Author: potus

(The Center Square) – In a state where its residents pay the second highest gas taxes in the country, another increase is on the horizon in Illinois. Dubbed “Rebuild Illinois” in 2019, the capital plan doubled the 19 cent gas tax to 38 cents and linked annual increases to the Consumer Price Index. It increases again to 48.3 cents per gallon on July 1. Revenue generated from motor fuel taxes is primarily dedicated to funding transportation-related infrastructure, but Ravi Mishra, policy analyst with the Illinois Policy Institute, said Illinoisans are not getting their money’s worth.“The state just keeps on taking more taxes and…

(The Center Square) – Georgia Power will freeze its rates for three years, according to an agreement with the Public Service Commission announced Monday.As part of the agreement, Georgia Power will not file for recovery expenses related to Hurricane Helene until 2026. Those expenses were expected to be a significant part of the 2025 rate case.”Energy customers have seen unprecedented inflation in the energy sector across the U.S.,” said Jason Shaw, chairman of the Public Service Commission, in a news release. “My fellow Commissioners and I urged staff and Georgia Power to come to some agreement where base rates would not…

This illustration picture shows a person waiting for an update of Epic Games’ Fortnite on their smartphone in Los Angeles on August 14, 2020.Chris Delmas | AFP | Getty ImagesApple must work out its latest issues with Epic Games, or head back to court to prove it has a legal basis for delaying the restoration of the popular Fortnite game to its iOS App Store, a judge ordered on Monday.Fortnite recently re-submitted its game but was blocked by Apple, Epic Games said Friday. The company later filed a motion to enforce the earlier injunction from the court.U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez…

(The Center Square) – Republicans’ multi-trillion-dollar budget reconciliation bill, set to hit the House floor Thursday, repeals multiple tax credits implemented by the Inflation Reduction Act that subsidize infrastructure meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.Yet even as Democrats have denounced the plan as “extreme,” some Republican lawmakers argue the legislation doesn’t go far enough. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act included 21 new climate-related tax expenditures, including subsidies and deductions for electric vehicle owners, homeowners who make their houses energy efficient, and facilities that generate electricity from wind turbines and solar panels.The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s portion of the policy megabill,…

The US Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, March 17, 2025. Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesA federal judge on Monday ruled that the Trump administration and DOGE’s takeover and gutting of the U.S. Institute of Peace were unlawful. The decision declaring DOGE’s actions at USIP “null and void” is the latest in a series of judicial rebukes of efforts by President Donald Trump and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to slash the size of the federal government. DOGE has been led by Trump advisor Elon Musk.The ruling came two months after DOGE team…

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday gave the Trump administration the green light to revoke special legal protections for thousands of Venezuelan immigrants, which could pave the way for them to be deported.The high court granted an emergency application filed by the administration, meaning officials can move forward with reversing a decision made at the tail end of the Biden administration to extend protections for almost 350,000 Venezuelans under the federal Temporary Protected Status program.The brief order noted that liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the application. Litigation will now continue in lower courts.”This is the largest…

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon delivers a speech during the Global Markets Conference, ahead of the Choose France summit, in Paris on May 15, 2025.Michel Euler | Afp | Getty ImagesJPMorgan Chase is finally allowing clients to buy bitcoin. But CEO Jamie Dimon is still a skeptic.”We are going to allow you to buy it,” Dimon said at the bank’s annual investor day on Monday. “We’re not going to custody it. We’re going to put it in statements for clients.”The decision marks a notable step for the largest U.S. bank, particularly due to Dimon’s history of criticizing the digital currency…

(The Center Square) – The Wisconsin Jobs and Energy Coalition, along with several other employer groups in Wisconsin, have been working to fight against an attempted block of a Line 5 reroute of the Bad River Reservation.The director of the Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association, for example, recently wrote with concerns that the arguments against approving the reroute could be used to block the timber industry on private land.“These claims could delay or deny logging, road building, forest thinning, and replanting efforts—basic practices essential to both forest health and economic vitality,” Henry Schienebeck recently wrote in an op-ed published in…

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the company at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on , April 4, 2025.David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesMicrosoft’s GitHub unit on Monday introduced a Copilot artificial intelligence agent that can take on specific programming work and inform people once it has finished.From there, developers can check the agent’s work from GitHub, a widely used repository for code. They can request modifications and then allow GitHub to add the source code to existing files.The launch, announced at Microsoft’s Build developer conference in Seattle, shows that the technology…

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will sign legislation Monday that will ban the nonconsensual online publication of sexually explicit images and videos that are both authentic and computer-generated. The “Take it Down Act” would make publishing this content illegal and would subject violators to mandatory restitution and criminal penalties such as prison, a fine or both. The bill would also subject people to criminal penalties who make threats to publish these intimate visual depictions, some of which are created using artificial intelligence. The measure would require websites, through enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission, to remove this imagery after receiving…