Important Takeaways:
- Hamas is basically saying that if the Trump administration dares to implement the relocation and reconstruction plan, the terrorist organization will unleash a wave of terrorism against Americans and Palestinians.
- Hamas does not want any US intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The terrorist group, together with Iran’s terror proxies, fear that this would disrupt their Jihad (holy war) against Israel.
- For the Trump plan to succeed, the US must insist on the removal of Hamas from power and the disarming of all the terror groups in the Gaza Strip.
- It will take several years to rebuild the Gaza Strip and make it habitable once again. The Trump administration will be gone by then. The biggest fear is that a future US administration will fail to block the return of terrorists to the rebuilt Gaza Strip.
- If that happens, it will be a matter of time before the Gaza Strip once again becomes a large base for jihadists not only from Hamas, but other Islamist terror groups for whom Israel and the US are the Number 1 target.
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Important Takeaways:
- Americans foresee a somewhat challenging year ahead for the country, based on their predictions for various aspects of U.S. affairs and daily life. Majorities of U.S. adults think 2025 will be a year of political conflict, economic difficulty, international discord, increasing power for China and Russia, and a rising federal budget deficit.
- However, there is at least some optimism for 2025, as 66% of U.S. adults expect gains in the stock market, 54% think there will be increasing or full employment, and 52% predict reasonable price growth. Meanwhile, Americans are essentially tied in their projections for what 2025 will hold when it comes to the United States’ power in the world, the number of labor strikes, taxes and crime rates.
- Bottom Line:
- Americans’ forecast for the year ahead is tied to their views of the current domestic and international climates. Recent Gallup polling finds that opinions of the economy, the direction of the country and President Joe Biden’s job performance are all negative, which is likely contributing to their outlook for 2025. The exception is Republicans’ broadly positive predictions for the year ahead as Trump prepares to become president again.
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Important Takeaways:
- The US Embassy in Beirut is calling on Americans to leave Lebanon as soon as possible as the war between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies.
- “US citizens in Lebanon are strongly encouraged to depart now,” the embassy said in a notice to citizens on Monday. “US citizens who choose not to depart at this time should prepare contingency plans should the situation deteriorate further.”
- Just 1,100 of the estimated 86,000 Americans who live in Lebanon have fled the nation so far, with the US setting aside thousands of seats on flights out of Lebanon since Sept. 27, according to the State Department.
- The embassy, however, warned that the flights “will not continue indefinitely,” urging all Americans in Lebanon to make a decision sooner rather than later.
- Embassy officials stressed that any plans for those who choose not to leave “should not rely on the US government for assisted departure or evacuations.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Nearly 3 million Americans have cast early ballots either in person or by mail with under four weeks to go until Election Day, an election tracking site shows.
- Of that figure, nearly 504,000 people had voted early in person, and more than 2.37 million had voted by mail, the tracking site found.
- About 47.5 million mail-in ballots have been requested so far. In comparison, more than 92 million mail-in ballots were requested through the 2020 election, according to the university.
- In the states reporting how people voted by party, 56.3 percent of people who had returned early ballots were Democrats, representing about 732,378 people.
- Another 27.4 percent were Republican, representing 356,797 voters, and 16.2 percent, or 210,980, were independent or members of a third party, according to the website.
- Early in-person voting has been underway in some states for several weeks now. It begins next week in four more swing states: Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Nevada.
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Important Takeaways:
- The U.S. economy has remained remarkably strong even amid persistent inflation and high interest rates.
- And yet, 59% of Americans falsely believe that the U.S. is currently in a recession, according to a recent survey of 2,000 adults by Affirm in June.
- Citing higher costs and difficulty making ends meet, most respondents said they think a recession started roughly 15 months ago, in March 2023, and could last until July 2025, Affirm found.
- Still, regardless of the country’s economic standing, many Americans are struggling in the face of sky-high prices for everyday items, and most have exhausted their savings and are now leaning on credit cards to make ends meet.
- Economists have wrestled with the growing disconnect between how the economy is doing and how people feel about their financial standing.
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Important Takeaways:
- Even Americans earning more than six figures are worried about their finances
- A growing number of Americans making six-figure salaries are worried about paying their monthly bills, according to a new survey published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
- The survey shows that more than 30% of respondents earning between $100,000 and $149,999 are concerned about making ends meet within the next six months. That marks a sharp increase from one year ago, when 21.3% of individuals in that income bracket expressed concern about making ends meet.
- At the same time, about 32.5% of individuals earning more than $150,000 are worried about being able to pay their bills, which also marks an increase from the 21.7% figure reported one year ago.
- Interestingly, those more affluent Americans are actually more worried about their finances than many individuals who are earning less money. About 29.8% of individuals making between $40,000 and $69,999 said they are concerned, up from 23.9% last year.
- The typical U.S. household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 more compared with three years ago.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Pentagon is moving U.S. military assets closer to Israel and Lebanon to be ready to evacuate Americans as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies
- U.S. officials are increasingly concerned Israel is going to carry out airstrikes and a possible ground offensive in Lebanon in the coming weeks.
- Israel wants to move Hezbollah farther away from the border and is pushing for a diplomatic solution, but if that does not work the Israel Defense Forces are ready to use force, an Israeli official said.
- The goal is to return quiet to northern Israel so that 60,000 Israelis who have left in the past eight months because of Hezbollah rocket fire can go home, the official said.
- The State Department estimated in 2022 that 86,000 Americans live in Lebanon. In 2006, the U.S. evacuated 15,000 people from the country during Israel’s war with Hezbollah.
- In a statement, Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said restoring calm along the Israel-Lebanon border “remains a top priority for the United States and must be of the utmost importance for both Lebanon and Israel. We continue to work toward a diplomatic resolution that would allow Israeli and Lebanese citizens to safely return to their homes and live in peace and security.”
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Important Takeaways:
- More than a quarter of Americans have resorted to skipping meals to avoid paying inflated grocery store prices, according to a new survey.
- According to a study by Qualtrics on behalf of Intuit Credit Karma, 80% of Americans say they have felt a “notable increase” in grocery costs in recent years. More than a quarter of respondents said the increased cost has led them to occasionally skip meals, while about one-third said they spend more than 60% of their monthly income on mandatory expenses such as food, utilities and rent.
- “Food insecurity is a major issue in this country as millions of Americans don’t have enough food to eat or don’t have access to healthy food,” Courtney Alev, a consumer financial advocate at Credit Karma, said in a statement.
- Of the Americans surveyed in the Credit Karma poll, 44% reported feeling financially unstable. This feeling is strongest among households making less than $50,000.
- The rising cost of living is also a likely factor in the increasing number of Americans taking on debt (55%).
- A large majority of consumers (80%) said they felt the most notable increases in expenses were for groceries, followed by gasoline, utilities, housing and dining out.
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Important Takeaways:
- Americans Dismayed over Waning Influence of Religion in Public Life
- According to the survey, 57 percent of Americans believe religion plays a positive role in public life, while only 19 percent have a negative view of the role of religion.
- Overall, “there are widespread signs of unease with religion’s trajectory in American life,” Pew reveals, and this dissatisfaction “is not just among religious Americans.”
- A remarkable 80 percent of U.S. adults currently believe the influence of religion in American life is dwindling, Pew finds, and over 60 percent of these think this is a bad thing.
- Leftists like Hollywood producer Rob Reiner have proclaimed a dangerous rise in “Christian nationalism” and one Politico reporter recently suggested that those who share Thomas Jefferson’s belief that human rights come from God rather than government are all “Christian nationalists,” presumably plotting a theocratic coup d’état.
- Commenting on the report, Catholic League president Bill Donohue said that Americans’ concern for the decline in religion in public life likely has to do with the fact that “the inculcation of religious values has a stabilizing effect on individuals, and hence on society.”
- Character building, which is essential to citizenship, “is facilitated by religion,” Donohue added. “Unfortunately, American society has become more unstable and character building has become more difficult.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The typical American household must spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January of 2021, right before inflation soared to 40-year highs, according to a recent analysis of government data.
- Such figures underscore the financial squeeze many families continue to face even as the rate of U.S. inflation recedes and the economy by many measures remains strong, with the jobless rate at a two-decade low. The analysis, from Republican members of the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee, taps government data such as the Consumer Price Index and Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine the impact of inflation state by state.
- Even so, many Americans say they aren’t feeling those gains, and this fall more people reported struggling financially than they did prior to the pandemic, according to CBS News polling. Inflation is the main reason Americans express pessimism about economy despite its bright points, which also include stronger wage gains in recent years.
- The Biden administration called the analysis “flawed.”
- Around the U.S., the state with the highest additional expenditures to afford the same standard of living compared with 2021 is Colorado, where a household must spend an extra $15,000 per year, the JEC analysis found. Residents in Arkansas, meanwhile, have to spend the least to maintain their standard of living, at about $8,500 on an annual basis.
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