America's Talking

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump said Thursday he will pause migration from some countries following the shooting of two National Guard members near the White House. The suspected gunman, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, is an Afghan national who entered the U.S. in 2021 under a Biden-era immigration program for Afghans fleeing the Taliban movement. He was reportedly granted asylum this year....

(The Center Square) – After a story was published last week claiming that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered a second strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat to kill those remaining, both Hegseth and the Pentagon reiterated their defense of the War Department’s actions as completely legal. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson told reporters Tuesday that the U.S. has performed 21 strikes o...

(The Center Square) – Election interference charges in Georgia against second-term Republican President Donald Trump were motioned for dismissal Wednesday by the Prosecuting Attorney's Council. In response, the president later in the day said again the 2020 election was stolen. On social media, the second-term Republican called the case the "Fani Willis Witch Hunt" and accused Democrats of orchest...

Secretaries are well known for earning modest wages, but not the ones who work at Pocantico Hills Central School District. The school district of 500 students outside New York City has its secretaries rack up $130,000 and $190,000 a year, an investigation by The Center Square found. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source...

As the Trump administration makes changes to visa programs and other political leaders call for further changes, the debate continues about how much legal immigration and what kind should be facilitated by visa programs. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

(The Center Square) – Louisiana’s annual budgets swelled more than 71% over the past decade, ticking up year after year under a Democratic governor who expanded Medicaid and led the state through the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pace of spending slowed under a Republican governor elected two years ago, the bottom line keeps growing, an analysis of state records by The Center Square found. Support...

(The Center Square) – With the record-long government shutdown finally over, Republicans are ramping up conversations about how to reform Obamacare and address the rising cost of insurance premiums. Democrats, who refused to authorize government funding for 43 days, used the shutdown to bring attention to the expiring enhanced Obamacare Premium Tax Credit. The enhanced subsidies are set to revert...

(The Center Square) – The U.S. Senate on Tuesday agreed to pass a bill by unanimous consent requiring the U.S. attorney general to release all documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer initiated passage of the U.S. House of Representatives bill to release the files. The U.S. House passed the measure earlier Tuesday afternoon.  Support this po...

(The Center Square) – Responding to Americans' frustrations over high grocery prices, President Donald Trump issued an executive order Friday exempting more than 200 food products from tariffs. "Certain qualifying agricultural products will no longer be subject to those tariffs, such as certain food not grown in the United States," according to the White House. The executive order includes coffee,...

(The Center Square) – One of the sponsors of Wisconsin’s statewide sports wagering legislation is warning prediction markets could take over the sports wagering marketplace if state lawmakers don’t pass a law in the Assembly Wednesday allowing the state’s 11 tribes to offer online sports wagering in the state.  Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-...

(The Center Square) – With the longest government shutdown in history finally over, federal agencies are slowly bringing affected services back online and hoping to resume normal operations by the end of next week. Tens of millions of low-income Americans on food stamps should receive November benefits within 24 hours, Politico reported. Some of the most disruptive consequences of the 43-day shutd...

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump has again floated the idea of sending Americans $2,000 from tariff revenue, but a new analysis suggests the import taxes won't bring in enough money to cover the proposed checks. Trump's tariff rebate suggestion comes a week after the Supreme Court sharply questioned his authority to impose tariffs under a 1977 law that he has used to justify the bulk o...

(The Center Square) – The U.S. House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol cost almost twice as much as previously reported, including spending taxpayer funds for TV news producers and documentary filmmakers to create videos dramatizing its case against President Donald Trump, an investigation by The Center Square found. Support this podcast: https://secur...

(The Center Square) – As the government shutdown drags into its 38th day and forced flight reductions begin taking effect, the number of daily flight cancellations Americans are experiencing has skyrocketed. By noon Friday, airlines had slashed 850 flights within, into, or out of the United States – quadruple the number of cancellations made the previous day. The numbers will only increase over th...

(The Center Square) – Self-proclaimed democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani will be the next mayor of New York City after taking down the former Democrat New York governor for a second time on Tuesday. Democrats also won their respective races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia Tuesday. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a...

(The Center Square) – The U.S. Supreme Court gave President Donald Trump's tariff authority a chilly reception on Wednesday, with his economic agenda hanging in the balance and businesses and consumers watching for higher prices. After the president spent months talking about how much money his tariffs would generate, Trump's Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the nation's highest court Wednesda...

(The Center Square) – Spending on U.S. House of Representatives office accounts increased by more than 85% over the past three decades but nearly half of that occurred since 2020, an investigation by The Center Square found. The Members' Representational Allowance (MRA) provides each of the 435 U.S. representatives in Congress about $2 million a year to pay staff, travel, buy equipment and run the...

(The Center Square) – Millions of Americans reliant on food stamps will not receive benefits for the month of November, due to the ongoing government shutdown. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will not issue Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits until the government reopens, with the agency saying on its website that “the well has run dry.” Federal agencies like the USDA have...

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump feels confident the flow of fentanyl from China will be curbed following a “great meeting” with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea. The meeting prompted Trump to cut in half the tariffs the U.S. put on China due to the flow of the deadly drug. “I've agreed, as you know, I put a 20% tariff on China because of the fentanyl coming in, it's a big t...

(The Center Square) The number of businesses owned by racial minorities and women that are certified by Illinois plummeted in the past year, partly due to a new computer system the state bought for as much as $750,000 and was designed to help boost the number, an investigation by The Center Square found. In an annual report this year to lawmakers, the Commission on Equity and Inclusion cited its n...

(The Center Square) – Senate Democrats are set to block Republicans’ government funding bill for the 12th time Wednesday, keeping the federal government shut down despite tens of millions of low-income Americans at risk of losing food stamps or early childhood education assistance. Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture will resume core Farm Service Agency financial services Thursday, the unf...

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump’s plans to “restore election integrity” and prevent voter fraud include banning mail-in voting and requiring that voters present identification at the polls. The majority of Americans support the voter ID requirement but are divided on a mail-in voting ban, according to a new poll. Trump’s proposal to ban mail-in voting nationally – something he could n...

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin has paid billions of dollars in recent years for outside investors to manage most of the state's retirement funds even though it has an expansive team of highly paid investment employees, according to state data. State auditors this year urged the state of Wisconsin Investment Board to create specific plans that might shift more of that management to state employees...

(The Center Square) – A new poll shows that President Donald Trump’s approval rating reached 48% in October, a number mostly bolstered by Republicans. The Center Square Voters' Voice Poll, conducted by Noble Predictive Insights, surveyed 2,565 registered voters from Oct. 2-6, 2025. Half of voters surveyed objected to how Trump is handling his job as president, with 10% somewhat disapproving and 40...

(The Center Square) – In an act of defiance, Democratic senators blocked the House-passed full-year funding bill for the Department of Defense from advancing Thursday. The procedural vote on one of the 12 annual appropriations bills to properly fund the government in fiscal year 2026 failed despite Republican leaders bringing it to the floor to remedy some of the worst effects of the ongoing gover...