Federal agents carried out one of the largest immigration raids in recent history this week, arresting nearly 700 workers at chicken processing plants in Mississippi.

But you can still buy a rotisserie bird at your local supermarket tonight for less than $10.

So far, the government crackdown has had little effect on the wider food processing industry, a dangerous business that is heavily reliant on immigrant labor.

The Trump administration says its crackdown helps discourage illegal immigration. But workers’ advocates warn it leaves vulnerable employees open to exploitation and unsafe working conditions.

“Americans really need to think about where their chicken and where their beef and their pork comes from and really demand that the industry raise labor standards,” says Debbie Berkowitz, who directs a health and safety program at the National Employment Law Project.

Authorities raided seven Mississippi poultry plants on Wednesday, arresting 680 people suspected of living in the country illegally. So far, no charges have been brought against the five companies that run the plants, although federal officials say that could change as the investigation is ongoing.

The Trump administration has focused considerable resources on workplace immigration probes. Investigations and audits more than tripled last year, and arrests of workers rose even more. But there was no comparable increase in the number of employers cited.

“These enforcement actions are always aimed toward the workforces,” says Ted Genoways, whose 2014 book, The Chain, focuses on the food processing industry. “No one ever seems to ask how it is that a company comes to employ a factory full of people who do not have legal immigration status.”

Genoways says that is reminiscent of other high-profile raids on a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, in 2008 and at half a dozen Swift plants in 2006.

“In all those cases, there were work stoppages, huge numbers of people swept up, families divided, but little to no consequences for the people who did the hiring,” he says. “And those plants were back up and in production in fairly short order.”

Koch Foods, one of the companies raided in Mississippi this week, said in a statement that it closed for one shift on Wednesday but planned to keep operating to “minimize customer impact.” The company also advertised a hiring fair in Mississippi next Monday and advised job applicants to bring two forms of ID.

Koch Foods (no relation to Charles and David Koch, the majority shareholders of Koch Industries) — paid nearly $4 million last year to settle a complaint brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Latina workers at the company’s plant in Morton, Miss., accused the company of both racial and sexual harassment. The company admitted no wrongdoing.

Another of the companies raided this week, Peco Foods, had two workers suffer amputations last year at a chicken processing plant in Arkansas.

The chicken industry boasts that its processing plants have gotten safer. The rate of workplace injuries was cut by half between 2003 and 2016. But poultry workers are still twice as likely to suffer serious injuries and six times as likely to contract a workplace illness as other private sector employees.

Berkowitz, who was chief of staff at OSHA during the Obama administration, says those numbers are likely understated, because of declining government inspections.

“The industry is totally dependent on finding workers who will not raise issues and who, to a degree, live in fear of the company and they’ll just keep their head down and do the work,” Berkowitz says. “For the last 30 years that’s been immigrant labor.”

A quarter-century ago, journalist Tony Horwitz documented the miserable conditions in a chicken processing plant in a Pulitzer Prize-winning story for The Wall Street Journal. Industry observers say little has changed since then.

“On a good day, the work is repetitive and stressful,” Genoways says. “On a bad day, if there’s a single mistake made by anyone in a group, there’s a high risk of accident.”

If anything, the pressure on workers has only increased, as processing lines move ever faster.

“Meatpacking remains one of the most dangerous jobs in America,” Genoways says. “And because of that, for really more than a century it’s been a job that’s very often done by first-generation immigrants who are just looking for a foot in the door and a way up the economic ladder in America.”

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A U.S. court has ruled that Facebook users in Illinois can sue the company over face recognition technology, meaning a class action can move forward.

The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued its ruling on Thursday. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, it’s the first decision by a U.S. appellate court to directly address privacy concerns posed by facial recognition technology.

“This decision is a strong recognition of the dangers of unfettered use of face surveillance technology,” Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said in a statement. “The capability to instantaneously identify and track people based on their faces raises chilling potential for privacy violations at an unprecedented scale.”

Facebook told NPR that the company plans to ask the full circuit court to review the decision of the three-judge panel. “We have always disclosed our use of face recognition technology and that people can turn it on or off at any time,” said Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman. Information about its facial recognition technology is available in the company policy online.

The case concerns Facebook users in Illinois who accused the social media giant of violating the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act.

Facebook argued that the users had experienced no concrete harm. But the 9th Circuit panel noted that intangible injuries can still be concrete, and it noted the Supreme Court has said advances in technology can lead to more personal privacy intrusions.

The appeals panel decided that Facebook’s technology “invades an individual’s private affairs and concrete interests.”

In 2011, Facebook launched a feature called “tag suggestions.” It allowed technology to analyze the details of people’s faces in uploaded photos — the distance between their eyes, their nose and other features. Users could choose to opt out of the feature. Facebook said it only builds face templates of Facebook users who have the feature turned on.

“Once a face template of an individual is created,” the judges wrote, “Facebook can use it to identify that individual in any of the other hundreds of millions of photos uploaded to Facebook each day, as well as determine when the individual was present at a specific location.”

They noted that Facebook keeps a database of users’ face templates, which are stored on servers in states that include Oregon, Iowa, Texas and California.

Facebook argued before the judges that its collection of biometric data happened outside of Illinois, and outside of the privacy law’s purview.

The panel disagreed, saying it was reasonable to conclude that the law was meant to protect people in Illinois, “even if some relevant activities occur outside the state.”

Privacy advocates have long expressed concern that face recognition technology can be used for mass surveillance and to target protesters, setting a dangerous environment in countries where democracy is failing or never existed at all.

Note: Facebook is one of NPR’s financial sponsors.

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The U.S. and China opened a new front in their trade war this week, when China allowed its currency to fall, triggering a sharp drop in the U.S. stock market.

The seemingly modest adjustment in global exchange rates had a seismic effect on Wall Street confidence, rattling retirement accounts and prompting a new round of bellicose rhetoric from President Trump.

Both the market and the currency stabilized on Tuesday, but not before investors got a stomach-churning preview of what an escalating trade war might look like.

The U.S. Treasury Department formally accused China of manipulating its currency, echoing a complaint the president had made via Twitter. But experts say China’s actions do not amount to currency manipulation, and they warned that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is squandering credibility that the U.S. might need in the future.

“Currency manipulation has a very specific definition under U.S. law,” said David Dollar, a former official with the Treasury Department and the World Bank. “China does not meet the standard.”

Although China does have a trade surplus with the U.S., it does not meet two other Treasury Department tests for currency manipulation, analysts said: It doesn’t have a large surplus in its broader “current account,” and it hasn’t made persistent, one-sided moves to interfere in currency markets.

Dollar, who is now with the Brookings Institution, says currency manipulation usually describes a country that is keeping its currency artificially low, in an effort to make its exports more affordable or to discourage imports.

If anything, China had been propping up its currency until this week. That’s when the government allowed market forces to take over and the Chinese yuan fell below 7 to the U.S. dollar for the first time in over a decade.

“The move down in the yuan on Monday was not artificial — it was an entirely natural market response to newly imposed U.S. tariffs,” wrote former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers in an op-ed for the The Washington Post. Last week, Trump sent a shock through financial markets with plans for a new 10% tariff on $300 billion worth of products imported from China — in addition to previously announced import taxes.

Mnuchin “has damaged his credibility and that of his office” by declaring China a currency manipulator, wrote Summers, who was Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration and an economic adviser to former President Barack Obama. “It will be harder now in the next difficult financial moment for Treasury Department pronouncements to be credited by market participants.”

The Treasury Department said it would consult with the International Monetary Fund about China’s falling currency, but observers said they did not expect much practical effect.

“It’s meaningless,” said Daniel Ikenson, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “We’re already in a trade war with China. We’re already imposing all sorts of punitive measures. So just calling them a ‘currency manipulator’ is more political and it is an exercise in name-calling.”

The Chinese yuan stopped its slide on Tuesday, and U.S. investors appeared to catch their breath. Stocks regained some of the ground they lost the day before. U.S. stock indexes rose more than 1% on Tuesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing up 311 points.

Still, the market gyrations only add to the uncertainties that have led to a slowdown in U.S. manufacturing and business investment.

“The president’s flailing bluster, in which the treasury secretary is now a full participant, risks real economic damage as businesses and consumers become fearful and hold off spending,” Summers wrote. “The risk of recession going forward might now be as high as any time since the 2008 financial crisis.”

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow offered reassurance Tuesday, telling CNBC there’s still an opportunity for a negotiated resolution of the trade war.

“The reality is we would like to negotiate,” Kudlow said. “The president has said if you make a good deal, maybe he’ll be flexible on the tariffs.”

Dollar agreed there’s room for compromise.

“It would only take a phone call between the two presidents to put things back on a good track,” he said. “They could just decide this [trade war] is mutually destructive.”

But Trump’s tweets showed little sign that he is backing down on his tariff threats.

“Massive amounts of money from China and other parts of the world is pouring into the United States for reasons of safety, investment, and interest rates,” he wrote Tuesday.

However, as nervous investors seek safety in dollars, that merely strengthens the U.S. currency — encouraging imports and making American exports more expensive. That’s precisely the opposite result of what the president says he wants.

“His protectionist policies are driving down the value of the Chinese currency and driving up the value of the dollar. And that’s just going to encourage trade deficits in perpetuity,” the Cato Institute’s Ikenson said. “If we want the dollar to settle down, we need to have more predictable, level-headed policies in place going forward.”

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The Treasury Department formally labeled China a currency manipulator Monday, after Beijing allowed its currency to fall to an 11-year low. The tit-for-tat moves mark the latest escalation in the two countries’ trade war, which triggered a sharp sell-off on Wall Street.

While President Trump has long accused China of tinkering with its currency to gain an unfair advantage on world markets, this is the first time in a quarter century the U.S. has formally accused Beijing of currency manipulation.

The Treasury secretary will work with the International Monetary Fund “to eliminate the unfair competitive advantage created by China’s latest actions,” the department said in a statement.

China’s devaluation came days after Trump announced plans to level new tariffs on some $300 billion in Chinese imports, beginning in September. China also responded by suspending its already limited purchases of U.S. agricultural products.

Signs the two sides are digging in for an extended trade battle rattled investors on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 767 points, or 2.9%. The S&P 500 fell nearly 3%.

“Any investor who had anticipated that President Xi and President Trump would shake hands and reach some kind of an agreement by year-end is probably scratching that scenario off their blackboard,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer of Cresset Capital in Chicago.

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Major League Baseball’s Philadelphia Phillies are suing the creators of “The Phillie Phanatic,” to prevent them from making the green and furry mascot a “free agent,” available to root for and promote other teams.

The Phanatic debuted at a Phillies game in April 1978 with the help of Harrison and Erickson, Inc., which designed and created it.

According to a lawsuit filed in New York, the firm’s principals, Wayde Harrison and Bonnie Erickson, were paid over $200,000 by the end of 1980. In 1984, after it was clear that the Phanatic was a hit, Harrison and Erickson terminated the original licensing agreement and renegotiated a deal for $215,000. The Phillies say the 1984 agreement gave the team the rights to the mascot forever.

The 39-page lawsuit says the firm “has threatened to obtain an injunction against the Phillies’ use of the Phanatic and to ‘make the Phanatic a free agent’ if the Club does not renegotiate the 1984 Assignment and pay H/E millions of dollars.”

The Phillies claim that the team has a 41-year investment in the mascot and that it is a “co-author of the Phanatic costume” and “author of the Phanatic character.”

In addition to the Phillie Phanatic, Bonnie Erickson is also known for her work with The Muppets creator, Jim Henson. She has created mascots for other pro sports teams. But none caught on like the Phillie Phanatic.

As the Victory Journal reported:

“As Harrison/Erickson see it, three elements determine the success of a mascot character: ‘A good design, a good performer, and the support of the team,’ says Harrison. ‘None of those three things is easy. Nobody really executed the program as well as Philadelphia. The Phillies, they got it 100 percent.'”

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The Pentagon is hitting pause on a massive, first-of-its-kind cloud computing contract after President Trump cited critics’ accusations of favoritism toward Amazon.

Mark Esper, the new defense secretary, is re-examining the project just weeks before the winner was expected to be announced. Amazon and Microsoft are the finalists for the contract, which is worth as much as $10 billion and will be as long as 10 years. The project is called JEDI, for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure.

“No decision will be made on the program until he has completed his examination,” Department of Defense spokeswoman Elissa Smith said on Thursday.

JEDI is a high-profile contract to collect and store sensitive military data and give U.S. war fighters access to cutting-edge technologies, like artificial intelligence. It has been one of the most controversial Pentagon technology contracts, with lawsuits, several investigations, rebukes and, most recently, Trump’s interest in what is normally a bureaucratic contracting process.

The new examination is good news for Oracle and IBM, which have been knocked out of the bidding competition and unsuccessfully sued to block the award.

They and some Republicans in Congress have argued that the Defense Department should select multiple companies instead of a single winner. Critics have also accused the Pentagon and Amazon of having an unfairly cozy relationship, pointing to several Defense Department employees who have done work for Amazon’s cloud business, AWS.

The Department of Defense, the Government Accountability Office and the Court of Federal Claims have reviewed the JEDI bidding process and allowed the contract to proceed. The Pentagon has also hit back that the criticisms were “poorly-informed” and “manipulative.”

But these complaints have reached the ear of Trump, who has publicly expressed disdain toward Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos over Amazon’s deal with the U.S. Postal Service and Bezos’ personal ownership of The Washington Post, whose news coverage is a common target of Trump’s criticism.

“I’m getting tremendous complaints about the contract with the Pentagon and with Amazon; they’re saying it wasn’t competitively bid,” Trump told reporters on July 18. “I will be asking them to take a look at it very closely to see what’s going on because I have had very few things where there’s been such complaining.”

Congressional letters have also been flying in recent weeks from Republicans who think that the JEDI contract is tainted — and Republicans who argue the delays in awarding it have already hurt the Pentagon’s urgent technology needs.

Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle declined to comment on the re-examination of the cloud contract. Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle are among NPR’s financial supporters.

“JEDI is probably the most important cloud deal ever,” Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives said. “This is the Pentagon moving to cloud, and any company that gets this — it’s going to be a massive ripple effect for decades to come.”

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The Trump administration is moving to weaken the civil rights-era Fair Housing Act — making it much harder to bring lawsuits alleging discrimination in housing, according to housing advocates. But conservative groups applaud the move and say it would stop frivolous lawsuits.

A draft of the Department of Housing and Urban Development rule, obtained by NPR, would target a powerful weapon that’s used in discrimination cases. It’s called “disparate impact.” That means that to prove discrimination in a lawsuit, plaintiffs don’t have to prove, for example, that a bank employee is refusing to make loans to people of color. They just have to show that a company has a business practice that, on its face, may not purposefully discriminate but has a discriminatory effect.

“It’s important because it allows us to really get at discrimination that’s not intentional,” says Nikitra Bailey, a lawyer with the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending. She says the Trump administration’s new rule would severely restrict this very important tool for fighting discrimination in housing.

“It’s huge,” Bailey says, because it allows fair housing lawsuits to obtain remedies for large numbers of people “without having to demonstrate each individual action of discrimination.”

The proposal, which is not yet public, is expected to be released in August.

In one current case, a fair housing group is suing Bank of America, alleging that when the bank foreclosed on homes in recent years, it treated the vacant houses very differently in white neighborhoods than it did minority neighborhoods.

Wanda Onafuwa lives next to one of these houses in Baltimore’s Tremont neighborhood. She works in accounting, owns her house and raised her kids there. She says it’s a nice, quiet street. But then Bank of America foreclosed on the house next door, and it fell into worse and worse disrepair.

“The grass wasn’t being mowed, there were no windows upstairs,” Onafuwa says. “So you have a bad rainstorm, and I don’t know what was going on with the roof, water would get in.”

She says water would fill the basement and then spill over into her basement. “There were rats running around.”

Onafuwa says she called the city and the bank repeatedly, but not much changed. Then, she says, a squatter started living in the vacant house — “a guy going in and out.” That’s even though, she says, there was no electricity hooked up. “It just looked pitch-black,” she says.

Lisa Rice, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, which is bringing the lawsuit, says her group looked at foreclosed properties in more than 70 communities across the country with comparable levels of owner-occupied homes and other similarities.

“In the white communities that we looked at, the story was completely different,” she says. “The grass was mowed, the doors were secure, the windows were not broken, we didn’t see trash and debris.”

Bank of America said in a statement that it denies the claims in the lawsuit. “Our commitment to sustainable homeownership for low- to moderate-income and multicultural clients and communities has always been a hallmark of Bank of America,” it said.

But in a disparate impact lawsuit, you don’t have to show that a company meant to discriminate. The company might have had the best of intentions but still have adopted a policy that has an unequal outcome with a discriminatory effect.

Rice says these types of Fair Housing Act cases go back more than 40 years. In 2015, the Supreme Court upheld the use of disparate impact while imposing some limitations. But many corporations and conservatives don’t like this legal approach.

“There are always going to be racially disproportionate results for any policy,” says Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank that focuses on civil rights issues. Clegg, who worked in the Justice Department in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, says these disparate impact cases are often unfair to defendants because the cases find discrimination where it’s not actually happening.

“If you have a landlord who says, ‘I’m not going to rent to people with a history of violent crime,’ ” he says. “The fact that that has a racially disproportionate result does not make it discrimination.”

So he says this disparate impact approach results in a lot of unfair lawsuits. And he says the Trump administration’s new rule will provide clarity about the limits under the 2015 Supreme Court decision.

But Bailey, of the Center for Responsible Lending, says the proposed rule goes way beyond that. “It really makes it more difficult to bring disparate impact cases, and then it limits the damages for discrimination,” she says.

Bailey says with African American homeownership rates at their lowest level in 50 years, this could set up more roadblocks.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development says it can’t comment on the proposed rule yet. But in an earlier statement, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said the department “remains committed to making sure housing-related policies and practices treat people fairly.”

But civil rights advocates say they’re worried. They say that beyond this proposed housing rule, the Trump administration is looking to roll back civil rights protections in education and in terms of which groups of people deserve protection from discrimination.

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