Wisconsin Right Now

  The Biden administration will pause its replenishment of the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves because oil has become too expensive, the White House said. Earlier in his term, Biden drained about half of the U.S. oil reserves down to their lowest level in decades in order to try to lower gas prices, which surpassed a record national average of more than $5 per gallon in 2022 before coming back down. Now, Biden’s effort to replenish those reserves have been stalled. Critics warn that lower oil reserves are a national security issue for the U.S. If the reserves are low when a larger war or crisis occurs, refilling the reserves could be much more difficult and certainly more expensive. “It’s pure insanity to watch the Biden Administration cut American oil production and then claim they can’t refill our critical reserve because of the price,” Daniel Turner, founder and executive director for Power The Future, said in a statement. “Joe Biden drained the SPR for political rea

  The Biden administration has removed a federal webpage dedicated to union transparency and accountability and apparently has no plans to replace it. The Center Square on Tuesday exclusively obtained a letter from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to 10 U.S. senators defending its decision to remove a webpage built to hold unions accountable. After the accountability webpage disappeared last year, an OPM spokesperson told The Center Square "previous reports on official time are not currently available because OPM is reorganizing our website to improve navigation and customer experience." Since then, OPM has declined to comment on the issue multiple times. As The Center Square previously reported, the Office of Personnel Management created the webpage in question to track “official time,” a practice when federal employees who are union members conduct union business during normal work hours, which means taxpayers pick up the tab. The practice has gone on f

A new Biden administration rule forces schools to comply with progressive ideology on gender and sexuality or risk losing federal aid for free and reduced-price school lunches. Legal observers say this is just the first in a slew of new rules on the horizon tying federal education funding to far-left policies on gender and sexuality. The school lunch funding controversy began in May 2022, as The Center Square previously reported , with an announcement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which handles federal help for school lunches. The USDA said at the time it would change its longstanding interpretation of Title IX, the law broadly governing discrimination protections in education. USDA said it would expand its previous prohibition against discriminating based on sex “to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” School lunch funding goes through the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of USDA. “As a result, state and local agencies, progra

  The Biden administration cut a $7 billion check on Friday to launch its vision for a hydrogen-fueled future. The money augments $40 billion in private investment to build seven hydrogen hubs across the nation that will decarbonize transportation and industrial manufacturing, slashing 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. The amount “roughly” equates to removing 5.5 million gasoline-powered vehicles from the road, or just under 2% of the estimated 286 million operational cars in the United States. After calling climate change “the only existential threat to humanity” during a news conference in Philadelphia, President Joe Biden touted federal infrastructure spending as the key to reigning in greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning away from fossil fuel reliance. “Today’s announcement is all part of a bigger vision to do just that,” he said. The hydrogen hubs expand across seven regions and 16 states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia

The Biden administration has allowed a more than eleven-fold increase in the number of illegal immigrant convicts let out of Texas prisons and into the general U.S. population, despite federal immigration law requiring ICE to take convicts into custody after serving their time, usually in advance of deportation. The disclosure emerges from state-initiated litigation that is beginning to shed light on what critics call the administration's secretive and lenient handling of immigrants beginning last year – treatment that is imperiling public safety, alarmed state authorities say. Soon after President Joe Biden assumed office a year ago January, agents of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement began dropping their usually automatic requests to take custody from Texas authorities of illegal immigrant convicts set to be released from the state's prisons and jails, so they could be deported. In the past, few such convicts were exempt from the process. From 2017 to 2020, IC

  The Biden administration extended the federal mask mandate for public transportation Thursday even as states and local governments around the country drop their mandates. The Transportation Security Administration announced the mandate would be in effect through April 18 of this year. It applies to federally regulated public transit such as planes, trains and airports. “At CDC’s recommendation, TSA will extend the security directive for mask use on public transportation and transportation hubs for one month, through April 18th,” the TSA said. “During that time, CDC will work with government agencies to help inform a revised policy framework for when, and under what circumstances, masks should be required in the public transportation corridor. This revised framework will be based on the COVID-19 community levels, risk of new variants, national data, and the latest science. We will communicate any updates publicly if and/or when they change.” The decision came as a surprise to

Reports of a new Biden administration grant program has drawn widespread criticism for its efforts to reduce the spread of disease by providing crack pipes at taxpayer expense. The application window for the $30 million “harm reduction” program grant closed Monday. The three-year grant program was funded through President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill pushed through by Democrats in March of last year. It specifically outlines syringes and “safe smoking kits/supplies” as an approved use of federal funds. “The purpose of the program is to support community-based overdose prevention programs, syringe services programs, and other harm reduction services,” the grant said. “Funding will be used to enhance overdose and other types of prevention activities to help control the spread of infectious diseases and the consequences of such diseases for individuals with, or at risk of developing substance use disorders (SUD)...” A spokesman from the De