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Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced Monday that the Trump Administration will raise the cost of new single family homes in the U.S. as part of its promise to “make America great again.” Mr. Ross didn’t put it quite that way. He said the Administration will impose a 20% tariff on softwood lumber imports from Canada, which total about $5 billion at year. But that’s a lot of lumber and the tariff will add an additional $1 billion in new costs for U.S. construction. Most of those costs will be added to the price of new American housing, not counting the...

Texas is spending record amounts on transportation, but lawmakers worried it is not enough are considering extending a controversial program that’s helped spread tollways through some of the state’s largest areas. A bill approved this week by a House committee would give the Texas Department of Transportation a chance to add six additional projects, including the widening of Interstate 45 north of I-10 and a long-planned Hempstead Tollway, meant to relieve traffic on U.S. 290 with the potential for a commuter rail corridor. The bill, by state Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, would also allow TxDOT or regional officials the chance...

Immigration: By threatening to shut down the government, Democrats got President Trump to back off his demand for money to start building the border wall this year. But so what? Illegal crossings are already way down thanks to Trump's other actions. And Democrats came off looking like out-of-touch hypocrites. Trump had wanted Congress to include $1.4 billion in the spending bill it has to hurry through to keep the government from shutting down for border wall construction. As CNS News points out, that's less money than the Treasury receives in a given four hours. Nevertheless, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep....

What does it say about environmentalists that a stand-up comic made famous in the 1970s by listing seven dirty words you couldn't say on TV has far more insight about the Earth than one of the green movement's most influential leaders? Is there any other conclusion to draw from a recent New York Times op-ed by Bill McKibben headlined "The Planet Can't Stand This Presidency"? In it, McKibben — who founded 350.org and teaches environmental studies at Middlebury College (where students recently physically attacked libertarian Charles Murray for trying to give a speech) — declares that President Trump poses both...

President Trump has his eye on a corporate tax rate of 15 percent, even if that means adding to the national deficit, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Trump reportedly told his aides to draft a proposal that could be presented to the American people this week. But such a plan would be an extremely tough sell to Republican lawmakers who’ve spent the last decade making debts and deficits a central issue, Politico’s Playbook notes. Plus, it could put future, permanent, tax cuts at risk.

In the high-priced Bay Area, even some households that bring in six figures a year can now be considered “low income.” That’s according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which recently released its 2017 income limits — a threshold that determines who can qualify for affordable and subsidized housing programs such as Section 8 vouchers. San Francisco and San Mateo counties have the highest limits in the Bay Area — and among the highest such numbers in the country. A family of four with an income of $105,350 per year is considered “low income.” A $65,800 annual...

Connecticut, a state making its mark in both microgrid and fuel cell technology, today will put yet another microgrid into operation, this one in Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood. microgrid and fuel cellConstellation, Bloom Energy and the city plan to announce completion of the 800-kW fuel cell microgrid this afternoon at a ribbon cutting. The microgrid will generate clean energy, manage electricity costs and supply emergency power for public buildings and businesses. The fuel cell uses natural gas to produce electricity. The state helped fund the project with about $2 million through its Microgrid Grant Program. Hartford was among nine grant winners...

Link only due to copyright issues: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/04/25/no-regrets-100-approval-100-days-these-trump-voters/100874444/

An antivirus service used by tens of thousands of businesses and millions of home users shut down an untold number of computers around the world after it mistakenly identified core parts of Microsoft Windows as threats, the company confirmed Tuesday. Webroot Inc. of Broomfield, Colorado, said it issued an updated detection rule that "identified false positives" for critical Windows operating files Monday afternoon, resulting in those files' being "quarantined" and inaccessible to Windows. Kristin Miller, a spokeswoman for Webroot, said the program incorrectly classified as "bad" a common folder that is often targeted for malware. She said that the false...

The Trump administration has dropped any support for a so-called border adjustment tax on imports, according to two people who have been briefed on the matter. The tax was intended to be the keystone of a tax reform proposal developed by Republican leaders in the House of Representatives. But it faced immense pushback from influential companies including Walmart and Toyota. If enacted, a border adjustment tax would have effectively imposed significant levies on billions of dollars of imported goods. Retailers in particular would have been hard hit, as products ranging from tires to T-shirts, which are imported from overseas, would...

Last month we published a video arguing the case for circular runways at airports, as part of a series called World Hacks. It took off and went viral. The video has had more than 36 million views on Facebook and generated heated debate on social media - including within the aviation community. Many people are sceptical about the concept. So we decided to hand-pick some of the top concerns and put them straight to the man proposing the idea: Dutch engineer Henk Hesselink. This is what he had to say.

Investors can thank earnings, as much as they can anything else, for the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s rally over the last couple of weeks. The surge this week in the Dow DJIA, +1.20% which is on track Tuesday to post the first back-to-back 200+-point gains since the two days following the U.S. election, is being attributed by many to the reduced risk of euro dissolution in the wake of French election results and hopes for corporate tax cuts and a budget deal. But there is a lot more to it than that. Since April 13, when J.P. Morgan Chase &...

UPDATE: The layoffs at ESPN might turn out worse than predicted, sources tell Sporting News. The Worldwide Leader in Sports could cut around 70 TV/radio anchors, reporters, analysts and online writers over coming days and weeks, sources said. That would be worse than the 40 to 50 on-air talents predicted by ESPN book author James Andrew Miller during a podcast with Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated. The higher numbers may reflect the inclusion of online writers like respected Titans beat reporter Paul Kuharsky who tweeted Monday his contract is not being renewed. "This could be a bloodbath," warned one source....

Drug smugglers are being helped by the Democratic leaders in Congress who are trying to block funding for a border wall, says President Donald Trump. He is using Twitter to hit the Democrats as enablers for the criminal gangs that are smuggling deadly drugs into American cities and towns around the nation, and which are sending murderous MS-13 gang members into Americans’ neighborhoods. Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump The Wall is a very important tool in stopping drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth (and many others)! If Donald J. Trump ✔ ‎@realDonaldTrump ....the wall is not...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., delivered a message to President Trump on Monday morning about Congress' sensitive negotiations over a spending bill that must pass by Friday. That message: Butt out. "It's my view that if the president stepped out of it, we could get a budget done by Friday," Schumer said on a conference call with reporters. "Totally agree," Pelosi said. "We were on the path to get it done until he did intervene." [Snip] Schumer called the wall a "monkey wrench" the president threw into the process, bungling an agreement...

Former President Barack Obama will be paid $400,000 to speak at Cantor Fitzgerald's healthcare conference this September, according to a new report. Obama, whose legacy item was the Affordable Care Act, will deliver the keynote address at the organization's lunch in what will be one of his first paid speeches, Fox Business' Charlie Gasparino reported Monday. Cantor Fitzgerald is a New York City-based financial services firm that specializes in fix incomes sales, institutional equity and trading.

The tax plan that President Trump is releasing tomorrow is likely to include infrastructure spending in an effort to attract Democrats, Politico reported Tuesday. The proposal is also expected to include a tax benefit for childcare and it is unlikely to feature the House Republicans' "border adjustment" proposal to tax imports and exempt exports, according to Politico, which cited sources familiar with the proposal. Trump has previously floated linking tax reform and infrastructure, telling The New York Times recently that it might make sense to pair the two issues together because infrastructure is “so popular” with members of Congress. White...

The Nasdaq breached the 6,000 mark for the first time ever on Tuesday, spurred by a raft of strong corporate earnings and President Donald Trump's promise of a major tax reform plan. The tech-heavy Nasdaq rose as much as 0.4 percent to hit a record level of 6,007.72 helped by gains in Biogen (BIIB.O) and Apple (AAPL.O). The index first breached the 5,000 mark on March 7, 2000 and closed above that level two days later during the height of the tech boom. Biogen's shares jumped more than 4 percent after the biotech company reported better-than-expected quarterly profit and revenue...

BERLIN — Ivanka Trump is joining Chancellor Angela Merkel and others in Berlin on Tuesday for talks on encouraging women’s economic empowerment on her first international outing as a White House adviser.

At its core, this story is about land rights, ownership, and power. It is a long, complicated, and winding tale that began back in 1989 over a desert tortoise. Designated as an "endangered species," the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) designated "hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land" for conservation, as reported by The Washington Post. This did not sit well with Cliven Bundy, whose family homesteaded his ranch back in 1877 and called the move a government land grab. As well, others were upset and felt the heavy hand of the federal government on their backs. But it...