Talk Business & Politics: State Sen. Jonathan Dismang, CEO Denise Thomas
Talk Business & Politics host Roby Brock met with State Sen. Jonathan Dismang (R-Searcy), architect of many bills this session, sat down to talk about prison funding and the current state of the economy.
Roby then talks with World Trade Center for Arkansas CEO Denise Thomas, who is on her way to a conference in France. She discusses what topics are up for discussion and how President Trump's new tariffs could have an impact.
Talk Business & Politics airs Sunday at 9:30 a.m. on FOX 16. For more coverage, head to TalkBusiness.net.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


CBS News
2 minutes ago
- CBS News
NYC mayoral candidates Eric Adams, Andrew Cuomo engage in war of words over each other's past
In the race for New York City mayor, things seem to be heating up between incumbent Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The independent candidates took aim at each other Sunday about their pasts. Parades were the backdrop for Adams and Cuomo engage in a war of words. At the Bronx Dominican Parade, the mayor called out Cuomo for stepping down as governor in 2021, when he was investigated for sexual harassment allegations. Adams drew from his experience with now-dismissed federal corruption charges. "I hung in there. I made a commitment to the city, that I was gonna serve as their mayor. He did not. He abandoned the state, and he stepped down from his role and his responsibility," Adams said. Cuomo, who was grand marshal at this year's Colombian Parade in Queens, fired back. "During his personal strife, he went and made a deal with President Trump to save himself at the cost of New Yorkers, and he put himself over the interest of New Yorkers," Cuomo said. Adams referenced the Department of Justice's lawsuit last week against the city over its sanctuary policies, saying, "You don't make deals with someone you eventually get sued by." Cuomo said Adams put himself over New Yorkers by meeting with Trump before his corruption case was dropped. "He turned his back on New Yorkers," Cuomo said. "New Yorkers will never forget that." Adams and Cuomo are trying to beat Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani in November. According to a Wick Insights Poll from last week, Mamdani, an assemblyman from Queens, has a double-digit lead over Cuomo -- 39% to 21%. Republican Curtis Sliwa comes next with 18%, followed by Adams with 9% and 13% undecided. Wick, in partnership with the "Next Up with Mark Halperin" podcast, surveyed 500 likely voters in New York City from July 18-20. The results show Mamdani holding an early lead in a crowded field, potentially driven by perceptions that he best represents working families, challenges the status quo, and is most likely to put New York first. The poll also found Mamdani's advantage shrinks in a direct matchup with Cuomo to a near statistical tie. In a potential Mamdani-Adams matchup, the poll found Mamdani would lead by 10%.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Former Obama Speechwriter Jon Lovett on How Trump Is Funny Like a 'Clown With a Gun'
Donald Trump may not like being a punchline and seemingly never laughs, but he has a funny bone behind his frowns and scowls. Just ask Obama speechwriter and self-described comedian Jon Lovett. 'Trump's very funny. When he says Merry Christmas to all the haters and losers, that's funny. He's funny,' Lovett tells The Hollywood Reporter from the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'In the Land of Arto': Camille Cottin, Zar Amir Ebrahimi Journey Into Armenia and Its Past (Exclusive Clips) Why Stand-up Legend George Wallace Can't Get Off the Stage After 49 Years in Comedy: "I'm Living My Dream" Oasis Play Wembley: 5 Takeaways From Liam and Noel Gallagher's Nostalgia-Packed Return to Stage Sure, the U.S. president has laid ruin to U.S. politics since returning to the White House. 'Trump is a vandal. He's doing vandalism to our country,' Lovett insists. But he can't ignore Trump's surprise comedy chops behind that lower lip pout or when he shows open anger. 'When he steamrolls in an interview, or when he's on stage, he's doing his version of crowd work with his MAGA base. So I do think he's funny. That's part of his skill,' Lovett argues. He took to the stage in Montreal for a live presentation of his Lovett or Leave It podcast, with Gianmarco Soresi, Roy Wood Jr., Mary Beth Barone and Zach Zucker as guests. And while Trump's no stand-up, Lovett insists 'he's got a cruel sense of humor, and it works at times. He has a great sense for television. He knows what's going to play well. And he knows when what's happening is silly or ridiculous, and he knows when he needs to be on the outside of it, with the audience watching it.' 'We can pretend otherwise, but we do so at our peril,' he added. For Lovett, as a host of the Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It podcasts from Crooked Media, doing audio content allows him to fulfill all his creative interests and goals. 'It's writing. It's performing. It's politics. It's comedy. And I get to do all of them,' he explains. All of which is an unconventional route to stand-up for Lovett. 'I didn't do open mikes out of college, my path to telling jokes on stage wasn't the traditional one. I always feel a little bit of an outsider in the comedy world,' he admits. And Lovett points to the challenge of making comedy amid Trump's world of distractions and political division. 'It'll be hard to describe to future generations how stupid and dangerous politics in American have become,' he explains. One solution is to use comedy as opposition to Trump, including the Democratic Party, and become happy warriors, because the serious part of politics is exhausting, embarrassing and causes unending anxiety. 'We have to stay invested, and that's going to be a mix of seriousness when it's called for, but also a willingness to make fun of thse people for being fools like Trump is a clown with a gun. The gun doesn't change the fact that he's a clown, and the fact that he's a clown doesn't change the fact he's holding a gun,' Lovett insists. The Just For Laughs comedy festival continues through Sunday. Best of The Hollywood Reporter From 'Party in the U.S.A.' to 'Born in the U.S.A.': 20 of America's Most Patriotic (and Un-Patriotic) Musical Offerings Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025 Solve the daily Crossword


Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Faith leaders hope bill will stop the loss of thousands of clergy from abroad serving US communities
Faith leaders say even a narrow fix will be enough to prevent damaging losses to congregations and to start planning for the future again. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Unless there is a change to current practice, our community is slowly being strangled,' said the Rev. Aaron Wessman, vicar general and director of formation for the Glenmary Home Missioners, a small Catholic order ministering in rural America. Advertisement 'I will weep with joy if this legislation passes,' he said. 'It means the world for our members who are living in the middle of uncertainty and for the people they'll be able to help.' Two thirds of Glenmary's priests and brothers under 50 years old are foreign-born — mostly from Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and Uganda — and they are affected by the current immigration snag, Wessman added. So are thousands of others who serve the variety of faiths present in the United States, from Islam to Hinduism to evangelical Christianity, providing both pastoral care and social services. Advertisement No exact numbers exist, but it is estimated that there are thousands of religious workers who are now backlogged in the green card system and/or haven't been able to apply yet. Congregations bring to the United States religious workers under temporary visas called R-1, which allow them to work for up to five years. That used to be enough time for the congregations to petition for green cards under a special category called EB-4, which would allow the clergy to become permanent residents. Congress sets a quota of green cards available per year divided in categories, almost all based on types of employment or family relationships to US citizens. In most categories, the demand exceeds the annual quota. Citizens of countries with especially high demand get put in separate, often longer 'lines' — for several years, the most backlogged category has been that of married Mexican children of US citizens, where only applications filed more than 24 years ago are being processed. Also in a separate line were migrant children with 'Special Immigrant Juvenile Status' — neglected or abused minors — In March 2023, the State Department suddenly started adding the minors to the general green card queue with the clergy. That has created such a bottleneck that in April, only halfway through the current fiscal year, those green cards became unavailable. Advertisement And when they will become available in the new fiscal year starting in October, they are likely to be stuck in the six-year backlog they faced earlier this year — meaning religious workers with a pending application won't get their green cards before their five-year visas expire and they must leave the country. In a report released Thursday, US Citizenship and Immigration Services blamed the EB-4 backlogs on the surge in applications by minors from Central America, and said the agency found widespread fraud in that program. The Senate and House bills would allow the Department of Homeland Security to extend religious workers' visas as long as their green card application is pending. They would also prevent small job changes — such as moving up from associate to senior pastor, or being assigned to another parish in the same diocese — from invalidating the pending application. 'Even as immigration issues are controversial and sometimes they run afoul of partisan politics, we think this fix is narrow enough, and the stakeholder group we have is significant enough, that we're hoping we can get this done,' said Democratic Two of the last three priests there were foreign-born, he said, and earlier this month he was approached by a sister with the Comboni missionaries worried about her expiring visa. Kaine's two Republican cosponsors, Senators 'It adds to their quality of life. And there's no reason they shouldn't have the ability to have this,' Risch said. 'Religious beliefs spread way beyond borders, and it is helpful to have these people who … want to come here and want to associate with Americans of the same faith. And so anything we can do to make that easier, is what we want to do.' Advertisement Republican Representative Mike Carey of Ohio, with Republican and Democratic colleagues, introduced an identical bill in the House. Both bills are still in the respective judiciary committees. 'To be frank, I don't know what objections people could have,' said Lance Conklin, adding that the bill doesn't require more green cards, just a time extension on existing visas. Conklin cochairs the religious workers group of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and often represents evangelical pastors. Faith denominations from Buddhism to Judaism recruit foreign-born clergy who can minister to growing non-English-speaking congregations and often were educated at foreign institutions steeped in a religion's history. For many, it is also a necessity because of clergy shortages. The number of Catholic priests in the United States has declined by more than 40 percent since 1970, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a research center affiliated with Georgetown University. Some dioceses, however, are experiencing Last summer, the Diocese of Paterson — serving 400,000 Catholics and 107 parishes in three New Jersey counties — and five of its affected priests sued the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Advertisement Expecting some action on the legislative front, the parties agreed to stay the lawsuit, said Raymond Lahoud, the diocese's attorney. But because the bills weren't included in the nearly-900-page 'We just can't wait anymore,' he said.