TRUMP WARNS ASSAD: White House Says Syria Potentially Prepping Another Chemical Attack

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The Trump administration said late Monday that it had discovered evidence that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad could be planning another chemical weapons attack.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement that “The United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.”

Spicer added that the activities resembled preparations for an April chemical weapons attack that was blamed on Damascus.

“As we have previously stated, the United States is in Syria to eliminate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” Spicer concluded. “If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”

The White House did not detail what prompted the warning. Several State Department officials typically involved in coordinating such announcements told the Associated Press they were caught completely off guard by the warning, which didn’t appear to be discussed in advance with other national security agencies. (Read more from “TRUMP WARNS ASSAD: White House Says Syria Potentially Prepping Another Chemical Attack” HERE)

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Study: Islamic Extremists, Leftists Most Threaten European Jews

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A comprehensive study released this month, titled “Antisemitic violence in Europe,” provides insight into the the continent’s growing anti-Semitism problem and the perpetrators of anti-Jewish attacks in France, the UK, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Russia.

The University of Oslo Center for Research on Extremism finds that Islamic extremists, followed by left-wing extremists, are the most common perpetrators of anti-Semitic crimes, according to a survey conducted among the countries’ Jewish populations.

Respondents in France, Sweden, Germany, and the UK “most often perceived the perpetrator(s)” of an anti-Semitic attack to be “someone with a Muslim extremist view.”

The study quashed the theory promulgated by some “anti-Zionists” that somehow anti-Semitic violence is caused by Israel and its occasional clashes with its Arab neighbors. The university study found that there is no “direct causal link” between Arab-Israeli feuds and the rise of European violence against Jews, but it sometimes acts as an enabler of violence for individuals who already hold extremist views.

The climate of anti-Semitism in European countries has forced Jews there to flee to Israel and America. Last year, 5,000 Jews left France for Israel. When surveyed, one-third of European Jews said they were considering leaving Europe.

As the Jewish population in Europe continues to decline, Muslim populations continue to surge. This is largely due to two factors: Islamic migration into Europe, and the fact that Muslim families have over three children per couple. In 2015, some 1.3 million migrants arrived in Europe from the Middle East and North Africa.

An ADL global survey found that 74 percent of individuals in North Africa and the Middle East hold anti-Semitic attitudes. A Pew global attitudes survey found similar results. In Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, and the Palestinian territories, less than five percent of those surveyed had “favorable views” of Jewish people. (For more from the author of “Study: Islamic Extremists, Leftists Most Threaten European Jews” please click HERE)

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Democrats Need Only These 3 Things to Control the House in 2018

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As we continue to wait for the Democrats actually to win something, it would be wise of Republicans not to get too cocky in response to the Left’s laughable “moral victories.” There absolutely is a path to the Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms. It’s just a matter of whether they’re capable of implementing it. They may be, or they may not.

In fact, a Democrat House in 2018 is only these three easy steps away:

1. Dump Nancy Pelosi.

She’s unlikable, a career politician, scatter-brained, and from uber-left San Francisco. Other than that, she’s the perfect face for the Democratic Party — if you’re a GOP consultant. Seriously, if you’re a wary Republican in the uncertain age of Trump looking to concoct the perfect foil, the only thing Pelosi is missing is being a white male. But as the song goes that Trump likes to play at his rallies, you can’t always get what you want. However, if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. And Republicans need Pelosi as a bogeyman to offset Trump’s scare value for Democrats, in what will be a turn-out-the-base election. As long as Pelosi is there to be the Republicans’ piñata, Paul Ryan will continue to be speaker of the House.

2. Stop talking/pursuing impeachment.

While dumping Pelosi is a necessary start, it doesn’t close the sale for Democrats. Sometimes in sports, a road environment is so raucous that it fires up the road team every bit as much as the home squad, thus creating a boomerang effect. This is what the issue of impeachment is for the Democrats.

Sure, it ignites the 15 percent of counties that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. But it also ignites the 85 percent of counties across the country that didn’t, too. So it’s a net loss for Democrats — a big one, especially since these are district and not statewide elections.

It’s no secret that Republicans are much better at campaigning on their platform than actually governing on it, which is why they’re always at war with their own base. However, the impeachment issue is so flammable that it will cause the GOP’s base problem to all but disappear. Democrats would be much wiser to let independent counsel Robert Mueller do his work, then sit back and see how the GOP navigates the choppy seas of what its corporatist donors want vs. the reforms its base desires.

3. The GOP passes a health care bill that doesn’t substantively cut the rising costs of premiums, but does cut Medicaid.

This would be like Republican leadership actually writing Democrats’ 2018 campaign commercials next year for them, and it appears as if the Republicans are hell-bent (literally) on doing exactly that. Attaching your brand to legislation that doesn’t immediately relieve consumers suffering under Obamacare, but then promises future cuts to a program originally established for poor folks, literally fulfills every Democrat talking point ever. That’s not even political malfeasance, but more like a political Jonestown for Republicans.

How likely is it that Democrats will wake up and carry out these first two easy steps? Until Democrats first confront the fact that they’re so far left they’re scaring the (literal) hell out of much of America, Republicans will escape many of the consequences of their own betrayals. (For more from the author of “Democrats Need Only These 3 Things to Control the House in 2018” please click HERE)

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With Senators Like These, Obamacare Repeal Was Always a Tease

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This week will be marked by raging debate over the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the Senate’s version of Obamacare-lite that is drawing a swarm of criticism from conservatives for failing to repeal Obamacare and from moderate and liberal Republicans for going too far toward repealing Obamacare. Over the weekend, several U.S. senators clarified their position on the bill – casting doubts on the feasibility of its passage in its current form.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., elaborated on his opposition to the current version of the BCRA in an op-ed published at the New York times, explaining that “it relies too heavily on government spending, and ignores the role that the private sector can and should play.”

“Once again, a simple solution is obvious,” Johnson writes. “Loosen up regulations and mandates, so that Americans can choose to purchase insurance that suits their needs and that they can afford.”

“Like many other senators, I had hoped that this was where things were headed during the last several weeks as the Republican bill was discussed. We’re disappointed that the discussion draft turns its back on this simple solution, and goes with something far too familiar: throwing money at the problem.”

Johnson was joined in his opposition to the bill last week by Senators Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rand Paul, R-Ky. All have said they are open to voting for the BCRA if certain improvements are made. In an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Paul said that he would “consider partial repeal” if the Senate were to reach an “impasse.” Senator Cruz has offered an amendment to permit insurers to sell plans that are not compliant with Obamacare regulations, in an effort to allow insurance companies to give greater choice to consumers and drive down prices.

Senator Lee has made his vote conditional on an “opt-out provision,” acknowledging that other attempts at compromise from his position of full repeal have failed to move the liberal Republicans in the Senate.

“Conservatives have compromised on not repealing, on spending levels, tax credits, subsidies, corporate bailouts, Medicaid, and the Obamacare regulations. That is, on every substantive question in the bill,” Lee wrote Friday. “Having conceded to my moderate colleagues on all of the above, I now ask only that the bill be amended to include an opt-out provision, for states or even just for individuals.”

The liberal Republicans are wavering on the bill for vastly different reasons. Senator Dean Heller, R-Nev., declared his opposition to the bill during a press conference Friday, saying, “This bill would mean a loss of coverage for millions of Americans, and many Nevadans.” The contentious issue for these Republicans are worries that rolling back Medicaid expansion will cause some Americans to lose their insurance coverage as an entitlement is taken away. Senators Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Bill Cassidy, R-La., are among the moderates expressing concerns.

Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, is waiting for the Congressional Budget Office score of the bill before making a final decision. ‘‘I have very serious concerns about the bill,’’ she said on ABC’s ‘‘This Week,’’ acknowledging that the CBO score ‘‘will be so important.’’ The CBO is expected to release its score of the Senate bill later today.

In the same interview, Sen. Collins objected to defunding Planned Parenthood in the BCRA, saying, “It makes absolutely no sense to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood.” The bill would block Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood for one year. Eliminating that provision would further alienate conservative senators who have made defunding Planned Parenthood a condition of their support. Taking the provision out will alienate Sen. Collins and other liberals.

As these battles play out, other senators remain undecided or silent. Still others don’t know what to think. Senator Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, is polling her constituents for their thoughts before taking an official position.

The bottom line is that intense negotiations on this bill will dominate the work of the U.S. Senate this week. The CBO score will complicate the matter. In all likelihood, the CBO will project that millions of Americans will lose their current health insurance coverage, just as it predicted (somewhat inaccurately) would happen in the House American Health Care Act. (For more from the author of “With Senators Like These, Obamacare Repeal Was Always a Tease” please click HERE)

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Corker Threatens Gulf Allies on Behalf of Terror-Friendly Qatar

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On Monday, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., threatened to choke off arms sales to U.S. Gulf allies because they are pressuring Qatar on terror financing. In a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Corker promised to shut down all arms sales to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) if it does not immediately “resolve the current dispute” with Qatar.

Corker has a long history of supporting initiatives for Qatar. His latest action on behalf of the oil-rich nation follows a disturbing pattern of carrying water for Doha.

Several Middle Eastern nations have decided to boycott the nation of Qatar, highlighting its worrisome support for terrorist organizations. They have released 13 mandates for Qatar, which call for the country to stop its close relationships with the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida, among other jihadi outfits. The Arab nations are also demanding that Turkish and Iranian influences be removed from the region and that Qatar shut down its Al Jazeera media network. The demands are very much in line with protecting American interests and putting pressure on U.S. adversaries.

And President Trump appears to support the initiative, as he recently labeled Qatar “a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”

When in a series of tweets, the president accurately described Qatar as a state funder of terror, Corker seemingly mocked Trump to reporters, shaking his head and asking: “The president?”

It appears that Corker is not acting out of concern for more advanced armaments entering the Middle East (he recently approved a $100 billion-plus arms deal with Saudi Arabia), but seemingly as an activist for Qatari interests. The Tennessee senator has in the past lobbied Obama officials for arms sales to the Gulf state.

Last year, Corker personally lobbied Obama national security adviser Susan Rice on the merits of selling 72 F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft to Qatar.

Al-Monitor reports that Corker “urged her” to let a proposed arms sale through and dismissed concerns that the massive fighter jet deal could upset Israel’s regional Qualitative Military Edge (QME).

“I want the administration to bring forth the Qatar sales, and I’ve met with the White House toward that end,” Corker told Al-Monitor in March, 2016. “I support it and hope that they’re going to be forthcoming.”

In January 2016, he publicly pushed for Qatar’s fighter jets, asking the White House to accelerate sales to Doha.

In early June, Corker told Al Jazeera (the Qatar-controlled media network) that the U.S. should not encourage the embargo of Qatar. “We have got to deal with all of the people in the region,” Corker said. “We have got some assets in Qatar that I visited not too long ago that are very important to us.”

Corker is infamously known in Republican circles as being the man who delivered a mechanism for President Obama to approve the Iran nuclear deal without the consent of Congress. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Corker authored the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015. His bill torched the treaty provision in the Constitution, allowing for President Obama to forge an agreement with the world’s foremost terror sponsor. The Treaty Clause, found in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution, requires that two-thirds of Senate support for any treaties made by the president with foreign nations. (For more from the author of “Corker Threatens Gulf Allies on Behalf of Terror-Friendly Qatar” please click HERE)

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Religious Liberty Wins Big at the Supreme Court

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A big win today for religious liberty from the Supreme Court. In a sweeping 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the First Amendment. The case was Trinity Lutheran v. Comer.

Missouri offered recycled tires to schools for safer playgrounds. Missouri said that Trinity Lutheran School couldn’t even have used tires. Why? Because it is run by a church.

Keeping kids safe doesn’t spread the Gospel. There is no “compelling state interest” in leaving religious school playgrounds more dangerous than public ones.

Chief Justice John Roberts knew what to think about banning an ordinary public benefit like safety equipment from a school just because it’s Christian. He called it “odious to our Constitution.”

Here’s a second piece of (maybe) good news. The Court today decided to hear Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Colorado fined baker Jack Phillips for refusing to decorate a gay wedding cake.

Mississippi’s Religious Freedom Act

A third piece of good news from the lower courts: Last week a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel lifted an injunction. It had blocked Mississippi’s “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act.”

Mississippi’s 2016 law is the best in any state. It provides the broadest protections for gay marriage dissenters. It guards those with three specific beliefs:

Marriage is the union of one man and one woman;
Sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage
Man or woman refers to an individual’s immutable biological sex.

The law gives religious organizations new protections. Government may not force them to provide goods and services for a gay wedding. It can’t punish them for hiring believers who agree with their teachings. They don’t have to offer married student housing to gay married couples. They can’t be banned from running foster care or adoption agencies for their marriage policies.

Individuals also receive new protections. Government can’t punish:

Traditional believers who wish to be adoptive or foster parents.
Medical and other professionals who won’t take part in sex reassignment, fertility services, or psychological counseling.
Business owners who decline to provide goods and services for weddings.
State employees who express their beliefs. (If Georgia had passed such a law Atlanta fire chief Kelvin Cochran would still have his job.)

The 5th Circuit three-man panel of judges did not rule on the substance. Instead they ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. Merely feeling “triggered” or stigmatized doesn’t count as a harm.

The first time a wedding photographer refuses a client, however, the law will likely be back on trial. (An aside: the law’s chances of surviving under the current Court would be stronger if it protected both gay marriage supporters and dissenters.)

he plaintiffs have requested that the whole 5th circuit review the three-judge ruling. But if this ruling stands Trump will have more time to appoint another Gorsuch to the court.

An Insight Into the Supreme Court

The good news is the Trinity Lutheran victory shows us the current Court is more supportive of religious liberty than many of us feared.

Justice Elana Kagan joined the majority opinion without any reserve. Justice Breyer wrote his own concurring opinion limiting his judgement to playground resurfacing programs and not all government benefits.

Only Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginbsurg dissented. In Justice Sotomayor’s dissent, she warned of almost apocalyptic consequences:

This ruling, “weakens this country’s longstanding commitment to a separation of church and state beneficial to both,” she wrote, “If this separation means anything, it means that the government cannot, or at the very least need not, tax its citizens and turn that money over to houses of worship. The court today blinds itself to the outcome this history requires and leads us instead to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.”

If so, it’s a good thing.

If religious freedom means anything it is that the government may not exclude us based on our faith. It may not tell Muslims they can’t build a mosque. It may not tell a church “Our firemen won’t protect your buildings.” It may not tell a religious school that their children’s safety doesn’t matter. (For more from the author of “Religious Liberty Wins Big at the Supreme Court” please click HERE)

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Court Partly Reinstates Trump Travel Ban, Fall Arguments Set

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The Supreme Court is letting a limited version of the Trump administration ban on travel from six mostly Muslim countries to take effect, a victory for President Donald Trump in the biggest legal controversy of his young presidency.

The court said Monday the ban on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen could be enforced as long as they lack a “credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.” The justices will hear arguments in the case in October.

Trump said last week that the ban would take effect 72 hours after being cleared by courts. (Read more from “Court Partly Reinstates Trump Travel Ban, Fall Arguments Set” HERE)

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Planned Parenthood Was Jon Ossoff’s Death Star

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There are many lessons Democrats should learn from Jon Ossoff’s expensive flame-out. (And they probably won’t.) But the most important might be this: Cozying up to Planned Parenthood is a great way to lose.

Let’s start by myth-busting. Whatever the Democrats said, Georgia’s Sixth District was not solidly Republican. Susan B. Anthony List’s political consultant Frank Cannon says: “Let’s not rewrite the narrative now that it’s inconvenient for the Democrats. This was not a deep red district that returned to its roots. The Democrats were attempting to flip a suburban district. One where Trump was far less popular than in most Republican districts. On paper, it should have worked.”

The former incumbent Tom Price used to win it by very large margins. That’s largely because the Democrats never contested it. Hillary Clinton came close to carrying it, losing by only 1.5 percent. It was an open seat. The district is filled with white suburban college graduates. That includes lots of moms. Those are the kind of voters whom the Democrats think they can scare. Remember the phony “War on Women”?

Bottom line: If Democrats are going to take back the House, they must win in districts like this. That’s why the Left threw everything it had at Karen Handel.

The Democrat’s Death Star

Planned Parenthood was one of the Democrats biggest weapons. In fact, it’s their Death Star.

Jon Ossoff leapt into bed with the nation’s biggest abortion business. He held special roundtables with women. The topic? The “scandal” that Handel wanted to cut off Planned Parenthood’s subsidies from the taxpayer. As the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported, “Democrat Jon Ossoff held a roundtable Friday with women’s health advocates and breast cancer survivors as his campaign stepped up the attack on Republican Karen Handel’s stint at a breast-cancer charity.”

Ossoff relentlessly went after Handel in high profile debates. Her crime? Trying to keep anti-cancer money given to the Susan G. Komen Foundation from going to Planned Parenthood’s coffers. “She imposed her own views and cut off funding for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood,” Ossoff charged in their June 6 debate.

His campaign ran an attack ad calling Handel’s stance “unforgiveable.” This wasn’t an outside group mind you. It was the Ossoff campaign itself. This candidate didn’t just call in the Death Star. He practically lived on it. (Which is just as well, since he didn’t live in the district.)

Selling Baby Parts Doesn’t Win Votes

The national media has been slow to note the significance of Ossoff’s loss for how Planned Parenthood’s extreme abortion stance plays out politically in purplish places. But the local media extensively reported on the sharp contrast that emerged between Ossoff and Handel on the abortion issue: “A split on abortion is one of the starkest contrasts between the two candidates in the nationally-watched June 20 runoff to represent suburban Atlanta’s 6th District. And both candidates are banking that their positions will energize their supporters in the final stretch of the race.”

Planned Parenthood bet the farm on Ossoff, pouring more than $800,000 into his election. It was his second-largest financial backer, after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. (Again, not much money came to Ossoff from inside his actual district.)

The result? Georgia voters just elected another pro-life woman to Congress. Whether the corporate media will report it or not, the political class must take heed: If you want to win the votes of ordinary Americans, Planned Parenthood makes a terrible running mate. You can’t win House elections by blasting the districts from orbit. (For more from the author of “Planned Parenthood Was Jon Ossoff’s Death Star” please click HERE)

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On “Travel Ban,” Supreme Court Backs Away From Brink of a Constitutional Crisis

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As the AP reports, the U.S. Supreme Court has thrown out most of the lower court decisions that crippled President Trump’s immigration decisions (that is, his “travel ban”). This is good news not just for fighting terrorism. It’s huge for fans of the separation of powers, the rule of law, national security, and democratic lawmaking. Read David French’s excellent legal analysis of why each of those claims is true.

Essentially, the lower courts vastly overreached the legitimate function of jurists. Their job was to scrutinize the laws to see whether President Trump’s decision to restrict travel from terrorist-ridden hellholes was Constitutional. Instead, they regurgitated his campaign rhetoric and pored over his Twitter archive to scrutinize his alleged motives. They invented imaginary rights for foreign residents. They granted legal “standing” to law firms who recruited foreign clients. Attempting to reverse the effects of a presidential election, they usurped the legitimate powers of the president.

The executive branch has broad Constitutional and legislated authority to protect national security. Immigrants have zero presumptive right to enter the United States. It would be perfectly Constitutional, though stupid, to admit them based on aesthetics (that is, a “Melania” standard).

Avoiding a Constitutional Crisis

Had the Supreme Court followed the lower courts’ lawless precedent on this case, it should have provoked a Constitutional crisis — in the form of GOP-backed bills to challenge courts’ jurisdiction, or term-limit SCOTUS members. I think that even the liberal justices on the Supreme Court saw that, which is why most of them blinked and backed away from the brink.

With many crucial issues on the docket, that crisis still might come. There is just one way to avoid it: If the president stays true to his campaign to appoint only strict constructionists to the courts. Or else if conservatives cravenly surrender.

I wrote before the 2016 election that the race was mostly about the courts. Since Roe v. Wade, the left has relied on the judicial branch to override voters’ will on crucial issues. Progressives wield vast, overweening power. They micromanage the media. They smother and censor the colleges. They terrorize big business via pressure campaigns.

Still, sometimes all that doesn’t turn out to be enough. We saw that in the recent Georgia election: Jon Ossoff called in Planned Parenthood as his Death Star, and still lost to the pro-life Karen Handel.

The Left’s All Purpose Plan for Overriding the Voters

So where they can’t get the votes, as they couldn’t on same-sex marriage, leftists follow this playbook:

Pretend that the U.S. Constitution enshrines whatever “basic rights” that academic elites invented five minutes ago — even those that would have horrified every one of the U.S. Founders, down to the last pallid Deist.

Claim that “international norms” from foreign courts or the United Nations have binding force in basic American laws.

Convince Democrat appointees on lower courts to overturn or stay a democratically enacted law. Or a legitimate use of presidential authority. Because it violates those invented rights.

Pretend that each case is the same as Brown v. Board of Education. And each of their opponents is no better than a bigoted Southern sheriff. Imply that those who put up a fight will end up as disgraced and marginalized as white segregationists.

Win in the Supreme Court by a narrow margin. Then despite the learned dissents by distinguished jurists…

Pretend that anyone who still opposes the decision is an uncivilized Neanderthal. Their organizations are “hate groups.” Except if they’re Muslim. Those groups are exempt, because they’re so peaceful that we don’t want to provoke them.

Use this brand-new consensus to browbeat churches into rewriting the Gospel. Then presto-chango, 2000 years of Christian belief and practice is discredited.

Rinse and repeat.

This strategy worked amazingly well on same-sex marriage. The narrowly decided and crudely anti-Constitutional Obergefell decision is now being foamed into every nook and corner of the culture like toxic asbestos insulation. “Mainline” churchmen (Catholic and Protestant alike) are falling over themselves to accommodate it. They’re wearing out holes in their clerical shirts from patting themselves on the back for groveling before Caesar.

We Will Fight in the Wedding Chapels

But the same strategy backfired on abortion. The pro-life movement is gaining in power, popularity, and influence. Even the socially laissez faire President Trump seems like a genuine convert on the topic.

So there’s no need to despair. And no excuse to retreat into some “Benedict Option” ghetto, which would always be just one court decision away from the cops coming to remove Christian kids from their parents’ custody. Which is happening not in North Korea but in Canada.

We should welcome lawful decisions, and fight lawless ones tooth and nail. We cannot even give up on seemingly implausible goals like overturning Obergefell, and returning marriage jurisdiction to the states. That decision, as Justice Roberts (hardly a right-wing extremist) warned, planted religious liberty time bombs throughout our legal system. Christianity cannot coexist with legal same-sex marriage forever. One of them or the other will end up legally hamstrung. America needs to pick between them.

Yes fixing Obergefell seems out of reach and hopelessly unpopular. But then, in 1973, Roe v. Wade seemed untouchable too. (For more from the author of “On “Travel Ban,” Supreme Court Backs Away From Brink of a Constitutional Crisis” please click HERE)

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New Study of Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Says It Costs Jobs

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Seattle’s $15-an-hour minimum wage law has cost the city jobs, according to a study released Monday that contradicted another new study published last week.

A University of Washington team studying the law’s effects found that the law has boosted pay in low-wage jobs since it took effect in 2015, but that it also caused a 9 percent reduction in hours worked, The Seattle Times reported. For an average low-wage Seattle worker, that’s a loss of about $125 per month, the study said.

“If you’re a low-skilled worker with one of those jobs, $125 a month is a sizable amount of money,” said Mark Long, one of the authors. “It can be the difference between being able to pay your rent and not being able to pay your rent.” (Read more from “New Study of Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Says It Costs Jobs” HERE)

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