The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday determined that former President Donald Trump engaged in an insurrection against the United States via the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Riot and was therefore ineligible to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot, Politico reported.
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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday signed a measure to make illegal entry into the Lone Star State a state crime, giving state law enforcement a potentially pivotal tool to combat illegal immigration on its own amid perceived federal apathy.
The law, which is slated to take effect in March, would empower Texas law enforcement to arrest illegal entrants and grant judges the ability to order their deportation, CNN reported.
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On Monday, the European Union (EU) formally announced that it would be launching an investigation into X, the platform formally known as Twitter, over alleged violations of laws meant to crack down on free speech.
According to ABC News, the investigation will be the first one of its kind under new regulations passed by the 27-nation European bloc. In a post on X, European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement that “Today we open formal infringement proceedings against @X” under the Digital Services Act.
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A federal appeals court on Monday rejected a bid from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to move his Georgia election case from state to federal court.
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Small business owners are pessimistic about the future of the economy, according to a new poll.
The National Federation of Independent Businesses released the polling data Tuesday, which shows that the group’s “Small Businesses Optimism Index” decreased slightly in November to 90.1, its 23rd straight month below the historical average of small business optimism.
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Harvard University scrubbed several web pages from the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) department’s website, according to the web archive.
Two web pages, titled “Heritage Months and Identity Recognitions” and “Gender Identity and Pronouns at Harvard,” appear to have been deleted, according to the archives. Both links now route directly to the Diversity and Inclusion homepage.
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Following the resolution of the six-week United Auto Workers strike last month and the ensuing glut of news coverage, one could be forgiven for believing that private sector unions were experiencing a generational comeback the likes of which haven’t been seen since their halcyon days of the 1950s.
The reality, however, couldn’t be further from the truth: union participation in the private sector is now a tiny sliver of the overall employment picture in the United States. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unionization rate of private-sector workers currently sits below 6% at just under 7 million workers nationwide – down from 17 million in 1950.
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Never before has so much ‘infrastructure’ been funded and so little built.
Unless, that is, you label Pete Buttegieg’s ‘paternity’ leave as ‘human infrastructure.’ Which, by the way, is exactly what the Biden administration did with its trillion dollar infrastructure boondoggle in 2021.
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The number of homeless people in the U.S. jumped 12 percent to more than 653,000 people as pandemic spending expired, the highest level on record since the counts started in 2007.
Figures released Friday provide a snapshot of the number of people in shelters, temporary housing and in unsheltered settings. The report found 653,100 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023, a 12 percent increase from 2022. That figure of 653,100 people is equivalent to about 20 of every 10,000 people in the U.S.
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The Russian invasion of Ukraine, along with increased tensions in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific region, has generated many debates. Debates about the stability of the international order, the cohesion of NATO, and many others. But for the United States, one significant debate regards the size and expansibility of the American defense industrial base. It’s a discussion that is well past due.
Last year, Under Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl testified to Congress that, “What the Ukraine conflict showed is that, frankly, our defense industrial base was not at the level that we needed it to be to generate munitions.” But the challenge with ammunition is more symptom than cause, in economic terms something of a “leading indicator.”
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In a poll of small business owners, 76 percent said that they had not seen an increase in sales during the holiday season as inflation and other economic conditions constrict consumers’ cash, according to Goldman Sachs.
Of small business owners surveyed, 55 percent said that their profit margins decreased this year, and a further 70 percent said that their own personal spending plans for their families were negatively impacted following their own assessment of the state of the economy, according to a poll by Goldman Sachs conducted from Dec. 1 to Dec. 8 of 337 small retail business owners. Consumer spending previously slowed in October as the Americans’ savings declined to $768.6 billion in the month, down from the over $1 trillion held in May and even further from the all-time high of almost $6 trillion held in April 2020.
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