New York City is caring for more migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. than longtime homeless residents for the first time as the migrant crisis reaches a tipping point in the Big Apple, city officials announced Wednesday.

There are currently over 50,000 migrants under the care of New York City, Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said during a briefing, a number she called ‘unsustainable’ as it surpasses the number of unhoused New Yorkers in its shelter system.

‘You see from today’s numbers that we have reached a tipping point,’ Williams-Isom said. ‘We now have more asylum seekers in our care than longtime New Yorkers … who were in our existing DHS system.’

‘We all are facing a humanitarian crisis right here in the five boroughs,’ she said, and called on federal partners to help in the form of financial aid and national coordination.

Since Spring 2022, more than 81,200 asylum seekers – most entering the U.S. from the southern border – poured into New York City’s intake system, according to the deputy mayor.

Last week, an additional 2,500 came under the city’s care, Williams-Isom said.

Over the course of the crisis, the city has opened 176 sites and 12 Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers to support the wave of migrants.

Williams-Isom also announced that the city is extending the contracts of 10 navigation sites, including the addition of an eleventh site – a cost of $2.3 million.

As New York City officials struggle to house tens of thousands of asylum seekers, they have begun to bus some migrants to the suburbs.

Earlier this month, Mayor Eric Adams caught backlash for suggesting housing migrants in private residences in the city.

Adams, a Democrat, had also announced that he is suing 30 New York counties over local executive orders intended to stop the city from housing migrants in their towns.

Fox News’ Cortney O’Brien and Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.

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Former Republican Sen. Lowell P. Weicker died Wednesday at the age of 92.

Weicker, who also served as governor of Connecticut from 1991 to 1995, passed away at a hospital in Middletown, Conn., after a short illness, according to a family statement.

The Republican was first elected to Connecticut’s General Assembly in 1962. He was later elected to the U.S. Senate, serving from 1971 to 1989.

Weicker served on the Senate’s special committee on Watergate in 1973. Weicker was one of three Republicans represented on the seven-person committee.

A brash politician, Weicker did not shy away from criticizing President Richard Nixon.

‘More and more, events were making it clear that the Nixon White House was a cauldron of corruption,’ Weicker wrote in his memoir, ‘Maverick: A Life in Politics’. ‘And even as disclosures kept coming, more and more national leaders were acting as though nothing especially unusual had happened.’

Weicker, who was considered a Rockefeller Republican by some conservatives, broke with his party on major social issues of his day, such as abortion and school prayer. 

As senator, he sponsored the Protection and Advocacy for the Mentally Ill Act and introduced legislation that would become the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act. As governor of Connecticut, Weicker fought against income tax increases but eventually relented, which helped fix Connecticut’s $963 million deficit.

‘It is with great sadness that we learn the news of the passing of former Governor Lowell P. Weicker, Jr.,’ Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont tweeted on Wednesday. ‘I am directing U.S. and state flags lowered in his honor effective immediately.’

Lamont had previously described Weicker as a genuine friend.

‘I think he was just incredibly genuine, a little unfiltered,’ Lamont told The Associated Press in 2021. ‘And we sort of miss that in this day and age with the teleprompter.’

In a statement, Weicker’s family said he was ‘the center of our universe.’

‘In nearly four decades of public service, he used his position to protect the Constitution of the United States and to improve the lives of people who had no power advocating for education, health care and research, civil rights and equal opportunity,’ the statement read.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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President Biden used a CPAP machine Tuesday night while sleeping, explaining visible marks on his face when he was talking to reporters on Wednesday.

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News that Biden has sleep apnea, as previously disclosed.

‘Since 2008, the President has disclosed his history with sleep apnea in thorough medical reports. He used a CPAP machine last night, which is common for people with that history,’ Bates said.

Voters in Wisconsin are torn on who to support in the GOP race for president, with former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis neck and neck in the hotly contested White House race, a recently released poll shows.

The Marquette University Law School Poll, which was conducted from June 8 to June 13 and released Wednesday, shows Trump narrowly leading DeSantis 31% to 30%, well within the poll’s margin of error of +/-4.3 percentage points.

Following DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence picked up six percent support in the poll, South Carolina GOP Sen. Tim Scott received five percent support, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley received three percent support, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy picked up three percent support.

Asked who they would vote for if the only two options in the Republican presidential primary were DeSantis and Trump, respondents to the survey chose DeSantis over Trump 57% to 41%. Forced to choose between the two prominent Republicans, those whose first choice is someone other than DeSantis or Trump selected DeSantis by 74% to Trump’s 25%.

Sixty-eight percent of Republicans and independents who lean Republican said they view Trump favorably, followed by DeSantis at 67%, Pence at 52%, and Haley at 32%.

Despite the large swath of support for both Trump and DeSantis in the Badger State, both would lose in a hypothetical matchup against the incumbent president. In both cases, however, four percent of respondents either declined to choose or were undecided.

If the election were held today, with DeSantis being the Republican nominee against President Biden, it would be a pretty close race. Forty-nine percent said they would vote for Biden, with 47% saying the same for DeSantis.

As for an election rematch between Trump and Biden in 2024, a victory for Republicans is more bleak, according to the poll results. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they would vote for Biden, compared to 43% who said the same for Trump.

The poll also showed that Biden still leads both of his Democratic challengers, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and author Marianne Williamson, in the race for the White House. Among Democratic voters and independents who lean Democratic, the incumbent president received a 97% favorability rating. Kennedy and Williamson received a combined 60% favorability rating.

The Marquette University Law School Poll outlined above was compiled using the responses of 913 Wisconsin registered voters. The sample includes 419 Republicans and independents who lean Republican and were asked about their preferences in the Republican presidential primary, with a margin of error of +/-6.5 percentage points. The Democratic primary preference was asked of 453 Democrats and independents who lean Democratic, with a margin of error of +/-6 percentage points.

LOS ANGELES – What should parents and students expect if the Supreme Court bans affirmative action in public and private universities? Consider the case of California, which banned race-based admissions in 1996.

Despite spending some $500 million on outreach programs to boost Black and Latino enrollment, the state’s elite universities still failed to improve racial diversity on campus. California even recently eliminated standardized tests — the ACT and SAT — hoping to reduce high-scoring Asian students from outperforming competitors, but it too failed to change the racial makeup of University of California (UC) students.

‘Despite its extensive efforts, UC struggles to enroll a student body that is sufficiently racially diverse to attain the educational benefits of diversity,’ UC wrote in an amicus brief to the court. ‘The shortfall is especially apparent at UC’s most selective campuses, where African American, Native American, and Latinx students are underrepresented and widely report struggling with feelings of racial isolation.’

In 2021, 54% of the state’s high school seniors were Latino, 5.4% Black. By contrast, UC’s incoming freshmen were 26% Latino – a 28-point gap – and 4.4% Black. At UC Berkley, just 20% of incoming freshmen were Latino, 3% Black. In all, there were just 228 Black students compared to more than 2,800 incoming Asian students out of a total enrollment of 6,750.

‘I’ve only met two other Black students within all of my classes that I’ve been in,’ Berkeley student James Bennett told Reuters.  

Law professor John Powell, who is Black, added, ‘Everyone agrees. The fact is that admissions in college is uneven. Blacks are underrepresented, especially at a place like Berkeley.’ 

Today, the elite UC system’s nine undergraduate universities have been using 13 factors to build a freshman class. Their ‘holistic’ admissions review has included high school GPAs, class ranks, high school zip codes, family income and education, student essays and outside accomplishments.

Should the court ban affirmative action, education consultant Arvin Vohra predicted other universities will adopt the California model and develop algorithms or software to try achieving racial equity even if race is not allowed as an input. 

‘The group that’s most likely to be helped by this decision are Asian American students, while you’ll see lower enrollment among Black and Hispanic students,’ said Vohra. ‘You can’t change your race, but you can change your activities. You can change your way of presenting your story.’

He predicted that colleges will use crime, demographic and poverty rates from a student’s zip code to help identify minority applicants. Elite schools could also see an increase in Black and Hispanic applications if other schools also drop the standardized test. California saw an 18% jump in those applications after it dropped the SAT and ACT. 

‘A very high achieving Black or Hispanic student is going to be very in-demand,’ Vohra said. ‘We’ve seen this in private and public colleges. If you’re a top-level Black or Hispanic student, you’ll have a lot of opportunities.’ 

Already, even with affirmative action, top state schools are having a hard time finding minority students who could compete with higher-scoring Asian and White students. In a study of 101 of the nation’s most selective public universities, the Education Trust found Black and Latino students vastly underrepresented.

‘The overwhelming majority of the nation’s most selective public colleges are still inaccessible for Black and Latino undergraduates,’ the report concluded. ‘Over half of the 101 institutions earned D’s and F’s for access for both Black and Latino students.’ 

Some of the worst scores happened at each state’s flagship university. For example, at the University of Georgia, just 8% of incoming freshmen are Black compared to the 36% of graduating public high school seniors statewide. At Ole Miss, 8% of incoming freshmen are Black compared to 48% of high school grads. At the University of Michigan, the gap is smaller — 4% versus 17% statewide.

Hispanic enrollment is not much better. At the University of Texas, there is a 23-point gap between the incoming freshman class and the statewide average. At the University of Colorado Boulder, the gap is 20 points.

At UC Berkeley, it’s 34 points; 20% of the freshmen are Hispanic versus 54% of high school grads, according to the ‘Common Data Set,’ numbers provided annually by all the major U.S. universities.

If history is any guide, if the court bans affirmative action in higher ed, elite schools will likely see minority enrollment drop. That was true at Berkeley, where minority enrollment fell 40% post-Prop 209. At UCLA, freshman Black enrollment dropped from 7.1% in 1995 to 3.4% in 1998. Latino students dropped from 21% to 10% over the same period.

The average SAT score in 2022 was 1050. By ethnicity, Asian students average 1229, White students 1098, Hispanic students 964 and Black students 926, according to the College Board.

Without affirmative action, experts have said the score will take on added weight, unless the colleges adjust their criteria. 

President Biden and former President Donald Trump are in a virtual dead heat in a key general election battleground state in a potential 2024 rematch, according to a new poll.

Trump stands at 47% support and Biden at 46% among registered voters in Pennsylvania, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

The survey indicates Trump winning the support of Republicans 89% to 7% and Biden with overwhelming 94% to 4% backing from Democrats. Among independent voters, the former president holds a 51% to 37% advantage.

Biden, a Pennsylvania native who spent his early childhood in Scranton, edged Trump by just over 1% in the Keystone State in the 2020 election. Pennsylvania was one of six swing states where Biden narrowly defeated Trump to win the White House.

The president remains underwater with Pennsylvania voters, according to the survey.

‘Voters give President Biden a negative 39-57% job approval rating, with 4% not offering an opinion,’ a release from Quinnipiac University noted.

But Trump was also in negative territory, with a 41%-57% favorable/unfavorable rating among Keystone State voters.

For Pennsylvania’s Republican presidential primary, the poll indicates Trump would top Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 49% to 25%, with every other candidate in a large field of GOP contenders in single digits.

In the Democratic presidential primary, Biden grabs 71% support, with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at 17% and Marianne Williamson at 5%.

Pennsylvania is scheduled to hold its 2024 primary in late April, but there’s an ongoing effort to move the date to mid-March, earlier in the presidential nominating calendar.

The poll indicates Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who was elected last November, is underwater with a 39% to 50% job approval rating.

Longtime Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. — who is seeking re-election next year — stands at 44% to 32%.

And Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who along with Fetterman was elected last year, stands at 57% approval and 23% disapproval.

The poll was conducted June 22-26 among 1,584 registered voters in Pennsylvania. The survey’s overall sampling error was plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.