A leaked White House plan for comprehensive immigration reform puts some 11 million undocumented immigrants on a path to citizenship after as little as eight years, and would put them at the back of the line, behind legal applicants. The pathway for the children of illegal immigrants would be shorter.

While the cuts haven't come yet, Takeaway political correspondent Todd Zwillich reports that the sequester deadline will probably come and go, automatically enacting those across-the-board spending drawdowns. But cuts will have a wider reach, affecting many industries throughout all parts of the United States. For example, the USDA will likely have to furlough many of their food inspectors, closing down the farms and factories they inspect. Mark Dopp is Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at the American Meat Institute.

Detroit may be on the brink of insolvency. This is not the first time a US city has hit run into major financial problems. Cleveland did so in 1978, Philadelphia in 1991 and New York in the late 1970s.  Jonathan Soffer, associate professor of history at Polytechnic Institute of New York University and author of "Ed Koch: and the Rebuilding of New York" explains what lessons Detroit can learn from these other cities-- and in particular, from New York.

Before he was our sixteenth president and the man who kept our union together, Abraham Lincoln was sort of a regular guy who made mistakes and had ambitions. In honor of President’s Day, we’re looking at that other Lincoln, that not-yet-famous Lincoln, with Chris DeRose, author of “Congressman Lincoln: The Making of America’s Greatest President.”

Listeners have been calling, emailing and texting us with stories about their most cherished letters -- missives from parents, grandparents, lovers and friends that have changed your lives. Letters don't just detail personal lives; they chronicle history too.  Nowhere is that more evident than in the thousand-some letters exchanged between John Adams and his wife Abigail. Margaret Hogan, Managing Editor of the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society and Coeditor of "My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams" shares some of the highlights of their exchange on this President's Day.

Fifty years ago this week, Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique."  The groundbreaking feminist text proclaimed that the stalled rigidity of sexual roles was out of step with the other transformations taking place in the 20th century.  Marcia Ann Gillespie, editor in chief of Ms. Magazine and freelance journalist Anna Holmes, founder of the website Jezebel explain how Friedan's book influenced them, and what work remains left for proponents of gender rights fifty years after its publication.