Texas Governor Greg Abbott had a blunt response to learning that LGBTQ+ groups have written to the United Nations to complain about suffering from “systemic” discrimination in the Lone Star state.
Dismissing the international organization with a six-word post on X, formerly Twitter, Abbott wrote: “The UN can go pound sand.”
His comment comes after Texas passed a string of laws that critics consider discriminatory against LGBTQ+ people. Seven new laws in particular have drawn the ire of some gay and transgender organizations and human rights groups, which joined forces to write a letter to officials at the U.N. “to raise alarm about the deteriorating human rights situation for LGBTQIA+ persons in the state of Texas, United States of America, due to hostile rhetoric and legislation from the Texas state government.”
The U.N. has proven to be one of the most bigoted and corrupt organizations in the world. I think Texas does well to ignore them.
On a recent episode of Caleb Hammer’s YouTube show, Financial Audit, Abigail admitted the student loan she took out wasn’t necessary. “I don’t need to use them like I use them, I know that,” she said.
“You’re borrowing from the government, potentially from taxpayers,” Hammer responded. “You’re going about this in such an irresponsible way and your actions are showing that you just don’t give a s–t.”
However, according to a recent survey, Abigail isn’t alone in her addiction to spending money or misallocating funds.
35% of American Gen Z’s surveyed by Credit Karma admitted to “doom spending,” which it described as a pattern of compulsive spending (think: clothing or high-end skincare products) that helped people cope with anxieties about the economy and world affairs.
Abigail seemed to be on a similar path when she appeared on Financial Audit.
Her college is relatively close to where she lives and is, as Hammer described, “insanely cheap.” Nevertheless, she managed to accumulate $11,000 in student loans — all of which were allocated to fund her lifestyle choices.
In addition, she has $8,000 in auto loans for a car she admitted she didn’t need to buy in the first place.
She also has thousands of dollars in credit card debt, which could have been avoided because her cost of living is lower than the national average. She currently lives with her parents and doesn’t pay for groceries or utilities.
When Hammer asked Abigail if she’d “just given up” she said “probably.”
She added, “That’s been my problem for the past few years: knowing I’m hurting myself and just not doing anything about it. I just feel like I don’t have any self-esteem.”
I recently had an infuriating experience at my local gas station. I stopped in for my morning coffee. Of course, I’m a sucker for the doughnuts in line, so I grabbed one of those too. My total was $3.49. All I had on me was a $20, so I promptly put it on the counter. The clerk smiled, put the $20 in the drawer, wished me a nice day, and beckoned the next customer up. Irritated, I asked about my change and was told, “oh, we keep the change now to use for other customers who we like better.”
Of course, this scenario is fictional and unbelievable, but that is exactly what the legislative Democrats and Gov. Tony Evers are doing with your tax dollars.
Ever since Republicans took control of the state Legislature in 2010 thanks, in large part, to anger over the massive state deficit that Democrat Governor Jim Doyle and the legislative Democrats had created, the legislative Republican majority has built fiscally responsible budgets that ran surpluses. Despite increasing spending every budget, the Republicans managed to bend the cost curves to ensure that all bills were paid while leaving plenty of change. Republicans have since filled up the state’s rainy day fund with billions of dollars and the state’s finances are stronger and more stable than they have ever been thanks to Republican fiscal management. Last week, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau issued its regular report about the state of the budget and projected surplus or deficit. The estimate is based on projected macroeconomic conditions and current state policies. Once again under Republican fiscal leadership, the LFB is projecting that the state will end the current budget in June of 2025 with a budget surplus of $3.15 billion — about $550 for every man, woman, and child in Wisconsin.
Let me write that another way: The state of Wisconsin is overtaxing every man, woman, and child in the state by about $550 and refusing to give any of it back. For the average family of four, they will be unnecessarily taxed $2,200 above and beyond the needs of government as expressed in the budget.
Noting this overpayment, the Republicans want to give the taxpayers their change and adjust the tax rates to reduce the amount of overpayment. Legislative Republicans passed their third attempt at a tax cut last week that would reduce income tax rates to bring the level of taxation in line with the amount of money that the government is actually spending. Yes, the spending is still too much, but Wisconsinites are still being taxed way more than even the spending justifies.
Democrats in the Legislature voted against this tax cut just like they voted against the last two tax cuts. Governor Evers vetoed the last two tax cuts and will probably veto this one too. Democrats refuse to give the Wisconsin taxpayers their change after funding government.
Why are Evers and his fellow travelers refusing to let Wisconsinites keep their money to afford the exploding cost of living despite government being fully funded? Simple. They do not think it is your money. They think it is their money and they want to spend it on things that they want.
Dressed up in the language of fake compassion, Evers and legislative Democrats have offered dozens of ways to spend the surplus instead of giving it back to hardworking Wisconsinites. They have proposed spending it on child care welfare, pouring more billions into the black hole of the government education complex, corporate welfare to big business to pay for paid leave and worker training, creating new government bureaucrats like the Office of State Employee Engagement and Retention, and all manner of spending.
All of the Democrats’ spending proposals have two things in common. First, they were not in the state budget. They are just more ideas to spend money after the budget was completed and signed into law by the governor. Second, every one of the spending proposals is designed to be spent on, or filtered through, the Democrats’ favored people. As the money flows, Democrats and their liberal constituencies throughout Wisconsin will get their beaks wet in a stream of tax dollars that were forcibly and unnecessarily taken from hardworking Wisconsinites.
Given the crooks’ high speeds and evasive actions, this could have ended a lot worse. I admire the police for using a dog on him instead of shooting him. That’s a lot of unnecessary restraint. And Waukesha is lucky that some kid didn’t get run over during the chase.
WAUKESHA — A group’s plan to steal and resell medicine was derailed when a slow-moving train stopped them during a police pursuit. Four people from Chicago were charged after they allegedly made off with $1,075 worth of medications from the Waukesha Meijer store.
Tashyla Ellis, 27; Jamar Humphrey, 23; Rayvontay Hutchins, 30; and Margie Taylor, 29 were charged on Friday in Waukesha County Circuit Court.
[…]
Officers then pursued the suspects’ vehicle. Ellis, Humphrey, Hutchins, and Taylor were in a white Dodge Durango that fled southbound on Tenny Avenue, turned westbound onto Highway 59 and traveled south on Center Road, evading the pursuing officer who was traveling at 94 MPH. Eventually, the vehicle was blocked by a train after turning eastbound onto Lawnsdale Road. The Durango then turned off the road and got stuck in a marsh less than 100 feet in.
Hutchins exited the vehicle and walked forward, following police directions poorly. He appeared to be speaking with someone on his phone. Police suspected that Hutchins was attempting to let the others flee, the complaint said.
After multiple instructions to kneel, Hutchins did, then reached for his pocket and retrieved what officers first believed to be a firearm but was actually his phone. K-9 Arko apprehended Hutchins by biting his arm, the complaint said.
This story is also a reminder that another community’s soft on crime policies don’t just impact that community.
Of course the timing is intentional. Biden had three years to change this policy and chose this moment because his is bleeding Islamist support in the battleground states of Michigan and Minnesota. Biden doesn’t mind dead Jews in the Holy Land if it means him retaining power.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Friday restored a U.S. legal finding dating back nearly 50 years that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are “illegitimate” under international law.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. believes settlements are inconsistent with Israel’s obligations, reversing a determination made by his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, in the Biden administration’s latest shift away from the pro-Israel policies pursued by former President Donald Trump.
Blinken’s comments came in response to a reporter’s question about an announcement that Israel would build more than 3,300 new homes in West Bank settlements as a riposte to a fatal Palestinian shooting attack.
It wasn’t clear why Blinken chose this moment, more than three years into his tenure, to reverse Pompeo’s decision. But it came at a time of growing U.S.-Israeli tensions over the war in Gaza, with the latest settlement announcement only adding to the strain. It also came as the United Nations’ highest court, the International Court of Justice, is holding hearings into the legality of the Israeli occupation.
This story has been interesting to watch unfold. The original narrative was that trans kid died after fight with other students in evil red-state Oklahoma. It was spun as an example of intolerance of trans people by redneck Republicans or something. Now we learn more… First, we learn that the trans kid was the aggressor.
In the video from the hospital the day of the altercation, Nex explains to an officer that the girls had been picking on them and their friends because of the way they dressed. Nex claims that in the bathroom the girls said “something like: why do they laugh like that,” referring to Nex and their friends.
“And so I went up there and I poured water on them, and then all three of them came at me,” Nex tells the officer while reclining in a hospital bed.
Not that a squirt of water justifies a physical attack, but Nex did transition the altercation from verbal to physical.
Next, when the mom called 911, she thought it might be a head injury from the fight that caused Nex’s eventual death. This is the narrative that the media ran with despite no other diagnosis other than raw speculation by an untrained observer.
In the 911 call on Feb. 8, Nex’s mother, Sue Benedict, expressed concern about a head injury as she described Nex’s symptoms.
Nex’s mother told the Independent that the bullying Nex had faced came amid state legislative policies that targeted the transgender and nonbinary communities.
Later we learn that the autopsy revealed that the death was not the result of a head injury from the fight.
While the two-week-old warrant states that police were seeking evidence in a felony murder, the department has since said Benedict’s death was not a result of injuries suffered in the fight, based on the preliminary results of the autopsy.
The police department, which didn’t respond to multiple messages sent Friday, has said it won’t comment further on the teen’s cause of death until toxicology and other autopsy results are completed.
Now neither the police nor the family are commenting on the actual cause of death. The police are correct and should not comment until they know for sure. The family can be given some leeway in their grief, I suppose, but they continue to use their dead kid as part of the trans agenda.
What we do know for sure is that this kid got into a minor fight at school in which he was a mutual combatant and later died of unrelated causes. It is the adults who are elevating this kid’s tragic death to use in ideological warfare to advance trans ideology.
CBS News first reported that the military was tracking the balloon as it traversed the Western U.S. earlier in the day. NORAD, the military command responsible for air defense over the U.S. and Canada, later confirmed it had detected the object and said it was floating between 43,000 and 45,000 feet. Its presence prompted enough concern that the command sent aircraft to investigate.
“The balloon was intercepted by NORAD fighters over Utah, who determined it was not maneuverable and did not present a threat to national security. NORAD will continue to track and monitor the balloon,” NORAD said in a statement. “The FAA also determined the balloon posed no hazard to flight safety.”
One U.S. official told CBS News the balloon was expected to be over Georgia by Friday night. The official said the balloon appeared to be made of Mylar and had a small cube-shaped box, about two feet long on each side, hanging below it. Its origins and purpose remain unknown.
2×2 box… could be surveillance equipment; or a bioweapon; or collecting trajectory information at altitude for future use; or just a middle finger from a foreign power to show they can do it. I don’t care. Shoot it down.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Hundreds of migrants were dropped off Friday at a San Diego bus stop instead of at a reception center that had been serving as a staging area because it ran out of local funding sooner than expected, showing how even the largest city on the country’s southern border is struggling to cope with the unprecedented influx of people.
Migrants who previously had a safe place to charge phones, use the bathroom, eat a meal and arrange to head elsewhere in the U.S. were now left on the street as migrant aid groups scrambled to help out as best they could with makeshift arrangements.
Border Patrol buses carrying migrants from Senegal, China, Ecuador, Guatemala and many other countries arrived outside a transit center. Migrant aid groups said they would be bused from there to a parking lot where they could charge their phones and get a ride to the airport. The vast majority planned to spend only a few hours in San Diego before taking a flight or having someone pick them up.
“Are we in San Diego?” asked Gabriel Guzman, 30, a painter from the Dominican Republic who was released after crossing the border in remote mountains on Thursday. He was told to appear in June in an immigration court in Boston, where he hopes to earn money to send home to his three children.
Abd Boudeah, of Mauritania, flew to Tijuana, Mexico, through Nicaragua and followed other migrants to an opening in the border wall, where he surrendered to agents Thursday after walking about eight hours. The former molecular engineering student said he fled persecution for being gay and planned to settle in Chicago with a cousin who had been in the U.S. for 20 years.
Ever since Republicans took control of the state Legislature in 2010 thanks, in large part, to anger over the massive state deficit that Democrat Governor Jim Doyle and the legislative Democrats had created, the legislative Republican majority has built fiscally responsible budgets that ran surpluses. Despite increasing spending every budget, the Republicans managed to bend the cost curves to ensure that all bills were paid while leaving plenty of change. Republicans have since filled up the state’s rainy day fund with billions of dollars and the state’s finances are stronger and more stable than they have ever been thanks to Republican fiscal management. Last week, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau issued its regular report about the state of the budget and projected surplus or deficit. The estimate is based on projected macroeconomic conditions and current state policies. Once again under Republican fiscal leadership, the LFB is projecting that the state will end the current budget in June of 2025 with a budget surplus of $3.15 billion — about $550 for every man, woman, and child in Wisconsin.
Let me write that another way: The state of Wisconsin is overtaxing every man, woman, and child in the state by about $550 and refusing to give any of it back. For the average family of four, they will be unnecessarily taxed $2,200 above and beyond the needs of government as expressed in the budget.
Noting this overpayment, the Republicans want to give the taxpayers their change and adjust the tax rates to reduce the amount of overpayment. Legislative Republicans passed their third attempt at a tax cut last week that would reduce income tax rates to bring the level of taxation in line with the amount of money that the government is actually spending. Yes, the spending is still too much, but Wisconsinites are still being taxed way more than even the spending justifies.
Democrats in the Legislature voted against this tax cut just like they voted against the last two tax cuts. Governor Evers vetoed the last two tax cuts and will probably veto this one too. Democrats refuse to give the Wisconsin taxpayers their change after funding government.
Why are Evers and his fellow travelers refusing to let Wisconsinites keep their money to afford the exploding cost of living despite government being fully funded? Simple. They do not think it is your money. They think it is their money and they want to spend it on things that they want.
Dressed up in the language of fake compassion, Evers and legislative Democrats have offered dozens of ways to spend the surplus instead of giving it back to hardworking Wisconsinites. They have proposed spending it on child care welfare, pouring more billions into the black hole of the government education complex, corporate welfare to big business to pay for paid leave and worker training, creating new government bureaucrats like the Office of State Employee Engagement and Retention, and all manner of spending.
All of the Democrats’ spending proposals have two things in common. First, they were not in the state budget. They are just more ideas to spend money after the budget was completed and signed into law by the governor. Second, every one of the spending proposals is designed to be spent on, or filtered through, the Democrats’ favored people. As the money flows, Democrats and their liberal constituencies throughout Wisconsin will get their beaks wet in a stream of tax dollars that were forcibly and unnecessarily taken from hardworking Wisconsinites.
In a recent survey conducted by a panel of experts specializing in the American presidency, President Biden was ranked the 14th-best president, while his likely 2024 presidential opponent former President Trump found himself at the very bottom of the list.
[…]
Biden was placed ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant. Former President Obama was ranked No. 7, eight spots higher than when the experts were polled last year.
Really? I would even put Obama ahead of Biden. Certainly Reagan and Grant. Wilson was a raving eugenist, but even he had some good qualities. Frankly, any ranking that doesn’t have Coolidge in the top 5 is invalid.
Mark Friedlander, a spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group, said home insurance premiums had cumulatively risen 32% from 2019 to 2023, while rebuilding and replacement costs had gone up 55%. Analysts for the group estimated that in 2023, home insurers experienced their biggest underwriting loss — the difference between collected premiums and paid-out claims — since 2011. Behind the loss were huge storms that caused more than $50 billion in damage that insurers had to pay for.
A survey last year by the institute and researchers for Munich Re, a reinsurer, found that 88% of U.S. homeowners had property insurance, down from 95% in 2019. Only 4% had flood insurance, even though 90% of the country’s natural disasters involve flooding.
Once insurers raise premiums, many homeowners are discovering that their lenders are willing to explore ways to make their payments more affordable. Banks that collect mortgage payments must ensure that borrowers’ coverage meets requirements set by the government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac housing agencies, but are open to owners tweaking it within those requirements, said Pete Mills, the chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, the trade group for the mortgage industry.
Amy Bach, the executive director of United Policyholders, a nonprofit advocacy group that helps insurance consumers navigate tricky claims processes, said she found herself recommending a multitude of strategies these days to keep policies affordable.
“For most consumers, what they’re facing now is: What is the least worst option for me, given the pricing?” she said. She advises lowering the coverage on the contents of a house or cutting coverage for outbuildings like garages, sheds, pools or retaining walls.
“We had been saying, ‘Raise your deductible,’ but now, what does that mean?” Bach said. “My parents’ home on Long Island has a $33,000 wind deductible,” meaning they would have to pay that much out of pocket — a huge share of the cost of a new roof — before getting any help from their insurer.
And before you tell me that it isn’t Bidenomics, it absolutely is. The key number is, “rebuilding and replacement costs had gone up 55%.” Some of that is due to the demand for new housing and remodeling while corporations restrict supply by purchasing homes, but a huge contributor is the inflationary economy and high interest rates that are pervasive elements of the Biden economy. Yes, if it costs 55% more to replace your home whose value is already inflated, insurance rates are going to go way up.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed new legislative district maps into law on Monday that he proposed and that the Republicans who control the Legislature passed to avoid having the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court draw the lines.
But remember why we are here. The activist Leftist majority of the court forced this and usurped the power of the legislature. The Governor encouraged it.
Administration officials aren’t disengaged from the impeachment fight. President Joe Biden slammed the impeachment as “petty partisan games.” And aides are monitoring it closely, often elevating Republicans who have questioned the merits of impeachment.
But the administration is also leaning on allied outside groups to poke holes in the GOP’s case against Mayorkas and echo the message coming from Pennsylvania Avenue.
[…]
The Congressional Integrity Project has led the charge externally. The group launched in late 2022 — ahead of Republicans taking over the House — with the goal of combatting the investigative onslaught into the Biden administration. The organization has been tracking the targeting of Mayorkas closely, but as impeachment seemed increasingly likely, it ramped up that element of its operations.
Over the last six weeks, the Congressional Integrity Project has worked closely with advocates in the immigration policy space to defend Mayorkas and to paint the GOP effort as a “shameful” and unfounded partisan act tied to fringe conservatives, such as Georgia Rep. Majorie Taylor Green and Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs.
The groups, including America’s Voice and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, have stayed in touch over a shared chat where they coordinate strategy, said Douglas Rivlin, communications director at America’s Voice. They have pushed various constituencies to speak out against the impeachment effort they’ve sought to frame as “unconstitutional.”
The 2022 child-parent relationship lawsuit filed by Walli Carranza raises multiple concerns about Moreno, who at the time was referred to as Jeffrey. Carranza alleges Moreno was diagnosed multiple times with schizophrenia and had said she was not taking prescribed medications or following treatment recommendations made by her psychiatrist.
Walli Carranza said Moreno had “a history of constantly erratic, paranoid, stalking and mendacious behavior and was diagnosed as exhibiting Munchausen and Munchausen by proxy signs and symptoms.” Munchausen syndrome is when someone fakes illness, abuse or other hardship to gain sympathy or aid. By proxy means they took on someone else’s misfortune as their own.
[…]
“(Moreno) has been investigated four times by Child Protective Services for child abuse and neglect and was found by them to have intentionally harmed her child on at least two occasions,” the suit states.
Bulletproof vests, ammunition, plastic bottles filled with unknown substances, antisemitic books and a white mask that read “Free Gaza Trump” were pulled from the Conroe home of the suspected Lakewood Church shooter, records show.
[…]
Officers also found a book titled “All Remainers are Neo-Nazis.” It’s unclear what the book is referring to, but the term remainers is often used in the United Kingdom to describe people who voted for the country to stay in the European Union. Seven handmade poster signs were found in a trash can, but the warrant does not indicate what they said.
[…]
Conroe police have responded to more than 20 calls since 2019 tied to the address where Moreno lived, records show. The calls ranged in severity from neighbors reporting strange interactions with the woman to one who said Moreno tried to hit her with her vehicle.
Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher has had quite a week. After a controversial vote against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Gallagher made the surprise announcement that he will not be seeking reelection. The moment says a lot about where the Republican base is right now.
For background, according to the U.S. Border Patrol, they encountered an all-time record 302,034 people illegally crossing our southern border in December of 2023. During President Biden’s term, the Border Patrol has encountered more people every year than the year before for a whopping total of over seven million illegal border crossers. The vast majority of illegal border crossers were released into the interior of the country. That is more people than currently live in 34 of our 50 states. This number only includes the people that Border Control encountered. It does not include the countless people who evaded detection. In other words, our border is wide open. Ignoring their legal and moral responsibility to implement the law to secure our border, the Biden Administration has deliberately opened our nation’s borders. Biden has all of the legal authority and responsibility to secure the border at any time but refuses to do so. The result is that millions of indigent people are tearing social safety nets and committing crimes in communities all over our nation. People are frustrated. Angry. Enter Secretary Mayorkas. Mayorkas is the chief implementer of Biden’s openborder policy. He has spent years ignoring, obstructing, and misleading Congress in his quest to erase America’s geographic sovereignty. For this, the Republicans, who only control a single house of Congress, sought to impeach Mayorkas as the face, and chief architect, of Biden’s open border.
Impeachment is a political tool granted to the House of Representatives by the Constitution to be used against anyone in the other two branches of government. It is one of the famed “checks” that creates “balance” in our system of government. The criteria for impeachment are intentionally vague because it is a political tool — not a legal one.
Even though the Democrat majority in the Senate would never convict Mayorkas, the House Republican leadership sought to impeach Mayorkas to vent the frustration of their constituents and use the most powerful tool available to them to try to check the Executive Branch’s wonton disregard for the laws it is charged to faithfully implement.
Gallagher voted against impeaching Mayorkas and it failed by a narrow margin. Gallagher’s reasoning was sincere, but flawed. He aspires to a higher standard for impeachment that the Democrats abandoned long ago and is not appropriate for the seriousness of the border crisis and Mayorkas’ role in it.
The reaction to Gallagher’s vote from Republican voters and moderates was immediate and vicious — perhaps overly so, but reflective of the pent-up frustration and anger about Biden’s border treachery. Republican voters are looking for elected Republicans to use every tool available to fight for a secure border. We are sick and tired of watching elected Republicans latibulate when our country needs people to fight for it.
Gallagher took both barrels of that gurgling anger. Although he did not state this reaction as the reason, he announced that he will not seek reelection a couple of days after his vote. Gallagher was a rising Republican star with legitimate conservative credibility, but this singular vote has most likely ended his political career.
The silver lining for Wisconsin Republicans is that Gallagher’s precipitous announcement makes the race to replace him an open seat in the Republican-leaning Fox Valley. That region of Wisconsin has increasingly become the bellwether of Republican statewide elections and a hotly contested race for Congress may drive Republican turnout for their attempt to oust Senator Tammy Baldwin.
“On my first day back in the White House, I will terminate every open borders policy of the Biden administration, stop the invasion on our southern border and begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump said at an Iowa campaign event in December.
None of this
The former president has projected a my-way-or-the-highway approach to international dealings, floating the idea of a universal 10% tax on all goods coming from countries outside the U.S., in an attempt to prioritize domestic production.
Or this
Trump has suggested using the National Guard to address crime, which he argues is worse than it’s ever been.
Meh. Should be done, but not a priority that actually impacts the lives of the American people.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and go after the Biden crime family,”
MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would prefer to see U.S. President Joe Biden win a second term, describing him as more experienced and predictable than Donald Trump — even though Moscow strongly disagrees with the current administration’s policies.
Putin’s comments during an interview with Russian state television Wednesday were his first about the upcoming U.S. presidential election, likely to pit Biden against Trump. They come at time of heightened tension between Russia and the West — and deep disagreements in the U.S. about how best to counter Russia and help Ukraine, which is fighting Moscow’s forces.
“Biden, he’s more experienced, more predictable, he’s a politician of the old formation,” Putin said, when asked which candidate would be better for Russia. “But we will work with any U.S. leader whom the American people trust.”
Japan’s economy dipped into a technical recession, after unexpectedly contracting again in the October-December period, provisional government data showed Thursday. High inflation crimped domestic demand and private consumption in what’s now the world’s fourth-largest economy.
The latest gross domestic product print complicates the case for interest rate normalization for Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda and fiscal policy support for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. It also means Germany took Japan’s place as the third-largest economy in the world last year in dollar terms.
Provisional gross domestic product contracted 0.4% in the fourth quarter compared with a year ago, after a revised 3.3% slump in the July-September period. This was way below the median estimate for 1.4% growth in a Reuters poll among economists. The GDP deflator in the fourth quarter stood at 3.8% on an annualized basis.
The Japanese economy also contracted 0.1% in the fourth quarter from the previous quarter, after shrinking a revised 0.8% in the third quarter from the second. This was also weaker than expectations for 0.3% expansion.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin’s GOP-controlled Legislature on Tuesday passed legislative maps that were proposed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers — a move designed to prevent the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court from implementing maps that might be even worse for Republicans.
Republicans conceded defeat, while Democrats said they were afraid of being tricked.
“It pains me to say it, but Gov. Evers gets a huge win today,” Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said, adding that under the new maps, “the Legislature will be up for grabs.”
The Assembly and Senate passed the bill in quick succession Tuesday, sending it to Evers. Last week, he promised to sign his maps into law if the Legislature passed them with no changes. Republicans did tweak the language to ensure the new maps don’t take effect until November, but it’s unclear if that’s a dealbreaker for the governor. His spokesperson Britt Cudaback posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, after the votes that Evers position has not changed. She did not elaborate.
