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Steve Madden shoe boxes are displayed Nov. 11 at a DSW store Novato, California. In response to President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs, shoemaker Steve Madden is planning to import fewer goods from China and look to move production to countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Brazil and Mexico. Economists say Trump’s proposed tariffs would raise prices after he promised to bring them down for groceries, rent and other basics. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) President-elect Donald Trump has promised to bring down prices on groceries, rent and other basic necessities of life. U.S. presidents don’t typically have direct control over how much any of those things cost, but their policies can have an effect. In Trump’s case, the proposals that economists think could have significant influence are tariffs, or taxes on imports. Why Trump tariffs could be bad for prices On Monday, Trump threatened to impose new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China – the United States’ three biggest tradin...

The Alabama Legislature has meet in the current Statehouse -- the old Highway Department Building -- since 1986. The Alabama League of Women Voters streams the proceedings of the Alabama Legislature and wants to ensure it remains as a service for years to come. (Stew Milne for Alabama Reflector) More than two years after going live, the Alabama Channel is planning to expand its coverage of government beyond the meetings it streams during the legislative session. The League of Women Voters of Alabama, the nonprofit responsible for creating the website that both broadcasts and archives video of the meetings at the Statehouse, hopes to secure grant funding that will allow it to hire videographers to capture even more footage of what is happening at the Legislature. “Last year we had students who were helping us out,” said Kathy Jones, president of the League of Women Voters of Alabama. “This year, we want to do it more formally, so that we have got a more consistent presence in the s...

Voters wait in line at First Baptist Church during Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024 in Huntsville, Ala. A filed bill would make Election Day a state holiday. (Photo / Eric Schultz) An Alabama state representative has filed a bill that would make Election Day a holiday for major state and federal elections. HB 64, sponsored by Rep. Ontario Tillman, D-Bessemer, would apply to gubernatorial and presidential election contests, making Election Day a holiday every two years. Tillman said in a phone interview that the goal would be increasing voter participation. Voters, he said, have faced long lines and conflicting job schedules trying to vote. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBE “It’s very difficult for some people to get there and they have to kind of do a number of things,” he said. “So my position is, why not just make it a holiday?” Alabama has historically had low voter turnout , due to a long history of voter suppression, a lack of alternate voting options and a...

U.S. Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota, speaks to the Brandon Valley Area Chamber of Commerce on Nov. 26, 2024, in Brandon, South Dakota. Thune, the incoming U.S. Senate majority leader, said Congress may have to "put the brakes on" attempts by President-elect Donald Trump to control federal spending. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight) This story originally appeared on South Dakota Searchlight . BRANDON, South Dakota — Incoming U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, signaled Tuesday he’s willing to push back against potential attempts by President-elect Donald Trump to expand presidential power over federal spending. “Every president is going to come in and try to do as much as they can by executive action as possible,” Thune said. “Congress, in some cases, is going to be the entity that sometimes will have to put the brakes on.” Thune spoke Tuesday to the Brandon Valley Area Chamber of Commerce and also took questions from reporters. He said Repu...

Wisconsin voters line up outside of a Milwaukee polling place on Nov. 5. Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde is one of the Republican politicians who sowed doubt about the integrity of this year’s election. (Andy Manis/Getty Images) President-elect Donald Trump may have quieted his lies about widespread voter fraud after his win earlier this month, but the impact of his effort to cast doubt on the integrity of American elections lingers on. Although this post-election period has been markedly calmer than the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, there were isolated flare-ups of Republican candidates borrowing a page from Trump’s playbook to claim that unsatisfactory election results were illegitimate. In Wisconsin, Republican U.S. Senate challenger Eric Hovde spread unsubstantiated rumors about “last-minute” absentee ballots in Milwaukee that he said flipped the outcome of the race. Though he conceded to incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin nearly two weeks a...

People participate in a Puerto Rican Day parade in New York City. Multiracial cultures such as Puerto Rican and Dominican may pose problems for new proposed Census Bureau survey formats that ask about race and Hispanic status separately. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images) This story originally appeared on Stateline . The U.S. Census Bureau and a growing number of states are starting to gather more detailed information about Americans’ race and ethnicity, a change some advocates of the process say will allow people to choose identities that more closely reflect how they see themselves. Crunching and sorting through those specific details — known as data disaggregation — will help illuminate disparities in areas such as housing and health outcomes that could be hidden within large racial and ethnic categories. But some experts say the details also might make it harder for Black people from multiracial countries to identify themselves. Racial data gleaned from the census is important be...

President-elect Donald Trump says on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% tariffs on goods from China until those countries stop the flow of illegal drugs and migrants into the U.S. (Getty photo illustration by Olivier Le Moal) President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement Monday that he would impose harsh tariffs on the United States’ closest trading partners will work against his pledge to bring down consumer prices, Democrats in Congress and economists are warning. In a  pair of  posts to his social media platform, Truth Social, on Monday evening, Trump said on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% tariffs on goods from China until those countries stopped the flow of illegal drugs and migrants into the U.S. “Thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before,” Trump wrote. “On January 20th, ...

Donald Trump, at the time president of the United States, listens to then-Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Russ Vought deliver remarks prior to Trump signing executive orders on Oct. 9, 2019, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead) WASHINGTON — Incoming White House budget director Russ Vought has spent much of his career learning the detailed, often convoluted mechanisms that make up the Office of Management and Budget. The agency, little known outside Washington, D.C., is relatively small compared to the rest of the federal government, but it acts like a nucleus for the executive branch and holds significant power. OMB is responsible for releasing the president’s budget request every year, but also manages much of the executive branch by overseeing departments’ performance, reviewing the vast majority of federal regulations and coordinating how the various agencies communicate with Congress.  Vought was deputy...

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen walks toward a podium during inauguration ceremonies at the Alabama State Capitol on Monday, Jan. 16, 2023 in Montgomery, Alabama. Allen said Tuesday he did not think new restrictions on voting affected turnout. (Stew Milne/Alabama Reflector) The results of the 2024 general election have been made official Tuesday at the State Elections Canvassing Board meeting. Representatives from both the Alabama Attorney General and Governor’s Office, as well as Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen signed and certified the results. The office estimated earlier this month that about 2.2 million people voted in the election , or 58.5% of registered voters. The turnout in percentage terms was the lowest for a presidential election in the state since 1988.   About 2.3 million Alabamians voted in the 2020 presidential election. “As far as turnout, that is up to the voters to get out and go vote,” Allen said in an interview with media following the certificati...

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday announced his intent to nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In this photo, Oz speaks at a March 15, 2022 press conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Pennsylvania Capital-Star). WASHINGTON — Former TV personality and onetime U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz could become the next administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an expansive government agency that is responsible for large swaths of the country’s health care. President-elect Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Oz on Tuesday, writing in a statement “there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again.” Oz won the Republican primary in the 2022 Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race but was  defeated during the general election by Democratic Sen. John Fetterman. Trump wrote that Oz would “work closely” with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who  will be nom...

Donald Trump spoke at the March for Life rally in January 2019 during his first term as president. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images) The 2024 election results created complicated new realities for reproductive rights in the U.S., with Americans even in a few red states overwhelmingly voting to protect the right to have an abortion while also overwhelmingly electing anti-abortion representatives in state houses, courts, Congress and the White House. With a Republican trifecta coming to the nation’s capital in January, anti-abortion activist groups are planning for the first potentially friendly presidential administration since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated a 50-year federal right to terminate a pregnancy. They aim to end other federal and state protections while vastly expanding restrictions on reproductive health care. Though many anti-abortion leaders are skeptical of President-elect Donald Trump’s commitment to the...