More federal taxpayer dollars are being funneled through the state of Ohio to help Springfield schools deal with a growing number of Haitian immigrants.
Two other western Ohio communities will receive money to help with similar issues.
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Former President Donald Trump has gained ground and is leading Vice President Kamala Harris in key Sun Belt states, according to a New York Times/Siena poll from Monday.
Trump gained in Arizona and is now leading Harris by five points with the two candidates polling at 50 percent and 45 percent among likely voters respectively, according to the poll. At the same time, Trump has also held onto his lead over Harris in Georgia by four points and in North Carolina by two points.
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Lawmakers say tens of millions of taxpayer dollars were wrongly set aside for union pension plans, and now lawmakers want those funds back.
Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., and Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Chair Bob Good, R-Va., sent a letter to the Biden administration Wednesday following up to see what action the administration has taken to recover funds wrongly allotted to multiemployer pension plans.
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Video surfaced on Friday of U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) declaring in a political event that it will be “impossible” to lower prices that have increased since President Joe Biden entered the White House.
“I’m not proposing that we’re going to be able to bring these prices down. That’s impossible,” Casey acknowledged in a video posted by Donald Trump Jr. to the social media platform X.
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U.S. annual economic growth measured just 1.6 percent in the first quarter of 2024, following a report of persistently high inflation in March of 3.5 percent year-over-year. The combination of both low growth and high inflation, in conjunction with continuously high amounts of government spending and debt, has led to signs of stagflation in the U.S. economy, which wreaked havoc on U.S. consumers throughout the 1970’s, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.
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The city of Detroit is targeting $95 million of federal money to take care of blight.
That’s in addition to the city’s $250 million bond that voters approved in 2020 to also address blight remediation. The city estimates it has 16,000 vacant homes in the city limits.
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Governor Brian Kemp recently announced that 118 projects have been awarded grant funding totaling $83.5 million to “improve community-level public safety measures and address law enforcement staffing challenges that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
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The Tennessee Department of Agriculture (TDA) released the first round of recipients for its new Tennessee Forestry, Agriculture, and Rural Markets (FARM) cost share program.
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Subsidiaries of behemoth concert promoter Live Nation Entertainment received $20 million in federal COVID grants that they were not entitled to, according to a Wisconsin Daily Star review of documents.
Madison-based Frank Productions Concerts, LLC and National Shows 2, LLC of Delaware, each received $10 million from the Small Business Administration’s Shuttered Venues Operator Grant (SVOG) program — funding that was clearly marked for independent operators, not subsidiaries of publicly traded companies.
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There was a time not long ago when Americans would read news stories about obscene levels of corruption in other countries and feel justified in a sense of superiority. Things might not be perfect here, but at least we weren’t that bad. No more. We have now reached the point here where it is that bad. We have surrendered the right to look down our noses at any other country.
One of the most glaring examples of this today can be found in the crisis raging at the U.S.-Mexico border. There have been endless videos of hordes of migrants traversing the Rio Grande and walking into the United States, but that is just a part of the total picture.
The city of Detroit will allocate $6 million to give low-income Detroiters who don’t own a home a down payment of up to $25,000.
The Detroit Down Payment Assistance Program provides qualifying Detroit households grants up to $25,000 for a down payment. Funding also can be used for other home purchase-related expenses, including prepaids (such as escrow deposits for property taxes), interest rate buy-downs, closing costs and reduction in principal.
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As Gov. Tony Evers prepares to introduce his next biennial budget proposal, his administration can’t say how they have allocated a significant portion of the federal COVID aid Evers has nearly complete control over.
And as the governor calls for billions more in education spending, a new report shows there’s a massive amount of federal education aid the state has yet to approve for spending.
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Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen blamed the American people for the 40-year high inflation we have been enduring.
Appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” she said that Americans “were in their homes for a year or more, they wanted to buy grills and office furniture, they were working from home, they suddenly started splurging on goods, buying technology.” According to her, this consumer “splurging” caused prices to rise so much.
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Ohio State Senator Matt Dolan (R-Chagrin Falls) has taken a step back from his initial plan to establish a red flag law in Ohio. He instead proposed, during legislative committee, a restriction on future gun purchases after a judge deems a person is a threat to themselves or others despite opposition from gun rights activists.
Senate Bill (SB) 357 originally aimed to add extreme risk laws, commonly known as red flag laws, to supposedly “protect the public and the gun owner” by temporarily removing a firearm from someone deemed by a judge to be suffering from a severe mental health condition.
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The state has awarded $39.4 million in grants aimed at helping more than three dozen judicial circuits to clear case backlogs.
The Judicial Council of Georgia Ad Hoc Committee announced the grants, funded by federal American Rescue Plan money, to circuits that applied. These awards for the 2023 calendar year are part of the Judicial Council’s ARPA grant program’s second year.
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RICHMOND, Virginia — Virginia’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are “catastrophic,” Governor Glenn Youngkin said in a press conference Monday morning, hours after the NAEP scores were released. Nationally, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a press release the scores are “appalling.” Virginia’s Republican education administration blamed the Commonwealth’s scores on Democratic policy under previous administrations predating COVID-19, while Cardona said the national results are “a reminder of the impact that this pandemic has had on our learners.”
“Today’s data release is a clear and heart-wrenching statement that Virginia is failing her students,” Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera said at the conference, and said the results are not a surprise. “Recent date from the ACT, SOLs [Standards of Learning], from the PALS data, and today’s catastrophic decline in Virginia’s NAEP scores are a predictable outcome of the decade-long systemic dismantling of a foundational commitment to excellence in education.”
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If it weren’t for federal dollars, Milwaukee’s bad 2023 budget would be much worse.
A new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum makes the case that Milwaukee is simply postponing an inevitable fiscal crisis for another year or so with Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s latest spending proposal.
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Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) Commissioner Penny Schwinn met First Lady Jill Biden and U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to the University of Tennessee (UT) on Monday as the pair kicked off the Road to Success Back to School Bus Tour.
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Virginia’s advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing (APM) cluster will receive $52.9 million in grants as one of 21 winners in the federal Build Back Regional Challenge, according to the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA).
“After meeting with the Virginia Biotechnology Research Partnership and pushing the Department of Commerce to support this project, I am thrilled to see the Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Cluster Growth Hub named one of the American Rescue Plan Build Back Better Regional Challenge winners,” Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) said in a September 2 press release. “This support will continue to strengthen the foundation and accelerate the growth of pharmaceutical manufacturing in the United States. As a proud supporter of the American Rescue plan, I am glad to see that Virginia continues to reap the benefits through job creation and economic growth.”
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Federal COVID-19 funds in Tennessee will not be used to combat COVID-19.
Instead, according to a press release from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), at least part of the $3.725 billion the state received from the American Rescue Plan will be spent on “water infrastructure.”
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Georgia is giving more than $62.4 million in federal COVID relief money to groups fighting homelessness and housing insecurity worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The state is allocating American Rescue Plan and State Fiscal Recovery Fund dollars to the 20 projects receiving money.
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Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance criticized the energy and fiscal policies of his Democratic opponent and of the White House on Wednesday, blaming them for the steep gasoline prices Buckeyes now endure.
The average price of a regular gallon of gas in Ohio exceeded $5.00 on Wednesday. That’s a 118.91-percent increase over the $2.32-per-gallon average cost state motorists faced when President Joe Biden took office. In Vance’s estimation, “no one else” bears responsibility for this other than Biden and his “extreme allies in Congress like Tim Ryan (D-13).”
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As Democrats head into the November midterms with historically low approval ratings, another major factor could arise that will further contribute to the shrinking of their already-slim majorities.
As reported by The Hill, the Affordable Care Act – known colloquially as “Obamacare” – could face a significant increase in premiums due to a lapse in special funding provided by the coronavirus aid bill passed last year. That bill, known as the American Rescue Plan, temporarily increased financial assistance for Americans seeking healthcare through Obamacare; the increase was set to expire just one year after the bill’s passage.
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Last week, President Biden gave a speech listing everyone and everything allegedly responsible for record high inflation. His list included corporate greed and price gouging, Vladimir Putin, and “ultra-MAGA” Republicans. The president said that his policies, and the nearly $7 trillion in spending he authorized, have nothing to do with inflation.
None of this holds up under scrutiny. While President Biden claims that corporations are ripping off Americans, the costs of their supplies have been increasing at a record rate. In reality, many companies that Biden claims are stiffing consumers have actually lost money because they don’t want to alienate their customers by raising prices too quickly.
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Over one year after the United States Congress passed the “American Rescue Plan,” the vast majority of school districts that were awarded relief funds have spent less than ten percent of that money.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, approximately $122 billion of the overall $1.9 trillion bill was designated for school districts that were determined to be in distress and in need of relief funds. But of that $122 billion, only about 7 percent has been spent in total across all the school districts nationwide that received some handouts.
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Minnesota is spending untold millions in COVID-relief funds on controversial education initiatives, like implementing ethnic studies in schools and recruiting teachers on the basis of race.
President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief package included $122 billion for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund. Minnesota received a total of $8.5 billion in American Rescue Plan funds, $1.3 billion of which came from ESSER.
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Cochise County officials have approved a plan that will repurpose COVID-19 relief funds to upgrade its emergency response system.
“Sierra Vista Fire and Medical Services and Fry Fire District proposed the Fire Station Alerting System project,” according to reports. “Plans include software installation and technology upgrades for all Cochise County fire stations and special districts to increase the overall effectiveness and efficiency of dispatch centers.”
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The Georgia Department of Education is dishing out more than $11 million in federal COVID-19 relief to help more than 14,600 Georgia teachers.
The State Board of Education approved $6.8 million in Expanding Opportunities for Teachers Grants for 19 school districts, higher education institutions and Regional Educational Service Agencies (RESAs). Recipients can use the money to pay for tuition, fees and exam costs for Georgia public school teachers enrolled in approved Teacher and Teacher Leader Endorsement programs.
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An inspector general’s report reveals that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) handed out as much as $64 million in stimulus funding to dead people after Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law.
Just The News reports that the massive oversight was due to a computer error that the IRS was aware of but did not fix at the time. Ultimately, nearly 45,000 total payments were sent to Americans with deceased dependents who died before January 1st, 2021.
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Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Wednesday approved $10 million in funding for infrastructure improvements at ports and harbors across the state.
In collaboration with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) and Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP), the money seeks to encourage economic development.
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Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers opted to remove the consideration of race from a mortgage-assistance program after the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty (WILL) highlighted several constitutional concerns.
The group pointed out that Evers intended to expand eligibility for “socially disadvantaged” groups, defining those as “any racial or ethnic group besides non-Hispanic/Latinx White.”
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Gov. Ned Lamont (D) this week proposed a holiday from the state’s 25-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax to last through the month of June.
He said he does not believe the gas-tax break can be extended beyond July 1 insofar as Connecticut’s acceptance of federal funds under President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) restricts the state as to how much it can reduce taxes. The governor also voiced concern that a longer tax holiday would compromise the state’s ability to fund transportation. The gas tax’s suspension will cost the state over $90 million.
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Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Wednesday dished out $20 million in “healthcare infrastructure” grants.
The funds will be used to upgrade and improve portions of the Marshfield Medical Center-Park Falls, according to a release from the governor’s office.
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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp plans to use more than $217 million in federal money to fund grants for hospitals, assisted living communities and personal care homes.
The state will use money from the American Rescue Plan’s (ARP) Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds for grants to bolster COVID-19 response efforts.
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Governor Mike DeWine on Friday announced more than $25 million in funding for “School-Based Health Centers” throughout the state.
The money, which is from the federal government and available through the American Rescue Plan, will fund 136 new or expanded centers.
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While President Joe Biden proposed $22.5 billion in coronavirus-related spending this week, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey (R) urged clarification of how the government has spent almost $6 trillion in earlier COVID relief.
Toomey joined 35 Senate colleagues in writing to Biden asking for a detailed explication of the disbursements made over the last two years which, the authors noted, amounted to the largest allotment of taxpayer money for one concern in American history.
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Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Thursday announced a new grant for Milwaukee and Milwaukee County that will award approximately $25 million to the region.
The money, which was awarded to the state through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), will go to affordable housing and other issues in the region. For example, child care services and libraries will see a boost in funding.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Fox contributor and finance Wall Street expert Liz Peek to the newsmakers line to weigh in on the economic outlook for America.
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Republican members of Arizona’s congressional delegation have a demand for United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen: don’t take federal relief funding away from the state.
Arizona is scheduled to receive $4.2 billion from the federal government as a part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan; it has received nearly $1.2 billion of that money so far.
However, the United States Treasury Department has warned the state that it may forfeit $163 million if it doesn’t change its actions.
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President Joe Biden’s administration plans to provide millions of COVID-19 tests to K-12 schools each month, the White House said in a Wednesday statement.
This month, the Biden administration will start shipping five million rapid COVID-19 tests each month to K-12 schools across the country in an effort to keep schools open amid a spike in COVID-19 cases and the rise of the Omicron coronavirus variant, according to White House officials. The new tests will allow schools to double the “volume of testing” from November 2021.
The administration also plans to expand lab capacity to provide an additional five million tests per month so schools can “perform individual and pooled testing in classrooms nationwide.”
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The state of Iowa on Friday sued the city of Sioux City regarding discharge of wastewater.
In the lawsuit, the state asks the Iowa District Court for Woodbury County to make the city pay up to $5,000 per day of violations of state wastewater treatment regulations (Iowa Code section 455B.186(1), 567 Iowa Admin. Code 64.3(1)) and the city’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit. It seeks a permanent injunction preventing Sioux City from further violations of these state laws and the treatment permit requirements.
The state said that for periods between March 15, 2012, and June 8, 2015, Sioux City’s treatment facility would only properly disinfect water discharges on days it collected and submitted samples for E. coli contamination to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the lawsuit said.
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The Metro Nashville Council released a survey on Monday for the city’s residents to note their preferred recipients of federal coronavirus relief funds that will be dispersed throughout the year.
The survey responses, which will be collected throughout January, will be considered by the committee with the authority to appropriate the funds.
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The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) released its plan to administer its portion of the federal American Rescue Plan (ARP) monies directed to Tennessee, outlining the department’s approach for improved water infrastructure in communities across the state, according to a Friday press release.
The Volunteer State was allocated $3.725 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) which is designed to help Americans recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. A condition of the funding from ARPA is that spending must be obligated by December 31, 2024 and expended by December 31, 2026. The Water Infrastructure Investment Plan was developed by TDEC based on input provided by leaders and experts from agencies internal and external to the state government, the press release reports.
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The Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) had a vacancy rate of 27.4 percent, or 1,680 correctional officer vacancies by September 30, 2021, according to a November 15 report from the Public Safety Compensation Work Group. That’s an increase from the average number of vacancies between fiscal years 2018 and 2020, which ranged between 650 and 682 each year.
“There was a dramatic increase since the beginning of the pandemic,” House Appropriations Committee Analyst Michael Jay told the Joint Committee of the House Health, Welfare and Institutions and Public Safety and Senate Judiciary on Tuesday.
“Since then it has gone up about 60 each month and it is now at almost 1,700 vacancies. Some individual facilities have seen higher vacancies, with one correctional facility having turnover of 54 percent in the last calendar year,” Jay said.
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After its major cities raked in more than six billion dollars from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan for COVID-19 relief, Ohio will once again be flush with federal cash.
The state is expected to receive more than$10 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which is meant to be spent on rebuilding roads, bridges and other public structures, according to reports.
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Of the $6.6 billion given to Ohio cities in federal pandemic relief funds, much of the money has been allotted for projects unrelated to COVID-19, or has not been allotted for spending at all.
The American Rescue Plan was signed into law in March, providing a total of $1.9 trillion in federal funds for pandemic relief. That money was spread around the country, and cities were supposed to report their expenditure plans to the federal government by Oct. 31.
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Virginia is on pace to have universal broadband access throughout the commonwealth by 2024 following a record number of local and private sector applications to match state investments, Gov. Ralph Northam announced.
After the most recent application window closed, the state received 57 applications from 84 localities for about $943 million worth of state funding, which leverages about $1.15 billion worth of private and local matching funds. In total, this amounts to an investment larger than $2 billion, which the governor’s office estimates will connect more than 250,000 homes to broadband internet.
“Broadband is as critical today as electricity was in the last century,” Northam said in a statement. “Making sure more Virginians can get access to it has been a priority since I took office, and the pandemic pushed us all to move even faster. Virginia is now on track to achieve universal broadband by 2024, which means more connections, more investments, easier online learning, and expanded telehealth options, especially in rural Virginia.”
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A statewide coalition is backing a spending schedule of $6 billion of federal government money from the American Rescue Plan (ARP).
The Coalition for a Strong and Prosperous Michigan represents businesses, government organizations, local elected leaders, and statewide associations. They aim to detail strategic ways to invest Michigan’s ARP funding for future growth and prosperity.
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The Metro Nashville government has formed a COVID-19 Financial Oversight Committee in order to help decide where COVID relief funds are spent. Nashville has received $260 million in American Rescue Plan funding that is supposed to be used to help with COVID response, mitigation, and prevention.
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Michigan’s $70 billion budget for fiscal year 2022 increases government spending by 11.5% from last year’s $62.8 billion budget. The increased spending includes one-time funds from federal stimulus packages, raising concerns Michigan can’t sustain current spending without hiking taxes or slashing services.
Once government federal stimulus money runs dry, the government must either raise taxes or reduce services to continue paying for programs that were once considered not essential.
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