Welcome to November! It’s Friday, November 1, 2024. The 2024 elections are 4 days away The 2025 Colorado legislative session will convene in 68 days.
These updates are curated from multiple news sources and designed to be a “choose-your-own-adventure.” Please read any coverage of interest and skip anything you deem to be irrelevant. Hyperlinks are provided to add additional context. With the 24/7 news-cycle I hope to keep us all in the loop on items we may want to know about or better understand. Please feel free to share if you think someone outside FGMC needs to be aware of this information.
Disclaimer – The news and articles contained within this update do not represent any political positions or policy opinions of Foster Graham Milstein & Calisher, LLP. This update is designed for informational purposes only.
Today’s Big Three Things-To-Know:
- The relentless world of Colorado rulemaking. Just because lawmakers aren’t in session in Colorado doesn’t mean that activity has come to a halt. Colorado has transformed into a year-round rulemaking powerhouse. Add in interim committees drafting proposals for the upcoming session, and there’s a full agenda of potential legislation and new regulations to navigate. If you’re not closely following the developments, you might have missed some important updates. Here are a few key examples: 1) Colorado is set to establish rules for companies looking to inject carbon dioxide underground—a technology state leaders view as essential for reducing emissions, though business leaders caution that overly strict regulations could deter investment in the state. 2) Colorado air quality regulators have pinpointed five priority toxic air contaminants, for which they will propose stricter regulations. These include emissions from combustion engines, medical-device sterilization processes, and petroleum refining activities. 3) To minimize freshwater usage in oil and gas drilling, operators will be required to ensure that a certain percentage of the water used in extraction is reused or recycled. This plan is expected to be released next week by a legislatively created advisory group. 4) Developers and users of artificial intelligence systems are urging a legislative task force to revise definitions and address what they consider an “untenable” appeals process in Colorado’s AI law. However, they face resistance from some groups who believe the law should be more stringent. Keep your eyes on these issues (and more) as we head toward the end of the year (and the 2025 session).
- Colorado is in the election spotlight. The Trump campaign is demanding that Colorado counties rescan all ballots processed so far after the exposure of voting equipment passwords online. This follows a confirmation from the Colorado Secretary of State’s office that a spreadsheet posted on the department’s website for months included a hidden tab with BIOS passwords for voting machines. Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, stated that the posting appears to have been accidental and poses no immediate security risk. Despite this, the Trump campaign insists that counties should reset their machines and halt the processing of mail ballots. “The Secretary of State must immediately identify the affected counties, notify them, direct them to pause mail ballot processing, and prepare to rescan all ballots,” read a press release from the Trump-Vance campaign. Under Colorado law, counties can open and scan ballots as they are received, but they do not tabulate the results until 7 p.m. on election night. So far, over 1.5 million ballots have been scanned statewide for this election. The Trump campaign’s attorney in Colorado submitted a letter to Secretary of State Jena Griswold on Thursday, warning that the exposure of the password information might have affected a software update for the voting machines earlier this year. “As you know, anyone with access to the current BIOS passwords and the affected election systems could potentially alter the Trusted Build of those systems without leaving signs of tampering in the software,” said Scott Gessler, the campaign’s attorney and a former Colorado Secretary of State. Griswold responded that the passwords posted online were “partial” and insufficient for accessing the machines’ operating systems, which also require physical access. She noted that counties enforce strict security measures, including background checks, key card access, and limits on personnel near tabulation machines, which are monitored by 24/7 video surveillance. “We have teams in the field working to reset passwords and review access logs for the affected counties,” Griswold told CPR News on Wednesday. “This is being done out of an abundance of caution; we do not believe there is a security threat to Colorado’s elections.” At the same time, Governor Polis said Thursday that he is providing state aircraft and vehicles to help with changing voting system passwords that were accidentally leaked on a state website.
- U.S. job growth stalls in days before the election . “It’s the economy, stupid” is a famous phrase that underscores the importance of economic issues in political contexts. It highlights that voters often prioritize economic conditions when making decisions. If this holds true, what will voters make of the most recent jobs data? TBD. Job creation slowed in October, with employers adding just 12,000 jobs during a month marked by a significant strike and two major hurricanes. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1 percent. This figure fell well short of economists’ expectations, indicating that the disruptions may have had a greater impact than anticipated, or that the overall rate of job growth could be declining. This report comes ahead of a contentious election where the economy remains a key concern for voters, as well as a Federal Reserve meeting to determine whether to lower interest rates further. August and September were revised lower, taking a total of 112,000 jobs off earlier estimates. The average job growth over the past three months is now 104,000, down from 189,000 over the six months before that. Hurricanes Helene and Milton cut a wide swath of destruction through the Southeast last month, affecting leisure and hospitality businesses in particular. The Labor Department addressed the disruption, but did not quantify it. Jared Bernstein, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, pointed to the unemployment rate as a better indicator because it is less “noisy” than the payroll totals. “Anyone who is ignoring the noise in this report has a political agenda, not an economic one,” he said. The Trump campaign described the report as “a catastrophe” and said it “definitively reveals how badly Kamala Harris broke our economy.”
*** Bonus Story – Pittsburgh is now the center of the political universe. That’s right, Pittsburgh – a midtier city best known for steel, Mac Miller, football and being the oft-claimed birthplace of ketchup. Now it presides at the vortex of America’s presidential election. Billionaires and political luminaries, including Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, Bill Clinton, and Nikki Haley, have descended upon Pittsburgh in the waning days of the race. Legions of out-of-state volunteers walk the neighborhoods, knocking on doors. Campaign notifications bombard phones, partisan ads dominate the TV and digital billboards glow with red-and-blue “TRUMP” displays or black-and-white testimonials from Republicans pledging to vote Harris this time. Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, reigns as the biggest prize among battleground states, and is a must-win for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Its southwest corner has its own distinction as the potential key that could unlock the state and possibly the entire presidential contest. Check out WSJ for more.
And now, more news…
Around the city…Downtown Denver’s recovery lags other cities, CSI study says.
According to Colorado Politics, Downtown Denver’s recovery from the pandemic shutdown lags behind other downtowns nationwide due to crime, homelessness and high office vacancy rates, according to a Common Sense Institute study.
“None of the attempts to rejuvenate have been, so far, successful in restoring the downtown Denver activity of 2019,” the study’s authors said. “Since safety and security are paramount to would-be downtown visitors, it may be that enough time has not yet passed for Denver metro residents to absorb the message that downtown Denver has become safer and cleaner than it was in 2021 and 2022.”
CSI, which describes itself as a non-partisan research organization “dedicated to the protection and promotion of Colorado’s economy,” used data from a University of Toronto study of North American cities released in May to reach its findings. Out of 55 cities surveyed, on some 80 criteria, Denver’s “foot traffic recovery is 11th lowest among U.S. cities for weekends, 20th lowest for weekdays, 18th lowest for working hours, and 12th lowest for after hours and whole weekends,” the study said.
You can read more from Colorado Politics here.
Also from Denver…Denver Central Library prepares to debut massive revamp.
Via Axios, when Andrew Carnegie helped open the Denver Central Library in 1910, he thought the original building — the present-day McNichols Building — was too large, even ostentatious, city librarian Michelle Jeske said Tuesday.
The renowned philanthropist, who donated some of his fortune to build more than 1,600 public libraries across the country, couldn’t imagine how Denver would evolve. And 114 years later, its flagship library, now an even grander space, is set to fully reopen on Nov. 3 after roughly $60 million in renovations.
The project restored a towering civic institution in the heart of Denver, returning it to the public with sweeping improvements. The Denver Central Library closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the same year renovations started.
You can read more from Axios here.
Around the metro…Park Meadows mall owner avoids default, discloses $700M refinancing.
As reported by DBJ, a national real estate investment firm refinanced its Denver-area mall property two days before its $615 million loan was set to mature Nov. 1 and the possibility of default loomed.
New York City-based Brookfield Properties, owner Park Meadows mall in Lone Tree, successfully refinanced the property for $700 million Wednesday, the company said in an email to the Denver Business Journal. The new loan is good for five years, Brookfield said. Brookfield Properties owed $615 million on an interest-only loan that was set to mature on Friday, according to previous DBJ reporting. The owners had been making payments on it since November 2019, but the loan was added to loan-servicer watch lists in September because of its upcoming maturity date. A Brookfield spokesperson earlier this month said the company was working on refinancing the maturing loan.
Brookfield was paying a 3.18% interest rate on that loan, or roughly $1.6 million, each month for at least the last 48 months, CMBS data shows.
You can read more from Denver Business Journal here.
More from around the metro…$1 million in cash, valuables stolen in 9 Arapahoe County dinner-time burglaries.
According to The Denver Post, deputies in Arapahoe County are investigating a series of dinner-time burglaries at multi-million dollar homes that are similar to a national trend of burglary tourism.
Between Feb. 2 and Oct. 18, there have been at least nine robberies at high-value, single-family homes in Arapahoe County, usually between one to two hours after sunset. The thieves steal valuables like jewelry, designer purses, cash and safes from the homes. The total value of the stolen items amounts to around one million dollars. At this time, no arrests have been made.
You can read more from The Denver Post here.
Around the state…FAA finally approves Aspen’s plan to fix deteriorating airport runway. Election Day could send it back to square one.
Via The Colorado Sun, the future of the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport seemed to become more certain when the Federal Aviation Administration on Oct. 23 gave the county commissioners the initial go-ahead to renovate the airport and revamp its deteriorating runway, which airport officials say has been being “pieced together” since 1957.
But that go-ahead could be meaningless if a citizen-initiated ballot measure to strip the Pitkin County commissioners of their power to make decisions about the runway passes on Election Day. The FAA’s green-lighting of the amended Airport Layout Plan, or ALP, is just the latest step in the county’s efforts to modernize the airport since the agency approved a master redevelopment plan in 2012.
That process has been riddled with controversy centered largely on whether or not to widen the distance between the runway and taxiway, which would allow for larger planes to land at the mountain airport that sits at 7,815 feet. The plan the FAA reviewed includes the separation, which the agency says is necessary for the county to receive federal funding crucial for the runway’s reconstruction.
You can read more from The Colorado Sun here.
In rulemaking…Regulators’ coming decisions could determine future of carbon capture in Colorado.
According to the Sum & Substance, Colorado is about to begin setting rules for companies seeking to pump carbon dioxide underground — a new technology that state leaders call necessary to reduce emissions but that business leaders warn won’t come to Colorado if regulations are too strict.
Carbon capture occurs when companies pull carbon dioxide from the emissions emanating from industrial sources and then use wells to inject that gas into deep-rock formations, where it can be stored permanently. Some companies also are working to develop direct air capture where the carbon dioxide can be pulled straight from the atmosphere, but that technology remains nascent.
Currently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for permitting carbon-capture projects, but the process is slow and leaves any such permitting outside the control of Colorado and local governments. A 2023 law permitted Colorado to join a handful of other states in seeking permitting primacy from the federal government, and the Energy and Carbon Management Commission has been working on proposed permitting rules in advance of a Dec. 2 hearing.
You can read more from the Sum & Substance here.
Also from rulemaking…Five air contaminants singled out for additional regulation.
Via the Sum & Substance, Colorado air-quality regulators have identified five priority toxic air contaminants for which they will propose more stringent regulations, including ones emitted from combustion engines, medical-device sterilization processes and petroleum-refining activities.
The Colorado Air Quality Control Commission will hold a hearing in January to formally establish the priority air contaminants and then will hold another in September to set health-based standards for the pollutants. Another hearing in April will create new reporting requirements around these and other air contaminants that would mandate more frequent self-reporting from emitters on more compounds.
These new rulemakings stem from a 2022 law that sought to expand Colorado air-quality regulations beyond greenhouse gas emissions into other chemicals shown to cause higher risks of cancer or other health conditions. The rules will affect sectors facilities ranging from oil-and-gas drilling sites to the state’s lone petroleum refinery and from wastewater treatment plants to machinery- and glass-manufacturing plants.
“Our prioritization really focused on a risk-based approach, focusing on the compounds that carry the highest health risks,” said Amanda Damweber, air toxics regulation supervisor for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, in an Oct. 16 presentation to the AQCC
You can read more from the Sum & Substance here.
Even more from rulemaking…New rules would limit use of fresh water in oil-and-gas operations.
According to the Sum & Substance, to reduce the amount of fresh water used in oil-and-gas drilling, operators must ensure a certain percentage of water they are using in extraction is reused or recycled under a plan set to be released in the next week by a legislatively created advisory group.
The strategy from the Colorado Produced Water Consortium — a group of 31 energy, environmental and water experts that has been meeting for more than a year — will mark the first time Colorado has attempted to curb use of fresh water in the industry. Consortium members are required to produce a report with recommendations by Nov. 1, and the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission is scheduled to hold a hearing in December to put new rules into place.
You can read more from the Sum & Substance here.
From the Gold Dome…Business leaders plead for changes in state’s new AI law.
From the Sum & Substance, developers and deployers of artificial intelligence systems are begging a legislative task force to amend definitions and an “untenable” appeals process in Colorado’s AI law — and getting pushback from some groups who feel the law doesn’t regulate enough.
The push-and-pull has played out for two months before the Artificial Intelligence Task Force, a 26-person group of elected officials and citizens put together by Gov. Jared Polis after he signed “with reservations” the most comprehensive AI regulatory law in America. With the regulations not going into place until February 2026, the task force is hearing from myriad groups affected by them and is required to submit a report to the Joint Technology Committee by February 2025 recommending any potential changes to the law.
So far, large and small companies and technology associations all have teed up requests centering on too-vague definitions in the bill that they fear could impact everyone from AI developers whose clients altered their systems to companies offering digital coupons for consumer goods. And while companies ranging in size from Amazon to startups are making the asks, smaller firms particularly argue that the current law is not just a hindrance but a threat to their existence
You can read more from the Sum & Substance here.
From elections…Trump campaign demands Griswold halt Colorado ballot count as Polis deploys staff to address password leak.
Via Colorado Politics, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign demanded that Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold take immediate action to halt ballot processing in order to secure the state’s election equipment after voting machine passwords were posted online by her office.
A Griswold deputy insisted on Thursday that election officials have determined that “layers of security and redundancies” mean the leak hasn’t endangered the state’s voting system. Meanwhile, Gov. Jared Polis announced that he is deploying state resources and personnel to help Griswold’s staff change compromised passwords and review security logs maintained by county clerks to make sure no one has tampered with their voting equipment.
At the same time, a Republican lawmaker called for the state’s bipartisan Legislative Audit Committee to convene an emergency meeting to investigate the password leak, saying the response by Griswold, a Democrat, “so far raises more concerns than it resolves.
You can read more from Colorado Politics here, Colorado Newsline here, CPR here, The Colorado Sun here, and The Denver Post here.
Hold on…What are Colorado’s voting machine BIOS passwords?
According to CPR, passwords that make up part of the security system for computer equipment used in Colorado elections were published in a spreadsheet on the Secretary of State’s website.
The posting of the “BIOS” passwords has led to intense scrutiny and concerns, with the state government flying and driving election staffers to all corners of Colorado to update affected machines. The Secretary of State’s Office and other experts say the state’s election system remains secure. Secretary of State Jena Griswold has described the passwords as “partial,” and stressed that voting-system computers are protected by numerous other measures.
Additionally, BIOS passwords can only be used by people with physical access to the machines, which are kept in secure locations. There is no sign that anyone tried to use the passwords. Colorado’s election integrity also is protected by its use of paper ballots, which creates a permanent record against which tabulations can be checked.
Here’s what we know about the machines and passwords in question, and how they are managed.
You can read more from CPR here.
Also from Colorado elections…Democrats slightly outpace Republicans in Colorado early voting.
From Colorado Newsline, over 1 million Colorado voters had returned their ballot as of Monday, eight days until Election Day, according to the secretary of state’s office.
That is a bit over 26% of active registered voters in the state. At this time in 2020, which had a large emphasis on returning ballots by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic, turnout was about 47%. Turnout this year is outpacing 2022 midterm numbers, as expected for a presidential election year. Democrats have returned about 31% of the ballots, Republicans have returned 28% and unaffiliated voters have returned about 40%. About half of Colorado voters are unaffiliated.
A little over 16,000 votes so far this year were cast in person at one of the state’s polling centers. About 6,700 were from unaffiliated voters, 6,100 from Republicans and 2,800 from Democrats. The two largest demographics of in-person voters are unaffiliated and Republican men, respectively, followed by unaffiliated and Republican women.
You can read more from Colorado Newsline here.
More from Colorado elections…Liberal groups mount late push to defeat Proposition 131.
According to Axios, despite being outspent 50-to-1, a coalition of liberal organizations is joining hands in a last-ditch effort to defeat Proposition 131 in Colorado.
The David vs. Goliath battle will determine whether Colorado makes major changes to how it elects candidates for state-level offices. The opposition is appealing to late voters who tend to lean younger and more progressive in the hopes it can persuade them against open primary elections and ranked choice voting, organizers tell Axios Denver.
The arguments focus on the billionaires, out-of-state moneyed interests and corporations behind the effort, and the untested nature of the system in Colorado. Critics argue that open primaries — where all candidates compete for attention — would reward those with the most money and special interest support, as evidenced by the recent Denver mayoral race.
You can read more from Axios here.
It’s all about the Benjamins, baby…Colorado campaign spending tops $100M.
Via Axios, total campaign spending on state-level elections now tops $100 million — and it’s far from over.
The huge sum reflects the high stakes in the 2024 election in Colorado. Most of the $101 million spent through Oct. 23 is being funneled toward the battle for a Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature and a handful of high-profile ballot measures, an exclusive Axios analysis of the latest finance reports finds.
Millions more continue to pour into campaign advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts, setting the stage for a flurry of activity in the final two weeks before the Nov. 5 election. Billionaires and dark-money organizations continue to dominate the election, and Proposition 131 is driving most of the spending.
Kent Thiry, the former DaVita CEO behind the election-related measure, is the largest individual donor at $4 million through the reporting period. Two political committees he helped direct raised another $5.7 million for the cause. Oil and gas company Chevron is the largest single corporate donor at roughly $1.8 million through the reporting period. The money went to electing Republicans in the state Senate and the Colorado Chamber’s political committee. Last Friday, Chevron added a $500,000 donation to the Proposition 131 campaign.
You can read more from Axios here.
From our ballot…In big cat ballot measure, a divide that sees hunting as a foundation of wildlife management or a brutal relic.
As reported by The Colorado Sun, efforts to ban wild cat hunting in Colorado have failed in recent years in the state legislature and have not gained traction with the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission. On Nov. 6, voters could chart a new course for managing wild cats.
Supporters and opponents of Proposition 127, a statewide ballot measure that would ban bobcat, lynx and mountain lion hunting, largely agree on one basic tenet: These wild cat species are an important and treasured part of Colorado’s natural ecosystem that should be preserved. And that’s where the camaraderie ends.
You can read more from The Colorado Sun here.
In national news…Where do Harris and Trump stand on 10 major policy issues?
Via Colorado Newsline, as the last weekend before Tuesday’s presidential election approaches, voters who want more insight on where the candidates stand on major policy issues can get up to speed through a States Newsroom Washington Bureau series. In these 10 articles, States Newsroom reported on the policy positions taken by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, ranging from education to taxes to Social Security and Medicare.
You can read more from Colorado Newsline here.
From the election…Xenophobia and hate speech are spiking heading into the election.
In troubling news from NYT, a terrible trend in xenophobia and hate speech is emerging as we head toward Election Day.
The last time there was a presidential election, the country was coming off a summer of protests in favor of greater racial equality. Support for increased immigration was at the highest level ever polled.
This year is different. Former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign, filled with anti-immigrant rhetoric, is playing out in a country where researchers report seeing particularly high levels of hate speech against minority groups. A spike that began soon after the George Floyd protests was sustained over four years and has only risen since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee.
“I certainly don’t remember in my lifetime the rhetoric against immigrants ever getting this strong during an election,” said Yonatan Lupu, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University who leads a team that monitors about 1,000 hate communities across a range of online platforms. Lupu said that hate speech levels were up about 50 percent compared with early 2020 before the murder of Floyd that summer.
Immigrants are reporting harassment and false accusations in communities from Aurora, Colo., to Springfield, Ohio. Extreme rhetoric against migrants has been amplified by Republican politicians and commentators, while the Israel-Hamas war has given rise to increased Islamophobia and antisemitism, including from the left.
You can read more from NYT here.
What are the odds?…Betting markets tend to get elections right—with some notable exceptions.
Via The Wall Street Journal, netting markets show former President Donald Trump has a roughly 60% chance of beating Vice President Kamala Harris next week. Should they be trusted?
History suggests that betting markets have generally been good forecasters of U.S. elections. More often than not, the presidential candidate with the best odds before Election Day goes on to take the White House.
But there have been some glaring exceptions. In 2016, for instance, betting markets such as PredictIt and U.K.-based Betfair gave Hillary Clinton a more than 80% chance of defeating Trump in the days before the election. Instead, Trump won an upset victory.
Today, with polls showing Harris and Trump in a dead heat, the accuracy of betting markets has become a politically loaded question. Supporters of Harris have raised doubts about a recent run-up in Trump’s chances, arguing that betting markets are vulnerable to manipulation, skewed to a right-leaning user base and distorted by multimillion-dollar wagers placed by a small number of users. Meanwhile, Trump supporters say the betting markets are reacting to polls tightening in his favor and signs of Harris losing momentum in the campaign’s closing stretch.
You can read more from WSJ here.
What some are saying…The ‘shy’ Kamala Harris voters who could decide the election.
From Politico, for eight years, pollsters have been striving to accurately capture former President Donald Trump’s level of support among voters. Even today, on the eve of his third campaign for the presidency, there’s no confidence they’ve nailed it. It raises a question that not enough people are asking: If it’s taken that long to adjust for Trump, is 100 days enough to accurately poll potential Vice President Kamala Harris voters?
It’s not just an academic question. There’s reason to believe that, just as proved to be the case with Trump, there is a fuller range of Harris voters who aren’t being measured. At the same, emboldened allies of Vice President Harris are circulating new Gallup data that shows Democratic enthusiasm at a (slightly) higher level than it was for Barack Obama’s big 2008 victory.
You can read more from Politico here and Axios here.
In some (maybe) good news…This campaign is also demonstrating America’s democratic vitality.
This from The Economist, Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist and human-rights activist, likes to tell a story about walking through New York after appearing on various cable-TV networks to crusade against Iran’s oppression of women. Alinejad, who has a nimbus of spiraling curls that makes her easy to recognize, describes being stopped by people who wanted to voice their support. But on one block a person pleaded with her not to appear again on Fox News (“They are miserable”) while on the next a person urged her to stop going on CNN (“They are using you”).
“I was like, ‘Wow, wow—guys, having Fox News and CNN is the beauty of America,’” Alinejad said, speaking at the Global Free Speech Summit at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 18th, just days before prosecutors in Manhattan would charge four men, including a senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, with plotting to kill her in 2022. Americans who wanted to cancel either network and watch only one, Alinejad continued, might consider life in North Korea or Iran, where “You only see people repeating the narrative of the government, and you only see your family members and your heroes doing false confession in order to survive.”
That is a low bar. However, it is a fair point, and a chastening one as the climax approaches of an election campaign that has members of both parties despairing about their democracy. American news organizations may not always make the best use of their freedom, yet their very freedom to misuse their freedom is a measure of what keeps America great. In Alinejad’s spirit, it seems worth considering other ways in which this much maligned campaign is revealing the vitality of America’s democracy—along with the pernicious effects of negative partisanship explored in The Economist Essay this week.
You can read more from The Economist here.
Meanwhile…How California, the land of the million-dollar starter home, could decide the fate of Congress.
Via Politico, long treated as a local concern, housing decisively entered the bloodstream of federal politics this year, from the presidential race on down.
Democrats in particular have taken their cues from Vice President Kamala Harris, hoping a nod to voters’ housing squeeze can offset the GOP’s edge on inflation and other pocketbook concerns. That is especially true in California, land of the million-dollar starter home, where the battle for control of the House is being waged in districts that have experienced some of the state’s most acute housing sticker shock.
You can read more from Politico here.
From Congress…Speaker Johnson, facing uncertain future, seeks to save House GOP.
Speaker Mike Johnson in an interview with The Hill from the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, said he “probably underestimated” just how much work it would be to lead the House GOP’s massive political operation.
Johnson has been on the road constantly this fall, crisscrossing the country to raise money and preserve — and try to grow — a fragile GOP majority. “We had a big challenge ahead of us, and I knew there was some travel involved. But I think I’ve had to travel more than my predecessors, because I was introducing myself to people for the first time,” said Johnson, who recently reached the one-year mark as Speaker.
“It’s been all-encompassing,” he added. Johnson has been tasked with leading a fractious House GOP conference with an excruciatingly small majority, and it could stay that way even if Republicans keep the lower chamber.
You can read more from The Hill here and WaPo here.
Around the country…The latest on the economy.
According to NYT, job creation stalled in October, with employers adding only 12,000 positions in a month that included a major strike and two destructive hurricanes. Unemployment remained steady at 4.1 percent. The number was significantly lower than economists had expected, suggesting either that disruptions took a larger toll than they had forecast, or that the underlying pace of job growth might be slowing.
The report is the last before a contentious election in which the economy has consistently polled as a top issue for voters, as well as a Federal Reserve meeting at which officials will decide whether to drop interest rates further.
- Previous months appear weaker: August and September were revised lower, taking a total of 112,000 jobs off earlier estimates. The average job growth over the past three months is now 104,000, down from 189,000 over the six months before that.
- Strike effects: Manufacturing declined by 46,000 jobs, nearly all of which were in transportation equipment factories. The Labor Department noted that was mostly because of a large strike at Boeing, which affected its suppliers as well.
- Storm disruptions: Hurricanes Helene and Milton cut a wide swath of destruction through the Southeast last month, affecting leisure and hospitality businesses in particular. The Labor Department addressed the disruption, but did not quantify it.
- Wages looking strong: Average hourly earnings rose 0.4 percent over the month, or 4 percent for the past 12 months. Wages can appear to be pushed upward when lower-paid positions disappear, as they most likely did as a result of the hurricanes.
- How it plays politically: Jared Bernstein, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, pointed to the unemployment rate as a better indicator because it is less “noisy” than the payroll totals. “Anyone who is ignoring the noise in this report has a political agenda, not an economic one,” he said. The Trump campaign described the report as “a catastrophe” and said it “definitively reveals how badly Kamala Harris broke our economy.”
You can read more from NYT here, Axios here, and The Wall Street Journal here.
And one final note…Why mortgage rates are climbing.
Via Axios, since the Fed cut rates on Sept. 18, mortgage rates have actually been climbing.
The increase has depressed the beleaguered housing market, as would-be buyers who’d been gunning for lower rates are backing away and waiting it out. Home sales are on track for their worst year since 1995. The average rate on the 30-year mortgage rose to 6.72% this week, the highest since August 1, per Freddie Mac’s weekly number.
Mortgage News Daily, which tracks the situation closer to real time, reported Thursday the average was 7.09%. That’s the highest since July — and it crosses a psychological rubicon that can be a turnoff — especially for buyers who’d believed a rate cut would lower mortgage rates. When the Fed cut in September, average mortgage rates were closer to 6%.
“There was a possibility that mortgage rates would rise after the September rate cut, but we didn’t expect them to rise this much,” Chen Zhao, Redfin’s economic research lead, said in a release on Thursday.
The relationship between the interest rate that the Fed sets and the interest rate on mortgages is not straightforward. Essentially, the Fed controls short-term rates. Longer-term rates, for 10-year Treasury bonds are set in global bond markets, based on inflation expectations and what investors believe the Fed is going to do further into the future, as Axios’ Neil Irwin laid out last month. 30-year mortgage rates move in tandem with those longer-term bond rates.
You can read more from Axios here.
That’s all for this week! Have a wonderful weekend.
Best,
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Adam J. Burg
Senior Policy Advisor |
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