America's Talking

(The Center Square) – Right before leaving for its week-long August recess, the U.S. Senate passed a minibus Friday evening containing three out of the 12 annual government funding bills. The package allocates more than $153 billion for military construction and Veterans Affairs in fiscal year 2026 alone, $27 billion for agriculture and rural development, and $2.2 billion for the Legislative branch. More than 80 senators ultimately voted for the minibus. Appropriations bills are typically passed individually. The unorthodox move is the result of Republican leaders spending days negotiating with uncooperative Democrats, who stalled on confirming the rest of President Donald Trump’s civilian nominees and by doing so prevented progress on the funding appropriations process.

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 (The Center Square) – The FBI on Thursday agreed to assist with locating Texas Democrats who fled the state to prevent the Texas House from reaching a quorum and conducting official business. On Sunday, more than 50 Democrats fled the state, many to Chicago, to prevent a House vote on redistricting, and all other votes during a special session of the legislature, by preventing a quorum from being reached. They also fled Texas to avoid being arrested by state law enforcement. On Monday, House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, signed civil arrest warrants and by Tuesday, only eight Democrats showed up for work. Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the missing Democrats to return to Austin by Monday or face being arrested and removed from office.

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(The Center Square) – Appellate court judges scrutinized President Donald Trump's tariff authority on Thursday, asking attorneys on both sides of the case tough questions about the president's authority to restructure global trade without help from Congress. Trump has used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to underpin his "Liberation Day" tariffs. On April 2, Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners. He later suspended those higher tariffs but used the threat of higher taxes to get foreign nations to agree to new trade deals. Most of the deals Trump has announced so far come with a 15% import tax on foreign countries, although some face higher rates. 

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(The Center Square) – The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to rescind an Obama-era environmental finding impacting the automobile industry. The EPA chief says it costs $1 trillion in regulations. Lee Zeldin, administrator of the EPA, made the announcement Tuesday in the backdrop of an auto dealership in Indianapolis, Ind., to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which the Trump EPA claims is responsible for the Biden administration's electric vehicle mandate — pushing to reduce the production of gas-powered vehicles.

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(The Center Square) – Newly declassified intelligence documents indicate that Hillary Clinton, her 2016 presidential campaign managers, and a top member of a George Soros group plotted to fabricate the Trump-Russia collusion campaign to distract the public from Clinton’s email scandal. Declassified by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, the 29-page “Durham annex” from 2023 chronicles the Office of Special Counsel’s (OSC) investigation into purported efforts by the Clinton campaign and its allies to falsely tie Russia’s cyber interference attempts during election season to Trump.

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(The Center Square) – Cities that host the NFL Draft have seen small increases in hotel revenue in recent years but those gains are far smaller than what is claimed by teams, the National Football League and the marketing and tourism departments in local government have claimed. The first three cities to host the draft after it left New York saw insignificant changes in hotel stays during the event while host cities since 2019 have seen between $4 million and $6 million in hotel revenue increases due to the event, according to a new paper provided to The Center Square from economist E. Frank Stephenson from Georgia’s Berry College.

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(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump said Tuesday he had reached a framework for a trade deal with Japan that will include a 15% tariff on imports from the island nation. Trump outlined the broad terms of the deal in a post on Truth Social, as he has for other trade pacts. Trump said imports from Japan will face a 15% tariff, while U.S. exports to Japan will be tariff-free. 

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(The Center Square) – Federal officials have released more documents indicating a Democratic-led intelligence community politically targeted President Donald Trump by claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin influenced the 2016 presidential election to help Trump win. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report Wednesday that “exposes how the Obama Administration manufactured the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false.” Notably, the report found that the majority of the intelligence community’s judgements on Russia’s confirmed attempts to meddle with the 2016 election were “sound,” including its findings that Putin ordered “conventional and cyber influence operations” to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process and the legitimacy of an expected Hillary Clinton presidency.

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(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump's tariffs could cancel out the economic benefits of the GOP's tax cuts, according to a new analysis from the Tax Foundation. "Our analysis finds the current U.S.-imposed and scheduled tariffs threaten to offset much of the economic benefits of the tax cuts, while falling short of paying for them," according to a report from the national nonprofit. The tax cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act are expected to cost about $4 trillion over the next decade, or about $3 trillion factoring in economic growth. At the same time, Trump's tariffs are expected to drag on the U.S. economy.

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(The Center Square) – The U.S. House in a late night vote passed Republicans’ $9 billion rescissions package, delivering another win for President Donald Trump and his promise to cut federal spending. The measure, which cuts already appropriated federal spending on some foreign aid projects and public broadcasting programs, passed 216-213 in the House, the final voted needed to send it to Trump's desk for his signature. Two Republicans – U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Mike Turner, R-Ohio, joined all Democrats in voting against the measure. Originally clawing back a total of $9.4 billion, the package now revokes roughly $7.9 billion in “woke” foreign aid programs and $1.1 billion meant to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which finances NPR, PBS and some radio stations.

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