U.S. and World Headlines
Five Takeaways From Biden’s Pivotal Press Conference
President Biden held a critical news conference at NATO’s Washington summit on Thursday evening as the fate of his reelection campaign hangs in the balance.
The event came exactly two weeks after the disastrous debate performance in Atlanta that sent Democrats into a frenzy of panic and prompted a number of lawmakers to urge the president to stand aside. It’s a crisis that Biden has not yet weathered.
The news conference was an hour-long walk on a high wire.
Advisers hoped Biden would reassure his party with a performance showing him in command on the world stage. Another collapse would surely have spelt the end of his campaign.
In the end, the news conference didn’t hit either of those extremes.
Here were the biggest takeaways.
More Democrats Call On Biden To Step Aside From 2024 Race After His News Conference
At least three more House Democrats called on President Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race Thursday after his first solo news conference in months following the NATO summit.
Even though Biden’s team felt optimistic about his performance, it remained unclear whether he did enough to repair the damage with members of his party who worry he no longer has what it takes to defeat Donald Trump and be effective for another four years.
Expectations Spike For A Fed Rate Cut
It now looks like we are going to get a rate cut this quarter after all.
After this morning’s very benign inflation report, the CME Fed Funds futures markets spiked to pricing in a 95% probability that the Fed will cut in September, if not this month.
At the start of this year, markets were sure there would be at least one rate cut by September, with most market participants expecting five cuts by then.
Nearly All AT&T Cell Customers’ Call And Text Records Exposed In A Massive Breach
The call and text message records of tens of millions of AT&T cellphone customers in mid-to-late 2022 were exposed in a massive data breach, the telecom company revealed Friday.
AT&T blamed an “illegal download” on a third-party cloud platform that it learned about in April – just as the company was grappling with an unrelated major data leak.
AT&T said the compromised data includes the telephone numbers of “nearly all” of its cellular customers and the customers of wireless providers that use its network between May 1, 2022 and October 31, 2022.
SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Suffers Major Malfunction During Starlink Launch
SpaceX launched another batch of Starlink internet satellites from California Thursday, but the engine powering the rocket’s second stage suffered a catastrophic failure, if not an explosion, during an attempt to carry out a final “burn” to raise the low point of the orbit, company founder Elon Musk posted early Friday on X.
Musk referred to the anomaly as a “RUD,” a tongue-in-cheek acronym that stands for “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
Wisconsin Headlines
Schimel Raised $598k In Six Months For SCOWIS Bid, Crawford Pulled In $461k Over Three Weeks
Conservative Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel raised $597,639 over the last six months, his campaign tells WisPolitics.
By comparison, liberal candidate Susan Crawford raised $461,274 over the first three weeks after she got into the race last month, according to a draft cover sheet her campaign shared with WisPolitics.
Both are well ahead of where other candidates have been at this point in a Supreme Court race, pointing to another expensive campaign with the majority up for grabs against in 2025. WisPolitics tracked at least $56 million in spending on the 2023 race as liberals flipped control of the court for the first time in 15 years.
Rural Wisconsin School District Calls On State To Stop Funding Vouchers
A small rural Wisconsin school district that says property taxes have increased now that about a dozen students are attending a voucher school, and the school board is asking the state for relief.
The Kickapoo Area School District passed a resolution this spring calling for lawmakers to stop using public tax dollars to fund private school vouchers. The district is also asking that public spending on private school be outlined on property tax bills.
During the 2023-24 school year, 11 students in the Kickapoo school district received a private school voucher. The district is based in the tiny community of Viola, which has about 700 residents. Taxpayers there contributed $113,811 toward the cost of private school education for those students, an increase of more than 400 percent from the previous year, according to the resolution.
Chairman Of Wisconsin GOP Holds Press Conference On Upcoming RNC
In just a few short days, Milwaukee hosts the Republican National Convention.
It’s bringing tens of thousands of people to Wisconsin and boosting the economy by hundreds of millions. It’s also when the GOP formally selects former President Donald Trump as the party’s nominee for the White House.
The Chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin once again spoke out in support of former President Donald Trump at Thursday’s RNC press conference in Madison. Brian Schimming emphasized the importance of Wisconsin hosting the Republican National Convention as a common swing state in every election.
Woman Sentenced to 5 Years for Fraud Scheme
Timothy M. O’Shea, United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, announced that Sarah Doherty, 35, Stephenville, Texas, was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Judge William M. Conley to 5 years in federal prison for wire fraud and tax evasion. Doherty pleaded guilty to these charges on April 9, 2024. As part of her sentence, Doherty was ordered to pay $1,025,064.74 in restitution to Victim-1.
Between 2016 and 2020, Doherty executed a scheme to defraud Victim-1, who owned a small business in central Wisconsin. Doherty became friends with Victim-1 and gained access to his personal finances. She then used this access to steal money from Victim-1 and used the stolen money to pay her personal expenses, including a down payment on a property in Colorado and a seven-horse trailer.
Wisconsin Election Officials Provide Local Clerks Guidance On Using Absentee Ballot Drop Boxes In 2024
The bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission on July 11 unanimously approved a set of best practices to ensure the security of unstaffed absentee ballot drop boxes that the state Supreme Court ruled could be installed for the fall elections.
The use of drop boxes became a partisan issue after Donald Trump lost to President Joe Biden in Wisconsin by just under 21,000 votes in 2020. Wisconsin is once again expected to be one of the few swing states in 2024, heightening attention to voting rules.
