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Growth Stocks Roar Into The New Year. This FAANMG Stock Is Poised To Go Higher

The Nasdaq just booked its 5th consecutive weekly gain which is the longest winning streak in over a year. The rally has occurred amid strong earnings reports from some major tech companies. Also driving this Index higher is bottom fishing among investors looking for quality Software and Retail stocks that were crushed during a period of rising interest rates last year. Rising interest rates are a negative for Growth stocks as they lower the value of future earnings.

DAILY CHART OF NASDAQ ($COMPQ) VS YIELD ON THE 10-YEAR TREASURY ($TNX)

Subscribers to my MEM Edge Report were alerted to a bullish turnaround in the Nasdaq after this Index posted a follow-through day in early January. This unique occurrence signaled a near-term bottom in the markets and recent price action has further strengthened our conviction that the markets are headed higher from here.

One of many reasons for my positive bias for the markets is last week’s sharp gain in Meta Platforms (META) which took place after the company announced better than expected results while also speaking positively about their growth prospects for 2023. The stock gapped up 23% on the news as well the announcement of a huge share buyback program.

Gaps up in the price of mega-cap Growth stocks is not very common and the huge volume that accompanied last week’s rally points to a stock that’s under accumulation. In fact, the last time META posted this sharp of a gain on heavy volume was in July of 2013 after the company posted much better than expected mobil ad sales numbers.  Below is a chart of the company at that time and as you can see, the gap up into a base breakout marked the beginning of a 59% gain before Facebook formed a secondary base.

DAILY CHART OF META PLATFORMS (META) IN 2012-2013

While market conditions in July of 2013 were much different from now, the fact remains that gaps up in price into a base breakout are one of the most powerful base formations as they often lead to greater gains.

As you can see in the chart above, META’s RSI remained in an overbought position for several months in 2013 before pulling back. Also of note is the continued high volume which took place after the initial gap up in price. This is critical price action in the beginning stage of the stock’s advance as it points to high demand which can sustain a more prolonged advance. Next week’s price action in META will help determine its ability to climb higher from here.

DAILY CHART OF META PLATFORMS, INC. (META) INTO FRIDAY’S CLOSE

Going forward, another signal that the current uptrend in META still in place will be a bullish position of both the RSI and MACD going forward. This would mean that they remain above 50 for the RSI and above zero for the MACD. Most important will be a bullish backdrop for the broader markets which are currently in an uptrend as market conditions will drive investor sentiment regarding underlying stocks.

If you’d like to be kept up to the minute on market conditions as well as have access to the winning Growth stocks on my Suggested Holdings List, use this link to receive immediate access to my twice weekly MEM Edge Report. Last week, a key sector entered a downtrend which we highlighted in yesterday’s Thursday Alert report and you can uncover this as well.

It’s an exciting time to be investing given the strength in the current market uptrend. Use the link above so you can confidently take advantage of the bullish shift in the markets!

Warmly,

Mary Ellen McGonagle – MEM Investment Research (powered by Simpler Trading)

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New Dow Theory Declares Bullish Phase

While the technical analysis toolkit has certainly evolved over time, having benefitted from advances in computing and data analysis, in many ways, the tools of the modern technical analyst are not far from the original work of Charles Dow in the early 20th century. But an updated version of his classic “Dow Theory” suggests that the markets have entered a new bullish phase, as both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are making new swing highs.

Dow’s Foundational Analysis of Markets

To be clear, Dow’s work was all done via paper and pencil, a practice which continued well into the 1980s for many technical analysts (or “chartists” as Ralph Acampora enjoyed telling me they were called, given that much of their time was spent creating charts instead of analyzing them!).

One of Charles Dow’s contributions was so significant that now we simply call it “Dow Theory”. He proposed looking at two indexes, the Dow Industrials and the Dow Railroads (now evolved into the Dow Transports), and seeing if they were in agreement. If both indexes were breaking to new highs, the market was strong. If both indexes were breaking to new lows, the market was weak. If there was a non-confirmation, where one of the indexes was breaking out but the other was not, then it indicated a potential reversal point. His theory was based on the importance of these two groups–the Industrials as the producers of goods and the Railroads as the distributors of goods–as a way to evaluate the strength of the economy.

Dow Theory for the Modern Age

Now, in 2023, the Dow Industrials includes a fairly diverse group of businesses that are better classified as service-oriented than product-oriented. And the Dow Transports includes stocks like JetBlue and Avis Budget Car Group. Not really the distributors of goods. Plus, perhaps most importantly, names like TGT and AMZN, arguably to be included in both indexes, are actually in neither of them!

So I now prefer to use a New Dow Theory, comparing the S&P 500 (representing the old economy) and the Nasdaq Composite (the new economy). If both indexes are in uptrends, the market is strong.

What’s most striking to me about this chart is the bearish non-confirmation that occurred at the end of 2021. Notice how the S&P 500 was making a new all-time high which the Nasdaq Composite was making a lower high?

This pattern suggested that the breakout for the SPX was suspect and to be faded, not bought. To be honest, this was one of many divergences you’ll find during this period, along with weakening momentum, weakening breadth, and a lower high for small caps.

New Dow Theory in February 2023

Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite made a new 52-week low in October of last year, providing a bearish confirmation. Then, in December, we had the Nasdaq continue to make lower lows while the S&P 500 bounced higher to achieve a higher low before year-end. This was a bullish non-confirmation, where one index makes a new low but the other one does not confirm the bearish setup. It suggests the bear market phase of 2022 was at a potential inflection point.

Here in February 2023, you’ll note how both indexes made a new swing high as they pushed above their December 2022 peaks. This is what I’d consider a bullish confirmation, where both the old economy and new economy indices are confirmed in a new uptrend.

Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are facing significant overhead resistance. Until we see the S&P 500 push above its August 2022 high around 4300, and the Nasdaq break above its own August 2022 high around 13,000, then the upside potential for stocks may be limited beyond current levels.

“Don’t fight the tape.” That’s what I was told early on in my career. And the New Dow Theory suggests that the tape is telling us that it’s onward and ever upward for stocks. Combined with renewed strength in breadth indicators like the McClellan Oscillator, we have a strong start to 2023 for the S&P 500!

RR#6,

Dave

P.S. Ready to upgrade your investment process? Check out my free behavioral investing course!

David Keller, CMT

Chief Market Strategist

StockCharts.com

Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. The ideas and strategies should never be used without first assessing your own personal and financial situation, or without consulting a financial professional.

The author does not have a position in mentioned securities at the time of publication. Any opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views or opinions of any other person or entity.

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U.S. added 517,000 jobs in January as employers drove unexpected hiring surge

The employment picture started off 2023 on a stunningly strong note, with nonfarm payrolls posting their strongest gain since last July.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 517,000 in January, far above the Dow Jones estimate of 187,000. The unemployment rate fell to a historic low of 3.4%, compared with the estimate of 3.6%.

The U.S. hasn’t seen an unemployment rate as low as January’s since 1969. Unemployment among Black Americans declined slightly to 5.4% but ticked up for Hispanic Americans to 4.5%, both of which remain higher than the national average.

Job growth across a multitude of sectors helped propel the massive beat against the estimate. Leisure and hospitality, an industry that shed many positions early in the pandemic and has been racing to hire, added 128,000 jobs in January, leading all sectors. Other significant gainers were professional and business services (82,000), government (74,000) and health care (58,000).

Wages also posted solid gains for the month. Average hourly earnings increased 0.3%, in line with the estimate, and up 4.4% from a year ago, 0.1 percentage points higher than expectations. The labor force participation rate and the employment-to-population ratio both increased, reinforcing the portrait of a persistently strong labor market.

The surge in job creation comes despite the Federal Reserve’s effort to slow the economy and bring down inflation from its highest level since the early 1980s. The Fed has raised its benchmark interest rate eight times since March 2022, most recently with a 0.25% increase on Wednesday.

In its latest assessment of the jobs picture, the Fed on Wednesday dropped previous language saying gains have been “robust” and noted only that the “unemployment rate has remained low.” However, Chairman Jerome Powell noted in his post-meeting news conference that the labor market “remains extremely tight” and is still “out of balance.” As of December, there were about 11 million job openings, or just shy of two for every available worker.

“Today’s report is an echo of 2022’s surprisingly resilient job market, beating back recession fears,” said Daniel Zhao, lead economist for job review site Glassdoor. “The Fed has a New Year’s resolution to cool down the labor market, and so far, the labor market is pushing back.”

One metric in the latest release that is likely to encourage the Fed is average hourly earnings, which declined to 4.4% in January. That slowdown “should ease inflationary pressures in the near term as wage growth comes back in line,” LPL Financial Chief Economist Jeffrey Roach said in a note Friday.

Inflation has been on the downtrend, falling to 6.5% on an annual basis in December, according to the consumer price index. That’s down from 7.1% in November after hitting a 9.1% peak in June last year.

Though Fed officials have expressed their intention to keep rates elevated for as long as it takes to bring inflation down to their 2% target, markets are betting the central bank starts cutting before the end of the year. Traders increased their bets that the Fed would approve a quarter percentage point interest rate hike at its March meeting, with the probability increasing to 94.5%, according to CME Group data.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS
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Despite layoff headlines, there’s still plenty of hiring going on in the U.S. economy

The past several months have been dominated by headlines of layoffs at high-profile companies, particularly in the tech industry.

But Friday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. added 517,000 jobs in January, while the unemployment rate fell to 3.4%, the lowest it’s been in five decades. In total, 5.7 million U.S. workers remain unemployed, the lowest number since 2000.

As University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers noted in a tweet after the release of the jobs report on Friday morning: ‘Real America is getting back to work.’

‘The labor market is pretty strong,’ said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, in an interview in advance of Friday’s report. ‘The unemployment rate is low, and there are still people who have not returned to the labor market after the pandemic, so we can expect the labor force can grow. But we’ve had an incredible couple of years of recovery.’

Additional data this week showed the strength of the jobs market: There remained more than 11 million job openings in the economy in December, and the weekly count of first-time filers for unemployment benefits has fallen to 183,000 — a nine-month low.

The jobs gains run counter to the announcements by some brand-name firms in Silicon Valley. A handful of tech companies, including Amazon, Google-parent Alphabet, Facebook-parent Meta, Salesforce, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Salesforce, Twitter and others have cut thousands of jobs in recent months.

Layoffs are brutal life-altering events. But there is evidence that many of those who’ve lost their jobs have been able to secure new ones in a relatively short period of time.

A recent ZipRecruiter survey conducted in the last three months of 2022 found that more than half of recently hired workers found their job within a month of searching, and more than 4 in 5 found their job within three months.

Even in the hard-hit tech industry, bounce-backs have been robust: ZipRecruiter found that among workers recently laid off from a tech job, 37% found a new job within one month, and 79% found a new job within three months. 

Where are companies hiring right now?

Among those bringing in new workers at the moment:

Airplane and airline companies including Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Boeing, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines Bloomberg LP, which is hiring 1,000 new workersChipotle, which announced it’s looking for 15,000 new workersGeneral Motors told the Detroit Free Press that while this won’t be a “major” hiring year for the automaker, it is continuing to look for tech talent, especially among people laid off in Silicon Valley. The U.S. Postal Service is hiring 2,400 workers in California

The strength of Friday’s jobs report took most economists by surprise — even those who had dismissed the notion that the U.S. was on the brink of a recession.

But at least one group foreshadowed the ongoing jobs boom. The consulting firm Robert Half announced this week that a survey of 2,000 hiring managers showed 58% anticipated adding new permanent roles during the first half of the year, up from 46% just six months ago.

In fact, managers in technology (64%) and finance and accounting (62%) saw the greatest full-time staffing needs. The survey did find 72% of managers plan to hire more contract professionals in the first half of 2023, compared to 45% six months ago.

“Hiring tends to pick up at the beginning of the year, as budgets have been approved and teams seek additional support for initiatives that will drive business growth and customer retention,” said Paul McDonald, senior executive director of Robert Half, in a statement.

“As job openings and turnover remain high, employers need to play offense — and be prepared to negotiate — in order to recruit and retain skilled talent.”

How did we get to this point?

Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, says the economy is returning to a more ‘balanced’ distribution of job growth after the pandemic sparked massive layoffs in leisure and hospitality, but there’s been an uptick in sectors like warehouse and delivery.

Health care, she said, will be at the forefront, as evidenced by the sector adding 70,000 to 80,000 new jobs each month since last June.

‘The economy is getting back to normal, where job growth is not just being shaped by the pandemic recovery but by longer-term forces like demographics and technological change, which will also be more durable,’ Pollak said in a recent interview.

Green jobs like solar and wind technicians, spurred in part by President Joe Biden’s multibillion-dollar Inflation Reduction Act, are also likely to see outsized growth.

And in Sun Belt states like Texas and Florida, the job growth will be faster than in other parts of the country, Pollak said. Georgia, Kentucky and Michigan are on track to land large electric battery factories that will build the components that power electric vehicles.

Many economists believe a ‘soft landing’ scenario for the U.S. economy that sees inflation slowing while job losses remain low and corporate earnings stay solid is very much in play. One key element for that scenario, at least in the minds of economists, is wage and earnings growth. Friday’s report showed average hourly earnings for lower-wage workers climbed just 0.25%, the smallest increase since January 2021.

Slowing wage growth is not great news for workers. Indeed, their inflation-adjusted ‘real’ wage gains for much of the pandemic and post-pandemic period have been negative because price growth has been so fast.

But EPI’s Gould said that as inflation continues to fall, workers will likely continue to see real earnings gains.

‘Hopefully they’re going to be catching up some to the higher inflation we’ve been seeing last year,’ she said.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS
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Jury finds Elon Musk did not defraud Tesla investors with infamous ‘funding secured’ claim

A jury found Elon Musk not liable for costing investors millions of dollars when he issued a series of tweets saying he had ‘secured’ funding to take the electric car maker private.

The Friday verdict, issued by a nine-person Northern California jury, represents a legal victory for the 51-year-old billionaire, who has seen the value of his Tesla holdings decline some 44% over the past year.

During the trial, Musk personally took the witness stand to defend the tweets, testifying he believed he had a handshake agreement in 2018 with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to convert Tesla, which is a publicly traded company, into a private one. It was the Saudis, he said, who subsequently reneged on the deal.

Elon Musk and shareholder attorney Nicholas Porritt in federal court as U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, right, looks on in San Francisco on Jan. 24, 2023. Vicki Behringer / AP

“I had no ill motive,” Musk said during nearly eight hours of testimony last month. “My intent was to do the right thing for all shareholders.”

Nicholas Porritt, an attorney representing Tesla shareholders in the case, countered that no formal agreement was ever in place, and that Musk’s tweet had served his own interests rather than those of investors, costing them millions and potentially billions of dollars as Tesla’s share price fluctuated during the ordeal.

Even before the trial, California District Court Judge Edward Chen had ruled that the tweets were false and reckless. Separately, Musk and Tesla had reached a $40 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission just one month after the tweets were posted, though Chen instructed the jury not to consider that development in their deliberations.

Just three weeks after his online musings, Musk decided to scrap the take-private proposal after consulting with shareholders. But Musk, as well as several colleagues, testified that they had no doubt Musk could have raised the funds to take the company private if necessary, mostly through tapping shares in SpaceX, his rocket company.

By one measure, the decision to keep Tesla public has paid off: Tesla’s shares are worth more than eight times what they were at the time of Musk’s buyout tweet, after adjusting for two stock splits that have occurred since then.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS
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Biden admin to brief ‘Gang of Eight’ on Chinese spy balloon after Speaker McCarthy’s request

The Biden administration will brief the ‘Gang of Eight’ next week on the Chinese spy balloon hovering over the continental United States, according to a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Multiple lawmakers, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, asked for a ‘Gang of Eight’ briefing after the balloon was discovered.

‘China’s brazen disregard for U.S. sovereignty is a destabilizing action that must be addressed, and President Biden cannot be silent. I am requesting a Gang of Eight briefing,’ McCarthy said on Twitter.

The ‘Gang of Eight’ consists of eight Republican and Democrat congressional leaders from the House and Senate who are briefed on classified matters from the executive branch.

During a briefing Thursday afternoon, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the U.S. government detected a high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental U.S.

A senior defense official added that the U.S. government is ‘confident’ the surveillance balloon belongs to the People’s Republic of China.

The defense official said the balloon was recently over Montana, adding the government considered shooting it down but decided against doing so because of the potential risks.

President Biden was briefed on the situation and asked for military options, the official said.

‘You did see reports yesterday of a ground stop at Billings Airport and the mobilization of a number of assets, including F-22,’ the official said. ‘The context for that was that we put some things on station in the event that a decision was made to bring this down while it was over Montana. 

‘So, we wanted to make sure we were coordinating with civil authorities to empty out the airspace around that potential area. But, even with those protective measures taken, it was the judgment of our military commanders that we didn’t drive the risk down low enough. So, we didn’t take the shot.’

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson responded to U.S. government officials Friday, claiming the balloon is a ‘civilian airship’ being used for meteorological purposes and deviated from its planned course.

‘The airship is from China. It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes,’ the spokesperson said. ‘Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course.’

A senior U.S. defense official told Fox News the balloon initially took off from mainland China. The Pentagon doesn’t believe claims that the object is a weather balloon that flew off course.

‘This was intentional,’ the senior U.S. official said.

As a result of the balloon’s discovery, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a planned trip to China.

The balloon was seen over Kansas City, Missouri, Friday. Department spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters the balloon will probably hover over U.S. airspace ‘a few days.’

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo and Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.

Chad Pergram currently serves as a senior congressional correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC). He joined the network in September 2007 and is based out of Washington, D.C.

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South Dakota Republicans move to pass sweeping election security bills

Lead Republicans in South Dakota are advancing a package of bills that they say would strengthen security of the 2024 elections, with hearings that began this week.

The package of bills announced last week by Republican House and Senate leaders addresses issues such as runoff elections, recounts and ballot legitimacy. While lawmakers say they believe South Dakota elections are among the most secure in the country, they also say the system could be made stronger, and they are hoping the new proposals will help alleviate distrust.

‘South Dakota has an excellent election system but we can always be better,’ said Republican Rep. Tony Venhuizen, who proposed that the timing of runoff elections for general elections should be extended to 10 weeks instead of eight, to avoid conflict with the deadline to certify ballots. ‘It’s a pretty small piece of the puzzle in the scheme of things but I think it’s a good issue to head off if we can.’

The package of bills from Rep. Will Mortenson and Sen. Casey Crabtree includes language changes that would also allow candidates outside the primary election to run. In addition, candidates tied for second place would be required to run in the runoff election alongside the first-place candidates if the margin is less than 35%.

When it comes to recounts, Rep. Amber Arlint proposed establishing partisan recount boards that would ensure the state’s dominant party has more representation. Registered Democrats would comprise a Democratic candidate’s recount board and a registered Republicans would comprise a Republican’s board.

This modification stems from Arlint’s personal experience. She won her position against two Democrats by so close a margin that a recount took place. Two registered Democrats and one registered Republican were among those counting her ballots.

‘Recount boards can impact the outcome of an election. They make judgment calls and they can be charged with interpreting voter intent,’ Arlint said Monday.

The package also includes a bill from Republican Rep. John Sjaarda that would extend the requirement that counted ballots be stored for six months — up from the current period of one month — before being destroyed. He said retaining certified ballots for a longer period would address unresolved election disputes.

Jordan Mason, director of the far-right State Freedom Caucus Network, advocated for the bill. He pointed to current legal cases contesting election outcomes that lack evidence due to ballot destruction.

In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, lawmakers across the country brought thousands of bills to change how elections are run. There is no evidence there was widespread fraud or other wrongdoing in the 2020 election.

Republican Rep. Tyler Tordsen on Wednesday cited concerns over electronic balloting systems and proposed modifying existing tabulation laws. Tordsen’s bill would upgrade policy to outline voting tablet verification policies. From public demonstration notifications to post-election safeguarding, the bill would increase guidelines for how a test is to be conducted, how test results are communicated, how any errors are to be resolved and how a tablet is to be sealed after an election.

Among the minority of proposals rejected was Democratic Sen. Reynold Nesiba’s attempt to address redistricting. Currently, multiple counties in the state share voting precincts, which means multiple elections take place at a single voting location. These situations have led to poll worker confusion, such as misplaced ballots, which have led to integrity concerns. Nesiba’s bill outlined requirements to establish voting precincts that ‘represent the interests and conveniences of voters in the county.’

‘When we’re putting poll workers into this difficult situation where they’re having to run two elections instead of one at their precinct place, it allows for the possibility that more errors will happen, and it plays into this false sentiment voter fraud,’ Nesiba said.

More issues dealing with election issues passed through the House State Affairs Committee on Friday, including a measure to regulate absentee voting that makes absentee ballot drop-boxes a misdemeanor and shortens the period a voter can request an absentee ballot. Other electoral system proposals that were scheduled for hearing Friday were postponed.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS
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Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt calls for investigation into Biden admin’s ‘alarming’ handling of Chinese balloon

EXCLUSIVE: Missouri GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin regarding the Chinese spy balloon that is hovering over the state, saying the Biden administration’s ‘lack of transparency is alarming’ and called for an investigation into the matter.

‘As I write, a Chinese asset hovers over the great State of Missouri. This is potentially a grave threat to national security that the Biden Administration is allowing to violate U.S. airspace, while failing to provide critical details for the American people,’ Schmitt wrote. 

‘The lack of transparency is alarming. The Department of Defense has told the public very little about the Chinese asset. The Department of Defense has said it is a Chinese balloon; it is over the central United States; it is carrying surveillance gear as well as a payload; it has the ability to maneuver; and a decision was made to not shoot it down. The Department of Defense has said that ‘instances of this activity have been observed over the past several years, including prior to this administration.’’

Schmitt, who previously served as attorney general of Missouri and was elected to the Senate last November, blamed the Pentagon for refusing to answer questions about the balloon’s exact location.

‘Without answers to these critical questions, it is difficult to understand why the Biden Administration decided to allow an asset from a foreign adversary ot invade U.S. airspace,’ he added. ‘The Department of Defense says that this Chinese asset ‘has violated U.S. airspace and international law, which is unacceptable.’ But despite this violation of our nation’s airspace, the Department of Defense has taken no action to stop the Chinese asset from proceeding to pass over, and likely surveil, some of our most sensitive military sites.’

Noting the importance of the situation, Schmitt pointed out in his letter to Lloyd that Whiteman Air Force Base, the home of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, is located in Missouri.

‘The Chinese asset appears to have passed close to Whiteman. Yet nothing was done to stop the asset from reaching Missouri,’ Schmitt wrote.

‘I request an immediate briefing for my colleagues so that we can provide constitutional oversight,’ he added. 

‘The fact that a Chinese spy balloon is able to fly in American airspace completely undeterred is absolutely ridiculous,’ Schmitt told Fox News Digital. ‘The Biden Administration needs to answer why this Chinese spy balloon was not taken down over a sparsely populated area before it moved deep into the United States interior, or why they continue to allow it to fly.’

Schmitt said one would ‘be naive not to think China is attempting to observe critical military installations across the country and in Missouri, such as Whiteman Air Force base – a vital asset in ensuring America’s nuclear preparedness and home to the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.’ 

‘We need answers from President Biden, Secretary Austin, and this administration immediately,’ he added.

Defense Department spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that the Chinese surveillance balloon, which China claims is a civilian reconnaissance airship that inadvertently drifted off course and was first reported to be hovering over Montana, had ‘changed its course’ and moved to the central part of the country. But he declined to get into specifics about its location.

The National Weather Service in Kansas City, Missouri, posted photos of a large balloon visible from its office in Pleasant Hill that appeared to be headed southeast. ‘We have confirmed that it is not an NWS weather balloon,’ NWS Kansas City said.

In a Friday statement, Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson said he has had ‘zero communication’ from the Biden administration about the balloon.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House about Parson’s remarks, but did not receive an immediate response. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Schmitt’s letter.

Hours before Ryder’s remarks, officials said the balloon sat above Billings, Montana, potentially giving the Biden administration ample time to act on the situation before it moved into more populated areas of the country. 

The Pentagon said that it considered taking down the possible threat from China, but ultimately decided against any action due to ‘the risk to safety and security of people on the ground from the possible debris field.’

Senior State Department officials have called the incident ‘unacceptable,’ and Secretary of State Antony Blinken has indefinitely postponed a planned trip to China to meet President Xi Jinping in light of the circumstances.

A senior U.S. Defense official told Fox News the balloon was launched from mainland China. 

‘This was intentional,’ the senior U.S. official said.

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this article.

Kyle Morris covers politics for Fox News. Story tips can be sent to kyle.morris@fox.com and on Twitter: @RealKyleMorris.

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Minnesota Gov. Walz makes Juneteenth state holiday, bans ‘hair discrimination’

Juneteeth will become a state holiday in Minnesota, under a bill signed by Gov. Tim Walz on Friday in a state where it’s now illegal to discriminate on the basis of hair texture or style.

The Democratic governor made Minnesota the 26th state to recognize June 19th as a holiday. It’s the date in 1865 viewed as the final abolition of slavery in the U.S. even though it came two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. It became a federal holiday in 2021, and many local governments and companies already observe it.

Walz also held a ceremonial signing Friday of a bill known as the CROWN Act, which he formally signed Wednesday. It stands for ‘Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,’ and explicitly prohibits racial discrimination based on natural hair texture and hairstyles such as braids, locs, and twists.

Flanked by a crowd of mostly female Black lawmakers and community leaders, Walz joked about ‘the irony of an older white bald guy signing this bill,’ but said it addresses a real problem.

The lead House author, Democratic Rep. Esther Agbaje, of Minneapolis, said the legislation was necessary because the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 ‘declined to weigh in on whether natural hair was an immutable part of race.’

Nineteen other states and several cities have enacted similar protections since 2019.

‘With this law we are saying that we will not allow hair discrimination as a proxy for race discrimination,’ Agbaje said. ‘We are also saying it is perfectly fine to show up as you are.’

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS
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GOP renews push to arm federal judges amid rising threats of violence

House Republicans are proposing a change to the law that would make it easier for federal judges to arm themselves as they enter and exit the courthouse, a change they say is needed because judges are seeing more threats to their safety.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., introduced the Firearm Lockbox Protection Act, which would allow judges who are licensed to carry a firearm in their state to securely store that firearm in the courthouse. It would set up a system that lets judges check these weapons into a secure facility as they arrive and check them out as they leave, which Cole said would help them defend themselves from threats.

‘As federal judges have faced an increasing number of threats to their personal safety, the Firearm Lockbox Protection Act will make certain they can protect themselves if a physical threat or dangerous altercation were to occur,’ Cole told Fox News Digital. ‘In fact, I first introduced this legislation at the request of a federal judge from my state, and I am proud to reintroduce it again at such a critical time.’

Cole’s bill was co-sponsored by a handful of other Republicans, and he is seeking wider support within the House.

‘Often, federal judges are left in a vulnerable position while walking from their vehicles to the building,’ Cole told his House colleagues. ‘Physical threats and altercations have cultivated a dangerous environment for judges commuting to the federal workplace.’

Cole chairs the House Rules Committee, which sets the terms of debate and voting on legislation — a position that could give him some leverage as he tries to advance the bill.

Cole’s bill was introduced in the context of growing calls to find better ways to protect judges from danger. In 2020, a gunman shot and killed the son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas and wounded her husband in an attack that took place at their home.

In early 2022, the U.S. Marshals Service reported there were 4,500 threats and potentially dangerous interactions with federal judges, which led to calls for ways to protect the personal information of those judges.

Later in the year, a man was charged with the attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, after he appeared at Kavanaugh’s home with a pistol, knife and other paraphernalia.

Pete Kasperowicz is a politics editor at Fox News Digital.

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