SINCERETALK

Mississippi may soon face a ‘huge gap’ in disaster recovery funding when the Trump administration follows through with its plan to raise the threshold for public assistance. Mississippi Today reports the administration of President Donald Trump’s is proposing raising the threshold a state’s damages have to reach to qualify for public assistance funds for road, bridge and government building repairs after a disaster. State emergency officials saw the numbers rolling down from the federal level and alerted Mississippi lawmakers, warning them that had Trump’s cuts already been in effect, the state would have missed out on federal support for 18 of the last 28 declared disasters, causing an estimated loss of $163 million. In its hurry to eviscerate federal programs, Trump officials proposed quadrupling Mississippi’s public assistance threshold from $5.5 million to $22 million. Of course, upping the threshold that severely makes it much harder for the impoverished Republican-majority ...

President Donald Trump has nominated former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh to succeed Jerome Powell as chairman of the Fed. But one Republican senator is threatening to make sure Warsh never gets confirmed out of his committee. Semafor reported Friday that outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) – who is not running for another term in November – is signaling he will vote against Warsh's confirmation in the Senate Banking Committee, where he is one of 13 Republican members on the 25-member body. Tillis maintains that he won't vote to confirm any of Trump's nominees to the Federal Reserve until the Department of Justice calls off its investigation into Powell . "I actually sent a note to the president saying, ‘It’s a great pick,'" Tillis told Semafor. "But I'm not changing." Assuming all 12 Democrats on the committee vote no, Warsh would be unable to advance to the full Senate for a majority vote. The rules of the Senate allow for the full...

One of the U.S. economy's biggest strengths has been effectively kneecapped by President Donald Trump's administration, according to a new analysis from The Bulwark's Catherine Rampell. In a Thursday essay , Rampell argued that Trump's policies during the first year of his second term have been "both disruptive and deeply damaging." She observed that the United States' previous dominance in the areas of research and development, medical research and other fields has since been decimated largely due to the Trump administration's impact on higher education. According to Rampell, the Morrill Act of 1862 — which created land-grant colleges – put the U.S. on the path of creating a "knowledge economy." She further noted that opening up the immigration system to "attract the best and brightest scientific talent from around the world" has paid dividends." According to a 2015 University of Chicago Journal of Labor Economics study, f...

President Donald Trump has apparently decided on his pick to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, and will announce the nomination on Friday. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Trump planned to make the announcement in the morning, following a months-long vetting process led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The Treasury secretary is recommending Trump nominate one of four finalists: National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, BlackRock executive Rick Rieder, current Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Christopher Waller (who Trump appointed in 2020) and former Fed board member Kevin Warsh. Whoever Trump nominates will likely face questioning from U.S. senators over whether they will prioritize Trump's wishes in lowering interest rates or if they will listen to economists and other experts who have cautioned against lowering interest rates due to concerns about inflation. The new Fed chair will replace current Fed chair Jerome Powell, who has...

With Democrats projected to win back control of at least one chamber of Congress in this fall's midterm elections, Republicans are now banking their hopes on legislation that could make it much harder for millions of Americans to cast a ballot. The New Republic (TNR) reported Thursday that Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), who chairs the House Administration Committee, is behind the new Make Elections Great Again Act. TNR described the legislation as a laundry list of far-right policy priorities "that would actually impose severe restrictions on voting across the country." Steil's bill would mandate that all voters across the country present a photo ID to be able to vote, require all mail-in ballots arrive for counting no later than Election Day, make voters manually opt in to cast votes by mail and eliminate ranked-choice voting for federal elections, among other restrictions. "Americans should be confident their elections are being run with integrity – includin...

One new high-ranking staffer at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is now resigning from his role just weeks after his hire was announced. On January 16, the Kennedy Center announced that Kevin Couch would be the new senior vice president of artistic programming at the vaunted institution. The Kennedy Center also announced Couch's new role on its official X account on January 22. However, the Washington Post reported Wednesday that Couch submitted his resignation less than a week later. While Couch confirmed his resignation to the Post on Wednesday, he didn't issue any further comment explaining the reason for his sudden departure. Prior to his 12-day stint at the Kennedy Center, Couch worked at his Dallas, Texas-based branding agency, CBC Creative. Before founding CBC Creative, Couch managed popular R&B acts, including 1990s group Color Me Badd. According to the Kennedy Center's press release announcing his hire, Couch "oversaw all aspects of busin...

The Guardian reports it was largely the work of a hyper-conservative group of Mormon women who derailed Republican efforts to gerrymander a new Republican district in Utah this year. The Pew Research Center reveals that Mormons, also known as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were among Trump’s strongest supporters in 2016, with about 61 percent of church members backing him, making the group his second-largest religious support base. But in 2018, the Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG) helped gather enough signatures to pass Utah’s Proposition 4, with 50.34 percent of the vote . This created an independent state commission to draw state and congressional maps using nonpartisan criteria, rather than let legislators cherry-pick their own voters. But in 2020, state Republican lawmakers told MWEG to take a hike and repealed Proposition 4. Then they redrew maps that split Salt Lake County – Utah’s youngest, most diverse and bluest region – into four...

Home Depot in Georgia announced it is eliminating about 800 corporate jobs in Cobb County, which could prove a problem for President Donald Trump’s plans for the state in upcoming midterm and the subsequent national elections. The company announced its cuts primarily due to “ a slow housing market and increased consumer uncertainty ,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution . “Many of the affected employees are in technology positions and were working in remote or hybrid roles, Home Depot spokesperson Sara Gorman told AJC . “Some affected employees work in other roles across the Store Support Center, what Home Depot calls its headquarters. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the company’s cuts come as Amazon announced its own plans to kill 14,000 corporate jobs and as a Sandy Springs, GA.-based UPS announced it was cutting 30,000 positions this year. Home Depot reported in August that customers were shying away from large home improvement projects because of high in...

Far-right media figures are in open "revolt" after President Donald Trump signaled he would " de-escalate a little bit " in Minneapolis, Minnesota after the deadly shooting of 37 year-old U.S. citizen Alex Pretti last weekend. That's according to The Bulwark's Sam Stein and Will Sommer , who reported Tuesday that several MAGA commentators are viewing Trump's winding down of federal operations in the Twin Cities area as a white flag to the political left. Sommer said there was noticeable division between people who "really like this very cruel way" the administration is conducting immigration enforcement, and another camp asking: "Do we really want to sink everything else we want to get done over this?" Stein commented that politics for many in the MAGA media realm is a "zero-sum game" in which acknowledging a "misstep" is effectively "handing a victory to the opposition." "Some of the reactions...

MS NOW columnist Michael A. Cohen said one year into his second term President Donald Trump has finally managed to make some of his fellow Republicans scream and run from him. “If you’ve noticed a strange rumble emanating from Washington, D.C., let me help you out: It’s the sound of Republicans running for political cover after immigration officers shot and killed another American citizen, Alex Pretti,” said Cohen (who is not Trump's former fixer). It began as a low rumble on Sunday night, when a smattering of Republicans and usually reliable conservative pundits tepidly expressed concern about the shooting and how the Trump administration was characterizing the incident.” But by Monday, Cohen said the rumbling “crescendoed into a deafening roar.” “The situation was so bad that even Trump was looking for political cover. Late Sunday night, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal , Trump declined to defend the Border Patrol officers who took Pretti’s life and signaled tha...

One Republican member of the U.S. Senate recently launched into a rant about what he viewed as "amateurish" leadership of senior-level officials in President Donald Trump's administration. On Tuesday, journalist Jamie Dupree posted a video of Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) speaking to reporters about Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem and other top officials within the DHS. Tillis – who is not running for a third term in the Senate — argued that Noem's handling of DHS operations in Minnesota "should be disqualifying." "She should be out of a job. Really, it's just amateurish. It's terrible," he said. "It's making the president look bad on policies that he won on." Tillis, who was one of the 59 senators who voted for Noem's confirmation , lamented that Noem was disrupting Trump's success with her "incompetence." He asserted that while the president was elected to a second term by runn...

US President Donald Trump sent his top border enforcer to Minneapolis and struck a conciliatory note in a bid to tamp down nationwide outrage over the second killing of a US citizen protesting militarised immigration raids. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/erXyj3t via sinceretalk

New York Magazine reporter Ben Terris recently sat down with President Donald Trump for nearly an hour to discuss his health. Now, he's saying the unsightly bruise on the back of Trump's hand is apparently getting worse — and that the president is "very self-conscious" about it. In a Monday interview with The Bulwark's Tim Miller, Terris went into detail about his encounter with Trump in the Oval Office. He told Miller that while he hadn't expected White House physicians to be present during his conversation with the president, he decided to focus the bulk of his questions on Trump's health — which the president and his staffers welcomed. According to Terris, both White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt both pushed the narrative that the 79 year-old president had never been in better health. Miller suggested that Terris refer to Trump as a "superhuman president," which Terris made i...

President Donald Trump was recently dealt another unfavorable ruling by a federal judge, who struck down his attempt to obtain sensitive information about voters. On Monday, Politico legal correspondent Josh Gerstein reported that U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai – an appointee of former President Joe Biden — dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration's Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain Oregon's database of registered voters. Kasubhai also reportedly asked the Trump administration about Attorney General Pam Bondi's letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) asking for Minnesota's voter database. Gerstein reported that neither the Trump DOJ nor Oregon said that Bondi's letter to Walz impacted the Oregon case "at this stage," though Kasubhai's line of questioning suggests that the letter may potentially come up as an issue should the administration decide to appeal. In order to overturn Judge Kasubhai's ruling, the Trump administ...

One of President Donald Trump's top border security officials was reportedly denied access to Minneapolis during the recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement surge, with the Washington Examiner reporting that other top officials are working to force him out over ethical disagreements on the president's deportation plans. Rodney Scott is Trump's U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner. According to the Examiner's Monday report, conflicts with Scott have led Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her close ally, special Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employee Corey Lewandowski , to mount "an aggressive campaign" to try and make the commissioner "so uncomfortable at work that he would resign." Scott reportedly clashed with the pair over "how to reach the president’s deportation goals and ethical concerns," according to eight anonymous sources familiar with the matter. Some sources have describ...

Revego Africa Energy Fund raised R1 billion in its first capital-raising round since 2021 as the Investec Bank-backed firm seeks to bankroll renewable power projects in South Africa. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/cpLzHoJ via sinceretalk

Gold surged beyond $5 000 an ounce for the first time on Monday, while the rand remains close to the R16/$ mark. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/pC8cIFY via sinceretalk

Today is the saddest most depressing day in America since Nov. 5, 2024, when anybody with a brain in their head or a heart in their chest knew what was most assuredly coming. Somehow that didn’t include myriad universities, corporations, media outlets, and even members of the opposition party, who surrendered to this murdering fascist regime almost before it got going, thus greasing the skids for this homegrown national emergency. I hold them in contempt, and will do everything possible to make sure these cowardice sellouts pay for their betrayal. And about that media … Try as I might, I just couldn’t get through the newspapers this morning. I know what I saw on my screen on that frigid Minneapolis street Saturday. There are in fact two sides to this story: The right side and the wrong side. I have heard more than enough from the latter side to last one-hundred-and-fifty lifetimes. If you are still covering Donald Trump as anything but a violent, lying lowlife you have no credi...

As hundreds of Minneapolis residents assembled in Whittier Park Saturday evening to demand once again that federal immigration agents leave Minnesota following the second fatal shooting of a legal observer in less than three weeks, one speaker demanded that the gathering must not simply be “another damn vigil.” “This is a turning point,” said Edwin Torres DeSantiago of the Immigrant Defense Network. He spoke to the crowd hours after several federal officers were filmed surrounding Alex Pretti, 37, after he attempted to help a woman one of them had pushed to the ground, and fatally shooting him. Torres DeSantiago’s words were echoed by the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, which did not mince words about the agents of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection who have for months roamed the streets of cities including Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles, arresting immigrants and US citizens and opening fire nearly two dozen times—kil...

Netflix hosted an event for Bridgerton’s fourth season on Saturday in Cape Town. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/LCwfTIG via sinceretalk

Your one stop window into all the stories you have to read in this week’s City Press. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/V0zYqnZ via sinceretalk

The killing of a US citizen by federal immigration agents on Saturday - the second in Minneapolis this month - sparked new protests and impassioned demands by local leaders for the Trump administration to end its operation in the city. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/M3CFrxw via sinceretalk

Laura Loomer – a MAGA social media influencer who has been referred to as President Donald Trump's unofficial " loyalty enforcer " — posted a lengthy screed to her 1.8 million followers attacking Vice President JD Vance In a Friday post to her X account , Loomer addressed Vance's recent remarks in which he appeared to heap criticism on Loomer while quote-tweeting one of her posts. The vice president wrote: "It's interesting that some 'conservative influencers' spend all of their time attacking the administration and sowing division. Disgraceful actually." Loomer responded to Vance's post by challenging him to speak out against conservative activists like neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, who used a slur about his Indian American wife . She also pointed out that he has so far remained silent about far-right commentator Tucker Carlson, "who has attacked every single policy of the Trump administration, and who is currently being broadcasted on Ir...

Donald Trump went to Davos on Wednesday morning and gave the speech that Vladimir Putin wanted him to, lying and pissing off Europe and shaking the North Atlantic alliance to its core. Our president has refused to help Ukraine in any meaningful way for a year now, giving Russia the room to destroy much of that country’s electric and heat infrastructure so badly that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had to cancel his trip to Davos to deal with the crisis. Trump’s now invaded Venezuela and is threatening the same with Greenland, legitimizing Putin’s land-grabs in Georgia and Ukraine. Trump’s ICE goons are destroying the rule of law in America, running amok in Minneapolis, punishing — and killing — the residents of that city for having elected politicians who’d dare advocate democracy over autocracy. Russian media is proudly proclaiming that their own internal crackdowns on immigrants, dissidents, and people of color aren’t so bad because Trump’s doing the same thing in America. We’v...

Tennessee’s GOP-imposed pay-as-you-go system for funding road projects is smacking hard against $58 billion in planned road construction projects this year. Meanwhile, new financial demands imposed by the Republican Congress and President Donald Trump are leaving state leaders with no long-term strategy to fund them, according to state transportation officials. The Tennessean reports anti-tax Republicans consider debt anathema to budget decisions. But Transportation Commissioner Will Reid says that the state's zero-debt system is unable to keep up with a growing deluge of highway and bridge needs. “It’s kind of like the boy at the dike that’s got cracks in it,” said Reid. “We used to be sticking fingers and toes wherever we could stop the leaking. Well, the reality is, unless you fix the dam, you’re eventually going to run out of fingers and toes.” Rep. Ronnie Glynn, D-Clarksville offered a similar metaphor: “… [Y]our house is falling down but you refuse to take out a loan be...

A federal judge appeared to side with plaintiffs suing to stop President Donald Trump's construction of his planned $400 million White House ballroom . That's according to a Thursday article in CNN , which reported that U.S. District Judge Richard Leon — an appointee of former President George W. Bush – was skeptical of the Trump administration's claims that the ballroom was being built in accordance with existing laws. The network reported that Leon frequently admonished the administration from the bench while responding to arguments from White House lawyers. The nonprofit group National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States sued the Trump administration in December in response to Trump bulldozing the East Wing of the White House to make room for the 89,000 square-foot ballroom. Plaintiffs are asking Judge Leon to issue a preliminary injunction that would halt all construction until both Congress and the public have been given a chance to weigh in on si...

Bulwark Podcaster Tim Miller and “False Flag” Newsletter writer Will Sommer joined forces to tear down a recent video showing MAGA influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, Nick Fuentes, Braden Peters (known as “Clavicular”), Myron Gaines (real name Amrou Fudl), Justin Waller and Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy (known as “Sneako”) posting a group club visit in Florida’s South Beach. “The boys went out on the town. I mean, it's the ‘Hangover 4’ — these are the leading lights of the Manosphere, the man children, they got together.” said Miller, playing footage of the group on a bus, singing along to Kanye’s “Heil Hitler”. “They're not really going for subtlety here,” Miller pointed out. “You can see, I think that's Gaines, who we're supposed to be admiring, just doing the full Nazi salute over and over again while they're videoing themselves. Nick Fuentes is in the back looking a little uncomfortable and chuckling.” Later the group took a table at a club, Vendôme. “And ...

Scammers are taking advantage of President Donald Trump's MAGA base by selling them products without ever actually fulfilling their orders. That's according to a Wednesday article by Jezebel's Jim Vorel , who wrote that numerous products marketed to pro-Trump conservatives are frequently accused by those same customers of ignoring them after taking their money. Vorel focused mostly on customer reviews for MAGA-branded alcoholic beverages, though he noted that scammers targeting MAGA customers do so through a variety of products. "Here’s the thing about grifters in this mold: They truly don’t care who they’re stealing from, and the ideology they’re wearing ends the moment the mark is no longer buying, or the ideology is no longer selling," he wrote. "They will steal from anyone, or appropriate any image, personality or movement without permission, in order to move some units." Vorel observed that one product dubbed "Tears of the Left" — whi...

Here are the Daily Lotto and Daily Lotto Plus numbers. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/0vUbK7t via sinceretalk

Ahead of President Donald Trump's appearance at this week's annual meeting of world leaders and business executives in Davos, Switzerland, many European leaders are reportedly determined to use the meeting to dissuade the president from his attempts to claim Greenland for the United States . That's according to CNN business editor-at-large Richard Quest , who told host Erin Burnett that European officials have been strategizing about how to confront Trump when he arrives at Davos. Burnett played a clip of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from Davos, in which he called on Europe to "take a deep breath, do not escalate." "President Trump has a strategy here. Hear him out, and then everything will be fine," Bessent added. When Burnett asked Quest "how much fear and uncertainty is there" from European leaders, the CNN correspondent said it was "off the charts." "I've spoken today to the president of the European Central Ban...

Georgia state economist Robert Buschman always delivers an economic forecast to legislators before they debate funding bills, but the outlook he delivered this week with fresh numbers from President Donald Trump's economy was not pretty. “Georgia’s top economist projected slow job growth and persistent inflation in the year ahead as many Georgia families struggle to make ends meet,” reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) , adding that Buschman said surveys show consumers and CEOs to be “pessimistic about the economy.” Buschman noted household debt in the state rising and that job growth “stalled in Georgia … last year,” with the state gaining just 3,200 nonfarm jobs in 2025 through November. Buschman also said Trump’s tariffs have raised prices for businesses and consumers and they threaten to “undermine Georgia’s trade-dependent economy.” Mortgage rates similarly, remain high, which limits the sale of homes. And inflation, he said, has crept back up to 2.7 percent. “...