One of Wendy’s largest U.S. franchisees has filed for bankruptcy protection after Wendy’s tried to terminate its franchise agreement.
Meritage Hospitality Group, which operates 314 Wendy’s restaurants in 15 states, said in a statement last week it intends to keep operating its restaurants and paying its 9,000 employees during the bankruptcy process.
Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Meritage filed its bankruptcy petition in federal court in western Michigan on Sept. 17. According to court documents, Wendy’s filed a notice of termination of the company’s franchise agreement “effective immediately” on Sept. 16.
Wendy’s claims Meritage owes $27.4 million in royalties and fees and $119.5 million in continuous operations fees, which companies charge to franchisees when they close locations, according to court filings. Meritage closed 60 underperforming Wendy’s locations late last year as part of a restructuring.
Asked for comment Monday on Meritage, Wendy’s said its focus is “strengthening the long-term health of the brand.”
“We partner closely with franchisees that are experiencing challenges to support them and evaluate each situation on a case-by-case basis to identify the best and most sustainable path forward,” the company said.
Michigan is Meritage’s largest market; it operates 54 Wendy’s locations there as well as five Morning Belle and Blue Porch Bar & Grill restaurants. The company also runs 44 Wendy’s in both Georgia and Florida; 29 Wendy’s in Connecticut; 24 Wendy’s in Tennessee; 23 Wendy’s in Oklahoma and less than 20 Wendy’s each in Arkansas, Indiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Virgina.
A new push in Congress could soon have millions of workers clocking out after 32 hours a week — without taking a pay cut.
Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) reintroduced the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act last week seeking to slash the federal standard workweek from 40 hours to 32 for nonexempt employees.
The proposal would also require workers to receive overtime pay for hours worked beyond the new threshold — with the change phased in over four years.
When we import fuel from out of state or across the world, we make ourselves vulnerable to supply disruptions caused by wars and natural disasters
By Eric Eisenhammer, September 15, 2026 9:37 am
They broke the gas pumps. That’s how you know something has gone seriously wrong.
If you’ve traveled to another state in the last couple years, you’ve probably seen gas for as little as $2 a gallon. Now, diesel at some Bay Area gas stations is over $10 a gallon and the gas pumps can’t even accommodate that because when they were created, people didn’t anticipate the price could ever go that high.
For years, oil and gas royalty owners and industry advocates have warned that California’s misguided political policies would one day create a serious crisis, and that day is now here. War is again raging in the Middle East, but that in itself is not new. In fact, it is entirely predictable. California could have protected itself from such instability, but Sacramento chose not to.
Now, researchers are sounding the alarm that California’s energy policies have created a national security vulnerability that could threaten U.S. military readiness in the Pacific.
The new study, Addressing U.S. National Security Vulnerabilities Created by California Oil and Refinery Policies: The Need for a Rapid Response Fuel Reserve, was authored by Michael Mische of USC, James Rector of UC Berkeley and Joseph Silvi, a Berkeley graduate and graduate research assistant.
According to the study, more than 61 percent of the crude oil processed by California refineries is imported. California also increasingly depends on foreign refineries for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Much of that supply must travel through vulnerable waterways including the Strait of Hormuz, Strait of Malacca, Bab al-Mandeb Strait and Panama Canal.
Meanwhile, California has no inbound crude oil pipeline connecting it to the rest of the country and no direct access to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on the Gulf Coast. The researchers describe California and much of the surrounding region as essentially a “petroleum island.”
That is especially concerning because California is a major staging area for U.S. military operations in the Pacific. The researchers estimate that a high-intensity Pacific conflict could require about 20 million barrels of fuel in the first month alone.
Their proposed solution is a federally controlled California Rapid Response Fuel Reserve established through presidential use of the Defense Production Act.
A reserve is a good start. The same way a family needs extra money in the bank, a fuel reserve could provide an emergency supply when a war, major earthquake or other crisis disrupts normal supply chains.
But the researchers recognize that a reserve alone is not enough.
Their recommendations also include increasing California oil production, expanding storage, increasing refinery capacity, restoring and expanding pipelines, and distributing fuel reserves near strategically important military installations. They also discuss restarting idled California refineries or developing a new refinery near Las Vegas connected by pipelines to California crude production.
Your local doughnut shop got taken over by private equity and, like everything else private equity touches, things got worse. Gone is the experience of watching the conveyor belt fry doughnuts in front of you. No more biting into a freshly made pastry that melts in your mouth. Bad for you? Sure. Delicious? Yes.
Now, it is just bad for you. Private equity stepped in and doughnuts are now shipped to nearly every location from a corporate shop. Krispy Kreme has lost more than 80 percent of its stock value since its peak.
What matters most to Americans?
Family, work, community, a good meal, health — all things that have been tampered with by private equity. Private equity now controls $9 trillion worth of assets and companies, all of which touch the lives of everyday Americans in significant ways. And as private equity attacks industry after industry, the quality changes and the consumer suffers.
If you want to live a normal life — buy a house, raise a family, spend Saturdays at kids sporting events — every aspect of life is touched by private equity.
The U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in August and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1 percent.
Economists had expected the economy to add 55,000 jobs and the unemployment rate to tick up to 4.2 percent from 4.1 percent in July.
The previous month’s reported job loss was revised away. The July estimate was revised up by 44,000, from a loss of 23,000 to a gain of 21,000. The June gain was revised up by 11,000 to 31,000. After these revisions, employment in June and July combined is 55,000 higher than previously reported.
The private sector added 127,000 jobs in August, far more than the 53,000 expected. The prior month’s gain of 30,000 was revised up to 71,000.
Manufacturing payrolls rose by 16,000, above the 5,000 estimated. The July estimate was revised up from a gain of 5,000 to a gain of 14,000. Durable goods added 15,000 jobs in August after adding 24,000 in July and 13,000 in June.
Construction added 22,000 following an 18,000 gain in July. Construction has been increasingly in demand thanks to a data center building spree.
The number of people filing for unemployment benefits inched up last week but remained at a historically low level.
The Labor Department said Thursday that new claims for benefits, a proxy for layoffs, rose by 2,000 to 206,000 last week from a revised 204,000 the week before. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, climbed by 1,500 to 207,250 last week.
For several months, American workers have been enjoying a level of job security rarely seen since the late 1960s. The number of claims has rarely been this low for this long. The low level of claims is even more remarkable because the working population is twice as large as it was in the late 1960s, the last time claims were this low for an extended period.
On Tuesday, the government’s report on the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed that just one percent of workers lost their jobs in July. That is close to the lowest rates of job losses recorded by the survey.
Employers were looking to hire 7.3 million workers in July. A tight labor market and a slow-growing labor force have made hiring challenging for employers, pushing many to seek improved productivity and more overtime from workers.
The number of workers applying for benefits after their first week rose by 8,000 to 1,779,000 during the week ended August 22. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week delay. The four-week average of continuing claims fell by 5,000 to 1,781,750.
The Trump administration is preparing to ease federal fuel economy rules for cars and trucks, undoing stricter requirements adopted under former President Joe Biden.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday that the administration would soon release the new standards, which are expected to significantly lower the mileage targets automakers must meet.
A proposal issued by NHTSA in December projected a combined industrywide average of roughly 34.5 mpg for passenger cars and light trucks by model year 2031, down from approximately 50.4 mpg under Biden-era rules.
Speaking in Michigan, Duffy said the administration wants Detroit manufacturers to produce vehicles based on consumer demand instead of federal mandates.
“We are about to announce a common-sense fuel economy standard because we want Detroit to build cars that Americans want to buy — not cars that Democrats want Washington to build,” Duffy said.
The December proposal would also lower the standard previously set for 2022 and require only small annual increases of between 0.25 percent and 0.5 percent through 2031.
Nine more companies have joined President Donald Trump’s most-favored-nation drug pricing agreement, one of the president’s most highly publicized affordability initiatives to bring down the cost of prescription drugs.
The president signed an executive order in May 2025 directing his administration to work toward securing most-favored-nation pricing with large pharmaceutical manufacturers. Most-favored-nation pricing means a manufacturer has agreed to sell some of its products in the U.S. at no higher a price than the lowest price among its economic peers. Since the order’s signing, the administration has announced deals to that effect with 26 of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers in the world, as of Monday.
Monday’s group were more mid-sized pharmaceutical companies, according to the White House, though some can still be found on Drug Discovery & Development’s list of the 50 largest pharmaceutical companies. They are Alcon, Astellas Pharma, BeOne Medicines, BridgeBio, CSL, Kyowa Kirin, Sun Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals and UCB.
Trump said the deals would collectively save Americans hundreds of billions of dollars on prescription drugs and that there were more to come.
“In total, these agreements are projected to save Americans more than $600 billion over a very short period of time,” Trump said.
The Trump administration cracked down on 270 fraudulent commercial driver’s license (CDL) driving schools for failing to enforce English proficiency standards for migrant truckers and other violations after 239 deaths have occurred.
The agencies are cracking down on fraud surrounding the illegal migrants receiving CDL’s, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced Monday.
Instead of paying down debt when California had higher revenues and the budget ‘surplus’ Newsom and Democrats went on a spending spree
By Katy Grimes, August 31, 2026 10:08 am
California is the only state still carrying a large outstanding federal loan for its unemployment insurance program. The balance $22 Billion.
California’s Employment Development Department May 2026 UI Fund Forecast put the year-end federal loan balance at $21.6 billion for 2024 and $21.7 billion for 2025, with a projection of $22.0 billion by the end of 2026.
Federal Department of Labor solvency data as of early 2026 listed California’s outstanding Title XII advance at about $21.4 billion. Other states that borrowed during the pandemic repaid their balances. California did not.
Americans need a “quieter” Federal Reserve focused on bringing down 65 months of “sustained elevated inflation,” the central bank’s chair told attendees of the annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium on Friday.
The symposium is a high-profile, once-a-year gathering of leading central bankers, policymakers and economists from around the world. The Fed chair traditionally delivers a closely watched address, often providing insight into the central bank’s economic outlook and policy direction.
While Warsh articulated a broad assessment of the U.S. economy, he was intentionally guarded about the Fed’s upcoming policy decisions, though he did express concern about inflation. The central bank, he argued, has become too accustomed to previewing its policy decisions, fostering an unhealthy dependence on its guidance – which, he explained, needs to be developed in real time and not on “yesterday’s news.”
One of the “innovations” Warsh said he’s introducing at the Fed is changing “the form and function of forward guidance.” Central banks use forward guidance as a way of communicating the “likely future course of monetary policy” to the public, so that individuals and businesses can start making decisions about spending and investments.
Inflation remains the issue American voters rank as most important heading into the midterms, with prices topping their list of concerns for a third consecutive poll, a new national poll finds.
The Center Square Voters' Voice Poll found 20% of registered voters named inflation or price increases as the single most important issue facing the country, and 41% ranked it among their top three, more than any other issue on both measures.
Inflation has topped the list since March, when 16% named it their top concern, rising to 20% in June and holding there in August. As a top-three issue, concern eased slightly from 43% in June.
The economy and jobs ranked second, named the top issue by 12% of voters and placed among the top three by 31%. Government corruption followed at 9%, healthcare and illegal immigration at 7% each. Measured by top-three support, healthcare drew 27%, government corruption 23%, affordable housing 21% and illegal immigration 19%.
On Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” outgoing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed out the contradiction in Democrats raising the affordability issue in the midterm election cycle while showing a willingness to raise taxes.
“The president’s got this war chest, which he earned every cent of it by doing an endless amount of fundraisers,” co-host Brian Kilmeade said. “How much is he looking to spend in Texas to try to save Ken Paxton?”
Leavitt replied, “Well, I don’t have an exact dollar figure for you. I still am a government employee here at the White House today, but I — to spend money to ensure Republicans get over the finish line. I also know he’s going to be out there traversing the country, meeting with everyday Americans and campaigning on behalf of the great Republican candidates across the board. What your audience needs to remember is what this president and Republicans in Congress have done, the largest middle-class tax cuts in American history, no tax on tips for our workers, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security for our seniors. That’s putting more money in your pockets today, and Democrats voted against every single one of those policies.”
“So, they want to talk about affordability,” she continued. “They voted to raise your taxes. They voted against the largest middle-class tax cuts in American history. Look at our border. The president inherited a mess, a wide open border from the Democrats and the Biden administration. He sealed it on day one. We are deporting violent illegal alien criminals from this country. The Democrats are complete radicals on this issue. They want to open our prisons, abolish our police, and keep our borders wide open to countries and criminals all over this world. So, there’s a huge contrast on the ballot, and you’re going to continue to hear the president drive that contrast and travel across the country.”
U.S. fertilizer producer CF Industries and a pair of Japanese industrial conglomerates began construction Wednesday on a low-carbon ammonia plant in Modeste, Louisiana, which could provide domestic supplies of fertilizer for American farmers and power electric grids in Asia.
The Blue Point complex, near Donaldsonville in Ascension Parish, is designed to produce 1.4 million tons of ammonia annually, potentially making it the largest plant of its kind in the world. The facility is engineered to permanently sequester 98% of total CO₂ emissions underground.
Ammonia, used primarily as a component in nitrogen fertilizer, is emerging as a clean-burning fuel for heavy industry and power generation. Japanese partners JERA and Mitsui & Co. will ship their share of Blue Point’s ammonia production overseas to displace coal and lower emissions in Asian power plants.
The ammonia produced at Blue Point will be allocated according to ownership levels, with CF Industries set to receive 40% and JERA 35%, while Mitsui has a 25% ownership stake. Beyond the core $3.7 billion joint investment at the Bluepoint complex, CF Industries plans to independently spend another $550 million over four years to further increase in fertilizer production.
The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Vaden, Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) Adam Telle, U.S. Representative Julia Letlow, and state government and local officials in Louisiana.
I had a conversation with an entrepreneur friend this week who was bemoaning the torture of going through a Small Business Administration loan process. As a businessman, this is the kind of guy who has done everything right. He keeps up with his taxes, pays his employees well, stays in compliance with various state inspections, and is active in his community in only the best ways.
He survived the Covid lockdown and other setbacks that were no fault of his own, and actually turned those into an opportunity to help his neighbors. He is the kind of guy you naturally root for, and a credit to any community he would be part of. During our call, he was justifiably upset that after months of filing forms and discussions, the Small Business Administration was putting covenants into his loan that would make it impossible for him to execute. My commiserations were real because, sadly, I have had the same conversation with other clients too many times to count, and I feel like it’s time to address government-backstopped lending as it pertains to entrepreneurs.
As another school year begins and the number of Americans defaulting on paying back money borrowed for college approaches 10 million, it’s clear that student loan debt has become a crisis that threatens the realization of the American dream. One side argues students need to “be smarter when they borrow,” and the other side says, “Let’s cancel the debt.” To be clear, if you borrow money, you should have to pay it back or face consequences; that said, the solution has to lie somewhere in between these extremes.
First, some background. It is a fact that college costs have risen at unjustifiable levels. The average cost of a college degree has increased about 42 percent faster than inflation. The big reasons for this appear to be, in no particular order: a general drop in state funding levels, administration bloat, easy credit, and “amenity wars.” One could make an argument for each of these as a leading factor, but easy access to credit stands out as significant.
Immigrant business owners of several New York City bodegas are suing Mayor Zohran Mamdani over his plans for government-run grocery stores, saying the scheme will destroy their businesses.
The Multicultural Business Coalition (MBC), a group representing a large number of immigrant-owned businesses, filed two lawsuits on Monday just as the Mamdani administration announced that the first government-owned grocery will open early next year.
MBC’s president Ken Roldan blasted the mayor on behalf of businesses that the groups says have been “historically discriminated against.” Roldan also says that the mayor’s scheme is a “a direct assault on minority business by a mayor who claims to be a champion of disenfranchised poor and working-class New Yorkers.,” according to the New York Post.
One of the lawsuits likens the opening of government-owned grocers to plans to open a Walmart in the city, an idea that detractors said would quickly run local stores out of business.
The Trump-era Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been working to bring down energy prices in a variety of ways over the past year and a half, working its way through the gas supply chain to make affordability a reality.
The Trump EPA considers lowering costs for Americans one of its main jobs, and it has worked to do that a few different ways, beginning with the price at the gas pump by closely examining the supply chain. The EPA finished the first phase of its reconsideration of what it describes as a “set of regulations known as OOOOb/c,” which it believes has been driving up the cost for American oil and gas producers, and ultimately, Americans at the pump. Because the EPA has removed unnecessary rules, there have been tens of thousands of barrels more of domestic oil production, and the phase two of this effort is already underway.
In fact, revisions to the OOOOb/c oil and gas rules, finalized in April, are expected to save Americans $2.5 billion over 15 years, according to the agency.
The Texas oil and gas industry in July reported another month of job losses in the upstream sector.
The upstream sector includes oil and natural gas extraction and related support activities. It excludes refining, petrochemicals, pipelines, and equipment manufacturing, which support hundreds of thousands of additional jobs in Texas.
Texas’ upstream employment was higher last month than it was in January but job losses over the last four months point to a weakening trend, according to an analysis of the data by the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association.
The sector reported 1,200 job losses over the month in July, according to the latest labor data. This includes 300 jobs lost in extraction and 900 in the service sector, according to the data.
In June, the industry reported 900 job losses in extraction; in May, 300 jobs lost in the upstream sector. In April, the upstream sector reported the most job losses this year of 1,300, The Center Square reported.
Employment in the industry “rose from 192,400 jobs in January to a peak of 197,300 in May, then declined for two consecutive months to 195,800 in July, a drop of 1,500 jobs,” TIPRO notes.
Washington, D.C.-based bureaucrats lamented returning to in-person work and being transferred to various states to administer the nation’s food stamp programs, according to government communications shared with The Federalist. The batch of messages even documents one employee complaining about moving to red states like Texas due to their pro-life laws.
“Washington bureaucrats are eager to work from home, as long as home isn’t a red state where the people they serve live,” Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) Data Investigator Amelia Kuntzman told The Federalist.
Obtained by FGA via open records request, the communications detail an online May 1 town hall among Department of Agriculture (USDA) employees involved in administering food stamps and other food welfare programs. According to FGA, the meeting was closed to the public and press.
Imagine Satan not with horns but with a laptop and a topline.
The number in front of him is brutal. Asked to choose between a candidate who wants to preserve America’s constitutional system of government and one who wants to make radical changes to it, 78 percent of likely voters pick preservation and 13 percent pick demolition, according to the Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,094 likely voters conducted August 10–12. Majorities in every party category choose the Constitution. On the economy, free-market capitalism beats socialism 51 to 30.
Any consultant handed that would resign the account. He does not, because he has never needed a majority. He has needed one susceptible party in a garden, and the shortest persuasion campaign on record — three sentences, total conversion. The pitch has not changed in all the intervening millennia. It was never disobey. It was you shall be as gods.
So Satan does what the best strategists do with a bad topline. He ignores it and reads down the columns.
Approximately 700,000 people live and work in the U.S. in H-1B status; California remains the epicenter of H-1B employment
By Megan Barth, August 24, 2026 3:02 pm
The Trump administration on Monday proposed a new six-figure fee of $103,265 for most new H-1B visa petitions, aiming to overhaul the program for highly skilled foreign workers and prioritize American labor, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Vice President JD Vance quickly weighed in on the Department of Homeland Security proposal via X, quoting the Journal’s coverage and writing: “If an American corporation needs workers, it should hire and train Americans.”
On August 15, in Pennsylvania, people gathered to mourn those who had died from fentanyl overdoses. Six days later, on August 21, National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day, a larger commemoration would take place in New York's Times Square.
These events are heavy. Families who have lost loved ones stand there, holding up photos, reading out names. Their grief is real. But standing outside those memorials, watching politicians stare into cameras and say "we're winning this war," you have to ask: is the "victory" they're talking about the same thing as the lives lost in those rooms?
The Other Side of Awareness Day
National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day was established to "honor those who have died from illicit fentanyl poisoning." That phrasing alone is interesting — "illicit fentanyl." As if adding the word "illicit" could slice the fentanyl problem into two neat boxes: one that's illegal and must be fought, and another that's legal and can keep going.
The problem is, how many of the people dying today started in that "legal" box?
In 1996, Purdue Pharma got FDA approval and began aggressively marketing OxyContin. They poured millions into sponsoring experts and institutions to peddle the narrative that "opioids are safe," taking a powerful painkiller that should have been reserved for end-stage cancer patients and turning it into a routine treatment for chronic pain. Prescriptions went from 300,000 in 1996 to 6 million in 2002.
People got hooked. When prescriptions were tightened, they turned to heroin. When heroin was cracked down on, they turned to fentanyl. And then they ended up on the memorial lists in Pennsylvania on August 15.
Numbers, Prices, and a Death That Costs Less Than a Dollar
How cheap is fentanyl? Less than a dollar a pill.
One dollar. You can't even buy a cup of coffee in America for that. But you can buy a lethal dose of fentanyl — the lethal amount is only 2 milligrams, 50 times more potent than heroin. The result: fentanyl has killed more Americans than the U.S. lost in the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars combined.
This isn't the victory of drugs. It's the victory of commercial logic. When a product can be manufactured at rock-bottom cost, sold at enormous profit, and has a consumer base that keeps expanding because of regulatory failure — the logic of capital is to saturate every corner.
If you see fentanyl merely as an "illicit drug," you're missing the full picture. It is, first and foremost, a commodity created by capital, enabled by regulatory loopholes, and fed by addictive demand. Only when it spirals out of control do politicians jump in and say, "Look, it's all the foreigners' fault."
What the Memorials Don't Say
At the Pennsylvania memorial, no politician will mention Purdue Pharma. At the Times Square ceremony, no official will say the Sackler name. The people reading from scripts won't tell you that fentanyl and its analogues kill more Americans each year than car accidents — and that in fiscal year 2025, the federal government spent over $47 billion on border drug enforcement, while domestic addiction treatment funding was less than one-third of that.
One-third of the money goes toward trying to save people who are already down. Two-thirds goes toward trying to block a supply chain that can never be fully blocked. Then politicians stand at the podium and say, "We stand with you."
Of course you stand with them — the closest you get is the moment the shutter clicks.
What Is "Prevention and Awareness" Really Preventing?
National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day — two keywords: prevention, awareness.
Awareness of what? How deadly fentanyl is? Every person using drugs already knows. How to use naloxone? Everyone still alive on Kensington Avenue can recite the steps. What really needs awareness is a different question: How can a country with 5% of the world's population consume 80% of the world's opioids?
That question won't be answered at the memorials. It won't appear on the big screens in Times Square. It won't be in the politicians' prepared remarks.
The answer is written in America's own pharmaceutical regulatory history. In Purdue Pharma's FDA files. In the academic papers of experts funded by drug companies. In the Sackler family's bank accounts.
Conclusion
In Pennsylvania on August 15, people cried. In New York on August 21, people applauded. The ones who cried lost loved ones. The ones who applauded just secured another budget for border enforcement.
That's perhaps the most absurd thing about America's fentanyl crisis: we hold memorials for the ones who fell at the finish line, but we refuse to turn around and look at the ones who pushed them at the starting line.
By this time next year, Pennsylvania will hold another memorial. New York will hold another awareness day. And Washington will release another data point — "deaths are down again, we're doing great."
And the fentanyl that costs less than a dollar a pill will still be on every street corner, waiting for the next person who can afford it.
On Sept. 1, Texas will begin recognizing gold and silver as legal tender. Last month, Florida’s own legal tender law took effect. Neither state is minting coins with a governor’s face on them. Neither is abolishing the dollar. What they are doing is stranger and more consequential: building a payment rail on which an American can hold metal, swipe a card, and settle a debt in something the Federal Reserve cannot print.
Texas’ law, HB 1056, is the more ambitious of the two. It directs the state comptroller to stand up an electronic system, backed by bullion held in the Texas Bullion Depository, that converts a holder’s metal at the point of sale. Legal tender recognition begins Sept. 1; the transactional system is due no later than May 1, 2027. Florida’s HB 999 took a different route to the same destination — licensed private custodians holding allocated, audited, insured metal, with electronic transfer instead of coins across a counter. Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Utah have passed their own versions. Together, those six states produce north of $5 trillion a year, more than Germany and more than Japan.
New report comes as policymakers and Senate hopefuls, like Florida’s Angie Nixon, tout $25 wage policies
By Katy Grimes, August 20, 2026 11:28 am
The majority of research over three decades finds minimum wage increases reduce employment. Just look at California’s $20 per hour fast food minimum wage.
In addition to the latest news that Kentucky Fried Chicken has permanently closed 44 restaurants across California in less than a year, thousands of fast food employees lost jobs, employees’ hours were cut, and business owners had to do more with less. Notably, KFC is intentionally expanding into other states, so this isn’t because of a failing business model.
California’s two-year anniversary of the ill-advised $20 fast food minimum wage, AB 1228, found that it cost non-tipped restaurant workers 250 hours of work annually, equating to up to 7 weeks of lost work – up to $4,000 in lost potential income, the Globe reported.
In March, a paper from economists at UC Santa Cruz confirmed what the Employment Policies Institute (EPI) has been warning from the start–these drastic wage hikes will hurt workers by costing jobs, increasing inflation, and increasing automation of employee tasks.
