The measure will cause many rollovers, in which hundreds of billions of dollars move annually from 401(k)s to individual retirement accounts, to be more heavily regulated. It also gives investors who feel they have been given bad rollover advice the right to file a lawsuit or arbitration claim.
Jeff Hammer has spent the past four decades involved in multiple fields, including business, finance, education, nonprofit and energy, which has enabled him to work across the region, state, country and even the world.
He is now looking to enter municipal government.
Earlier this week, Hammer announced he is running in the 2021 Democratic Party primary for Johnstown mayor, looking to unseat incumbent Frank Janakovic.
Hammer is a current director of sales for Transparent Energy, which procures third-party energy for retail customers.
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — There are calls to reopen schools and resume in-person classroom instruction.
But some local school districts have been reluctant during the coronavirus pandemic. Pittsburgh Public Schools has delayed reopening until April, and now KDKA investigator Andy Sheehan has learned that may be pushed back even longer.
President Joe Biden wants schools to reopen, especially elementary schools. Dr. Anthony Fauci told the CBS This Morning it can be done safely even if the teachers aren’t fully vaccinated.
But the Pittsburgh Public Schools board, which has already delayed reopening the classrooms until April, will now consider keeping buildings closed for the rest of the school year.
Conservative talk radio pioneer Rush Limbaugh, who died Wednesday after a year-long battle with cancer, took a dig at President Biden in his final Facebook post two weeks before his death.
“Biden canceled ‘a major foreign policy speech,’ folks, over two inches of snow. I kid you not,” Limbaugh wrote late on Feb. 2.
He added a link to a story on his website titled, “Biden Sees His Shadow, Cancels Major Speech.”
A day earlier, the president pulled the plug on a trip to the State Department, where he had been scheduled to deliver his first major foreign policy speech as commander-in-chief, citing the couple of inches of snow that fell in DC that weekend.
WASHINGTON — President Biden took a snow day Thursday as DC received a half-inch dusting — but Vice President Kamala Harris carried on with scheduled in-person events.
Biden postponed a trip to Michigan, where he planned to tour a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing facility, and the White House declared an 8 a.m. “lid” for reporters — meaning there would be no in-person events.
The president’s trip to Portage, Michigan, was preemptively canceled Wednesday evening before any precipitation fell in Washington.
The early White House “lid” meant a 12:30 p.m. briefing with White House press secretary Jen Psaki was conducted by phone.
Although the destination in Michigan was a frigid 16 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday morning, it wasn’t snowing there.
Sen. Ted Cruz and his family flew to Cancun, Mexico, he confirmed in a statement to CNN, as a winter disaster in his home state left millions without power or water.
Cruz, a Texas Republican, said in the statement he flew down for a night because his daughters “asked to take a trip with friends.”
“With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon,” he said in the statement. “My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas. We want our power back, our water on, and our homes warm. My team and I will continue using all our resources to keep Texans informed and safe.”
Facebook on Wednesday announced that it will no longer allow publishers and users in Australia to share or view news articles in response to a new proposed media law in the country.
With the legislation, the Australian government seeks to require online platforms like Google and Facebook to pay news outlets for displaying and linking to their content.
(CNN)President Joe Biden’s rejection of calls to eliminate up to $50,000 of student loan debt has prompted sharp responses from his allies on Capitol Hill, with leading liberals vowing to push ahead with the plan and the top Senate Democrat calling for them to “keep fighting.”
In a joint statement on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, “Cancelling $50,000 in federal student loan debt will help close the racial wealth gap, benefit the 40% of borrowers who do not have a college degree, and help stimulate the economy. It’s time to act. We will keep fighting.”
The comments are a rebuke to Biden and a way to put pressure on the administration after the President made clear during Tuesday night’s CNN town hall that he disagrees with other members of his party who want to cancel $50,000 of student debt per borrower.
“I will not make that happen,” Biden said after a member of the audience said his proposal to cancel $10,000 per borrower doesn’t go far enough.
Rush Limbaugh, the monumentally influential media icon who transformed talk radio and politics in his decades behind the microphone, helping shape the modern-day Republican Party, died Wednesday morning at the age of 70 after a battle with lung cancer, his family announced.
Limbaugh’s wife, Kathryn, made the announcement on his radio show. “Losing a loved one is terribly difficult, even more so when that loved one is larger than life,” she said. “Rush will forever be the greatest of all time.”
The radio icon learned he had Stage IV lung cancer in January 2020 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President Trump at the State of the Union address days later. First lady Melania Trump then presented America’s highest civilian honor to Limbaugh in an emotional moment on the heels of his devastating cancer diagnosis.”
Rush Limbaugh: Thank you for your decades of tireless devotion to our country,” President Trump said during the address.
Critics of President Joe Biden took aim at him as a mere placeholder to get President Donald Trump out of the White House – a self-described “transition candidate.”
Now, some will see reinforcement of that notion as the commander in waiting, Vice President Kamala Harris, is taking charge of a key presidential task.
Harris has taken on the customary presidential role of calling heads of state, The Epoch Times reported Tuesday.
Harris spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, according to a White House readout that did not mention President Biden, per the report.
Although Biden, 78, did speak with Macron on Jan. 24, it is rare for a president to step aside for vice presidents to make the calls with world leaders.
“Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again,” Trump said in the statement. “He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country. Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate leadership.”
What was President Joe Biden doing as a senator that he now wants to keep secret?
Judicial Watch is trying to find that out.
We filed a notice of appeal with the Supreme Court of Delaware, asking for access to records about President Biden’s senatorial papers held by the University of Delaware.
These papers include more than 1,850 boxes of archival records from his senate career.
This appeal seeks a reversal of the opinion of the Superior Court of Delaware, which is blocking a state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
It comes in the lawsuit we filed with the Daily Caller News Foundation after a Delaware Attorney General’s opinion denied access to the records (Daily Caller News Foundation v. University of Delaware (No. N20A-07-001)).
The Delaware FOIA lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware on July 2, 2020.
Warnock worked with a group founded by Stacey Abrams that is now under investigation.
Warnock served as chairman of the board for the New Georgia Project in 2019, which is when election officials claim misconduct took place.
Under Georgia election rules, voting registration organizations like the New Georgia Project have to submit completed voter applications within ten days after they are received from the voter.
But officials allege that during a 2019 registration effort, some 1,268 applications were submitted to the Gwinnett County elections office after the ten-day deadline.
Minneapolis on Friday backtracked on its original push to defund the city’s police department in the wake of George Floyd’s police custody death after residents begged the city to hire more officers, citing longer response times and increased violent crime.
The City Council on Friday voted unanimously to approve $6.4 million in additional funding that police had requested.
FILE: Demonstrators are taken into custody after curfew in Minneapolis, as protests continued following the death of George Floyd, who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers on Memorial Day. (AP)
The department says it only has 638 officers available to work — roughly 200 fewer than usual. An unprecedented number of officers quit or went on extended medical leave after Floyd’s death and the unrest that followed.
With new recruit classes, the city anticipates it will have 674 officers available at the end of the year, with another 28 in the hiring process, the Star Tribune reported
Days before the City Council vote, Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Medaria Arradondo promised to update the application process for police recruits to include questions about whether they have lived in Minneapolis, have degrees in criminology, social work, psychology or counseling, and whether they volunteer or participate in programs such as the Police Activities League.
Meanwhile, three City Council members have proposed replacing the police department with a public safety department that would include law enforcement and other services. Yes 4 Minneapolis, a coalition of local community groups, is also collecting signatures to try to get a similar proposal on the November ballot.
The Star Tribune reported the Yes 4 Minneapolis committee is being fueled by a half-million dollar grant from the Washington, D.C.-based group Open Society Policy Center, linked to billionaire George Soros.
President Joe Biden on Sunday called on Congress to institute “commonsense gun law reforms,” including widespread firearm sales background checks and a ban on assault weapons — highlighting an “epidemic of gun violence” in the US on the third anniversary of the deadly Parkland school shooting.
By Quisha King
The Biden-Harris administration has decided the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is irrelevant and we do in fact need to discriminate on the basis of race, color and religion.
The act states, “All persons shall be entitled to be free, at any establishment or place, from discrimination or segregation of any kind on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.”
It goes on to say, “No person shall (a) withhold, deny, or attempt to withhold or deny, or deprive or attempt to deprive, any person of any right or privilege secured by section 201 or 202.”
‘Skin color and gender are about as relevant to my skills and contributions to society as my having black hair.’
The blowback against the seven Republican senators who supported former President Donald J. Trump’s conviction in his impeachment trial has begun.
In Louisiana, the state Republican Party’s executive committee voted unanimously on Saturday to censure Senator Bill Cassidy, who was just re-elected in November and was among those who voted to find Mr. Trump guilty. The state’s Republican attorney general, Jeff Landry, said Mr. Cassidy had “fallen into the trap laid by Democrats to have Republicans attack Republicans.”
Two of the Republicans who voted for conviction, Senators Richard M. Burr of North Carolina and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, are not seeking re-election next year, giving them more political freedom than many of their colleagues. But they still faced rebukes at home.
Lawrence Tabas, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, called the trial “an unconstitutional theft of time and energy that did absolutely nothing to unify or help the American people,” adding, “I share the disappointment of many of our grass-roots leaders and volunteers over Senator Toomey’s vote today.”
“Wrong vote, Sen. Burr,” former Representative Mark Walker, a Republican who is seeking his party’s nomination for Senate next year, wrote on Twitter. “I am running to replace Richard Burr because North Carolina needs a true conservative champion as their next senator.”
Of the seven Republicans who voted to convict Mr. Trump, only one of them, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, will be on the ballot in 2022. But she is a uniquely formidable candidate in her state, having once won re-election as a write-in candidate after losing a primary.
The Republican senators who broke with their party during the former president’s trial joined 10 House Republicans who voted last month to impeach him, triggering an earlier backlash within the G.O.P.
The White House deputy press secretary resigned Saturday, a day after he was suspended for threatening and harassing a journalist who was pursuing a story on his relationship with another reporter.
First lady Jill Biden is burnishing her reputation for springing jolly surprises: Before dawn on Friday, she helped decorate the North Lawn of the White House for Valentine’s Day with candy-heart sentiments as a message of hope and healing for Americans.
Then, in another surprise, she and President Joe Biden and their two German shepherds, Champ and Major, went for an unscheduled stroll to view the array of large red, pink and white heart-shaped signs covered with words: “Healing,” “Compassion” and “Hope.” The two, wearing masks, chatted with a trailing, shivering pool of reporters and C-SPAN crew.
One of the hearts on the lawn was signed, “Love, Jill.”
The president, dressed in old jeans and a black leather jacket with a presidential patch and clutching a coffee cup, said Valentine’s Day is his wife’s favorite day. They joked about which one loves the other more and kept an eye on their dogs while chatting with reporters.
The 263-acre camp was a destination for kids, families and school groups for generations.
The YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh was unable to sustain the camp because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Carolyn Grady, chief development officer.
“Camp T. Frank Soles operated over the summer with pandemic restrictions but was never able to regain the level of program participation that would make it financially viable,” she said in a statement. “We made the difficult decision to end programs at Camp Soles in October and listed the building for sale.
The “African Song and Dance” performance came at the start of the Spring Festival Gala, or “Chunwan,” one of the world’s most-watched TV programs. It included Chinese dancers in African-style costumes and dark face makeup beating drums.
China’s ruling Communist Party tries to promote an image of unity with African nations as fellow developing economies. But state broadcaster China Central Television has faced criticism over using blackface to depict African people in previous New Year broadcasts.
On Twitter, Black Livity China, a group for people of African descent who work in or with China, called the broadcast “extremely disappointing.” It noted CCTV’s 2018 Spring Festival Gala, which featured performers in blackface with a monkey.
“We cannot stress enough the impact scenes such as these have on African and Afro-diasporic communities living in China,” the group said.
The Lincoln Project was plunged into even deeper turmoil Thursday, with the anti-Trump group tapping an outsider to investigate its handling of sexual misconduct allegations against a co-founder, and former employees demanding to be released from non-disclosure agreements.
On Friday, several more key advisers left the group in the wake of the previous day’s scandalous reports.
The organization fanned the flames by tweeting out what appeared to be private messages between a co-founder who left in a rancorous split and a journalist who was hoping to interview her. The Lincoln Project later deleted the tweet—which was cited by the ex-staffers as an example of retaliation.
The controversy boiled over hours after reports that leaders of the Lincoln Project knew about sexual harassment allegations against co-founder John Weaver last summer, before they became public in January. (Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson is a Daily Beast columnist and co-hosts the podcast The New Abnormal.)
More than 20 men have accused Weaver of sending unsolicited sexual messages, with some saying he tried to barter his connections for sex; one was underage when Weaver began communicating. Weaver, who is married with two children, admitted his behavior was “inappropriate” but said he thought all the interactions were consensual.
Weaver resigned, but the accusations did not end there. Last weekend, co-founder Jennifer Horn stepped down, citing what she said were Weaver’s “grotesque and inappropriate behavior” and “longstanding deceptions.” The group responded by claiming she left after making financial demands including a $250,000 signing bonus.
On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that leaders of the Lincoln Project learned about allegations against Weaver in the summer after a payroll employee emailed co-founder Ron Steslow—who then reportedly shared it with corporate counsel Matthew Sanderson and other key figures and advocated for Weaver to be removed from the organization.
A Colorado police officer was fired Thursday following investigations into an excessive use of force incident in which he punched a suspect multiple times in the ribs and shocked him five times with a Taser before giving any verbal commands.
Aurora police Officer Robert Rosen responded Aug. 10 to a King Soopers supermarket, where another officer requested assistance in arresting a man on trespassing charges, according to a statement from the department. The man was on the ground on his stomach with his arms underneath him, according to police and body camera video worn by the officer who was trying to initially arrest him.
Rosen arrived to the scene and immediately started punching the man in the ribs before saying anything, the body camera video showed. He then deployed his Taser five times, for a total of 27 seconds within two minutes, according to police.
The suspect suffered minor injuries.
“During the arrest Officer Rosen never attempted any lesser means of force nor did he make any attempts to deescalate the situation in accordance with Aurora Police training,” the department said in the statement.
Investigations into the incident found Rosen did not activate his body camera during the arrest and “failed to document his justifications for each use of force that he used during the arrest,” police said.
US President Joe Biden has paused legal action against TikTok and WeChat, which could have seen the apps banned in the United States.
While president, Donald Trump had sought to ban both apps, claiming they were a national security threat.
Both companies had taken legal action against the proposed bans.
The new administration has now asked for an “abeyance” – or suspension – of proceedings while it revisits whether the apps really pose a threat.
The delay means both apps can continue to operate in the US while new staff at government agencies “become familiar with the issues in this case”, the legal documents state.
Mr Trump had claimed that the spread in the US of mobile apps developed and owned by Chinese firms threatened “the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States”.
Messaging app WeChat has more than one billion users worldwide, but says the US only accounts for 2% of its revenue.
Video-sharing app TikTok has about 800 million users worldwide, of which 100 million are in the US.
Criminal charges have been dropped against two police officers seen on video last spring shoving a 75-year-old protester to the ground in Buffalo, New York, prosecutors said Thursday.
Bombshell Report Surfaces On COVID Deaths In New York Nursing Homes
Republicans were outraged. U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., called for a Justice Department investigation.
“The families of thousands of dead New York seniors deserve accountability and justice for the true consequences of Governor Cuomo’s fatally flawed nursing home policy and the continued attempts to cover it up. It’s clear what’s happening here is criminal,” Zeldin said.
The Post report coincided with a second correction from state officials in as many weeks about underreported nursing-home deaths.
(CNN)A trio of Republican senators allied with former President Donald Trump met with his defense team Thursday evening, in the middle of an impeachment trial in which they will vote on whether to convict Trump and potentially bar him from holding public office again.
Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah were spotted going into a room in the US Capitol that Trump’s lawyers were using to prepare for their arguments.
Trump lawyer David Schoen said that the senators were “very friendly guys” who just wanted to make sure they were “familiar with procedure” on the eve of their rebuttal to the House impeachment managers’ presentation.
When asked if it’s appropriate to meet with senators during the trial, Schoen said, “Oh yeah, I think that’s the practice of impeachment.”
Whether a former President ought to be subject to an impeachment trial is a matter of constitutional debate. Whether it’s prudent, if acquittal appears likely, is a related question. But wherever you come down on those issues, the House impeachment managers this week are laying out a visceral case that the Capitol riot of Jan. 6 was a disgrace for which President Trump bears responsibility.Long before November, Mr. Trump was saying that the only way he could lose the election was if it were rigged. On the night of the vote, he tweeted, “they are trying to STEAL the election.” In his speech that night, he called it “a fraud on the American public,” and said, “frankly we did win.” Is it a surprise that some of his fans took his words to heart?Instead of bowing to dozens of court defeats, Mr. Trump escalated. He falsely claimed that Vice President Mike Pence, if only he had the courage, could reject electoral votes and stop Democrats from hijacking democracy. He called his supporters to attend a rally on Jan. 6, when Congress would do the counting. “Be there, will be wild!” Mr. Trump tweeted. His speech that day was timed to coincide with the action in the Capitol, and then he directed the crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue.Mr. Trump’s defenders point out that he also told the audience to make their voices heard “peacefully.” And contra Rep. Eric Swalwell, who argued the incitement to attack the Capitol was “premeditated,” it’s difficult to think Mr. Trump ever envisioned what followed: that instead of merely making a boisterous display, the crowd would riot, assault the police, invade the building, send lawmakers fleeing with gas masks, trash legislative offices, and leave in its wake a dead Capitol officer.
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — There are calls to reopen schools and resume in-person classroom instruction.
Rush Limbaugh, the monumentally influential media icon who transformed talk radio and politics in his decades behind the microphone, helping shape the modern-day Republican Party, died Wednesday morning at the age of 70 after a battle with lung cancer, his family announced.
