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@ISIDEWITH submitted…1 day1D
The U.S. government on Tuesday issued new rules to remove roughly $49 billion in unpaid medical debts from Americans’ credit reports, even as debt collectors and incoming Republican leaders have signaled they might try to overturn the policy entering the Trump administration.The new prohibition targets credit-reporting companies, including Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, which assemble detailed dossiers about consumers that they furnish to banks, employers and landlords so that they can evaluate a person’s finances.Under the new policy, these credit reports can no longer include past-due medical bills, and companies that obtain a person’s credit history cannot evaluate their application based on outstanding medical debts. The regulation from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does not forgive any health-related debts.The agency estimated Tuesday that its rules would help about 15 million Americans, some of whom have been unable to obtain jobs, apartments, credit cards or mortgages if unavoidable medical debts appear as glaring, derogatory marks on their credit histories, lowering their scores.Many of these people carry medical debt despite having some form of health insurance. The CFPB said some of the past-due balances are actually erroneous, reflecting amounts already paid or greatly overstated totals compared to what a person actually owes.“People who get sick shouldn’t have their financial future upended,” Rohit Chopra, the agency’s director, said in a statement. “The CFPB’s final rule will close a special carveout that has allowed debt collectors to abuse the credit reporting system to coerce people into paying medical bills they may not even owe.”The CFPB rules are likely to draw sharp opposition from credit-reporting agencies and debt collectors, which blasted the agency last year when it first proposed the idea.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…2 days2D
President Joe Biden announced a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the US coastline on Monday in a move designed to bolster his environmental and climate legacy as he prepares to leave office.The order will protect 625mn acres of ocean on the US east coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, as well as portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska, the White House said on Monday.“My decision reflects what the coastal communities, business and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said.The executive action will not prevent oil and gas companies obtaining leases in the central and western parts of the Gulf of Mexico, areas that produce almost 15 per cent of the nation’s oil supplies. Nevertheless, the move is expected to complicate the policy agenda of incoming president Donald Trump, who has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” and boost US oil production, even though it is already at a record level.The Trump transition team said it was a disgraceful decision designed to exact “political revenge on the American people” and the incoming president said he would immediately “unban” Biden’s prohibition on new offshore drilling.“I have the right to unban it immediately . . . we can’t let that happen to our country. It’s our greatest, it’s really our greatest economic asset,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in an interview on Monday.Biden’s action will probably be challenged by the oil industry in court and face pushback from Republicans in Congress. But overturning the order could prove challenging and may require an act of Congress, according to legal experts.Biden is using his authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, to protect the areas from drilling — the same mechanism which former president Barack Obama used previously to ban offshore drilling in some Arctic and Atlantic waters in 2016.In 2019, a federal judge ruled that an executive order by former president Donald Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean was unlawful.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…3 days3D
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is likely to announce his resignation as leader of the Liberal Party this week, the Globe and Mail reported, citing information from three people it didn’t name.Trudeau has been under pressure from elected lawmakers in his party to quit for months — and it increased further when Chrystia Freeland, his finance minister, stepped down on Dec. 16, saying she and the prime minister were at odds on policy.Liberal lawmakers are scheduled to hold a caucus meeting on Wednesday. Trudeau’s resignation would trigger a race for the party leadership, with the winner becoming prime minister.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…3wks3W
The Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to a defense policy bill directing $895 billion toward the Pentagon and other military activities, moving over the objections of some Democrats who opposed a provision added late in the negotiations that would deny coverage for transgender health procedures for minors.The 85-to-14 vote, coming a week after a divided House passed the same measure, cleared the bill for President Biden’s signature.Most Republicans and many Democrats supported the measure, which provides a 14.5 percent pay raise to junior enlisted service members and a 4.5 percent pay raise for all other service members. It also expands access to meal assistance, housing and child care programs that benefit those in uniform.But several Democrats withheld their backing in protest of a provision preventing TRICARE, the military’s health care plan for service members, from covering “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for children under 18.The language, which would affect the gender-transitioning children of service members, was recently added to the measure at the insistence of Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, who refused to bring a defense bill to the House floor without it, according to aides familiar with the negotiations.Twenty-one Democrats, led by Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, proposed an amendment to strip the provision from the bill, but the matter was never brought to a vote. Several of them took to the floor on Tuesday to lodge their objections.“It’s flat-out wrong to put this provision in this bill and take away a service member’s freedom to make that decision for their families,” Ms. Baldwin said, estimating that the provision could negatively affect as many as 6,000 to 7,000 military families.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…16hrs16H
President-elect Trump is preparing to invite the entire Senate Republican conference to Mar-a-Lago for a mega-MAGA party in the coming weeks, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.Trump is keen to celebrate a victory he sees as historic and fete the senators who helped him achieve it. He also wants to build trust with the lawmakers he needs to pass his sweeping legislative agenda."Mar-a-Lago is special to the president. He's at ease there. Everyone is," a Trump adviser told Axios."So it's a good place to get everyone together outside of Washington. It's team bonding. Trump is very much the player-coach."Final details have not been locked down, but the big bash could come before Trump's inauguration.It will serve as an informal and more fun follow-up to his meeting Wednesday evening with GOP senators at their weekly policy get-together.Trump is also hosting governors at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday night, Politico reported.Also this week, Trump will welcome three House groups to his Florida club. There'll be separate meetings scheduled for the Freedom Caucus, committee chairs and the so-called SALT lawmakers from high-tax blue states.Zoom out: Trump likes to play the role of DJ at his Palm Beach club, but the background music will likely be dominated by the same talk that has consumed D.C. these last few weeks.Republicans are in a heated internal conversation on whether to use one — or two — legislative vehicles to implement Trump's immigration and tax reform policies.Trump isn't entirely indifferent, but he's indicated he can live with either approach."I like one, big, beautiful bill," Trump said at a press conference on Tuesday. "But if two is more certain, it does go a little bit quicker because you can do the immigration stuff early.""I can live either way," he added.Zoom in: This winter, Mar-a-Lago has been the warm-weather retreat for Trump's court — once in exile, but now preparing to return to power. (Mar-a-Lago was dubbed the "Winter White House" long before Trump bought it).Government leaders and high-profile executives have all visited Trump in Palm Beach, both to pay their respects, but also to understand Trump's intentions and shape his views.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…56mins56m
The Los Angeles Fire Department had its budget cut by a staggering $17.6 million this financial year, records show — as fire crews continue to battle out-of-control blazes ravaging the City of Angels.The drastic decrease in funding for the fire department was the second-largest cut to come out of embattled Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass‘ 2024-25 fiscal year budget, according to city figures.The police budget, meanwhile, increased by $126 million, a graphic shared by LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia shows.Bass had initially wanted to cut the fire department by even more — a staggering $23 million.The details on Bass’ budget slashing resurfaced as the mayor faced widespread backlash Wednesday after it was revealed she was away in Africa for the Ghana president’s inauguration — even as wind-whipped wildfires turned parts of her city into an apocalyptic hellscape.In her absence, Bass found time to praise firefighters and other emergency crews for working “overnight to protect Angelenos affected by fires.”“Angelenos should be advised that the windstorm is expected to worsen through the morning and to heed local warnings, stay vigilant and stay safe,” Bass said in a post on X.
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