and manufacturers this week, announcing new steps to address the shortage. plans to speed up manufacturing, crack down on price gouging and increase imports. biden speaking today on increasing imports from abroad. in places like europe where we can get more product on u.s. shelves, that s underway. i think we will be in a matter of weeks or less getting significantly more formula on shelves. joining me now, julian castro, former secretary of housing and urban development during the obama administration. he is also an msnbc political analyst. it is good to see you. your reaction to fox news latest attack on immigrants? you know it is election season because they never miss an opportunity to try to divide people. this is one of the most cynical and twisted attempts to divide people, and really it is about the politics. every election cycle these folks choose a vulnerable community,
xenophobic theory. she tweeted this, they double down on sending pallets to the southern border. part of what frustrates me beyond the xenophobia, the racism, the lies, is the complete lack of interest in actually working to solve the problem, right. because if you are a member of the house of representatives, there is this ongoing crisis, you would hope that that would be where they would be pouring their time and attention. yeah, and i think that s the biggest difference that you saw there in the clip with the biden administration. the administration and the democrats see a problem and they re trying to fix it on behalf of the people they work for, whereas the republicans are just demagoguing for it. you could call for the import from other countries quickly, can other countries ramp up production more quickly than abbott labs and end the
now to the very real baby formula shortage in the u.s. and the fake outrage over at fox news, which is using the shortage to jin up xenophobia. first the facts, the supply of baby formula is running very low, an out-of-stock rate of 43%. there are a bunch of causes including the closure of one of the nation s top formula plants due to contamination. experts cite panic buying and general supply chain issues. on the right it is being used to attack immigrants and president biden. texas governor greg abbott accusing biden of being, quote, happy to provide baby formula to illegal immigrants and fox hosts saying this. american families, there is a shortage, but if you are a migrant don t worry because uncle sam has a stash of that. the biden administration will give them food supplies you can t buy, and those would include baby formula. we can feed the illegal alien babies but we can t feed our own babies?
it is sad. do you know how fired up i am that they ve got these on palets to feed the babies at the borders. what about our kids. why wouldn t all of the pallets go to american families first. it is misleading. there is baby formula stored at migrant facilities because it is the long standing law going back 25 years, an obligation for the government to provide adequate treatment for migrant children held in migrant facilities including the appropriate food such as baby formula. the same law that courts compelled trump to abide even when he didn t want to. and as one fact checker points out, the migration facilities account for a minute portion of the formula used across the country. for republicans it is not about baby formula. it is about finding an excuse to attack immigrants and president biden. biden meeting with key retailers