Cabot Phillips

Sure.

So this all centers on the Small Business Administration's 8A program, which was initially intended to offer support for those businesses that were deemed socially and economically disadvantaged.

Now, under the Biden administration, federal agencies were instructed to make sure that 15% of all government contracts were awarded to businesses operated by minorities or women, meaning billions of taxpayer dollars were given individually.

based on race and gender.

So basically, this was one of the largest DEI programs in the country.

Now, not only was the program intentionally excluding certain people based on race, it was also rife with fraud.

Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak has documented countless cases in which minority-owned businesses

would win a contract and then outsource nearly all of the work to non-minority-owned businesses, pocketing most of the money in the process.

In many other cases, large government contractors like Deloitte or Booz Allen Hamilton would seek out minority-owned businesses to secure contracts on their behalf through the 8A program, and then those smaller businesses would keep a huge chunk of the money while the larger contractor would do all of the work.

On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Small Business held a hearing to address that fraud, and here's what Rosiak had to say about his findings.

You owe it to voters to end this program.

So the process of the government insisting that certain contracts be awarded to these minority or women-owned businesses is referred to as set-asides.

And here's Rosiak testifying about the danger that he says is inherent in these set-aside programs.

So on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve Board voted again to cut interest rates by a quarter point to the 3.5 to 3.75% range.

That means the rates have now come down by almost 2% over the last year and a half.

They're now at their lowest point in more than three years.

So typically rates are raised when inflation is high and then lowered when the labor market is cool.

But ultimately, the Fed board, led by Chair Jerome Powell, viewed the labor market as a more pressing matter.

And they said that these cuts would help get hiring going again and lower unemployment.

Here's Powell explaining their decision and talking about those conflicting issues between the labor market and inflation.