Tag Archives : Build House

Judge warns against Bannon trial becoming 'political circus'

The federal judge presiding over the contempt of Congress case against Steve Bannon warned the defense team on Wednesday against trying to bring politics into the trial.

In the midst of the first witness testimony of the trial, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said Bannon’s lawyers could not cross-examine anyone on the stand in a way that would suggest the case against him is politically motivated.

“I do not intend for this to become a political case, a political circus, a forum for partisan politics,” Nichols, a Trump appointee, said Tuesday morning.

The jury was not in the courtroom for the judge’s ruling.

Nichols’ warning was prompted when prosecutors raised concerns Tuesday morning after Evan Corcoran, one of Bannon’s defense attorneys, asked jurors in his opening statement the day before to consider whether the evidence against his client is “affected by politics.”

Amanda Vaughn, an assistant U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case, said she was concerned the defense team was “trying to find ways around” Nichols’ previous orders precluding Bannon from trying to mount such a defense.

Vaughn had raised an objection during Corcoran’s opening statement Tuesday when he made the remark about politics, leading the parties to have a sidebar with Nichols out of earshot of the jurors or public observers.

Nichols ruled on Wednesday that Bannon’s lawyers can question witnesses on the stand about whether they have their own personal biases, but not about the potential biases of lawmakers who authorized the Jan. 6 Select Committee subpoena to Bannon or voted in favor of holding him in contempt for refusing to comply with it.

“I will police that line the best I can,” Nichols said.

The court began hearing from the prosecutors’ first witness, select committee chief counsel Kristin Amerling, on Tuesday, which continued Wednesday morning.

They have said they expect to call just one other witness, FBI Special Agent Stephen Hart.

Source: TEST FEED1

Arizona GOP censures Rusty Bowers after Jan. 6 testimony

The Arizona GOP executive committee censured the state’s House Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers Tuesday and called on Republican voters to “replace him in the ballot box” in the August state Senate GOP primary following his testimony in front of the House Jan. 6 committee.

Bowers testified in June before the House committee, refuting former President Trump’s claims of election fraud and saying he was pressured by Trump and his former personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to overturn Biden’s Arizona victory.

Bowers told the committee that he’d pushed back, asking to see evidence of the former president’s fraud claims, but that no proof was given.

In a press release Tuesday, Arizona’s GOP accused Bowers of “direct violation of the Republican platform” and lambasted him for siding with Democrats on legislation dealing with education, immigration, gender and elections.

Among the reasons to vote Bowers out of office, the release listed “giving tax-payer funded in-state tuition to illegal aliens at our state universities;” “killing a bill to permanently reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance in our children’s schools;” and sponsoring “one of the most horrific attacks on the Republican Party” with a bill that designated sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes. 

Bowers was also flagged for being the only Republican to oppose a bill to establish a gender binary in government documents.

The Arizona GOP also claimed that Bowers killed “all meaningful election integrity bills.” In February, Bowers opposed a bill that would allow the state legislature to reject election results and another that would eliminate early voting. 

In a Tweet confirming Bowers’s censure, Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, a former state senator, said “He is no longer a Republican in good standing.” 

Bowers, who’s worked in the Arizona House since 2015, is making a bid for the state Senate in this year’s midterms. After his June testimony before the Jan. 6 committee, Trump backed Bowers’s opponent David Farnsworth.

The Hill has reached out to Bowers and the Arizona GOP for comment.

Source: TEST FEED1

The racial justice argument for student debt relief

To take her first steps onto the storied yard of her dream school, Bianca Jones didn’t just get the grades and write a strong application; she applied for five different types of financial aid, including a work–study position. She took on additional jobs, but still came up short of what she needed to pay for her Howard University education, so both she and her mother took out loans to make it possible.

In the “My Yard, My Debt” documentary, Jones reflects on the power of a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) experience. “Whenever I needed something…because I came here and stepped out in faith…people were waiting here to help me.”

After graduating in 2016, Jones started teaching. “I love being an educator. I love my students. I love what I do.”

Jones has nearly $70,000 in student loan debt, which she pays for in $300 monthly income-driven repayment installments. Every day her loans accrue $8 in interest, adding nearly $3,000 per year to her already astronomical debt burden. 

Her story is the story of so many Black students who seek HBCUs for community and learning and higher education for its promise of upward mobility. In 2016, Black borrowers held an average of $37,540 of student loan debt. Today, that number is almost $45,000 according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.  

President Biden knows that the student debt crisis is severe; that’s why he’s considering small-scale cancellation and why he extended the pause on student loan payments through August. But we have an opportunity to make this relief more significant to those who need it most by canceling $50,000 in student debt, which President Biden can accomplish through executive action.

In 2016, Black households had about one-tenth of the wealth of white households. Without familial wealth to help finance higher education, Black students are in an unfavorable position from the start. They end up having more loans to repay and are more likely to default during the repayment period. Predatory lenders capitalize on this disparity by directing low-income communities and communities of color towards high-risk, high-priced products. Despite diligently making payments for a decade or more, nearly 75 percent of Black borrowers and 63 percent of Latino borrowers saw their student loan balances grow. HBCUs also face historic disinvestment, increasing the cost for students to attend.

The impact of this debt disaster can’t be understated. Student debt depresses the purchasing power of 45 million borrowers and prevents millions from starting families, buying homes, investing in local economies, starting businesses and going back to school.

Cancellation advocates say $50,000 is the amount needed to clear 72 percent of student debt for Black and Latino borrowers and lift the burden for 87 percent of low-income borrowers, guaranteeing economic benefit to those who need it the most. It’s families without significant wealth who need to take on high dollar student loan debts, and college degrees aren’t enough to shield Black and other borrowers of color from income and wealth disparities.

The only way to make significant inroads against the student debt crisis and racial wealth gap is to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower.

That’s why the Center for Responsible Lending and the NAACP are proud to join 58 civil rights and faith leaders, as well as student, community and consumer advocates, in calling on President Biden to take this bold step. Anything less than $50,000 of student debt cancellation is simply insufficient for borrowers who have suffered the most devastating consequences of the pandemic.

We are encouraged by President Biden’s commitment to reform the Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Income-Driven Repayment systems, and we are thrilled that his administration recognizes the need to relieve borrowers of the student debt burden. We have a historic opportunity to make momentous change, and now is not the time to compromise.

As much as student debt affects individuals across gender, geography and generational lines, we must not forget that it also is a racial justice issue. President Biden can show the Black community that he stands for Black and Latino economic equity by canceling student debt.

Jaylon Herbin is policy and outreach manager at the Center for Responsible Lending. Wisdom Cole is national director of the youth and college division at NAACP. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Putin reports 'progress' in talks with Turkey on exporting food from Ukraine

Russia said that “progress” is being made with Turkey on efforts to export foodstuffs from Ukraine through the Black Sea, but that “not all problems have yet been resolved.”

The U.S. and allies have criticized Russia for maintaining a blockade of Ukraine’s seaports that is contributing to at least 40 million more people facing poverty and hunger, worsening an already dire world food crisis. 

During a meeting in Tehran on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “for granting a Turkish platform for talks on food problems, on the export of grain via the Black Sea.” 

“We made progress with your mediation. True, not all problems have yet been resolved, but there is progress and that is good enough,” Putin said.

Turkey is working to position itself as an intermediary between Russia on one side and Ukraine, NATO and global democracies supporting Kyiv’s defense against Moscow’s war of aggression. 

At least 50 million tons of global food supplies are trapped in temporary silos or on ships in Ukraine, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Ukraine has mined the seas around the ports, particularly Odesa, to prevent Russian warships from attacking the city. 

The U.S. and other allies have also criticized Russia for restricting the export of fertilizer, which has inflated prices and contributed to challenges facing farmers to produce food. 

The U.S. and NATO allies praise Turkey as a critical ally in being the front of the alliance on the Black Sea, and for providing Ukraine with Bayraktar TB2 drones that have proved decisive in Ukrainian attacks on Russian forces. They further say Turkey’s ties with Russia provide a necessary channel to maintain diplomatic communication.

But Turkey’s close ties with authoritarian regimes like Russia and Iran have made it a complicated ally. Erdogan’s meeting with Putin and Iranian officials in Tehran largely focused on the conflict in Syria, where Turkey seeks to eliminate all Kurdish military groups, which it views as terrorist organizations, including those backed by the U.S.-coalition in the fight against ISIS.

Still, United Nations officials, which have taken the lead on pushing for a breakthrough on sea lanes to move grain, have encouraged international diplomacy. 

Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, has traveled to Moscow in recent days to meet with senior officials there, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said on Tuesday. 

Haq added that Guterres is open to traveling to Istanbul for talks but did not elaborate on the progress of the talks, saying, “I think the information we’re putting out shows that things are going on and that itself is a welcome sign. What the results of it is, we’ll have to see.”

The spokesman also said that Gutterres spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, discussing “ongoing negotiations aiming at exporting Ukrainian food products through the Black Sea without impediments.”

The U.N. led-effort to export grain has the backing of Ukrainian officials. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov offered support for the U.N. and Turkey’s role in mediation, in remarks to the Atlantic Council on Tuesday, but criticized Russia as untrustworthy.

“[Russia] is interested in destroying Ukraine, completely…Their assurances are not worth the paper they are written on.”

Source: TEST FEED1

The vanishing center of American democracy

Finally, an issue has arisen that unites most Americans. According to a New York Times/Sienna poll published last week, 58 percent of voters on the left, right and in between agree that our political system is broken and needs structural change. They don’t want tinkering on the margins or incremental adjustments, but a complete overhaul. 

The problem is that while a majority agree on the diagnosis, they are irreconcilably divided on the causes and cures. It’s like being on the Titanic, agreeing that the iceberg is dead ahead, and battling over what explains the iceberg or in which direction to steer to avoid it. 

We’re so polarized that we can’t agree on what we see. For example, 92 percent of Democrats in the survey believe that former President Trump’s post-election actions “went so far that he threatened American democracy”; but 76 percent of Republicans believe “he was just exercising his right to contest the election.” Eighty-nine percent of Democrats believe Trump committed crimes while contesting the election; but 80 percent of Republicans said he hadn’t. 

The survey reveals that both parties have altered certain assumptions that guided their orthodoxies. Traditional Republicans have cemented their alignment with Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on traditional institutions. Even as the January 6 commission has methodically revealed the brutalities of the violent attack, including the bloodying and beating of U.S. Capitol Police officers, 72 percent of Republicans view it only as a protest “that got out of hand.” The established conservative doctrine of law and order, respect for institutions and support for law enforcement has been turned on its head. 

Democrats, meanwhile, are veering from the traditional view that government is a solution to achieving progress and justice. The survey revealed that they largely believe that our current political system has failed them. Their party controls both houses of Congress and the White House but has been unable, they perceive, to protect abortion and voting rights or pass meaningful gun safety and climate legislation.

What may be the most concerning element of the survey is the complete shattering of confidence across the board in news organizations. We have different views because we are ingesting partisan flames cloaked as absolute truths. Only one-third of respondents in the survey were confident that major newspapers and television networks report accurately and fairly about news and politics. Only 7 percent said they get most of their news from a major national newspaper. 

Data in these surveys can be dry, sterile, one-dimensional. I was moved by reading the sentiments of several respondents. 

Army retiree Rosanthina Goforth, 55, of Wagoner, Okla., gets her news from Christian news programs. She believes that officials at every level of government need to be removed and replaced with people “who believe in the United States.” And who does she have in mind? Here’s a hint: “I know that Trump won the election,” she said. “It’s a given. He won that election. But somehow or another, you know, people got paid and votes were mismanaged.” This is in absolute and irrefutable contradiction of the facts, upheld by over 60 courts and eight judges appointed by Trump himself.

Rachel Bernardt, 62, from Silver Spring, Md., sees things differently. For her, Trump’s election “revealed the scope of American racism and the extent to which Republican officials would cater to it.” She told the Times, “If I saw a confederate flag, I’d just assume that the person was some kind of mentally ill psycho.” On Oct. 6, she saw those flags and swastikas paraded through the halls of the U.S. Capitol.

But the divisions aren’t solely partisan. Faith in government has collapsed faster and deeper among voters between the ages 18 and 29. Mitch Toher, 22, from Austin, Texas, reflected the view of nearly half of young voters in the survey when he said that voting for either Democrats or Republicans didn’t matter. “The largest divide is not necessarily left versus right, but those that are generationally old versus young. …I don’t think those types of changes are coming any time soon, or at least forthcoming at any point in my lifetime.”

Self-described independents bring the survey into greater coherence. When they are factored into the sample, the overall percentage of voters who view the Capitol riot as an attempt to overthrow the government rises to 49 percent, with 55 percent of voters believing that Trump’s actions were a threat to American democracy.   

But the middle no longer seems to matter. The energy that cemented America near the political center for most of our recent history now tears us apart. Gerrymandered districts artificially inflate the bases of both parties and eclipse the middle; social media algorithms manipulate us, locking our eyes on a feed that fuels our adrenalin and blinds us to inconvenient, sometimes nuanced realities.  

Democracy has always required forbearance, a set of mutually agreed upon norms and a shared respect for facts even when the facts run contrary to our ideologies. The Times/Sienna poll is an alarm. Returning to the Titanic metaphor: When the ship of state sinks, we all go down. 

Steve Israel represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives over eight terms and was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015. He is now director of the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy Institute of Politics and Global Affairs. Follow him on Twitter @RepSteveIsrael. 

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Just 38 percent of Americans approve of Supreme Court, down 22 points since last year: poll

Just 38 percent of Americans now approve of the U.S. Supreme Court while 61 percent disapprove of how the court is handling its job, according to a Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday.

The poll was taken after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade and eliminated nearly 50-year of federal rights to abortion last month.

The overall number is down 22 points from July 2021, when the court had a 60 percent approval rating and a 39 percent disapproval rating.

But it is down even more from just last September when 66 percent of Americans said they approved of the Supreme Court while just 33 percent disapproved of how the court is handling its job, according to a Marquette poll at the time.

The poll shows Americans are largely dissatisfied with the High Court after a series of controversial decisions this term from the court’s 6-3 conservative majority.

Those rulings include limited power of the Environmental Protection Agency, expanded gun rights and the Second Amendment in the wake of several mass shootings and favored allowing more religion in the role of government and public services.

Most Americans, or 61 percent, say the court is motivated mainly by politics, according to the Marquette poll. About 39 percent say the court follows mainly the law.

The court’s reversal of the right to abortion, which was created in 1973 and had been reaffirmed several times, sparked outrage among the American public. More than 60 percent of Americans approve of the right to abortion.

Still, the number of Americans who support overturning Roe climbed from 32 percent in September 2019 to 36 percent in July 2022, the Marquette poll shows. Most Americans, or 64 percent, disapprove of overturning Roe V. Wade.

After the court’s decision last month, some have called to impeach some of the justices for perjury, claiming they misled the public about their opinions on Roe during confirmation hearings.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who voted to overturn Roe, wrote in his concurring opinion that he wanted to reconsider cases that created the right to same-sex marriage, the right to use contraception and the right to privacy in the bedroom. A petition to impeach Thomas has collected more than one million signatures.

Around 66 percent of Americans favor the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize same-sex marriage, while 34 percent oppose the ruling.

Americans are divided in how they want the Supreme Court to rule. Fifty-four percent say justices should consider public opinion in rulings, compared to 46 percent who say they should ignore it.

Thirty-three percent back the idea of the court following precedents, compared to 66 percent who say they should overturn a precedent if a majority of the public believes the ruling was wrong.

Following the stunning reversal of Roe, House Democrats have proposed adding four more seats to the court, but that idea remains unpopular.

About 49 percent of Americans approve of expanding the court, compared to 51 percent of Americans who disapprove of the idea.

The Marquette poll was conducted from July 5 to July 12 among 1,003 adults nationwide. The margin of error is plus or minus four percentage points.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump: ‘I want the Secret Service tapes far more’ than the Jan. 6 committee

Former President Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social that he wants records from the Secret Service “far more” than the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. 

He said the records would show that he did not lunge at a Secret Service agent and grab the steering wheel of a presidential vehicle when he was told that he could not go to the Capitol during the riot.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified to the committee last month that she heard an account of the incident from Tony Ornato, who was serving as the deputy chief of staff at the time. 

“I want the Secret Service tapes far more than the Unselect Committee of political Hacks and Thugs in that ridiculous and libelous story of me supposedly choking a big and strong Secret Service Agent around the neck while the Beast (wrong car!) would be shown to be, as the Secret Service has already confirmed, Fake (and Fraudulent!),” Trump said. 

The Secret Service has denied the account that Hutchinson gave, and Ornato and Robert Engel, the Secret Service agent that Trump allegedly lunged at, said they were willing to testify under oath to dispute Hutchinson’s testimony on the incident. 

Hutchinson testified that Engel was in the room when Ornato told her about the moment, and Engel did not dispute any of the details. 

Trump’s post comes as the Secret Service has fallen under controversy for apparently deleting text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, during a device replacement program. The agency has maintained that the messages were not deleted maliciously. 

The committee issues a subpoena for text messages from the Secret Service, but Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) told MSNBC that the agency could not provide Congress with new texts from those two days. 

Hutchinson also testified that Trump knew some of those in attendance at his rally at the Ellipse before the riot were armed and pushed for attendees to be allowed to skip over magnetometers to allow more people to attend. 

Trump said in his post that he did not want “to be surrounded by strangers ‘with guns’ during my ‘Peacefully & Patriotically’ speech.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden’s six favorite lies about inflation and the economy

Every modern president has stretched the truth now and then, and the media loved to torch Trump nearly every other day for lying. But Biden’s routine misstatements about money and the economy seem to go unchallenged.  

In recent months, as the economy has slipped into a soft recession and with inflation at 9.1 percent the Biden whoppers keep coming fast and furious.

Here are six of the most economically consequential deceptions of the Biden administration.

1. Nobody making under four hundred thousand bucks will have their taxes raised. Period. 

This one was reminiscent of the infamous George H.W. Bush claim in 1988 “read my lips: no new taxes.” Biden didn’t say he wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class once or twice, but routinely throughout the campaign — and he even STILL says it. 

Except that inflation is a tax that hits the middle class and the poor hardest and over the past year, prices have outpaced wages and salaries by roughly four percentage points. With the average worker wage and salary at roughly $60,000 per year (that’s a lot less than $400,000) this means a $2,400 per worker Biden inflation tax and as much as double that for families with husband and wife both working.

2. Inflation is worse everywhere but here. 

Biden claimed this most recently in a speech in Philadelphia as an excuse for high inflation here at home. It is hogwash. Inflation is lower in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and many other countries.

3. The economy had stalled when I entered office.

The reality is that Biden was bequeathed an economy with robust growth coming out of the pandemic. In the second half of 2020, the economy grew more than $1.5 trillion at an annualized rate. The growth rate for the second half of 2020 even with COVID was almost 15 percent. 

Moreover, when Biden entered office, the economy was prepped for an enormous tail winds gust because of the Trump “operation warp speed” vaccine that was just hitting the market and allowing businesses to reopen and workers to return to the job.  

4. I am responsible for the strongest job creation economy in modern times.

This is more an exaggeration than a bold-faced lie.  

On jobs, we will give the president his due. This has been an impressive hiring spree over the past 14 months and the jobs are out there for those who want them. But this is NOT the strongest period for job creation. That hiring record was set in 2020 under Trump who presided over the initial recovery following the government-imposed lockdowns. 

Job growth under Trump from May 2020 to Jan 2021 averaged 1.4 million jobs per month, for a total of 12.5 million people returning to work. But under Biden, average job growth per month has been cut by more than half, down to 542,000 with 8.7 million people returning to work. That means Biden has added 31 percent fewer jobs in 16 months than Trump did in nine.

5. Since I took office, families are carrying less debt, their average savings are up. 

This is a strange and oft-repeated White House claim.  

The amount families are able to save each month has utterly collapsed, falling 74 percent since Biden took office, while the personal savings rate has plummeted from 19.9 percent to just 5.4 percent. Likewise, the claim about declining debt is equally untrue. Household debt has risen by $1.29 trillion in just the first 15 months of Biden’s presidency. Credit card debt, which decreased over $100 billion during the pandemic, is now exploding at the fastest rates on record as families run out of savings and fall into debt. 

Put simply, they cannot afford to live in Biden’s America. Biden also ignores a stock market selloff that has evaporated some $10 trillion of Americans’ wealth and savings.  This is one of the greatest periods of savings disappearing. 

6. I’m doing everything I can to lower gas prices.

We wonder if ANYONE actually believes this claim. 

The folks at Institute for Energy Research have identified 100 separate Biden executive orders, regulations, and laws that have impeded oil and gas production and raised prices at the pump. These range from killing pipelines, to expanding EPA regulations on oil and gas drilling and refining, to taking hundreds of thousands of acres of prime oil and gas lands on public lands and in areas like the Gulf of Mexico off-limits for drilling. Economist Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago estimates that these policies have reduced oil and gas drilling by 2 to 3 million barrels a day. That increased production would bring gas prices down at the pump. 

Perhaps none of these half-truths and outright fibs should be too surprising. What should we expect from the administration that first denied inflation, then said inflation was transitory, then claimed it was only a high-class problem? Biden has done another about-face, decrying inflation as bad but now it is Russia’s fault or greedy businesses, like meatpackers or oil companies and even mom-and-pop gas station owners.

C’mon Joe. We’re not that dumb. Give us a little more truth. 

Stephen Moore is a distinguished visiting fellow in Economics, and EJ Antoni is a research fellow for Regional Economic in the Center for Data Analysis, at the Heritage Foundation. Moore is a cofounder of Committee to Unleash Prosperity, where Antoni is a senior fellow.

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Why homeownership is becoming incredibly tough for young people

Homeownership remains a key benchmark for younger Americans, yet many encounter numerous hurdles immediately upon entering the market.  

Some need help from their parents to meet basic down payments to qualify for a mortgage, while all enter right into a housing market where inventory is historically low. 

First time homebuyers deal with these issues while facing rising inflation, growing interest rates, and a supply crunch that leaves them wading through an ultra-competitive market in search of housing suitably priced for first-time owners.    

Despite the drastic changes in the housing market and the strains of inflation, recent polling shows most American adults view homebuying as a hallmark of the American dream. Around 65 percent of Millennials and 59 percent of those in Gen Z put homeownership as a fundamental marker of success.   

But their main barrier is affordability, whether due to their own incomes or the cost of a home. 

The market is especially challenging for the first-time homebuyer, whose initial issue is often coming up with the capital for a down payment, Robert Dietz, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) told Changing America. 

“First, they have to consider what their abilities are to accumulate a down payment – through their own savings, if they lack access to what is often called the ‘bank of mom and dad,’” Dietz said. “Those are key challenges to be even able to essentially qualify for a mortgage and be able to purchase a home.” 

Polling from May shows that 79 percent of homebuyers between the ages of 18 and 29 had help from their parents when purchasing their first home. One in 10 homeowners across all age groups said their parents purchased the property for them outright.   

“Then there’s the question — and it varies somewhat by geography — but the question of whether you can find available inventory, whether that’s new or an existing home, particularly single-family entry level type construction, so a smaller home that’s appropriate for a younger homebuyer,” Dietz said. 

Dietz noted that although some estimates suggest the U.S. is short several million homes, NAHB puts the number closer to 1 million.   

Median home prices in June jumped 11.2 percent from the previous year at more than $428,000, while the median time a home sat on the market jumped to 18 days.  

There has also been a growing disparity between median household income and the average cost of a home over a six-decade period through 2020. The average cost of a home in 1960 was $11,900 with the median household income sitting at $5,600, according to Census Bureau data.   

“Construction costs for homebuilding have increased roughly 19 percent. Lumber was kind of a key canary in the coal mine when it came to gauging whether we were going to see a bout of inflation,” Dietz said. “Lumber pricing really took off in late 2020. It was a signal that we were going to see these higher consumer costs including higher rents and higher home prices.” 

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news. 

Low inventory has also intensified the competition, as first-time homebuyers were coming of age as the market was changing due to a combination of housing preferences and the onset of widespread remote work, Joel Kan, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting, told Changing America.   

Moreover, the gap between earnings and housing costs has only been exacerbated by growing inflation, which can cut into what one might put toward a mortgage down payment. 

Mortgage rates are also an issue with average rates rising to around 5.51 percent from 3.3 percent at the beginning of the year. This creates “an extremely challenging affordability situation for a lot of first-time homebuyers,” according to Kan.  

“We’re at a time where affordability was already under strain, but now with inflation having taken over a lot of the challenges, we’re paying more for food and for fuel. That’s eating away at someone’s potential savings on a down payment — and especially for a first-time homebuyer who doesn’t have the sale of an existing home to lean on, to put in for the next purchase,” Kan said. 

While the years-long hot housing market has strained young buyers, they might still prepare by taking a few steps, according to Kan. First young buyers should find a targeted type of home within an appropriate price range while preparing to absorb higher interest rates. Then one should consider getting their finances in order, including speaking with multiple lenders to determine the right mortgage.  

“And so, getting your documentation in order, working with the lender and making sure that you’re comfortable with them helping you close the deal is important,” Kan said. “But, you know, it’s certainly still as challenging.” 

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Trump remembers ex-wife Ivana ahead of her funeral: 'Beautiful inside and out'

Former President Trump is remembering his ex-wife Ivana Trump as he prepares to attend her funeral.

The model and businesswoman, and the mother of Trump’s three eldest children, died last week at 73 from blunt impact injuries in an accident in her New York City home, according to a medical examiner. She was reportedly found near a spiral staircase.

Cindy Adams, the New York Post’s famed gossip columnist and a longtime friend of both the ex-commander in chief and Ivana, reported Tuesday that she received a call from the 45th president.

“I’m just thinking how well you knew Ivana. You knew her very well. You knew her from the first. From the very beginning. From when I first met her,” Trump said, according to Adams.

“She was beautiful. She was special,” Trump said of his former spouse, who he was married to from 1977 until the early 1990’s, when the couple split and engaged in a highly contentious public divorce that played out in the New York tabloids.

“She was outstanding. Beautiful inside and out,” Trump said. “We began all of it, our lives together, with such a great relationship.“

Trump is planning to attend Ivana’s funeral on Wednesday at St. Vincent Ferrer Church in Manhattan, Adams said.

Remembering his ex-wife, who was born in what is now the Czech Republic, as “different,” Trump praised her, saying she “never gave up.”

“Beautiful, yes, but she was also a hard worker,” he said.

“No matter how rough things were or how badly they looked she never fell down. She went from communism to our lives together. She took nothing for granted.”

Despite their scandal-plagued divorce, the pair described their relationship in friendly terms in recent years. Ivana expressed support for her ex-husband’s political ambitions, saying in 2016, “I think he would be a great president.”

Telling Adams that the two of them should “just manage to get through this awful, painful experience,” 76-year-old Trump’s words then appeared to turn to politics, hinting at a possible 2024 White House run.

“And after this … just remember … just remember what I’m telling you … 78 is not old,” Trump said.

Source: TEST FEED1