Lawmakers in Alabama argued over new maps as required to be redrawn by Friday to follow guidelines set forth in a Supreme Court ruling which upheld the same ruling by a federal district court’s three-judge panel in June.
The legislature was required to redraw districts to conform to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which prohibits discrimination in voting based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
The SCOTUS ruled 5-4 in favor of the lower court’s ruling that said the map that was enacted after the 2020 U.S. Census violated that section of the VRA by “diluting the strength of Black voters in the state.”...
The Biden administration has proposed imposing energy efficiency standards for residential water heaters, a move that it said will help consumers save $11.4 billion every year and combat climate change.
The proposed rule would require that the most common-sized electric water heaters use heat pump technology, and gas-fired instantaneous water heaters use condensing technology to achieve energy efficiency.
The United States last updated its energy efficiency standards for water heaters in 2010.
The Department of Energy (DOE) said the rule builds on consensus-based recommendations from a wide range of stakeholders and would apply to new water heater models starting in 2029 if finalized.
The standards are expected to reduce 501 million metric tons of harmful carbon dioxide emissions over a span of 30 years, equivalent to the combined annual emissions of 50 percent of homes in the United States....
Former President Donald Trump is not obliged to appear before a grand jury in connection with the special counsel investigation of the 2020 presidential election, attorney John Lauro said on July 21.
“There’s no need to appear in front of any grand jury right now. President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” Mr. Lauro, who is representing Mr. Trump in the special counsel probe, told Fox News.
Mr. Lauro said the special prosecutor, whom he said served as part of the “Biden Justice Department,” is targeting the Republican front-runner amid a heated presidential election campaign.
“For the first time in our history, a sitting president is using the Department of Justice to go after a political opponent criminally while that political opponent is leading in the polls,” he told the news outlet....
The Biden administration is setting up a new pandemic preparedness office that will aid the country in countering such large-scale health threats.
“As part of the President’s commitment to ensure that our country is more prepared for a pandemic than we were when he took office, the Administration is standing up the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR),” said the White House as it announced the launch on Friday.
A permanent office in the Executive Office of the President, OPPR will be “charged with leading, coordinating, and implementing actions related to preparedness for, and response to, known and unknown biological threats or pathogens that could lead to a pandemic or to significant public health-related disruptions in the United States.”...
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest chipmaker, will delay production at its new Arizona chip plant to 2025 due to a shortage of skilled labor.
The year-long delay comes as trade relations between Washington and Beijing, have deteriorated over the past several years.
TSMC Chairman Mark Liu broke the news to investors on a second-quarter earnings call on July 21.
Mr. Liu said that the company does not have enough skilled local workers to install advanced equipment at its new facility, in time for the official deadline.
TSMC first proposed plans to build the facility in Arizona in 2020, when former President Donald Trump was in office....
A July 20 House Judiciary Committee hearing examining the federal government’s role in censoring Americans Democrats was marked by explosive exchanges between Democrats and Republicans about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments on vaccines and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The forum also included discussion about social media companies’ handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story and government efforts to work with social media companies to remove “disinformation” and “misinformation.”
Mr. Kennedy, who is challenging President Joe Biden for the party’s 2024 nomination, was a star witness at the hearing on the weaponization of the federal government.
Republicans defended Mr. Kennedy and charged the Democrats’ outcry over his presence at the hearing as “censorship.” Democrats criticized Republicans for giving Mr. Kennedy a “megaphone” to talk about his views on vaccines....
Not many CIA directors serve as members of a U.S. president’s Cabinet. CIA Director William Burns will now be one of the few.
President Joe Biden, underscoring the confidence he holds in and how much he relies on Mr. Burns, announced on July 21 that the intelligence chief is now a Cabinet member.
There is precedent for a CIA director to serve in a Cabinet. President Bill Clinton named CIA directors John Deutsch and George Tenet to his cabinet. President Ronald Reagan did the same with William Casey.
Mr. Burns is one of the president’s closest advisers, and the two meet regularly. Mr. Biden has dispatched Mr. Burns overseas on diplomatic missions....
U.S. lawmakers are seeking to review the license agreement between Ford Motor and a Chinese battery maker.
They are concerned that the deal will facilitate China’s global dominance in electric vehicle battery technology with American taxpayers’ money and increase America’s reliance on Chinese critical raw materials. According to the lawmakers, the Chinese battery maker’s supply chain in Xinjiang also raised a forced labor question, which is a potential violation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
In February, Ford announced that a new $3.5 billion plant would be built in Marshall, Michigan, 100 miles west of Detroit, to produce lithium-iron-phosphate batteries, better known as LFP, a type of battery cheaper but less energy-dense than the nickel-cobalt-manganese chemistry that currently dominates the market....
Florida’s new school rules “want to replace history with lies,” Vice President Kamala Harris said.
“Extremists, so-called leaders for months have dared to ban books. Extremists here in Florida pass a law saying ‘Don’t say gay,’ trying to instill fear in our teachers that they should not live their full life and love who they love,” Ms. Harris said. Then she reassured her Jacksonville, Florida audience that “You’re not fighting out here by yourselves.”
The Florida state academic standards for social studies included a controversial provision that said instruction should include “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”...
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told South Carolina voters, that if elected president, he would give the president of Mexico 90 days to help stop the drug cartels in his country.
“If I’m elected president on my first day, I will sign an executive order that sends the National Guard to the border,” Mr. Christie said. “And their specific task will be the interdiction of fentanyl.”
Mr. Christie said that fentanyl is the leading cause of death for young men in America. He vowed to take a hard line with the Mexican government. He said he would give Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador an ultimatum....
Less than a month has passed since the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s 2022 student loan forgiveness plan as unconstitutional.
Yet, Inez Stepman of the Independent Women’s Forum points out, the commander-in-chief still got what he wanted that year. Young Americans seeking relief from their debt burden turned out to vote for a party that promised it.
“There’s pretty good polling showing that it did really help the Democrats in the midterms,” Ms. Stepman told The Epoch Times during a July 20 interview.
That political reality is one of multiple motivations for her recent proposal (pdf) to fund student loan forgiveness by taxing universities....
The U.S. Senate passed an amendment to the annual defense bill on Thursday that would ban oil exports to China from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which sits half empty after President Joe Biden ordered a drawdown to reduce soaring inflation.
The amendment, spearheaded by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) passed the upper chamber in a vote of 85-12 on July 20.
The SPR, which was filled to its then 727 million barrel storage capacity a little over a decade ago, has been depleted to a multi-decade low of 336 million barrels, the latest federal data shows.
Reduced levels of the strategic stockpile have been the subject of controversy, as Republicans accused Mr. Biden of drawing it down irresponsibly and depriving the nation of an important energy buffer in case of emergencies....
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign on July 21 called the new May 2024 court date for his federal criminal trial a “major setback” to Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors.
Scheduled to begin on May 20, 2024, the new trial date was set earlier that day by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon following extension requests from both Special Counsel Jack Smith and Mr. Trump’s legal team.
“Today’s order by Judge Cannon is a major setback to the DOJ’s crusade to deny President Trump a fair legal process,” a Trump spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “The extensive schedule allows President Trump and his legal team to continue fighting this empty hoax....
House Republican leaders have raised the prospect that a Border Patrol chief was the target of retaliation by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief after the Border Patrol official sat for a transcribed interview with Congress.
Gregory K. Bovino, the chief patrol agent of the El Centro Border Patrol sector in California’s imperial valley, offered a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee and House Homeland Security Committee on July 12, 2023. According to Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.), within hours of finishing his testimony, Mr. Bovino was informed that he had been relieved of his command at the El Centro sector and “reassigned to a vague, indefinite, and temporary headquarters assignment.”...
The top concern of American mayors is infrastructure, according to a recent report. This indicates that local officials realize that neglecting infrastructure to address other needs will end up hurting everything, says one of the report’s authors.
“Infrastructure has always been the sacrificial lamb,” said Farhad Omeyr of the National League of Cities (NLC) Center for Research and Data.
The NLC released its 10th annual “State of the Cities” report on July 21 during a panel discussion in Tacoma, Washington.
Mr. Omeyr said this is the third year that infrastructure topped the list of priorities for America’s mayors. Previously the city executives had placed economic development at the top of their lists, he said, but they have elevated infrastructure as a spending priority as city systems age and the federal government makes funding available....
A legal battle over the construction of a new natural gas pipeline in West Virginia has raised common ground between President Joe Biden’s administration, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and a group of Republican lawmakers.
The deal to increase the U.S. debt limit last month included a provision to approve the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural gas project set to run between Virginia and West Virginia. An environmental group known as the Wilderness Society has challenged the pipeline’s construction, winning a July 11 order from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that halts the pipeline’s construction for now....
A legal battle over the construction of a new natural gas pipeline in West Virginia has raised common ground between President Joe Biden’s administration, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and a group of Republican lawmakers.
The deal to increase the U.S. debt limit last month included a provision to approve the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural gas project set to run between Virginia and West Virginia. An environmental group known as the Wilderness Society has challenged the pipeline’s construction, winning a July 11 order from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that halts the pipeline’s construction for now....
Former President Donald Trump released a campaign proposal on July 21 saying that he would subject human traffickers to the death penalty, as part of his latest anti-crime proposal for his 2024 White House bid.
Mr. Trump also used the campaign video to endorse the nationwide box office hit “Sound of Freedom,” which tells the story of a Homeland Security Department agent who says he has spent years investigating pedophiles and child trafficking rings.
The former president is running for his second term after losing to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Trump is currently the frontrunner among the Republican candidates and is thought likely to be facing Mr. Biden in the 2024 general election....
Republican presidential candidates are rallying behind country music singer Jason Aldean and his song “Try That in a Small Town,” issuing statements of support in what has become a political controversy and playing the tune at their campaign rallies.
Since its release in mid-May, the now divisive song has skyrocketed in popularity among GOP and conservative listeners while being roundly denounced by the left, which accuse it of promoting gun violence and racism.
Adding to the controversy was the official music video for the song, which premiered July 14 on YouTube.
The music video features as a backdrop to Mr. Aldean singing at the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tenn., a balcony from which a mob hanged black 18-year 0ld Henry Choate in 1927. Columbia is also the site of a 1946 major race riot....
There is little doubt that a Republican will garner Utah’s six electoral votes in the November 2024 presidential election, but who that nominee will be is a question to be determined during the state’s March 5, 2024, GOP primary, one of 15 contests that will be staged nationwide on that “Super Tuesday.”
Seven months before that caucus clash, it doesn’t appear that Beehive State voters are buzzed about the prospects of seeing former President Donald Trump’s name on that ballot, a glimmer of opportunity the dozen candidates struggling for traction in the GOP presidential race against the dominant frontrunner will seek to exploit....
