Tractor giant Deere & Co. and the American Farm Bureau Federation reached an agreement that gives farmers the right to repair their own farm equipment or take it to an independent technician. It’s a move that should save farmers time and money and marks a significant settlement in the “right to repair.”

When it comes to technology, manufacturers often limit who has the tools, parts and information to fix it when it breaks. The result: companies get to keep business in house. For instance, until recently, if someone’s MacBook broke, the person would have to take it to the Apple Store and pay a premium to get it fixed.

The right to repair movement pushes companies to make parts, tools and information readily available so the consumer can fix the technology at home or take it to the repair shop of their choice. And while the conversation around the right to repair often centers around consumer electronics, farmers just scored a major victory in the space.

“As you use equipment, we all know at some point in time, there’s going to be problems with it. And we did have problems with having the opportunity to repair our equipment where we wanted to, or even repair it on the farm,” AFBF President Zippy Duvall said at a conference over the weekend.

The issue for farmers has become more pressing as machinery adopted high-tech equipment like software and sensors to maximize agricultural production. Deere has used software locks that only authorized dealers could disable, limiting options and causing delays in repairs.

The Farm Bureau said it took years of hard work to get to this agreement with Deere and hopes the memorandum of understanding will serve as a model for other manufacturers. Those conversations are reportedly already in the works.

The memo between Deere and AFBF said its purpose is to address “right to repair” through the private sector, rather than through legislation or regulation. Deere has been repeatedly sued for allegedly monopolizing the repair market and state and federal lawmakers alike have considered various forms of right-to-repair bills.

In the memo, the Farm Bureau agreed to “refrain from introducing, promoting, or supporting federal or state ‘Right to Repair’ legislation” that goes beyond the current agreement.

As Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tries to become the next House speaker, he is negotiating with his opponents on a series of demands that include plum committee positions, campaign spending and making it easier to vote the speaker out if they aren’t happy with the their performance. But there’s another demand that’s not getting as much attention. The demand is to give members at least 72 hours to read a bill before they vote on it.

Some members contend they don’t always have enough time. For instance, the omnibus spending package that will fund the government through September was 4,155 pages long and covered $1.7 trillion. The details of the bill were released at 2 a.m. Tuesday Dec. 20, 2022, and the Senate voted on it Thursday Dec. 22.

Straight Arrow News went to the White House to ask people visiting from around the country: Should members of Congress have to read a bill before they vote on it? Everyone said yes.

Here are some of the answers:

“It’s common sense.”

“Because how can you vote in support a bill if you haven’t read it first?”

“You should know what you’re voting for. You can’t vote blindly.”

Check out their explanations in the video above.

A new year means making resolutions that likely won’t stick, along with making fantastic predictions that will likely never come true. The latter is exactly what Denmark-based Saxo Bank does each year. We have the most outrageous predictions for 2023 in this week’s Five For Friday. 

#5: Country bans meat production

The global agenda to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is quite a ways away. But to make inroads, Saxo predicts one country is going to make a huge push toward carbon neutrality by unveiling plans to ban all domestic meat production by 2030. Food production is responsible for 35% of global greenhouse gas emissions and meat production creates twice the greenhouse gas emissions of plant-based foods, according to a study published in Nature. Saxo says Sweden could be best positioned to make the pledge after setting a legally-binding target of net-zero emissions by 2045. 

#4: Billionaires form trillion-dollar energy coalition

In recent years, billionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson have set their eyes on colonizing space. But this year, Saxo says the ultra-wealthy will work to address the future of energy. They say it’ll be driven by exploding energy demand, “not just from the current and planned electrification via EV’s of our transportation fleets, but also due to the ongoing digitalisation of human activity and the exponential growth in data storage.” Saxo says tech billionaires will form a trillion-dollar coalition, which would be the biggest research and development mission since the Manhattan Project developed the atomic bomb. They even gave the predicted group a name, Third Stone. 

#3: International tax-haven ban

The International Monetary Fund estimates corporations avoid $500 to $600 billion in taxes each year by parking money in tax havens like the Cayman Islands or Bermuda. Saxo says governments are going to need the missed revenue to fund their agendas, which includes infrastructure and green energy projects. They claim the International Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development will get together and ban tax havens. Saxo believes the move would have a devastating effect on private equity and venture capital firms that rely on the practice to save money. 

#2: Gold goes to $3,000

Last year, Saxo said inflation would hit 15%, but prices stalled before hitting that mark. But with prices still high and the stock market taking hits, Saxo thinks 2023 could be a fantastic year for gold. The investment bank predicts the precious metal will skyrocket to $3,000 per ounce this year. Gold’s highest price in history is just over $2,000, but adjusted for inflation it topped $2,500 in 1980. This prediction has some weight considering all the pontificating about a coming recession, when gold serves as a safe haven. 

#1: Nations implement price and wage controls

With inflation remaining an issue, Saxo predicts governments will make massive moves to stabilize prices. They say 2023 will see some nations institute price and wage controls to avoid destabilization of their economy. But Saxo predicts this will end in disaster by disincentivizing production and not addressing the root causes of inflation. 

Take a look at the predictions from Saxo we highlighted last year to see how they turned out. Spoiler alert, Spotify’s stock did drop considerably but not due to an NFT-based music service. 

President Biden announced his administration is expanding an immigrant parole program for immigrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti. Effective immediately, citizens from those countries who cross the border illegally or arrive at a port of entry unannounced will be deported to Mexico, which has agreed to accept returns of 30,000 people per month.

Under the program, the United States will welcome 30,000 individuals per month who will be allowed to live and work in the United States for two years. But if they try to cross illegally they will not be eligible for the new legal pathway.

Migrants will have to apply through a cellphone app called CBP One and then make an appointment for a meeting at a port of entry. To be approved, applicants will need to pass a security screening, have a financial sponsor in the U.S. and complete vaccinations and other health requirements.

“If you’re trying to leave Cuba, Nicaragua or Haiti, or have agreed to begin a journey to America, do not, do not just show up at the border. Stay where you are and apply legally from there,” President Biden said.

This announcement comes as mayors and governors who are dealing with the immigration influx at the local level are asking for more help from the federal government. That includes the Mayor of El Paso, Texas who has migrants sleeping in the streets, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams who has accepted bus loads of migrants but said his resources are being strained.

The president pointed his finger at Republicans, and said Congress needs to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

“It’s clear that immigration is a political issue that extreme Republicans are always going to run on. But now they have a choice, they can keep using immigration to try to score political points or they can help solve the problem,” the president said.

The president will make his first trip to the border this Sunday, when he goes to El Paso. He said he will assess border enforcement operations and meet with local officials so they can tell him in person what they need.

The president and his Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said the border is not open. That statement has been heavily criticized by Republicans, Democrats and nonpartisans who are impacted by the immigration influx. The pair also urged people in Central America who are considering the journey north not to listen to coyotes, or human smugglers, who say they can get them to America safely for thousands of dollars.

Customs and Border Protection put out a release that said human smuggling is on the rise in South Texas in the Rio Grande Valley. Agents at Border Patrol checkpoints have discovered immigrants being smuggled in cars and tractor trailers, the same tactics smugglers have been using for years.

Big Tech continues its big jobs shedding in 2023 as two major players announce deep cuts to start the year. Amazon is axing 18,000 corporate employees, nearly double previous estimates, while Salesforce announced a 10% staff reduction impacting 8,000 workers.

Both companies cite the current economy and over-hiring the past few years as factors. Amazon’s job cut is easily the largest in the company’s history. Amazon doubled its workforce from 2019 to 2022, peaking above 1.6 million employees. Salesforce also roughly doubled its employee count from 2019 to 2022.

“This year’s review has been more difficult given the uncertain economy and that we’ve hired rapidly over the last several years,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in a message announcing layoffs Wednesday. The majority of eliminations will come from the Amazon Stores and People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) teams.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about how we came to this moment,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff wrote to his employees. “As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that.”

Benioff has previously aired frustrations on the company’s Slack channel that workers hired during the pandemic have “much lower productivity.”

The New Year layoffs follow the Big Tech bleeding of 2022. Layoff tracker layoffs.fyi reports that 1,018 tech companies laid off 153,678 employees in 2022. Analysts expect cuts to continue in 2023, especially as many predict a recession is coming amid more Federal Reserve tightening and weakening market conditions.

Despite the clear warning signs in the economy, jobs data still paints a strong picture. The latest job openings report released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that on the last day of November, job openings were little changed at an enormous 10.5 million, with hiring increasing in sectors like health care and social assistance. December’s jobs report, due Friday, is also expected to show the U.S. adding hundreds of thousands of jobs for the month.

Illinois could eliminate cash bail as part of the SAFE-T Act. The Illinois Supreme Court has issued a stay on the measure until the court hears arguments on it. 

Under the SAFE-T Act, if an individual is arrested, a judge would decide whether the accused awaits trial in jail or not. Pretrial detention would no longer depend on whether that individual could afford to post bail. The current system has tied finances to freedom, contributing to economic disparity in the criminal justice system.

The ACLU of Illinois has supported the SAFE-T Act.

“People are stuck in jail for days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years at a time, not because of any threat to another person that they’ve been found to pose, not because they are likely to flee from prosecution, but simply because they cannot afford to pay an arbitrary amount of money that’s been the price tag that’s been set on their freedom,” Ruddell said.

Research indicates that pretrial detention detrimentally affects people. Statistically, the longer a person is in jail pretrial, the more likely they are to be rearrested later on, according to a recent Core Correctional Solutions study.

“It doesn’t take long for people to begin suffering negative consequences like job loss,” Ruddell said. “if you were arrested and held in jail, and you didn’t show up at your job the next day, you probably wouldn’t have that job for very long.”

While proponents of the change say eliminating cash bail is a solution, state attorneys from 65 counties filed a lawsuit over the legislation. A Kankakee County judge ruled parts of the law unconstitutional, so a cash bail system will remain in the counties listed on the lawsuit.

Jeffrey Clayton, the executive director of the American Bail Coalition, agreed with the perspective that eliminating cash bail is contradicts the state constitution.

“It’s a question of whether we want people to have at least the opportunity to get out or whether we’re just going to condemn people based on their future behavior and say, ‘We just think they’re too dangerous to let out,’” Clayton said. “That’s never been really the constitutional tradition in the United States until probably the 1980s during the Reagan administration.” 

According to Article 1, Section 9 of the Illinois Constitution, “all persons shall be bailable by sufficient sureties,” with exceptions. 

Cash bail is one kind of surety, a guarantee that the accused shows up for trial – even if only to get their bail money back. Though there are many iterations of a surety if someone doesn’t have the cash on hand. For example, with bail collateral, someone can offer their property in place of money.

“For the average person, you want the right to bail,” Clayton said. “You don’t want the state to say we just don’t like Jeff, and he’s going to jail like we don’t believe in that.”

Other critics – including leaders in law enforcement – have speculated about the correlation between bail reform and crime rates. They warn about the risk of releasing people who will become repeat offenders because a judge decides not to detain them before trial.

While crime did increase in New York since the state’s bail reform measure passed in 2019, the connection is not clear. 

The New York City Comptroller pointed out that “the share of released people awaiting trial who are rearrested remained roughly the same before and after implementation of bail reforms,” according to state data.

Also, the crime spike wasn’t specific to states with bail reform. It was nationwide, during a pandemic.

Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting show officials worried the market could undermine the Fed’s efforts to bring down prices. Despite rumblings of a Fed pivot, the minutes revealed the committee’s resolve in bringing down inflation, including officials’ consensus on keeping interest rates high through 2023.

“Participants noted that, because monetary policy worked importantly through financial markets, an unwarranted easing in financial conditions, especially if driven by a misperception by the public of the Committee’s reaction function, would complicate the Committee’s effort to restore price stability,” the minutes read.

Markets have previously priced in a Fed pivot later in 2023, where the Fed would start cutting its interest rate amid a weakening economy. Basically, the Fed’s statement reads that if markets don’t believe the Fed will be as restrictive as it says it will be, it could lessen the impact of those restrictions on bringing down inflation.

In November, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge showed a 5.5% annual increase, well above the 2% target but below June’s 7% peak. As the Fed has raised its benchmark interest rate to cool prices, many Fed officials note how strong the labor market has remained throughout.

That said, more than two-thirds of economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal are betting the U.S will have a recession in 2023. They cite red flags like dwindling household savings, the housing market decline and banks tightening lending standards, all which tie back to the Fed hiking interest rates.

According to Fed data, a recession occurs around every time bank tightening standards have peaked the past 30 years.

But in his last press conference, Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted the committee is not debating what type of recession Fed monetary tightening could have. The word recession is only mentioned three times in the December meeting minutes, with staff noting the possibility of a recession in the next year is plausible.

When a new party takes a majority in Congress, like Republicans are doing today, the first bills they introduce are meant to set their priorities for the next two years. In this case, it is also meant to send a message to the Biden administration as to where it can expect push back.

Here’s a look at what Republicans plan to bring forward in the first week of the 118th Congress:

Taxes

Republicans will bring up a bill to rescind $72 billion given to the IRS for tax enforcement under the Inflation Reduction Act. Republicans said that money would have funded the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents and drastically increased the number of audits performed on middle class families. Democrats contend the money will go to wealthy tax cheats. 

China

House Republicans want to set up a select committee on strategic competition between the U.S. and China.

They will also try to ban selling oil from the U.S. strategic reserve to any entity that is owned, controlled or influenced by the Chinese Communist Party. In July of 2022, 5 million barrels from the U.S. strategic reserve, released to help lower prices in the U.S. were exported to Europe and Asia.

Immigration

The Border Safety and Security Act would give the Homeland Security Secretary the authority to deny migrants entry to achieve quote “operational control” of the border. They will also introduce a bill that would require the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to notify ICE and local law enforcement if an immigrant in the country illegally tries to buy a gun. 

Abortion

They’ll introduce a bill that requires healthcare providers to give medical treatment to any baby that survives an abortion. They also want to permanently codify the Hyde amendment which prohibits federal money from funding abortions.

Of course anything House Republicans pass needs to be approved by the Senate and signed by the president, so it’s unlikely any bills challenging the Democratic agenda will become law.

A series of tweets from China’s new foreign minister seem to signal a possible softening in China-U.S. relations. Qin Gang, a trusted aide to leader Xi Jinping and outgoing Chinese ambassador to the U.S., offered enthusiastic praise of the U.S. on Tuesday.

“Going forward, I will continue to care about and support the growth of China-US relations, encourage dialogue, mutual understanding and affinity between the two peoples, work for mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation between our two countries,” Qin tweeted.

I have been deeply impressed by so many hard-working, friendly and talented American people that I met.

— Qin Gang 秦刚 (@AmbQinGang) January 3, 2023

The sentiment comes at a time when relations between the two countries are relatively strained, from Taiwan to trade. Talks between the two powerhouses frosted over following former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August, an island Beijing hopes to eventually control. Beijing responded to Pelosi’s visit by conducting military drills near and around the island.

Repeated U.S. statements of support for Taiwan have contributed to “the biggest tinderbox” in bilateral relations, Qin told NPR. President Joe Biden has said the U.S. would come to Taiwan’s defense if faced with an “unprecedented attack” by China.

As U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken readies for his visit to China in January, he said he has already connected with Qin on “maintaining open lines of communication” they experienced during Qin’s ambassadorship.

As for trade, while the U.S. imports more from China than any other country, relations there have continued to stiffen; from tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump and sustained by Biden; to the CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act, aimed at lessening reliance on Chinese goods, particularly semiconductors.

At least in public statements, it appears China is seeking a more stable relationship with the U.S. this year. To close out the more tumultuous 2022, Qin wrote in an op-ed, “China-U.S. relations should not be a zero-sum game where one side out-competes the other or thrives at the expense of the other.”

The Democratic Speaker of Oregon’s state House of Representatives, Tina Kotek, helped raise the minimum wage and pass statewide rent control. She’s slated to become one of the country’s first two openly lesbian governors.

Kotek takes office in 2023, and she said her top priority is to tackle homelessness. Multnomah County, which includes Portland, reported more than 5,000 people in its homeless population this year.

“I will declare a homelessness state of emergency and work with urgency to help Oregonians to move off the street,” Kotek said.

Her plan involves an executive order that will set up a 10-year plan for building enough affordable housing to meet the need.

With education, Kotek wants to expand access to pre-kindergarten, set a standard for all students to be able to read by third grade and reduce time spent on standardized testing. 

Kotek supports further gun control measures, such as raising the age to purchase semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21 and banning people with hate crime convictions from owning guns.

During her hard-fought, three-way election campaign, Kotek defended measure 110, which decriminalized small amounts of hard drugs statewide. People found in possession of the drugs can pay a fine or undergo addiction screening. Her competitors said the measure failed and made the addiction crisis worse. Kotek said the state needs to provide more treatment programs for this to be effective in addressing addiction.