The White House reluctantly dropped its bid to cut Social Security payroll taxes Thursday as Republicans prepared to unveil a $1 trillion COVID-19 rescue package, yielding to opposition to the idea among top Senate allies.
“It won’t be in the base bill,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, speaking on CNBC about the payroll tax cut, killing the idea for now. The cut in the tax that finances Social Security and Medicare has been a major demand of President Donald Trump.
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by Jack Coyle NEW YORK, New York (AP) — A long time ago in a pre-COVID universe far, far away, blockbusters opened around the globe simultaneously or nearly so. In 1975, “Jaws” set the blueprint. Concentrate marketing. Open wide. Pack them in. Since then, Hollywood has turned opening weekends into…
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Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis held a 17-point lead over Vice President George W. Bush in July 1988, as they prepared to contend for the White House. A month later Bush was up eight. And Bush won 40 states that November.
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A study published Tuesday in The Lancet medical journal found that full lockdowns, border closures and high rates of coronavirus testing are not associated with a statistically significant reduction in the total number of critical cases or the virus’s overall mortality rate.
However, the study, which was based on data from the 50 countries with the most reported cases as of May 1, noted that lockdowns and border closures are likely associated with better overall health outcomes, as the measures helped drive down the rate of the virus’s transmission and reduce the load on hospital systems.
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Allen West clinched the position of party leader for the Texas Republicans early Monday morning, ousting James Dickey, who was first elected to the position in 2017.
Retired Army Lt. Col. West won 22 state Senate districts to Dickey’s four and claimed victory around 3:30 a.m, according to the Statesman News Network. Five districts are yet to report.
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Self-censorship is on the rise according to a new Cato Institute survey that reports nearly two-thirds of Americans are afraid to share their political views.
A new CATO Institute/YouGov national survey found 62% of Americans say the political climate today prevents them from saying what they believe. This is up several points from 2017 when 58% of Americans said they were afraid to share their political beliefs.
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On Wednesday, Gov. Tim Walz signed Executive Order 20-81, ordering Minnesotans to wear a mask in indoor public settings and crowded outdoor spaces starting Friday at 11:59 p.m.
“COVID-19 has impacted every corner of our state and every aspect of our lives,” Walz said in a statement.
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The Department of Labor reported Thursday that over 1.4 million Americans filed additional claims for unemployment last week, marking the first weekly increase in claims since March.
The number of Americans filing for unemployment had been declining each week before mid-July, but the Thursday report marks the 18th week in a row that unemployment claims have been above one million, CNBC reported.
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President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has scrubbed his planned Republican National Convention scheduled for Florida next month, citing a “flare-up” of the coronavirus.
Trump’s formal renomination will still go forward in North Carolina, where a small subset of GOP delegates will still gather in Charlotte, North Carolina, for just four hours on Aug. 24. Florida was to have hosted four nights of programming and parties that Trump had hoped would be a “four-night infomercial” for his reelection.
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President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he will send federal agents into Chicago and Albuquerque to help combat rising crime, expanding the administration’s intervention in local enforcement as he runs for reelection under a “law-and-order” mantle.
Using the same alarmist language that he has employed in the past to describe illegal immigration, Trump painted Democrat-led cities as out of control and lashed out at the “radical left,” even though criminal justice experts say the increase in violence in some cities defies easy explanation.
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President Donald Trump has issued an executive memorandum to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to discount illegal aliens who are subject to legal removal from the U.S. Census.
Here, the President is invoking the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.”
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Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said the ongoing protests in Portland are “the complete opposite” of peaceful demonstrations and that the federal government would “not retreat.”
“We support and we will protect those who want to peacefully protest,” Wolf said in a press conference Tuesday. “Unfortunately, what we’re seeing in Portland every night, roughly from midnight to 4:30 or 5 a.m. is the complete opposite.”
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The mainstream press has spent a lot of time and energy recently attacking Tucker Carlson, none more enthusiastically than CNN’s simpering and shrieking little eunuch, Brian Stelter. Of course Carlson, with the No. 1 rated show in the history of cable news, can laugh all the way to the bank in response to most of these critics. This is nothing new: Fox News is used to its top stars being attacked by the thought-monolith, leftist media and benefitting from the drama in the ratings. For those of us on the Right, it’s amusing and tiresome all at once.
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The United States ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, escalating tensions between the world’s largest economies as President Donald Trump ramps up pressure against China ahead of the November election. Beijing denounced the order Wednesday as “outrageous” and said it would draw a firm response if not reversed.
The physical closure of the consulate, one of six in the United States along with China’s mission to the United Nations, marked a dramatic step in increasingly contentious relations that have been strained not only by the coronavirus pandemic but by disputes over trade, human rights, Hong Kong and Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.
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A powerful earthquake off Alaska’s southern coast jolted coastal communities late Tuesday, and some residents briefly scrambled for higher ground over fears of a tsunami.
There were no immediate reports of damage in the sparsely populated area of the state, and the tsunami warning was canceled after the magnitude 7.8 quake off the Alaska Peninsula produced a wave of a less than a foot.
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Around 20,000 workers walked out of their workplaces worldwide to protest racial and economic inequality Monday, organizers told the Associated Press.
About 60 labor unions and other social justice organizations organized The Strike For Black Lives walkout in 160 cities around the world, according to the AP.
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Planned Parenthood of Greater New York condemned its founder Margaret Sanger for her “harmful connections to the eugenics movement” and vowed to remove her name from their building, according to the group’s statement released Tuesday.
“The removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color,” Karen Seltzer, chairwoman of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York’s board, said in a statement reported by the New York Times.
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The federal government pledged $1.95 billion for an order of 100 million doses, with an option to acquire an additional 500 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine, which is set to enter key large-scale trials in the coming weeks.
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Minneapolis City Council Member Jeremiah Ellison, the son of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, berated cops who are presently away from the job as many of those officers suffer from PTSD related to the George Floyd riots.
Ellison placed the blame for the recent uptick in violence squarely on cops recently, as he suggested that law enforcement has abandoned the city amidst his own council’s attempts to abolish the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). He then suggested that officers are lying about having PTSD because they hate the citizens of Minneapolis. Although he hedged this claim almost immediately, his words drew a sharp response from the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association (MPPOA).
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The Minnesota Legislature passed a broad slate of police accountability measures early Tuesday that includes a ban on neck restraints like the one that was used on George Floyd before his death in Minneapolis.
The package also bans chokeholds and so-called warrior-style training, which critics say promotes excessive force. It imposes a duty to intercede on officers who see a colleague using excessive force. It changes rules on the use of force to stress the sanctity of life. It makes changes in arbitration rules affecting police unions. Officers will get more training on dealing with people with mental health issues and autism. The measure also creates a new advisory council for the state board that licenses officers.
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President Donald Trump is ending the 2015 Obama-Biden era regulation Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation, and has removed requirements that more than 1,200 cities and counties make changes to local zoning in order to qualify for $3 billion of annual community development block grants.
Appearing at the White House Rose Garden on July 14, President Trump called enforcement of this regulation was a “key element” of former Vice President Joe Biden’s platform for president, saying it would “abolish the suburbs…”
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Fourteen people were injured, one person was in custody and additional suspects were being sought after gunfire erupted outside a funeral home on Chicago’s South Side where at least one squad car was present, police officials said Tuesday.
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A coalition of states, environmentalists and American Indians on Monday renewed its push to stop the Trump administration from selling coal from public lands after a previous effort to halt the lease sales was dismissed by a federal judge.
Joined by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and several environmental groups, Democratic attorneys general from California, New York, New Mexico and Washington state filed a lawsuit challenging the administration’s coal program in U.S. District Court in Montana.
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The nation’s largest teachers unions filed a lawsuit Monday against the State of Florida over a department of education emergency order, which demanded schools reopen in August.
The Florida Education Association was joined by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association in suing Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and Richard Corcoran, commissioner of the Florida Department of Education, according to a press release. DeSantis’ emergency order, issued on July 6 by the department of education, ordered all brick and mortar schools to open at least five days a week in August.
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A new high school graduate may take out about $37,200 in student loans for college, according to a recent NerdWallet study.
And for many of them, that won’t be enough.
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More than 50% of Americans oppose removing public statues dedicated to Confederate generals, according to a Washington Post/ABC poll published Monday.
The poll showed 80% of Republicans and 56% of independents oppose removing such monuments, while 74% of Democrats support ridding the country of statues commemorating the Confederacy. Nearly 60% of white people oppose their removal, as do about half of Hispanic people, the poll found.
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President Donald Trump signed a memorandum Tuesday that seeks to bar people in the U.S. illegally from being counted in congressional reapportionment, a move that drew immediate criticism and promises of court challenges.
Trump said that “respect for the law and protection of the integrity of the democratic process warrant the exclusion of illegal aliens from the apportionment base, to the extent feasible and to the maximum extent of the President’s discretion under the law.”
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A Nevada company that started in 1973 with a single hotel-casino in Reno announced Monday it has completed a $17.3 billion buyout of Caesars Entertainment Corp. and will take the iconic company’s name going forward as the largest casino owner in the world.
Eldorado Resorts Inc. said the combined company will now own and operate more than 55 casino properties in 16 U.S. states, including eight resorts on the Las Vegas Strip.
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In the wake of George Floyd’s death, America has been presented with a false narrative about blacks and law enforcement.
Elite progressive voices have pushed a radical idea: Law enforcement is the embodiment of bigotry in America and that “defunding” or even banning the police department is the solution that blacks want most.
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Lacy Johnson raised four times more in campaign contributions than Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05), the Democrat incumbent, during this year’s second quarter. In a recent tweet, Johnson, the leading Republican candidate, detailed that his campaign took in $2 million, while Omar’s campaign posted only $471,000 in donations.
According to the Federal Election Commission, Omar has raised 22 percent more for her campaign in total. She has taken in $3.8 million to date, while Johnson raised $3.17 million. Currently, she has $1.1 million in cash on hand, while Johnson has half that amount.
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Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four others were arrested Tuesday in a $60 million federal bribery probe, a person briefed on the investigation confirmed.
U.S. Attorney David DeVillers’ office would not discuss details of the case, which it planned to outline at a briefing later Tuesday.
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Key legislative leaders had a tentative agreement Monday on the outlines of a police accountability bill, the top Republican in the Minnesota Senate said Monday, but chances appeared dimmer for a $1.9 billion public construction projects package that has yet to win the necessary GOP support in the Democratic-controlled House.
Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, of East Gull Lake, said the Senate planned to adjourn the special session late Monday if there was no agreement on the projects bill, also known as a bonding bill.
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Dr. Carl Sagan was one of the premier scientists when it came to trying to bridge the gap of hard science with general public understanding. In the process, his personal enthusiasm for the wonder of science became evident to all. He also understood that science could be hijacked and that the highest standards of evidence were required when fantastic claims were being made.
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Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” which had hoped to herald Hollywood’s return to big theatrical releases, has yet again postponed its release due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Warner Bros. said Monday that “Tenet” will not make its August 12 release date. Unlike previous delays, the studio this time didn’t announce a new target for the release of Nolan’s much-anticipated $200 million thriller.
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Alex Trebek says he’s responding exceptionally well to treatment for pancreatic cancer and expects to mark his two-year survival next February.
His doctor has said he’s counting on that milestone, the “Jeopardy!” host said, “so I expect to be around ‘cause he said I will be around. And I expect to be hosting the show if I am around.”
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed speculation that he and President Donald Trump have come to an understanding in an interview published Monday.
“I’ve heard this speculation, too, so let me be clear: There’s no deal of any kind,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with Axios published Monday.
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Stanford Law School welcomed a former Manhattan federal prosecutor to a visiting professorship for the fall semester after he was fired by President Donald Trump in June.
Geoffrey S. Berman received his law degree from Stanford Law in 1984 and will return as a visiting professor to teach an elective course titled “Prosecutorial Discretion and Ethical Duties in the Enforcement of Federal Criminal Law,” the school announced in a Wednesday press release.
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A self-described “anti-feminist” lawyer found dead in the Catskills of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound is considered the prime suspect in the shooting of a federal judge’s family in New Jersey, the FBI said Monday.
Roy Den Hollander, who received media attention including appearances on Fox News and Comedy Central for lawsuits challenging perceived infringements of “men’s rights,” was found dead Monday in Sullivan County, New York, two officials with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press.
The FBI said Den Hollander was the “primary subject in the attack” and confirmed he had been pronounced dead but provided no other details.
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Few who were alive at the time can forget the moment the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Over the intervening 18 minutes, people remarked that there were 10,000 people in those buildings on any given workday. And some talked about a B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building in dense fog in 1945. Nearly all were wondering how those kinds of accidents can still happen in the 21st century. In those tense minutes, everyone knew something was terribly wrong, but they were in a First Tower Mentality.
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School districts that plan to reopen classrooms in the fall are wrestling with whether to require teachers and students to wear face masks — an issue that has divided urban and rural schools and yielded widely varying guidance.
The divide has also taken on political dimensions in Iowa, among other places, where Democratic-leaning cities like Des Moines and Iowa City have required masks to curb the spread of the coronavirus, while smaller, more conservative communities have left the decision to parents.
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Several prominent Muslim American elected officials endorsed Joe Biden for president in a letter organized by Emgage Action ahead of an online summit that starts Monday and features the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Among those signing the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, are Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Indiana Rep. Andre Carson, all Democrats.
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Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican and frequent Trump critic, has been approached and is expected to speak at the Democratic National Convention on Biden’s behalf next month, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans who insisted on anonymity to discuss strategy. Kasich is among a handful of high-profile Republicans likely to become more active in supporting Biden in the fall.
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Investigators are examining a possible connection between the shooting and the body of a man found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in Sullivan County, New York, a law enforcement official said.
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A rising senior at Fordham University has provided Campus Reform with letters he allegedly received from the school’s dean of students notifying him that two of his posts shared on his personal social media violated the university’s student conduct code and that he has been placed on probation as a result.
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President Trump recently finalized an overhaul of one of the most important environmental laws in America. Credited by some as the “Magna Carta” of environmental legislation, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is one of America’s main legislative weapons in fighting climate change. It mandates an extensive review process, including the drafting of a lengthy Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and subsequent legal challenges, before the commencement of infrastructure projects. But Trump’s revision of the law through regulatory reinterpretation dramatically weakens the bill’s potency, greatly simplifying the procedure for getting federal approval on many infrastructure projects.
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As the nation struggles with record high unemployment, extended job losses, continued statewide shutdowns, and crippling national debt, a new report reveals that congressional leaders will receive an estimated $1 million each in retirement payouts on top of their lifetime pensions, fully funded by taxpayers.
First published by Forbes, OpenTheBooks.com’s report, “Why Are Taxpayers Providing Public Pensions To Millionaire Members Of Congress?” compares the financial benefits that both top leaders in Congress receive.
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Twitter says the hack that compromised the accounts of some of its most high-profile users targeted 130 people. The hackers were able to reset the passwords of 45 of those accounts.
The San Francisco-based company said in a blog post Saturday that for up to eight of these accounts the attackers also downloaded the account’s information through the “Your Twitter Data” tool. None of the eight were verified accounts, Twitter said, adding that it is contacting the owners of the affected accounts.
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A viral report of a sudden surge of coronavirus cases in infants in a single county in Texas is inaccurate, a local official said on Saturday.
On Friday, the top health official for the Corpus Christi area said at a press conference that the county currently has 85 cases of newborns with coronavirus.
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President Donald Trump announced the preliminary results of his administration’s efforts to deregulate the federal government.
Before taking office, Trump pledged to roll back two regulations for every new regulation added in Washington, D.C. However, that ratio has since increased to seven regulations rolled back for every new one created, Trump said.
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Nearly 50% of American voters believe mail-in voting is likely to result in significant fraud as officials search for ways to secure the electoral system amid a]the coronavirus pandemic, a Washington Post/ABC poll published Sunday found.
Only 43% of people surveyed in the poll think there are adequate protections against potential instances of fraud. The WaPo/ABC poll also showed that 38% of Americans say they prefer to vote through mail, while another 59% want to vote in person.
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