The Treasury Department released a plan Thursday aimed at overhauling the U.S. housing market. A key component of the plan has the government relinquishing control over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in order to privatize the mortgage buyers.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which back half of the country's mortgages, have been under government conservatorship since the 2008 financial crisis. Under the Trump administration plan, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae would be privatized again and required to pay a fee for government protection. This approach does not require any approval from Congress, and the plan doesn't detail what will happen to the government's stakes in the firms or how they will build their capital up enough so they can go private again, The Washington Post reports.
Housing prices continue to rise across the country, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the proposal "will protect taxpayers and help Americans who want to buy a home." Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) disagrees, telling the Post that the plan "will make mortgages more expensive and harder to get. I'm urging the president: Make it easier for working people to buy or rent their homes, not harder." Catherine Garcia
Several people were killed on Wednesday during a shooting at the Molson Coors campus in Milwaukee, the city's mayor said.
"There are multiple people who have died, I believe including the shooter, and we will have more information in the next several hours," Mayor Tom Barrett said. Police are asking people to stay away from the area, but there is no longer an active threat. During the incident, schools and businesses in the area were on lockdown.
About 600 people work on the campus, which has offices and brewing facilities. Molson Coors owns the Miller and Coors brands of beer. Catherine Garcia
Israel on Wednesday became the first country to officially warn its citizens to avoid any international travel amid fears over the coronavirus outbreak.
Several airlines have canceled flights to China, where the respiratory virus originated, and governments have issued warnings about travel to certain countries, but no country has actively urged their citizens avoid traveling abroad at large until now. "If you don't genuinely have to fly — don't do so," Israel's health ministry said in a statement.
Although the majority of cases remain in China, the virus has spread to several other countries. In response to criticism that the country was stoking panic and could cause both economic and diplomatic damage, the health ministry said they'd rather deal with the inconveniences now than be sorry later, The Times of Israel reports.
The only confirmed Israeli cases so far involve people who were on a cruise ship that was quarantined in Japan, although South Korea — which is experiencing one of the larger outbreaks beyond China — reportedly informed Israel over the weekend that a members from a group of pilgrims returned to South Korea from Israel and tested positive for the disease. Read more at The Times of Israel. Tim O'Donnell
In today's edition of this is why we can't have nice things, the Federal Communications Commission reported Wednesday that it received a whopping 1,312 complaints over Jennifer Lopez and Shakira's halftime show at the Super Bowl earlier this month, per Fox Business.
The performance — which paid homage to the women's Latina roots — was described as "completely inappropriate," "obscene," and a "strip club act" by irate viewers, with objections arriving from every state except Vermont.
The most baffling news of all, though, was that somehow only around 50 people filed complains when Maroon 5's frontman, Adam Levine, performed topless at Super Bowl LIII in 2019 and subjected all of us to his unfortunate tattoo collection. Jeva Lange
No Time to Die should have been called No Time for a Bathroom Break, because rumor has it the film is going to be the longest James Bond movie ever made.
According to unofficial run times posted on AMC and Regal Cinemas' websites, Daniel Craig's fifth and final installment in the 007 franchise will take 163 minutes, or nearly three hours, to watch, reports Esquire.
If that turns out to be the case, it would make No Time to Die an entire quarter of an hour longer than the next-longest Bond movie, Spectre, and almost a full hour longer than the shortest (but still also somehow the longest?) Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. Jeva Lange
Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg twice compared Social Security to a Ponzi scheme when he was in office, CNN reports, which is a far cry from his current stance as a Democratic presidential candidate.
Nowadays, Bloomberg has vowed to to strengthen entitlement programs, but he used to see them as a major hurdle in the effort to shrink the United States' deficit. During appearances on his old radio program "Live from City Hall," which were reviewed by CNN's KFile, Bloomberg made the Ponzi scheme comparison once in 2006 and again in 2009. The latter instance was in relation to Bernie Madoff, who was arrested in December 2008 and later pleaded guilty to a massive Ponzi scheme.
"I don't know if Bernie Madoff got his idea from there, but if there's ever a Ponzi Scheme, people say Madoff was the biggest? Wrong," Bloomberg said. "Social Security is, far and away."
Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Bloomberg, attempted to explain Bloomberg's comments to CNN. "The Social Security Administration itself gives out detailed actuarial tables on when and how payments will exceed income, and the issue needs attention because we're running the cushion between them down," he said. "Mike believes that between now and that time, we will need to boost receipts by raising contributions from those who can best afford it, which is what he'll do as president." Read more at CNN. Tim O'Donnell
Heading into the 2020 presidential election, immigrants make up more of the voting population than ever before.
Immigrants account for roughly 10 percent of the electorate — 23 million eligible voters — marking a record high and nearly doubling that of 2000, according to analysis by Pew Research Center.
The number of eligible voters who are immigrants has increased more rapidly than that of the U.S.-born population over the last two decades due to both the increase in the number of immigrants living in the U.S., and an increase in naturalization. Forty-six percent of U.S. immigrants who are eligible to vote live in states with Democratic primaries or caucuses on or before Super Tuesday.
Hispanic and Asian immigrants make up the majority of eligible immigrant voters and see higher voter turnout rates than that of U.S.-born Hispanic and Asian people. Immigrants from Mexico are the largest group, accounting for 16 percent of foreign-born voters.
Immigrant voters include those born outside of the U.S. who are at least 18 and gained U.S. citizenship. The findings were pulled from Census Bureau data. Read more at Pew Research Center. Taylor Watson