Aurelia Butler

(Reuters) – A federal judge in Texas on Tuesday ruled that a $1.7 trillion government funding bill was unconstitutionally passed in 2022 through a pandemic-era rule that allowed lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives to vote by proxy rather than in person.U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix in Lubbock reached that conclusion as he granted Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request to block a provision of that bill that gave pregnant workers stronger legal protections.The judge called the scope of his ruling “limited,” and said it did not block all of the spending law. Texas had only sought to block two provisions ultimately.Hendrix, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, blocked the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act from being enforced against the state as an employer after finding the funding bill was wrongly passed.That law requires employers to provide pregnant workers with reasonable accommodations. The injunction Hendrix issued only applies to state government employees and not other workers in Texas.Paxton, in a lawsuit filed last year, argued the spending package enacted in December 2022 was unconstitutionally passed as more than half of the House, then led by Democrats, were not physically present to provide quorum and voted by proxy.Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi helped implement the proxy voting rule in May 2020 following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as an emergency measure. It was ditched when Republicans took control of the House following the 2022 elections after an earlier unsuccessful court challenge.In a 120-page ruling, Hendrix said that for over two centuries before the “novel” proxy voting rule’s adoption, Congress understood that the Constitution’s quorum clause required a majority of members of the House or Senate to be physically present to have quorum to pass legislation.”Supreme Court precedent has long held that the Quorum Clause requires presence, and the Clause’s text distinguishes those absent members from the quorum and provides a mechanism for obtaining a physical quorum by compelling absent members to attend,” he wrote.The U.S. Department of Justice, which defended the bill on behalf of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, had no immediate comment.Matthew Miller, a lawyer with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation who represented the state, said the ruling “correctly” concluded a physical quorum was required.While Hendrix ruled in Texas’ favor, he found the state lacked standing to challenge $20 million appropriated in the bill to fund a pilot program that provided voluntary case management and other services to  noncitizens in immigration removal proceedings. More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets.The Reserve Bank of New Zealand, sometimes seen as global monetary policy’s “canary in the coal mine,” takes center stage in the Asia and Pacific region on Wednesday when it delivers its latest interest rate decision.Australia’s January inflation data are also on tap – annual inflation is expected to accelerate to 3.6% from 3.4% – and markets across the region should be relatively calm at the open after a quiet global session on Tuesday.U.S. Treasury yields inched up slightly on Tuesday after the bond market absorbed a $42 billion auction of seven-year paper without much trouble. This was a day after $127 billion worth of two- and five-year bonds were sold, and the relative ease with which these sales passed is encouraging for investors.The dollar flat-lined, the yen’s rise on the back of surprisingly sticky Japanese inflation was minimal, Wall Street was mixed but within narrow ranges, and global and Asian stocks edged up a bit. All in all, a quiet session on Tuesday that is unlikely to give much direction for Asia on Wednesday, which means even more attention falls on the RBNZ’s rate decision.All but one of the 28 economists polled by Reuters expect the RBNZ to keep its cash rate at a 15-year high of 5.50%, with the outlier at ANZ going for a 25 basis point hike.That’s clearly a non-consensus call, but perhaps not all that outlandish. The swaps market is attaching around a 23% probability of a hike on Wednesday, and a near 50-50 likelihood of an increase by May. Inflation at 4.7% remains well above the central bank’s target range of 1-3%. RBNZ Governor Adrian Orr said recently that the inflation challenge was not over, and the central bank’s aim was to continue to slow it to around 2%.That 2% goal pursued by many major central banks today was invented in New Zealand in the late 1980s. With inflation running high at the time, the then finance minister plucked the 2% figure out of the air and a couple of years later New Zealand became the first country to formally have an inflation-targeting goal.Fast forward to today, and the RBNZ is in the same boat as many other central banks, facing sticky inflation, a strong labor market, weak growth, high mortgage rates, and a vulnerable consumer. Unlike the U.S. Fed, however, the RBNZ no longer has a dual mandate – its sole target is inflation. Will it surprise markets with a hike? Possibly, but as Brent Donnelly at Spectra Markets notes, since 2000 the RBNZ has never raised the cash rate when it has been above the two-year swap rate. Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Wednesday:- New Zealand interest rate decision- Australia inflation (January)- Hong Kong GDP (Q4, final) (By Jamie McGeever) More

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(Reuters) -Apple has canceled work on its electric car, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday, a decade after the iPhone maker kicked off the project.Shares of the company were up 0.7% in afternoon trading, having pared some losses from earlier in the trading day.Several employees working on the electric car project will be shifted to the firm’s artificial intelligence (AI) division, according to Bloomberg News, which first reported the development.Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) declined to comment.High interest rates to tame inflation have soured consumer sentiment and led to a slowdown in demand for usually pricier electric vehicles, prompting the industry to cut jobs and reduce production. Several major automakers, including EV market leader Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), have decided to pull back on investments, with some shifting plans to focus on hybrids instead of fully battery-powered cars.Apple kicked off Project Titan, as its car effort was known internally, a decade ago, as a wave of interest in self-driving vehicles swept through Silicon Valley. Reuters reported in 2020 that Apple was considering releasing a vehicle as soon as 2024 or 2025.But progress had been uneven even before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the global automotive industry.Apple had laid off 190 workers from the group in 2019 after revamping its software approach.The design of the concept vehicle also changed, from a radical, steering-wheel-free autonomous vehicle that would have been a departure from traditional automotive design, to a more conventional car with advanced driver-assistance features. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. environment regulator said on Tuesday it is launching new cleanup projects at 25 hazardous waste sites from New Jersey to Oregon with $1 billion in funds.The sites are in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program, originally created in 1980, which helps to repurpose land polluted by heavy industry for new economic development, including parks and warehouses. The $1 billion is the third and final wave of $3.5 billion in funding appropriated by the bipartisan infrastructure bill U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021.”This funding will help improve people’s lives especially those who have long been on the front lines of pollution,” Janet McCabe, the deputy EPA administrator told reporters on a call. McCabe said 75% of the 25 sites are in historically underserved communities. The $1 billion also will help speed up ongoing work at 85 Superfund sites. More than 25% of Black and Hispanic Americans live within three miles (5 km) of a Superfund site, McCabe said. New Jersey, which has more Superfund sites than any other state, has three sites among the 25 including Raritan Bay Slag in Old Bridge and Sayreville, where a seawall and jetty were built using slag, waste from the bottom of industrial blast furnaces used to smelt metal from the 1960s to the 1970s. U.S. Representative Frank Pallone of New Jersey said the funding will work well with an expected infusion of $23 billion over five years for Superfund after “polluters pay” taxes for the program were reinstated in the infrastructure law and Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.”Reinstating that Superfund tax is really only about basic fairness that corporate polluters, not taxpayers, should have to pay to clean up the messes that they created,” Pallone told reporters. In Clackamas, Oregon, the funding will help clean up the Northwest Pipe & Casing/Hall Process Company site where pipes were made and coated from the 1950s to the 1980s contaminating soil and groundwater with solvents, primers, coal tar and other pollutants, the EPA said. More