Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said this week that interest rate increases could be higher and come faster if Friday’s unemployment data shows the nation’s labor market isn’t cooling off. Stock indexes fell after his comments.
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Congress
North Carolina is among the states that benefited the most from an expanded Child Tax Credit The expanded child tax credit that families received in 2021 helped reduce child poverty across the country, but particularly in the South where families lack a sufficient safety net, according to a paper released on Wednesday.
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WASHINGTON — Attorneys general representing nearly two dozen Republican states are backing a lawsuit that would remove the abortion pill from throughout the United States after more than two decades, eliminating the option even in states where abortion access remains legal. The state of Missouri filed its own brief in the case Friday while Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed a brief on behalf of her state as well as Alabama...
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As Americans continue to struggle with high credit card rates, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed a rule to help lessen some of their financial burden — in the form of lower late fees. The new rule would limit late fees to $8. Currently credit card companies can charge as high as $41 — penalties that the CFPB’s director, Rohit Chopra, said are charged for “no purpose beyond padding the credit card companies’ profits.”
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As states plan how they’ll spend the $25 billion remaining in federal COVID relief funds, some also are facing criticism and renewed scrutiny over how they allocated money already received from the American Rescue Plan Act. Of the $198 billion authorized by Congress in 2021, $173 billion already has been appropriated by states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Much of the money went — as it was intended — to deal with the COVID-19 public health emergency...
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U.S. House Republicans passed a bill Friday to force the White House to make more federal land and waters available for oil and gas development if the president orders the withdrawal of more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The bill, passed 221-205, mostly along party lines, would strip the president’s power to remove oil from the reserve unless the U.S. Energy Department has a plan to allow new leasing on federal lands and waters for oil exploration.
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The $1.7 trillion federal spending bill President Joe Biden signed last week ushers in expanded protections for workers who are pregnant or nursing. Proponents of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act — both included as amendments to the spending bill — say the measures clarify rights for these workers, who weren’t properly covered under existing laws.
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NC's Patrick McHenry defends cryptocurrency industry at House Financial Services Committee hearing; Senator-elect Ted Budd is a no-show
Members of a U.S. House committee disagreed at a Tuesday hearing about whether more aggressive federal regulation would have protected customers from the collapse of cryptocurrency firm FTX and the alleged fraud of its founder, Samuel Bankman-Fried. ...
Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz is trying to cut a last minute deal that could bring tens of millions of dollars in new funding to the islands for Native Hawaiian housing. WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to wrap up work for the year, Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz is looking to cut an ambitious deal that could pump tens of millions of dollars of new money into Native Hawaiian housing for at least the next decade.
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Tillis and Burr 'aye' votes help assure measure could not be filibustered WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate approved legislation Tuesday that would enshrine protections for same-sex and interracial marriages, codifying many of the rights that would disappear if the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn those landmark decisions the way it overturned the nationwide right to an abortion this summer.
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Early voting in the U.S. Senate runoff got off to a busy start in Georgia, with more than half a million ballots cast as of Monday night, including more than 300,000 votes cast Monday. “Just…WOW!” tweeted Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the secretary of state Monday night. “GA voters, facilitated through the hard work of county election & poll workers, have shattered the old Early Vote turnout...
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WASHINGTON — The Department of Education announced on Tuesday it is extending the pandemic-era pause on federal student loan repayments until June 30 while legal challenges to the administration’s student debt relief program are fought over in the courts. The agency said if the student debt relief program has not been put in place by June 30, and if litigation is still tied up in the courts, student loan payments will begin 60 days after that.
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WASHINGTON — Members of the U.S. Senate on an investigation panel on Tuesday grilled federal immigration officials about a bipartisan report that detailed how migrant women at an immigration detention center in Georgia underwent questionable gynecological procedures. The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations released an 18-month bipartisan report that found migrant women who were detained at Irwin County Detention Center, known as ICDC, in Georgia were subjected to “excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures,” and many of the women did not consent or understand the procedures they underwent.
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