For GameStop day traders, it’s the moment they’ve dreamed about

WASHINGTON (AP) — They’ve endured a financial crisis. Two deep recessions. Mounds of student debt. Stagnant pay. Costly health care. Dim job prospects.

They’ve seen the uber-rich grow richer while a pandemic threw tens of millions of people out of work and left many more isolated and vulnerable at home.

Now, they feel, it’s payback time.

Nearly a decade after the Occupy protest movement left Wall Street more or less unscathed, the citadel of financial might faces a new assault.

Day traders, mobilized on Reddit, have poured about all the money they can find into the stocks of a struggling video game retailer called GameStop and a few other beaten-down companies. Their buying has swollen those companies’ share prices beyond anyone’s imagination — and, not coincidentally, inflicted huge losses on the hedge funds of the super-rich, who had placed bets that the stocks would drop.

Their strategy, of course, is freighted with risk. The prices of the stocks they’ve bought are now multiples above any level justified by revenue, earnings or future prospects. The danger is that at any time, the stocks could collapse.

Maybe so. But as one Reddit user wrote Friday, asserting that hedge fund financiers would drink Champagne as they looked down upon Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2011:

“I’d rather lose it all than give them what they need to destroy me … I’ll burn it all down just to spite them.”

Their rage and hell-bent drive to pick on powerful Wall Street financiers have sent shivers through ordinary investors and heightened fears about the fragility of the markets in general after a prolonged period of stock gains fueled by ultra-low interest rates. Those fears just caused the S&P 500 index to suffer its worst week of losses since October.

GameStop shares? They rocketed nearly 70% on Friday. Over the past three weeks, they’ve delivered a stupefying 1,600% gain.

“They figured out how to play the way Wall Street has been playing for a long time,” said Robert Thompson, who has long tracked cultural trends as director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. “I’m amazed it didn’t happen earlier.”

Feeding the frenzy have been young traders like 27-year-old Zach Weir, who this past week bought five shares of GameStop.

“I’m a college student, so that’s basically a month’s rent for me,” said Weir, who is pursuing a master’s degree in marketing.

He did it, he said, because he believes in the cause: Protecting a cherished game store, where he would hang out as a teenager on Friday nights, from financial tycoons who want the company to fail.

And if he loses his investment?

“If my account goes to zero, it goes to zero,” Weir said. “At this point, it’s not about the money. I think this is bigger than the money now”

Proposal to raise minimum wage turning into a flashpoint

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic push to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour has emerged as an early flashpoint in the fight for a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, testing President Joe Biden’s ability to bridge Washington’s partisan divides as he pursues his first major legislative victory.

Biden called for a $15 hourly minimum wage during his campaign and has followed through by hitching it to a measure that, among other things, calls for $1,400 stimulus checks and $130 billion to help schools reopen. Biden argues that anyone who holds a full-time job shouldn’t live in poverty, echoing progressives in the Democratic Party who are fully on board with the effort.

“With the economic divide, I mean, I want to see a $15 minimum wage. It should actually be $20,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.

Some Republicans support exploring an increase but are uneasy with $15 an hour. They warn that such an increase could lead to job losses in an economy that has nearly 10 million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic began. Moderates such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rep. Tom Reed of New York are urging Biden to split off the minimum wage hike from COVID-19 talks and deal with it separately.

Census delay helps Democrats in one state, GOP in another

FALLS CHURCH, VA. (AP) — The Census Bureau’s missed deadlines could be a boon for Virginia Republicans but a bust for the New Jersey GOP — and the reverse for Democrats — as the only two states with legislative elections this year do so without the data they need to draw new boundaries.

The 2021 election cycle, the first since Democrats took control of the White House and Congress, is also supposed to be the first conducted after redistricting based on changes captured in the once-a-decade census required under the Constitution.

The delay in census figures means Virginia and New Jersey will continue to use decade-old maps that don’t reflect growth in areas such as northern Virginia and may undercount people of color, factors that could contribute to shifts in their statehouses.

The two are the only states with statewide elections in 2021; the unusual election cycle often provides an early window into the electorate’s view on a new presidential administration.

Russian police warn Navalny’s supporters not to come to protests

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian police have issued a strong warning against participating in protests planned for today to call for the release of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s most prominent foe.

The warning comes amid detentions of Navalny associates and opposition journalists and a police plan to restrict movement in the center of Moscow today.

Navalny was arrested on Jan. 17 after flying back to Russia from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from nerve-agent poisoning. His detention sparked nationwide protests in about 100 cities; nearly 4,000 people were reported arrested.

The next demonstration in Moscow is planned for Lubyanka Square. The Federal Security Service, which Navalny claims arrange to have him poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent on behalf of the Kremlin, is headquartered in the square. The Russian government has denied a role in the 44-year-old’s poisoning.

Lawmakers push for mental health days for kids

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Legislation proposed in two states this year would add mental or behavioral health to the list of reasons students can be absent from class, partly in response to increases in stress and anxiety amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Arizona, Democratic Sen. Sean Bowie has introduced a mental health day measure for the second time after legislation stalled in March as the pandemic took hold. Republican Gov. Doug Ducey has taken an interest in youth suicide and mental health, and Bowie said he’s confident it will be signed into law. The bill passed the state Senate unanimously Thursday.

And in Utah, which already has a law that lets kids take time off school for a mental illness, a new proposal from Republican Rep. Mike Winder would allow absences for students to deal with other kinds of mental pressures to further normalize treating a mental health concern like a physical one.

Biden will have to rebuild the ranks of environmental researchers

Polluting factories go uninspected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Leadership positions sit vacant at the U.S. Geological Survey’s climate science centers. And U.S. Department of Agriculture research into environmental issues important to farmers is unfinished.

The ranks of scientists who carry out environmental research, enforcement and other jobs fell in several agencies — sharply in some — under former President Donald Trump, federal data shows. Veteran staffers say many retired, quit or moved to other agencies amid pressure from an administration they regarded as hostile to science and beholden to industry.

That poses a challenge for President Joe Biden, who must rebuild a depleted and demoralized work force to make good on promises to tackle climate change, protect the environment and reduce pollution that disproportionately affects poor and minority communities.

“It’s going to take a long time to undo the damage that the Trump administration has done,” said Kyla Bennett, a former EPA enforcement official who now directs science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a watchdog group.

Employment data shows more than 670 science jobs lost at the EPA, 150 at the U.S. Geological Survey, which researches human-caused climate change and natural hazards, and 231 at the Fish and Wildlife Service.