But on Friday, Judge Robert Summerhays of the U.S. District Court in Lafayette, Louisiana, ruled against lifting Title 42, Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports for CBS News. 

Judge Summerhays, a Trump appointee, said that the CDC had not allowed the public to participate in the "required notice and comment process," prior to finalizing the repeal of the policy. (To be clear, Title 42 was instituted in March 2020 without a notice-and-comment period). 

More than 20 states, led by Republican attorneys general in Arizona, Louisiana, and Missouri, filed the lawsuit challenging the decision to end Title 42. The Department of Justice now plans to appeal Summerhays’ ruling, per Montoya-Galvez.  

"Hypocritically, the States that brought this lawsuit seemingly care about COVID restrictions only when they involve asylum seekers and are using the case as an obvious attempt to enact immigration restrictions," said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt, who is challenging Title 42 in a separate court case. 

Not only is Title 42 a bad immigration policy, denying migrants their right to claim asylum, but it also applies "uneven treatment for asylum-seekers" based on their nationality, reports the Associated Press’ Elliot Spagat.  

We can do so much better. 

Welcome to Monday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Joanna Taylor, Senior Communications Manager at the Forum. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].  

100 MILLION — Per UNHCR, the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide has surpassed 100 million for the first time, Diane Taylor reports for The Guardian. "One hundred million is a stark figure — sobering and alarming in equal measure," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. "This must serve as a wake-up call to resolve and prevent destructive conflicts, end persecution and address the underlying causes that force innocent people to flee their homes." Syrians, Venezuelans, and Afghans accounted for the world’s largest refugee populations, while Turkey, Colombia, and Uganda accounted for the top three host countries.  

In local welcome: 

• The Virginia Community Center (VACC), established by the advocacy organization Women for Afghan Women (WAW), has opened in Alexandria, Virginia, to help "with services like mental health counseling, legal support, and educational programming" for newly resettled Afghans. (Héctor Alejandro Arzate, DCist) 
• After providing 594 Afghan refugees with permanent housing, the International Institute of St. Louis has partnered with Arch Grants founder Jerry Schlichter for a new initiative that includes "developing a soccer league for Afghan kids, providing a housing fund, and launching an Afghan chamber of commerce." (Kayla Drake, Danny Wicentowski, St. Louis Public Radio) 

DEBUNKING GREAT REPLACEMENT — The Great Replacement Theory is an "overtly white supremacist ideology [that] is being sanitized and mainstreamed," Natasha Ishak reports for Prism. "When it comes to the great replacement theory, specifically, it’s really an attempt by white supremacists and neo-Nazis and others who are trying to redefine what it means to be an American as being white," the Forum’s Danilo Zak told Ishak. "… It makes it more difficult to combat because as it sanitizes itself, it doesn’t include the more extreme elements. It allows elected officials and others to sort of hide behind slightly less extreme ideas that are still clearly linked to the more dangerous and racist ideology." To help combat misinformation like the Great Replacement theory, check out our explainer. 

FOOD INSECURITY — Idaho’s immigrant farmworkers spend 15 hours a day harvesting food — but "[l]ike most regions in the country whose economies rely on exporting food, little of what’s picked here makes it onto the plates of the people who harvested it," Astra Lincoln writes in a column for Writers on The Range. To help, the nonprofit Idaho Organization of Resource Councils began "distributing culturally relevant foods, like masa for corn tortillas," with support from some local farmers and food pantries. "Yet the need is widespread — in Idaho and elsewhere where farmworkers are needed — and even the best-organized mutual aid projects can’t meet the demand."  

HIGH-SKILLED IMMIGRATION — Congress needs to pass immigration reforms that include provisions for foreign talent if the U.S. wants to stay globally competitive, writes Mick Cornett, former mayor of Oklahoma City, for The Oklahoman. "The proposals in the America COMPETES Act that is currently in conference committee would make an immediate positive impact putting skilled STEM and medical professionals to work in fields where we desperately need them most," he writes. Will Hunt, research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), and Remco Zwetsloot, a trustee fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, couldn’t agree more: "The provision included in the COMPETES Act was endorsed by 49 national security leaders — including senior defense and intelligence officials from every recent administration — in an open letter that called international talent America’s ‘most powerful and enduring asymmetric advantage’ in its technology competition with China." 

Thanks for reading,  

Joanna