"President Joe Biden is frustrated. Unemployment has fallen to a healthy 3.6%, the economy is growing at a decent 2.4% rate, and inflation has fallen to 3%. And yet despite all this good economic news, the vast majority of voters rate the economy as poor and blame Biden for its sorry state.

"What gives?

"One hint can be found in the most recent CBS News poll, which found that 65% of adults would rate the economy as 'bad' and just 13% said that they were getting better financially. Most adults, 52%, said they were just staying in place, while 35% said they were falling behind.

"Among those that rated the economy as bad, 88% blamed 'inflation and the rising costs of goods and services.' Indeed among all respondents, even those who rated the economy as good, 70% of adults said that their personal income was not keeping up with inflation.

"And this perception is reflected in economic numbers. Despite falling inflation, prices are still rising. And overall, real wages are still down 5% since Biden took office. In other words, most voters are functionally making less money today than when Biden took office. No wonder most people think the economy is still bad!"

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"Half of Americans in a poll released Thursday said the U.S. economy is continuing to get worse, despite recent positive indicators.

"The CNN poll found that 51 percent of Americans said the economy is still in a downturn and conditions are continuing to worsen, while another 28 percent said an economic recovery has yet to start, but conditions are no longer getting worse.

"Just 1 in 5 Americans said the U.S. economy is beginning to recover from its recent problems, according to the poll."

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"D.C.'s slowest month is going to be one of the busiest for the nation's labor cops.

"President Joe Biden's appointees are poised to dramatically reshape the work lives of tens of millions of workers and the businesses that employ them. The Department of Labor, National Labor Relations Board and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- each operating on a separate track -- are readying to push out new regulations and rules on everything from overtime pay to who counts as an employee.

"The packed agenda will allow Biden to champion his pro-worker agenda as his re-election campaign heats up and the president works to tamp down grumbling from some segments of organized labor, most notably the United Auto Workers.

"Employers are bracing for the deluge, as August shapes up to be the start of a critical stretch for the federal government's top workplace enforcers."

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"President Joe Biden is facing increasing opposition for his ongoing crusade against popular household items. As of August 1, traditional incandescent light bulbs became the newest on the regulatory chopping block, effectively outlawing them nationwide.

"Under new Energy Department efficiency standards, bulbs manufactured and sold now must meet the 'minimum energy-efficiency standard' of 45 lumens per watt, giving rise to LED bulbs that some researchers have suggested can cause health complications.

"Biden's light bulb ban joins the list of growing home items the President has fixated on. Perhaps most notably, gas stoves have been a target of his administration for several months."

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"New polling provided exclusively to The Federalist shows a vast majority of U.S. voters support election integrity initiatives such as voter ID requirements and limitations on the use of mail-in voting.

"Conducted by the Honest Elections Project (HEP) from July 13-16, the survey reveals widespread support among the American electorate for common-sense election integrity policies. According to the poll, 88 percent of Americans support laws mandating voters show a form of ID in order to cast their ballot, including the vast majority of black (82 percent) and Hispanic voters (83 percent). Only 9 percent of those polled opposed ID requirements.

"The survey's findings paint a vastly different picture than the one crafted by legacy media and Democrat politicians, who for years have maliciously smeared voter ID laws as Republican-sponsored tools designed to 'suppress' the votes of racial minorities."

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"On the same day Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra was grilled by Congress for failing to vet immigrant family sponsors, the Department of Labor announced a 44% increase in the number of children it found working illegally this year.

Both of these issues stem from the same problem, a problem not created by either HHS or the Department of Labor. Child labor, and deaths from child labor, are surging in this country as a direct result of the catch-and-release policies implemented by President Joe Biden at the southern border. These problems will only get worse until all child immigrants are treated equally when encountered by Border Patrol.

The trafficking of immigrant children across the southern border was almost nonexistent until 2008, when President George W. Bush signed the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Before 2008, immigrant children were treated equally when apprehended at the border, no matter what country they came from. Nearly all were returned to their country of origin.

After the Wilberforce bill, children from countries other than Mexico and Canada were guaranteed not only a hearing from an immigration judge but also an automatic transfer from Border Patrol custody to HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement, which would then release them to a sponsor in the United States, usually a family member."

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"With the collapse of his plea bargain, Hunter Biden is facing something that he has been able to evade for five years: a real prosecution. The plea bargain itself was widely panned as a sweetheart deal that offered Biden a chance to close out the investigation with no jail time and two minor misdemeanors. However, it is hard for a plea bargain to actually write 'a wink and a nod' as a part of the formal factual description. The judge made a simple threshold inquiry on its meaning, and it immediately collapsed as the prosecutors and defense counsel struggled to explain.

"If the Justice Department followed its past practice, a withdrawal of this kind would ordinarily result in the prosecutors pursuing every possible criminal count -- and serious jail time. However, Hunter's sudden exposure to equal justice could prove equally costly for the person who was not to be mentioned in the case: President Joe Biden."

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"A recent video on Twitter showed a supermarket employee tussling with a shoplifter who had filled her bag with items. As the employee pulled the bag from her hand, she cried, 'I have to feed my family!' That's a common refrain from shoplifters these days, echoed in media headlines proclaiming that people have turned to stealing to put food on the table -- despite a U.S. social safety net that includes $185 billion in spending on food stamps and other nutrition-assistance programs. In truth, America's exploding shoplifting problem predates our current economic difficulties. Much of the stealing, store owners and security experts say, has less to do with putting food on the table than with a rise in organized theft, and it's having a particularly adverse effect in cities where criminal-justice reforms have made it easy to get away with.

"Retail theft in America has grown to a $94 billion epidemic, according to the National Retail Federation -- a staggering 90 percent increase since 2018. Retailers say that the problem gained momentum about a decade ago, when states began decriminalizing low-level shoplifting, raising the value of goods that a person must steal to enable prosecutors to bring felony charges. More than two-thirds of states now treat shoplifting as a misdemeanor if someone boosts less than $1,000 in goods, and 15 states have raised their limit to $1,500 or more. More than 70 percent of surveyed retailers reported that shoplifting spiked in their stores after these changes. Bail reforms that free without bond those arrested for shoplifting have also contributed to the problem. An official of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists says that retail theft is now 'a low-risk and high-reward line of business.'"

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"If you're a middle-class American, chances are your retirement account quietly funds far-left priorities like climate alarmism, racial hiring quotas, and other Democratic hobby horses. That's because of something called 'ESG,' or environmental, social, and corporate governance.

"In simple terms, ESG is liberal activism masquerading as corporate responsibility -- and it's bad for business and your retirement account. ...

"Last year, energy was the only sector in the Standard and Poor's 500 stock index to rise, yet ESG-aligned funds shunned fossil-fuel company investments. As a result, ESG funds underperformed the S&P 500. These ESG companies put progressivism ahead of profit and left money on the table, hurting their own investors.

"Making matters worse, America's largest ESG firms are likely violating antitrust laws by depriving the fossil fuel industry of investment. Attorneys general across the country are investigating ESG companies for antitrust violations and warning the public about the related financial risk."

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"The number of foreigners on the U.S. terrorist screening list who have tried illegally crossing into the United States has exploded ninefold since President Joe Biden took office, an alarming increase that experts say puts national security at risk.

So far in fiscal 2023, 140 people on the terror list have been apprehended between ports of entry, already crushing last year's record of 98. ...

The rapid growth in crossings by illegal aliens with terror ties is a warning sign that countries with bad intent may be trying to sneak potential terror cells into the United States, experts told Just the News."

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