JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES - JUNE 10: Hundreds of irregular migrants cross the border to Jacumba Hot Springs days after US President Joe Biden announced a decree to change migration policy at the border in California, United States on June 10, 2024. Biden rolled out the new executive order, to significantly restrict asylum claims in a bid to stave off Republican criticism of his border policies ahead of November's presidential election. The order goes into effect when there is a seven-day average of 2,500 or more 'border encounters' per day. That includes the southwestern land border and southern US coastal borders. There are already well over 2,500 daily 'border encounters,' meaning the order immediately takes effect. Its restrictions remain in place until two weeks after the number of 'border encounters' dips below 1,500. (Photo by Katie McTiernan/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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Yes Virginia. The undocumented are a problem, especially when taking jobs or getting social programs. Never did we have issues with legal immigrants. But according to Pew, it’s the undocumented.
From 1990 to 2007, the unauthorized immigrant population more than tripled in size, from 3.5 million to a record high of 12.2 million. From there, the number slowly declined to about 10.2 million in 2019.
In 2022, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. showed sustained growth for the first time since 2007, to 11.o million.
As of 2022, about 4 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. are Mexican. This is the largest number of any origin country, representing more than one-third of all unauthorized immigrants. However, the Mexican unauthorized immigrant population is down from a peak of almost 7 million in 2007, when Mexicans accounted for 57% of all unauthorized immigrants.
The drop in the number of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico has been partly offset by growth from other parts of the world, especially Asia and other parts of Latin America.
Virtually all unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. entered the country without legal permission or arrived on a nonpermanent visa and stayed after it expired.
A growing number of unauthorized immigrants have permission to live and work in the U.S. and are temporarily protected from deportation. In 2022, about 3 million unauthorized immigrants had these temporary legal protections. These immigrants fall into several groups:
Asylum applicants: About 1.6 million immigrants have pending applications for asylum in the U.S. as of mid-2022 because of dangers faced in their home country. These immigrants can stay in the U.S. legally while they wait for a decision on their case.
Other protections: Several hundred thousand individuals have applied for special visas to become lawful immigrants. These types of visas are offered to victims of trafficking and certain other criminal activities.
A new Reuters study found that Newsmax is one of the influential news brands in the U.S.
Earlier this week, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism released its annual Digital News Report, surveying 100,000 people across 47 countries.
The Reuters U.S. survey found Americans are turning to just 12 news brands offline for news.
And Newsmax was one of them.
Reuters found that 8% of Americans — about 25 million Americans — turn to Newsmax for their news at least weekly.
Newsmax ranked close to well-known news brands like The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and The New York Times.
“Newsmax’s rise is even more stunning considering the newness of our brand, Big Tech efforts to thwart us, and several virtual TV distributors still keeping us from their subscribers,” Chris Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax, said.
Newsmax started as a digital media company in 1998 and a decade ago launched a cable news channel.
Today, the cable channel is available on all major cable systems and through its proprietary app on Newsmax+.
Newsmax also launched Newsmax2, a streaming news channel.
The Reuters study also found that Newsmax is taking close to 30% of Fox News’ total audience.
The Reuters study did not include Newsmax’s significant reach online through its popular app, its website Newsmax.com, and its massive social media following on platforms like Facebook, X, and Truth Social.
Newsmax estimates it reaches 40 million American regularly through all its platforms.
Other surveys have also found Newsmax’s brand is rising and resonating among U.S. consumers.
Last year, the Economist/YouGov annual survey of Trust in Media found Newsmax was among the most trusted cable news brands, ranking with outlets like CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and Bloomberg.
Last week, Newsmax announced that it plans to make a public offering later this year with a listing on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq.
The company cited significant investor interest and its strong growth in ratings and revenues as helping to make the decision to go public.
Newsmax said its revenues have grown over 330% since 2019 and its cable TV and online ratings have been strong.
Nielsen reported that in 2023 Newsmax was the only cable news channel to see significant ratings growth across all dayparts, making it the fourth-highest-rated cable news channel in the nation.
Feibush, who met with available staff in person Monday afternoon, called the shutdown a difficult decision, citing rising costs, reduced sales, and the expiration of leases for a business that he said was never profitable during its 13 years.
”But we pushed forward because we understood the positive impact we were making in our communities and the importance to maintain a level of compensation and benefits … that you each deserved,” he wrote in an email announcing the decision to staff who did not attend Monday’s meetings.
Combined with financial and logistical headwinds, however, “the administrative and legal costs associated with your desire to organize has regrettably moved us beyond any cost that we could sustain,” he wrote.
Just one week after staff at the OCF Coffee House informed him of their intention to unionize, owner and real estate developer Ori Feibush confirmed that he would be closing all three locations down.
Stories the MSM sometimes ignores. We see articles that at times are ignored by the MSM or are spun in a way that don’t give you all of the facts. Below are ten of these articles.
That’s a far different wish list than Trump’s campaign:
Biden’s response to a porous southern border
The lack of law and order in America’s cities
Rampant inflation
I would like to see the corruption in the DOJ covered. Also if Trumps court cases are brought up, then so should the Hunter laptop and Hunter and Joe’s family cases and Chinese business dealings.
But Joe said the economy is growing. GDP continues to tank.
Joe keeps on telling us how good things are, but the numbers tell another story. GDP was revised for the first quarter. See below.
The U.S. economy grew less than previously thought in the first three months of the year, expanding at an annual pace of just 1.3 percent, revised government data showed Thursday.
The downward revision was primarily driven by data showing that consumer spending grew by significantly less than previously estimated.
The 1960s were some of the most significant years in American history. The decade saw the Civil Rights Movement and a rising counterculture that reimagined the shape of the American social fabric. Pop music exploded like never before with the British Invasion led by the Beatles and Rolling Stones, but the ’60s were also an intense era of war and political violence.
The decade’s most monumental moments tend to be widely covered, and the sheer number of historic events during this time almost create the impression that every moment was imbued with turbulence. But while the tumult of the decade played out on the evening news in homes across America, many people were still living normal everyday lives — albeit lives that looked quite different from our modern lifestyle. The following numbers offer a snapshot of day-to-day life in 1960s America.
Credit: PhotoQuest/ Archive Photos via Getty Images
42% of Adults Were Smokers
Smoking was still widespread in the middle of the 20th century. The smoking rate in the U.S. reached a peak of 47% of adults (including 50% of doctors!) by the end of 1952. Though cigarette sales declined somewhat in 1953 and 1954 amid growing health concerns, the introduction of the filtered cigarette created a rebound. Through the early years of the 1960s, the smoking rate held steady at 42% of adults. On January 11, 1964, Surgeon General Luther L. Terry published the first report of the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health, a landmark event that brought the link between smoking and disease front and center in the American consciousness. Smoking has been on an overall downward trend ever since: As of 2021, smoking has declined to 11.5% of adults.
In 1966, the national average for the price of a men’s haircut was $1.95 ($19.03 in today’s currency). For women, it was $2.16 ($20.79 today) — unless an extravagant “permanent wave” was desired, which cost an average of $12.15 ($118.57 today). The permanent wave (or “perm”) was a multi-step process to make long-lasting curls, which required additional materials and could take between six to eight hours to complete, hence the premium cost. Chicago was the most expensive city for men to get a haircut in; the average price there was $2.48 ($24.20 today), while Dallas was the least expensive at $1.79 ($17.47 today). But interestingly, Chicago was the cheapest city for women’s haircuts — $2.08 ($20.30 today) for a conventional cut, and $11.27 ($109.98) for the permanent wave. The most expensive city for women was Washington, D.C., at $3.31 and $18.19 ($32.30 and $177.51, respectively).
At the beginning of the 1960s, marriage was still a fairly unquestioned rite of passage into adulthood. The median age for brides in 1960 was 20.1, while the median age for grooms was 24.2, and the percentage of adults who were married was a large majority: 72% in 1960. But the decade brought about sweeping social changes in attitudes toward divorce, sexuality, and parenthood, creating a downward trend in marriage that persisted into the 21st century. Data collected in 2023 shows that the current median age at first marriage is 28 for women and 30 for men, and 53% of American adults are married.
A single dollar bill had a lot of buying power throughout most of the 20th century. The national average price for most grocery staples in the ’60s was less than a buck: A 5-pound bag of flour was 61 cents; a dozen eggs cost 66 cents; a pound of ground beef (which was broadly referred to as “hamburger” even when not formed into a patty) was 55 cents; and a box of generic corn flakes was 32 cents. In today’s dollars, these prices equate to $5.95, $6.44, $5.37, and $3.12, respectively. With the notable exception of eggs (which have infamously inflated in cost since 2020), these equivalent prices are right in line with what we’d expect to see at a grocery store today.
Credit: Three Lions/ Hulton Archive via Getty Images
A Three-Minute Phone Call to Someone Across the Country Cost $2
Though many aspects of daily life are more expensive today than they were in the past, phone service is one item that’s actually more affordable today than it was in the 1960s. During most of the landline era, phone calls to different regions incurred long-distance charges, based on the duration and distance of the call. In 1960, the cost for a three-minute call from New York to San Francisco was $2.25; it dropped to $1.75 by the end of 1967. With inflation, the $2 average for that three-minute call would be the equivalent of $19.89 today. A lengthier conversation could easily incur enough long-distance charges to surpass the cost of an entire month of cellphone service today.
For most of the 20th century, the typewriter was the quintessential office item. In 1946, leading manufacturer IBM set out to improve the typewriter design that had been standard since the late 19th century. IBM engineer Horace “Bud” Beattie developed a mushroom-shaped type element to replace the basket of individual typebars that manual typewriters were equipped with; it solved the problem of typebars jamming if keys were pressed in too rapid succession. Beattie and a team of engineers refined the “mushroom printer” to a spherical shape about the size of a golf ball, which allowed for a pivoting motion that made the page more stable and less prone to small shifts that could result in unwanted slanted text.
In 1954, the team at IBM developed a prototype of the new design. The type sphere was designed to be easily replaceable, allowing for switching out typefaces, thus giving the machine its name: Selectric. The Selectric was capable of printing 186 words per minute and accommodating keystrokes as quick as 20 milliseconds apart with no risk of jamming. It included ergonomic keys, and was available in eight color combinations. It took seven years from the completion of the prototype for the product to go to market, but when the Selectric went on sale on July 31, 1961, the buzz around it was instant. First-year sales hit 80,000, topping projections by 400%. For the rest of the decade and beyond, it became the new standard in offices, comprising 75% of all typewriters sold, and eventually a 94% market share for electric typewriters.
Sacramento's favorite. Anderson, US - October 24, 2016: Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen Fast Food Restaurant. Popeyes is known for its Cajun Style Fried Chicken III
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How much have fast-food prices gone up since 2020? Price hikes at 6 popular chains.
The carefree days of the “Dollar Menunaire” are a distant memory. Five-dollar footlong? Forget it. As any fast-food fanatic knows, the drive-thru is no longer the greasy bastion of value it once was.
Inflation affects all consumer products and services, but each business make its own decisions when it comes to raising prices. And while some companies’ price hikes have been in line with rising wages and increasing supply costs, certain businesses — including many in the fast-food industry — have increased prices at unprecedented rates that have outpaced inflation by a significant margin.
Consumers have noticed these supersized prices at the drive-thru, and they aren’t happy. Fastflation, as it’s come to be known, refers to outsized inflation at fast-food establishments — businesses that have historically aimed to maintain low prices relative to other eateries to better serve working folks on a limited dining budget.
Fast-food price hikes by company: 2020–2024
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, prices in general went up by around 21.5% between December 2019 (prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic issues that followed) and March 2024 (the latest month for which CPI data was available as of this article’s last update).
We looked at the prices of popular menu items at six popular fast-food chains over this same period (McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out Burger, Burger King, and Jack in the Box) and found that only 3 of the 30 menu items we checked didn’t go up in price by more than the inflation rate (and only a single item didn’t go up in price at all).
Below are tables listing menu prices of five popular products from McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out Burger, Burger King, and Jack in the Box fast-food restaurants from the end of 2019 and mid-2024, along with percentage increases.
Note:
Most of the end-of-2019 prices in this article come from archived versions of pages from fastfoodmenuprices.com, an independent company whose human team has been visiting restaurants and collecting real fast-food menu prices in person since 2013. It’s important to note that the data collected by this company may not be 100% accurate.
2024 prices are sourced directly from restaurants’ online menus where possible. For those that required a specific restaurant to be selected to view prices, a Los Angeles location on or near Figueroa Street was selected.
2024 source: Jack in the Box website (Figueroa Street Los Angeles location selected)
Key takeaways
Below are some of the key insights we gleaned from the data examined above. Keep in mind that the following statements apply only to the 30 menu items and six restaurants listed above — not to the fast-food industry in general.
How much have fast-food prices gone up since 2020?
Prices of the items we looked at at the six restaurants listed above went up an average of 77.4% between late December 2019 and mid 2024.
Which fast-food chain raised prices the most?
Across all of the menu items listed for each of the six restaurants checked, McDonald’s raised prices more on average (141.4%) than any of the other five restaurants included in this list.
Which fast-food chain raised prices the least?
Across all of the menu items listed for each of the six restaurants checked,, Jack in the Box raised prices less on average (45%) than any of the other five restaurants included in this list.
Which item went up in price the most?
Of the 30 items checked across all six restaurants, McDonald’s Cheeseburger had the highest percentage price increase, at 215%.
Which item went up in price the LEAST?
Of the 30 items checked across all six restaurants, Jack in the Box’s Two Tacos had the lowest percentage price increase, at 0%.
Which items’ price hikes didn’t outpace inflation?
Only three items out of the 30 checked went up in price by less than the overall inflation rate between the end of 2019 and mid-2024 — Taco Bell’s Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito (19%) and Spicy Potato Soft Taco (19%), and Jack in the Box’s Two Tacos (0%).
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