essential workers or because they are screw-offs, lets add them to the vulnerable list. Everyone take special precautions around doctors, nurses, grocery store employees and people who dont follow orders just as we do around the elderly and immunocompromised.

By May 1, even most of the slackers will have worked through the Wuhan. There havent been any large gatherings for them to attend, and almost everyone else has been staying 6 feet away from them. Theyve had a month to infect one another and either live or die.

In any event, unless all the claims about social distancing are nonsense, then a ONE-MONTH nationwide quarantine should have killed off the Wuhan in 90% of us, allowing a return to mostly normal life. (It goes without saying that Trumps travel bans will have to remain in place.)

I notice that the same people telling Americans they must remain at home indefinitely were indignant about closing bathhouses in response to the AIDS epidemic. Back then, the media and all gays except Randy Shilts said: How dare you ask us to shut down the bathhouses! Theyre part of gay culture. It would be like asking Catholics to stop visiting the Sistine Chapel!

But putting the entire country under stay-at-home orders? No problem.

Another liberal about-face since the AIDS era gives me an idea for how to re-open the country.

Liberals are furious with Trump for expressing optimism about the experimental drug hydroxychloroquine. When it came to AIDS, the gay communitys successful campaign to compel the FDA to allow compassionate use of unapproved drugs was a civil rights milestone on the order of Selma.

In a 1990 editorial, for example, The New York Times praised the educated and articulate gay spokesmen for bringing about changes in the traditional methods of testing drugs, adding that the new procedures were a compassionate response to AIDS sufferers.

By contrast, today the media are absolutely ghoulish in their hope for hydroxychloroquine to fail. The drug is approved for malaria patients, so its safe; its simply not approved specifically to treat the Chinese virus.

The reason for the medias hostility to hydroxychloroquine is obvious: Trump expressed enthusiasm for the treatment, so liberals are required to take the opposite position.

Its just like the Democrats recent infatuation with open borders. Until Trump, nearly every Democrat was for or claimed to be for border security, deporting criminal aliens and ending the anchor baby scam.

But as the Times Frank Bruni said, Democrats are defining themselves as antonyms to Trump. Why else, he wondered, would Democrats push policies like open borders, which wont go down well with many of the voters the party needs?

Perhaps we could use this liberal neurosis to our advantage. To re-open the country, we need Trump to come out against it.

Ann Coulter is the writer of 12 best-selling books, including In Trump We Trust.

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ANN COULTER: Liberalism, like the Wuhan virus, will never die - MDJOnline.com

Whether or not former Attorney General Jeff Sessions wins back his old Senate seat, President Donald Trump and Congress must seriously consider his proposal to halt immigration until unemployment returns to pre-Coronavirus levels.

While most politicians are arguing over how to reopen the economy, only Sessions is addressing the impact legal immigration has on jobs. On Thursday, he announced a plan to establish a moratorium on employment-based immigration.

The moratorium would last until the unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, where it was before the coronavirus crisis hit the US.

The run-off Republican primary race for US Senate in Alabama was supposed to be over last month. Former Alabama University football coach Tommy Tuberville, boasting an endorsement from Trump himself, led Sessions by double digits in a poll weeks before the initially scheduled election date of March 31.

Now that the election is reset for July 14, due to Covid-19 precautions, new life is breathed into the race. In addition to the Chinese virus, two more pandemics will be top issues: job loss and legal immigration.

Over 22 million Americans lost their jobs in the last month, nearly wiping out all the job gains since the Great Recession, CNBC reported Thursday.

Support for an immigration moratorium is rising among conservative leaders and the American people as a whole. Conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, and Ann Coulter have long favored one. Charlie Kirk, the leader of Turning Point USA and Students for Trump, recently reversed his position of stapling green cards to diplomas of foreign nationals. He now calls for a total and complete moratorium on all visas.

A recent Ipsos poll found 79 percent of Americans support a temporary pause on all immigration. Currently, over 1 million legal immigrants are added to the country every year.

Sessions opponent, however, recently lamented that 400,000 workers in India were unable to be Americans. In a muddled explanation, Tuberville blamed illegal immigrants for taking the places of these Indians, while also supporting a program to bring illegals out of the shadows.

Where Trump stands on immigration should be clear. Unfortunately, Sessions lost the presidents support after failing as his attorney general, abdicating his role in the Russiagate investigation. Trump is endorsing Tuberville for personal reasons, not policy.

Despite being hawkish on immigration for 20 years in the Senate, and despite being the first sitting US senator to endorse Trump in February 2016, Sessions is now struggling to convince Alabamians that hes the Trumpist candidate.

We dont need to be bringing in immigrants now, in any kind of numbers, that are going to take jobs from Americans, Sessions told the Alabama Federation of Republican Women on Wednesday night, Yellow Hammer News reported.

Whether its Tuberville or Sessions running against incumbent Democrat Senator Doug Jones in November remains to be seen, but the American people should not have to wait that long for substantive immigration policy in this crucial moment.

Congress reopens in May. One of the first legislative acts should be to pass a moratorium like the one Sessions is proposing. The corporate donor class wouldnt be pleased, but the country would love it.

In its latest weekly immigration poll, Rasmussen Reports found the American people consistently support a national e-Verify system and reject claims by businesses that say they cant find Americans to fill jobs. Raise the pay, even if it means higher prices, because its keeping Americans working, 60 percent said.

Needless to say, Trump won the White House because of sentiments like those. Right now could not be a better time for him to pressure Congress to reform immigration policy.

A moratorium is a great place to start. A comprehensive bill that permanently ends chain migration and birthright citizenship in exchange for a points-based merit system, while restricting asylum protection to the internationally recognized definition, and which tracks non-immigrant visitors via biometric entry/exit systems should be debated on the House and Senate floors.

Natural supporters in the Senate for these policies include Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas, David Perdue of Georgia, and Josh Hawley of Missouri, who support the RAISE Act, which cuts legal immigration.

Whereas most Republican senators support big business interests in maintaining a large labor pool that lowers wages, there may be a few who would move further right under current circumstances.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky once proposed a trade-off where no new legal immigrants would be accepted while were assimilating the ones who are here.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas told Numbers USA that legal immigration should be scaled down to traditional levels of 250,000 per year when he was a candidate in 2012.

With three months of campaigning left to go, Sessions reported a campaign account balance of over $749,000, and Tuberville reportedly has campaign cash totaling nearly $459,000. Of course, much more money will be spent on the race by outside political action committees, especially under an economic lockdown confining many voters to TV and computer screens.

Much of that money could be wisely spent communicating a message that reflects the decades-long plea of Americans to put America first.

Tuberville may have the most recent photos smiling alongside Trump, but so far, Sessions is bringing the substance. Come 2021, whoever the next Alabama senator is, they should be voting on an immigration moratorium bill if one has not already passed.

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Jeff Sessions' Immigration Moratorium Should Have Trump's Backing - The Schpiel

Berensons upbringing seems tailor-made for the media elite, growing up in Englewood, New Jersey, and attending Horace Mann and then Yale, where he graduated in 1994. He joined the Times five years later, after cutting his teeth at the Denver Post and Jim Cramers financial start-up, TheStreet.com. Around the Times, which he joined in 1999, Berenson was known as a dogged reporter, according to friends, former colleagues, and former friends.

He knew his way around complicated data sets and corporate accounting logs. He covered hedge funds and later the pharmaceutical industry, but liked to go out drinking with cops and law enforcement figures, hanging around with people for whom the stakes were higher than the bottom line. He is remembered as an almost obsessive fan of Trumps The Apprentice when it first aired. He was headstrong and seen as difficult to work with, but with a contrarian streak that led him to look in places others werent. He realized back in 2002 that companies were cooking their books and wrote a series of articles about it, which eventually led to Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski storming into the Times offices with a handful of associates to accuse Berenson of printing lies; Berenson wrote a book on these fraudulent accounting practices while Kozlowski spent more than six years in prison for stealing nearly $100 million from the company.

Berenson later moved into the fiction world, where hes written 12 spy novels that center around a character named John Wells, a super spy with excellent language skills, extreme physical capabilities, and an unquestionable loyalty to the United States, who, while working for the CIA, infiltrates al-Qaida, over time becoming indoctrinated in the terrorist organization, adopting the Muslim faith, and questioning U.S. policy in the Middle East, according to the website Book Series in Order. As the novels progress, Wells returns to the U.S., then back to the Middle East, falls in love with a fellow CIA operative, courts danger, and staves off global disaster, left questioning his belief in human kind, but remaining the ultimate warrior as he combines unrelenting loyalty to his country and the physical traits necessary to get the job done at any cost, someone consumed with a violent streak of revenge as he tracks down those responsibility [sic] for innocent violence and brings justice to the world. As each novel begins, a new threat is unleashed and only John Wells has the knowledge and expertise to save the United States. Wells is a 210-pound, Montanaraised, one-man Team America, in the words of one reviewer, but he is also a reluctant spy, at one point going on a cruise with his girlfriend to prove his commitment to her, only to find himself pulled back into espionage, sometimes against his better judgment.

The books have become best sellers, and garnered Berenson an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, even as some reviewers chafed at the books apparent endorsement of torture and their graphic depictions of violence. Its rare to go more than a few pages without encountering a sickening passage like this, read a Times review of The Secret Soldier, the fifth book in the series. Shrapnel tore open his face and neck, and one jagged piece chopped through his skull and cut into the arteries around his brain, causing massive internal bleeding. He died, but not soon enough.

They also borrow from real-life events, and occasionally tragic ones that some writers may feel conflicted about repurposing for their fictions (Maybe I should, but I dont, Berenson once told an interviewer about the matter). He traveled to global hot spots such as Kandahar and Cairo to pick up the mood and feel of the place. But they also rely on Berensons experience as a reporter with the Times, where he mostly worked at the business desk, but also traveled to Iraq at the start of the war, where he was briefly taken captive by insurgents, blindfolded, tied up, and threatened with death before being released.

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