Author: Reporter

For months, the outlook for the U.S. economy has been a mostly bleak one: Inflation hitting a four-decade high, consumer spending weakening, interest rates surging. Most economists penciled in a recession for 2023. An economic downturn is still possible. Yet in recent weeks, with inflation showing widespread signs of easing, a more cheerful view has gained traction: Maybe a recession isn’t inevitable after all. One reason for the tentative optimism is evidence that an acceleration in U.S. wages, which has benefited workers but also heightened inflation, is slowing. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has frequently pointed to fast-rising worker...

The infighting was so intense a year ago that Democrats who controlled both the White House and Congress could not win support for a sweeping social spending package that was the party’s top legislative priority. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, was viewed skeptically enough that some of his fellow Democrats questioned the wisdom of him seeking reelection. What a difference a year makes. Speculation about Biden’s political future has quieted after Democrats outperformed expectations during the November midterm elections. His toughest critics on the left are signaling they would work to help him secure a second term. And perhaps most...

Wisconsin Republicans planned to vote on January 12 to again allow therapists, social workers, and counselors to try to change their LGBTQ clients’ gender identities and sexual orientations, a practice known as conversion therapy. A ban on conversion therapy was passed in 2020 by a state board within the Democratic governor’s administration overseeing licensing for mental health professionals. But a committee in the Republican-controlled Legislature temporarily blocked it then and was poised to do so again Thursday. LGBTQ rights advocates have decried the scientifically discredited practice of trying to “convert” LGBTQ people to heterosexuality and traditional gender expectations as...

House Republicans on January 11 opened their long-promised investigation into President Joe Biden and his family, wielding the power of their new majority to demand information from the Treasury Department and former Twitter executives as they laid the groundwork for public hearings. The Republican-led committee sent a series of letters requesting financial information from the Treasury Department about financial transactions by members of the Biden family that were flagged as suspicious activity. Those reports are routine, with larger financial transactions automatically flagged to the government, and are not evidence on their own of misconduct. Lawmakers also requested testimony from...

As thousands of children were taken from their parents at the southern border during a Trump administration crackdown on illegal crossings, a federal public defender in San Diego set out to find new strategies to go after the longstanding deportation law fueling the family separations. The resulting legal defense that Kara Hartzler would help draft in the coming years, work that continued even after a judge halted the general practice at the Mexico-U.S. border in June 2018, was unprecedented. It exposed Section 1326 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which makes it a crime to unlawfully return to the...