Author: Press Room

Plans to Quit Rise But So Do Fears of Layoffs—Thanks to the Fed and AI Are workers gaining or losing confidence about their job prospects? On Monday, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released the results of its monthly consumer expectations survey—and the results provided ammunition to both optimists and pessimists. The mean probability workers assigned to voluntarily leaving their jobs in the next 12 months jumped 2.6 percentage points to 20.8 percent, the highest reading since February 2023. This is an indication of economic confidence because workers are more likely to expect to leave their jobs—and more likely…

House Republican appropriators are taking aim at TSA’s new $45 fee for air travelers who don’t have a REAL ID or other accepted form of identification, inserting language into their annual Homeland Security spending bill seeking to stop its collection. The fiscal 2027 legislation, which is poised for an Appropriations Committee markup Tuesday, includes a prohibition on TSA charging or collecting any fee for “a program vetting travelers arriving without acceptable identification for admission through security screenings at airports.” In an accompanying report released Monday offering details about the bill, the House GOP said there’s “no valid statutory authority for…

NATO has launched a new experimental unit to test assorted unmanned systems in the Arctic, as the US-led bloc continues to increase its military presence in the region.The bloc has consistently cited an alleged Russian threat to justify its Arctic buildup. Moscow has rejected the claims, arguing that the region’s militarization has been driven by NATO’s own actions and pledging to respond accordingly to activity in the Arctic, where Russia controls more than half of the coastline.The latest NATO initiative was unveiled over the weekend as the research vessel Alliance departed La Spezia, Italy, launching Task Force X-Arctic (TFX-Arctic). The…

Lebanese Defense Minister Michel Menassa said on Monday that Israel has conducted 3,491 airstrikes against targets in Lebanon since the U.S.-brokered “ceasefire” began on April 17. Menassa told a meeting of the Lebanese Cabinet that Israel has also performed 407 controlled demolitions of structures in southern Lebanon, plus six more destructive “razing” operations that wiped out entire neighborhoods. Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam reposted Menassa’s report on social media after the cabinet meeting and said the heavy bombing campaign has created a wave of internally displaced persons that threaten to overwhelm northern Lebanon’s capacity to manage refugees. According to the…

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) lambasted Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) to her face on Wednesday after she claimed President Donald Trump’s administration was targeting immigrant communities. The war of words erupted during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when Hirono remarked on the Stop Citizen Abuse and Misrepresentation Act (SCAM Act), Fox News reported Friday. The outlet referred to it as a “denaturalization bill.” The Democrat senator argued naturalized citizens would face stricter requirements and pointed to the fact she was the only naturalized citizen on the committee. “I am horrified by the implication that naturalized citizens basically get second-class citizenship… As…

President Donald Trump officially nominated acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to hold the role on a permanent basis Monday. The White House notified the Senate of the nomination days after Trump said he would tap Blanche for the job at a private Rose Garden dinner last week. Blanche’s path to confirmation remains uncertain. Republican senators, fresh off their opposition to the administration’s proposed Justice Department “anti-weaponization” fund, appear to be hesitant to offer their wholehearted support for Trump’s pick. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who Trump has repeatedly attacked, previously told POLITICO he would…

Several thousand demonstrators took to the streets of Berlin on Monday, calling for the resignation of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.The rally drew participants from across Germany, many of whom traveled to the capital in organized car convoys, according to local media. Organizers said they registered 10,000 attendees, while Berlin police estimated the crowd at around 4,000.Demonstrators marched with German flags and carried placards bearing slogans such as “Not my chancellor” and “Merz must go.”Local authorities said the protest remained peaceful and concluded without incident.The rally was organized by the non-partisan group Project M1llion, which says it brings together a broad…

Preliminary results from Peru’s National Electoral Processes Office (ONPE) indicate that conservative former first lady Keiko Fujimori maintains a narrow lead against radical leftist candidate Roberto Helbert Sánchez Palomino in Sunday’s razor-thin presidential runoff election. Sunday saw millions of Peruvians head to the polls to choose between Fujimori and Sánchez Palomino as the next president of Peru — a country that has experienced back-to-back political crises resulting in nine different presidents in about ten years. The runoff election also follows an extremely convoluted first round held in April that featured 35 different candidates on the ballot. The April election was marred by logistical…

A federal judge appointed by former President Barack Obama has struck down President Donald Trump’s one-time $100,000 fee for importing foreign H-1B visa workers to take American white-collar jobs. On Monday, Judge Leo Sorokin of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the Trump administration’s plans to impose a $100,000 fee on foreign H-1B hires, arguing that doing so is essentially a tax that Congress did not authorize. “… the Court finds that the Policy imposes a tax on H-1B petitions without the requisite delegation by Congress,” Sorokin wrote: Accordingly, the Court VACATES the Policy materials…

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “News Central,” Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) said she believed Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner had essentially disqualified himself with his past conduct and personal behavior. Host Boris Sanchez asked, “Do you support Graham Platner’s candidacy for Senate in Maine?” Dean said, “I think it’s so distressing. All of the stories that are coming out, and they’re more and more, it seems, by the hour. I’m not a voter in Maine, but he has disqualified himself in my eyes. He is not qualified to be, representative, a senator. We’ll see what Maine does about it.” She…