#political-pressure

#political-pressure

In a tense and unusually divided meeting, the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to cut interest rates by 0.25 percentage points to a range of 3.5% to 3.75%. This is the third consecutive rate cut since September, as concerns about a deteriorating labor market outweigh fears of rising inflation. The final meeting of the year also yielded new economic forecasts and offered some clues about the Fed's roadmap for 2026.

Nonprofits are facing a political environment where essential missions are under attack and public funding is disappearing. The Trump administration has made it far more difficult for many nonprofits to continue receiving government support. Organizations whose missions or values run afoul of those of the White House and its allies in Congress, especially those connected to LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, racial equity, women's rights, voting rights, international relief, and the ever-present boogeyman of DEI, are facing the greatest funding pressures.

The team is just nine people out of more than 2,000 who work at Anthropic. Their only job, as the team members themselves say, is to investigate and publish quote "inconvenient truths" about how people are using AI tools, what chatbots might be doing to our mental health, and how all of that might be having broader ripple effects on the labor market, the economy, and even our elections.

The chasm is widening between NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit that funneled federal dollars to public media until Congress killed that funding earlier this year. NPR's legal team privately questioned the CPB's longtime chief executive, Patricia Harrison, under oath earlier this month, according to the radio network's legal filings, and is scheduled to do so publicly at a court hearing Tuesday morning.

In a meeting with English Department faculty on Oct. 22, TCU provost Floyd Wormley cited financial reasons for the change, asserting that political pressure "had no influence" on the decision to merge the Women and Gender Studies and Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies Departments into the English Department. But some faculty aren't convinced. They say the move follows a decline in institutional support for the disciplines as the university faces immense pressure to eliminate any and all programming related to gender, race and ethnicity.

n FBI agent was relieved of duty for declining to arrange a perp walk of the bureau's former director, James Comey, in front of news media cameras after Comey was federally charged last month, four people briefed on the matter said on Friday. Reuters could not immediately determine how or when senior FBI officials wanted to stage bringing Comey into the bureau's Washington field office.

The sequence of events here could not be clearer, because it was all done in plain view. Carr leaned on broadcasters to take down Kimmel. They did that, sometimes even directly citing Carr while doing so, and then Carr celebrated with a fun GIF. That sure seems like a pretty clear case of the government pressuring companies to censor speech. And it's not like Trump is even trying to hide it.

The president has never done well with criticism, constantly going after news organizations and private companies and individuals perceived to be insufficiently supportive or ingratiating. "This is the environment that we're all operating in, and we've known this for a while, where, whether it's legitimate or not, you have the government as an actor trying to control and shape coverage through a combination of means, one of which is threats," the news anchor said.

Back in the 90s and 2000s, much ink was spilled as the major networks grappled for ratings in the now-quaint real estate of post-11PM programming. Johnny Carson retired. David Letterman jumped to CBS. Conan O'Brien was plucked from obscurity, eventually handed The Tonight Show, and then had it essentially clawed back by Jay Leno for a few more years of appalling hackwork.

"Don't mess up my beach, girl," New Yorker and comedian Ilana Glazer pleaded to Gov. Kathy Hochul in late July in an Instagram reel with over 46,000 likes. Glazer wants the governor to reject the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) project, which would build a natural gas pipeline that would start in Pennsylvania and end in New York City's beachfront community, the Rockaways, with a 17-mile stretch below the ocean floor.

The United States Department of Justice plans to investigate Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, with a top official informing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell of the probe and encouraging him to remove her, Bloomberg News has reported.

She took out a mortgage on a house in Michigan represented to be her principal residence, and shortly thereafter a loan on a condominium in Atlanta that was also described as her principal residence, according to Pulte's letter. It further asserts that she listed the Atlanta condo as a rental property in 2022, despite having asserted in mortgage documents it would serve as her primary residence. There is no accusation or evidence that Cook has defaulted on either loan.

Nicola Sturgeon expressed an obsession with living up to being Scotland’s first female first minister, fearing a particular kind of failure tied to success. She felt pressure as the sole female representative, a test case for women in leadership roles, and faced scrutiny in expressing vulnerability about personal issues like menopause and miscarriage.

Under pressure from Republican lawmakers, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville terminated its scholarship partnership for Chinese students, citing concerns over the China Scholarship Council's influence.