The retail giant Big Lots on Thursday announced it was commencing a company-wide “going out of business” sale at all of its locations, marking another major business that went belly-up during President Joe Biden’s administration.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced changes on Tuesday to the H-1B program that will enhance the abilities of American companies to fill job vacancies.
The government says the new rule will “modernize” the H-1B program by simplifying the approvals process, giving employers more flexibility in retaining workers, and enhancing program oversight, according to the DHS press release.
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An ongoing drought in Brazil coupled with bad weather in Vietnam has contributed to a significant spike in the price for Arabica and Robusta coffee beans, according to reports.
Arabica beans, now selling for more than $3.44 a pound have increased more than 80% this year, and Robusta beans also hit a high in September, marking a record high for international commodity markets.
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Dollar stores are reporting softened demand and increased financial stress among their lower-income consumers, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Some businesses say their customers are spending less money toward the end of the month and more focused on purchasing from cheap store brands, according to the WSJ. Dollar General said in a December earnings call that its best-performing category in its last quarter was its “value valley” aisle, which offers $1 products, the WSJ reported.
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Meta donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
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Annual inflation rates increased last month.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest Consumer Price Index, a key marker of inflation, which showed that consumer prices rose 0.3% in November, part of a 2.7% increase over the last year.
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The unemployment rate in the U.S. ticked upwards to 4.2 percent in November, with 161,000 additional Americans saying they are unemployed in the latest household survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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The average American household credit card balance as of the third quarter of 2024 was about $10,757 after adjusting for inflation, according to a new study.
The personal-finance website WalletHub on Friday released its new Credit Card Debt Study, which found that consumers added $21 billion in debt during the third quarter of 2024.
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The Labor Department reported Friday the number of new jobs in the U.S. economy increased in November, compared to the previous month, while the unemployment rate increased slightly to the annualize rate of 4.2%
The economy in November added 227,000 new, non-farm jobs, compared to 36,000 in October, according to the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The November number exceeded Wall Street expectations of 214,000 new jobs.
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Job creation in November bounced back, with 227,000 jobs created, after coming to a standstill in October.
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by J.V. Caro China’s infiltration into agricultural IoT (Internet of Things) networks represents a critical yet underexplored dimension of its global technological strategy. Through key players such as Huawei and Alibaba Cloud, Beijing has embedded IoT technologies into agricultural systems in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. These initiatives, often…
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A Biden administration appointee agreed to a new contract with a government employee union that will allow tens of thousands of bureaucrats to work remotely for years ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to Bloomberg News.
Recently-departed Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Martin O’Malley signed off on a new deal last week with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) — which represents about 42,000 SSA employees — that will extend remote work availability into 2029, according to Bloomberg News. The incoming Trump administration and the newly-minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are poised to target work-from-home policies for government employees as part of a broader push to rein in the federal government and eliminate bureaucratic bloat.
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The State of Texas has been a leader in the pushback against environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies, passing some of the first anti-ESG laws in the country. Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to protect the coal industry from what Paxton says is an effort on the part of large investment firms to not only shrink coal companies — but also unfairly profit from them.
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Some U.S. steelmakers are supporting President-elect Donald Trump’s proposals to place tariffs on China, Mexico and other countries, according to The Wall Street Journal.
American steel companies are calling for Trump to reintroduce tariffs on steel from the U.K., Japan and the EU amid concerns of foreign competitors being involved in unfair market practices, according to The WSJ. Some U.S. steel executives were supportive of steel tariffs under the previous Trump administration, with some steelmakers saying the tariffs helped to boost profits, The WSJ reported.
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Workers at Amazon went to strike Black Friday demanding higher pay and better working conditions.
The strike is expected to through so-called Cyber Monday, the end of long holiday weekend in which retailer offer discounts to shopper ahead of the Christmas shopping season.
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U.S. farm industry groups are seeking an exemption from President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans once he takes office.
The groups argue that mass deportations could disrupt the nation’s food supply chain.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin on Tuesday confirmed he supports President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to impose new tariffs against Mexico to compel the neighboring nation to cut the flow of fentanyl over the southern border. Youngkin argues that Trump’s plans will ignite an expansion in manufacturing for Virginia.
Youngkin reportedly confirmed his support for Trump’s tariffs during a Tuesday press conference, as he provided an update on the commonwealth’s efforts to curtail fentanyl overdoses with Attorney General Jason Miyares.
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Major automobile companies are attempting to cut costs associated with electric vehicle (EV) lines and autonomous cars after spending heavily on both, according to CNBC.
Companies such as General Motors (GM), Stellantis and Ford are taking drastic measures aimed at reducing costs, such as enacting layoffs and making production cuts, according to CNBC. Automakers have invested billions of dollars into self-driving cars and EVs, with many now facing prolonged returns on their investments and slow EV adoption, CNBC reported.
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The average American’s energy bill could increase from 25% to 70% in the next 10 years without intervention from policymakers, according to a new study from Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Jack Kemp Foundation.
According to reports, America is facing an energy crisis, with demand for energy soaring due to the proliferation of AI and hyperscale data centers, which can use as much energy as almost 40,000 homes; the boom in advanced manufacturing, and the movement toward electrification.
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Federal pricing data released this week for consumer and producer prices shows that inflation rose last month.
Harvard professor and former economic advisor to President Barack Obama Jason Furman said the consumer data could show a “resurgence of inflation” not to the ultra high levels in recent years but to more recent elevated data.
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Dozens of investment advisors warned America’s biggest corporations Friday that their diversity programs will be a liability under the incoming Trump administration.
Americans “overwhelmingly rejected the ideological takeover of political and civic life by narrow-minded identity politics” in the Nov. 5 election, a coalition of 38 financial officers wrote in letters warning companies that the new administration will “hasten the demise of DEI.”
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Donald Trump’s win is a big victory for the American energy industry and for all Americans. The climate crazed don’t want to recognize the fact that more than 80% of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas. They don’t want to admit that the use of all three are at record highs and are continuing to grow. Or that a thriving economy needs reliable, affordable, and abundant energy. Because the cost of energy is built into everything that we do, consume or use, even watching Netflix.
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The Onion, a satirical news company mocking current events and news personalities, purchased Alex Jones’ Infowars network in a bankruptcy auction Thursday held to help pay off a nearly $1.5 billion lawsuit.
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Inflation rose slightly in October despite a massive slowdown in job growth in the same month, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report released Wednesday.
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Elections have consequences, and those consequences are dire for free market dogmatists in the Republican Party.
The tariff debate is over. President Donald Trump won, and it is not even close. Americans overwhelmingly support efforts to punish countries like China for their unfair trade practices. Even President Joe Biden, who ran blatantly misrepresenting the Trump economic record, has kept the Trump tariffs on steel and aluminum in place.
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Bernard “Bernie” Marcus, who helped build The Home Depot into one of America’s most iconic brands before turning to philanthropy and conservative politics and unabashedly backing Donald Trump’s rise in politics, died Monday night at the age of 95.
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Social media’s influence is causing Gen Z’s interest in skilled trades to rise, according to a report by Thumbtack – something a trade organization co-director said is “inspiring and eye-opening.”
“55% of Gen Zers are considering a skilled trade career (up 12% from last year) – including 72% of those with a college degree,” Thumbtack’s report stated.
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The private sector hemorrhaged jobs in October while the federal government expanded its workforce to even bigger levels, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released Friday.
The U.S. economy lost 28,000 private sector jobs while the federal government added 40,000, BLS data shows. The private sector job losses come amid a disappointing jobs report overall, with the country adding just 12,000 nonfarm payroll jobs — well below the 110,o00 economists expected.
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The U.S. added 12,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in October as the unemployment rate remained unchanged, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday.
Economists expected 110,000 jobs to be added in October, far lower than the initially reported 254,000 job gain in September, and that the unemployment rate would hold steady at 4.1%. Previously reported job gains for August and September were revised down by 81,000 and 31,000, respectively, following a trend under the Biden-Harris administration of overestimating employment growth in initial estimates, with the cumulative number of new jobs reported in 2023 roughly 1.3 million less than previously thought.
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Virginia agricultural and forestry small businesses impacted by Hurricane Helene now have another place to turn for help.
Individuals and state and local governments in federally designated disaster zones can already apply to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for assistance, as the president approved a Major Disaster Declaration for the commonwealth within a week of the storm.
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The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 2.8% in the third quarter of 2024, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) statistics released Wednesday.
The growth in the third quarter comes after a better-than-expected 3.0% growth rate in the second quarter of 2024, according to the BEA. Economists forecast that GDP would increase by about 3.0% in the third quarter, according to Forecast.com.
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Volkswagen (VW) said Wednesday that it needs to cut costs amid slackening consumer demand for electric vehicles (EVs) and weaker car sales in China.
VW’s profits fell 64% in the third quarter of 2024, driving the company’s share price to its lowest level since October 2010. Now, the world’s largest automaker by sales is looking to lower its expenses, with VW’s top labor leader announcing earlier this week that the company was aiming to shut at least three of its German factories, slash wages 10% and lay off thousands of employees.
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California made climate history in 2020 when the state became the first in the nation to create an electric vehicle mandate, which eventually became a key part of the Biden-Harris climate agenda. Now the state wants to do the same for motorcycles, despite the problems the EV push has faced over the past four years.
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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced Thursday it housed 47,925 veterans experiencing homelessness in fiscal year 2024, besting an earlier goal.
That’s the largest number of veterans experiencing homelessness the federal agency has housed since fiscal year 2019 and 16.9% over its goal of 41,000.
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Republican lawmakers wrote to Department of Labor (DOL) Acting Secretary Julie Su on Friday, slamming the agency for ignoring an oversight request regarding its “botched release” of data that showed the Biden-Harris administration had wildly overestimated job creation.
The August Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release — which revealed the U.S. economy had created more than 800,000 fewer jobs in the twelve months through March than the administration had claimed — was posted roughly a half hour late, with a slew of Wall Street investment firms obtaining details about the report at least 15 minutes before the public. Republican Reps. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina and Bob Good of Virginia issued an oversight request following the incident, which the DOL then failed to respond to, prompting the lawmakers to re-up their inquiry into whether or not the BLS favored Wall Street insiders over the American public, according to the letter obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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The North Carolina government on Wednesday released an estimate that Hurricane Helene caused at least $53 billion in damage, particularly in the western part of the state.
The state budget office calculated the preliminary amount which also includes potential investments to avoid similar expensive damages during hurricanes in the future.
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Although there isn’t much public information available about the Justice Climate Fund, it appears to have been an overnight success.
After gaining nonprofit status in August 2023, the organization was awarded $940 million by the Biden administration just eight months later in connection with the White House’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which aims to provide financial assistance to reduce carbon emissions and reduce pollution.
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The upcoming presidential election might keep some would-be homebuyers on the sidelines, according to a real estate economist.
Existing-home sales declined 1% in September as prices continued to climb higher, according to figures released Wednesday by the National Association of Realtors.
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Restaurant chains and operators are slated to have their most bankruptcies in decades apart from 2020, a Wall Street Journal analysis of Chapter 11 filings found Monday.
The bankruptcies seen this year are rivaling those seen during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when restrictions and other pandemic-related disruptions caused the industry’s sales to fall $240 billion, according to the WSJ. The surge in bankruptcies comes as prices have increased over 20% since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, raising operational expenses for restaurants and making customers less inclined to eat out.
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Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz awarded up to $126,000 in taxpayer funds to meat processor JBS after an investigation revealed some of the company’s processing plants were cleaned using child labor.
The U.S. Department of Labor found in February 2023 that at least 31 children were employed “in hazardous occupations to clean dangerous powered equipment during overnight shifts at JBS USA plants,” though they were employed by a third-party cleaning service rather than by JBS directly. Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education then announced a grant in June to fund job training for 28 staff members at the JBS plant in Worthington, Minnesota — a plant at which at least 22 children had been illegally employed to clean.
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Security measures implemented by the largest payment platform used by Democratic candidates to process political donations failed to address GOP concerns that spurred the payment processor to respond in the first place.
In 2023, Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Republican Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil both raised concerns that ActBlue not requiring users to input a credit verification value (CVV), the three numbers on the back of credit cards, when making donations increased the risk of fraudulent contributions being made. ActBlue has since required that donors using debit or credit cards on their platform input CVVs. The requirement, however, can be easily circumvented by donating through PayPal, Google Pay or Venmo, all of which are still options on ActBlue.
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The largest retail group in the country says it expects consumers to spend more this holiday season, but the growth in sales will be slower than last year.
The National Retail Federation (NRF) said its 2024 forecast shows winter holiday spending is expected to grow between 2.5% and 3.5% over 2023.
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The Biden-Harris administration has become synonymous with an economy in tatters. Americans are struggling with rising prices, stagnant wages, and increased obstacles to starting a business, buying a home or retiring. According to the Gallup Economic Confidence Index, Americans’ outlook on the economy from 2021 to 2024 has been negative.
Contrast this with the economic prosperity seen under the Trump administration. America enjoyed energy abundance, skyrocketing wages, a record number of startups and incredible stock market averages. A large part of this success can be credited to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), a tax cut for families and small businesses that fueled one of the strongest economies in decades.
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Democrats’ display their elitism by using macroeconomic numbers to ignore America’s microeconomic concerns. By promoting the macro-economy, Democrats produced the numbers they now campaign on. However, their macro numbers have come with high inflation that has wreaked havoc on the micro-economies in which most Americans live.
Democrats’ embrace of the macro economy is unmistakable. Paul Krugman’s recent column (10/8) trumpeted that the “macro” numbers “vindicate Bidenomics.” During CBS’s Sunday (10/6) 60 Minutes interview, Kamala Harris immediately ducked into the macro economy when asked about inflation’s impact on Americans.
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American journalism has experienced a spectacular collapse in the last 25 years – daily newspaper circulation has declined from over 60 million subscribers to just over 20 million. And the trend is accelerating: According to the Pew Research Organization, the average monthly number of unique visitors to the websites of the country’s top 50 newspapers plummeted 20 percent in one year from 2021 to 2022.
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American small business uncertainty hit an all-time high and optimism remains low just weeks before Election Day, according to the latest survey.
The National Federation of Independent Businesses on Monday released the survey, which showed small business uncertainty rose last month to the highest level ever recorded by NFIB.
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Inflation fell slightly in September amid fears of a hotter-than-expected economy following strong job gains in the month prior, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release Thursday.
The consumer price index (CPI), a broad measure of the price of everyday goods, increased 2.4% on an annual basis in September and rose 0.2% month-over-month, compared to 2.5% in August, less than the 2.3% rate that was expected, according to the BLS. Core CPI, which excludes the volatile categories of energy and food, rose 3.3% year-over-year in September, compared to 3.2% in August.
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America’s fourth-largest Catholic healthcare system performed so-called gender affirming surgeries on 81 children and prescribed puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to 113 over the past five years, according to a national database launched Tuesday by Do No Harm, which fights identity politics in “medical education, research and clinical practice.”
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U.S. hospitals charged nearly $120 million over five years for sex-change procedures performed on around 14,000 children, according to new data compiled by medical watchdog Do No Harm.
The first-of-its-kind database, which logs sex-change procedures given to children nationwide between 2019 and 2023, catalogs a total of 5,747 minors who underwent sex-change surgeries, along with 8,579 who obtained puberty blockers or cross sex hormones.
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Professional sports teams and government officials promise tax revenue benefits when taxpayer subsidies are used to build new or renovation stadiums and arenas.
But those benefits consistently do not come to fruition, according to a report from the Tax Foundation.
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