The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday ousted Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The 216-to-210 vote marked the first time in history that the House removed its leader, with eight Republicans voting with 208 Democrats to remove McCarthy. McCarthy told reporters he would not make another run for speaker.

Republicans control the chamber by a narrow 221-212 majority, meaning they can afford to lose no more than five votes if Democrats unite in opposition. McCarthy’s ouster as speaker brings legislative activity in the House to a halt

Republican leaders like Steve Scalise and Tom Emmer could possibly be candidates, though neither has publicly expressed interest. Representative Patrick McHenry was named to the post on a temporary basis. Multiple Republicans said they planned to meet on Oct. 10 to discuss possible McCarthy successors, with a vote on a new speaker planned for October 11.

After a record-breaking year for startup investment in 2021, Wisconsin has struggled to keep that momentum going in 2022 and 2023.

Investment in early-stage companies was down last year, but still higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to an annual report from the Wisconsin Tech Council. However, such investments so far this year have come in much lower.

This year, roughly $191 million in investment deals have been tracked so far, less than the $209 million tracked in all of 2015, according to Joe Kremer, director of the Wisconsin Tech Council Investor Networks program.

He said it’s unlikely the state will match the record-breaking $868 million raised in 2021 and the strong $640 million raised last year, but he’s still optimistic that investment could see an uptick before the end of 2023.

“A lot of deals happen in the fourth quarter,” Kremer said. “I saw this last year as well, where we were worried about the numbers, and it really picked up in October through November and December. So we’re anticipating that could happen.”

He also said “large deals” really drive the state’s total investments, pointing to Madison-based Fetch Rewards securing $240 million last year. That accounted for one-third of all investment capital raised in 2022.

“We haven’t had any of those significant deals yet, but I do see some brightness on the horizon here,” Kremer said. “We have had a number of deals that have raised $10 to $20, almost $30 million that are starting to grow to that point that hopefully they will start attracting larger rounds in future years.”

Additionally, 2021 may have been a bit of an outlier for the state, as much of the investment may have been driven by the economy coming back to life as the pandemic eased, Kremer said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Communications Commission are planning to test both the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) on Wednesday, October 4, at 2:20 p.m. Eastern. The test will be conducted in two parts, with one set to go to cell phones and the other to radio and TV stations.

FEMA says the alert will have a unique tone and vibration to make the alert accessible to all recipients. Phones should receive the message only one time in the 30 minutes after the test begins on Wednesday.

“The purpose of the October 4 test is to ensure that the systems continue to be effective means of warning the public about emergencies, particularly those on the national level,” FEMA and the FCC explained in a statement.

The WEA test will go to Americans’ cell phones and will include one text message that will read, “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.”

The agency noted this will be the third nationwide test of the system, although it will be just the second test that has gone to all cell phones since the system was established in 2012.

FEMA and the FCC are coordinating with EAS participants, wireless providers, emergency managers and others in preparation for the test to minimize confusion and maximize the public safety value of the test.

The agencies have set a backup testing date of October 11, which will be used if there is widespread severe weather or other significant events occurring on October 4 that derail the planned test.

The Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) has added four more trades exam testing dates to the 2023 calendar as the department continues to look for ways to stay ahead of demand.

“Since I was appointed to lead DSPS, we’ve put an emphasis on making our department more efficient in licensing and strengthening our state’s workforce. We want to pave the way for qualified professionals to become credentialed more quickly, without compromising our commitment to safety,” said DSPS Secretary-designee Dan Hereth. “We have seen, and expect to keep seeing, increased demand for trades exams in Wisconsin. Looking into the future, our agency wants to position itself to meet that demand and help hard-working Wisconsinites get into a variety of rewarding fields.”

The four added dates more than double the number of exam dates available through the end of the year. The new dates are:

October 12
December 19
December 20
December 21

DSPS is notifying people currently signed up for exams in 2024 to offer them a slot on one of the added 2023 dates on a first-come, first-served basis. People registered for trades exams in January and February of 2024 have been offered the first opportunity to move up their test dates, with the department sending each a date change request form.

Currently, DSPS offers trades exams about four days per month at one of five testing locations across the state. In addition to adding more exam dates through 2023, Hereth says DSPS is exploring more ways to increase options and offer more flexibility to Wisconsinites entering the trades.

The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD) has been awarded $11.25 million in federal funds to strengthen and modernize its unemployment insurance system, part of a continuing improvement process to make its system more reliable and accessible to users.

The grants will allow Wisconsin and other states to adopt new strategies to upgrade and redesign unemployment insurance programs, better defend against fraud, and make the systems easier to maintain and change.

“As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance services, we continue to seek ways we can leverage technology to improve the speed and accuracy of unemployment benefit payments and make the system easier to navigate,” said DWD Secretary Amy Pechacek. “We look forward to investing these funds in additional efforts to overhaul our state’s decades-old unemployment insurance infrastructure and benefits delivery system.”

Since 2021, DWD has received more than $28 million from the U.S. Department of Labor to improve equity, reduce fraud and modernize Wisconsin’s unemployment system.

Learn more about the U.S. Department of Labor strategy to modernize the unemployment insurance system.

New single-family home purchases plummeted 8.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 675,000 units, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Sales remain up about 5.8% from the same time one year ago.

“The pace of new home construction is slowing, but there is still a large backlog of homes in the funnel that should continue making their way to the market in the coming months, giving more opportunities for home buyers to jump on the new construction train,” said Nicole Bachaud, Zillow senior economist.

At the current pace of sales, it would take roughly 7.8 months to exhaust the inventory of existing homes. Experts view a pace of six to seven months as a healthy level.

The decline in sales indicates that a resurgence in mortgage rates is pushing many would-be buyers out of the market. That slowdown in demand contributed to a decline in prices last month.

The median price for a new home fell to $430,000 from $436,700 the previous month. Still, that remains far higher than the typical pre-pandemic level.

Rates on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage are currently hovering around 7.19%, according to Freddie Mac, well above the 6.29% rate recorded one year ago and the pre-pandemic average of 3.9%.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is setting up a new division with the billions in new funding it received in the Inflation Reduction Act to go after uncollected taxes sheltered in companies that pass their tax liability through to their individual owners.

These kinds of businesses are known as “pass-through entities” and often take the legal designation of limited liability partnerships, S-corporations, general partnerships and sole proprietorships.

The new division will be contained within the IRS’s Large Business and International (LBI) Division, which collects taxes on corporations, S-corps, and partnerships with assets greater than $10 million.

The IRS said in a Wednesday statement that the creation of the new unit is part of an effort “to restore fairness in tax compliance by shifting more attention onto high-income earners, partnerships, large corporations and promoters abusing the nation’s tax laws.”

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has released its Strategic Enforcement Plan (SEP) for Fiscal Years 2024 –2028. The SEP establishes the EEOC’s subject matter priorities to achieve its mission of preventing and remedying unlawful employment discrimination.

The Plan calls for the EEOC to continue its focus on promoting promising practices to prevent discrimination; combatting pay discrimination and advancing equal pay; preventing and remedying systemic harassment; and tackling retaliation. Changes to the SEP include:

• Targeting discrimination, bias, and hate directed against religious minorities (including antisemitism and Islamophobia), racial or ethnic groups, and LGBTQI+ individuals.
• Expanding the vulnerable and underserved worker priority to include additional categories of workers who may be unaware of their rights under equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws, may be reluctant or unable to exercise their legally protected rights, or have historically been underserved by federal employment discrimination protections.
• Updating the emerging and developing issues priority to include protecting workers affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, including under the new Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) and other EEO laws; employment discrimination associated with the long-term effects of COVID-19 symptoms; and technology-related employment discrimination.
• Highlighting the continued underrepresentation of women and workers of color in certain industries and sectors, such as construction and manufacturing, finance, tech and other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.
• Recognizing employers’ increasing use of technology, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, to target job advertisements, recruit applicants, and make or assist in hiring and other employment decisions.
• Preserving access to the legal system by addressing overly broad waivers, releases, non-disclosure agreements, or non-disparagement agreements when they restrict workers’ ability to obtain remedies for civil rights violations.

Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Legislature on Wednesday ignored Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ call for a special session to pass a $1 billion package that would keep a pandemic-era child care program running, send more money to the University of Wisconsin and create a paid family leave program. The special session remains open, giving lawmakers a chance to revisit Evers’ bills or, take up other proposals at a future date.

The package Governor Evers called on Republicans to pass would spend $365 million to make permanent the pandemic-era federally funded Child Care Counts program that’s set to end in January. The program distributed nearly $600 million to more than 4,900 child care providers from March 2020 through March 2023, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Governor Evers’ proposal goes beyond child care funding.

It would also provide up to 12 weeks of paid family leave for Wisconsin workers starting in 2025 at a cost of $243 million, and would give UW an additional $66 million.

The Evers package also includes $40 million more for the Wisconsin Technical College System; $100 million more for a grant program targeting healthcare-related worker shortages; $60 million for programs targeting nursing shortages; and $16 million to address teacher shortages.

The U.S. Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday but stiffened a hawkish monetary policy stance that its officials increasingly believe can succeed in lowering inflation without wrecking the economy or leading to large job losses.

“People hate inflation. Hate it,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a press conference after the end of a two-day policy meeting at which central bank officials held the benchmark overnight interest rate in the current 5.25%-5.50% range, but sketched a stricter policy path moving forward in an inflation fight they now see lasting into 2026.

While Powell said the Fed was “in a position to proceed carefully” with future policy moves, he also made clear the jury was, to some degree, still out on the central bank’s fight to contain the worst outbreak of inflation in 40 years.

“We want to see convincing evidence really, that we have reached the appropriate level” of interest rates to return inflation to the Fed’s 2% target, a judgment its policymakers have not yet made, Powell told reporters. Inflation by some measures remains more than double the Fed’s desired level, though Powell said the pace appeared to be in decline across several key parts of the economy.