24 Jul 2025

US applications for jobless benefits fall for sixth straight week, remain at historically low level

by | posted in: All news | 0

By MATT OTT, Associated Press Business Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans filing for jobless aid fell for the sixth straight week, hitting the lowest level since mid-April.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims for the week ending July 19 fell by 4,000 to 217,000. That’s fewer than the 227,000 new applications analysts were expecting.

Related Articles


France’s first couple sue Candace Owens for defamation over claims that Brigitte Macron is a man


Most US adults still support legal abortion 3 years after Roe was overturned, an AP-NORC poll finds


Today in History: July 24, Apollo 11 returns home from the moon


Post office arson case for Pat Tillman’s brother suspended for competency exam


Flight attendant who police say secretly recorded girls in airplane bathroom sentenced to 18.5 years

Applications for unemployment aid are viewed as representative of layoffs.

Earlier in July, the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers added a surprising 147,000 jobs in June, adding to evidence that the American labor market continues to show resilience despite uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s economic policies. The job gains were much more than expected and the unemployment rate ticked down 4.1% from 4.2% in May.

Though the job market is broadly healthy by historical standards, some weakness has surfaced as employers contend with fallout from Trump’s policies, especially his aggressive tariffs, which raise prices for businesses and consumers. Most economists believe the import duties make the economy less efficient by reducing competition. They also invite retaliatory tariffs from other countries, hurting U.S. exporters and potentially driving businesses to freeze hiring or cut staff.

The deadline on most of Trump’s stiff proposed taxes on imports were extended again until Aug. 1. Unless Trump reaches deals with countries to lower the tariffs, economists fear they could act as a drag on the economy and trigger another bout of inflation.

Companies that have announced job cuts this year include Procter & Gamble, Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, Google and Facebook parent company Meta.

The Labor Department’s report Thursday showed that the four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, declined by 5,000 to 224,500.

The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the week of July 12 remained stable, rising by just 4,000 to 1.96 million.

24 Jul 2025

Trump will visit Federal Reserve in escalation of campaign to pressure Powell to cut interest rates

by | posted in: All news | 0

By CHRIS MEGERIAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump plans to step foot in the Federal Reserve on Thursday as his allies scrutinize its expensive building renovations, a highly personal and confrontational escalation of his campaign to pressure the central bank to slash interest rates.

Trump administration officials have used concerns about the building overhaul to cast doubt on Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s decision making. They were scheduled to inspect the site on Thursday, and the White House announced late Wednesday that the Republican president would also be visiting.

FILE – The sculpture of an eagle looks out from behind protective construction wrapping on the facade as the Federal Reserve Board Building undergoes both interior and exterior renovations, in Washington, Monday, Oct. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

The visit reflects Trump’s disregard for the traditional independence of the Fed, which plays a foundational role in the American economy by setting monetary policy that is supposed to be free of political influence.

While previous presidents have criticized the Fed’s decisions, Trump’s sustained campaign is an unusual and, his critics say, dangerous departure from the norm. He has called on Powell to resign, insulted him repeatedly and suggested that he could be fired.

Related Articles


Trump’s trip to Scotland highlights his complex relationship with his mother’s homeland


Appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, upholds block


State Department approves $322 million in proposed weapons sales to Ukraine


Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220M in deal with Trump to restore federal funding


GOP House members want to run in other races. Trump is telling them to stay in their seats

Ousting Powell could be illegal, and it would send shockwaves through global markets, potentially having the opposite effect that Trump wants as he pushes for lowering borrowing costs.

Trump has criticized Powell for months because the chair has kept the short-term interest rate the Fed controls at 4.3% this year, after cutting it three times last year. Powell says the Fed wants to see how the economy responds to Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports, which Powell says could push up inflation.

Powell’s caution has infuriated Trump, who has demanded the Fed cut borrowing costs to spur the economy and reduce the interest rates the federal government pays on its debt.

The Fed has been renovating its Washington headquarters and a neighboring building. With some of the construction occurring underground and as building materials have soared in price after inflation spiked in 2021 and 2022, the estimated cost has ballooned from $1.9 billion to about $2.5 billion.

When asked last week if the costly rebuilding could be grounds to fire Powell, Trump said, “I think it sort of is.”

“When you spend $2.5 billion on, really, a renovation,” Trump said, “I think it’s really disgraceful.”

24 Jul 2025

Penned Poetry: A Formerly Incarcerated Activist’s Turn to Verse

by | posted in: All news | 0

One poem in Jorge Renaud’s new collection, The Restlessness of Bound Wrists, makes the reader question whether the book in their hands would be allowed into Texas prisons—or whether it would be culled by administrators, left “to burn with other / slashed seditionary / lies, all lies, unfit for our rehabilitation.”

Lamentation for Literature (excerpt)

We will not read this book.
It will not whisper its histories
to us. We will not
listen to its secrets,
be seduced
by its sweet mysteries,
compelled to arise
revolt question
accuse desire
confess dream
Love die.
We will not.
read. this. book.

Renaud—a longtime social justice advocate who has worked with Latino Justice, Grassroots Leadership, and other prominent nonprofits—writes from experience and from a place of all-consuming empathy. He spent years incarcerated in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice system, and since his release in 2008 has been working as an advocate and writer. In his new collection, out in May from Plancha Press, he trades in his megaphone for a pen, his essay style for something more raw, but the result is no less loud, no less informative: “Does it matter / if the testimony tonight / or any night / is whispered or shouted / if it / takes the shape / of a murmur / or a moan?”

In 28 poems, he inhabits different narrators, touching on often unmentioned aspects of incarceration. The physical distance between two lovers who “have to say / i love you / through reinforced / chicken wire” and the obstacles that stand in the way of human touch. There’s a lot about physicality in general: “the gulp of scabby / lips / and dried gasping desperate / throats,” “the rough tongue of loneliness,” and the titular “restlessness / of bound wrists.” About the numbness built up, guarding against all emotions, good and bad. The experience of a narrator taking a life, of discovering someone who’s taken their own. 

Although this is his first published poetry collection, he’s by no means new to the craft. His essays and some poems have been published in major newspapers and magazines across the United States (including the Texas Observer). He’s been writing poetry for decades—he bartered some poems and paintings for a wedding ring when he married his ex-wife, who was a poetry professor—but he said he never cared about publishing. He told the Observer he considers himself “an activist who writes” but was convinced by a friend who told him it was time—that he “really need[ed] to publish some fucking poetry.”

Advertisement

It won’t take readers long to digest the collection, but it’s meant to be revisited. In order, the transition from one poem to the next seems to intentionally imbue more meaning in each. A poem entitled “Prison” about the lack of beauty inside is followed by “Gravity,” the first poem in the collection about desperation and suicide, though not the last. 

This isn’t a collection of poems couched in hindsight; they’re about existing within the carceral system, even after release. They’re undated, and Renaud wrote them over the course of 15 years. Each has the detail, clarity, and emotional sharpness that suggest proximity to the scenes, but overall the collection shines with the wisdom of perspective. Renaud’s poetry masterfully brings the audience past the gates of the prison and keeps them there—through pain and discomfort—until they’re forced to understand the humanity inside the system. 

It’s news to me

My mother fell.
She broke her neck.
If the blame lay in her sluggish heart
or in the bottle that she clutched
I was not told.

Other than the tears I shed
When I wrote her eulogy,
I sit and wait the flood unsprung,
I wonder if the well is dry
and what is wasted in my eyes.

My brother died.
Bloated
in a rented bed he gurgled
when he drowned,
without the coin to pay
the gowned professionals
who may have saved him.

Other than a low escaping wail
when that finality was nailed
into my head, no rage
has pricked my skin.
If i mourn unceasingly
it comes as news to me.

My daughter grows
and grows,
has crawled
and walks
and sprints
unaided now,
without my guiding hand.

If that wracked me once,
if that cracked my shell
and spilled humanity
upon the concrete floor,
it moves me little now.
What does
this place
to me?

The post Penned Poetry: A Formerly Incarcerated Activist’s Turn to Verse appeared first on The Texas Observer.

24 Jul 2025

France’s first couple sue Candace Owens for defamation over claims that Brigitte Macron is a man

by | posted in: All news | 0

PARIS (AP) — A lawyer for France ‘s first couple said they’ll be seeking “substantial” damages from U.S. conservative influencer Candace Owens if she persists with claims that President Emmanuel Macron ‘s wife, Brigitte, is a man.

The lawyer, Tom Clare, said in an interview with CNN that a defamation suit filed Wednesday for the Macrons in a Delaware court was “really a last resort” after a fruitless yearlong effort to engage with Owens and requests that she “do the right thing: tell the truth, stop spreading these lies.”

“Each time we’ve done that, she mocked the Macrons, she mocked our efforts to set the record straight,” Clare said. “Enough is enough, it was time to hold her accountable.”

Related Articles


Most US adults still support legal abortion 3 years after Roe was overturned, an AP-NORC poll finds


Today in History: July 24, Apollo 11 returns home from the moon


Post office arson case for Pat Tillman’s brother suspended for competency exam


Flight attendant who police say secretly recorded girls in airplane bathroom sentenced to 18.5 years


Google’s AI push pays off with solid second quarter, but doubts about company’s future persist

The Macrons have been married since 2007, and Emmanuel Macron has been France’s president since 2017.

In a YouTube video, Owens called the video an “obvious and desperate public relations strategy,” and said the first lady is “a very goofy man.”

Owens is a right-leaning political commentator whose YouTube channel has about 4.5 million subscribers. In 2024, she was denied a visa from New Zealand and Australia, citing remarks in which she denied Nazi medical experimentation on Jews in concentration camps during World War II.

The 219-page complaint against Owens lays out “extensive evidence” that Brigitte Macron “was born a woman, she’s always been a woman,” the couple’s attorney said.

“We’ll put forward our damage claim at trial, but if she continues to double down between now and the time of trial, it will be a substantial award,” he said.

In Paris, the presidential office had no immediate comment.

The Macrons first met at the high school where he was a student and she was a teacher. Brigitte Macron was then Brigitte Auzière, a married mother of three children.

Macron, 47, is serving his second and last term as president. The first lady celebrated her 72nd birthday in April.

Macron moved to Paris for his last year of high school, but promised to marry Brigitte. She later moved to the French capital to join him and divorced before they finally married.

Their relationship came under the spotlight in May when video images showed Brigitte pushing her husband away with both hands on his face before they disembarked from a plane on a tour of Southeast Asia.

Macron later dismissed the incident as play-fighting, telling reporters that “we are squabbling and, rather, joking with my wife,” and that it had been overblown into “a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.”