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Three More States Join the $15 Minimum Wage Club Next Monday

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Three additional states will be raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour as of New Year’s Day, raising the total to seven.

Maryland and New Jersey are the latest states to join the $15 minimum wage club when a wage increase goes into effect at the beginning of the year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Upstate New York is also raising its minimum wage; until 2024, it was the only part of the state with a rate below $15 an hour.

Currently, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Washington state are the only states where every region has a $15 minimum wage or higher, but more are coming. Seven states have passed laws that will gradually raise the minimum wage over $15, the EPI says. The highest minimum wage rate in the country is in Tukwila, Washington, a Seattle suburb. In Tukwila, the rate is $20.29 an hour.

READ MORE: Sinema Slammed After Spokesperson Says It’s Sexist to Discuss Her ‘Thumbs Down’ Vote Against $15 Minimum Wage

For those not in the states mentioned, there’s still good news—nearly half the country, 22 states, will be raising their minimum hourly wage. Twelve of those increases are automatic, as those states adjust for inflation yearly, according to the EPI.

While $15 is becoming more common, the federal minimum wage is just $7.25 per hour. The last increase to the federal rate was in 2009, according to the Department of Labor. Prior to 2009, small boosts were relatively common, occuring in 2007 and 2008, and four times during the 1990s.

Only five states don’t have their own laws setting the minimum wage, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. Two others officially have a lower minimum wage than the federal level—Georgia and Wyoming are both at $5.15 per hour. In those two states, the federal level supersedes the state-level wage, so minimum wage employees still earn $7.25.

There has been a campaign throughout the 2010s to raise the national minimum to $15. But, according to U.S. News and World Report, even that raise isn’t enough to pay for most living expenses for an average family.

Attempts to raise the federal rate at all have stalled out in Congress. Since 2017, a “Raise the Wage Act” has been introduced every year. The 2023 version of the bill, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Bobby Scott (D-VA), would raise the minimum wage to $17 by 2028. All previous versions had died in committee, and the current version has been referred to the committees of jurisdiction.

The politicians say that if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity, it’d be at $23.

“In the year 2023 a job should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality and record-breaking corporate profits, we can no longer tolerate millions of workers being unable to feed their families because they are working for totally inadequate wages. Congress can no longer ignore the needs of the working class of this country. The time to act is now,” Sanders said.

Featured image from Pictures of Money via Flickr, used under the Creative Commons 2.0 license.

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FCC Poised to Review Disney Licenses Amid Trump Pressure Over Kimmel Joke: Report

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The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to review Disney’s broadcast licenses, according to an exclusive report by Semafor.

According to Semafor, a person familiar with the FCC’s thinking said the review is not directly tied to a monologue delivered last week by ABC’s late night host Jimmy Kimmel, which targeted President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.

But NBC News, citing a source familiar with the matter, reported later on Tuesday that the FCC is expected to order Disney’s eight broadcast stations to file their broadcast license reviews early.

A source told NBC News the move was “unprecedented” and directly tied to Kimmel’s comments.

On Monday, First Lady Melania Trump blasted ABC, demanding the broadcast network hold Kimmel to account.

READ MORE: Trump ‘Frustrated’ by Ballroom Legal Battles — So GOP Wants You to Pay for It: Report

“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country,” the First Lady said on social media. “His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.”

“People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate,” she continued, calling the late night host a “coward” who “hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him.”

Later on Monday, President Trump went even further than the First Lady, demanding Kimmel “be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”

Days earlier, on Thursday night, in a mock version of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Kimmel delivered several jokes, including saying: “Our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

Kimmel delivered his monologue two days before an alleged assassination attempt targeting Trump and top administration officials at the actual White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.

READ MORE: Coming Price Spike Made Worse by Trump Could Deal ‘Fatal Blow’ to GOP: Report

 

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Coming Price Spike Made Worse by Trump Could Deal ‘Fatal Blow’ to GOP: Report

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President Donald Trump’s insistence that his Iran war is nearly over is causing energy producers and the stock markets to misjudge what some believe could be a protracted military engagement. That miscalculation may lead to lower or insufficient oil and gas production — and ultimately large price spikes for consumers at the pump, Politico reports.

Trump’s “jawboning” has been largely successful, keeping oil prices lower than they would be, according to Politico. But there will be a price to pay.

A gas price shock that “hits people in the face” will come as summer travel heats up, Dan Pickering, chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners, told Politico.

“There’s a day of reckoning coming,” Pickering added. “It will be painful because I can tell you that the stock market’s ignoring this.”

That gas price spike could deal a “fatal blow” to Republicans’ chances of holding on to the House majority, Politico notes.

READ MORE: ‘This Will Backfire’: DeSantis’s New Redistricting Map Is Already in Trouble

Rosemary Kelanic of the libertarian-leaning Defense Priorities think tank says the Trump administration’s insistence that the war is nearly over is preventing energy companies from producing more. Why ramp up production if a return to normal is in sight?

Politico notes that if the war doesn’t end very soon, there won’t be enough oil for the world, Kelanic said.

Kelanic told Politico, “By talking down the market so effectively, when the price spike becomes inevitable, it’s going to hurt way worse because we’ll have lost weeks or even months of time where producers could have been ramping up output.”

Emma Anderson, author of “Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates” and a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a foreign policy research institute in Washington, told Politico that it will take months after the war for gas prices to return to normal.

“Prices at the pump are going to go up over time,” she said. “The costs of goods are going to go up as diesel goes up. Shipping will get more expensive. Trucking will get more expensive. The things you buy at the store will get more expensive.”

READ MORE: Trump ‘Frustrated’ by Ballroom Legal Battles — So GOP Wants You to Pay for It: Report

 

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Trump ‘Frustrated’ by Ballroom Legal Battles — So GOP Wants You to Pay for It: Report

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Twelve hours after a gunman tried to attack Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, President Donald Trump used the incident as justification to build his $400 million, 90,000 square-foot ballroom.

“What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE,” Trump wrote on Sunday. NBC News characterized the claim as “without evidence.”

“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough!” Trump added.

According to Bloomberg News, even at 90,000 square feet, the proposed ballroom would not be large enough to seat the dinner’s two thousand guests. Nor is the dinner a White House function — it is a private event.

Trump has been “frustrated” by legal challenges to his ballroom project, Bloomberg added.

From the start, the president maintained the ballroom would not cost taxpayers a dime, but rather, be privately funded by “many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly,” as the Associated Press reported last year.

READ MORE: ‘This Will Backfire’: DeSantis’s New Redistricting Map Is Already in Trouble

Now, according to Bloomberg, Trump allies are pushing for federal taxpayer funds to be used to pay for the ballroom.

“Key Republican senators are pushing to use federal funds for the construction of the White House ballroom President Donald Trump has planned, citing increased threats following Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner,” Bloomberg notes.

The lawmakers calling to use taxpayer funds for Trump’s ballroom include U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Katie Britt (R-AL), and Eric Schmitt (R-MO). They “plan to try to attach funding for the ballroom to a federal spending bill.”

“I will be introducing standalone legislation tomorrow to authorize and appropriate money to fully fund the White House presidential ballroom,” Graham wrote on Sunday, “which over time will provide adequate security for this president and future presidents for events like the White House Correspondents Dinner.”

Punchbowl News’ Laura Weiss reports Senators Graham and Britt are holding a press conference Monday night for their bill to fund the ballroom.

READ MORE: ‘Hateful’: Melania Trump Demands ABC ‘Take a Stand’ Against Jimmy Kimmel

 

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