The school board in Shenandoah County, Virginia, early Friday approved a proposal that will restore the names of Confederate military leaders to two public schools.
The measure, which passed 5-1, reverses a previous board’s decision in 2020 to change the names of schools that had been linked to Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby, three men who led the pro-slavery Southern states during the Civil War.
Mountain View High School will go back to the name Stonewall Jackson High School. Honey Run Elementary School will go back to the name Ashby-Lee Elementary School.
NEW YORK — All dogs coming into the U.S. from other countries must be at least 6 months old and microchipped to help prevent the spread of rabies, according to new government rules published Wednesday.
The new rules require vaccination for dogs that have been in countries where rabies is common. The update applies to dogs brought in by breeders or rescue groups as well as pets traveling with their U.S. owners.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says she regrets making an offhand remark that suggested Black children in the Bronx do not know what the word “computer” means.
Hochul, a Democrat, made the extemporaneous comment Monday while being interviewed at a large business conference in California to discuss expanding economic opportunities in artificial intelligence for low-income communities.
“Right now, we have young Black kids growing up in the Bronx who don’t even know what the word computer is. They don’t know, they don’t know these things,” Hochul said while on stage at the Milken Institute Global Conference.
In the week since it launched, the online tip line already has received more than 10,000 submissions, none of which seem legitimate, he said. The form asks people to report public school employees who knowingly allow someone to use a facility designated for the opposite sex.
Utah residents and visitors are required by law to use bathrooms and changing rooms in government-owned buildings that correspond with their birth sex. As of last Wednesday, schools and agencies found not enforcing the new restrictions can be fined up to $10,000 per day for each violation.
Although their advocacy efforts failed to stop Republican lawmakers in many states from passing restrictions for trans people, the community has found success in interfering with the often ill-conceived enforcement plans attached to those laws.
Within hours of its publication Wednesday night, trans activists and community members from across the U.S. already had spread the Utah tip line widely on social media. Many shared the spam they had submitted and encouraged others to follow suit.
Their efforts mark the latest attempt by advocates to shut down or render unusable a government tip line that they argue sows division by encouraging residents to snitch on each other. Similar portals in at least five other states also have been inundated with hoax reports, leading state officials to shut some down.
IRVING, Texas (AP) — The Boy Scouts of America announced after 114 years that it will change its name and will become Scouting America in an effort to emphasize inclusion as it works to move past the turmoil of bankruptcy and a flood of sexual abuse claims.
The rebrand is another seismic shift for an organization steeped in tradition that did not allow gay youths or girls to begin joining its ranks until relatively recently. Seeking to boost flagging membership numbers, the Irving, Texas-based organization announced the name change Tuesday at its annual meeting in Florida.
But these headlines are not reflective of young voters’ top concerns this election year, according to recent polls. Surveys taken in recent months show young voters are more likely to sympathize with Palestinians in the conflict, but few of them rank the Israel-Hamas war among their top issues in the 2024 election. Like other voters, young people often put economic concerns at the top of the list.
And while young voters are cooler to Biden than they were at the same point in 2020, there is little evidence that American support for the Israeli invasion of Gaza is a critical factor in their relative discontent.
“When you have two presidents that have the same stance on one issue, that automatically puts that issue — I hate to say lower down the list, because it’s obviously an important issue, but it doesn’t make it an issue where I’m going to choose Donald Trump over Joe Biden,” said Devon Schwartz, a student at the University of Texas at Austin.
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In an Economist/YouGov poll taken more recently, in late April, 22% of voters ages 18 to 29 listed inflation as their most important issue. Two percent named foreign policy as their top concern. (The poll did not specifically ask about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)
According to one U.S. official, the U.S. Air Force has been told by the White House National Security Council to pause the delivery of ammunition already approved and under contract, waiting to be shipped from Dover Air Force Base.
A second U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that the NSC was behind the decision to pause the munitions. U.S. officials said the delay is being done intentionally.
The NSC has not confirmed the decision or said why the shipment was put on hold. Instead, administration officials have noted that the overall U.S. policy toward Israel hasn’t changed.
A former CNN reporter took to social media Sunday to talk about how she is ‘haunted’ by a dinner with several Donald Trump supporters who, at first glance, seemed ‘normal.’
‘All were well-educated and successful in careers,’ Michelle Kosinski recalled of the recent dinner party that she described on X.
‘They seemed great! On the surface. For like an hour ‘ the one-time NBC News correspondent continued, categorizing the Trump-leaning guests as ‘closeted.’
‘But slowly, over a few drinks, they began to let slip their true MAGA natures.’
The 50-year-old who served as CNN’s White House Correspondent until 2020 went on to add how she was surprised by the revelation – marveling at how a ‘normal’ a group of people could support a politician she does not approve of.
President Joe Biden is continuing his illegal and obvious effort to buy votes by “forgiving” student loans. It is a healthy reminder that government involvement makes everything worse. Let us remind ourselves of how we got here.
The cost of college has been increasing for decades far in excess of almost any other major expense. Throughout this period, our culture shifted and parents and K-12 educators pushed more and more kids to college by portraying college as a requirement for future financial stability and personal fulfillment. This characterization is not wrong, but it is also not universal. There are many paths to financial stability and personal fulfillment.
As demand for college continued to swell, the prices continued to rise (basic demand curve consequences), and students took on more and more debt to pay for their sheepskin Golden Ticket to the Middle Class. According to The Education Data Initiative, the cost of college has risen by 747.8% since 1963 after adjusting for inflation.
Prior to 2010, college students primarily had to get student loans from private financial institutions. In this construct, the private financial institutions were taking a risk loaning tens of thousands of dollars to 18year-olds with no credit history and no current means of paying the loan back. Those institutions generally required a co-signer from a responsible adult before issuing the loan. Private institutions were taking a risk on the future earning potential of college aspirants. The risk and apposite interest rates served as market pressures to limit the amount that students could borrow.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson pushed for and signed the Higher Education Act. Part of that law was the Guaranteed Student Loan Program or Federal Family Education Loan Program. In this scheme, the federal government became the co-signing guarantor for student borrowers based on a few qualifications. With the federal government guaranteeing the loans, the private financial institutions providing the loans relaxed their requirements and were much more willing to provide more money to students.
Demand was rising and the supply of money to meet that demand became easier to get. America’s colleges rose to the challenge by continuing to increase prices to accept the available money supply.
Over the decades, the qualifications for the loans guaranteed by the federal government were gradually loosened to allow more students to borrow more money. Between 1965 and 1992, all federally guaranteed loans were subsidized with the taxpayers paying the loan interest while students were still in school. In 1992, the federal government began guaranteeing unsubsidized loans where the student loans would continue to accrue interest for the student to pay back after graduation.
In 2005, President George W. Bush signed a law that had the federal government allow higher interest PLUS student loans for graduate students that would also allow them to borrow up to the total cost of attendance.
2010 was a pivot point. President Barack Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act. This law eliminated the Federal Family Education Loan Program by requiring all federal student loans to be Direct Loans. Effectively, it was a government takeover of student loans as it was no longer economically viable for private financial institutions to compete with the federal government for high-risk borrowers.
With the federal government now in charge of student loans, any remaining market pressures to regulate the issuance of debt were eliminated. With an unlimited supply of money, the decision to issue a loan to a student became perfunctory. The people issuing the loans did not care about the risk because it was not their money. The students taking the loans were willing to take as much money as possible. The politicians overseeing the programs were, and are, motivated by political considerations and not economic considerations.
We have created a third-party payer system in higher education where the people paying for the service (taxpayers) are paying for an unrelated person (students) to receive a service from provider (colleges). By trifurcating the financial transaction, market forces that might otherwise provide downward pressure on prices or demand are obscured.
The result was inevitable. With students able to borrow as much as they want from an unlimited vat of cash, colleges raised prices to capture as much money as possible. According to the Education Data Initiative, College tuition inflation averaged 12% annually from 2010 to 2022. That is twice as fast as tuition was increasing in the previous decade and well above the rate of currency inflation.
With the federal government now fully in charge of student loans, political motivations trump economic realities, fairness, and common sense. In a tough election year on the tail end of a disastrous presidency, Biden is willing to violate the law to force the taxpayers to eat the debt of borrowers in order to buy their votes. In doing so, Biden will further exacerbate the problem of rising college costs and debts for short-term political gain.
LBJ created the problem by having the federal government guarantee student loans. Obama accelerated the problem by having the federal government take over student loans. Biden is inflaming the problem by effectively having the federal government eliminate loans and just pay for college through debt “forgiveness.”
Government intrusion always makes things worse. President Reagan was right. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
JERUSALEM (AP) — Hamas announced its acceptance Monday of an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal, but Israel said the deal did not meet its “core demands” and that it was pushing ahead with an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Still, Israel said it would continue negotiations.
[…]
Hamas’s abrupt acceptance of the cease-fire deal came hours after Israel ordered an evacuation of some 100,000 Palestinians from eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, signaling an invasion was imminent.
[…]
On Sunday, Hamas fighters near the Rafah crossing fired mortars into southern Israel, killing four Israeli soldiers.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a defiant statement Sunday, vowing that the demands made by student protesters at the University of Texas at Austin will “NEVER happen.” The students called for the school to divest itself from companies manufacturing weapons for Israel and demanded the resignation of university President Jay Hartzell.
“This will NEVER happen,” Abbott wrote on X about the demands. “The only thing that will happen is that the University and the State will use all law-enforcement tools to quickly terminate illegal protests taking place on campus that clearly violate the laws of the state of Texas and policies of the university.”
Key word in that statement is “illegal.” Protests are fine. People have a right to speak. They do not have a right to infringe on the rights of others.
Also, if these student protestors are so appalled by the fact that the University invests in companies that manufacture weapons for Israel, then why are they helping fund the university through their tuition? They should all immediately withdraw if they are sincere.
According to an X post by the Transportation Security Administration, officers at the Miami International Airport found the small bag of snakes hidden in a passenger’s trousers on April 26 at a checkpoint.
The post included a photo of two small snakes that were found in what appeared to be a sunglasses bag.
Large, drawn-out protests like the one at Columbia have a tendency to attract people with a diffuse set of ideologies and motivations, experts say. Roughly 30% of those arrested at Hamilton Hall on Tuesday had no affiliation with the school, according to university officials.
But while there is no doubt that the occupation of the building amounted to a dramatic escalation in tactics, it remains unclear how large an influence outsiders like Carlson have had on the overall student protest movement at Columbia and nearby colleges, which began more than two weeks ago.
Some of the student protesters think the narrative pushed by city and university officials — of dangerous outsiders co-opting the demonstrations — is fueled by ulterior motives.
“I really struggle a lot with the whole narrative of outside agitators because I see it as a means through which to justify violence,” Soph Askanse, a junior at the neighboring Barnard College, said in an interview. “And to claim that because individuals are not students, they are thus deserving of police brutality.”
The entitlement dripping off of the students is ridiculous. The underlying assumption is that students are a special class of adults who should be immune from consequences for their actions. I don’t care if they are a student or a 42-year-old anarchist from Oregon… if they are breaking the law, they should be arrested.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Roughly 100,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children are expected to enroll in the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance next year under a new directive the Biden administration released Friday.
The move took longer than promised to finalize and fell short of Democratic President Joe Biden‘s initial proposal to allow those migrants to sign up for Medicaid, the health insurance program that provides nearly free coverage for the nation’s poorest people.
But it will allow thousands of migrants to access lucrative tax breaks when they sign up for coverage after the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace enrollment opens Nov. 1, just days ahead of the presidential election.
While it may help Biden boost his appeal at a crucial time among Latinos, a crucial voting bloc that Biden needs to turn out to win the election, the move is certain to prompt more criticism among conservatives about the president’s border and migrant policies.
The action opens up the marketplace to any participant in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, many of whom are Latino.
If Trump were to defeat President Joe Biden in November, the SEC under his administration would likely start by curtailing many of the rules recently put in place tied to the environment, according to experts and people close to the former president. An initial target of the SEC under a second Trump administration would be to roll back the new climate disclosure rules, these people explained.
Gensler and the SEC adopted a rule in March requiring large publicly traded companies to disclose their levels of greenhouse gas emissions. The largest companies are required to make climate disclosures as early as fiscal 2025, with specifics on greenhouse gas emissions as soon as fiscal 2026.
Gensler argues greenhouse gas emission levels and other climate related data have a material impact on businesses, and investors deserve to know this information.
But an SEC chaired by a Trump appointed Republican would likely remove these Biden-era disclosure requirements, these people said.
The rule “costs companies and investors a tremendous amount of money, and provides them no benefit,” said a person advising Trump on SEC related matters. Like others in this story, they were granted anonymity in order to recount private conversations.
The prospect of a Trump pullback on the SEC’s climate disclosure rules is also tied to the former president’s dislike of environmental, social and governance investment standards, some of these people explained.
During his term in office, Trump issued an executive order that made it harder for employers to offer ESG funds in employees’ 401(k) retirement plans. The Biden administration later softened the Trump rule.
In February, he said in a Truth Social post that if he is elected to a second term, he would reinstate his previous rule.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the U.S. on immigration.
The remarks, at a campaign fundraising event Wednesday evening, came just three weeks after the White House hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for a lavish official visit, during which the two leaders celebrated what Biden called an “unbreakable alliance,” particularly on global security matters.
[…]
“Why? Because we welcome immigrants,” Biden said. “Look, think about it. Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants.”
The president added: “Immigrants are what makes us strong. Not a joke. That’s not hyperbole, because we have an influx of workers who want to be here and want to contribute.”
Werfel noted that the IRS’ strategic plan over the next three tax years include a sharp increase in audits, although the agency reiterated it won’t boost its enforcement for people who earn less than $400,000 annually — which covers the bulk of U.S. taxpayers.
Here’s who will face an increase in audits
At the same time, the IRS is increasing its audit efforts, with Werfel noting on Thursday that the agency will focus on wealthy individuals and large corporations:
The IRS plans to triple the audit rates on large corporations with assets of more than $250 million. Audit rates for these companies will rise to 22.6% in tax year 2026 from 8.8% in 2019.Large partnerships with assets of more than $10 million will see their audit rates increase 10-fold, rising to 1% in tax year 2026 from 0.1% in 2019.Wealthy individuals with total positive income of more than $10 million will see their audit rates rise 50% to 16.5% from 11% in 2019.
“There is no new wave of audits coming from middle- and low-income [individuals], coming from mom and pops. That’s not in our plans,” Werfel said.
Let’s set aside, for a moment, the notion that imposing rectal audits on thousands of American companies won’t have negative consequences in terms of passing costs onto consumers, sucking wind out of the economy by diverting cash from productive activities to regulatory enforcement, or forcing companies to move operations overseas to friendlier environments. For a moment, let’s ignore that fact.
While the IRS Commissioner’s statement may be being made in good faith, there is absolutely no way that they will not go after small businesses and middle class folks. They may show restraint for a few months or even a year, but they are coming after all of us. They are like the scorpion. It is in their nature. And you can thank Joe Biden for that.
Greg LaVay, a 79-year-old retired entrepreneur from San Diego, says he used to visit McDonald’s a few times a month — but recently decided to switch to sit-down restaurants for dinner instead.
Why? LaVay noticed the price of hamburgers in his area inching up to $2.50 apiece, with a Big Mac going for $5.39 today.
Since September’s ruling that California fast food franchisees would be required to increase its minimum wage for employees to $20 starting in April, several eateries have embarked on cost-cutting measures such as raising menu prices.
A recent analysis from market research firm Datassential reveals the Golden State’s fast-food and fast-casual restaurants, like McDonalds, Chick-fil-A and Pizza Hut, have lifted prices by about 10% overall since September. This growth far surpasses that of the U.S. as a whole, which has seen chains inflate prices by just over 5%.
Several fast food chains have said they’re raising menu prices in response to the minimum wage hike.
Graduation season is upon us. Our youngest two children will accept their college diplomas this year along with thousands of others across the country. As these graduates embark upon the sea of adulthood, I offer five pieces of advice that will serve them well.
First, do not have debt. If you have debt, pay it off as soon as possible and do not take any more debt. This might mean living meagerly for some time and making hard choices, but living without debt liberates you from servitude and creates a foundation upon which to build wealth at any income.
Without debt, every dollar earned can be spent on savings (for gaining financial freedom), necessities (for a life without want), or giving (to make your community better). You will have to resist the temptations of consumerism and get comfortable with having less than your friends. Work hard, be frugal, save for big purchases, and live beneath your means. Your mental health will be better, and your 40-year-old self will thank you for the financial freedom you gave them.
Second, do your own laundry. This is a metaphor to do everything for yourself. You are an adult now. Act like it. Do your laundry. Iron your clothes. Clean the bathroom. Do the dishes. Keep your car maintained. Make the grocery list. Shop for the economical phone plan. Buy birthday and anniversary cards for your family. Make the appointment with the doctor. Go to the dentist twice a year. If you don’t know how to do something, ask or find a YouTube video to show you how.
Doing things for yourself is not just about getting the task done. It is about severing dependency from your parents and giving yourself the confidence and self-assurance that only comes from living independently. Even if your parents offer to do something for you, kindly decline their generosity. You will never be respected as an adult until you act like one. Nobody respects the 24-year-old whose mommy does their laundry.
Third, travel. Don’t add debt to travel, but travel nonetheless. Drive somewhere. Hike something. If you can, fly somewhere. Take a bus. Take a train. Go alone. Split a room somewhere with friends. Camp. Travel to other places. Meet different people. Eat strange foods. Experience different cultures. Whether it’s a weekend in Memphis or a month in Europe, make travel a priority within your means.
Travel is the great teacher. There are things to learn by being somewhere, talking to people, touching things, and experiencing life that cannot be taught from a page or screen. Go educate yourself about the world by being out in it. Break out of your comfort zone or find another one. You will never have another time in your life with as few encumbrances as you have now. Don’t let your regrets be found on a path untraveled.
Fourth, work hard. Irrespective of your chosen profession, working hard will always serve you well. Yes, I know it sounds trite and you might think that you work hard already. Work harder. There are only a handful of things that differentiate mediocre employees from exceptional employees. Work ethic is one of those things.
Doubtless, your first few jobs out of college will be a grind. As the youngest person on the job, you get the most menial, tedious, grunt kind of work. Do it. Do it well. Do it with pride. Learn to grind. Learn to embrace the suck. Every great career starts with the grind and you don’t get to tell war stories as a seasoned professional at the top of your craft if you don’t put in the grind.
Finally, go to church, or synagogue, or temple, or whatever your faith commands. When you are out in the world, you are unmoored from the stable docks of your youth. It can be lonely. At church you will find that stability and a fellowship of people who will help share your burdens. It is also increasingly difficult to make friends as an adult. That is why so many of people’s truly good friends are the ones they met in their youth.
From the Christian perspective, which is my own, church also provides that sense of perspective and contentment that will get you through the tough bits. To know that you are adrift in an infinite sea of humanity across time and space, and yet still seen and held precious by your loving Lord is humbling and uplifting. You do not struggle or succeed alone. You are never alone.
For the graduates, your age of adolescence is over. Now your age of adulthood begins. Go live it.
Several protesters have been arrested at UT-Austin Monday, most of whom are not believed to be affiliated with the university, school officials said in a statement.
