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  • China sanctions US organizations for hosting Taiwan leader during stopover | CNN

    China sanctions US organizations for hosting Taiwan leader during stopover | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    China has slapped sanctions on two American organizations that hosted Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen during her recent travel in the United States, which Beijing had fiercely condemned.

    China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Friday the Washington-headquartered think tank Hudson Institute and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California would be banned from any cooperation, exchange or transaction with institutions and individuals in China.

    Key leaders of the organizations would also be barred from visiting China, unable to transact or cooperate with organizations or individuals there, and have any assets in the country frozen, the statement said.

    “The Hudson Institute and the Reagan Library have provided a platform and facilitated Tsai’s separatist activities… which seriously undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the ministry said, using a term often used to criticize the actions of Taiwan’s leader.

    The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library was the site of a meeting between Tsai and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday – the first time a Taiwan president had met a US Speaker on American soil.

    And last week, the Hudson Institute presented a Global Leadership Award to Tsai in New York City.

    Both occurred during stopovers in the course of the Taiwan President’s 10-day international tour, which included official visits to Central America.

    CNN has reached out for comment to the Hudson Institute and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. It’s unclear if either organization or its leaders have assets or cooperation in China that would be impacted.

    China had repeatedly said it would take “resolute and strong measures” in response to Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy.

    China’s Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its own despite never having controlled it, and has vowed to take the island, by force if necessary.

    China also imposed sanctions on two Taiwanese organizations, The Prospect Foundation and Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats, on Friday, according to the Taiwan Affairs Office.

    A spokesperson accused the groups of promoting Taiwan independence and said they could not cooperate with mainland organizations and individuals. Their directors were also barred from entering the mainland.

    Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan representative to the US, was also hit with sanctions on Friday, according to Chinese state media. Hsiao was previously sanctioned by China last August, following a visit from then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the island. On her Twitter account on Friday, Hsiao reacted to the sanctions saying, “Wow, the PRC just sanctions me again, for the second time.”

    Taiwan’s foreign ministry responded later Friday calling China’s decision to impose new sanctions over Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy “irrational and absurd.”

    It was Taiwan’s “fundamental right” to conduct diplomatic activities overseas, and “coercion and suppression” from Beijing would only boost its “insistence on freedom and democracy,” the statement said.

    Beijing’s overall response to the latest meeting has appeared muted so far compared with its actions following Pelosi’s visit.

    Then, Beijing launched extensive military drills around the island following the Speaker’s departure and suspended several lines of communication with Washington.

    This time there has been little clear military response toward the island, which sees regular incursions into its air defense identification zone and patrols in surrounding waters by the Chinese military.

    Ahead of the meeting between Tsai and McCarthy, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it had tracked a Chinese aircraft carrier group, led by the carrier Shandong, passing through waters southeast of Taiwan for training in the Western Pacific.

    China’s retaliation against the US organizations comes at a tense time between the two powers, which have struggled to stabilize their relationship amid friction over a range of issues.

    Among those is bolstered American support of Taiwan in the face of increased military, economic and diplomatic pressure on the island democracy from Beijing.

    On Friday, US Republican congressman Michael McCaul, who is currently visiting Taiwan, said that speeding up the delivery of weapons to the island was “critically important” in building deterrence against China.

    The chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee told reporters that “we are doing everything in our power to expedite [weapon delivery],” and that the bipartisan congressional delegation he is leading is “in broad agreement that this absolutely needs to be done, to provide the deterrence for Taiwan to promote peace in the region.”

    McCaul said that potential ways to do so included reprioritizing weapon sales to Taiwan or through third-party sales.

    The US maintains an unofficial relationship with Taiwan and Tsai’s transit in the country was therefore not an official visit in order to keep Washington aligned with its longstanding “One China” policy.

    Under the policy, the US acknowledges China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the island of 23 million.

    Tsai is expected to return to Taiwan Friday.

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  • A momentous political showdown in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics | CNN Politics

    A momentous political showdown in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Tennessee Republicans’ ruthless use of their state House supermajority to expel two young Black lawmakers for breaching decorum exposed a torrent of political forces that are transforming American politics at the grassroots.

    The GOP action, after the lawmakers had led a gun control protest from the House floor in response to last week’s Nashville school shooting, created a snapshot of how two halves of a diversifying and increasingly self-estranged nation are being pulled apart.

    A day of soaring tensions inside and outside the state House chamber thrust the Volunteer State into the national spotlight in an extraordinary political coda to the mass shooting in which six people, including three 9-year-olds, were gunned down.

    The drama laid bare intense frustration among some voters at the failure to pass firearms reform – and the growing clash between Democrats from liberal cities and a Republican Party that is willing to use its rural conservative power base to curtail democracy. Given the national attention, the showdown could backfire on the GOP with voters who balk at its extremist turn. And it turned two lawmakers – whom most Americans had never heard of – into overnight heroes of the progressive movement.

    The Democrats – Justin Pearson and Justin Jones – were thrown out of their seats in a move that effectively canceled out the votes of their tens of thousands of constituents, simply for infringing the rules of the chamber – an almost unheard of sanction across the country.

    But a third Democrat – Gloria Johnson, a White woman who also joined the gun control protest – escaped expulsion after Republicans failed to muster the required two-thirds majority. The discrepancy raised suggestions of racial discrimination and made an acrimonious day even uglier.

    Republicans said that the Democrats had interrupted the people’s business with their protest, arguing that democracy couldn’t work if lawmakers refused to abide by the rules. But the Democrats have long warned their voices are being silenced by the hardline GOP supermajority and accused Republicans of infringing their rights to free expression and dissent.

    “We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” Jones told Republican legislators on Thursday as he spoke before the House in his own defense.

    At its most basic level, the clash underscored the utter polarization between Republicans and Democrats about how to respond to mass shootings, which pass with little or no significant action to prevent the endless sequence of such tragedies.

    Although it did pass a measure intended to enhance school security, the Tennessee state House essentially decided to use its near unchecked power to protect its behavioral rules rather than take any action to make it harder for mass killers to get deadly weapons. In a deep-red state like Tennessee, this is not a surprise. But the fury and even desperation of lawmakers like Pearson and Jones and the hundreds of protesters at the state capitol on Thursday reflect increasing anger among the majority of Americans who want tougher gun restrictions but find their hopes dashed by Republican legislatures.

    In Tennessee, that frustration over the endless deaths of innocents erupted into activism.

    One protester, teacher Kevin Foster, said the aftermath of the Nashville school shooting had been “deeply, deeply painful.”

    And he tearfully called on Tennessee legislators to do something to stop more school shootings. “Just listen to us, there is absolutely no reason you should have assault rifles available to citizens in the public. It serves absolutely no purpose and it brings death and destruction on children,” Foster told CNN’s Ryan Young.

    The severe penalties meted out by the legislature for a rules infraction, which did not involve violence or incitement, also underscored another increasing trend – the radicalization of the Donald Trump-era Republican Party. Critics see the way the GOP is using its legislative majorities as an abuse of power that threatens the democratic rights of millions of Americans.

    The Tennessee House has only rarely expelled members – and when it has, it’s for offenses like bribery or sexual infractions – so the treatment of Pearson and Jones, who had already had their committee assignments taken away, was regarded by Democrats as disproportionately harsh.

    The expulsions looked like a party dispensing with opponents and positions it didn’t agree with – a perspective Pearson voiced when he accused the GOP of acting to suppress ideas it would prefer not to listen to and questions it wouldn’t answer.

    “You just expelled a member for exercising their First Amendment rights!” he said.

    Tennessee Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison told CNN his members were always firm in wanting the Democratic lawmakers expelled and rejected an alternative route through the House ethics committee. “The overwhelming majority, the heartbeat of this caucus, says ‘not on this House floor, not this way,’” he said. Faison added: “It is not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor. There’s got to be some peace.”

    Democrats did break the rules last week – they admitted to doing so and their actions, if adopted by every legislator, would make it impossible to maintain order and free debate. Jones, for instance, used a bullhorn to lead chants of protesters in the public gallery. But the question at issue is the appropriateness of the punishments and whether the GOP majority overreached.

    One Republican, state Rep. Gino Bulso, said that Jones – with his dramatic self-defense in the well of the chamber on Thursday – had made the case for his ejection because he accused the House of acting dishonorably.

    “He and two other representatives effectively conducted a mutiny on March the 30th of 2023 in this very chamber,” Bulso said. State House Speaker Cameron Sexton had previously compared the gun control protest to the mob attack by Trump’s supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    But this appeared an absurd analogy. While the protest in the Tennessee chamber did disrupt regular order, it wasn’t anti-democratic, nor was it designed to interrupt the transfer of power from one president to the next, like the Capitol riot briefly did. And the behavior of the three Democratic lawmakers, while irregular, was not that unusual in a riotous political age. US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and other Republicans, for instance, heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address this year. And Trump this week attacked a New York judge as biased and singled out his family after becoming the first ex-president to be charged with a crime.

    The racial backdrop of Thursday’s vote could not be ignored after Johnson was reprieved by a single vote. She told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota that she believed race helped explain the differing outcomes.

    “I think it is pretty clear. I am a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men,” Johnson said, adding that she thought the Republicans questioned Jones and Pearson in a demeaning way.

    US Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, didn’t rule out the possibility that discrimination was behind the expulsion of Jones and Pearson but not Johnson.

    “I am not saying race wasn’t (the reason) – but I haven’t looked at the numbers to see if gender might not have had a play in it, and also maybe some seniority, and also some folks that were on a committee with her,” Cohen told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga.

    The question is especially acute since Pearson and Jones were arguing that their voices – and those of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans in the state’s diverse cities – were being silenced by a largely White Republican majority.

    “I represent 78,000 people, and when I came to the well that day, I was not standing for myself,” Jones said. “I was standing for those young people … many of whom can’t even vote yet, many of whom are disenfranchised. But all of whom are terrified by the continued trend of mass shooting plaguing our state and plaguing this nation.”

    Jones, from Nashville, and Pearson, from Memphis, are representative of a new generation of politically active Americans. Their background in activism and compelling rhetorical styles speak to a kind of politics that is more confrontational than the outwardly genteel but hardball power plays preferred by some of their older Republican colleagues in the legislature.

    At times, the speeches by both lawmakers invoked the atmospherics of the civil rights movement and may augur a new brand of urgent activism by younger citizens – like the multi-racial crowd of protesters who greeted Pearson and Jones as heroes after they left the chamber.

    The topic of the showdown – over infringements of the decorum of the state House – also had uncomfortable racial echoes as they implied, deliberately or not, that the two young Black Americans did not understand the proper way to behave in public life.

    “It’s very scary for the nation to see what’s happening here. If I didn’t know that it was happening to me, I would think this was 1963 instead of 2023,” Jones told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

    More broadly, Pearson and Jones also represent a cementing reality of the American political map in which growing liberal and racially diverse cities and suburbs are increasingly clashing with legislatures dominated by Republicans from more rural areas.

    This dynamic is playing out on multiple issues – including abortion, crime and voting rights – in states like Georgia and Texas. In Florida, meanwhile, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using his big reelection win and GOP control of both chambers of the state legislature to drive home a radical America First-style conservative agenda that he’s using as a platform for a possible presidential campaign. Some Republicans see similar trends in Democratic-majority California.

    In Tennessee, as Democratic state House Rep. Joe Towns put it, the GOP used a nuclear option by deploying their supermajority to suppress the ability of minority Democrats to speak.

    “You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

    Pearson was specific in viewing his expulsion as being about far more than a thwarted gun control protest.

    “We are losing our democracy to White supremacy, we are losing our democracy to patriarchy, we are losing our democracy to people who want to keep a status quo that is damning to the rest of us and damning to our children and unborn people,” he said.

    The political crisis in Tennessee quickly got national attention.

    Biden described the expulsions as “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent” and lambasted Republicans for not doing more to prevent school shootings.

    “Americans want lawmakers to act on commonsense gun safety reforms that we know will save lives. But instead, we’ve continued to see Republican officials across America double down on dangerous bills that make our schools, places of worship, and communities less safe,” he said in a statement.

    Republicans in Tennessee had their own political reasons for acting against the trio of Democratic lawmakers. But by making national figures of Pearson and Jones and by handing the White House a new example of GOP extremism, their efforts may have badly backfired.

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  • Tennessee House expels 1 lawmaker, falls short of ousting another while 3rd awaits vote | CNN

    Tennessee House expels 1 lawmaker, falls short of ousting another while 3rd awaits vote | CNN

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    Nashville
    CNN
     — 

    A vote to expel Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson from Tennessee’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives has failed, a week after she and two other Democrats led a gun reform protest on the House floor. The House earlier expelled Rep. Justin Jones over that protest, which followed a deadly mass shooting at a Nashville school.

    The third Democrat involved, Justin Pearson, also faces a possible vote on his removal from office Thursday.

    The vote over rules violations for Johnson was 65-30. Expulsion from the House requires a two-thirds majority of the total membership. The vote for Jones split along party lines, 72-25.

    Protesters flooded the state Capitol on Thursday as the legislators were set to take up three resolutions filed by GOP lawmakers Monday seeking to expel Jones, of Nashville, Johnson of Knoxville and Pearson of Memphis, a step the state House has taken only twice since the 1860s.

    “There comes a time where people get sick and tired of being sick and tired,” Jones said in a speech prior to a vote on his expulsion. “And so my colleagues, I say that what we did was act in our responsibility as legislators to serve and give voice to the grievances of people who have been silenced.”

    “We called for you all to ban assault weapons,” he said, “and you respond with an assault on democracy.”

    Jones added: “How can you bring dishonor to an already dishonorable house?”

    Jones’ vote took place after two hours of debate that included Jones answering questions regarding his actions during a protest last Thursday over calls for gun violence legislation. Johnson’s vote followed about an hour and a half of discussion.

    Throughout the day, crowds have gathered outside and inside the building. Following the vote to expel Jones, those inside the Capitol gallery raised their fists and erupted in boos.

    After a Democratic motion to adjourn until Monday was voted down, Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton admonished the people in the balcony for yelling, saying if their “disruptive behavior” continued they would clear the area of everyone but the media.

    “That’s the one warning,” he said.

    Cheers filled the Capitol following the failed vote to expel Johnson.

    “We did what we needed to do,” Johnson said to reporters outside the chamber.

    Johnson thanked the crowd that was gathered around the building and encouraged them to vote. “Keep showing up, standing up and speaking out and we will be with you,” she added.

    Johnson, who is White, was asked why there was a difference in the outcome for her and Jones, who is Black-Filipino.

    “I will answer your question. It might have to do with the color of our skin,” she said.

    President Joe Biden criticized the proceedings in Nashville in a tweet.

    “Three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting. And what are GOP officials focused on? Punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action. It’s shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent,” he wrote.

    The three lawmakers led a protest on the House floor last Thursday without being recognized, CNN affiliate WSMV reported, using a bullhorn as demonstrators at the state Capitol called on lawmakers to take action to prevent further gun violence after a mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville left three 9-year-olds and three adults dead. Each lawmaker was removed from their committee assignments following last week’s demonstrations.

    Discussion Thursday began with Republicans playing footage of the protest last week, showing Jones, Johnson and Pearson standing in the well of the House and using the bullhorn to address their colleagues and protesters in the gallery.

    Democrats were opposed to having the footage played, arguing it was unfair because they had not seen the video themselves and did not know the extent to which it had been edited.

    Democratic Whip Jason Powell, who represents Nashville, said he was “outraged” and “expelling Justin Jones is not the answer.”

    He angrily said the House was spending too much time on the expulsion issue.

    “I had to leave here Monday night after this resolution was introduced and go to my son’s Little League field and see red ribbons surrounding the outfield in memory of William Kinney who was murdered and I am outraged, and we should all be outraged,” he said, his voice rising. “We need to do something and expelling Justin Jones is not the answer. It is a threat to democracy.”

    More about the three representatives:

    Rep. Justin Pearson:District: 86
    Age: 28
    In office: 2023-
    Issues: Environmental, racial and economic justice
    Of note: Successfully blocked oil pipeline from being built in south Memphis
    Recent awards: The Root’s 100 Most Influential Black Americans (2022)Rep. Gloria Johnson:District: 90
    Age: 60
    In office: 2013-2015, 2019-
    Issues: Education, jobs, health care
    Of note: Successfully organized in favor of Insure Tennessee, the state’s version of Medicaid expansion
    Recent awards: National Foundation of Women Legislators Women of Excellence (2022)Rep. Justin Jones:District: 52
    Age: 27
    In office: 2023-
    Issues: Health care, environmental justice
    Of note: Wrote “The People’s Plaza: 62 Days of Nonviolent Resistance” after helping to organize a 2022 sit-in
    Recent awards: Ubuntu Award for outstanding service, Vanderbilt Organization of Black Graduate and Professional Students (2019)

    “This is not just about losing my job,” Jones told “CNN This Morning” on Wednesday, saying constituents of the three representatives “are being taken and silenced by a party that is acting like authoritarians.”

    As he left the Capitol on Thursday, Jones said he is not sure what his next steps are following his expulsion.

    “I will continue to show up to this Capitol with these young people whether I’m in that chamber or outside,” Jones told reporters.

    In the last 157 years, the House has expelled only two lawmakers, which requires a two-thirds vote: In 1980, after a representative was found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office, and in 2016, when another was expelled over allegations of sexual harassment.

    This week, Sexton said the three Democrats’ actions “are and always will be unacceptable” and broke “several rules of decorum and procedure on the House floor.”

    Sexton said peaceful protesters have always been welcomed to the capitol to have their voices heard on any issue, but that the actions of the Democratic lawmakers had detracted from that process.

    “In effect, those actions took away the voices of the protestors, the focus on the six victims who lost their lives, and the families who lost their loved ones,” Sexton said in a series of tweets Monday.

    “We cannot allow the actions of the three members to distract us from protecting our children. We will get through this together, and it will require talking about all solutions,” Sexton said.

    During the discussion Thursday, Democratic Rep. Joe Towns called the move to expel the “nuclear option.”

    “You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

    The move to expel the trio drew protesters to the Capitol Thursday morning, with many wanting to express both their opposition to the lawmakers’ removal from office – chants of “We stand with the Tennessee three,” were heard outside – as well as support for gun reform legislation.

    To some, the vote to expel Johnson, Jones and Pearson was a distraction from the real issue: Keeping children safe.

    “I want people to know this is not a political issue, it’s a child issue,” Deborah Castellano, a first-grade teacher in Nashville, told CNN. “If you wash away Democrat, Republican, it’s about kids and do we want them to be safe or not. I will stand in front of children and protect as many as I can with my body … but we shouldn’t have to, and those kids shouldn’t be afraid.”

    Paul Slentz, a retired United Methodist pastor, knows two of the lawmakers personally, he said, adding it was wrong for them to face a vote for their expulsion.

    “They’re good people,” Slentz told CNN affiliate WSMV in an interview outside the Capitol. “They have strong moral convictions. They are people of faith.”

    Each of the resolutions says the lawmakers “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives,” saying they “began shouting without recognition” and “proceeded to disrupt the proceedings of the House Representatives” for just under an hour Thursday morning.

    The resolutions seek to remove the lawmakers from office under Article II, Section 12 of the Tennessee Constitution, which says, in part, the House can set its own rules and “punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”

    Republicans control the Tennessee House of Representatives by a wide margin, with 75 members to Democrats’ 23. One seat is vacant.

    The code allows for the appointment of interim members of the House until the seats of the expelled are filled by an election.

    Pearson has acknowledged he and his two colleagues may have broken House rules, both in a letter sent to House members this week and in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, acknowledging they “spoke out of order” when they walked to the well of the House.

    “We broke a House rule,” he said, “but it does not meet the threshold for actually expelling members of the House who were duly elected by their district, who sent us here to serve, and now they’re being disenfranchised by the Republican party of the state of Tennessee.”

    House Democrats expressed solidarity with Johnson, Jones and Pearson in a statement, while Rep. Sam McKenzie, of the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators, called the move “political retribution.”

    “We fundamentally object to any effort to expel members for making their voices heard to end gun violence,” McKenzie said.

    The move to expel the lawmakers also drew condemnation from the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, whose executive director, Kathy Sinback, called expulsion “an extreme measure” infrequently used, “because its strips voters of representation by the people they elected.”

    “Instead of rushing to expel members for expressing their ethical convictions about crucial social issues,” Sinback said, “House leadership should turn to solving the real challenges facing our state.”

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  • FBI and Army members raided the wrong hotel room during a training exercise and detained a guest inside | CNN

    FBI and Army members raided the wrong hotel room during a training exercise and detained a guest inside | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Members of the FBI and the US Army Special Operations Command who were conducting a training exercise in downtown Boston raided the wrong hotel room and detained the person inside before realizing their mistake, the FBI said in a statement to CNN.

    The FBI said its Boston division was helping the military with a training exercise around 10 p.m. Tuesday “to simulate a situation their personnel might encounter in a deployed environment.”

    “Based on inaccurate information, they were mistakenly sent to the wrong room and detained an individual, not the intended role player,” the FBI said.

    “First and foremost, we’d like to extend our deepest apologies to the individual who was affected by the training exercise,” USASOC Lt. Col. Mike Burns told CNN.

    The exercise was meant to “enhance soldiers’ skills to operate in realistic and unfamiliar environments,” Burns said, adding the incident is under review.

    No one was injured, the FBI said.

    The incident took place at the Revere Hotel Boston Common, according to the Boston Police Department. CNN has reached out to the hotel for comment.

    A Boston police incident report said officers were called to the hotel around 12:20 a.m. Wednesday, and were met by law enforcement agents conducting a training exercise.

    Local news reports said the person who was in the hotel room and detained by federal law enforcement is a Delta Air Lines employee.

    The Atlanta-based airline told CNN it is looking into the “alleged incident in Boston that may involve Delta people.”

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  • The Fed could easily drive Black unemployment much higher than the overall jobless rate | CNN Business

    The Fed could easily drive Black unemployment much higher than the overall jobless rate | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Millions of jobs could be on the chopping block this year, as the Federal Reserve continues its rate-hiking campaign to tame inflation. But the effects of that action likely won’t reverberate evenly across the economy.

    The Fed has seen some success: Inflation has cooled for eighth consecutive months, according to the February Consumer Price Index. The Producer Price Index shows a dramatic drop in wholesale prices in February. And the Fed’s favored inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, has also started to moderate.

    But the job market has proved to be a formidable force, humming steadily in the face of climbing rates meant to slow its growth. After adding more than half a million jobs in January, the US economy then added 311,000 jobs in February, with an unemployment rate of 3.6% — just above a half-century low — according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    However, the jobless rate isn’t expected to be that low for long.

    At its most recent policy-making meeting, the Fed released projections for the year ahead that showed unemployment could jump to 4.5%, representing another 1.5 million job losses, by the end of the year.

    While that’s a small improvement from the central bank’s previous 4.6% jobless rate estimate, economists say it’s possible the unemployment rate could rise above the Fed’s expectations. Moreover, they say that historically disadvantaged groups could be disproportionately affected by the central bank’s stringent monetary policy.

    While some groups often sidelined in the job market have seen benefits from this hot job market — women have seen a faster pace of job gains than men in recent months, for example — others, including Black women and Latino men, have seen slower recoveries in jobless rates since the onset of the Covid pandemic.

    Recession fears gained traction last month when the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank sent markets wobbling, raising concerns about the economy’s ability to handle more stress. Goldman Sachs revised its estimate of the United States entering a recession over the next 12 months to a 35% chance, up from its estimate of a 25% chance before the banking sector turmoil.

    That’s of particular concern to certain demographic groups: Jobless rates for Black and Hispanic Americans often increase by more than those of their White counterparts during recessions, said Rakesh Kochhar, a senior researcher focusing on demographics and social trends at the Pew Research Center.

    History makes that discrepancy clear.

    A Pew Research Center report comparing two recessions in recent decades shows how Black and Hispanic Americans experience disproportionate effects on their jobless rates during periods of economic downturn. From the second quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2009, during the Great Recession, the unemployment rate rose 6.5 percentage points for Black Americans. The Hispanic unemployment rate climbed 6.3 percentage points. For White workers, it increased 4 percentage points.

    And from the first quarter of 1990 to the first quarter of 1991, the unemployment rate climbed 1.4 percentage points for Black Americans and 2.1 percentage points for Hispanic Americans. The White unemployment rate rose 1.3 percentage points.

    Economists say it’s hard to guess the trajectory of the unemployment rate this year, noting it could very well exceed the Fed’s estimate.

    “There’s just tons of momentum, and once you slow the economy enough to get the unemployment rate moving up, it’s very hard to sort of turn that cruise ship back around,” said Josh Bivens, research director and chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

    As such, the Fed’s tightening efforts could easily drive the Black unemployment rate much higher than the overall jobless rate, said William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University and chief economist to the AFL-CIO.

    “If the Fed continues to use unemployment as its measure of labor force slack, and thinks they want a 4.5% unemployment rate — to make that happen, the Fed would have to induce net job loss in the labor market,” Spriggs told CNN in an email. “If we go through two months of negative job growth, all bets are off. The Black unemployment rate will easily get to 9% in that scenario.”

    One other likely consequence of growing unemployment is slowing wage growth, Bivens said.

    Like rising unemployment, stunted wage growth tends to hit marginalized groups harder. A 2021 Economic Policy Institute report shows that a 1 percentage point increase in overall unemployment correlates with about 0.5% slower wage growth for White median hourly wages. Wage growth falls by roughly 0.8% for Black median hourly wages.

    “A lot of people have this idea that in a recession, if unemployment rises by a couple of percentage points, as long as you’re not one of those unlucky people to lose the job, you’ve dodged the bullet,” Bivens said. “And that’s not true at all.”

    Still, a robust labor market isn’t a permanent solution to bridging employment disparities, even if the Fed does keep rates lower, says Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

    The job market’s recent strength is unsustainable, she said. The US economy needs about 75,000 net job gains a month to keep stable and is currently adding about 350,000 net job gains a month on average, according to Edelberg.

    “[The Fed is] right to be confident that one of the things that’s going to have to happen to get inflation back down to a normal, stable level is to get job growth to a normal, sustainable level,” Edelberg said. “But if the Fed’s actions resulted in a slower labor market, then inflation stayed high — that would be a disaster.”

    The March jobs report from the Department of Labor, due to be released Friday at 8:30 a.m., is expected to show the US economy gained 240,000 positions last month. ADP’s private-sector payroll report, generally seen by investors as a proxy for the trajectory of Friday’s number, fell short of expectations, with just 145,000 jobs added. Economists had expected private hiring would rise by 200,000 positions last month.

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  • DOJ reaches tentative $144.5 million settlement with victims of Sutherland Springs church mass shooting | CNN

    DOJ reaches tentative $144.5 million settlement with victims of Sutherland Springs church mass shooting | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The US Department of Justice on Wednesday announced it had reached an “agreement in principle” to settle claims from the November 2017 mass shooting at a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church for $144.5 million, according to a news release.

    A federal court in 2021 ruled the US government was liable for damages caused by the shooting, in which 26 people were killed and 22 others wounded. The Air Force, a judge concluded, failed to exercise reasonable care when it didn’t submit the shooter’s criminal history to the FBI’s background check system, which increased the risk of physical harm to the general public.

    A court must still approve some parts of the settlements, the DOJ release said.

    “No words or amount of money can diminish the immense tragedy of the mass shooting in Sutherland Springs,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said. “Today’s announcement brings the litigation to a close, ending a painful chapter for the victims of this unthinkable crime.”

    This story is breaking and will be updated.

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  • Suicide note and weapons found when police searched the Nashville shooter’s home, warrant shows | CNN

    Suicide note and weapons found when police searched the Nashville shooter’s home, warrant shows | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 to connect with a trained counselor or visit 988lifeline.org.



    CNN
     — 

    Investigators found a suicide note when they executed a search warrant at the home of the shooter who killed six people at a Nashville school last week, along with more weapons and ammunition, according to an inventory of items seized.

    The search warrant and the list of items found were released Tuesday, just over a week after the shooter, former student Audrey Hale, opened fire at The Covenant School, killing three 9-year-olds and three adults.

    The warrant, executed the same day as the shooting, shows authorities also found several Covenant School yearbooks and a school photo, in addition to the shooter’s journals. Some of the journals are described as being related to “school shootings; firearm courses,” the list indicates.

    A total of 47 items were seized, according to the list.

    Hale, 28, fired 152 rounds in the attack, which was planned “over a period of months,” police said in a news release Monday. Hale “considered the actions of other mass murderers,” that release said, and “acted totally alone.”

    Hale, who police said was under care for an emotional disorder, had legally purchased seven guns and hidden them at home, Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake previously said.

    Hale was armed with three guns during the attack, which ended after Nashville officers arrived on the scene and confronted the shooter.

    Two officers opened fire – a moment captured in bodycam footage later released by police – and killed Hale at 10:27 a.m., 14 minutes after the shooter entered the private Christian school, according to Nashville police spokesperson Don Aaron.

    Police continue to work to determine a motive for the attack, but they said previously that writings left behind by Hale – which continue to be reviewed by police and the FBI – made clear it was “calculated and planned.”

    Hale targeted the school and Covenant Presbyterian Church, to which the school is attached, police said, but it’s believed the victims were fired upon at random.

    Those victims were Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, all 9 years old, as well as school custodian Mike Hill, 61, substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, who was head of the school.

    Four police officers who responded to the shooting described to reporters Tuesday how their training guided them as they hunted the shooter.

    Officer Rex Engelbert praised two staff members “who stayed on the scene and didn’t run.” They gave him the concise information he needed, as well as “the exact key I needed to enter the building,” he said.

    Engelbert and Detective Sgt. Jeff Mathes became part of a team that cleared classrooms and searched for the shooter. When they reached the first-floor atrium they took gunfire from the shooter.

    “We were still unsure where that was, but our job is to go towards it, so we went through a pair of double doors,” Mathes said.

    Detective Michael Collazo, who heard the shooter might be on the second floor, joined the group.

    “At some point around that time frame is when we started hearing the first shots … that’s when everything kind of kicked into overdrive for us, “Collazo said.

    After they went up a stairwell and down a second-floor hallway, they encountered a victim on the floor.

    “Doing what our training tells us to do in those situations and following the stimulus, all of us stepped over a victim. To this day, don’t know how I did that morally, but training is what kicked in,” Mathes said.

    Smoke was filling the building and the fire alarm was blaring, Collazo said. Then there was a gunshot to their right.

    He asked Engelbert, who had a scope on his rifle, to lead the team toward the gunshot. Engelbert said things were unfolding “very similar to the training we receive.”

    “We then proceeded continually towards the sounds of gunfire and then once we got near the shooter, the shooter was neutralized,” Mathes said.

    The school shooting – the deadliest since 21 people, including 19 children, were killed at a school in Uvalde, Texas, last May – renewed debate over the scourge of American gun violence, access to firearms and school safety, a fight that spilled over into the state legislature this week.

    Tennessee House Republicans on Monday took steps toward expelling three Democratic state representatives who participated in protests at the state Capitol last Thursday calling for more gun control in the wake of the deadly mass shooting.

    A vote on whether to expel the three members – Reps. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis – is slated for Thursday, according to The Tennessean.

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  • Wisconsin voters are deciding control of state Supreme Court in most consequential election of 2023 | CNN Politics

    Wisconsin voters are deciding control of state Supreme Court in most consequential election of 2023 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Wisconsin voters on Tuesday are deciding the outcome of a state Supreme Court race that could be the most consequential election of the year.

    The race between Democratic-backed Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz and Republican-backed former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly could both break a decadelong era of Republican dominance in one of the nation’s most important swing states and prove pivotal in the fight over the future of abortion access. It’s the most expensive state judicial race ever.

    Conservatives currently hold a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin high court. But the retirement of conservative Justice Patience Roggensack has given liberals an opening to retake control for at least the next two years, and with it fundamentally shift the political landscape in a state that has been ensnared in political conflict for more than a decade. The race could also effectively decide how the court will rule on legal challenges to Wisconsin’s 1849 law banning abortion – which took effect after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.

    Wisconsin is one of 14 states that directly elect their Supreme Court justices, and winners get 10-year terms. The races are nominally nonpartisan, but political parties leave little doubt as to which candidates they support. Spending in this year’s race – which reached $28.8 million as of March 29, according to the Brennan Center – has far surpassed the previous record for spending on a state judicial contest: $15.4 million in a 2004 Illinois race.

    Republican sway in Wisconsin began with Gov. Scott Walker’s election in 2010 – a victory that was followed by the passage of union-busting laws and state legislative districts drawn to effectively ensure GOP majorities, all green-lit by a state Supreme Court where conservatives have held the majority since 2008.

    Walker lost his bid for a third term to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2018. But Evers has been hamstrung by the Republican-led legislature, with the conservative Supreme Court breaking ties on matters such as a 2022 ruling during the once-a-decade redistricting process in favor of using Republican-drawn legislative maps rather than ones submitted by Evers. The decision cemented Republicans’ solid majority in the state legislature.

    Revisiting those maps, which Protasiewicz has criticized, could lead to new state legislative districts that are less favorable to Republicans if she is victorious.

    The court has also shaped Wisconsin elections in other ways. It barred the use of most ballot drop boxes last year and ruled that no one can return a ballot in person on behalf of another voter. The court played a pivotal role in the outcome of the 2020 election in Wisconsin: Justices voted 4-3, with conservative Brian Hagedorn joining the court’s three liberals, to reject former President Donald Trump’s efforts to throw out ballots in Democratic-leaning counties.

    Tuesday’s election will set the stage for the 2024 presidential race, with the court likely to be asked to weigh in again on election rules, including the state’s voter identification law, and potentially sort through another round of legal challenges afterward.

    But the most immediate battle likely to reach the justices as early as this fall is over Wisconsin’s 1849 law that bans abortion in nearly all circumstances.

    Groups on both sides of the abortion divide have poured vast sums into the race and have attempted to mobilize voters ahead of Tuesday’s election.

    Though the two candidates have refused to say how they’d rule on the issue, they’ve left little doubt about their leanings.

    In a debate last month, Protasiewicz said she was “making no promises” on how she would rule. But she also noted her personal support for abortion rights, as well as endorsements from pro-abortion rights groups. And she pointed to Kelly’s endorsement by Wisconsin Right to Life, which opposes abortion rights.

    “If my opponent is elected, I can tell you with 100% certainty, that 1849 abortion ban will stay on the books. I can tell you that,” Protasiewicz said.

    Kelly, who has done legal work for Wisconsin Right to Life, shot back, saying Protasiewicz’s comments were “absolutely not true.”

    “You don’t know what I’m thinking about that abortion ban,” he said. “You have no idea. These things you do not know.”

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  • Taxes and adulting: What to know about filing taxes on your own for the first time | CNN Business

    Taxes and adulting: What to know about filing taxes on your own for the first time | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    For most people in their early- to mid-20s, filing taxes is right up there with having to pay rent and realizing you can’t take summers off anymore: an unwelcome fact of being an adult.

    If you’re a recent graduate working your first full-time job or supporting yourself for the first time, this tax-filing season may indeed be your first experience doing your own taxes without the help of a parent.

    So here are seven things to keep in mind.

    If you’re confounded by filing your taxes, you may think it’s because you’re young and inexperienced. Nonsense. Tax filers of all ages get confused by tax rules and the intricacies of all the tax documents required. And it doesn’t help that tax provisions are tweaked frequently.

    Your tax return is a financial snapshot of your life over a 12-month period, in this case 2022. And a lot can happen during that time that will have tax implications and need to be reported.

    “Think about what went on in your life in the past year,” said Tom O’Saben, the director of tax content at the National Association of Tax Preparers.

    For example, O’Saben asked, did you work more than one job? Did you move for a new job? Did you get laid off? Did you get married or have a child? Did you make student loan payments? Did you make money selling anything you own? Did you buy a home?

    Next, pull together all necessary documentation. In addition to receipts and other paperwork you may have kept, you should also have tax forms that were either mailed to you or sent electronically — from your employers, brokerage firms, college, loan servicers, the state unemployment office, etc.

    You’ll need the information on these forms to fill out your tax return accurately. Keep in mind, the IRS also has a copy of these “third-party” forms that were sent to you, so its systems will flag if there is any discrepancy between what is on the form sent to you and what you put on your return.

    Most people realize what they earn at a full-time job is subject to income tax and that those taxes are automatically withheld by your employer.

    But any side hustle income you generate, or money you make as a gig worker, is also taxable, even if you’re paid in cash or via a payment app. Ditto for tips. And often tax on that type of income is not withheld. You’re just paid a gross amount and will have to set aside money to cover the taxes owed on it.

    Severance payments and unemployment benefits may be taxable too.

    And so is investment income — meaning the profits (or “capital gain”) you make on the sale of an investment or property — which is basically the price for which you sell something minus the original price you paid for it. (Also worth noting: if you have investment income, also called “passive” income, it is taxed at a lower rate than your paycheck — i.e., “earned” income — assuming you held your investment longer than a year.)

    Most dividends and interest payments are also taxable.

    And remember all that lucrative fun you had betting on the SuperBowl or spending a weekend with friends in Vegas? Yup, your winnings from gambling and sports betting are considered taxable income. (The semi-good news is if you had any gambling losses last year, they can offset your wins, so it may be that you won’t owe tax on your winnings if your losses cancel them out.)

    For many of these types of income you should have received forms from your employer (a W2 if you’re a full-time employee); from your clients if you’re a contract or gig worker (eg. a 1099-K, a 1099-NEC) or, starting next year, from the payment apps on which you get paid for your goods and services (e.g., a 1099-MISC). Meanwhile, banks and brokerage firms will send you 1099-INTs (for interest), 1099-DIVs (for dividends) and 1099-Bs (for your capital gains and losses).

    If you live in Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington or Wyoming, you don’t have to file a state tax return because those states don’t impose an income tax. If you live in New Hampshire and Tennessee, you won’t have to file a return for your salary and wages. But you may have to file a return if you got income from dividends and interest during the tax year.

    The standard deduction reduces your adjusted gross income. The amount for tax year 2022 is $12,950 for singles; $25,900 for married couples filing jointly; and $19,400 for heads of household (e.g., a single parent).

    “That’s the amount of money you don’t have to pay tax on,” O’Saben noted.

    The only filers who itemize their deductions are those whose deductions add up to more than the standard deduction. Itemized deductions include: charitable contributions, state and local income and property taxes, mortgage interest and casualty loss if you live in a federally declared disaster area.

    But even if you just take the standard deduction you may also take in addition what are called “above-the-line” deductions. These include up to $2,500 in student loan interest that you paid in 2022 (your student loan servicer should send you a Form 1098-E); any contributions you made to a deductible IRA or to a Health Savings Account; and, if you’re a teacher, up to $300 of what you spent on school supplies and personal protective equipment for your classroom.

    [For a fuller list of different types of taxable income (“additional income”) and above-the-line deductions (“adjustments to income”), see Schedule 1 to the federal 1040 form.]

    A tax credit is a dollar-for-dollar reduction of your tax bill and if it’s a “refundable” credit, which some are, it can actually increase your refund.

    Some credits to be aware of, especially if you’re not making a lot of income:

    The Earned Income Tax Credit: The EITC is intended to help low- and moderate-income workers (defined in 2022 as those with earned income under $59,187), and especially filers with children.

    The EITC is also available to earners without qualifying children and it’s worth $560 for 2022.

    Education credits: If you were in school last year, footed the costs and are not claimed as a dependent on anyone else’s tax return, you may be eligible for an American Opportunity Tax Credit or a Lifetime Learning Credit. To see if you qualify, here’s an IRS table comparing the eligibility requirements and the value of each of those credits. Also, check to see if your educational institution sent you a Form 1098-T, which you will need if you claim one of these credits.

    The Saver’s Credit: The Saver’s Credit is a federal match for lower-income earners’ retirement contributions for up to $2,000 a year.

    The Child Tax Credit: If you’re a parent you may claim a maximum child tax credit of $2,000 for each child through age 16 if your modified adjusted gross income is below $200,000 ($400,000 if filing jointly). Above those levels, the child tax credit starts to get reduced. And the portion of the credit treated as refundable — meaning it is paid to you even if you don’t owe any federal income tax — is capped at $1,500, and that is only available to those with earned income of at least $2,500.

    And if you paid for child care in 2022, you may be eligible to claim a dependent care credit.

    Your federal tax return is due on April 18. That is the day by which you must have filed your 2022 individual tax return and paid any remaining federal income taxes owed for last year. The only exceptions are for those who lived in federally declared disaster areas, in which case their deadlines are later.

    But anyone can apply for — and will automatically be granted — a six-month extension until October 16, 2023 to file their return if they submit Form 4868 by April 18.

    Note, though, that an extension to file is not an extension to pay if you still owe the IRS more in taxes for last year than you actually paid in 2022.

    So, unless you have good reason to believe you will receive a refund, get a ballpark estimate of what more you think you’ll owe the IRS and send in that check by April 18 if you file for an extension. Otherwise you could be hit with a late payment penalty. And that could be compounded by a failure-to-file penalty if you didn’t file on time or didn’t get an automatic filing extension.

    Sign up for CNN’s Adulthood, But Better newsletter series. Our seven-part guide has tips to help you make more informed decisions around personal finance, career, wellness and personal connections.

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  • FDA inspection finds sterilization issues at recalled eye drop manufacturer’s facility | CNN

    FDA inspection finds sterilization issues at recalled eye drop manufacturer’s facility | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The manufacturer of eye drops that have been linked to an outbreak of serious bacterial infections in the US, including at least three deaths, did not follow proper protocol to prevent contamination of its products, according to an inspection report published Friday by the US Food and Drug Administration.

    The FDA visited a Global Pharma Healthcare facility in India for an inspection that started in mid-February, 2½ weeks after the company recalled EzriCare Artificial Tears due to possible contamination.

    At the time of the recall, there were 55 reports of adverse events including eye infections, permanent loss of vision and at least one death with a bloodstream infection. As of late last month, 68 infections had been identified in 16 states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There have been three deaths, eight cases of vision loss and four surgical eye removals reported.

    An 11-day inspection of the Global Pharma facility resulted in 11 observations by the FDA, including a “manufacturing process that lacked assurance of product sterility,” specifically for batches of product that were manufactured between December 2020 and April 2022 and shipped to the US.

    The EzriCare Artificial Tears product, which is manufactured by Global Pharma, is part of an outbreak of infections from bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

    This rare drug-resistant bacteria can spread among people who don’t have symptoms – and to people who haven’t used the eye drops, according to the CDC. This type of spread is particularly common in health care settings.

    “The bacteria can spread when one patient carrying the bacteria exposes another patient, or when patients touch common items or when healthcare workers transmit the germs which is why infection control, like hand hygiene, is so important,” the agency told CNN in an email Monday.

    Several cases in the current outbreak have been identified in people who were carrying the bacteria without signs or symptoms of clinical infections, the CDC said. These cases were discovered through screenings at inpatient health care facilities that had clusters of infections.

    The particular strain of the bacteria associated with this outbreak had never before been reported in the US, and related infections have been identified at acute care hospitals, long-term care facilities, emergency departments, urgent care clinics and other outpatient facilities.

    People affected by the outbreak reported using different brands of artificial tears, but EzriCare Artificial Tears was most commonly reported.

    The FDA inspection of the Global Pharma facility is part of an ongoing compliance matter.

    “The FDA’s highest priority is protecting public health – this includes working with manufacturers to quickly remove unsafe drugs from shelves when they are identified,” the agency said in an email Monday. “The FDA continues to monitor this issue and is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the companies recalling these affected products. We urge consumers to stop using these products which may be harmful to their health.”

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  • Morning after pill brand speeds up retail access, doubles supply per pack | CNN Business

    Morning after pill brand speeds up retail access, doubles supply per pack | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    One maker said it is responding to high demand for the morning-after pill, after the US Supreme Court last year ended a constitutional right to abortion, by speeding up availability of the emergency contraceptive in retail stores and introducing a new two-count pack.

    Julie launched as a one-step tablet of emergency contraceptive containing Levonorgestrel, the key ingredient in the popular Plan B emergency contraceptive that was approved by FDA in late 1990s without a prescription, at 4,500 Walmart stores nationwide last September.

    The startup experienced a surge in demand for its $42 tablet at launch amid an overall spike in purchases of emergency contraceptive following the US Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in on June 24, 2022.

    The FDA-approved morning-after pill can reduce the chance of pregnancy after unprotected sex or failure of another contraceptive method like a condom, and is ideally taken within 72 hours. The pill, which is legal in all 50 US states, works by delaying ovulation or preventing implantation and cannot terminate a pregnancy.

    While the plan from the beginning was always to make the product widely accessible as quickly possible, the Supreme Court’s ruling only compelled the startup to accelerate the timetable for Julie’s nationwide rollout.

    “The Dobbs decision and overturning Roe v. Wade last year rocked everyone’s world, our customers and our retail partners,” said Amanda E/J Morrison, cofounder of Julie. “It lit a fire under us to provide our product to more women and, more importantly, to educate women about emergency contraceptives.”

    In April, just seven months after hitting the market, Julie is now expanding into 5,600 CVS stores and 1,500 Target stores. The brand is also introducing a new 2-count pack of its emergency contraception (which has a three-year expiration period). The two-count pack rolled out at CVS locations over the weekend.

    “With the two-pack, we want to make it easier for women to keep extra emergency contraceptive at home, just like they would with other birth control options like condoms,” said Morrison.

    The price for two-count pack is $70. Morrison said the pill works most effectively the closer it is taken after unprotected sex, ideally within 72 hours.

    Dr. Colleen Denny, a clinical associate professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said she saw the upside to a two-count pack of emergency contraception, which she hasn’t seen before from other emergency contraception brands.

    “It generally makes sense for barriers to emergency contraception, prescription and over the counter, to be as low as possible,” said Denny,

    “Emergency contraception is incredibly safe and effective at preventing pregnancy when used in the right time frame,” she said. “Relationships are complicated. There can be situations where there isn’t access to emergency contraception or women might not ask the partner to use it. So being able to have access to one pill and a backup is a great idea.”

    Kelly Cleland, executive director of the American Society for Emergency Contraception, said emergency contraception brands, like Julie, still have to work harder at making the product not only more accessible, but also more affordable.

    “I am in favor of expanding access, but this is a missed opportunity when a generic brand comes into the market with a high price barrier,” Cleland said about Julie’s $70 price for the two-count pack.

    Cleland said a study done last year by the American Society for Emergency Contraception on access to emergency contraception in stores compared price at retail for branded and generic emergency contraception options. The report said some generic options were priced at $6 or less.

    Julie said it set the price for its single pill and two-count pack so it can fund its one-for-one donation program (in which the company donates one box for every box purchased) and to cover business costs tied to packaging and marketing.

    By overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court revoked the notion that the constitutional right to privacy included an abortion. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court expanded states’ authority to regulate or restrict abortion.

    A total of 26 US states have since implemented new abortion restrictions or all-out bans.

    In the rulings’ immediate aftermath, doctors and prescribers saw a sharp jump in demand for different forms of contraception, including emergency contraception, and longer-lasting forms of birth control. The rush on emergency contraceptives forced some pharmacy chains to impose temporary purchase limits.

    “Every time there is a new development on restrictions to reproduction health care, there’s a run on emergency contraceptive. Our retail partners confirmed this,” said Morrison, adding that news events continue to influence buying patterns for emergency contraceptive.

    “The current political climate has emboldened Julie,” Morrison said. This, according to the company, includes expanding Julie’s available within communities through unexpected places like bars, restaurants and coffee shops.

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  • NASA set to unveil the crew of astronauts for moon flyby mission | CNN

    NASA set to unveil the crew of astronauts for moon flyby mission | CNN

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    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    Four astronauts — including three Americans and one Canadian — will be tapped by NASA to complete a generation-defining mission to the moon’s orbit, returning humans to deeper into the solar system than has been reached in five decades.

    On Monday, the public will finally learn the crew members’ names.

    Scheduled to launch in 2024, Artemis II will be the program’s first crewed mission to orbit the moon, flying farther into space than any humans since the Apollo program. It will pave the way for the Artemis III crew to walk on the moon in 2025, all aboard the world’s most powerful rocket and at a price tag that by then will approach $100 billion.

    Following months of closed-door decision making, NASA officials plan to unveil the names of the crew members in a ceremony scheduled for Monday at 11 am ET.

    Though officials have remained tight-lipped about their choices, CNN previously spoke with nearly a dozen current and former NASA officials and astronauts to pull back the curtain on the secretive selection process.

    Reid Wiseman, a 47-year-old decorated naval aviator and test pilot who was first selected to be a NASA astronaut in 2009, is at the top of the list, according to CNN’s prior reporting.

    Wiseman served as chief of the astronaut office until November 2022. While the chief is not permitted to fly while holding the post, they are able to wrangle the best flight assignments upon stepping down, an “acknowledged perk” of the job, according to former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman.

    Before stepping down as astronaut chief, Wiseman was also responsible for the decision to broaden the pool of astronauts eligible to fly in order to include himself. While NASA had initially deemed 18 astronauts to be the “Artemis Team” and eligible to fly on moon missions, Wiseman expanded the group of candidates to all 41 active NASA astronauts.

    People familiar with the process also told CNN that along with Wiseman, there are a handful of other candidates atop the list:

    • Randy Bresnik, 55, is also a decorated naval aviator and test pilot who flew combat missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has flown two missions to the International Space Station: one on the Space Shuttle, another on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Bresnik is often mentioned as a top contender for Artemis because, since 2018, he has overseen the astronaut office’s development and testing of all rockets and spacecraft that will be used in the Artemis missions.
    • Anne McClain, 43, is a decorated army pilot and West Point graduate who flew more than 200 combat missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and went on to graduate from the US Naval Test Pilot School in 2013, the same year she was selected to be a NASA astronaut. After launching on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2018, she spent more than 200 days at the International Space Station and served as the lead of two spacewalks.
    • Stephanie Wilson is the most senior astronaut on this list. The 56-year-old joined NASA’s 1996 astronaut class, and she served as a mission specialist on three Space Shuttle flights, including the first flight after the 2003 Columbia disaster, which killed seven astronauts.
    • Christina Koch, 44, is a veteran of six spacewalks. She holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, with a total of 328 days in space. Koch is also an an electrical engineer who helped develop scientific instruments for multiple NASA mission. She’s also spent a year at the South Pole, an arduous stay that could well prepare her for the intensity of a moon mission.
    • Jessica Meir is 45-year-old biologist with a doctorate from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She was a member of a NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) mission in 2002, which involved spending days in an underwater research facility, and, in 2016, completed a two-week caving mission in Italy.

    Koch and Meir together conducted the first three all-female spacewalks in 2019 and 2020.

    Rounding out the Artemis II crew will be one astronaut from Canada, terms that were cemented in a 2020 treaty between the two countries.

    The Canadian Space Agency’s currently has a cadre of just four astronauts, but among them, Jeremy Hansen has generated the most buzz, according to CNN’s reporting. Hansen was selected to be an astronaut almost 14 years ago, but he’s still waiting for his first flight assignment. The 47-year-old fighter pilot recently became the first Canadian to be put in charge of training for a new class of NASA astronauts.

    NASA has also previously committed to selecting a crew with racial, gender and professional diversity.

    Those criteria have not historically been the case for high-profile missions. Going back to the Gemini era, astronauts selected for inaugural crewed missions have been only White and male, and typically come from a background as a military test pilot — a profile notably characterized in the 1979 book “The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe.

    That has held true through NASA’s most recent inaugural crewed flight, of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station in 2020, which included former military test pilots Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

    And it may hold mostly true for the Artemis II mission as well: Nearly a dozen current and former NASA officials and astronauts told CNN they anticipated multiple test pilots being named.

    However, if Wiseman, a White man, is selected, that means the other spots will almost certainly need to go to at least one woman and at least one person of color.

    The Artemis II mission will build on Artemis I, an uncrewed test mission that sent NASA’s Orion capsule on a 1.4 million-mile voyage to lap the moon that concluded in December. The space agency deemed that mission a success and is still working to review all the data collected.

    If all goes to plan, Artemis II will take off around November 2024. The crew members, strapped inside the Orion spacecraft, will launch atop a NASA-developed Space Launch System rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

    The journey is expected to last about 10 days and will send the crew out beyond the moon, potentially further than any human has traveled in history, though the exact distance is yet to be determined.

    The “exact distance beyond the Moon will depend on the day of liftoff and the relative distance of the Moon from the Earth at the time of the mission,” NASA spokesperson Kathryn Hambleton said via email.

    After circling the moon, the spacecraft will return to Earth for a splashdown landing in the Pacific Ocean.

    Artemis II is expected to pave the way for the Artemis III mission later this decade, which NASA has vowed will put the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface. It will also mark the first time humans have touched down on the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

    The Artemis III mission is expected to take off later this decade. But much of the technology the mission will require, including spacesuits for walking on the moon and a lunar lander to ferry the astronauts to the moon’s surface, is still in development.

    NASA is targeting a 2025 launch date for Artemis III, though the space agency’s inspector general has already said delays will likely push the mission to 2026 or later.

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  • Member of pro-Nazi group used Molotov cocktails in attempt to burn down Ohio church planning to host a drag event, FBI says | CNN

    Member of pro-Nazi group used Molotov cocktails in attempt to burn down Ohio church planning to host a drag event, FBI says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    An member of a neo-Nazi group was arrested Friday after attempting to burn down a church in Ohio that was planning to host a drag show event, according to court documents.

    Aimenn D. Penny, 20, of Alliance, Ohio, has been charged in the U.S. District Court in Cleveland with one count of malicious use of explosive materials and one count of possessing a destructive device, according to a criminal complaint.

    Authorities claim Penny used “Molotov cocktails against the Community Church of Chesterland (CCC) in Chesterland, Ohio, in an attempt to burn the church to the ground,” the Department of Justice said in a press release.

    “As alleged in the charging documents, the defendant used an explosive device to cause harm to a church he found objectionable,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said in the release. “It is the solemn duty of the Department of Justice to safeguard the right of all Americans to free expression, and I commend the work of law enforcement in this matter.”

    The FBI claims Penny is a member of “White Lives Matter,” a pro-Nazi group, according to an affidavit filed in court Friday. The FBI said the group has “racist, pro-Nazi, and homophobic views.”

    Penny confessed he attempted to burn down the church using Molotov cocktails, “to protect the children and stop the drag show event,” according to the criminal complaint.

    CNN has reached out to an attorney appointed to represent Penny but did not receive an immediate response. Penny made his initial appearance in federal court Friday and was remanded in custody. He is due to face a court hearing on Thursday, Michelle Sztul, the chief deputy clerk for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Cleveland, told CNN.

    The affidavit alleges the Ohio church was targeted in the early hours of Saturday, March 25. The FBI said the church was damaged by what appeared to be Molotov cocktails and had scorch marks on the front door, scorch marks on a sign on the exterior of the building and a broken sign on the southeast corner of the property.

    Investigators recovered broken glass pieces from a vodka bottle and a beer bottle each containing a cloth-type material, the affidavit said. A burnt matchstick and a blue plastic spray bottle filled with gasoline were found near the damaged door.

    Law enforcement agencies obtained a court order to collect historical location data from Penny’s cellphone after receiving a tip, the affidavit said. While searching Penny’s home, agents found a Nazi flag and other Nazi memorabilia, a handwritten note with ideological statements, a White Lives Matter of Ohio T-shirt, a gas mask, multiple rolls of blue painter’s tape and gas cans, the document says.

    The affidavit also said Penny traveled to Wadsworth, Ohio, on March 11, where he attended a drag queen story hour to “distribute propaganda flyers (sic)representing White Lives Matter Ohio’s anti-drag queen views.”

    The Community Church of Chesterland, located in Geauga County, went ahead with hosting the drag queen story hour and brunch event Saturday, the church’s minister told CNN.

    Rev. Jess Peacock said it’s not the first time the church has been targeted. They said representatives of the church have in recent weeks received hate mail and messages containing threats of protests and violence over planned drag events.

    “There hasn’t been a day or two where I have not received hate messages from my personal phone,” Peacock said.

    Peacock said they are “relieved” and “very pleased” over Friday’s arrest. No one was inside the church during the attempted firebombing and drag show events will go ahead there as planned, Peacock added.

    “We hold no ill will against this man whatsoever. We forgive this individual. But we do want this individual to be prosecuted to the fullest extent. Just to send a message and have them think twice about attacking a synagogue, a church or a mosque. We want to see peace, not violence,” Peacock said.

    First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle M. Baeppler for the Northern District of Ohio said, “Violence and destruction are never an acceptable way to express a disagreement with a particular viewpoint.”

    “While, as Americans, we enjoy the right to disagree, doing so peacefully is the only appropriate option,” Baeppler said.

    If convicted, Penny may face a mandatory minimum of five years and up to 20 years in prison for the malicious use of explosive materials charge and up to 10 years in prison for the possession of a destructive device charge, according to the DOJ.

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  • CDC to warn some travelers to watch for Marburg virus symptoms as it investigates outbreaks in Africa | CNN

    CDC to warn some travelers to watch for Marburg virus symptoms as it investigates outbreaks in Africa | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is sending personnel to Africa to help stop outbreaks of Marburg virus disease and is urging travelers to certain countries to take precautions. The CDC is also taking steps to keep infections from spreading to the United States.

    Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania are facing their first known outbreaks of Marburg virus, a viral fever with uncontrolled bleeding that’s a close cousin to Ebola. This week, the CDC urged travelers to both countries to avoid contact with sick people and to watch for symptoms for three weeks after leaving the area. Travelers to Equatorial Guinea should take enhanced precautions and avoid nonessential travel to the provinces where the outbreak is ongoing, the agency said.

    In the United States, the agency will post notices in international airports where most travelers arrive, warning them to watch for symptoms of the virus for 21 days and to seek care immediately if they become ill. They will also get a text reminder to watch for symptoms.

    The CDC is standing up a “center-led” emergency response; it’s not as all-encompassing as when the CDC stands up its Emergency Operations Center, such as for Covid-19 and mpox. But it will refocus the efforts and attention of the staff of its National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases to respond to the outbreaks, which are in two countries on opposite sides of Africa, indicating that the deadly hemorrhagic fever is spreading.

    Equatorial Guinea, on the coast in West Africa, declared an outbreak of Marburg virus disease in mid-February with cases spread across multiple provinces. As of March 22, Equatorial Guinea had 13 confirmed cases, including nine people who have died and one who has recovered, according to the World Health Organization. Nine CDC staffers are on the ground there. They have established a field laboratory and are assisting with testing, case identification and contact tracing.

    Tanzania, on the coast in East Africa, declared an outbreak of Marburg virus disease on March 21, with cases reported in two villages in the Kagera region, according to the CDC. As of March 22, Tanzania has had eight confirmed cases, including five deaths. The CDC has a permanent office in Tanzania that is assisting with the outbreak. It is sending additional staff to support those efforts.

    Marburg virus is a rare and deadly virus that causes fever, chills, muscle pain, rash, sore throat, diarrhea, weakness or unexplained bleeding or bruising. It is spread through contact with body fluids and contaminated surfaces. People can also catch it from infected animals. It is fatal in about half of cases who get it. Other countries in Africa have had to quell outbreaks before.

    In its early stages, the infection is difficult to distinguish from other illnesses, so a history of travel to either of those countries will be essential to helping clinicians spot it.

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  • Florida House passes bill extending ban on sexual orientation and gender identity instruction to 8th grade | CNN Politics

    Florida House passes bill extending ban on sexual orientation and gender identity instruction to 8th grade | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Florida House voted Friday to extend a prohibition on teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity to eighth grade, reviving a debate from last year that sparked widespread condemnation from Democrats and copycat legislation in Republican statehouses around the country.

    The bill, which passed 77-35 in the Republican-controlled House, would go further than current Florida law to restrict the rights of transgender individuals in the state and limit what schools can discuss and teach about sex.

    The bill would force K-12 public schools to define sex as “an immutable biological trait” and says it is “false” to use a pronoun that doesn’t correspond to that sex. It would ban teachers from using their preferred pronouns when talking to a student, and it also says that schools cannot require teachers or students to refer to another person by their preferred pronouns if they differ from that person’s sex at birth.

    Under the bill, any materials used by schools as part of sex education curriculum would have to be approved by the state Department of Education.

    The existing law, signed last year by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, restricts instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom through third grade or in an age-appropriate manner for older grades. Democrats, LGBTQ groups and some businesses, most notably Disney, objected to the measure, which opponents dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

    DeSantis argued at the time that young children should not be exposed to concepts such as gender identity. However, his administration this month proposed extending the prohibition through high school.

    A Senate version of the House bill passed received a favorable recommendation from a committee on March 20 and is awaiting further action.

    The bill that passed Friday would also give parents and citizens more power to challenge classroom materials they consider pornographic or believe contain sexual conduct. Schools would have five days to remove any book that is challenged. Schools must hold public meetings to determine whether the material should be allowed. If a parent disagrees with the decision, the school will have to pay for a special magistrate picked by the state Department of Education to review the material and make a determination.

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  • US Justice Department sues Norfolk Southern following train derailment in East Palestine | CNN

    US Justice Department sues Norfolk Southern following train derailment in East Palestine | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The US Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against Norfolk Southern Thursday, alleging violations of the Clean Water Act (CWA) and seeking damages over the train derailment and subsequent environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, in February.

    The Norfolk Southern Railway Company and parent company Norfolk Southern Corporation are both named in the suit, court records show. The DOJ filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency.

    The DOJ says the lawsuit seeks “injunctive relief, cost recovery, and civil penalties” for violations of the CWA, including discharges of pollutants and hazardous materials into waters, and under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).

    Norfolk Southern says its focus is on making “progress every day cleaning up the site, assisting residents whose lives were impacted by the derailment, and investing in the future of East Palestine and the surrounding areas,” according to a statement sent to CNN from the company’s spokesperson, Connor Spielmaker, on Friday.

    “We are working with urgency, at the direction of the US EPA, and making daily progress,” the statement said. “That remains our focus and we’ll keep working until we make it right.”

    On February 3, a Norfolk Southern train derailed, igniting a dayslong inferno, spewing poisonous fumes into the air, killing thousands of fish and leaving residents to wonder if it was safe to live in East Palestine, Ohio.

    The fiery derailment prompted fears of a catastrophic explosion of vinyl chloride – a highly flammable chemical linked to an increased risk of cancer. After a mandatory evacuation order, crews released vinyl chloride into a trench and burned it off – averting an explosion but spawning new health concerns.

    Officials said tests showed that the air and municipal water were safe and allowed residents to return home, but some have reported a variety of new health problems including rashes, nausea, bloody noses and trouble breathing.

    While studying the possible health impacts from the train derailment, seven US government investigators also briefly fell ill in early March, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to CNN on Thursday.

    “Symptoms resolved for most team members later the same afternoon, and everyone resumed work on survey data collection within 24 hours. Impacted team members have not reported ongoing health effects,” a CDC spokesperson said in a statement.

    The train operator Norfolk Southern must handle and pay for all necessary cleanup, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The company has sent some hazardous waste out of state – fueling more questions about safety.

    The DOJ isn’t the only one filing a lawsuit against the railroad. The state of Ohio also filed a 58-count federal lawsuit against the rail company on March 14, saying Norfolk Southern violated numerous state, federal and Ohio common laws and violated the state’s CERCLA act.

    Norfolk Southern has set up a new web page that summarizes community impact efforts. Spielmaker said it “provides a 7-day look ahead and is updated daily and outlines Norfolk Southern’s continued environmental remediation efforts in concert with state and federal authorities.”

    “When a Norfolk Southern train derailed last month in East Palestine, Ohio, it released toxins into the air, soil, and water, endangering the health and safety of people in surrounding communities,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement. “With this complaint, the Justice Department and the EPA are acting to pursue justice for the residents of East Palestine and ensure that Norfolk Southern carries the financial burden for the harm it has caused and continues to inflict on the community.”

    The Justice Department, citing annual company reports, alleges in the suit Norfolk Southern both increased operating income and dropped operating costs over the past four years, including making “reductions in spending to repair, service, and maintain locomotives and freight cars, perform train inspections, and pay engine crews and train crews.” The suit also alleges that these measures are a “focus” of the compensation of the company’s executives.

    The lawsuit claims when the train derailed and cars carrying hazardous materials were breached, the dispersion and subsequent combustion of those materials released toxic chemicals into the “air, soil, groundwater, and waterways.”

    The DOJ says seven local waterways including the Ohio River were contaminated as a result.

    The Ohio Department of Natural Resources reported “thousands of aquatic animals were killed in the five-mile span of waterway from the Site” to the confluence of two creeks the DOJ described as contaminated, the lawsuit says.

    DOJ is asking for $64,618 per day, per violation of the CWA and $55,808 per day or $2,232 per barrel of oil or unit of hazardous substance, per violation of the CWA – but it was not immediately clear from the suit how many days the DOJ considered the violation to be applicable.

    They’re also seeking a declaration of liability against the company for response costs; a mandated increase in safety precautions by Norfolk Southern when transporting hazardous materials; and for the railroad to “remedy, mitigate, and offset” the environmental damage and public health issues that have arisen as a result of the derailment, court documents show.

    In early March, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw told a US Senate hearing that the company would “clean the site safely, thoroughly, and with urgency.”

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  • Democratic congressman announces he has ‘serious but curable form of cancer’ | CNN Politics

    Democratic congressman announces he has ‘serious but curable form of cancer’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan announced in a statement on Friday that he has been “diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma, a serious but curable form of cancer.”

    The congressman went on to say, “In a few weeks, I will have surgery to remove the cancer. The prognosis after surgery and treatment is excellent. My doctors have advised me it will take a few weeks to recover after the surgery. I’m eager to have this chapter behind me and get back to work. But in the meantime, I’ll be away from the office for a period of time. My congressional office will remain open to serve the people of Michigan’s Eighth Congressional District.”

    This story is breaking and will be updated.

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  • Who will end up paying for the banking crisis: You | CNN Business

    Who will end up paying for the banking crisis: You | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    It cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation about $23 billion to clean up the mess that Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank left in the wake of their collapses earlier this month.

    Now, as the dust clears and the US banking system steadies, the FDIC needs to figure out where to send its invoice. While regional and mid-sized banks are behind the recent turmoil, it appears that large banks may be footing the bill.

    Ultimately, that means higher fees for bank customers and lower rates on their savings accounts.

    What’s happening: The FDIC maintains a $128 billion deposit insurance fund to insure bank deposits and protect depositors. That fund is typically supplied by quarterly payments from insured banks in the United States. But when a big, expensive event happens — like the FDIC making uninsured customers whole at Silicon Valley Bank — the agency is able to assess a special charge on the banking industry to recover the cost.

    The law also gives the FDIC the authority to decide which banks shoulder the brunt of that assessment fee. FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said this week that he plans to make the details of the latest assessment public in May. He has also hinted that he would protect community banks from having to shell out too much money.

    The fees that the FDIC assesses on banks tend to vary. Historically, they were fixed, but 2010’s Dodd-Frank act required that the agency needed to consider the size of a bank when setting rates. It also takes into consideration the “economic conditions, the effects on the industry, and such other factors as the FDIC deems appropriate and relevant,” according to Gruenberg.

    On Tuesday and Wednesday, members of the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee grilled Gruenberg about his plans to charge banks for the damage done by SVB and others, and repeatedly implored him to leave small banks alone.

    Gruenberg appeared receptive.

    “Will you commit to using your authority…to establish separate risk-based assessment systems for large and small members of the Deposit Insurance Fund so that these well-managed banks don’t have to bail out Silicon Valley Bank?” asked the US Rep. Andy Barr, a Republican who represents of Kentucky’s 6th district.

    “I’m certainly willing to consider that,” replied Gruenberg.

    “if smaller community banks in Texas will be left responsible for bailing out the failed banks in California and New York?” asked US Rep. Roger Williams, a Republican who represents Texas’ 25th district.

    “Let me just say, without forecasting what our board is going to vote, we’re going to be keenly sensitive to the impact on community banks,” replied Gruenberg.

    Representatives Frank Lucas, John Rose, Ayanna Pressley, Dan Meuser, Nikema Williams, Zach Nunn and Andy Ogles all asked similar questions and received similar responses. As did US Sens. Sherrod Brown and Cynthia Lummis.

    “I don’t doubt he’s still fielding a lot of phone calls,” from politicians pressuring him to place the burden on large banks, former FDIC chairman Bill Isaac told CNN.

    Smaller banks are saying that they’re unable to pick up this tab and didn’t have anything to do with the failure of “these two wild and crazy banks,” said Isaac. “They’re arguing to put the assessment on larger banks and as I understand it, the FDIC is thinking seriously about it,” he added.

    A spokesperson from the FDIC told CNN that the agency “will issue in May 2023 a proposed rulemaking for the special assessment for public comment.” In regard to Greunberg’s testimony they added that “when the boss says something, we defer to the boss.”

    Big banks: “We need to think hard about liquidity risk and concentrations of uninsured deposits and how that’s evaluated in terms of deposit insurance assessments,” said Gruenberg to the Senate Banking Committee, indicating that smaller banks that are operating carefully could be asked to bear less of the assessment.

    A larger assessment on big banks would add to what will already be a multi-billion dollar payment from the nation’s largest banks like JPMorgan Chase

    (JPM)    , Citigroup

    (C)    , Bank of America

    (BAC)     and Wells Fargo

    (WFC)    .

    The argument is that the largest US banks will be able to shoulder extra payments without collapsing under it. Those large banks also benefited greatly from the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank as wary customers sought safety by moving billions of dollars worth of money to big banks. 

    Passing it on: Regardless of who’s charged, the fees will eventually get passed on to bank customers in the end, said Isaac. “It’s going to be passed on to all customers. I have no doubts that banks will make up for these extra costs in their pricing — higher fees for services, higher prices for loans and less compensation for deposits.”

    It’s hard out there for a Wall Street banker. Or harder than it was.

    The average annual Wall Street bonus fell to $176,700 last year, a 26% drop from the previous year’s average of $240,400, according to estimates released Thursday by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

    While that’s a big decrease, the 2022 bonus figure is still more than twice the median annual income for US households, reports CNN’s Jeanne Sahadi.

    All in, Wall Street firms had a $33.7 billion bonus pool for 2022, which is 21% smaller than the previous year’s record of $42.7 billion — and the largest drop since the Great Recession.

    For New York City and New York State coffers, bonus season means a welcome infusion of revenue, since employees in the securities industry make up 5% of private sector employees in NYC and their pay accounts for 22% of the city’s private sector wages. In 2021, Wall Street was estimated to be responsible for 16% of all economic activity in the city.

    DiNapoli’s office projects the lower bonuses will bring in $457 million less in state income tax revenue and $208 million less for the city compared to the year before.

    Beleaguered retailed Bed Bath & Beyond will attempt to $300 million of its stock to repay creditors and fund its business as it struggles to avoid bankruptcy, reports CNN’s Nathaniel Meyersohn.

    If it’s not able to raise sufficient money from the offering, the home furnishings giant said Thursday it expects to “likely file for bankruptcy.”

    Bed Bath & Beyond was able to initially avoid bankruptcy in February by completing a complex stock offering that gave it both an immediate injection of cash and a pledge for more funding in the future to pay down its debt. That offering was backed by private equity group Hudson Bay Capital.

    But on Thursday, Bed Bath & Beyond said it was terminating the deal with Hudson Bay Capital for future funding and is turning to the public market.

    Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond dropped more than 26% Thursday. The stock was trading around 60 cents a share.

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  • ‘It’s not zero.’ Wall Street is pricing in a small but growing risk of a disastrous US default | CNN Business

    ‘It’s not zero.’ Wall Street is pricing in a small but growing risk of a disastrous US default | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    A US default would have such devastating economic and financial consequences that many observers dismiss the possibility out of hand. But investors are not ruling out such a nightmare scenario.

    Even though a default could wipe out millions of jobs and wreak havoc on Wall Street, the White House and Republican leaders in Washington are nowhere near a deal to avert disaster that could strike as soon as July.

    As politicians sleepwalk toward a potential debt ceiling crisis, financial markets have begun pricing in a small — but growing — chance of a disastrous default.

    The implied probability of a US government default has increased to approximately 2%, according to modeling by research provider MSCI shared exclusively with CNN. That calculation is based on the cost to insure US debt in the market for credit default swaps.

    Although the probability of default is tiny, it has increased roughly fivefold since January 2, MSCI said.

    Since then, chaos in Congress, underlined by the historic dysfunction leading up to the election of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have raised concerns about how lawmakers will reach a compromise on much thornier issues such as the debt ceiling.

    “The probability of default has gone up noticeably,” Andy Sparks, head of portfolio management research at MSCI, told CNN in an interview. “It is small, but it’s not zero. And it has gone up in a very significant way.”

    An actual default would be terrible — for both Wall Street and Main Street. Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi has described a default as “financial Armageddon.”

    “I don’t think anyone should be complacent about this,” said Sparks. “Turmoil in the banking system shows how things can change very quickly.”

    The federal government hit the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling in January, forcing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to take accounting moves known as “extraordinary measures” to avoid default.

    Yellen has used unusually strong language for a former central banker to warn Congress against messing with the debt ceiling. On Thursday, Yellen said a breach of the debt ceiling could spark a “prolonged downturn and a global financial crisis.”

    “It could upend the lives of millions of Americans and those around the world,” Yellen said in a speech.

    Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius told CNN in January that even a near-default could cause a recession as well as turmoil in financial markets. Moody’s estimates that even a brief breach of the debt limit would kill almost a million jobs.

    All of this explains why many believe Washington will get a deal done before disaster strikes, as it has in the past.

    Even though leaders in Washington are not seriously negotiating on a debt ceiling deal, there is still time.

    The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that even without addressing the debt ceiling, the government will have enough cash to avoid a default until sometime between July and September. The exact timing for the so-called X-date will depend in large part on 2022 tax collections in April.

    Tom Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, told CNN last week that it’s “hard to imagine” the government would breach the debt ceiling.

    Still, Barkin conceded if it happened the Fed would be forced to react, much like it did after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

    Others are more pessimistic about the debt ceiling.

    Greg Valliere, chief US policy strategist at AGF Investments, only sees a 60% chance that Congress reaches a deal to address the debt ceiling.

    “I think we’ll come right up to the precipice,” Valliere, who is based in Washington, told CNN. “Most people in this city feel it’s inconceivable we could default on our debt. I agree it’s unlikely but it’ll be much closer than people thought.”

    He pointed to the more radical makeup of the Republican caucus and the reluctance among some lawmakers to vote for a debt ceiling hike.

    Even McCarthy, the Republican House Speaker, told CNBC this week there has been “no progress” in negotiations. “Time is ticking. Now I’m very concerned about where we are,” McCarthy said.

    “I worry there are just enough House radicals who might not accept anything. And it doesn’t take many of them to make this a crisis,” Valliere said.

    Asked about MSCI’s estimate of a 2% implied probability of a default, Valliere said that number is low.

    “The markets are too sanguine,” he said. “The market has felt for months that this is like the little boy who cries wolf. But this is not a typical debt ceiling debate.”

    There are some early indicators of concern popping up in the bond market.

    Morgan Stanley wrote in a report on Thursday that “kinks” have emerged in the Treasury bill market around bonds that mature around the X-date.

    “Market attention could swing back to this issue soon” Morgan Stanley advised clients.

    Or maybe not.

    McCarthy and his top lieutenants say they are prepared to push ahead with a fallback plan: A party-line bill to raise the debt ceiling, CNN’s Manu Raju reports.

    But such a move could be risky. Republicans can only afford to lose four of their own members in any party-line vote.

    There is also a possibility that Congress punts, reaching a short-term agreement to delay the issue by a few months.

    Eurasia Group analyst Jon Lieber said in a report Thursday there is a growing chance that lawmakers put off a debt ceiling solution until the end of the year.

    “A short-term punt would merely delay and not eliminate the disruption risks of the debt limit,” Lieber said.

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  • Severe weather threat ramps up as western storm pushes east | CNN

    Severe weather threat ramps up as western storm pushes east | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The same storm system that brought so much rain and snow to the western US is moving east and intensifying, making for a potential severe weather outbreak that could impact nearly 70 million people from the Mississippi Valley to the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys on Friday.

    “A concerning scenario appears to be developing,” warned the Storm Prediction Center. “Intense, damaging gusts and several tornadoes (some strong and long-track) are expected.”

    This weather pattern will be similar to the ones we have seen repeatedly over the last few months, when an atmospheric river event or storm system impacting the West intensifies as it moves eastward, resulting in a severe weather outbreak across the midsection of the country.

    There is a small chance of storms Thursday across the Plains, including in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Sioux Falls and Topeka. We could also see gusty winds, hail and the possibility of an isolated tornado.

    However, the severe threat ramps up on Friday.

    The storm center has placed a Level 4 out of 5 “moderate risk” of severe weather for nearly 4 million people in two separate areas along the Mississippi River: For portions of northeastern Arkansas, the Missouri Bootheel and western Tennessee, including Memphis, and for portions of eastern Iowa and northwest Illinois.

    Places such as Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Iowa City are included in the severe weather threat.

    Track the storms here

    “Things are still looking quite volatile in our region for Friday,” the National Weather Service office in Quad Cities, Iowa, said. “The storm motions are progged to be over 50 mph, given the strong wind fields, so people should plan ahead for sheltering in case severe weather strikes, as these storms will be moving quickly!”

    A wider area that stretches from northern Iowa and southwestern Wisconsin down to central Mississippi and southern Arkansas is under a Level 3 out of 5 “enhanced risk” of severe weather.

    This threat affects more than 14 million people in places such as Nashville, St. Louis, Des Moines and Little Rock.

    “Initially there could be a small tornado threat with storms as they enter our western counties, but a line of storms with a straight-line damaging wind threat will ultimately be the main concern,” the National Weather Service office in Nashville explained.

    Winds could gust as high as 70 mph and large hail is possible.

    Many of these storms will continue into the overnight hours, creating an even more dangerous scenario because people are asleep.

    How to be safe in severe weather

    This severe weather event comes one week after a deadly tornado outbreak killed dozens of people, many of them in Mississippi.

    Hear how tornado lifted couple up in the air while sitting in their bathtub

    “For this week our highest chance of severe weather is a little north of where it was last week,” National Weather Service meteorologist Amber Schlessiger told CNN. Schlessiger says that the region hit hard one week ago must be prepared. “People are going to be asleep and not put their alarms on until the next morning, so they need to have a way to be woken up.”

    There is also an existing threat of severe weather for more than 31 million people from southern Minnesota and Wisconsin down to portions of East Texas, northern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

    Gusty winds, large hail and the possibility of isolated tornadoes are all possible as the fast-moving storms track eastward.

    Along with the severe threat, heavy rainfall could lead to flooding. The prediction center has highlighted an area that stretches from eastern Oklahoma to Kentucky for a slight risk of excessive rainfall.

    “Hourly rates of 1-2 (inches) +/hr are possible (with these hourly rates largely driving the flash flood threat, as the bulk of the forecast precipitation is expected over a period of 3-6 hours,” the prediction center explained.

    Once the storms form, we could see them begin to “train” – meaning they roll over the same areas for long periods of time. This will be the main driver for potential flash flooding.

    Heavy snow will spread across much of the Upper Midwest, adding to their already banner winter season.

    “Winter weather-related advisories are in effect from South Dakota east into Minnesota and Wisconsin for the potential of snow totals generally between 3-6 (inches), with locally heavier totals of 10 (inches) + possible,” the prediction center said.

    Along with heavy snow, winds gusts as high as 50 mph could lead to whiteout conditions.

    “Gusty winds behind the front upwards of 50 mph will lead to areas of blowing snow and blizzard conditions, making travel treacherous to impossible.”

    Temperatures will remain unseasonably cold with highs on Thursday and Friday only making it into the 20s and 30s.

    Lows at night will drop into the single digits Saturday morning.

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