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WASHINGTON D.C. - The largest North American producer of french fries is shutting down its plant in Washington and laying off hundreds of employees, company officials announced in a recent earnings report.

Lamb Weston Holdings, Inc. president and CEO Tom Werner cited “soft” restaurant traffic and frozen potato demand in an October 1 press release detailing the business’s failures in the first quarter of Fiscal Year (FY) 2025. 

According to Werner, “key actions” to restructure the business include closing its “older, higher-cost” facility in Connell, Washington, which would reduce its total workforce by approximately four percent.

That means 375 workers will be out of a job, Fox Business reported. 

“We delivered first quarter financial results that were generally in line with our expectations, driven by sequentially improved volume performance, solid price/mix, and strict management of operating costs,” Werner said. “However, restaurant traffic and frozen potato demand, relative to supply, continue to be soft, and we believe it will remain soft through the remainder of fiscal 2025.” Click here to read more.

 

LANSING, Mich - Michigan lawmakers are expected to pass bills this week that would take money from people who care for their disabled loved ones and turn it over to the Service Employees International Union. But home health care providers will have ways to defend their constitutional rights, thanks to a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Even if Michigan enacts two dues skim bills currently in the state House, caregivers who do not wish to pay the union will have the right not to do so, Patrick Wright, vice president of legal affairs at Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told Michigan Capitol Confidential.

Senate Bill 790, introduced by Sen. Kevin Hertel, D-St. Clair Shores, and Senate Bill 791, introduced by Sen. Sylvia Santana, D-Detroit, would resurrect an SEIU scheme to take union dues from home health providers’ paychecks. The two bills passed the Senate in June and are expected to get a House vote this week. Click here to read more.

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Saline, Michigan – School officials at the Saline School District are attributing a recent drop in student test scores to changes in the testing algorithm, sparking criticism from parents and education experts who question whether the blame is being placed in the right direction.

During the latest school board meeting, district administrators explained that the dip in scores was largely the result of adjustments made to the algorithm used to evaluate state standardized tests. They argued that these changes had skewed the results, making it appear as though students were performing worse than they actually were.

 

LAWRENCE, Kan. — A University of Kansas professor is on administrative leave after a viral clip circulating social media Wednesday showed him calling for men who refuse to vote for a female presidential candidate to be shot.

The professor in the clip appears to be addressing a lecture hall full of students. He bluntly tells the students that men who underestimate a woman’s ability to lead the country should be shot, arguing "they clearly don't understand the way the world works."

“It’s what frustrates me, there are going to be some males in our society that will refuse to vote for a potential female president because they don’t think females are smart enough to be president,” he says. “We can line all those guys up and shoot them.”

The professor then adds, “Scratch that from the recording, I don’t want the dean hearing that I said that.” Click here to read more.

 

The FBI arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State terrorist organization and was plotting an election day attack targeting large crowds in the US, the justice department said.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City told investigators after his arrest on Monday that he had planned his attack to coincide with election day next month and that he and a co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs, according to charging documents.

Tawhedi, who arrived in the US in September 2021, had taken steps in recent weeks to advance his attack plans, including by ordering AK-47 rifles, liquidating his family’s assets and buying one-way tickets for his wife and child to travel home to Afghanistan, officials said.

The arrest comes as the FBI confronts heightened concerns over the possibility of extremist violence on US soil, with its director, Christopher Wray, telling the Associated Press in August that he was “hard pressed to think of a time in my career where so many different kinds of threats are all elevated at once”. Click here to read more.

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SALEM, Ore. (KATU) — The Oregon DMV announced that more potential non-citizens were accidentally registered to vote by mistake.

The DMV released an "after-action report" at 3 p.m. Monday at Governor Tina Kotek’s request.

It reveals that 1,561 potential non-citizens were registered to vote through the DMV.

Last month, that number was believed to be just over 1,200.

Also, the agency says that its own policy stated that a birth certificate from the U.S. Territory of American Samoa was acceptable proof of citizenship, when in fact, it is not.

The DMV report says that the root of these issues lies in the agency's leadership and not staffers in field offices. Click here to read more.

 

CHICAGO, IL - Average spending per student in Chicago Public Schools has soared in recent years. In Fiscal Year 2022, instructional and operational spending per student came in at $15,274 and $24,132, respectively. In FY2018, those figures were $10,314 and $15,878, representing increases of 48% and 52%.

That dramatic increase in spending per student has not improved academic outcomes. In 2018, 25.1% of CPS 11th graders achieved or exceeded proficiency in reading on the SAT. For mathematics, 25.1% achieved or exceeded proficiency. By 2022, the numbers of students achieving or exceeding proficiency dropped to 21.0% in reading and to 20.5% in mathematics.

Instructional spending only includes activities directly related to interactions between students and teachers or the teaching of students. Operational spending includes instructional spending plus nearly all costs for overall operations in the school district.

The percentage of students who are “partially meeting,” proficiency standards on the SAT has increased as the number of students achieving proficiency has decreased. In 2018, only 33.6% and 43.2% of students partially met proficiency in ELA and math. By 2022, those figures had risen to 40.1% and 55.3%. Click here to read more.

 

BOSTON, MASS - U.S. hospitals charged nearly $120 million over five years for sex-change procedures performed on around 14,000 children, according to new data compiled by medical watchdog Do No Harm.

The first-of-its-kind database, which logs sex-change procedures given to children nationwide between 2019 and 2023, catalogs a total of 5,747 minors who underwent sex-change surgeries, along with 8,579 who obtained puberty blockers or cross sex hormones.

Do No Harm believes the problem is likely even bigger than the data shows. The numbers, which are drawn from insurance claims data across all 50 states, do not include self-pay, charity payments, internal Veterans Affairs claims or patients covered by Kaiser Health Plans.

To create its dataset, the watchdog group matched gender-related diagnosis codes with codes for procedures related to gender transitions, such as body modification surgeries, cross sex hormones and puberty blockers. Click here to read more.

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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF - Vice President Kamala Harris said in a Monday interview with 60 Minutes that she owns a Glock pistol, but she advocated and currently advocates for gun control measures that would ban or heavily restrict the very pistol she owns.

Despite Harris’ ownership, she advocated for Proposition H, a total handgun ban in San Francisco in 2005 when she was district attorney for the city, and currently backs bans on “high-capacity” magazines and “assault weapons,” according to her campaign website. Glocks can accept magazines that hold well over 10 rounds. If Harris owned a standard issue magazine for a large range of Glock’s pistol offerings, it could land her a misdemeanor and up to a year in prison in her home state, according to the California Penal Code.

The magazine capacity on many Glock pistols would not only be banned under her past legislative records and potentially be banned under her current proposals, but would be designated as “unsafe” under California law since Glocks do not have the required loaded chamber indicator and magazine disconnect, according to The Reload. Click here to read more.

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Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency told Congress last month that it had $4 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund, officials also warned that the Fund could have a shortfall of $6 billion by year’s end, a situation FEMA says could deteriorate in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

While FEMA is expected to ask Congress for new money, budget experts note a surprising fact: FEMA is currently sitting on untapped reserves appropriated for past disasters stretching back decades. 

An August report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General noted that in 2022, FEMA “estimated that 847 disaster declarations with approximately $73 billion in unliquidated funds remained open.” 

Drilling down on that data, the OIG found that $8.3 billion of that total was for disasters declared in 2012 or earlier.

Such developments are part of a larger pattern in which FEMA failed to close out specific grant programs “within a certain timeframe, known as the period of performance (POP),” according to the IG report. Those projects now represent billions in unliquidated appropriations that could potentially be returned to the DRF (Disaster Relief Fund).” Click here to read more.