The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says it is not planning Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations targeting polling locations.
Popular Democracy Executive Director DaMareo Cooper laid out a list of grievances he said people should watch out for this election.
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As public education remains a concern for taxpayers, supporters of school choice programs argue that giving families more educational options can improve student outcomes at a lower cost.
More than 30 states have some form of school choice program, while 30 states have opted into the Trump administration’s Education Freedom Tax Credit Program, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2027.
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The U.S. economy added 29,000 jobs in September, according to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The unemployment rate remained at 4.2%, showing little change from previous months. The September report shows an economy with signs of slowing, following an average monthly gain of 45,000 over the last year.
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The full government cost of an active-duty service member is about $86,000 a year higher than what’s reflected in the Department of War’s budget.
That’s a cost that will ultimately be paid by taxpayers through VA’s budget decades from now, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate of future veterans’ benefits that aren’t captured in the military’s personnel-cost accounting.
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The federal government loses as much as $304 billion a year to tax fraud, and the IRS has no agency-wide strategy for stopping it, congressional auditors said in a report Friday.
The Government Accountability Office estimated annual losses at $116 billion to $304 billion, the first comprehensive federal estimate of tax fraud losses. Auditors used a Monte Carlo simulation drawing on IRS data from 2018 through 2024, potential fraud inside the tax gap and tax evasion in the shadow economy.
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As the Trump administration continues to pursue ways to quell “birth tourism,” legal scholars are probing potential actions Congress could take to rewrite the common interpretation of the 14th amendment’s citizenship clause.
The clause states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
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Illegal entries were again significantly lower last month although slightly up from July’s numbers, according to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
There were 34,428 illegal border crosser apprehensions/encounters reported nationwide last month, up from 33,788 in July, according to the data.
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California intends to file a new lawsuit against the Trump administration over an executive order placing restrictions on mail-in voting.
President Donald Trump’s executive order, issued in March, directs the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to curate lists with the names of all citizens at least 18 years old in each state who are eligible to vote. The order requires the U.S. Postal Service to check the lists before sending out mail-in ballots.
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National teacher unions contribute at least 10% of their annual budget to lobbying and political activism, which includes calling for the impeachment of Republican President Donald Trump in the 2026 American Federation of Teachers handbook. Efforts also include supporting Democratic causes such as messaging against immigration enforcement.
Some teachers raise questions about whether union dues are being used to advance causes the instructors actually support.
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More than 40 years after Kingston Springs, Tennessee motel maid Catherine Jean Jenkins was stabbed to death, Anthony Darrell Hines was executed for her murder.
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Foreign buyers pulled back from the U.S. housing market over the past year, buying $45.3 billion worth of existing homes, the second-lowest level on record, according to a new report.
Foreigners bought those homes from April 2025 through March 2026, according to the National Association of Realtors 2026 International Transactions in U.S. Residential Real Estate report. That’s a 19.1% decrease in dollar value and a 14% drop in the number of properties purchased from the previous 12-month period.
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A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation that would fast-track a floor vote on Social Security’s looming insolvency, using an independent board to draft a starting plan Congress could no longer easily ignore.
The Protecting Retirement Opportunities and Maintaining Income Security for Everyone, or PROMISE Act, would direct the Social Security Advisory Board to submit a base bill guaranteeing at least 50 years of solvency. Congress would then be forced to debate, amend and vote on it within 100 hours, bypassing the inaction that has left the retirement trust fund six years from depletion.
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Waste and abuse take place in prominent nonprofit hospital systems across the country, a new report from conservative watchdog advocacy group Save Our States says in a report published Monday.
A hospital system qualifies as a nonprofit if it provides certain community benefits and charity care. Nonprofit hospital systems are exempt from federal income taxes and often from some state and local taxes, too, and many also receive taxpayer-funded government grants in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. These hospital systems can sometimes provide minimal benefits meeting nonprofit status criteria while providing lavish salaries to hospital leadership and simultaneously executing mass layoffs, Save Our States alleges.
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Ohio legislative Republicans have not committed to an override of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of a bill requiring voter ID for absentee ballots, but they did offer strong criticism of their fellow GOP members.
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The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development is asking a Chattanooga company to return a $3 million FastTrack grant after the company failed to create the number of jobs it promised.
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The Los Angeles City Council is facing criticism from a Republican Party leader after deciding to move forward with a Nov. 3 ballot initiative to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.
The council voted Thursday to put the measure on the general election ballot.
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One day after federal trustees warned Congress that Social Security’s retirement trust fund will go insolvent by 2032, a U.S. House subcommittee met to question Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano about the program’s future.
The program’s insolvency will automatically trigger a benefit cut of 22% or more, impacting more than 60 million American retirees, 43% of whom rely on Social Security for the majority of their income.
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A federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday blocked President Donald Trump’s policy seeking to implement a $100,000 fee on visas for highly skilled foreign workers.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin said Trump’s order imposing a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa recipients is “unlawful.”
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Voters in Florida on Tuesday were provided a constitutional amendment on property taxes for the Nov. 3 ballot.
The measure passed the House of Representatives 75-26 and the Senate 30-9.
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Former Attorney General Pam Bondi defended the U.S. Department of Justice’s release of files associated with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and did not answer questions about President Donald Trump’s involvement in the release.
Bondi testified in a closed session to lawmakers on the U.S. House Oversight Committee Friday over the release of more than three million documents associated with Epstein. She repeatedly referred lawmakers to acting attorney general Todd Blanche on further questions related to the files release, lawmakers said.
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A panel of federal district court judges temporarily blocked Alabama’s plan to enact its 2023 congressional map for upcoming elections.
The Alabama legislature moved to implement its 2023 congressional map after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened section two of the Voting Rights Act, a provision designed to create more majority-minority congressional districts across the country.
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Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday defended a nearly $1.8 billion taxpayer fund through the U.S. Department of Justice aimed at supporting victims of “lawfare and weaponization.”
The $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” would support individuals who have been targeted by “lawfare and weaponization,” according to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. The fund came out of the settlement of a $10 billion lawsuit between President Donald Trump and the IRS over the leaking of his tax returns.
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The Trump administration is still releasing unaccompanied alien children (UAC)s into the U.S., although the numbers are dramatically lower than the unprecedented numbers released by the Biden administration.
UACs are children under age 18 who are primarily smuggled to the U.S. border and arrive claiming they were brought to reunite with family members.
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Inflation increased 0.6% in April, with an overall rate of 3.8% over the last 12 months, according to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The energy industry remained a key driver of the inflation increase, rising by 3.8% in April. Energy prices were responsible for more than 40% of the overall monthly item increase, largely due to gas prices.
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No tax proposal before Congress would be sufficient on its own to put the federal debt on a sustainable long-term path, according to a new report from the Tax Foundation that finds spending on programs such as Social Security and Medicare is projected to outpace revenues for decades.
The report, “Can Tax Reform Solve the Debt Problem – or Just Slow It?”, released in April by the Washington-based Tax Foundation, simulated nine major tax proposals and found that even the largest tax increases would fail to close the primary deficit over the long run.
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The Trump administration is continuing to crack down on fraudulent visa schemes that are occurring nationwide.
In New Jersey, a Korean man pleaded guilty to fraudulently using a B-1/B-2 visa program in a forced labor and charity fraud scheme. The visas are for business or tourism and prohibit visa holders from working in the U.S.
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Planned Parenthood received $832 million in taxpayer funding in 2024-2025, an increase of $39.8 million from its previous report. A record number of abortions also were performed by the organization.
President of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Marjorie Dannenfelser told The Center Square that “taxpayer dollars should never be used to fund Planned Parenthood, a business that profits off of killing hundreds of thousands of unborn children every single year.”
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The Department of Health and Human Services plans to appeal a judge’s temporary injunction to change the national childhood vaccine policy.
On Monday, Judge Brian Murphy of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts temporarily blocked Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts to change federal vaccination policies regarding childhood vaccine recommendations and paused the replacement of Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices members.
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California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a coalition of states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over new federal requirements that colleges report detailed data linking race to admissions, financial aid and student outcomes.
The administration says the data will help enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. But the states argue the demands are unprecedented, overly burdensome and likely to produce unreliable data that could be used to launch politically motivated investigations of universities.
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Following a U.S. Senate hearing this week on birthright citizenship, U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt R-Mo and Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, joined a Heritage Foundation webinar panel Wednesday to discuss immigration issues.
“Things are different in part because of what foreign actors are doing; they are weaponizing immigration and using it as a tool to undermine American sovereignty and to advance their own political interests inside the United States,” Schweizer said. “We need to stop thinking of immigration as just an organic economic process driven by push‑and‑pull factors and recognize there are political and strategic implications behind what’s happening.”
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Wednesday, Lawmakers introduced a bill to require greater transparency on the national debt and GDP.
Reps. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA-11) and Jared Golden (D-ME-02) introduced the Debt-to-GDP Transparency and Stabilization Act. The legislation would require the president to submit reports in his annual budget requests that detail the effects of his budget on the country’s national debt and GDP.
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The Georgia police department that fired an officer for asking a biological male to stay out of a women’s restroom will begin putting all its officers through sensitivity training this month. The mandatory “LGBTQIA+” class will push several tenets of transgender ideology that remain in dispute, The Center Square has learned.
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Academic achievement in U.S. public schools continues to fall behind pre-pandemic levels, with national test data showing a persistent decline in math and reading scores years after COVID-19.
Test results from the National Center for Education Statistics show that average scores on 12th-grade math and reading assessments dropped three points from 2019. Among fourth graders, average math scores were also three points lower than before the pandemic, while eighth graders saw math scores decline by eight points over five years. Reading scores for fourth and eighth graders dropped five points between 2019 and 2024.
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Chaos in global energy markets following the launch of Operation Epic Fury is expected to drive record demand for U.S. exports of propane and butane, analysts said Monday.
Following a military strike by the U.S. and Israel that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and approximately 40 senior officials, Iran launched missile attacks on Saudi Arabia’s largest oil field and targeted civilian and energy infrastructure in at least nine countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Jordan.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of plaintiffs in a lawsuit against a California law that allowed public schools to conceal a student’s “gender transitions” from their parents, a policy SCOTUS said likely violates the First and Fourteenth amendments.
The lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Society in 2023 when two Escondido teachers sued the Escondido Unified School District in San Diego County, the California Department of Education and Attorney General Rob Bonta, after they were denied a religious accommodation from school policies that required staff to use students’ preferred pronouns upon request.
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“Ban the middlemen” has become the easy applause line in healthcare politics. Tennessee’s version is SB 2040, which would prohibit pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) from owning, controlling, or holding any beneficial interest in pharmacies, including mail-order and specialty operations that ship into the state.
That sounds like a tough stand for “fairness.” But it’s a state-mandated corporate breakup that substitutes political judgment for competition – and risks making access worse for patients.
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In one year, illegal border crossings dropped by 96% at the southwest border, an historic shift from record highs during the Biden administration.
In January, 34,626 illegal border crosser apprehensions were reported nationwide, up from numbers hovering around 30,000 in October, November and December.
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Ongoing smuggling operations continue at the U.S.-Canada border. After alleged offenders are arrested and charged by federal immigration officers, they are being indicted and prosecuted.
Ongoing border crimes are being committed in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Swanton Sector, which reported a record number of illegal border crossers during the Biden administration, The Center Square exclusively reported. The sector includes all of Vermont, six upstate New York counties, and three New Hampshire counties.
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Lawmakers have left town after failing to pass the Homeland Security full-year funding bill, ensuring a partial shutdown of DHS beginning Saturday.
This is the second time in less than six months that Democrats have forced a shutdown over policy demands, with the holdup this time centered around demands for immigration enforcement restrictions.
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The U.S. economy added 130,000 jobs in January, according to new data released from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The addition of jobs marks a significant upward shift from previous months. In December, the economy only added 50,000 jobs and in November it added 64,000.
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An expansion that would double the number of private school vouchers offered by Tennessee topped the list of priorities outlined by Republican Gov. Bill Lee in his final State of the State address on Monday.
The state spent $144 million providing vouchers of $7,295 to 20,000 students in the 2025-2026 school year. Lee proposed $155 million for the program in 2026-2027, which he said would fund vouchers for 40,000 students.
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The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee will hear new accusations regarding the Minnesota fraud scandal investigation.
The hearing, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday, will likely feature fierce partisan debate as senators on the Judiciary Committee grapple with allegations of fraud in Minnesota and beyond. Senators postponed the hearing but did not announce a new date at the time of publication.
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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is banning the use of human fetal tissue sourced from elective abortion in federally funded research.
Under the new policy, researchers and institutions cannot receive National Institutes of Health funding if their research involves “the study, analysis, or use of primary HFT [human fetal tissue], cells, and derivatives, and human fetal primary cell cultures obtained from elective abortions.”
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The Tennessee Senate cancelled floor sessions and committee meetings for next week as ice and snow is expected in parts of the state beginning as soon as Friday evening.
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he could bypass Congress to send $2,000 tariff rebate checks to some Americans.
This directly contradicts his top economic adviser’s comments last month, making this the first time Trump has proposed issuing tariff-funded checks without congressional approval.
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Police deaths on the job fell 25% in 2025 to 111, an 80-year low not seen since World War II.
The number of law enforcement professionals nationwide who died in 2025 declined by a quarter compared to the same time period last year, according to preliminary data provided by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
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Negotiated lower Medicare costs for 10 popular prescription drugs went into effect Thursday.
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A majority of parents say it is important for high school students to learn civil debate skills, according to a new survey from EdChoice.
The survey examined public opinion on several education-related issues, including school choice policies, technology use in K-12 education and the teaching of “durable skills,” such as communication, critical thinking and teamwork.
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When Congress returns next week, lawmakers will have less than a month to pass the remaining nine appropriations bills funding federal agencies in fiscal year 2026.
Already, however, there are signs of further delay, with two Republican senators pledging to vote against the bill for Labor and Health and Human Services due to its inclusion of $5.69 billion for refugee assistance services.
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The U.S. Supreme Court will head into 2026 with numerous high profile decisions to issue. Transgender athletes, birthright citizenship, presidential firing power, tariffs and redistricting are several issues that hang in the balance of the high court’s decision making.
The Center Square compiled many of the key cases that could have widespread ramifications swpwnsing on how the court rules.
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