Consumer Confidence Defies Expectations,
Rises in April as Labor Market Outlook Brightens
Posted By: Dreadnought, 4/28/2026 7:44:31 PM
Consumer Confidence Defies Expectations, Rises in April as Labor Market Outlook Brightens MIAMI, FLORIDA - APRIL 11: U.S. President Donald Trump waves to the media after walking of(Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images) John Carney28 Apr 202670 4:30 Consumer confidence rose in April to the best level of the year, as consumers took a more optimistic view of the jobs market and their income prospects. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index climbed to 92.8 from an upwardly revised 92.2 in March, handily beating the consensus forecast of 89 in surveys of economists conducted by both Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. The Expectations Index
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They’ve hit the mother lode.
We may no longer need to rely on foreign batteries to power our electronics. Geologists have announced that the Appalachian Mountains could be hiding a sprawling multi-billion-dollar cache of lithium that could last the US hundreds of years.
“This research shows that the Appalachians contain enough lithium to help meet the nation’s growing needs,” declared US Geological Survey Director Ned Mamula in a statement.
According to a map by the institution, this East Coast mountain range houses around 2.5 metric tons of this battery precursor, most of which is concentrated in the Carolinas, Maine and New Hampshire. Total value: around $64.4B dollars.
Liberal Supreme Court justices say majority
has ‘completed demolition’ of Voting
Rights Act 12 replies
has ‘completed demolition’ of Voting
Rights Act 12 replies
The Supreme Court’s liberal justices called their colleagues’ decision clawing back race-based redistricting on Wednesday a “now-completed demolition” of the Voting Rights Act.
In a 48-page dissent, Justice Elena Kagan held up the landmark 1965 law as helpful to the nation’s progress on racial discrimination.
“At this last stage, the Court’s gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in peril,” Kagan wrote.
“I dissent because Congress elected otherwise,” she continued. “I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity. I dissent.”
The Latest: Supreme Court to hear arguments
on ending legal protections for Haitian/Syrian migrants 1 reply
on ending legal protections for Haitian/Syrian migrants 1 reply
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will weigh arguments Wednesday over the Trump administration’s push to end legal protections for Haitians and Syrians as migrants fleeing war and natural disaster.
Haitians and Syrians were among those from 17 countries with Temporary Protected Status, which allows migrants already in the U.S. to stay with work permits in 18-month increments, so long as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security deems their country of origin unsafe for return. Since President Donald Trump ’s second term began, Homeland Security has ended the protections for 13 countries, exposing their migrants to potential deportation.
The case focuses on
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday further weakened the Voting Rights Act, ruling that a congressional map in Louisiana was a racial gerrymander even though it was drawn to comply with the landmark law aimed at protecting minority voters. The justices, split 6-3 with the court's conservatives in the majority, told states they can almost never consider race when drawing maps to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which was enacted to protect minority voters who long faced discrimination in elections.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with a pro-life pregnancy resource center that had raised First Amendment concerns about a New Jersey investigation into its practices.
The Court handed First Choice Women’s Resource Centers a unanimous procedural victory in the case, which centers on a state investigation into whether it misled patients to discourage abortions. The ruling allows First Choice to challenge, in federal court, a subpoena it received from then-New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin (D) demanding donor lists and other information from the center.
'We Two Kings' and the Art of Trolling
7 replies
This absolutely had to be my last one for the night.
As you may - or may not - have known, it's been a couple of busy days for the president and our glorious First Lady.
From ducking madmen and comforting an angry and concerned nation on Saturday night... ...to rearranging Norah O'Donnell's derriere... ...President Trump has scarcely had a moment to chill out. Not that he'd want one.
And then, today? Chuck and Camilla stopped in for a visit. And it was everything British royalty could appreciate from their American cousins for their first state visit
The troops looked gorgeous.
Sure, it's not antisemitism. It's a political statement against Bibi Netanyahu or something.
A benefit concert for the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre in Australia has been canceled because the choir that was scheduled to sing refused to share the stage with a Jewish choir group.
You can't make this up. Surprised to find an action like this from the cultural elite? I'm not.
A choral concert fundraiser for the victims of the Bondi Beach terror attack at a Jewish event in Sydney has been canceled after local Greek singers opposed singing alongside their Jewish counterparts
As we reported, King Charles is visiting the United States.
He spoke to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday.
He also met with President Donald Trump, as Trump gave a speech on how "In recent years, we've often heard it said that America is merely an idea," but that it was much more than that; that "the cause of freedom did not simply appear as an intellectual invention of 1776," and that the American founding was based on struggle, sweat, blood, and sacrifice to have the freedom we enjoy today. I think this was likely a retort to one of Joe Biden's classic lines
US President Donald Trump has instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Citing US officials, the report said that in recent meetings, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports.
He assessed that his other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried more risk than maintaining the blockade, officials added, the report said.
The US and Israel launched a joint offensive against Iran on Feb. 28, prompting Tehran to respond with strikes on what it described as US interests across the region, many of them in Gulf countries.
A ceasefire
New York City's self-described democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has made history, just not the kind worth bragging about. Barely months into office, he has blown past a statutory budget deadline for the first time since 2015, declared a fiscal crisis of "historic magnitude," and responded to a $5.4 billion budget gap the way any good socialist would: by asking someone else to pay for it.
Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin appeared together at City Hall on Tuesday to announce they would delay the executive budget, originally due May 1, until May 12 while lobbying Albany to bail out a city
Finally, Some Covid Accountability?
9 replies
Yesterday the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment of David Morens, who was a Senior Adviser to Anthony Fauci during the covid era. The indictment includes allegations against two co-conspirators, who have been identified as Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, and Dr. Gerald Keusch, an associate director of Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory Institute. EcoHealth Alliance is the nonprofit that got grant money from the National Institutes of Health and passed it on to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to do research on coronaviruses
Search him
7 replies
Today the FBI executed twenty-two search warrants around the metropolitan Twin Cities in its continued investigation of the massiive public-programs fraud committed by an almost exclusively Somali cast of perpetrators. The United States Attorney will present the evidence to a federal grand jury and secure indictments in due course. In the Feeding Our Future case, the time between the searches and the first indictments ran some nine months.
The FBI conducted the searches today on a panoply of daycare centers (thank you, Nick Shirley), autism providers, and perhaps other businesses receiving funds under one or another of Minnesota’s fourteen waivered Medicaid programs. These programs have been looted by fraudsters
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New York City's self-described democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has made history, just not the kind worth bragging about. Barely months into office, he has blown past a statutory budget deadline for the first time since 2015, declared a fiscal crisis of "historic magnitude," and responded to a $5.4 billion budget gap the way any good socialist would: by asking someone else to pay for it.
Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin appeared together at City Hall on Tuesday to announce they would delay the executive budget, originally due May 1, until May 12 while lobbying Albany to bail out a city
Rep. Ilhan Omar got dragged on social media Monday afternoon for an outlandish gaffe in which she referred to World War Two as “World War Eleven” in a statement opposing the implementation of the Alien Enemies Act by the Trump administration to deport narco-terrorists from the United States. Check out some of the best reactions from online:
I guess that it should comes as no surprise that the congresswoman who "mistakenly" claimed that she was worth $30 million when she apparently doesn't even tout a net worth of $100,000 couldn't tell the difference between two and eleven.
Mamdani’s plan to delay pension payments
echoes the schemes that brought NYC to
near bankruptcy 22 replies
echoes the schemes that brought NYC to
near bankruptcy 22 replies
Despite a $7.1 billion hole, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has pushed back against any serious cutting to his budget and instead wants to delay required payments to city pension funds.
That’s precisely the kind of tactics that brought the city to the brink of bankruptcy in the ’70s.
At the least, it will saddle future taxpayers with unnecessary costs.
For the moment, the city is on-track to meeting its long-term pension-funding obligations by its 2032 deadline.
Yet to help close his budget hole, Mamdani would push $1 billion worth of payments into the 2040s.
That would be both costly and risky.
The Daily Signal has obtained plans from a coalition of House Democrats showing it will push legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour and “tax the rich” in an effort to strip “power and privilege” from “the wealthy and well‑connected” to advance “racial justice.”
Reps. Delia Ramirez, D‑Ill.; Analilia Mejia, D‑N.J.; Rashida Tlaib, D‑Mich.; Bonnie Watson Coleman, D‑N.J.; and Chuy García, D‑Ill., along with representatives from national unions and advocacy groups, plan to announce the Living Wage for All Act at a press conference Tuesday.
“This bill is about holding corporate America accountable,” Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said
Teachers’ unions have spent more than $1 billion in member dues and fees on political activism and left-wing social causes since 2015, according to a new watchdog report.
The spending captured in Defending Education’s report includes both national and local unions, including $669 million from national unions and $339 million at the local level.The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), two national teachers’ unions, spent a combined $669 million over the past ten years, including $44 million to For Our Future, a progressive political group focusing on social equity and climate justice in key battleground states;
Grand jury indicts ex-FBI boss James Comey
on charges related to photo alleged to
threaten Trump 17 replies
on charges related to photo alleged to
threaten Trump 17 replies
ederal grand jury in North Carolina on Tuesday indicted former FBI Director James Comey on charges related to his posting of a photo of shells on a beach with the inscription "86-47" that prosecutors alleged was a threat to President Donald Trump.
The charges will be unveiled at a DOJ news conference at 4 p.m. ET, officials said.
It is expected that one of the charges will fall under a statute that prohibits a person from "knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail or for a delivery from any post office —
Today is not a good day for the Canadian trade team.It started with Quebec’s new Premier in Washington DC meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer {citation} in order to talk trade {SEE TIMELINE} saying on Twitter, “Quebec wants a renewal of the [USMCA] to ensure a stable and predictable framework for our economic exchanges.” However, Mrs. Christine Fréchette (pictured left) then bragged about having strategic discussions with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. {citation}
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin slammed Rep. Rosa DeLauro for being “uninformed” Monday after the Connecticut Democrat completely lost it and suggested he drink weed killer during a heated congressional budget hearing.
DeLauro, the purple-haired ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, argued Zeldin’s budget proposal “reads like a climate change denier’s manifesto” as she asked the EPA chief to “justify abandoning [the EPA’s] duty to protect Americans” from climate change.
Zeldin, a former Republican New York congressman, wasn’t having it. “Following the law,” he responded. “Section 202 of the Clean Air Act. Where does it say anything about fighting global climate change?” DeLauro, 83, remained silent.
Woke Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., lashed out at a LindellTV reporter when pressed about massive discrepancies in her congressional financial disclosure forms, which once listed her net worth as high as $30 million before an amended filing reduced it to under $95,000.
In a hallway exchange captured on video, the reporter reminded Omar that she had previously called her “stupid” for asking about the filing and asked how she could make “such a big mistake,” prompting Omar to reply, “I still think you’re stupid for asking me anything.”
When the journalist pressed for an explanation for LindellTV’s audience and “the American people,” Omar snapped, “I don’t want to tell you jack s—t.
First Lady Melania Trump’s supporters are organizing a grassroots boycott of advertisers for ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! amid a report saying that Disney is “ready to pull” the plug following the left-wing TV host’s comments fantasizing about President Donald Trump’s death just days before the third documented assassination attempt on his life. Kimmel is facing intense backlash from scores of fed-up Melania Trump fans after he called the First Lady an “expectant widow” before a gunman attempted to assassinate President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday evening.
In a skit last Thursday, ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel pretended to be the host of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and remarked of Melania Trump, “You have a glow like an expectant widow.” Given that President Trump had already survived two assassination attempts, it was tasteless even at the time. But the remark aged even more poorly when a third aspiring assassin crashed the actual event days later.In a rare statement, the understandably shaken first lady condemned Kimmel, saying, “His monologue about my family isn’t comedy — his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.”
The indictment of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s former adviser David Morens Tuesday revived calls for the Justice Department to prosecute Fauci himself for allegedly lying to Congress about funding risky research in China before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Just two weeks remain before the five-year legal deadline on May 11 to indict Fauci for denying under oath that he funded “gain of function” experiments that modified bat coronaviruses in the same city where the pandemic started.
Morens, 78, was charged with one count of conspiracy, two counts of destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations and two counts of concealment, removal,