Russia Urges Investigation into New Nord Stream Sabotage Claims

House WOTUS hearing: Latest EPA announcement brings lots of uncertainty

Additional sales of U.S. soybeans, sorghum, corn, cotton, pork and beef to China reported. U.S. export sales for the week ended Feb. 2 included net sales for 2022-23 to China of 29,000 tonnes of corn, 53,000 tonnes of sorghum, 518,908 tonnes of soybeans, and 87,661 running bales of upland cotton. Sales for 2023-24 of 53,000 tonnes of soybeans were also reported. Net sales for 2023 of 1,361 tonnes of beef and 3,363 tonnes of pork were also reported.

Fed officials signal higher interest rates will be needed to contain inflation. Speaking at separate events, Federal Reserve officials gave remarks supporting continued interest rate increases and cautioning that inflation is still a threat. Meanwhile, China’s economic recovery following the end of their zero-Covid policy has Fed and other analysts watching for any impact on inflation. JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said “people should take a deep breath” before declaring victory over inflation, warning that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates above 5% and hold them there if higher prices linger.

Used-car prices are up 2.5%, showing inflation still persistent. It is the second consecutive monthly increase and could be a sign for next week’s consumer price index for January.

The World Container Index compiled by London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants is down 78% over the past year.

Florida orange growers are harvesting their smallest crop in nearly 90 years. Impact: frozen concentrate orange-juice futures are nearing record levels.

China will account for one-third of global power use in 2025, up from one-quarter in 2015, per the International Energy Agency’s latest outlook.

Senate Republicans demanded answers from the Biden administration on the suspected Chinese spy balloon. In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the lawmakers particularly asked about Pentagon and White House decision-making in the days after the balloon was detected and why the military and spy agencies weren’t better prepared given previous incursions, the WSJ reports (link). The letter comes ahead of a closed-door classified briefing for all senators scheduled for today. Meanwhile, China declined a proposed phone call with U.S. officials because Washington hadn’t created “an appropriate atmosphere” for the call, a Chinese defense ministry spokesperson said. U.S. officials said they held briefings in Washington and Beijing with nearly 150 foreign diplomats from 40 nations about the Chinese balloon.

The U.K. is considering sending advanced jets to Ukraine and will begin training Ukrainian pilots in coming months. Hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an emotional plea to the British Parliament for more military aid, U.K. officials said that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had tasked his defense minister with analyzing which jets Britain may send, adding that no final decision had been made and that it could take a significant amount of time before pilots were fully trained.

A House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday on the new WOTUS rule from EPA came under attack by most witnesses. More in Policy section.

Key ag policy priorities via the House Ag Committee was a topic addressed Wednesday by House Ag panel chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.). See Policy section for details.

In its annual list of agency priorities, the SEC said it plans this year to increase oversight of crypto-trading firms and investment advisers, plus environmental, social and governance funds. SEC’s examinations division will look at broker-dealers and registered investment advisers’ use of new financial technology, including the offer of, sale of, investment advice and standards of care around those assets.

President Biden is scheduled to be in Tampa, Fla., today where he is set to deliver remarks on Social Security and Medicare at the University of Tampa at 1:30 p.m. ET. Biden reiterated his message about manufacturing-industry jobs in a visit to Wisconsin yesterday, ahead of his expected launch of a re-election campaign in March or April.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) was hospitalized after feeling lightheaded.

Former Twitter executives said they erred in blocking links to Hunter Biden articles but denied getting political pressure. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee said Twitter’s decision to temporarily block links to articles about the laptop belonging to President Biden’s son appeared to be aimed at protecting Biden, a presidential candidate at the time, from damaging disclosures.

President Biden, in a PBS interview, blamed ex-staff for discovered classified documents: “They packed up my offices to move them, they didn’t do the kind of job that should have been done”….

Equities today: Global stock markets were mostly up overnight. U.S. Dow opened 200 points higher. In Asia, Japan -0.1%. Hong Kong +1.6%. China +1.2%. India +0.2%. In Europe, at midday, London +0.7%. Paris +1.3%. Frankfurt +1.3%.

Layoffs at Disney. Bob Iger, in his first earnings call since returning to the company, announced Walt Disney Co. will shed 7,000 jobs as part of a broader effort to save $5.5 billion in costs. Disney is facing pressure to control costs and boost profits as it continues to lose money from its key streaming business, which includes Disney+.

U.S. equities yesterday: The Dow ended down 207.68 points, 0.61%, at 33,949.01. The Nasdaq fell 203.27 points, 1.68%, at 11,910.52. The S&P 500 declined 46.14 points, 1.11%, at 4,117.86.

Agriculture markets yesterday:

• Corn: March corn rose 4 1/2 cents to $6.78 1/2, nearer the session high.
• Soy complex: March soybeans rose 4 1/2 cents to $15.19 3/4 and near mid-range. March soybean meal gained $0.50 to $481.90 and nearer the session low. March bean oil fell 31 points at 60.58 cents and near mid-range.
• Wheat: March SRW rallied 15 cents to $7.64 3/4, the contract’s highest close since Jan. 3, while March HRW rose 10 1/4 cents to $8.96. March spring wheat closed 8 1/4 cents higher at $9.25 1/4.
• Cotton: March cotton futures fell 26 points to 85.37 cents. May cotton dropped 38 points to 86.00 cents.
• Cattle: The nearby February live cattle contract edged up 22.5 cents to $160.80 Wednesday, while most-active April futures gained 10 cents to close at 163.70. March feeder futures fell 75 cents to $186.45.
• Hogs: Expiring February hog futures ended Wednesday having risen 55 cents to $75.925, while most-active April advanced 80 cents to $84.075.
  

Ag markets today: Soybeans are firmer this morning on followthrough buying, while corn and wheat are pivoting on either side of unchanged. As of 7:30 a.m. ET, corn futures were narrowly mixed, soybeans were mostly 5 to 11 cents higher, SRW wheat futures were 1 to 3 cents higher, while HRW and HRS wheat futures were narrowly mixed. Front-month crude oil futures were around 25 cents lower, and the U.S. dollar index was around 550 points lower.

Technical viewpoints from Jim Wyckoff:

On tap today:

• U.S. jobless claims are expected to rise to 190,000 in the week ended Feb. 4 from 183,000 one week earlier. (8:30 a.m. ET) UPDATE: The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose to 196,000 in the week ending February 4, from the previous week’s nine-month low of 183,000 and above expectations of 190,000. Still, the latest figure suggested the labor market remained tight.

• China’s consumer price index for January is expected to rise 2.2% from one year earlier and the producer-price index is forecast to fall 0.5%. (8:30 p.m. ET)

Report: Nord Stream pipeline bombings a U.S. covert operation. The bombing of the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea was a covert operation ordered by the White House and carried out by the CIA, according to a report (link) by Seymour Hersh. He claims U.S. deep-sea divers, using a NATO military exercise as cover, planted mines along the pipelines that were later detonated remotely. The report says the “Black Op” was ordered by President Joe Biden, and that the attack was carried out by the CIA in cooperation with Norway. The White House dismissed the allegations as “utterly false and complete fiction.” Nord Stream 2 was never put into operation after Germany axed the certification process following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia, for its part, shut down Nord Stream 1 indefinitely in early September, claiming an inability to repair gas turbines because of the Western sanctions.

Fed officials signal higher interest rates will be needed to contain inflation. Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said the economy will need higher borrowing costs for a few years to bring down inflation and prevent price pressures from strengthening. Fed officials last week approved lifting the benchmark federal-funds rate by a quarter-percentage point to a range between 4.5% and 4.75%. Most Fed officials in December thought they would raise the fed-funds rate to 5.1% this year, which would imply quarter-point rate increases at their next two meetings, in March and May. Separately, Fed governor Christopher Waller on Wednesday said he was optimistic that the Fed’s rate increases were slowing the economy. “We are seeing that effort begin to pay off, but we have farther to go,” he said.

Used-car prices up 2.5%, showing inflation still persistent. Prices of used cars jumped in January from December, climbing 2.5% over the month, according to data provider Manheim. That’s the second consecutive monthly increase and could be a sign for next week’s consumer price index for January. Used-car prices are still about 46% higher than before the Covid-19 pandemic. Used-car prices account for 4.5% of the consumer price index. Every percentage point increase from used cars translates into a 0.05 percentage point rise in the overall inflation rate, Omair Sharif, president of Inflation Insights, told Bloomberg.

Germany inflation rate rises less than expected. The annual inflation rate in Germany edged higher to 8.7% in January from a four-month low of 8.6% in December, but below forecasts of 8.9%, preliminary estimates showed. Compared to the previous month, the CPI went up 1%, reversing a 0.8% fall in December, when a federal one-off payment to lower household natural gas bills came into effect.

Market perspectives:

• Outside markets: The U.S. dollar index was weaker with the euro and British pound firmer against the greenback. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury note was weaker, trading around 3.58% with a mixed tone in global government bond yields. Crude oil moved lower, with U.S. crude around $78 per barrel and Brent around $84.65 per barrel. Gold and silver were mixed, with gold firmer around $1,892 per troy ounce and silver weaker around $22.41 per troy ounce. ·

• EIA predicts continued shift away from coal for U.S. power generation. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is now predicting that the share of U.S. power generated from coal will fall again in 2024 after declining in 2023. Overall electricity generation is forecast to decline by 2% in 2023 and rise by 2% in 2024, EIA said in the Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) report issued Wednesday, and will continue to shift away from coal. The share of US electricity generated from coal was at 20% in 2022 and is expected to decline to 17% in 2024. Increases in renewables will offset the decline in coal, EIA said, rising from 22% in 2022 to 26% in 2024.

• EIA significantly reduced their outlook for natural gas prices, forecasting Henry Hub natural gas spot price will average $3.40 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2023, down almost 50% from last year and about 30% from the January STEO. “We revised our outlook for Henry Hub prices as a result of significantly warmer-than-normal weather in January that led to less-than-normal consumption of natural gas for space heating and pushed inventories above the five-year average,” EIA said.

• China will account for one-third of global power use in 2025, up from one-quarter in 2015, per the International Energy Agency’s latest outlook (link). Meanwhile, a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis (link) finds that “global energy prices hinge on China’s economic recovery.” The country’s reopening from Covid restrictions will boost oil and natural gas demand there.

• Container spot rates dropped rapidly as borrowing costs shot up, U.S. stimulus efforts ebbed and consumer demand slipped. The World Container Index compiled by London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants is down 78% over the past year.

• Florida orange growers are harvesting their smallest crop in nearly 90 years, the result of an ill-timed freeze, two hurricanes and citrus disease. Short supplies have lifted frozen concentrate orange-juice futures to near records.

Of note: California, for decades the No. 2 grower, is now the largest orange-producing state in the nation. USDA forecast an orange crop of 1.84 million tons in California this season, more than double Florida’s projected hurricane-damaged harvest of 720,000 tons.

• Ag trade: South Korea purchased a total of 200,000 MT of corn from three tenders – 65,000 MT expected to be U.S. and 135,000 MT likely to be sourced from South America. Taiwan purchased 48,100 MT of U.S. milling wheat. Algeria purchased between 360,000 and 390,000 MT of optional origin milling wheat.

• NWS weather: Heavy snow over parts of the Upper/Middle Mississippi Valley and Upper Great Lakes on Thursday... ...There is a Marginal Risk of excessive rainfall and severe thunderstorms over parts of the Eastern Gulf Coast/Southeast... ...Snow over parts of the Rockies and the Plains; Pockets of rain/freezing rain over parts of the Northeast

Items in Pro Farmer’s First Thing Today include:

• Soybeans firmer, corn and wheat mixed
• China declines call with U.S. over balloon incident
• Firm raises EU wheat production forecast
• Indonesia, Malaysia to send palm oil envoys to EU over deforestation law
• Cattle futures pause
• Cash hog fundamentals firming

— Summary: The U.K. is discussing sending long-range missiles to Ukraine and assessing the long-term possibility of sending fighter jets to help in the war. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak agreed that the United Kingdom would train Ukrainian pilots on advanced NATO fighter jets.

• The White House is preparing to slap a 200% tariff on Russian-made aluminum as soon as this week to keep pressure on Moscow as the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine nears on Feb. 24.
• President Joe said in an interview that Vladimir Putin has “already lost Ukraine.” In an interview with Judy Woodruff on PBS NewsHour Wednesday night, Biden added that he was proud that “I’ve been able to unite NATO completely” since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began nearly a year ago.

• Russia has potentially lost up to half of its operational tank fleet since the start of the Ukraine war — or about 1,500 tanks — according to information collected by Oryx, a monitoring group that has been collecting visual evidence of military equipment losses in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began. Tanks have been a major focus of the conflict and are seen as key for either country to take territory on the battlefield. The total figure for Russia’s equipment losses — including tanks and other fighting vehicles — is almost 9,100, Oryx says, while Ukraine’s total equipment losses stand at about 2,900. While Kyiv has received pledges of modern tanks from Germany, the U.S., Britain and other Western partners, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today reiterated his plea to the West for more weapons.

— WOTUS hearing: Biden accused of ‘regulatory abuse’. The Biden administration’s new Waters of the U.S., or WOTUS, rule involves “tortuous and costly” efforts to determine whether “sometimes wet” land is protected under the Clean Water Act (CWA), Garrett Hawkins, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, told a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee Wednesday. Full committee Chair Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) called the rule a “massive overreach of regulatory abuse.”

“Sweeping legislation like the Clean Water Act, while certainly beneficial, can lead to bureaucratic overreach and regulatory headaches,” stated subcommittee Chair David Rouzer (R-N.C.). He said regulations should be simple, easy to follow and clearly carry out the intent of the law. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case here,” he said of the new WOTUS rule. Rouzer said the NWPR “finally brought some clarity and predictability to the nagging question of what a WOTUS should be,” but that the Biden EPA’s rewrite not only made the process of determining what waters fall under Clean Water Act (CWA) protections less clear, but also comes as the Supreme Court weighs a case that could upend the new rule. “This action irresponsibly risks taxpayer resources and everyone’s time as the Supreme Court could very well send the administration back to the drawing board on a WOTUS definition, ultimately creating even more confusion and uncertainty,” said Rouzer.

Democrats had a far different spin, saying the rule restores CWA protections that spanned multiple administrations — Democratic and Republican — that were scaled back under the Trump era rulemaking. “The Trump dirty water rule chose one definition of certainty, the elimination of federal protection of our rivers, streams and wetlands over the goals of the Clean Water Act, which seeks rightly to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s waters,” said subcommittee Ranking Member Grace Napolitano (D-Texas).

Hawkins also criticized the rule’s reliance on the “significant nexus test,” the broader of two tests laid out in competing Supreme Court opinions in the 2006 Rapanos v. U.S. ruling. The ruling split the court 4-1-4, with then-Justice Anthony Kennedy arguing CWA jurisdiction hinges on whether a water has a “significant nexus” to a navigable water, and then-Justice Antonin Scalia arguing jurisdiction should be more narrowly defined to only include navigable waters themselves. “The use of the significant nexus test allows the agencies to aggregate waters together, and the reliance on the vague term provides the agencies the latitude to reach whatever conclusion they please,” said Hawkins. “It is impossible for any farmer to know if a feature on their property is a WOTUS.” He said the result is that ordinary farming activities like tilling, planting or even building a fence could trigger civil or criminal penalties under the CWA.

The Supreme Court is considering how to define WOTUS in the Sackett v. EPA case, with a decision expected by June.

Susan Bodine, who served at EPA during both the Trump and George W. Bush administrations, also testified. “In my view, the rule sets up a framework that would allow EPA and [the Army Corps of Engineers] to expand their authority beyond that which was given to them by Congress,” she said. “In particular, the rule allows agencies to claim extremely broad authority over isolated ponds and wetlands.”

Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) asked Hawkins what the major impacts of the new rule are relative to farming. Hawkins suggested it could impair farmers’ ability to participate in conservation programs by imposing new red tape. “I have to question how [the new rule is] going to impact, going forward, my ability to do more conservation on the ground, or to construct facilities on the ground and how I manage my livestock,” he said, suggesting that intensive cattle grazing projects on his own farm might be impacted. Hawkins said the biggest issue related to the new rule was the potential compliance costs — especially costly permitting under the CWA. “There are costs associated with that permit of hiring the experts that are needed to help get you through the process. There are costs associated with mitigation. And there’s cost associated with the time that it takes to ultimately see your project through fruition on the farm as a result of the permit,” he stated.

— House Agriculture panel sets rules. Rules adopted by the House Agriculture Committee for the 118th Congress are very similar to those in place for the 117th Congress as the panel brings new members on board.

The panel adopted an oversight plan that calls for the Committee to identify programs that are inefficient, duplicative, outdated or better suited for state or local governments to administer, consolidate or eliminate. The committee will do general oversight where appropriate and work with other House committees that share jurisdiction in certain areas.

The panel will have 28 Republicans, including 11 new members, with Democrats currently at 21 members with three more still to be added. There are 12 Democrats that will be new to the panel so far. Democrats are expected to resolve the membership rosters soon, potentially today.

House Ag Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.) said the panel was “burning daylight” and indicated the first hearings by the panel could be late this month or early next month.

In Thompson’s list of priorities for the committee, put conventional agriculture and rural development first. “We certainly will have our work cut out for us as far as reauthorizing the farm bill,” he said. “I’m asked almost daily what my priorities are for the 118th Congress,” said Thompson. “It’s simple. Ask a farmer. Ask a rancher. Ask a forester. Ask a consumer. Because their needs should be our priorities. This means supporting policies that put production agriculture first and aim to revitalize rural America,” he said. “This also means tackling rising inflation and input costs, energy costs, addressing the politicization of science, and keeping a watchful eye on excessive regulations and spending from this administration,” Thompson added.

On nutrition, Thompson signaled he did not expect the panel to make any major revisions to work requirements under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as some Republicans have called for. He expressed confidence the panel would strike a balance and “do good work, which makes a handful of folks who really don’t understand any part of the farm bill irrelevant.”

— White House chief of staff Jeff Zients officially took over his new position Wednesday, taking over for Ron Klain. Meanwhile, Natalie Quillian, who formerly served as Biden’s deputy coordinator of the coronavirus response under Zients, is returning to serve alongside him once again, this time as deputy chief of staff

— IRS commissioner. The Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 15 will consider the nomination of Danny Werfel to be IRS commissioner. Werfel previously held positions at the Office of Management and Budget and the IRS.

— Chinese companies may face sanctions over Russia. G7 member states are discussing whether to sanction companies in China, Iran and North Korea they believe are providing Russia with parts and technology with military purposes. The U.S. already has raised concern with China about non-lethal equipment provided to Russia.

— China the biggest buyer of Brazilian corn in January. China became the main destination for Brazilian corn exports in January, surpassing traditional importers, according to revised trade data released by the Brazilian government on Wednesday. Brazil exported 983,684 MT of corn to China last month. Corn exports to Japan totaled 975,858 MT.

— U.S. trade with China is on the rise, despite escalating national-security tensions over matters such as last week’s downing of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon. U.S. imports of goods from China totaled $536.8 billion in 2022, a 6.3% increase from the prior year and close to the record $538.5 billion reached in 2018, the Commerce Department said earlier this week. U.S. exports to China grew 1.6% to $153.8 billion last year, pushing the total commerce between the two countries to a record $690.6 billion. The figures aren’t adjusted for inflation.

President Biden has kept in place tariffs covering hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese goods that were initially levied by the Trump administration. The president has also accelerated the use of export controls targeting Chinese technologies and clamped down on imports of items linked to the use of forced labor, such as cotton and solar panels.

— Yellen still hopes to visit China. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Wednesday she still hoped to visit China but offered no details on plans or timing. A team of U.S. Treasury officials was scheduled to travel to China this month to prepare for a visit by Yellen but that was before a diplomatic row over the Chinese balloon. China’s commerce ministry said it welcomes Yellen’s willingness to visit the country.

— Extending the supply chain for the raw materials critical to electric-vehicle batteries is going to be a long-running project. A mining company owned by the Swedish government recently found an estimated one million metric tons of rare-earths metals, Europe’s largest such deposit. The Wall Street Journal reports (link) that LKAB will likely face significant hurdles to mining the metals and then a long arc in setting up the facilities that can handle the multistep processing of the oxides that go into batteries for cars and consumer electronics. The rare-earths supply chain is long, and most of it now runs out of China, which undertakes 60% of the mining and 91% of the refining of the metals. Other rare-earth projects are making progress. U.K.-based Pensana aims to mine rare-earth concentrates in Angola, before separating and processing them in the north of England. Projects in Norway and Australia also are making headway.

— Directors of Shell PLC are being sued by shareholder and environmental law firm ClientEarth in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit that alleges 11 board members are improperly managing climate risk and breaching company law by not implementing a strategy that aligns with the Paris Agreement targets, although Shell said the directors “have complied with their legal duties.” The lawsuit, which was filed in the high court of England and Wales, is backed by institutional investors that hold over 12 million shares in the oil major. Link for details.

— A group of 34 Republican senators is looking to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s heavy-duty truck emissions rule, claiming it is too difficult to implement, would raise truck costs too high for small businesses and would add to supply chain costs. The emissions-cutting regulation will take effect on March 27 and is the first update to the rule in more than two decades, making the standard 80% more stringent. Link for details.

— $2.81 is the wholesale price of a dozen Midwest large eggs, down nearly 50% from a record of more than $5 a dozen in December, research firm Urner Barry found. Consumers are still shelling out more: Retail prices have stayed in the $4 range, according to NielsenIQ data.

— More local meat processing. Companion House and Senate bills would create a USDA competitive grant program to support local meat production by helping small processors expand their capacity. Link for more info.

— Super Bowl winner: chicken wings. Primarily because of lower retail prices, Americans are expected to consume a record 1.45 billion chicken wings during the upcoming Super Bowl weekend, a 2 percent increase from last year.

— Brazen food stamp scammers steal millions from L.A.'s poorest. Money meant for the lowest-income Los Angeles County residents is being siphoned from their EBT cards in record amounts, the Los Angeles Times reports (link). Authorities say a ring of organized criminals has stolen people’s personal EBT card information and pilfered their accounts. “They strike early in the morning of the first few days of every month — hours, sometimes minutes after the state deposits benefits onto the cards. They do the same with food stamps, which the state also deposits on EBT cards, then rack up mammoth bills at grocery stores. Some of the county’s poorest residents will wake up to discover a month of food or rent money they were relying on has vanished — even though their EBT card never left their wallet.”

— Summary:

• Global Covid-19 cases at 672,343,592 with 6,849,154 deaths.
• U.S. case count is at 102,737,738 with 1,113,236 deaths.
• Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center says there have been 669,600,840 doses administered, 268,064,626 have received at least one vaccine, or 81.66% of the U.S. population.

— Some Dems join Republicans on traveler vax. Seven House Democrats joined with all House Republicans to approve a measure that would overturn a rule requiring most foreign travelers to have Covid vaccines prior to entering the country. The bill ultimately passed 227-201, though it’s unlikely to move in the Senate. The list of Democrats: Reps. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Don Davis (D-N.C.), Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), Susie Lee (D-Nev.), Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) and Dina Titus (D-Nev.).

— $191 billion is the estimated total amount of pandemic unemployment benefits that were wrongly sent out in 2022 with a “significant portion attributable to fraud,” according to testimony from the Labor Department (DOL)released to the House Ways and Means Committee. DOL Inspector General Larry D. Turner said the department now believes $30 billion more in unemployment benefits were improperly paid compared to its previous calculations — 21.5% versus 18.7% of the total last year, which was pegged at $163 billion. Federal officials have acknowledged that they cannot precisely identify how much federal aid was wrongfully set out related to unemployment benefits.

— The Biden administration will soon release a roadmap to transition the U.S. out of the Covid-19 public health emergency, CNN reports. The goal of the expected roadmap, one source told CNN, is to try to lay out for the public in a clear way what the end of the declaration “does and does not mean,” as well as possibly provide guidance on masking and testing. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said the U.S. has “broken Covid’s grip” on the nation. “While the virus is not gone, thanks to the resilience of the American people, we have broken Covid’s grip on us,” he said, adding Covid deaths are down nearly 90%.

— President Biden head to Florida today. The Associated Press reports (link) that with “an eye toward the 2024 campaign,” Biden on Thursday “ventures to Florida, a state defined by its growing retiree population and status as the unofficial headquarters of the modern-day Republican Party.” Biden “sees a chance to use Social Security and Medicare to drive a wedge between GOP lawmakers and their base of older voters.”

— Republican Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota is set to deliver three policy speeches in Washington, D.C., next week that are likely to generate more buzz about her possible national ambitions. Link for more.

— Boyle backs entitlement talks with GOP. The new top Democrat on the House Budget Committee said he is open to the creation of a bipartisan commission to explore extending Social Security solvency — a different stance from the White House, which compared the idea to a “death panel” for entitlement programs. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) said in an interview with Bloomberg Government “If there is a legitimate way to study how we can extend the life of the Social Security trust fund and make sure that it’s on solid footing until the year 2050, until the year 2060, 2070, 2100, that would be something I would generally be excited about and supportive of, independent of the debt ceiling debate.” Boyle stressed he would oppose any bill that cuts Social Security or Medicare, or any measure to raise the age of eligibility for those programs. He also criticized Republicans for being inconsistent on their plans for entitlement programs.

— Sen. John Fetterman hospitalized after feeling lightheaded at Democratic retreat. Fetterman (D-Pa.), who suffered a stroke during his campaign last year, was hospitalized Wednesday night after feeling lightheaded while attending a Senate Democratic retreat. Initial tests did not show evidence of a new stroke, but doctors are running more tests.

— 27.3 million viewers watched President Biden’s State of the Union address on TV — the second smallest SOTU audience in at least 30 years. That was down 28% from the 38.2 million people who saw Biden’s SOTU last year. Of note, according to Axios, 73% of the people who watched Biden’s speech were 55 and older. Only 5% were under age 35. Link for more.

— Texas Senate Bill 147 would ban citizens of China from buying property in the state. Details of the proposed law, which would also target citizens of Iran, North Korea and Russia, are still being worked out, according to its Republican sponsor. But many are anxious about what the coming months in Texas might hold.

WASDE | Crop Production | USDA weekly reports | Crop Progress | Food prices | Farm income | Export Sales weekly | ERP dashboard | California phase-out of gas-powered vehicles | RFS | IRA: Biofuels | IRA: Ag | Student loan forgiveness | Russia/Ukraine war, lessons learned | Election predictions: Split-ticket | Congress to-do list | SCOTUS on WOTUS | SCOTUS on Prop 12 | New farm bill primer | China outlook | Omnibus spending package |