Gohmert met with Dr. Simone Gold on Friday after she was released from federal prison.
Gold, the founder of America's Frontline Doctors, a group that spreads disinformation and conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic, was previously known for touting unproven claims during the pandemic.
In March, Gold took a plea agreement for her involvement in the riot.
Gold pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, according to the plea agreement, Insider's Ashley Collman previously reported. She was sentenced to 60 days in prison in June, CNN reported.
In a press release, Gohmert falsely called Gold a "political prisoner" and blamed President Joe Biden's administration for "unjustly prosecuting" her.
"After having her name and reputation shamefully dragged through the mud, the Biden administration's DOJ threw her in prison for peacefully walking into the U.S. Capitol on January 6and delivering a speech. Dr. Gold is the definition of what a political prisoner looks like—something I never thought I'd see here in the United States of America," Gohmert said.
"God Bless Dr. Gold. History will not look kindly upon those who persecuted—and prosecuted—doctors who spoke out against the COVID lockdown, mask and vaccine mandates."
Gold, in a tweet, said she was "honored" to receive the recognition.
"I am honored to receive this recognition from Congressman Gohmert, a true believer in freedom and a fierce defender of our constitutional rights," Gold wrote.
American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines have exited 59 airports since the start of the pandemic.
Regional markets have suffered in recent years due to increasing operating costs and the pilot shortage.
Many of the dropped airports are part of the Essential Air Service program and are now served by a new airline.
Regional airports have become one of the biggest casualties of the coronavirus pandemic.
Aviation consulting firm Ailevon Pacific reviewed Cirium data to determine which airports the US' biggest airlines have left since 2020. The company's research revealed American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines have exited 59 airports.
In total, American has left 14 airports, Delta has exited 13, and United has departed 32.
While most of the airports are still served by competing carriers, a few were left without any airline service. Specifically, American has departed Dubuque, Iowa, and Williamsport, Pennsylvania, but neither has seen another operator yet.
Pierre and Watertown in South Dakota, two cities cut by United in November 2021, are EAS airports. Denver Air Connection took over the service for United.
According to Ailevon Pacific's data, United has completed or will end service at 10 EAS airports by the end of 2022, including Alamosa, Colorado; Paducah, Kentucky; Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; Kearney, Nebraska; Ogdensburg and Plattsburgh in New York; Shenandoah, Virginia; Clarksburg and Lewisburg in West Virginia; and Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
These routes have been replaced by carriers like Contour Airlines, Denver Air Connection, and Sun Country Airlines, per Ailevon Pacific data.
The trend of airlines leaving small markets is not new and became common during COVID-19, though the trend is continuing. American, Delta, and United have all cut routes in recent months, citing poor performance and the pilot shortage as contributing factors.
Henry Harteveldt, president and travel industry analyst of Atmosphere Research Group, told Insider in November that routes to many regional airports are simply unsustainable.
"As hard as it is for the people that live in these small towns to lose airline service, it is an unfortunate reality that airlines are not just going to serve a city out of civic responsibility," he said.
Harteveldt further explained that "airlines are going to seek out markets that they believe will give them an advantage, but if a city isn't profitable, they will cut it."
The lack of crews has also pushed airlines, including American and United, to ground regional aircraft because they simply don't have enough pilots to fly them.
Alycee Byrd/Simon Simard/Meron Menghistab/Erika Ramirez/Joe Martinez for Insider
Derrick Palmer's campaign base was a Staten Island bus stop.
For nearly a year, he would pitch up at the stop day and night with two tables and a tent, along with other leaders of the Amazon Labor Union.
They held bonfires, toasted marshmallows, and waited up at 4 a.m. with breakfast sandwiches to catch workers coming off the night shift nearby at JFK8, Amazon's main New York distribution center, where Palmer works as a packer, and encourage them to sign up to support a trade union.
On windy winter nights, the tent would often blow away.
Their efforts were rewarded in April this year when JFK8, which has more than 8,000 workers, became the first and only Amazon warehouse in the US to unionize following a vote — the process to formally establish a union by showing enough workers support it.
This year has seen a wave of union activism after decades of declining membership.
Union-representation petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board jumped almost 60% in the nine months that ended in June. A Gallup poll last year found support for unions to be at its highest since the '60s.
But the ordinary people leading this workers-rights revival have their work cut out.
American corporations often fiercely resist union efforts. A 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute estimated that US companies spend nearly $340 million a year on "union avoidance" consultants, and illegal firings are alleged to happen in up to 30% of union-election campaigns.
Insider spoke with people organizing workers at Amazon, Trader Joe's, Target, Wells Fargo, and Starbucks, in conversations spread over several weeks, about what drives them to try to unionise in America today. Some have had their unions recognised, others are still campaigning.
Derrick Palmer at the bus stop near the JFK8 warehouse.
Erika Ramirez/Insider
Derrick Palmer, Amazon, New York
Derrick Palmer and his best friend led a strike at Amazon's Staten Island warehouse in March 2020 in protest at the company's safety measures after a worker contracted COVID-19.
His friend, Chris Smalls, was fired after the strike, though he remains the president of the Amazon Labor Union they then founded together. (Amazon says it fired Smalls for violating its quarantine policy. Smalls disputes this.)
But Palmer, who is now 33, kept his job.
He told Insider he felt no sense of direction before unionizing, going through a string of temporary warehouse roles before he joined Amazon.
"I've been in their shoes," he says of finding purpose in supporting his Amazon colleagues. "I know what it's like to be unmotivated — I know what it's like to not be taken seriously."
Palmer told Insider the union started small, with money from a GoFundMe page.
He said he spent up to eight hours a day, on top of his 40-hour workweek, working on the campaign ahead of the vote.
"I had a lot of sleepless nights," he said, later adding: "We were building a community, and I felt like the last thing we wanted to do was let them down."
Erika Ramirez/Insider
Speaking with Insider while heating up some chicken and rice during his shift at JFK8, Palmer said Amazon created a "climate of fear" after the strike. He later added that Amazon engaged in "union-busting" including sending text messages to workers encouraging them to vote against joining the ALU and posting anti-union messages in bathroom stalls.
An Amazon representative told Insider that "it's important that everyone understands the facts about joining a union and the election process itself."
Palmer said he believed the company was monitoring his actions and tweets. But "fear is the last thing on my mind," he told Insider.
The union is trying to secure a contract with Amazon to bargain for things like higher wages, increased job security, and cutting back on mandatory overtime.
But for the organizers, it's still a time to celebrate. Palmer's co-leader, Smalls, met President Joe Biden in May at an event where the president called him "my kind of trouble."
Palmer's mother raised him by herself. He says he's changed a lot since childhood. "I was a very small kid, very soft-spoken. I used to walk with my head down. I didn't have the confidence that I do now," he said.
"I feel like that relates to Amazon workers now.
"It's like I'm talking to my old self saying, 'You've got to keep your head up, you've got to fight back, you've got to stand your ground.
'You've got to let your presence be known.'"
Adam Ryan in the trailer park where he heard the rumour that would lead him to work at Target.
Alycee Byrd for Insider
Adam Ryan, Target, Virginia
"I've always had the itch to organize" Adam Ryan told Insider. "If I'm not doing it, I don't feel okay about myself."
Ryan started working at Target because of a rumor he heard in a trailer park.
He was asking the park's residents about housing issues as part of a workers-rights campaign when one told him about a manager at Target who was widely accused of abusive behavior, including sexual harassment.
He got a job at the store in his hometown of Christiansburg, Virginia, in 2017 with the goal of forcing the manager out. Four months later, he organized a strike that he says triggered an internal investigation into the claims. The accused manager was later fired.
Ryan, 34, is a serial campaigner. He was trained in organizing in 2011 and has pushed to unionize at every job since then.
He grew up in a conservative, working-class family as the youngest of four brothers in what he describes as a "small, ranch-style house." His father worked at an Army ammunition plant, and his mother was a school cafeteria worker for over 20 years.
He told Insider he "didn't feel poor per se" but felt an expectation that "if you want anything, you're going to have to get a job and work for it."
Things were tense between Ryan and his family from his teenage years into his 20s. But his involvement in unions has helped them reconnect.
"We're in a common struggle, and we're dealing with a lot of the same issues," he said, adding that his efforts had inspired his brother to push for unionization in his job as a wildland firefighter.
He calls unionizing "the only power working-class people have."
Alycee Byrd for Insider
Ryan's job involves unloading stock deliveries and putting products on the sales floor. He said Target began monitoring workers more closely after the strike he organized, including by bringing in managers from other stores to surveil workers and question them individually. He has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board over this.
Ryan said management had grilled him too: He said after he invited coworkers to labor-rights meetings, he was pulled into a meeting with management and told not to do that. "It's definitely anxiety-inducing — it's stressful," he later said.
Target did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
He started calling for a union election with the wider campaign Target Workers Unite in 2019. "I don't want to see something I've invested a number of years in just like dissipate overnight if I happen to leave," he said.
He filed a petition for a union election in May of this year, but it didn't have enough signatures, which he blames on confusion over "on-demand workers," which he says the organizers didn't realize counted as employees.
He is pushing for benefits like hazard pay for workers who get sick with COVID-19 and seniority pay to reward long-term employees.
Campaigning has taken an emotional toll. Ryan moved to the countryside two years ago and says he finds comfort in the quiet of his garden. He said he felt drained by what he described as "constant infighting" in labor organizing.
He describes himself as "a disgruntled person" who struggles with "how to motivate people when I'm generally very frustrated and upset with how things are in the world."
But he argues the changes at his store so far have exposed "cracks" at Target. "It shows that even if you're small, you can still pack a punch," he said, "and you can punch above your weight."
Jessie McCool on her diving board, where she took a call which resulted in an informal warning.
Joe Martinez for Insider
Jessie McCool, Wells Fargo,Missouri
Like many Americans in office jobs, Jessie McCool worked from home during the coronavirus pandemic. She's a senior compliance officer at Wells Fargo, the US's third-biggest bank.
She told Insider she took one meeting while sitting on the diving board of her backyard pool last year so she could keep an eye on her child who was swimming.
She said she asked her manager whether she could have her camera switched off on the call but was told to switch it on. She said she was later given an informal warning, without her manager being present, accusing her of "disruptive behavior that could have diverted attention" on the call.
McCool describes this as an example of remote-working policies being applied inconsistently, saying she saw someone on a comparable Zoom call running on a treadmill in a bathrobe weeks later. (McCool said her manager at the time confirmed this other employee received no warning.)
McCool said she wanted to lead union efforts to try to "take back some of the control" that she said senior management had "run awry" with, recalling witnessing a colleague reduced to tears by her superiors on another video call in 2020.
She leads unionizing efforts at the Missouri headquarters and says remote communication during the pandemic helped workers start a union drive across Wells Fargo's US offices, though her group hasn't decided whether to be part of the wider campaign or to form an independent union.
Characterizing herself as "confrontational," McCool said she challenged people in her work and personal life.
"If I see something that I don't agree with, I will just stand up and say it, and I think in a way people have begun to rely on me to do things like that," she said.
She said she's lobbying for more transparency around policies and procedures, equitable pay, and fair treatment for employees.
McCool told Insider she was referred to as a "diversity hire" by a human-resources officer in an initial interview. She describes herself as having Hispanic, Jewish, and Middle Eastern heritage.
The banking giant has come under scrutiny over scandals including holding job interviews for "diverse" candidates despite already filling the roles with other candidates, as first reported by The New York Times. A spokesperson for Wells Fargo told Insider that diverse representation across the company has increased year-on-year since 2020.
McCool said she had a six-month internal battle with HR after being asked to remove a reference to the union in the headline bar of her Skype profile, something she argues is a federally protected right. "My coworkers are also having similar experiences," she added. She was ultimately allowed to use the tagline.
The spokesperson for Wells Fargo told Insider it doesn't comment on "specific personal matters".
Outside her day job, McCool is a rally race-car driver, model, and burlesque performer.
Activism was part of her upbringing. "Everybody deserves a community that will uphold them, and I think I just fell into that," she said, speaking of the punk marches in Pittsburgh that she said she went to as a child in the early 1990s.
"My mother was always like: 'You stand up for what's right — it doesn't matter whether you're popular,'" she said.
Jamie Edwards outside the Trader Joe's store which became the first in the US to unionize.
Simon Simard for Insider
Jamie Edwards, Trader Joe's, Massachusetts
"I know what it's like to be trapped at a job," said Jamie Edwards, who worked strenuous hours with long commutes across five other retail jobs before joining a Trader Joe's store in Hadley, Massachusetts.
"When I'm employed at a place where there are issues, I'm always thinking about the fact that not everyone has the ability to just easily go find another job," Edwards added.
Edwards, who is nonbinary and uses the pronouns they/them, is a lead organizer at the Trader Joe's that in July became the chain's first location to unionize. A second followed in August at the chain, which has more than 500 US locations.
They said they grew up "idolizing too many radicals" but viewed unionizing as a "bare minimum" for working-class people's well-being.
"I think that organizing a union is not really the most radical thing someone could do," they said. "It's a very basic thing."
Edwards celebrated their 33rd birthday in May. The next day, they said, they were sent home from their job at Trader Joe's for wearing a pro-union pin on their uniform, something that is generally not allowed under the National Labor Relations Act, according to the National Labor Relations Board.
Simon Simard for Insider
Edwards says efforts to create a union were driven mainly by safety concerns.
Though Trader Joe's enforced mask wearing through some of the pandemic, Edwards said they had felt unsafe at times, for example early on when they say the chain discouraged workers from wearing masks and gloves out of fear this would "scare" customers. Trader Joe's did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
Edwards got their first job when they were 17. They have been at Trader Joe's for nine years.
Speaking with Insider on their day off, Edwards said that during the campaign they had feared misinformation was being spread about the union, including rumors that unionized workers would be paid less.
"I've stopped engaging with certain people who have shown themselves not to be acting in good faith because I feel like the purpose of it is to take time away from me actually organizing," they added.
Edwards works night shifts and describes themself as a socialist who has always been pro-union. They had already attempted once before to unionize at the store.
With the milestone of formal recognition achieved, they plan to keep working to try to improve life for colleagues.
"I'm always of the mindset that I should exhaust my options at trying to make the workplace better before leaving," they said, "if only for the fact that there's still going to be people who are working there who are going to have to deal with it."
Lindsey Price outside a Starbucks, after the company fired her in April.
Meron Menghistab for Insider
Lindsey Price, Starbucks, Seattle
Lindsey Price worked for Starbucks for 17 years until she was fired in April.
Price argues she was fired because she was helping to organize workers at her store in Seattle's Eastlake neighborhood, where she worked as a shift supervisor.
Soon after her team's petition for a union election went public, Starbucks fired her, citing an incident where she had found the door to her store unlocked one morning, with the lock dislodged.
Price told Insider the door was often left unlocked after deliveries were made to the store, and the lock often dislodged. Starbucks Workers United said there were no complaints about her for nearly nine years before she lost her job.
A Starbucks spokesperson told Insider that Price was fired for putting her team "in an unsafe situation" because she failed to call 911 as the scene could have been a burglary. They added that Starbucks denies firing any workers for invovlement in unions.
Price's old store is now officially unionized. She describes safety at Starbucks as a key concern, telling Insider that her store caught on fire because of faults with the electrical systems in September 2021 and workers were tasked with finding their own shifts at other stores when it closed a few months later.
"We didn't feel taken care of," Price said, adding in another conversation that she felt "completely on my own."
She said her manager once asked her to clean up a "significant" amount of blood without protective clothing while working at a Starbucks store in Costa Mesa, California, in 2012 or 2013 after someone came into the store with a gunshot wound. She said she ultimately didn't clean it up, following instructions from the police.
Meron Menghistab for Insider
Price, 38, says she's always been "a parent" to her colleagues and has acted as a go-between with managers.
Yet she hasn't always supported unions. She chuckles when saying her opinions have shifted like "night and day."
"I was raised thinking that unions were not helpful," she told Insider.
Price's father worked a white-collar job, and her mother held a cool view toward unions after her own father had experience with a union that he said treated him "terribly."
But she got involved to advocate on behalf of her colleagues, and, looking back, wishes her store had unionized earlier, saying her career path "could have changed drastically had I felt taken care of and listened to."
Being fired felt like a bad breakup, Price says.
She has a new job at the Seattle Public Library and is in graduate school studying library science. There's relief in her voice when she says she now has "an actual career path, which I've never felt like before."
But she says she will still be part of the Eastlake Starbucks union bargaining committee when it is set up and feels connected to her former colleagues, saying she knows "that feeling of just hopelessness I guess that some people can feel working there, and that I know I felt many times."
"I think that's what makes me want to be on a bargaining committee," she said, "and continue to try to help as much as I can."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared more than 400 points on Friday as US stocks broke a three-week losing streak.
The gains came as the US dollar backed off its recent highs and Treasury yields fell slightly.
"A short-term shift is likely on the macro front, with the dollar and Treasury yields poised to consolidate for a couple weeks," Fairlead's Katie Stockton said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared more than 300 points on Friday, cementing a three-day rally and breaking a three-week losing streak as both the US dollar and Treasury yields took a breather from their recent surges and moved lower.
A declining dollar is a boon for US stocks, especially multinational stocks that have high costs in the US but sell a lot of their products overseas. Meanwhile, a decline in Treasury yields often helps boost growth stocks as the cost of capital moves lower.
But the declines are relatively small when accounting for their multi-month rallies. The US dollar index is down just 1.5% from its recent cycle high of $110.70. Meanwhile, the 10-year US Treasury yield has fallen just a few basis points from its recent high of 3.35%.
Here's where US indexes stood at the 4:00 p.m. ET close on Friday:
But even small moves lower in both the US dollar and Treasury yields could have a big impact on different asset classes, according to Fairlead Strategies' Katie Stockton.
"A short-term shift is likely on the macro front, with the dollar and Treasury yields poised to consolidate for a couple weeks," she said in a Friday note to clients.
Billionaire investor Bill Gross is betting on the British pound to rise against the dollar, as he expects the gaping US trade deficit and a premature end to the Federal Reserve's interest-rate hikes to weigh on the American currency.
Digital World Acquisition moved higher after the SPAC was granted more time to gather shareholder approval to extend its merger deadline with Donald Trump's Truth Social.
Bitcoin surged along with stocks, hitting to a two-week high on Friday. Bitcoin jumped as much as 13% to $21,375.38, the first time the price has topped $21,000 since August 26. It later pared gains.
SoftBank, Naspers, and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway are selling Chinese tech stocks.
The trio have been cutting their respective stakes in Alibaba, Tencent, and BYD.
Berkshire has sold about $600 million of BYD stock, while SoftBank anticipates a $34 billion profit.
Some of the world's best investors are cashing out their iconic bets on technology stocks from China, in the face of tightening regulations, disruptive COVID-19 lockdowns, and mounting economic challenges in the country.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway plowed $232 million into BYD in 2008, securing a stake in the Chinese electric-vehicle maker worth nearly $10 billion in June. However, the famed investor's company has sold about 8% of its position for around $600 million over the past two months, netting a roughly 35-fold return on its money.
Buffett's business partner, Charlie Munger, and one of the pair's close associates, Li Lu, have pared their bets on BYD over the past 18 months. They have pocketed several times what they invested.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who modeled his technology conglomerate on Berkshire, invested $20 million in Jack Ma's Alibaba in 2000. Until recently, SoftBank still owned about 24% of the Chinese e-commerce titan — a stake worth over $200 billion in October 2020 (the stock has plunged by 70% since then).
Son's company is in the process of slashing its Alibaba stake to about 15%, and expects to realize a $34 billion gain, a SoftBank executive told the Financial Times in August.
Meanwhile, Naspers invested $32 million in Tencent for 45.6% of the WeChat owner in 2001. The South African tech company's Prosus subsidiary still owns close to 30% of the Chinese media giant — a stake valued at north of $100 billion today.
However, Prosus declared in June that it would pare its position, and listed a hefty $7.6 billion worth of Tencent stock on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's clearing system this week. The Dutch company confirmed that it plans to dispose of those shares.
Buffett, Munger, and Li haven't offered any explanation for their BYD sales. Prosus is selling Tencent shares to finance stock buybacks, while SoftBank slashed its Alibaba stake to shore up its balance sheet.
Regardless, it's safe to say all of these investors want to realize some of their massive gains on Chinese stocks before they potentially disappear. After all, Alibaba, BYD, and Tencent shares have all slumped sharply this year, and the outlook for Chinese tech companies has darkened in recent years.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul got a bivalent Moderna booster on Wednesday, September 7, 2022.
Governor Kathy Hochul
New, reformulated COVID-19 booster shots are out from Pfizer and Moderna.
They're designed to combat Omicron, but also include an "ancestral" virus component.
As long as it's been at least 2 months since your last COVID-19 vaccine, it's fine to line up and get one.
The very first updated COVID-19 vaccines are here.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) signed off on two new vaccines last week — one from Pfizer, one from Moderna. For now, Pfizer's is for everyone 12 years old and up, while Moderna's is only for adults over 18.
Both new vaccines are designed to fight against the BA.4 and BA.5 versions of Omicron, which are what is currently circulating across the US.
Here is what you need to know about them.
These may be the last free COVID-19 vaccines you'll get
This fall booster campaign is likely the last chance you'll get to have free COVID-19 shots from the US government.
Reuters reported last week that the Department of Health and Human Services is planning to "transition procurement and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics from a federally managed system to the commercial marketplace" in 2023.
The shots are 'bivalent' meaning they target 2 versions of the virus
New York Governor's Office
Half of the mRNA product is targeted against "ancestral" SARS-CoV-2, meaning it's the same stuff that was in previous vaccines. The other 50% of the dose is designed to combat BA.4 and BA.5, which are the specific versions of Omicron we are dealing with right now.
Having a bivalent product means that we will have good protection if and when the virus mutates again — even if it drifts away from the currently-circulating Omicron variants.
The strategy is similar to how vaccine-makers treat influenza. This year's flu vaccine, for example, is quadrivalent, meaning it is formulated to fight back against four distinct flu types.
The Pfizer shot contains 30ug, while Moderna's shot contains 50ug per dose.
If you recently had COVID, wait a couple months
On green-lighting these boosters, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said anyone can get one "at least two months" after their last COVID-19 shot.
If you had COVID this summer, you can technically get your booster any time.
However, health officials at the CDC say "people who recently had SARS-CoV-2 infection may consider delaying a primary series dose or booster dose by three months."
Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina recommends waiting at least two months after a COVID-19 infection, the same as you would after any previous COVID-19 shot.
Will you need a yearly COVID booster? Experts are divided
President Biden has suggested that COVID-19 vaccines are going to become an annual tradition, much like flu shots are now.
"One COVID-19 shot, once a year, each fall," he said on Tuesday in a statement.
Infectious disease experts aren't so sure about that. Many are hoping that new kinds of COVID-19 vaccines being developed could be better long-term solutions than the shots we have now. Some new vaccines are being designed as nasal sprays you can inhale, or patches you'd put on your skin, while other "universal" vaccines could target multiple different coronaviruses all at once.
and myalgia (generalized muscle aches and pains) after the shot is administered.
While this side effect data was generated from vaccine trials in people who got bivalent boosters targeted to BA.1, that's a version of Omicron that "only differs slightly" from BA.4/5, according to Dr. Peter Marks who directs the FDA's division in charge of vaccine safety and effectiveness. Vaccine side effects are expected to be very similar, if not identical, with these new shots.
President Joe Biden speaks outside Independence Hall, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022, in Philadelphia.
(AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich told CNBC student-loan forgiveness is being lauded "prematurely."
He said he is looking for ways to legally challenge Biden's debt relief.
Other GOP lawmakers like Ted Cruz have also said they are pursuing ways to block the policy.
Another Republican politician voiced intentions to legally challenge President Joe Biden's student-loan forgiveness.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich told CNBC on Tuesday it might be too soon to bank on Biden's announcement to forgive $10,000 to $20,000 in student-loan debt for federal borrowers making under $125,000 a year. He said Biden is on "very, very shaky legal grounds right now."
"I think there's a lot of people celebrating prematurely," Brnovich told CNBC. "A lot of other people are very upset about this, not only because of legal arguments, but because they believe it's fundamentally unfair."
The Biden administration said the authority to wipe out that debt is granted under the HEROES Act of 2003, which gives the Education Secretary the ability to waive or modify student-loan balances in connection with a national emergency, like COVID-19.
But critics of the plan have argued that is an overreach of the authority, and the legal grounds do not exist for the president to cancel that amount of student debt.
Brnovich added that a lawsuit should be filed "sooner rather than later" so borrowers do not become to reliant on relief, and he said he's confident he can find a plaintiff that could challenge Biden's actions.
"If we can bring a challenge, we will bring a challenge," Brnovich said.
While there was legal debate prior to Biden's announcement of loan forgiveness, the conversation has only amplified since then. Biden's Education and Justice Departments both released memos concluding the Education Secretary does have the authority to enact one-time blanket relief due to pandemic-caused financial hardship, and they also rescinded a memo from former President Donald Trump saying the authority to cancel student debt broadly does not exist.
Still, Republicans and conservative groups have said they are pursuing legal routes to overturn the policy. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, told The Washington Post that he is "brainstorming" ways to block debt relief after acknowledging it could be difficult to find a plaintiff. Abby Shafroth, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, also previously told Insider that it will be difficult to prove someone has suffered a concrete injury as a result of Biden's debt cancellation.
For now, it's unclear how any legal action will progress, and the Education Department is continuing to tell federal borrowers to prepare for an application for relief to become live in early October, and they will have until the end of next year to submit their form.
US dollar corporate debt sales are hitting their lowest levels in 11 years, according to Bloomberg data.
Chinese yuan-denominated bond sales have now exceeded those of the dollar.
Divergent central bank policies of the US and China are fueling the change.
As the Federal Reserve and the People's Bank of China diverge in monetary policy strategies, China's corporate bond deals have overtaken those in the US in recent months, according to Bloomberg.
Yuan-denominated debt issuance by non-financial firms totaled 2.04 trillion yuan sales (about $306 billion, based on currency exchange rates at the time) between April and August. In the same stretch, sales of dollar-denominated corporate debt totaled $283 billion.
Beijing's monetary policy has allowed many firms to sell bonds at some of the cheapest prices in over a decade. The People's Bank of China has slashed key interest rates in a bid to bolster a faltering, COVID-19 lockdown-ridden economy.
Meanwhile, the Fed is hiking rate aggressively to tame inflation, and dollar debt sales have plunged 40% to $592 billion so far this year, their lowest levels in 11 years, per Bloomberg,. The issuance of yuan notes has slipped about 6% in 2022.
Still, total dollar debt issuance year to date remains higher than those in yuan as the trend in China's debt sales underscore the size of its economy, rather than the international popularity of the yuan.
Cineworld filed for bankruptcy over a $5 billion debt.
Amanda Krause/Insider
Cineworld's deputy CEO wished the movie chain had become a meme stock like rival AMC.
The UK movie chain, which owns Regal Cinemas in the US, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Wednesday.
The chain, carrying $5 billion in debt, would have welcomed meme-stock liquidity, the executive said.
Cineworld was unlucky not to become a meme stock like its rival AMC Entertainment, according to a top executive at the world's second-biggest movie chain operator.
The UK-based company, which owns Regal Cinemas in the US, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday after becoming weighed down with $5 billion in debt.
Like other cinema operators, Cineworld has been hit by enforced closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, fewer top-flight theatrical releases, and more competition from streaming services.
But it has struggled to shore up its finances, unlike AMC, which has managed to raise over $2 billion via sales of new "APE" preferred stock to its army of retail investors, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
Cineworld's deputy chief executive, Israel Greidinger, sounded regretful about his company's lack of a similar "meme stock" fanbase in a declaration accompanying the bankruptcy protection filing.
"While Cineworld would, of course, have welcomed the liquidity of becoming a 'meme stock' like AMC, we were never so lucky!" he said.
The chain confirmed in August that it was considering filing for Chapter 11 protection, which enables companies to continue operations while they work out a plan to pay back creditors. In its filing Wednesday, it said it was looking at restructuring its UK, US and Jersey business, and to cut debt.
"The pandemic was an incredibly difficult time for our business, with the enforced closure of cinemas and huge disruption to film schedules that has led us to this point," Cineworld CEO Mooky Greidinger said in the filing.
The meme stock movement sees non-professional investors talk up their favorite stocks in online forums like Reddit's r/wallstreetbets. The practice gained mainstream popularity about 18 months ago as retail investors successfully sent shares of GameStop (GME) to astronomical levels.
The movement lost momentum as stocks sold off in the first half of 2022, but powered up again in early August after Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY)'s stock caught fire. Much of that revival has since disappeared.
Insider and several other news organizations have identified 72 members of Congress who've recently failed to properly report their financial trades as mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act.
Congress passed the law a decade ago to combat insider trading and conflicts of interest among their own members and force lawmakers to be more transparent about their personal financial dealings. A key provision of the law mandates that lawmakers publicly — and quickly — disclose any stock trade made by themselves, a spouse, or a dependent child.
But many members of Congress have not fully complied with the law. They offer excuses including ignorance of the law, clerical errors, and mistakes by an accountant. Insider has chronicled this widespread nature of this phenomenon in "Conflicted Congress," an ongoing reporting project initially published in December.
While lawmakers who violate the STOCK Act face a fine, the penalty is usually small — $200 is the standard amount — or waived by House or Senate ethics officials. Ethics watchdogs and even some members of Congress have called for stricter penalties or even a ban on federal lawmakers from trading individual stocks. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are now seriously debating such a ban, with a vote on a consensus bill possible for September.
Here are the lawmakers discovered to have recently violated the STOCK Act — to one extent or another:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California.
In May 2020, Hickenlooper was months — and in two cases, more than a year — late in disclosing five separate stock trades for himself or his wife that, taken together, are worth between $565,000 and $1.3 million, nonprofit news organization Sludge reported.
Then, in June, Hickenlooper failed to disclose purchases of varying classes of stock from by his wife. They include shares of Liberty Media Corporation, Qurate Retail, and Liberty Broadband Corporation in 2021 and early 2022. The stocks were valued between $516,006 and $1.2 million. Hickenlooper was also late in reporting that his wife sold between $130,004 and $300,000 worth of stock in Liberty Media Corporation and Liberty Broadband Corporation from March 2022.
Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky
Sen. Rand Paul.
GREG NASH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Paul was 16 months late in disclosing that his wife bought stock in a biopharmaceutical company that manufactures an antiviral COVID-19 treatment, the Washington Post reported.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island.
Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida
Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida.
Photo by Susan Walsh-Pool/Getty Images
Scott on August 15, 2022, reported that he and his wife sold up to $450,000 in stock in Emida Corporation in September 2021 — months after a federal reporting deadline.
Sen. Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware
Sen. Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware.
United States Senate
Carper was about four months late disclosing his wife's sale of stock in a gold mining company.
Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Republican from Tennessee
Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Republican from Tennessee.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming
US Senator from Wyoming, Cynthia Lummis.
Tom Williams/Roll Call
Lummis was several days late reporting a purchase in August of up to $100,000 in bitcoin, CNBC reported.
Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat from Michigan
Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat from Michigan.
United States Senate
Peters was months late disclosing a purchase of up to $15,000 worth of stock in FS KKR Capital Corp., which manages business development companies, nonprofit news organization Sludge reported.
Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona
Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona.
REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
Kelly, a retired astronaut, failed to disclose on time his exercising of a stock option on an investment in a company that's developing a supersonic passenger aircraft, Fox Business reported.
Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Democrat from New Jersey
Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Democrat from New Jersey.
The independent Office of Congressional Ethics, in part citing Insider's reporting, found "substantial reason to believe" that Malinowski violated federal rules or laws designed to promote transparency and defend against conflicts. It voted 5-1 to refer its findings to the Democrat-led House Committee on Ethics, which confirmed on October 21 that it will continue reviewing the matter.
Rep. Pat Fallon, a Republican from Texas
Rep. Pat Fallon, a Republican from Texas.
Then, in June 2022, he was again months late in disclosing two-dozen additional cryptocurrency trades.
Rep. Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Massachusetts
Rep. Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Massachusetts.
MassLive
Clark, one of the highest-ranking Democrats in the House, was several weeks late in disclosing 19 of her husband's stock transactions. Together, the trades are worth as much as $285,000. She has since stopped trading stocks.
Rep. Blake Moore, a Republican from Utah
Rep. Blake Moore, a Republican from Utah.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland.
Reuters
Raskin failed to disclose on three annual congressional financial reports that his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, held stock in Reserve Trust. He then didn't disclose that she sold the stock, valued at $1.5 million, until months after a federal deadline for doing so. In early 2022, Raskin explained that sale disclosure delay occurred following his son's death.
Then, in June 2022, Raskin was again late disclosing stock trades. This time, it involved an exchange of stocks his wife received when I(X) Investments merged with Net Zero — a trade valued at between $250,001 and $500,000.
Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican from Alabama
Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican from Alabama.
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images
Brooks, a US House member who ran for a US Senate in 2022 but lost in a primary, failed to properly disclose a sale of Pfizer stock worth up to $50,000.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado
Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado.
Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Boebert failed for months to disclose between $5,000 and $80,000 worth of transactions, made in 2021, involving various stocks, cryptocurrency, and brokerage funds that belong to her husband, the Colorado Sun reported.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas.
Facebook/Crenshaw for Congress
Crenshaw was months late disclosing several stock trades he made in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Daily Beast reported.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida.
Rep. Kathy Manning, a Democrat from North Carolina
Rep. Kathy Manning speaks during the news conference on the introduction of the Medicaid Saves Lives Act on Wednesday, July 21, 2021.
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Manning and her husband were late — sometimes by months — disclosing several dozen stock trades made in 2021 that together were worth up to $1.25 million, according to nonprofit news organization Sludge.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat from New Jersey
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat from New Jersey.
Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
Sherrill was months late disclosing two sales of vested stock her husband earned as part of his employment. The trades were worth up to $350,000 and Sherrill paid a $400 late fee.
Rep. Kevin Hern, a Republican from Oklahoma
Rep. Kevin Hern, a Republican from Oklahoma.
Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida
Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida.
Ting Shen-Pool/Getty Images
Mast was late disclosing that he had purchased up to $100,000 in stock in an aerospace company. The president of the company had just testified before a congressional subcommittee on which Mast sits.
Separately, Mast sold stock worth up to $50,000 in Ideal Power, a company that develops power switches for electric vehicles and other machinery, in February 2021. But he didn't properly report the sale to the US House of Representatives until August 12, 2022 — about a year-and-a-half after a federal deadline.
Rep. Brad Schneider, a Democrat from Illinois
Rep. Brad Schneider, a Democrat from Illinois.
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
In mid-2022, Schneider was about two months late disclosing two stock trades involving a pet insurance company.
Separately, Schneider's wife sold up to $150,000 worth of Trupanion stock in February and December of 2021. But Schneider did not report the trades until August 13.
Rep. Michael Guest, a Republican from Mississippi
Rep. Michael Guest, a Republican from Mississippi.
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat from Pennsylvania
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat from Pennsylvania.
POOL
Scanlon's husband sold four stocks in February 2021 collectively worth up to $95,000 and exchanged up to $15,000 in shares of DuPont de Nemours early that same month, according to a disclosure she filed August 12, 2022 — almost a year-and-a-half after the fact.
In a separate disclosure filed August 26, 2022, Scanlon was months late reporting an exchange in shares of Exelon Corporation, a power generation company, that she jointly owned with her husband.
Rep. John Rutherford, a Republican from Florida
Rep. John Rutherford, a Republican from Florida.
Rep. Carol Miller, a Republican from West Virginia
Rep. Carol Miller, a Republican from West Virginia.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
In September 2022, Miller was months late disclosing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock trades made the year before by her husband. The trades included stock in a COVID-19 vaccine maker and a pair of defense contractors.
Rep. Pete Sessions, a Republican from Texas
Rep. Pete Sessions, a Republican from Texas.
AP
Sessions was a month late in reporting a purchase of stock in Amazon.com he made during August 2021. Separately, in early 2022, Sessions was late disclosing seven trades he made in late 2021. Sessions has been an outspoken advocate of allowing members of Congress to trade individual stocks.
Rep. Dan Meuser, a Republican from Pennsylvania
Rep. Dan Meuser, a Republican from Pennsylvania.
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
Meuser was about one year late disclosing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock purchases his wife and children made during March 2020, LegiStorm reported.
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat from Texas
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat from Texas.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican from Florida
Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida at a press conference outside the Capitol on March 17, 2021.
Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Salazar was weeks late disclosing a health care company stock share exchange valued at between $250,001 and $500,000.
Rep. Bill Pascrell, a Democrat of New Jersey
Rep. Bill Pascrell, a Democrat of Maryland, paid a late fee after he was tardy disclosing stock trades.
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
Pascrell was overdue reporting stock trades he made in December 2019 in General Electric and in August 2019 in pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson.
Rep. August Pfluger, a Republican from Texas
Rep. August Pfluger, a Republican from Texas.
Rep. Victoria Spartz, a Republican from Indiana
Rep. Victoria Spartz, a Republican from Indiana.
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Spartz was two weeks late disclosing a purchase of up to $50,000 worth of stock in a commercial real-estate firm.
Rep. Rick Allen, a Republican from Georgia
Rep. Rick Allen, a Republican from Georgia.
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Allen, a four-term Republican who represents a large southeastern region of Georgia, appears to have improperly disclosed the purchases and sales of several stocks during 2019 and 2020.
Rep. Kim Schrier, a Democrat from Washington
Rep. Kim Schrier, a Democrat from Washington.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Schrier was more than two months late disclosing that her husband purchased up to $1 million in Apple Inc. stock, Sludge and Forbes reported. Schrier's office told Insider that the congresswoman was initially unaware of the transaction.
Rep. Kurt Schrader, a Democrat from Oregon
Rep. Kurt Schrader, a Democrat from Oregon, is the latest member of Congress to violate the federal Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 by improperly disclosing personal stock trades.
Dwight Evans, a Democrat from Pennsylvania
Dwight Evans, a Democrat from Pennsylvania.
US House of Representatives
Evans in December 2021 failed to properly disclose a sale of up to $15,000 worth of stock in American Electric Power Co. Inc.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from New York
U.S. Congressman Tom Suozzi speaks at a ceremony honoring heroic police officers at police headquarters in Glen Cove, New York on August 24, 2020.
Raychel Brightman/Newsday RM via Getty Images
Suozzi failed to file required reports on about 300 financial transactions, NPR reported, citing research from the Campaign Legal Center. In March 2022, Suozzi disclosed more than 30 stock trades months or years past a federal deadline, Insider reported. In May 2022, he disclosed 10 more stock trades weeks past the federal deadline for doing so.
Rep. Warren Davidson, a Republican from Ohio
Rep. Warren Davidson, a Republican from Ohio.
John Minchillo/AP
Davidson didn't properly disclose the sale of stock worth up to $100,000, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research.
Rep. Lance Gooden, a Republican from Texas
Rep. Lance Gooden, a Republican from Texas.
House Television via AP
Gooden failed to file mandatory periodic transaction reports for a dozen stock transactions, per the STOCK Act, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research. Gooden's office disputed to the Dallas Morning News that the lawmaker did anything wrong.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, a Republican from Tennessee
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, a Republican from Tennessee.
Rep. Michael Burgess, a Republican from Texas
Rep. Michael Burgess, a Republican from Texas.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
In December 2021, Burgess failed to disclose on time the sale of 100 stock shares in health insurer Cigna Corp.
Rep. Cindy Axne, a Democrat from Iowa
Rep. Cindy Axne, a Democrat from Iowa.
Joshua Lott/Getty Images
During 2019 and 2020, Axne didn't file required periodic transaction reports for more than three-dozen trades, reported NPR, citing research by the Campaign Legal Center.
Del. Michael San Nicolas, a Democrat from Guam
Del. Michael San Nicolas, a Democrat from Guam.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
San Nicolas did not properly disclose two trades — one in 2019 and another in 2020, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research.
Rep. Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont
Rep. Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont.
Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/Getty Images
Welch, an outspoken environmentalist, was late disclosing the sale of his wife's ExxonMobil stock. In December, Welch's office told Insider that the congressman and his wife would both stop trading individual stocks.
Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana
Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana.
Rep. Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat from California
Rep. Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat from California.
US House of Representatives
Lowenthal was late disclosing his wife's purchase of a corporate bond in cloud computing and technology company VMWare, worth between $15,001 and $50,000, Forbes reported. "We have no comment," Lowenthal spokesman Keith Higginbotham told Insider on November 18.
In June, Lowenthal violated the STOCK Act again when he was months late disclosing four stock or corporate bond trades.
Rep. Jim Hagedorn, a Republican from Minnesota
Rep. Jim Hagedorn, a Republican from Minnesota.
US House of Representatives
Hagedorn was more than three months late disclosing the sale of stock in a company that makes colon cancer-screening products. Hagedorn died in February 2022.
Rep. Roger Williams, a Republican from Texas
Rep. Roger Williams, a Republican from Texas.
Associated Press/Carolyn Kaster
Williams did not properly report three stock transactions his wife made in 2019, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research.