America's Talking

(The Center Square) – Susan Crawford won the highly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race Tuesday night as both CNN and The Associated Press called the race. Crawford held 55.9% of the vote compared to 44.1% for Brad Schimel as of 9:25 p.m. central time on Tuesday on an Election Day where seven locations in Milwaukee ran out of ballots, causing voting delays. Schimel conceded the race shortly aft...

(The Center Square) – A flurry of lawsuits have been filed around the country in recent years attempting to make oil and gas companies pay for the costs of climate change. But critics of these lawsuits say that they are on tenuous legal ground because of a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court case, and proving direct causation is difficult. One such case is underway in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a moderate st...

(The Center Square) – U.S. markets took their steepest dive Thursday since the pandemic hit in March 2020 as investors worry about how the U.S. economy will handle President Donald Trump's latest tariffs. The Dow industrials dropped 1,679 points, or 4%. The tech-focused Nasdaq slumped 6%. The S&P 500 fell 4.8%. The dollar slipped to its lowest level of the year. It was the sharpest one-day decline...

(The Center Square) – A North Dakota jury of nine on Wednesday found environmental activist group Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages in a years-long lawsuit brought by Energy Transfer, the company that built the Dakota Access Pipeline that became the subject of sometimes violent protests and international attention. Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace for $300 million ove...

(The Center Square) – Boeing earned a contract to build the U.S. Air Force's top air dominance fighter, the F-47 and the service has plenty of options to base operational squadrons both in the U.S. and overseas. The sixth-generation aircraft is intended to replace the Air Force's existing top fighter, the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and will work with uncrewed aerial vehicles. The service says the...

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump Thursday called for defunding National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service, two partially federally funded groups under scrutiny in the DOGE era. Trump’s comments come after heads of both NPR and PBS defended their work at a Wednesday Congressional hearing. At the Wednesday hearing, Republican critics honed in on aggressively anti-Trump coverag...

(The Center Square) – Nearly two weeks after a reporter was erroneously looped into a Signal messaging chat between top national security officials, the White House said it is "making changes" to address the issue. “We have never denied that this was a mistake, and the national security adviser took responsibility for that and we have said we are making changes," White House Press Secretary Karoli...

(The Center Square) – U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts criticized President Donald Trump's move to impeach judges who have ruled against the president's policies, saying that the court system should be left to resolve legal disputes. "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Ro...

(The Center Square) – In a move that will undoubtedly incite legal challenges, President Donald Trump dismantled the U.S. Department of Education via executive order Thursday, sending education policy back to the state level. The long-promised, controversial order preserves and redistributes the Education department’s responsibilities to other federal agencies and departments. Education Secretary...

(The Center Square) – The cost to bring home a pair of stranded astronauts that have spent most of a year in space aboard the International Space Station could be as much as $150 million. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, along with Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, boarded a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and splashed down in the Gulf of America near the Big Bend region o...

(The Center Square) – Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday he would suspend the province's 25% tariff on U.S.-bound electricity after getting a meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and hours after President Donald Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canada. Ford previously said Tuesday he wouldn't budge on the electricity surtax until Trump dropped his tariff threats. Hours late...

(The Center Square) – With just a day before the potential for a government shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., switched course Thursday night and said he would vote to approve House Republicans' Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government through the end of the fiscal year. “I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down,” Schumer said on the Senate floo...

(The Center Square) – Four sanctuary city mayors who spent millions of state and federal taxpayer dollars to accommodate illegal immigrants denied that blocking federal agents from deporting criminal migrants violated federal law at a committee hearing Wednesday. Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee grilled Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Denv...

(The Center Square) – Stocks sunk Thursday afternoon despite President Donald Trump's decision to grant major exceptions to the 25% tariffs he put on Mexico and Canada earlier this week. All three major U.S. market indexes were in the red by the time of Trump's afternoon bill signing. Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office that steel and aluminum tariffs were on track for next week without modific...

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump addressed both the House and Senate Tuesday evening in a wide-ranging speech at about the six week-mark into his second term in office. Trump’s remarks come amidst a series of executive orders, a successful border crackdown, new tariffs, tumultuous foreign policy, and some lawsuits threatening to halt part of his progress. The president began his speech...

(The Center Square) – While expert witnesses gave divided views on the shuttering of the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID), lawmakers sparred Wednesday during a  House Oversight subcommittee hearing over the alleged corruption within the independent agency. Democrats on the Subcommittee on Delivery on Government Efficiency argued that the closing of USAID’s operations by the new Dep...

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, border, defense, and energy promises are one step closer to enactment after the U.S. House narrowly passed its $4.5 trillion budget resolution Tuesday night, officially kickstarting the budget reconciliation process. Following hours of Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., convincing Republican holdouts to commit, a brief cancellation of the vote, an...

(The Center Square) – The month-old Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Elon Musk has saved American taxpayers $55 billion, according to the latest update from the group. Its ‘Wall of Receipts’ on its new website catalogues where the department has made cuts and how much those cuts are worth. The biggest line item on ‘the wall’ is one from the Department of Homeland Security for...

(The Center Square) – In the first 10 days of the Trump administration, apprehensions dropped by 85% between ports of entry at the southwest border, according to new data published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. From Jan. 21 through Jan. 31, 2025, the number of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border dropped by 85% compared to the same period in 2024. The number of inad...

(The Center Square) – Billionaire Elon Musk joined President Donald Trump in the oval office Tuesday as the president signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to work with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE. The order will require federal agencies to work with DOGE to significantly reduce their labor force. A White House fact sheet, first reported by Semafor, say...

(The Center Square) – Prices rose more than expected last month, newly released inflation data shows. The Consumer Price Index, a leading marker of inflation, rose 0.5% in January, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The January increase contributed to a 3% increase in the last 12 months, the highest level since June. The rising cost of shelter drove much of the increase. Support thi...

(The Center Square) – Foreign aid has become the newest target of the Department of Government Efficiency, with President Donald Trump reportedly planning to merge the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with the State department. Trump has already made Secretary of State Marco Rubio the acting administrator of USAID and halted the agency’s work via a foreign funding freeze,...

(The Center Square) – Major markets pared some losses after President Donald Trump paused his plans for 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada while starting talks with China on a 10% additional tariff over fentanyl smuggling. Trump on Saturday ended decades of duty-free trade between the U.S., Mexico and Canada with a 25% tariff on imported goods from the two countries with a lower 10% tarif...

The White House took steps to make good on its promise to cut the federal government down to size by giving federal workers a choice: return to the office full-time or leave with eight months of pay. The Office of Personnel Management told federal workers Tuesday night that they have until Feb. 6 to decide to stay or go. If they step down, they will continue getting all pay and benefits and be exe...

Within a week of President Donald Trump being sworn into office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers working with multiple federal agencies are arresting nearly 1,000 people every day set to be deported. On Jan. 26, federal agents arrested 956 illegal border crossers and made 554 detainer requests with local jails, ICE reported. On Jan. 27, they arrested 1,179 foreign nationals in th...