A mother in New York State who claims to oppose vaccines because of her Catholic faith lost an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) this week—though Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have granted her application. For now, the woman’s kindergarten-aged son must be vaccinated to attend school.
Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution provides that the legislature of each state shall prescribe the “times, places and manners” of holding elections for the U.S. Congress, “but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations.” Congress has long used its override powers sparingly, and Republicans in particular have warned against both micromanaging how states do their job and the specter of a federal takeover. That remains the correct position, for reasons of practicality, election integrity and the safeguarding of the nation’s liberty.
Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson, dissenting from the Supreme Court’s decision to stay a preliminary injunction against implementation of President Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting, wrote that allowing the plan to proceed could “foment chaos” ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. You’ll never guess what happened next.
Australia plans to let social media users choose algorithmic or follow-only feeds under new digital safety rules targeting platform design and control.
Australia plans to let social media users choose algorithmic or follow-only feeds under new digital safety rules targeting platform design and control.
President Donald Trump said earlier this year he’d “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections” this fall, declining to rule out sending the National Guard or federal law enforcement officers to polling locations throughout the country.
Those comments came a few months after Trump casually and briefly mentioned canceling the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
Over the “strongest possible” objections from the federal prosecutor handling the case, leaders at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., quashed plans to bring civil rights charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent accused of shooting a Venezuelan immigrant and then lying about it.
President Donald Trump’s executive order placing new restrictions on mail-in voting would assign state officials a Herculean task to reach compliance before the crucial midterm elections.
The order directed the U.S. Postal Service to strictly regulate the envelope design of mail-in ballots and to collect voter data from each state through an online portal, among other things.
The Postal Service has argued in court that its rule is not an election regulation, but is within the agency’s purview as a standard for a specific type of mail.
Looks like someone has leaked details to the New York Post about a plan led by appointees of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to go after the tax exemptions of major nonprofits perceived as being at ideological odds with the Trump administration.
The morning bringsnews of whistleblower allegations concerning the US Postal Service and its response to President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting, key provisions of which are
ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) today released a new report, “Antisemitism in U.S. Teachers Unions,” documenting alarming levels of anti-Jewish conduct, hostile rhetoric and institutional failure that Jewish K-12 employees have experienced in teachers unions across the country. Based on a mixed-methods study combining focus groups and a survey of 307 Jewish members of U.S.
The date Jan. 6 has outsize significance in the United States for the worst reasons. Jan. 3, however, most Americans have never heard of. Ideally, it will stay that way.
A federal judge froze for two weeks a Trump administration regulation to restrict mail voting late Thursday, calling the U.S. Postal Service rule a violation of states’ power to administer elections.
In the 20th century, the United States built the world’s dominant manufacturing powerhouse. A thriving middle class grew, well into the 1970s. The U.S. was a beacon of democracy, defeating fascism in World War II and beating back communism and other forms of authoritarianism during the Cold War.
Quite a few in our community make a bit of cash on the side by selling our creations, and it’s not uncommon to find that a project which catches your eye can be picked up as a kit for a few of your preferred currency units. But there’s a problem facing such tiny producers in the form of regulations intended for large businesses which are beyond their ability to comply with. [Alain Pannetrat] writes for the Lectronz marketplace about one of them, the new European Union packaging waste regulations.
At face value it sounds like a good idea, that suppliers should be responsible in some way for the disposal of their packaging. It discourages excessive packaging and encourages recycling, indeed the EU even describe the scheme as boosting business. The problem is that its administration is left to individual member states, and someone selling across the whole bloc would have to join multiple schemes. The hefty price is nothing to a large enterprise, but impossible for a tiny one. He makes a very good point, that it’s difficult to claim to champion innovation, while also imposing something like this on grass-roots innovators. Going by the experiences of our acquaintances in this space an extra burden on top of that presented by the current unstable tariff and customs situation involved in selling to the USA would likely be the straw which broke the camel’s back.
In practice we suspect that many are simply doing the same as they have with compliance marking and waste electronic equipment regulations, simply not bothering and hoping they fly under the radar and never get caught. We hope we won’t end up reporting on any future crackdown, the landscape has definitely changed since we tried our hand in this business.
Bitcoin jumped roughly 25% to a two-month high above $77,000 within hours of the U.S. Treasury doubling its long-dated bonds buyback operations on August 19.
Falling Treasury yields triggered a short squeeze estimated $3.5 billion across crypto derivatives.
The move raises a pointed question: did Bitcoin catch a genuine liquidity tailwind, or trade a one-day signal that the bond market itself partially reversed within 24 hours?
BREAKING: Crypto markets officially post their 7th largest liquidation event in history, with $3.5 billion in levered positions liquidated in 24 hours.
In 24 hours, crypto markets added +$280 billion in market cap.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s move came a day after the 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.34%, its highest level since 2007, amid a global bond selloff tied to inflation worries, an escalating U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, and mounting concern over the U.S. fiscal trajectory. Total U.S. debt outstanding crossed $40 trillion the same day the buyback announcement landed.
Treasury will double the size of its 10- to 30-year buyback operations to at least $4 billion per operation, up from $2 billion previously, effective September 9 through November 4.
That adds at least $14 billion of additional liquidity support this quarter, bringing maximum repurchases in the current window to $83 billion, measured against a $32.2 trillion Treasury market and $5.5 trillion in outstanding 20- and 30-year bonds.
The announcement worked in the way it was designed to, at least initially: the 30-year yield fell to 5.184% from Tuesday’s high, and the 10-year yield dropped roughly six basis points to 4.66%.
Dan Gottlander, global head of USD and CAD swaps trading at Citi, told Reuters the move would have a huge impact on the long end, though he cautioned that Treasury would still need to issue elsewhere to cover the shortfall.
“It does not change deficits, obviously, and if you are going to buy back the long end, you still will need to issue. They may issue more bills, or also in the five-year to 10-year sector.”
That distinction matters for anyone reading the move as quantitative easing. A Treasury buyback is financed by issuing new short-term bills to retire older, harder-to-trade long bonds, a refinancing operation that swaps one liability for another without expanding the money supply, unlike the Federal Reserve’s own bond purchases under QE, which credit new bank reserves into existence.
Conflating the two overstates how loose the operation actually makes financial conditions.
By August 20, Bessent said he might increase buyback sizes even further. “We’re going to increase the size of the buyback,” he said. “I would note that it could be more than the $4 billion per issue.” He argued that yields didn’t reflect the underlying strength of the economy, tying the spike partly to the Iran conflict.
Photo: Bessent
The bond market wasn’t fully convinced. The 30-year yield climbed back to 5.24% by August 20, retracing roughly half of the prior day’s drop, while the dollar clawed back most of its post-announcement losses. According to Bit.com’s market analysis, Bitcoin gave back the $70,000 level within hours, settling into the high-$60,000s after Fed minutes reintroduced rate-hike risk.
Thomas Simons, chief U.S. economist at Jefferies, told Reuters the surprise buyback announcement broke with Treasury’s tradition of predictable debt issuance, calling the move “shot from the hip.”
Evercore ISI analysts framed it more charitably, crediting Bessent’s tactical skill in catching bond shorts off guard during thin August liquidity, but questioned whether the impact would hold given the “tidal wave” of maturing debt and deficits still to be financed.
Bitcoin Just Traded a Policy Surprise: Kalshi Lets Traders Position Before the Next One Hits.
The Treasury buyback showed how fast crypto can reprice when a macro decision catches the market off guard. Bitcoin surged, shorts were squeezed, yields fell, and then part of the move unwound as the bond market reassessed what had actually changed.
Kalshi gives traders another way to approach that kind of setup.
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That distinction matters when the asset reaction is messy. Bitcoin can move on leverage, positioning, dollar strength, and liquidity all at once. An event market lets traders isolate the question they actually have conviction on.
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Right-leaning Canadians’ trust in the bodies that manage Canadian elections has declined significantly since 2019, a McGill-led research team has found.
Their research draws on data collected between 2008 to 2021 by the Canadian Election Study (with about 72,000 respondents), as well as information gathered by the Media Ecosystem Observatory after the 2021 Canadian federal election (with nearly 3,000 respondents) and the Quebec election of 2022 (with approximately 1,500 respondents).
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