"The voting rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams spent more than $25 million over two years on legal fees, mostly on a single case, with the largest amount going to the self-described boutique law firm of the candidate’s campaign chairwoman.

"Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, Abrams' close friend who chaired her gubernatorial campaign both in 2018 and her current bid to unseat Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, is one of two named partners in Lawrence & Bundy, a small firm of fewer than two dozen attorneys.

"The firm received $9.4 million from Abrams' group, Fair Fight Action, in 2019 and 2020, the last years for which federal tax filings are available. Lawrence-Hardy declined to comment on how much her firm has collected from Fair Fight Action in 2021 and 2022 -- years in which Fair Fight Action v. Raffensperger, for which Lawrence-Hardy was lead counsel, had most of its courtroom activity.

"Fair Fight Action has maintained that the suit -- which ended last month when a federal judge ruled against the group on all three remaining claims -- served an important role in drawing attention to voting inequities. But some outside the group questioned both the level of expenditures devoted to a single, largely unsuccessful legal action and the fact that such a large payout went to the firm of Abrams' close friend and campaign chair. Those concerns were heightened by the fact that Abrams' national campaign against voter suppression galvanized the Democratic Party, many of whose top donors helped fill its coffers."

Read the entire article here.

"An appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding mechanism is unconstitutional, in a victory for lenders that have targeted the agency's structure in a years-long bid to tamp down regulation.

"A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the design of the CFPB violated the Constitution because it receives funding through the Federal Reserve, rather than appropriations legislation passed by Congress. ...

"The judges also vacated a 2017 small-dollar lending rule targeted by the payday lending advocates who brought the case -- the Community Financial Services Association of America and the Consumer Service Alliance of Texas.

"'Congress's decision to abdicate its appropriations power under the Constitution, i.e., to cede its power of the purse to the Bureau, violates the Constitution's structural separation of powers,' the judges wrote."

Read the entire article here.

"As a leader in political polling and election coverage for two decades, RealClearPolitics is announcing an initiative to improve public trust and confidence in political polling. ...

"There have been many news stories over the last several months questioning whether polling is broken in the United States. While there are certainly challenges in the polling industry, it is not entirely accurate to suggest polling is broken. There are many quality pollsters and media outlets that are doing excellent work in a constantly changing technological and political environment. However, there are also pollsters and news organizations that are doing less-than-stellar work and, unfortunately, many of the polls from these organizations receive a disproportionate amount of attention.

"To help address this problem, in the coming weeks RealClearPolitics will be rolling out a beta version ranking polling organizations. RCP will rank pollsters by their performance in recent elections, and will of course evaluate their performance in the 2022 mid-term election in just under a month. RCP's goal here is simple. Accuracy is the foundational bedrock of public trust. To that end we will be evaluating pollsters almost exclusively on one metric -- accuracy in reflecting the actual results."

Read the entire article here.

"It was already clear after Georgia's primary election set new turnout records this spring, but it bears repeating once again: Democrats don't tell the truth about voting rights. ...

"Democratic activists went to great lengths to plant stories in the media, which lazy journalists dutifully filed, claiming that Georgia's new voting law was a new attempt to suppress the black vote. ...

"With this much-maligned law, Georgia's legislature had actually made voting more accessible to its citizens than it had been previously. They also made voting more accessible than it is in New York, New Jersey, Biden's Delaware, and a variety of other states that Democrats would never try to pretend are Jim Crow states. Georgia legislators had actually expanded early voting and made it easier for almost anyone in the state to cast a valid vote.

"And now, once again, the results are speaking for themselves. Raffensperger announced on Tuesday that Georgia voters just set a new record for first-day early voting in a midterm election, with nearly twice as many people voting on Monday as had done so on the first day of early voting in 2018. Georgians are on pace to set a new record for midterm turnout in 2022 and are voting at levels that rival turnout for the 2020 presidential election.

"If anybody is trying to suppress the vote, they are doing a pretty lousy job of it. But of course, this was also true in 2018, another extremely high-turnout election whose results Democrats still deny."

Read the entire article here.

"Do yourself a favor: Don't listen to the rhetoric coming out of the mouth of Chinese President -- more like dictator for life -- Xi Jinping these days.

"Sure, he is talking a big game about China someday reunifying with Taiwan -- emphasizing using force if necessary -- and how he wants to build Beijing's military into a world-class power as fast as possible. In fact, in his address to the Communist Party's 20th National Congress, Xi seems set to be doubling down on his goal of making China the predominant military power in Asia and eventually a global military power as well.

"But we should be clear: Xi has been saying the same things over and over for nearly a decade now, and all of that is old news.

"What is different now, however, is that the Chinese leader finally has the economy -- a gross domestic product worth more than $16 trillion -- and foundational military capabilities to back up his bluster."

Read the entire article here.

"The economy shrank during the first half of 2022. In March, the Federal Reserve began ratcheting up interest rates to squash inflation. The hikes haven't resulted in price stability. But they have led to the highest mortgage rates in 20 years, growing volatility in debt markets, and the increasing likelihood of a prolonged recession and financial crisis. National Economic Council director Brian Deese likes to say that the U.S. economy is 'in a period of transition.' The transition is from bad to worse.

"By subsidizing demand while restricting supply, President Biden has revived the economic maladies that afflicted the American economy when he entered public life a half century ago. Biden has turned gold into dross and, amazingly, expects to be rewarded for it. 'The president and I were talking at lunch today about this,' Vice President Kamala Harris said in a recent interview with the Nation magazine. 'We are so proud -- and I hope I don't give off any bravado in saying this -- but we are so proud that we will end up being the most pro-labor administration probably ever.'

"Sorry, madame vice president, but your bravado is showing. The unions might be happy. The other 90 percent of the workforce is not. Expect to hear from them in November."

Read the entire article here.

"Scores on the ACT college admissions test by this year's high school graduates hit their lowest point in more than 30 years -- the latest evidence of the enormity of learning disruption during the pandemic.

"The class of 2022's average ACT composite score was 19.8 out of 36, marking the first time since 1991 that the average score was below 20. What's more, an increasing number of high school students failed to meet any of the subject-area benchmarks set by the ACT -- showing a decline in preparedness for college-level coursework.

"The test scores, made public in a report Wednesday, show 42% of ACT-tested graduates in the class of 2022 met none of the subject benchmarks in English, reading, science and math, which are indicators of how well students are expected to perform in corresponding college courses.

"In comparison, 38% of test takers in 2021 failed to meet any of the benchmarks."

Read the entire article here.

"The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday slashed its global growth outlook for next year, warning the world economy is headed for 'stormy waters' and that there is a growing risk of a painful worldwide recession if major central banks fumble the fight against inflation.

"The Washington-based institution said in its latest World Economic Outlook that global gross domestic product will still grow by 3.2% this year, but now anticipates it will slow sharply to just 2.7% in 2023. That is down 0.2 percentage points from its previous estimate and is a marked decline from its estimate of 3.8% at the beginning of the year, highlighting just how much the global economy has weakened in recent months.

"Inflation could remain elevated for longer than previously expected, according to the IMF, which forecast prices peaking later this year and declining from 8.8% in 2022 to 6.5% in 2023.

'The worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession,' the report said"

Read the entire article here.

"Trust in the federal government is low for many reasons: Incompetence, allegations of insider trading, destruction of scarce capital, and blatant overpromising and underdelivering all help to explain why voters are disillusioned.

"Still, the big promises of the Inflation Reduction Act are just one more example of the Democratic Party's mendacity. The act will not reduce inflation, and the green energy subsidies will not make a material dent in U.S. carbon emissions or in trends toward global warming. Researchers at Princeton University's Zero Lab are becoming more transparent about how difficult it will be for the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In a recent report , the researchers explain that electricity transmission is just one of the keystones for unlocking the benefits of the green energy subsidies in the act. ...

"The $379 billion of green energy subsidies of the Inflation Reduction Act will increase demand for the consumption of electric-powered vehicles, heat pumps, and other electrified goods. Electricity demand will increase. The supply of electricity must grow to meet demand. Democrats routinely enact policies to increase demand, but they ignore supply. Inflation and shortages follow. See, for example, the Affordable Care Act health reform law .

"Increasing the growth rate of electricity transmission will not happen without comprehensive legislation on permitting reform. Moreover, the magnitude of the task to transform the U.S. economy can only be fully understood in the context of the land required for green energy projects. Consider that researchers say wind and solar expansion would require up to 590,000 square kilometers of land. That amount of land is larger than New England plus Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. That is big. It will not happen."

Read the entire article here.

"Three years ago this month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed California Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) into law, essentially outlawing freelance journalism and most other independent contracting. Opponents of the bill warned the law would devastate the longstanding careers of many independent businesspeople in the Golden State. Three years later, it's clear the critics had it right: AB5 has proven to be among the most ill-conceived state labor policies in recent memory.

"If AB5's restrictions were limited to California, that would be bad enough. But the Biden administration appears determined to bring these destructive labor restrictions to the national stage in the form of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act). Policymakers should pay heed to the damage AB5 has wrought in California and stop this disastrous policy in its tracks. ...

"The PRO Act passed the House in 2019 and 2021, and President Biden renewed the call for Congress to enact the legislation this month in a Labor Day proclamation. Don't be fooled by the innocuous 'pro-worker' packaging of the PRO Act. It essentially would subject every independent worker in the United States to California's disastrous AB5 approach to labor relations."

Read the entire article here.