A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the Biden administration’s ban on new exports of liquified natural gas exports to non-free trade agreement countries.
Judge James Cain Jr. of the Western District of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction against the U.S. Department of Energy’s partial LNG export ban after more than a dozen states sued, arguing the ban was illegal.
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Amtrak has seen a 22% increase in its employee count while salaries and benefits have increased by more than $500 million in the past four years – to $2.69 billion in 2023.
Amtrak, known as the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, serves more than 500 destinations in 46 separate states covering more than 21,400 miles nationwide.
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In a recent report, “Powering Human Advancement,” The Heritage Foundation laid bare the truth that the driving force behind wealth creation and raising human development standards is the innovative harnessing of energy.
As historian Vaclav Smil sees it, “Energy is the only universal currency.”
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The Biden administration is selling off a million barrels of gasoline from an emergency reserve in a deliberate effort to cut prices ahead of the upcoming holiday weekend.
The Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it has awarded contracts to five energy companies to purchase the barrels the administration is releasing from the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve (NGSR), which is part of the federal Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) system. The NGSR releases are intended to “help lower gas prices ahead of the Fourth of July holiday,” according to DOE.
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Pending home sales fell 2.1 percent in May, according to the National Association of Realtors.
NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said home prices could dip in the coming months.
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The federal government reported $236 billion in improper payments in fiscal year 2023, with the vast majority coming from overpayments, according to a new watchdog report.
A U.S. Government Accountability Office report found 74% of improper payments – payments that shouldn’t have been made or were made in the wrong amount – were overpayments. Overpayments accounted for $175.1 billion of the total amount of improper payments in 2023. Overpayments are payments “in excess of what is due, and for which the excess amount, in theory, should or could be recovered,” according to the report.
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Americans purchased roughly 5.5 million guns in the first four months of 2024, according to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
The data shows that roughly 1.3 million guns were purchased each of the months of January through April of this year.
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Due to inflation eating away at earnings and less supply of affordable housing, the majority of Americans today cannot afford median rent prices, according to a new report by the real estate company Redfin.
The analysis comes as other reports indicate that both homeowners and renters are struggling with high housing costs due to inflationary pressures, an inflated housing market, low supply and demand for affordable housing.
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Americans looking to buy a home may have to wait as housing costs are expected to remain elevated until 2026 or later, according to a note from Bank of America (BofA) economists published Monday.
Homebuyers are facing elevated interest rates due to sky-high inflation under President Joe Biden and a housing shortage exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic that has led Americans to be hesitant to move, according to BofA. As a result, economists at the bank expect home prices to rise a total of 4.5% throughout the course of 2024 and another 5.0% throughout 2025, before easing slightly in 2026.
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A recent survey found that 3 in 10 college students or recent graduates had job offers rescinded as a result of their “pro-Palestine” activism.
Intelligent surveyed 672 students or recent college graduates who have engaged in anti-Israel activism and found that 29% of them had a job offer rescinded in the past six months and 55% believe there was bias against them in the hiring process because of their activism.
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Home prices hit a record high in May despite falling demand and sales activity, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
The national median home price in the United States is now $419,300, a 5.8% increase from a year earlier and a new record high, according to the The Wall Street Journal. The record high comes as homeowners remain unwilling to list due to high mortgage rates.
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Nearly half of Americans report that the recent spike in inflation is making it harder to make ends meet, according to a new poll.
Monmouth University released a poll Wednesday showing 46% of Americans are “currently struggling to remain where they are financially.”
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The Biden administration’s hackneyed talking point of “the rich paying their fair share” sounds appealing at first. Who could be against fairness?
But there is nothing fair about a political agenda that punishes the middle class and lowers everyone’s standard of living — rich and poor alike.
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The U.S. energy sector finds itself in a precarious position. Increasing geopolitical volatility and strong energy demand forecasts could spell trouble domestically in the future. The U.S. needs to stop hamstringing American energy companies and invest in the nation’s infrastructure, such as pipelines, processing, and production.
If we have learned anything in the last two and a half years, it’s that the U.S.’ energy industry is not free from geopolitical chaos globally. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Houthi’s attacks in Yemen backed by Iran and turmoil in the Middle East have very real repercussions for the average American. We may not be as intensely intertwined with those realities as our European allies, but energy is a global market with implications for domestic prices, supply, and demand. While different events can affect prices at home, there are steps the administration can take to protect our energy sector.
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Nearly half of American electric vehicle (EV) owners want to buy an internal combustion engine model the next time they buy a car, according to a new study from McKinsey and Company, a leading consulting firm.
Approximately 46 percent of Americans who own an EV want to go back to a standard vehicle for their next purchase, citing issues like inadequate charging infrastructure and affordability, according to McKinsey’s study, which was obtained and reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The study’s findings further suggest that the Biden administration’s EV push is struggling to land with American consumers, after 46 percent of respondents indicated that they are unlikely or very unlikely to purchase an EV in a June poll conducted by The Associated Press and the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute.
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An insightful, if pithy, tweet surfaced recently on my feed. It nicely summarized what happened to neutralize an awakening electorate in America over the past decade:
“They got you fighting a culture war to stop you from fighting a class war. It was designed that way in 2012 when the woke left & right were created. Occupy Wall Street/The Tea Party were making inroads uniting the political spectrum & the people against Wall Street following the 2008 crash. ‘We’ll get them to argue about women & their cocks instead'”
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America’s debt is growing faster than previously expected, largely due to actions taken by the Biden administration and recent legislation, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The United States’ projected deficit is $1.9 trillion for the 2024 fiscal year, $400 billion higher than it was projected to be in February, the CBO announced Tuesday. CBO analysts increased their estimate due in large part to the foreign aid package signed by President Joe Biden in April and his administration’s efforts to reduce student loan balances.
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The latest defense budget passed Friday authorizes over $920 billion in spending and contains significant investments in Virginia.
The commonwealth has one of the biggest military populations in the U.S., and the defense industry comprises a large portion of its economy.
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Something very strange is going on in America’s labor market. The employer’s survey in the June jobs report showed 272,000 jobs gained in May, and nearly 2.8 million jobs over the past year. These are both amazing figures given that the economy is at full employment.
While the employer’s survey is surely fine, the household survey, also produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), tells a strikingly different story, almost as though the country had two different labor markets.
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An electric vehicle (EV) producer that was once a splashy start-up company has filed for bankruptcy.
Fisker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday after trying and failing to secure more investment to stay afloat, the company announced. The company once attracted robust interest and hype, marketing itself as the Apple of vehicles, but it struggled to run as a public company and was stuck with thousands of EVs that it did not sell, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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To the outside observer, Arabella Advisors is nothing more than an accounting and human resources firm that helps charities get things done, not a billion-dollar political influence operation helping leftists remain in power.
But, in fact, it is the latter–although you’d never know it from the website. The organization certainly does not publicly hint that they run the largest political influence operation in America. Those who visit their site will be met with a simple slogan: “We help changemakers create a better world.” And who would impugn a noble goal like that?
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The Southern Poverty Law Center is laying off over 60 employees, a union representing the group’s employees announced recently.
While the group did not confirm the exact number of those being let go, it stated that the organization is “undergoing an organizational restructuring.”
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Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) has paid out millions in contracts to insiders, newly released tax documents show.
The nation’s largest BLM organization approved lucrative contracts to firms owned by members of the organization’s leadership and their family members between July 2022 and June 2023, tax filings show. The shuffling of charitable funds to private companies owned by interested parties raises considerable ethical concerns given the lack of oversight and the possible conflicts of interest, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Following the long-awaited reopening of the federal channel in the Port of Baltimore after the infamous shipping accident in March, the Biden Administration’s Department of Transportation (DOT) estimates that it will cost between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
As ABC News reports, the work to remove debris from the collapsed bridge and the damaged vessel culminated in the reopening of the McHenry Federal Channel to a passage of about 700 feet wide and 500 feet deep, allowing traffic to flow through the harbor once again. Workers will continue removing debris within an established safety zone, and deep draft vessels are required to have a single-escort tug until the cleanup work is completed.
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On Sunday, with no official statement from either side, Saudi Arabia apparently allowed a deal with the U.S. to expire that could have dire financial ramifications.
The Kingdom reportedly did not renew its 50-year petro-dollar agreement with the United States when it expired on June 9, meaning Saudi Arabia can now sell its oil in other currencies, including the Chinese renminbi (RMB), Euros, Yen, and Yuan, instead of exclusively in U.S. dollars. According to reports, the use of digital currencies like Bitcoin is also being considered.
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Ford Motor Company told dealers on Thursday that it was dropping certain equipment requirements to boost the sales of its struggling electric vehicle (EV) line, according to Bloomberg.
Dealers had previously needed to invest up to $1.2 million in certain equipment like chargers in order to be eligible to sell Ford’s EV line, with the change allowing all 2,800 dealerships with contracts to the company to sell EVs, according to Bloomberg. The changes to the program are intended to boost struggling sales of Ford’s EV models, which has contributed to the automaker taking a $1.3 billion loss on its EV production in just the first quarter of 2024 after selling only 10,000 vehicles.
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The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this week revealed the magnitude of the federal deficit, growing to $1.7 trillion in one year, as the national public debt reached $34.7 trillion for the first time in U.S. history.
On Monday alone, the national public debt grew by $37 billion. By Tuesday, it surpassed $34.7 trillion overall.
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Newly released federal inflation data showed that inflation slowed in recent weeks.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Consumer Price Index, which showed that overall consumer prices paused in the month of May after rising 0.3 percent in April.
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The Federal Reserve on Wednesday kept its key interest rate but signaled one cut is expected before the end of the year.
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President Joe Biden has pledged to install 500,000 public electric vehicle (EV) chargers around the U.S. by 2030, but logistical hurdles may be too much to overcome.
The Biden administration landed $7.5 billion to build out a network of public EV charging stations around the country in the bipartisan infrastructure package of 2021, but those funds have only led to a handful of operational charging stations to date. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reaffirmed the administration’s goal to build 500,000 chargers with the money by 2030 during a May television appearance on CBS News, but challenges like adding transmission lines, navigating the permitting process and coordinating with utility companies figure to make the goal improbable.
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Unsurprisingly, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s recent report on Credit Card Rewards is dismissive of programs that are popular with tens of millions of American households. However, its objections manifest the same sort of deceptive advertising and hiding of details that it complains are characteristic of credit card rewards, and the data in its report does not match the conclusions its director, Rohit Chopra, has made in his statement about the report as well as his testimony before Congress on the issue.
The CFPB’s press release announcing the Credit Cards Rewards: Issue Spotlight report denigrated rewards programs, alleging that “Consumers tell the CFPB that rewards are often devalued or denied even after program terms are met;” that “Consumers who carry revolving balances often pay far more in interest and fees than they get back on rewards;” and that “Credit card companies often use rewards programs as a ‘bait and switch’ by burying terms in vague language or fine print.”
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The RealClearMarkets/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, a leading gauge of consumer sentiment, dropped sharply 3.1 percent in June to 40.5. Since September 2021, the index has remained in negative territory for 34 consecutive months. June’s reading of 40.5 is 17.6 percent lower than the historic average of 49.2.
Optimism among investors edged up 0.4 percent from 46.3 in May to 46.5 in June, while it slumped by 6.0 percent among non-investors, from 40.1 in May to 37.7 in June.
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The average salary for a company’s chief executive officer (CEO) soared by 13% in 2023, thus producing an even greater income gap between top executives and the workers they employ.
According to ABC News, a data analysis by Equilar for the Associated Press revealed that the median compensation package for a CEO rose in 2023 to $16.3 million, marking a 12.6% increase. At the same time, wages and benefits for the average worker rose by just 4.1%. At half of the companies included in the Equilar survey, it would take one worker at least 200 years to make the same amount of money that their CEO makes.
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Americans took up part-time jobs in huge numbers in May as full-time jobs evaporate under President Joe Biden’s economy, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released Friday.
There were around 133.3 million people employed in the U.S. in May with full-time jobs, 625,000 less than the month before, while the number of people employed in part-time jobs surged by 286,000 to just over 28 million, according to the BLS. The total number of American workers collapsed by 408,000 as a result of the loss in part-time jobs to 161 million.
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The House Budget Committee released a report Friday that found more than half of all new jobs are going to immigrants, including those in the country illegally.
The report comes after the Labor Department released its jobs report for May, which saw a small decrease in labor participation, which shrank from 62.7% in April to 62.5% in May, and the unemployment rate ticking up slightly from 3.9% in April to 4% in May. Immigrants have filled 840,000 new jobs since November, according to the Washington Times.
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The U.S. added 272,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in May as the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.0%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday.
Economists anticipated that the country would add 190,000 jobs in May compared to the 175,000 jobs that were added in initial estimates for April and that the unemployment rate would remain unchanged at 3.9%, according to U.S. News and World Report. The job gains follow predictions that the economy is slowing down, with an early estimate for second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) being revised down to 1.8% from 4.2% over the last month by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
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Ignore the May jobs report‘s topline establishment survey number and the media’s celebratory reporting. It’s not to be trusted.
A new analysis by the Daily Caller News Foundation shows that payrolls were overstated by 1.3 million last year after accounting for the constant downward revisions. A new Bloomberg Economics report finds monthly job gains were overstated by 730,000 last year. Bloomberg says a surge of business closures is to blame.
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A large portion of small business owners are concerned about their future amid wider financial stress under President Joe Biden, according to a new poll from the Job Creators Network Foundation (JCNF) obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Around 67 percent of small business owners were worried that current economic conditions could force them to close their doors, ten percentage points higher than just two years ago, according to the JCNF’s monthly small business poll. Respondents’ perceptions of economic conditions for their own businesses fell slightly in the month, from 70.2 to 68.1 points, with 100 points being the best possible business conditions, while perceptions of national conditions increased from 50.4 to 53.2 points.
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A study has yielded mostly positive results on the initial phase of Richmond, Virginia’s guaranteed income program.
The University of Pennsylvania Center for Guaranteed Income Research recently released a report on the city’s first cohort of participants in its pilot guaranteed income program.
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Offshore drilling has been a cornerstone of global energy production since the 1800s, fueling the American way of life and powering the global economy. From the early days of “on-water-drilling” to the advancement of the fixed platform units of today, offshore drilling has consistently contributed around 30 percent of global oil production. In the U.S., supply on federal offshore lands in the Gulf of Mexico alone accounts for approximately 15 percent of total crude oil production.
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The federal debt continues to climb to unprecedented levels, but the “actual, true” debt is higher if the Treasury weren’t being drained, a national economist says.
Citing Bureau of the Fiscal Service data, E. J. Antoni, Ph.D., an economist at the Heritage Foundation, argues that as the federal debt increases, the “true daily deficit” is being masked by the amount of cash being drained from the U.S. Treasury by Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen.
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In his book Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt makes a famous distinction between good and bad economists:
The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups.
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Pending home sales in April fell 7.7%, according to the National Association of Realtors.
All four U.S. regions registered month-over-month and year-over-year declines.
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June 1 will mark the start of “Pride” month, in which advocates of LGBTQIA+ causes celebrate that movement. In recent years, June has seen major corporate chains feature an array of “Pride”-themed merchandise and decorations, though some offerings have prompted considerable backlash from a non-receptive — even hostile public — in recent years.
2023 saw major retailers such as Target become the subject of boycotts over more controversial products marketed for children. Other companies, such as Anheuser-Busch came under scrutiny over marketing campaigns that failed to resonate with their traditional clientele.
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The Biden administration has set in motion a wave of new regulations that have already cost the U.S. more than $1 trillion, which equates to thousands of dollars per family, according to a new report from the Job Creators Network.
There have been $1.6 trillion in costs imposed from a total of 923 new federal regulations that have been finalized under President Joe Biden, with $1.2 trillion of those being put in place in just the past few months, according to the JCN. In just the first two years of the Biden administration, new regulations are estimated to have led to an average of almost $10,000 in added future and present costs to American households, which could jump to $60,000 if the trend continues across a two-term presidency.
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China’s largest electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer, BYD, announced Tuesday that two of its new hybrid models have ranges that far exceed those of American competitors, The Wall Street Journal reported.
BYD’s chairman Wang Chuanfu claimed at an event in Xian, China, that the company was launching two new hybrid models that could go 2,100 kilometers, or 1,306 miles, on a single tank of gas and a full charge, according to the WSJ. The range is almost double the range of global hybrid competitors, which is around 1,100 km, or 683 miles, at the upper limit, and far exceeds the 700-mile range achieved by America’s longest-driving hybrid in 2023, the Lexus ES 300h.
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Home prices surged in March to another all-time high for the sixth month out of the last twelve, S&P Global announced Tuesday.
The Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which measures home prices across the entire country, rose 6.5 percent year-over-year in March, matching the annual gain in February, according to S&P Global. The increase in the price of homes is higher than the general pace of inflation, which increased 3.4 percent year-over-year in April.
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The Biden administration’s energy policies are increasingly costly for Americans, a newly released report says.
U.S. House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., released the report, which argues Biden’s energy policies have increased costs for Americans and hurt the economy.
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A vote during the ExxonMobil 2024 shareholder meeting Wednesday will pit those who think an oil company should act according to the concerns of climate activists against those who think companies should act to produce the best investment returns for their shareholders.
It is the latest front in the growing fight between proponents and opponents of environmental, social and governance (ESG), as the movement struggles to maintain the clout to effect social change through investments.
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The increase of migrant workers during the last two years cooled an overheated labor market and slowed wage growth across industries and states, according to an analysis of government statistics.
“The influx of immigrant workers appears to have helped alleviate the severe staffing shortages in certain industries that were pervasive during the pandemic’s volatile period,” Elior Cohen, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, wrote in the organization’s Economic Bulletin. It serves Colorado, Kansas, western Missouri, Nebraska, northern New Mexico, Oklahoma and Wyoming.
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