Just thought I’d share this brilliant post from them today.

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And the FTC’s proposal to ban them? This has been a long time coming. I wonder what % of people actually support non-compete clauses for ordinary salaries employees, stating they can’t continue their ordinary job at a different company. It can’t. E many, right?

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without this video:

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Lol time to get wiped out in November, GOP terrorists

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The Justice Department and 16 state attorneys general filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple on Thursday, the federal government’s most significant challenge to the reach and influence of the company that has put iPhones in the hands of more than a billion people.
The government argued that Apple violated antitrust laws by preventing other companies from offering applications that compete with Apple products like its digital wallets, which could diminish the value of the iPhone. Apple’s policies hurt consumers and smaller companies that compete with some of Apple’s services, according to excerpts from the lawsuit released by the government, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
“Each step in Apple’s course of conduct built and reinforced the moat around its smartphone monopoly,” the government said in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit caps years of regulatory scrutiny of Apple’s wildly popular suite of devices and services, which have fueled its growth into a nearly $2.75 trillion public company that was for years the most valuable on the planet. It takes direct aim at the iPhone, Apple’s most popular device and most powerful business, and attacks the way the company has turned the billions of smartphones it has sold since 2007 into the centerpiece of its empire.
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By tightly controlling the user experience on iPhones and other devices, Apple has created what critics call an uneven playing field, where it grants its own products and services access to core features that it denies rivals. Over the years, it has limited finance companies’ access to the phone’s payment chip and Bluetooth trackers from tapping into its location-service feature. It’s also easier for users to connect Apple products, like smartwatches and laptops, to the iPhone than to those made by other manufacturers.

This is wild.

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https://www.epi.org/blog/explaining...e-rule-that-will-benefit-4-3-million-workers/

How the overtime threshold works​

Overtime pay protections are included in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to ensure that most workers who put in more than 40 hours a week get paid 1.5 times their regular pay for the extra hours they work. Almost all hourly workers are automatically eligible for overtime pay. But workers who are paid on a salary basis are only automatically eligible for overtime pay if they earn below a certain salary. Above that level, employers can claim that workers are “exempt” from overtime pay protection if their job duties are considered executive, administrative, or professional (EAP)—essentially managers or highly credentialed professionals.

The current overtime salary threshold is too low to protect many workers​

The pay threshold determining which salaried workers are automatically eligible for overtime pay has been eroded both by not being updated using a proper methodology, and by inflation. Currently, workers earning $684 per week (the equivalent of $35,568 per year for a full-time, full-year employee) can be forced to work 60-70 hours a week for no more pay than if they worked 40 hours. The extra 20-30 hours are completely free to the employer, allowing employers to exploit workers with no consequences.

The Department of Labor’s new final rule will phase in the updated salary threshold in two steps over the next eight months, and automatically update it every three years thereafter.

• Effective on July 1, 2024, the salary threshold will be raised to $844 per week.
  • This is the equivalent of $43,888 per year for a full-time, full-year worker.
  • In 2019, the Department updated the salary threshold to a level that was inappropriately low. Further, that threshold has eroded substantially in the last 4+ years as wages and prices have risen over that period, leaving roughly one million workers without overtime protections who would have received those protections under the methodology of even that inappropriately weak rule. This first step essentially adjusts the salary threshold set in the 2019 rule for inflation.
• Effective on January 1, 2025, the salary threshold will be raised to $1,128 per week.
  • This is the equivalent of $58,656 per year for a full-time, full-year worker.
  • This level appropriately sets the threshold at the 35th percentile of weekly wages for full-time, salaried workers in the lowest-wage Census region, currently the South.
• The salary threshold will automatically update every three years thereafter, based on the methodology laid out in the rule, to ensure that the strength of the rule does not erode over time as prices and wages rise.

The final rule will benefit 4.3 million workers​

• 2.4 million of these workers (56%) are women
• 1.0 million of these workers (24%) are workers of color
• The largest numbers of impacted workers are in professional and business services, health care and social services, and financial activities.
• The 4.3 million represents 3.0% of workers subject to the FLSA.

Expanding overtime protections is good for workers and manageable for employers​

• The final rule will result in a transfer of $1.5 billion annually from employers to workers in increased pay.
• While that increase in wages will be enormously impactful to affected workers, it represents well under one-tenth of one-percent of total wages and salaries in the U.S. economy. Employers will be more than able to adjust to the rule without negatively impacting the overall economy.
• In addition to increasing pay for many workers, the overtime rule will also reduce excessive hours of unpaid work. Before this update to the salary threshold, the cost to employers of overworking salaried EAP workers who make more than $684 weekly was effectively zero. The concept of overtime pay is designed to protect workers’ most valuable asset—their time—and to push employers to value it too.
• Automatic updating is a smart and easy way to simply maintain the labor standard established in the proposal. If the threshold is not updated automatically over time, it will steadily weaken as a labor standard until the next rulemaking, covering fewer and fewer workers as the salary distribution naturally rises over time with inflation and productivity growth.
• With automatic updating, employers will know exactly what to expect and when to expect it. They will also be able to get a reasonable sense well in advance of what the next threshold will be, because they will be able to track on a dedicated Bureau of Labor Statistics website how the 35th percentile of full-time salaried worker earnings in the lowest-wage Census region is evolving over time.

good luck Tony

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Listen to April 14th episode about the crooked stuff that the Enquirer did and what it was like to work there--not just with the Trump stories--but several other...it's from a former editor.

I transferred funds to my bank from each of them and the funds haven’t hit. Usually takes 10 seconds. I called both gave the same run around saying they were working on it and I’m not the only one.

It was an important week for Iowa baseball last week and they answered the bell, sweeping Rutgers to move up in the Big Ten standings. Iowa won the first two games of the season with dominating offense and then Brody Brecht turned in an absolute gem on Sunday, pitching 7.2 innings and striking out a dozen while allowing just a single hit and one unearned run. The Hawkeyes have another important series this week against Nebraska, who are currently 2nd in the conference standings.

Elsewhere, Hawkeye track and field got a big weekend from the Hawkeye throwers, Iowa rowing racked up a suite of wins, and Iowa tennis wrapped up their regular season.

You can follow along with all things Hawkeye Olympic sports here.

It's an intriguing site. Close to downtown, and well served by multiple CTA lines concerns about parking could be alleviated.
I do have to give Jerry Reinsdorf credit for being a master at leveraging Chicago against other cities.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/white-...-78-site-south-loop-related-midwest-reinsdorf

Only whites over 65 can mailin ballot. What a frickin joke this supreme court is. Biden u bettr start puttin a plan together to add to the court. If trump gets in ĺook out for the court to carry out his wishes.

Interesting

No way I would ever be able to focus on a computer while walking stationary. Seems silly. Like something a hamster would do

The Federal Communications Commission will vote to put the internet back under “net neutrality” regulation on Thursday, reprising Obama-era rules that prohibit internet service providers from discriminating against certain websites by throttling or blocking them.

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But the FCC has run into a hitch: how to define the “internet” in the year 2024.

The internet has changed dramatically since the early 2000s, when the idea of internet service providers having to treat all data equally first became popular. Two major changes since then include the shift from personal computers to mobile devices and the growing number of items connected to the internet, from robot vacuum cleaners to entire factories.

As the internet has proliferated, the question of precisely where it begins and ends has become murkier. Now some mobile executives are arguing that an emerging 5G technology called “network slicing” should be considered to lie in the hazy realm beyond the internet’s borders, unconstrained by net neutrality.


The proposal has sparked controversy because these 5G “slices” are not just a small side show and may well be core to what the internet becomes in its next phase. Technologists are expecting network slices will run next-generation killer apps, from autonomous vehicles to self-regulating factories to remote surgeries via robot arms to ultrarealistic video games, all of which will rely on the slices’ ability to operate as “fast lanes” with high speeds and low lag times.
“It is the technology that will help unlock the full potential of telemedicine, autonomous vehicles, automated manufacturing and virtual reality,” AT&T spokesman Alex Byers said.

But is it internet? What is internet?
The FCC came up with a list of internet-connected applications exempt from net neutrality back in 2015, considering them not really the internet, even though they were hooked to it. These included heart monitors, energy consumption sensors and automobile control systems. The FCC said last year it would review the list of exemptions, asking the public, “Are these still appropriate examples of data services that are outside the scope of broadband Internet access service?”


Since then, mobile operators have pushed the FCC hard for the network slicing exemption. T-Mobile, in particular, sent a 66-page comment to the FCC arguing that network slicing did not meet the definition of “broadband internet access service.”

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This has drawn a backlash from consumer advocates, who warn that it may be a loophole large enough to exempt a significant chunk of the internet from regulation, to the detriment of the rest of the internet.
“When you make those slices, what ends up happening as a consequence is that the general internet gets slower,” said Chao Jun Liu, a legislative associate at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “That is a clear violation of net neutrality.”
It’s a complicated question to untangle. Indeed, the structure of 5G — designed to run multiple separated networks or slices at different speeds and latencies — appears fundamentally to contradict the traditional concept of net neutrality of all data flowing at the same speed through a pipe, with nothing allowed to jump the queue or be pushed to the back. It’s unclear how the FCC will square that circle.



Not that long ago, the obscurities of how cell towers worked wouldn’t have had much to do with regulation of broadband internet, which ran through fiber-optic cables. But the two realms are now very much intertwined, with both technologies under the purview of net neutrality. 5G powers not only smartphones, but also a good chunk of home internet connections in the United States through “fixed wireless” services.
The FCC has been seeking to find a middle ground where consumers’ interests are protected, but companies still feel able to innovate. FCC spokesman Jonathan Uriarte said the agency is still pondering the details, but said “the FCC will not allow ‘network slicing’ to be used as a get-out-of-jail free card for net neutrality violations.”
The FCC plans to reinstate net neutrality Thursday at its monthly open meeting, as part of an expansion of FCC authority called Title II, which grants the agency the ability to investigate internet outages and treats internet service providers as utilities.



The FCC first adopted net neutrality in 2015 after more than a decade of debate over the issue. It was repealed in 2018 under the Trump administration, which considered the rules too restrictive on businesses, discouraging investment in network upgrades. The Biden administration has always signaled it intended to restore them, but did not have a Democratic majority on the FCC until October 2023.
FCC commissioners have focused on the consumer benefits of internet oversight in their public comments ahead of the vote, even as they try to sort out the fine print of network slicing behind closed doors.
“It’s just common sense that we should have some meaningful oversight of this essential service,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told reporters last week. “The reality right now is that the FCC can gather data about long-distance voice outages, not broadband outages. There’s nothing modern about that.”



In the 2023 American Customer Satisfaction Index, a survey of tens of thousands of consumers, internet service providers ranked second-lowest in customer satisfaction among industries, with only gas stations ranking lower.
“We often get lost in the weeds and throw around jargon like reclassify and Title II,” said Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). “But net neutrality is much simpler than that … it’s about ensuring that monopoly or duopoly broadband providers cannot squash competition, squeeze consumers and squish the little guy.”
Consumer activists began mobilizing around the network slicing issue after noticing that companies such as AT&T and Verizon were already mentioning consumer-facing technologies like video games in their marketing materials about the next-generation technology. AT&T is arguing that its deployment of faster slices would be consistent with net neutrality, as app makers would decide if they pay for premium service, not AT&T picking winners and losers.



“We will implement this technology in a manner that is controlled by end users, creates more choice and is consistent with open internet principles,” said Byers, the AT&T spokesman. “App-makers, not us, will have control over whether their app uses a particular slice.”
Some net-neutrality proponents say such a solution would not suffice. Barbara van Schewick, a law professor at Stanford University, said that the creation of these fast lanes would still slow down the rest of the internet due to fixed bandwidth.
“It’s not as if you’re just getting something extra,” she said. “We’re using some capacity that would have otherwise been used for the internet.”

The FCC is receiving calls from net neutrality supporters to close the “loophole” by specifying that broadband operators are not only prohibited from slowing down certain types of network traffic, but also from speeding them up.


“Allowing ISPs [internet service providers] to speed up applications undermines the essence of net neutrality: ISPs should not be allowed to play favorites, whether by speeding up favored apps or slowing down disfavored ones,” Scott Wiener, a Democratic member of the California state Senate, wrote to Rosenworcel in a letter on Tuesday.
Industry is arguing in return that broadly banning an emerging functionality of 5G would hinder innovation. The CTIA, a lobbying group for the U.S. wireless industry, warned of a chilling effect it termed, “Mother May I?”
In addition to the advent of network slicing, telecom industry executives have also been highlighting another change since the early days of the net neutrality debate: the rise of Big Tech internet giants as a second layer of gatekeepers that can and do discriminate against certain types of content on the internet.

Rep. Donald Payne Jr., a Democrat from New Jersey, has died at 65, according to a statement Wednesday from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
“Deeply saddened by the passing of Congressman Donald Payne Jr., a good friend, highly effective public servant and compassionate leader,” Jeffries said in a post on X. “My prayers and support are with the Payne family and his loved ones during this difficult time.”


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Payne suffered a heart attack on April 6 and was hospitalized at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. According to his office, the cardiac episode was related to complications from diabetes.
The New Jersey Globe, which first reported Payne’s death, said the congressman had battled numerous health issues including high blood pressure, kidney problems and diabetes.

The six-term House member was the son of a former congressman, Rep. Donald Payne Sr. (D-N.J.), the first Black representative from New Jersey. When his father died of colon cancer in 2012, Donald Payne Jr. ran for his seat in New Jersey’s 10th District.


The younger Payne is survived by his wife, Beatrice, and their three children.

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Before his election to Congress, Payne served as president of Newark’s city council and the Essex County Board of Commissioners. He previously worked as a toll collector.
Payne was a “strong supporter” of the Affordable Care Act and advocated for children’s health-care legislation as well as cancer prevention and gun violence prevention, according to his biography.

In a statement Wednesday, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said he was deeply saddened by Payne’s death.
“With his signature bow tie, big heart, and tenacious spirit, Donald embodied the very best of public service,” Murphy wrote. “As a former union worker and toll collector, he deeply understood the struggles our working families face, and he fought valiantly to serve their needs, every single day.”

Can you procure a pic of a still standing phone booth from the Sunshine State?

A global crisis was in the rearview mirror, and the American economy was showing signs of strength. Unemployment had stooped to 3.9 percent. Talk abounded of technological advancement and its potential to revolutionize the workforce.

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To one politician, the time was ripe for a bold idea: a four-day workweek.

While this could describe the present moment — down to the unemployment rate — the year was 1956. Long before artificial intelligence entered the chat and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) filed a 32-hour workweek bill, another leader — Vice President Richard M. Nixon (R) — made a similar proposal in a speech that campaign season, saying he envisioned a “not too distant” future where the “backbreaking toil and mind-wearying tension will be left to machines and electronic devices.”

“These are not dreams or idle boasts — they are simple projections of the gains we have made in the last four years,” Nixon said while campaigning for reelection, according to a New York Times report from the time. “Our hope is to double everyone’s standard of living in ten years.”


Needless to say, Nixon’s vision did not materialize over the next decade — or in the 68 years that followed. But discussions surrounding a four-day workweek have gathered steam in recent years following the rise of artificial intelligence and a pandemic that shattered workplace expectations for millions of Americans.
Studies and pilot programs across the globe have shown that four-day workweeks can boost workers’ productivity and happiness. Take the findings from the world’s largest four-day workweek trial in the United Kingdom, where the companies that participated saw increased revenue and employee well-being, while their productivity remained steady.

Sanders cited the U.K. pilot program on Thursday when he unveiled the proposed legislation, which he said would “reduce the stress level in our country and allow Americans to enjoy a better quality of life.”


“Moving to a 32-hour workweek with no loss of pay is not a radical idea,” Sanders said in a news release.
And, truly, it’s not. In 1956, while stumping inside a packed school auditorium in Colorado Springs, Nixon painted a picture of a future “with a fuller family life for every American.” A decade prior, economist John Maynard Keynes said that technological advancements would make a 15-hour workweek possible by 2030. Even American founding father Benjamin Franklin predicted that four hours of work a day would eventually suffice.

But the renewed push for reduced working hours is the latest turn in a fight that began over a century ago — and that is deeply enmeshed with the rise of technology and the ebbs and flows of the labor movement’s power, experts told The Washington Post.
The battle over working hours goes back to the 19th century, said Erik Loomis, a professor and labor historian at the University of Rhode Island. As the Industrial Revolution picked up speed, the expectation was that the increased mechanization would result in fewer working hours — but the opposite turned out to be true. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, workers went from working 150-200 days per year, to over 300 after the Industrial Revolution. Often, workers in the late 19th century and early 20th century faced grueling 14- to 16-hour shifts, six days a week.


As a result, early union efforts centered on this issue. “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what you will” became the rallying cry for the push for fewer working hours — one that would take decades to achieve.

In 1926, Henry Ford famously instituted an eight-hour-a-day, five-days-a-week work schedule for his Ford Motor Company employees, but the 40-hour workweek wasn’t widely implemented until 1938, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) signed the Fair Labor Standards Act into law.

Here’s where a paradox lies, Loomis said: Reduced hours had been a major issue among voters and union members. But after a 40-hour workweek was established by law, the push for shorter shifts began losing some steam. Instead, he said, it became a divisive debate within the labor movement.


“The movement began to question ‘Is that the final answer or is there the potential to reduce work hours more?’” he said. “And as that debate went on, the issue started getting framed less around the rights of workers, and more around how with these massive technological innovations there will be less of a need to even work 40 hours a week.”

Following the end of World War II, the United States would rise as an economic and innovation powerhouse. Productivity soared. Numerical control technology — computers’ precursors — began taking the country by storm. The rise of automation sparked slogans that may seem all too familiar today: “You won’t get tomorrow’s jobs with yesterday’s skills!” which were splashed across newspapers and bus stops throughout the ’60s. Concerns over machines taking over jobs soon followed.
And while others — like Nixon — pinned their hopes of more leisure time on new technology, “the larger socio-economic reality, the rise of globalization and other factors end up leading to the reduction in the size of the labor movement and its power,” Loomis said.


“And with unions losing power, politicians who might have taken on the question about reducing hours early on, immediately begin backing off,” he added.

Case in point: Nixon. By 1960 — just four years after he envisioned machines taking off a weight from workers’ backs — the then-presidential candidate abandoned the idea during a national telethon campaign event. Asked by a caller from Warren, Mich., about his stance on the 32-hour workweek, Nixon said it “just isn’t a possibility at the present time.”
“We can’t have it now for the reason that we find, that as far as automation is concerned, both because of the practices of business and labor, we do not have the efficiency yet developed to the point that reducing the workweek would not result in a reduction of production,” Nixon said. “The workweek can only be reduced at a time when reduction of the workweek will not reduce efficiency and will not reduce production.”


And indeed, new tech doesn’t translate to immediate changes in the workplace, said Aaron Benanav, a sociology professor at Syracuse University.

“There are periodic waves of excitement over new technologies every 20 to 30 years, but the implementation of it new unfolds over a much longer stretch of time,” he said. “Productivity increased a lot in the ’50s and ’60s, but it didn’t happen overnight.”
Over the next decades, progress in reducing hours came in the form of vacation and other paid time off, Benanav said. But with the labor movement losing power, discussions about a 32-hour workweek mostly fizzled out, he said.
“Most of the reductions in the workweek had come through collective bargaining and not through legislation. Also, unemployment rose in the ’70s, and competition with other countries was heating up,” he said. “There were all these things that made bargaining conditions a lot harder for workers, and that’s basically why it stopped.”



The labor movement has not rebounded to its onetime strength since then, though this summer it made some gains through strikes and an increase in support. But, in contrast to the middle of the last century, the driving force behind today’s four-day workweek push is not coming from the blue-collar and union workers, but from white-collar and corporate employees, Benanav said.
“It’s because blue-collar jobs are regulated,” he said. “There’s a 40-hour workweek, and if you work more than that, you’re required to be paid overtime. But those rules don’t apply to salaried workers in America. And there’s just been this real pressure on salaried workers to work a lot more and there’s no law that prevents companies from doing that.”
Some of what Americans want today — better work/life balance and stronger community — can be found in what Nixon proposed long ago, Benanav said. And, he added, while the disgraced former president may seem like an unlikely champion of the four-day workweek, he was fairly progressive on economic issues by today’s standards.
On that, he said, “you shouldn’t sell Nixon short.”

The national conversation around so-called “squatters” reached a fever pitch in recent weeks, spurred by conflicts that have gone viral and legislative actions in at least four states.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last week signed a bill aimed at giving Floridian homeowners “the ability to quickly and legally remove a squatter from a property,” while Georgia, South Carolina and New York have introduced bills cracking down on people who illegally take over homes.


Squatting is extremely rare, according to experts — so rare that there is no reliable data available on the number of squatters around the country. But with the handful of high-profile cases of property owners going to court to evict illegal residents, a right-wing media frenzy and the introduction of state bills, the topic has become ubiquitous.



Here’s what you need to know:

What to know​

• What is squatting?
• Is squatting really a problem?
• What are the new laws and proposals around squatting?
• How did this national conversation come about?

What is squatting?​

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Squatting occurs when “somebody goes into a property with no legal right to it whatsoever,” said Eric Dunn, director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project.
It’s a form of trespassing but involves the intention of claiming ownership or permanent residency.
In recent weeks, politicians and news outlets have referenced so-called “squatters’ rights” — often conflating them with adverse possession, a rarely applicable legal doctrine used in cases when a person “occupies a home openly and notoriously” for years or decades, Dunn said. In such cases, there’s usually a dispute about ownership stemming from issues such as botched deeds.

But in the most literal sense, there’s no such thing as “squatters’ rights,” according to Dunn.
There are “some meager legal protections” for people accused of squatting, Dunn said. For instance, a homeowner can’t change the locks or go in with a gun and order squatters off the property.

Is squatting really a problem?​

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The short answer, experts say: No.


Juan Pablo Garnham, a researcher and communications manager at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, called squatting “an extremely rare issue.”
Dunn, who started off his law career in Detroit — “where there’s more abandoned homes than the city can count” — said: “I can probably count on one hand the number of legitimate squatting cases I’ve seen.”

Sateesh Nori, a clinical adjunct professor of housing rights at NYU Law School, said: “I haven’t heard of a single case recently in which a homeowner says there’s squatters in their home.”
No public data seems to be available. Squatting is not tracked in national crime databases, such as those by the FBI or the Public Policy Institute of California.
“What I think is happening is that it’s just a good story,” Nori said. “It only takes two or three examples for people to think this is rampant. I don’t doubt the facts in these several incidents that have been reported — and it’s quite horrible what’s happened to these homeowners — but I don’t think there is some kind of epidemic of squatters taking over neighborhoods in New York City or anywhere.”



Despite its rarity, squatting has emerged as a political cudgel for the right wing — a squatting panic fed by a flurry of headlines that “feed into the larger narrative of crime, which is a political issue,” Nori said, noting that 2024 is a presidential election year and partisans are looking to motivate voters to go to the polls.

What are the new laws and proposals around squatting?​

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Since November, at least four states have introduced bills that aim to extend homeowners’ rights and speed up the processes to remove people living illegally in their homes.
A bill introduced by a Republican in South Carolina’s state House last week would allow a property owner to immediately remove a person unlawfully occupying a home and provides penalties for those breaking the law.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last week signed a similar bill, giving local sheriffs the power to quickly remove people illegally living in others’ homes. The bill was initially filed in November. The law, which can lead to second-degree felony charges for those on others’ property, takes effect July 1.


The Georgia Squatter Reform Act, introduced on Jan. 24, has passed the state legislature and is awaiting the signature of Gov. Brian Kemp (R). It makes it clear that squatting is a police matter, not a civil case, and aims to give landlords “a streamlined process for ejecting squatters.”
In New York, four Republican state senators co-sponsored a bill, filed on March 24, that defines squatting as criminal trespassing and aims to penalize it more harshly.

Dunn from the National Housing Law Project said that the new laws and proposals give police the power to adjudicate whether someone is a legitimate tenant or a squatter and are “a disaster waiting to happen.”
“Anytime you have the police involved, you’re creating more opportunities for violence and abuse of things that police are often involved in,” he added.

How did this national conversation come about?​

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Several stories involving squatting gained media attention in recent weeks, with two standing out.


One involved Adele Andaloro, a New York woman who found that people had been living illegally in her home since February, according to ABC. Andaloro was arrested for changing the locks of her own house.

Also in March, Leonel Moreno, a Venezuelan citizen in the United States, created TikToks suggesting that people should occupy abandoned homes, citing adverse possession laws, which he called “squatters rights.” Moreno was arrested on March 29 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for entering the United States illegally, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
Moreno’s TikToks, the video of Andaloro getting arrested and a handful of similar incidents nationwide prompted a round of media coverage suggesting that squatting is on the rise, particularly by undocumented immigrants.
A Fox News host claimed on March 20 that President Biden was allowing migrants to “break into the country and then break into your bedroom.” Three days later, Joe Rogan, who hosts the country’s most streamed podcast, said the United States is “basically allowing people to steal people’s houses.”




Mentions of “squatters” were 14 times more common throughout the last week of March than they were a month earlier in social media posts, podcasts and other public statements from high-profile right-wing politicians, commentators and influencers, according to a Washington Post analysis.
Some observers view the narrative around the rise in squatters as a distraction from the housing crisis.
Brandon Weiss, a professor of law at American University, said an unprecedented number of U.S. households that cannot afford housing right now.
“Stories about the growing number of squatters is a sort of narrative, or rhetorical tool, being used to push back against tenants,” he said. “Narratives like this will shift the balance of power even further towards landlords.”
Weiss said that there are ongoing campaigns to provide greater housing security, but if the narrative becomes that landlords are the victims of tenants, it will deflect from the bigger problem of housing insecurity.
“Nobody is advocating wildly reckless lawbreaking, but if you take these caricatured cases to enact law reform, that can affect people in ways that the law probably didn’t intend,” he said.

Who is the bigger asshole? Baldwin or the protestor?

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Des Moines Community Schools will not allow staff to carry guns on campus in opposition to the Iowa Governor wanting to allow Iowa educators to be armed.

Chapter 1 in standing up to another stupid piece of legislation.

Bravo

More schools will follow.

WASHINGTON, DC: In a recent podcast interview with Blaze Media CEO Glenn Beck, independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr unleashed scathing criticism towards former chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci, blaming him for mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kennedy, known for his skepticism of the Covid vaccine and the government's response to the outbreak, accused Fauci of avoiding prison time solely due to Joe Biden's election victory in 2020.

Kennedy's critique of Fauci​

Kennedy, 70, didn't mince words in his condemnation of Fauci, alleging that his actions during the pandemic should have landed him in jail.

"Well, he's not in jail because - because Joe Biden is president and because, you know, unfortunately, Donald Trump colluded with, or was run over by him," the son of the late attorney general and senator from New York Robert F Kennedy declared.

He pointed fingers at both Fauci and former President Donald Trump, suggesting that Trump failed to take appropriate action against Fauci. Kennedy stated, "Donald Trump knew what was wrong. He knew not to shut down our businesses... He tried to speak up, but his own bureaucrats told him to shut up, and unfortunately, he did what he was told."

The podcast interview delved into Fauci's tenure as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, highlighting his role in both the Trump and Biden administrations.

Fauci, now 83, faced criticism for his advocacy of social distancing measures and his initially contradictory advice on mask-wearing. Despite his controversial decisions, Fauci retained his position throughout both administrations, with Trump defending his decision not to dismiss Fauci, citing bureaucratic limitations.

"First of all, you're not allowed. He's civil service, and you're not allowed to fire him," Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt in 2023. "But forget that, because I don't necessarily go by everything. But Dr Fauci would tell me things, and I wouldn't do them, in many cases. But also, he wasn't a big player in my administration."

Kennedy's criticism extended beyond Fauci, targeting the broader medical establishment's handling of the pandemic response. He lamented the suppression of dissenting voices among medical professionals who disagreed with mainstream narratives surrounding Covid-19 and the vaccine.

Kennedy described a climate of fear and intimidation, where doctors who spoke out were punished, silenced, and ostracized. "Thousands of doctors who were trying to tell the truth were punished, they were delicensed, they were gaslighted, they were vilified and demonized and silenced, and it was really criminal," he told Beck.

One of Kennedy's key points of contention was the impact of Covid-19 measures on children, particularly regarding lockdowns and mask mandates. He referenced changes in benchmarks for childhood development following pandemic-related restrictions, suggesting a correlation between these measures and developmental setbacks among children.

"They're trying to normalize what they did to our children and the whole thing is so criminal and so corrupt," Kennedy said, as quoted by the New York Post.

Social media reactions​

Social media was inundated with a flurry of reactions after Kennedy said Fauci was "not in jail because Joe Biden is president."

"That's the only reason," one posted on X.

"Without question," another wrote.

"Fauci should never see the light of day again," a comment read.

"He's not lying," someone else added.

"Another reason I am encouraging my liberal friends to vote for RFK," another chimed in.



History will show that Anthony Fauci will be remembered as one of the biggest villiians of the 21st century.