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It turns out 2025 isn’t the year for legalized sports betting in Georgia.Efforts to send a state constitutional amendment to voters failed Thursday in the state legislature, as neither the amendment nor a bill laying out details ever came to a vote in the House.Voters in Missouri narrowly approved sports betting in a 2024 referendum, making it the 39th state to legalize the practice. But like in Georgia, legalization faces high hurdles in the 10 remaining states that bar sports gambling.Thursday was the deadline for each Georgia chamber to pass its own legislation to the opposite chamber. The measures still could be revived in the last month of the session, but it much less likely. Lawmakers could still consider the measures in the 2026 half of Georgia’s two-year session.“It came in late and I guess people just weren’t there yet,” said House Higher Education Committee Chairman Chuck Martin, an Alpharetta Republican, referring to a bill and constitutional amendment that were introduced only last week.“We’ll keep working with people and trying to do what’s in the best interest of the state,” Martin said, saying a referendum was still possible in on the November 2026 ballot.Sports wagering is backed by Atlanta’s professional sports teams, business groups and Republican Lt. Gov Burt Jones. But those powerful proponents have struggled to pass a law in the seven legislative sessions since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 struck down a federal law that banned commercial sports betting in most states.In Minnesota, a proposal failed on a 6-6- tie vote in a Senate committee on Feb. 13, even though the sponsor said his bill was supported by the state’s 11 Native American tribes, which operate casinos, the state’s two horse racing tracks, charitable gambling operations and local sports teams.California voters rejected wagering in 2022. A proposal to legalize sports betting passed the Texas House in 2023, but the state Senate spurned the proposal.One state where the issue is making progress is Hawaii, where the state House on Tuesday passed a bill that would legalize online sports betting.Missouri is currently making rules and taking applications from sportsbooks, with the launch of legal betting delayed until late summer or early fall.Without Democratic votes in Georgia, a constitutional amendment couldn’t achieve the two-thirds majorities needs to pass the state House and Senate.Republicans in the state are far from unified. Some GOP lawmakers oppose sports betting, warning that legalizing sports betting will provide a pathway to addiction, especially for younger gamblers.House Minority Whip Sam Park, a Lawrenceville Democrat, said Wednesday that his party wants to prioritize use of any tax money for prekindergarten. That was part of the constitutional amendment proposed by Martin’s committee.Supporters have argued that Georgians should get a chance to vote, arguing many already bet on sports illegally.“I believe strongly and Georgians by wide margins agree with me that this change will not only bring in much needed revenue to educate our youngest learners but also provide consumer protections that don’t exist in today’s black market,” State Rep. Marcus Wiedower, the Watkinsville Republican who sponsored the measure, said in a statement.Of the 38 states that currently allow sports betting, some allow only in-person bets, although most allow electronic betting from anywhere. Jeff Amy, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday establishing a government reserve of bitcoin, a key marker in the cryptocurrency’s journey towards possible mainstream acceptance.Under Trump’s new order, the U.S. government will retain the estimated 200,000 Bitcoin it’s already seized in criminal and civil proceedings, according to Trump’s “crypto czar” David Sacks.“The U.S. will not sell any Bitcoin deposited into the Reserve. It will be kept as a store of value. The Reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called ‘digital gold,'” Sacks said on social media.The executive order calls for a “full accounting” of the government’s Bitcoin holdings, which Sacks said have never been fully audited. He added that the U.S. government has previously sold off about 195,000 Bitcoin over the last decade for $366 million. He said those Bitcoins would be worth about $17 billion if the government hadn’t sold them.Sacks said the order allows for the Treasury and Commerce Departments “to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional Bitcoin.”Once a skeptic who said a few years ago that Bitcoin “seems like a scam,” Trump has embraced digital currencies and leaned into his unofficial role as the “crypto president” in ways that can both help the crypto industry and enrich himself and his family. Wealthy players in the crypto industry, who felt unfairly targeted by the Biden administration, spent heavily to help Trump win last year’s election.Establishing a Bitcoin reserve was one of several crypto-related promises Trump made on the campaign trail last year. Trump is also pushing Congress to pass industry-friendly legislation, and under his administration the Securities and Exchange Commission has started dropping enforcement actions it had taken against some major crypto companies. On Friday, Trump is set to host many key industry leaders at a White House “Crypto Summit.”Bitcoin is the oldest and most popular cryptocurrency. Created in response to the 2008 financial crisis by an anonymous person or persons, Bitcoin has blossomed from an experiment by libertarian cryptography enthusiasts into an asset with a market cap of about $1.7 trillion. While it hasn’t taken off as a way to pay for everyday things, Bitcoin has found popularity as a store of value that’s not controlled by banks, governments or other powerful entities.Bitcoin’s supply is capped at 21 million coins, a built-in scarcity that supporters say makes it a great hedge against inflation. Critics have long said Bitcoin lacks any inherent value, but it’s so far defied naysayers with remarkable price increases. Some supporters of a strategic Bitcoin reserve said it could one day help pay off the U.S. national debt.Crypto prices soared after Trump’s victory last year, and when the price of Bitcoin first crossed $100,000 in early December, Trump took credit and posted “YOU’RE WELCOME!!!” on social media.But prices have since cooled off. Trump’s executive order did not equate to an immediate price spike for Bitcoin, which was trading around $86,000 shortly after his announcement.The executive order also creates a “U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile,” where the government will hold seized cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. On Sunday, Trump sent crypto prices on a short-lived surge after a surprise announcement that he wanted the government to hold lesser-known cryptocurrencies XRP, Solana, and Cardano. Alan Suderman, AP Business Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
U.S. employers added solid 151,000 jobs last month, but the outlook is cloudy as President Donald threatens a trade war, purges the federal workforce and promises to deport millions of immigrants.The Labor Department reported Friday that hiring was up from a revised 125,000 in January. Economists had expected 160,000 new jobs last month.The unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.1% as the number jobless Americans rose by 203,000.Employment rose in healthcare, finance, and transportation and warehousing. The federal government shed 10,000 jobs, the most since June 2022, though economists don’t expect Trump’s federal layoffs to have much of an impact until the March jobs report. Restaurants and bars cut nearly 28,000 jobs last month on top of a loss of almost 30,000 in January.“The solid February jobs report shows that the economy remains healthy, but fears of what could come next are likely to overshadow the positive news from today’s release,” said Josh Jamner, investment analyst at ClearBridge Investments.The job market has been remarkably resilient over the past year despite high interest rates.Hiring continued, defying expectations that the United States would tip into a recession. The economy’s unexpectedly strong recovery from the pandemic recession of 2020 set loose an inflationary surge that peaked in June 2022 when prices came in 9.1% higher than they’d been a year earlier.In response, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023, taking it to the highest level in more than two decades. The economy remained sturdy despite the higher borrowing costs, thanks to strong consumer spending, big productivity gains at businesses and an influx of immigrants who eased labor shortages.Inflation came downdropping to 2.4% in Septemberallowing the Fed to reverse course and cut rates three times in 2024. The rate-cutting was expected to continue this year, but progress on inflation has stalled since summer, and the Fed has held off.Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% last month, down from a 0.4% increase in January.Fed officials will likely see the figures as supporting their current wait-and-see approach toward interest-rate cuts. With inflation still modestly above the Fed’s 2% target, several have made clear in recent remarks that they would like to see more progress before cutting their benchmark rate any further.Steady hiring and an expanding economy make it easier for the Fed to stay on the sidelines. Should companies start laying off workers and the unemployment rate rise, pressure could rise on the Fed to cut rates.On Thursday, Fed governor Chris Waller suggested a cut was unlikely at the central bank’s March meeting, adding that Fed officials would like to see more data before making any further moves. AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this story. Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
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