House construction times have blown out to almost a year as the industry warns it would need almost half a million workers over the next two years to meet housing growth projections and replace workers that leave the industry.
The Master Builders Association about half of the that number would need to be in technician and trade roles.
Adding to the woes of the sector, construction times for homes and units has slowed significantly and prices for some materials continue to escalate.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics was unlikely to provide anything to cheer about from the building sector.
The ABS found that the total number of dwellings approved fell 4.6 per cent in September, in seasonally adjusted terms, following an 8.1 per cent rise in August.
ABS head of construction statistics Daniel Rossi said approvals for private sector dwellings excluding houses fell by 5.1 per cent, following a 10.1 per cent rise in August.
Total dwelling approvals were driven down by falls in Western Australia (-11.0 per cent), New South Wales (-10.5 per cent), and Victoria (-8.9 per cent). Rises were recorded in Queensland (+34.6 per cent), Tasmania (+18.3 per cent), and South Australia (+5.1 per cent).
MBA chief executive Denita Wawn said in 2022-23, the average build time for detached houses increased from 10.3 months to 11.7 months.
For new townhouses, it now takes a total of 14.9 months from approval to completion compared with 13.5 months in 2021-22.
“However, apartment building times are still far slower than was normal before the pandemic,’’ Wawn said.
“When our output of new apartments was at record levels back in 2015-16, it took just 21 months to complete a build.
“These unnecessary delays to construction ultimately drive up the cost of building which has already faced inflationary challenges with building product prices and a tight labour market.
“Since the pandemic, building product prices have increased 33 per cent and 4.4 per cent in the last 12 months.
“While we are seeing a stabilisation of some building product prices primarily around steel, some products such as cement continue to escalate.’’
Master Builders’ forecasts 2023-24 will see home starts decline by 2.1 per cent to around 170,100, well below the 200,000 needed per year to meet population growth.
“With a housing target of 1.2 million homes in five years, to realistically achieve this goal, we need to reduce the time it takes to build,” Wawn said.
First-term Minneapolis City Council Members Jason Chavez and Aisha Chughtai, who represent the densely populated, centrally located Ninth and 10th Wards, are asking voters this fall to return them to City Hall.
Two of the youngest council members to ever assume office, they are Democratic Socialists endorsed by the DFL. After winning their wards handily in 2021, they spent much of the past two years pressing unsuccessfully — as part of a progressive minority on a majority centrist body — to change how the city responds to homeless encampments, institute rent control and expand public safety operations beyond policing.
All their challengers are running to their right, saying they have better ideas to tackle the interwoven problems of crime, public drug use, homelessness and commercial decline.
10th Ward
Chughtai, a former political organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is facing her strongest challenge from real estate developer Bruce Dachis, who has repeatedly invoked Chughtai’s support of “the abolition of MPD through defunding” to illustrate how his own pro-police platform is the polar opposite.
While this is Dachis’ first bid for office, he recently supported Don Samuels’ unsuccessful campaign against Rep. Ilhan Omar and — also working with Samuels — sued to throw out the failed 2021 ballot question that would have replaced the Minneapolis Police Department with a new public safety agency in the city charter.
“Clearly, I disagree with most of the things [Chughtai] does,” Dachis said. “I bring a lot to the table as far as life experience and knowledge of the area, since my business has been here for 40 years.”
While Chughtai co-sponsored an ordinance that would have capped rent increases by 3% annually, Dachis opposes all forms of rent control.
Chughtai doesn’t want any city resources spent on clearing homeless encampments, proposing instead to supply portable toilets while outreach workers continue to work through their complex cases. Dachis opposes harm-reduction homeless shelters — the model of the tiny home indoor village Avivo — and recommends jail as a form of intervention for encampment occupants who decline sober shelter, with drug treatment as an optional diversion.
“I will tell you, as will every expert on this issue across the country, that harm reduction is an important part of how we meaningfully address homelessness,” responded Chughtai, who said she has spent more time in encampments than anyone running for Minneapolis City Council.
Chughtai does not support increased police funding, citing the millions allocated for staffing that have gone unused while the department continues to shrink. Dachis wants to spend more, hoping that hiking salaries would improve hiring.
Asked whether she still supports abolishing MPD, Chughtai declined to answer yes or no, but said she supports “safety beyond policing.”
Two years after law enforcement killed Winston Smith in an Uptown parking ramp, months of protests, drag racing and looting have reduced the once-vibrant commercial center to a ghost town. To revive small businesses, Dachis calls for abating city taxes on the area’s commercial properties and preserving on-street parking. When a plan to implement 24-hour bus lanes along Hennepin Avenue split the City Council last year, more than 100 local businesses pleaded with the city to keep their parking instead. Chughtai sided firmly — though unsuccessfully — with transit and climate advocates calling for around-the-clock bus lanes.
Also running is Nasri Warsame, who last worked as an airport community service officer from January to April. While his campaign account on X (formerly Twitter) claims he is a police academy trainee, Warsame clarified in an interview that he is still taking criminal justice classes at Hennepin Technical College. He supports Dachis on all the issues, calling his Somali heritage the main difference between them.
Warsame was banned from seeking DFL endorsement after his supporters upended the convention in May. He apologized without taking responsibility, saying the convention chaos was one of the worst things he’d ever experienced in life.
Greg Kline, who filed as a member of the nonexistent “Abolish Bike Lanes” party, is also on the ballot.
Ninth Ward
Council Member Jason Chavez, a former aide for various DFL state legislators, had no problem rising to the top of a crowded field when he was elected in 2021. This year he is facing just one challenger: Dan Orban, an East Phillips technology teacher for the nonprofit Create Mpls with no political machine and little fundraising. Orban said he’s running for office for the first time to represent the voices of ordinary residents who have shouldered the burden of large and unremitting homeless encampments.
There was an encampment behind Orban’s house this summer, and with it unsanitary conditions and a fatal shooting. His children didn’t play outside. It was a “bittersweet” relief when the camp was cleared weeks ago, Orban said, because the people who were living there still need places to live.
Orban believes laws that are on the books, including those prohibiting drug use in public, need to be better enforced. And he wants the state and county to help exert more control over encampments so that traffickers don’t fill the power vacuum.
“You could say, especially for repeat offenders, the options are to actually go through a drug treatment rather than incarceration, which seems like a much more compassionate approach than just leaving them on the streets to die or be exploited,” he said.
Chavez, who supported a moratorium on closing homeless encampments in his first term, now has a new approach: to create a “humane” policy that ensures basic sanitation for encampments and alternative shelter for people displaced by closures. Last year, there were 7,000 instances of people being turned away from the county’s shelter reservation system.
He’s also calling for overdose prevention sites in the Ninth Ward, which advocates hope would contain drug use and concentrate addiction treatment outreach. Recently he co-sponsored a $1 million commitment from the city to build a second Avivo in south Minneapolis, but that concept is far from reality as no location has been proposed.
In his first term, Chavez managed to close a nearly 10-year fight between the city and East Phillips neighborhood over control of the former Roof Depot warehouse. The city is now in the process of selling the warehouse to environmental activists for redevelopment as an urban farm. The saga highlighted the Ninth Ward’s outsized share of heavy industries and highways.
During a League of Women Voters forum earlier last month, the candidates were cordial and often in agreement, including on ideas around reducing pollution, expanding public transit and efforts to rebuild and fight crime on Lake Street. Key distinctions include Chavez’s support for rent control, which Orban opposes, and the council member’s support for a ordinance that failed this year to ensure minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers. Orban said he does not believe government should intervene in setting wages.
Chavez said he and other council members are looking into how much it would cost to re-create the Downtown Improvement District — with regular street cleanup and friendly ambassadors — along Lake Street and other cultural corridors. “It’s an idea that has been floating around for years,” he said. “My office wants to do something about it this year.”
Read the candidates’ responses to the Star Tribune’s voter guide online.
(Bloomberg) — Australian inflation is being driven by climate change, geopolitical shocks and government policies — factors typically beyond the Reserve Bank’s control. Yet economists still anticipate it will have to respond with monetary tightening as soon as next week.
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In a sign that pressures in at least one of these sectors are here to stay, figures released Wednesday showed Australian home prices advanced for an eighth straight month in October while rental vacancies hit a fresh record low.
House prices and rents, gasoline and insurance were the top drivers of consumer prices last quarter. Together, they constitute roughly 19% of the CPI basket but accounted for an outsized 44% of price increases, according to calculations by Bloomberg Economics.
“Can further rate hikes do anything to address these forces?” said James McIntyre at Bloomberg Economics. “We think oil, electricity, rents and insurance spikes will have faded by the 2H2025 window the Reserve Bank sees inflation returning to target, and will do so without any further help from the RBA.”
That’s why McIntyre is among a small group that sees the central bank pausing at 4.1% for a fifth straight meeting on Nov. 7.
Housing has been a major driver of inflation despite the RBA’s 4 percentage points of rate hikes since May 2022, pushed higher by elevated labor and material costs, chronic undersupply and a swelling population.
Money markets are pricing a 70% chance the RBA will lift rates to a 12-year-high of 4.35% on Tuesday after Governor Michele Bullock warned it had little tolerance for inflation taking longer to fall within its 2-3% target than the current late 2025 forecast.
The comments came just days before property consultancy CoreLogic Inc. reported that the number of homes available to rent in October fell to a historic-low. That will add further pressure on rental inflation, which rose 7.6% in the third quarter from a year earlier, the largest annual rise since 2009.
“It seems unlikely that these conditions will change any time soon given population growth, the lack of significant new housing supply and the overall strong demand for rentals,” said Cameron Kusher, director of economic research at REA Group’s PropTrack Pty Ltd. division.
Australia took in more than 500,000 people from overseas in the 12 months through September.
Economists at UBS Group AG say record population growth is expected to add 0.25-0.5 percentage points to CPI in the near-term, while former RBA official Luci Ellis said it is boosting aggregate consumer demand. That showed up in retail sales released Monday that came in at 0.9%, triple economists’ forecasts.
“Domestic demand pressures are still driving domestic inflation,” Ellis, now chief economist at Westpac Banking Corp, said in a research note. “Strong population growth is a factor here, and recent arrivals data suggest it will remain so.”
Insurance and financial services inflation climbed 8.6% last quarter from a year prior — the strongest annual rise since 2008, data last week showed, reflecting natural disasters from the Black Summer bushfires in 2019-20 to heavy rainfall and flooding across Australia’s east in 2021 and 2022.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers warned that government funding for disaster recovery had blown out by 433% over the past three years, ahead of a potentially disastrous wildfire season in the coming summer.
Insurers QBE Ltd, Suncorp Group and Insurance Australia Group Ltd. have had cumulative policy rate increases of 67%, 53% and 46%, respectively, since 2016, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
Gasoline and coal costs also surged in the wake of geopolitical upheavals — first in eastern Europe as Russia invaded Ukraine and then in the Middle East amid the escalating Israel-Hamas war.
An International Monetary Fund report on Wednesday found that soaring rents, electricity and insurance prices are why services inflation has proved so sticky in Australia, calling on the RBA to do more to curb price pressures.
The upshot is that, while these factors are beyond the RBA’s control, its job is to contain inflation. As Governor Bullock has said, it only has one blunt instrument to do so: the cash rate.
(Adds IMF Article IV Mission report in penultimate paragraph.)
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A pilot has been indicted for allegedly threatening to shoot the plane’s captain if the captain diverted the flight because of a passenger who needed medical attention.
A grand jury in Utah issued the indictment against Jonathan J. Dunn on Oct. 18 over an incident that happened in August 2022, charging him with interference with a flight crew, according to federal court records.
The Transportation Department’s inspector general’s office said in an email sent Tuesday that Dunn was the first officer, or co-pilot, on the flight and was authorized to carry a gun under a program run by the Transportation Security Administration.
“After a disagreement about a potential flight diversion due to a passenger medical event, Dunn told the Captain they would be shot multiple times if the Captain diverted the flight,” the inspector general’s office said.
The inspector general described Dunn as a California pilot. It did not identify the airline on which the incident occurred, saying only that it was a commercial airline flight. The office did not give the flight’s intended route, or whether it was diverted.
The inspector general said it was working with the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration on the investigation.
The two-page indictment in federal district court in Utah says only that Dunn “did use a dangerous weapon in assaulting and intimidating the crew member.” It did not indicate the airline either, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Salt Lake City declined to comment beyond the information in the indictment.
Interference with a flight crew is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
An arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 16.
The pilot’s indictment came just a few days before an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot riding in the cockpit jump seat tried to shut down the engines of a Horizon Air jet in midflight. He was subdued by the captain and co-pilot and arrested after the plane diverted to Portland, Oregon.
Joseph David Emerson of Pleasant Hill, Calif., told police he was suffering from depression and had taken psychedelic mushrooms 48 hours before the flight. He pleaded not guilty in state court in Portland to charges of attempted murder.
That incident revived debate about how pilots are screened for mental health — largely by trusting that they will volunteer information that could raise safety concerns. Pilots are required during regular medical exams to disclose depression, anxiety, drug or alcohol dependence, and medications they take.
David Koenig, The Associated Press
Struggling coworking giant WeWork (WE) is gearing up to file for bankruptcy “as early as next week,” nearly two months after it warned investors that it had “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay afloat, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Details on the potential bankruptcy were scant, only that the New York City-based WeWork was planning to file for Chapter 11 in New Jersey, according to the WSJ.
A spokesperson for WeWork told Commercial Observer that “we do not comment on speculation.”
The potential bankruptcy also comes the same month WeWork skipped out on $95.2 million in interest payments with its lenders in hopes of improving its capital structure, giving it a 30-day grace period to pay up.
The WSJ reported that WeWork struck an agreement with its bondholders to give it another seven days before a default is triggered.
A bankruptcy filing would cap off a long fall from grace for the once-shining coworking company which had had an eye-popping valuation of $47 billion and became the largest private office tenant in New York City for a spell.
But the company has dealt with a failed initial public offering attempt that shined a harsh light on its money-burning business model; had its bombastic co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann pushed out; nearly ran out of money; and then contended with a global pandemic that kept people away from offices and in their homes.
WeWork has recently started renegotiating with its landlords to alter or back out of its leases across the country — with Colliers data as of Oct. 13 finding that it shed 300,000 square feet in Manhattan alone during the fourth quarter. A bankruptcy could exacerbate that and cause collateral damage to owners who were once eager to rent to WeWork, with owners who have already lost WeWork dealing with large vacancies that have impacted the valuation of its debt.
“The minute they file for bankruptcy, normally what that means is you can reject leases and there’s no obligation whatsoever,” Manus Clancy, leader of applied data, research and pricing at Trepp, previously told Commercial Observer. “That being said, it has seemed for a while like they’ve been treating these leases as though they’re not obligations anyway. They’ve walked away from them. They’ve stopped paying as they’ve tried to conserve cash. … I think the borrowers — the property owners — are already feeling the impact.”
Nicholas Rizzi can be reached at nrizzi@commercialobserver.com.
Perth houses are selling almost twice as fast as they were a year ago, with buyers snapping them up in a median of just eight days in October.
According to reiwa.com data, the fastest selling suburbs in October were Cooloongup and Seville Grove, where houses sold in a median of only three days.
REIWA Chief Executive Officer Cath Hart said the speed of sales reflected the incredible demand for established homes.
“It’s a perfect storm, with strong population growth coming up against the challenges in the rental market and the ongoing constraints of building,” she said.
“As a result, many people are choosing to buy rather than build or try and find a rental.”
Other suburbs buyers were quick to purchase properties in were Huntingdale (four days); and Greenfields, Coodanup, Gosnells, Kelmscott, Mandurah, Orelia and Tapping (five days).
“Many of these suburbs have been on the fastest selling list several times in the past six months,” Ms Hart said.
“Cooloongup and Greenfields have made six appearances, while Seville Grove has made four. While not on this month’s list, Armadale has also appeared four times since May.
“Despite recent price growth, these areas remain very affordable, which adds to their appeal.”
Ms Hart said the tightness and speed at which the market was operating was upsetting for buyers who were frequently missing out on homes.
“I’ve had people say that no sooner do they see the For Sale sign go up, then an Under Offer sticker goes on it, and they find it disheartening,” she said.
“It is a challenging time. If you are looking to buy you need to be prepared – ensure you have your finances organised so you can make an offer when you see a home you like; be patient – homes are still coming to the market in reasonable numbers, they’re just selling quickly, you will find one eventually; and be persistent – if you keep trying you will be successful.
As a result of such strong competition, the Perth median house price also jumped to a new high of $575,000 last month, up 0.9 per cent in September and 6.5 per cent on a year ago.
The median unit price remained stable at $400,000 but has recorded a decline of 1.7 per cent year-on-year.
“We certainly expect the median house price to increase further over the rest of the year,” Ms Hart said.
“And while the unit price has been steady for some time, the underlying data suggests it will show an increase in coming months.”
Mosman park experienced the most price growth in October, up 3.8 per cent to a median of $1.91 million, while South Perth climbed 2.7 per cent to $1.875 million.
Manning is inching closer to the million dollar mark, up 2.7 per cent last month to a median price of $945,000.
Listings on reiwa.com rose 2.7 per cent in October to hit 5011 at the end of the month.
While that’s up on the 30-year low recorded in September, it’s still 37.4 per cent down on the same time in 2022.
“The significant difference between now and 12 months ago is the speed of sales,” Ms Hart said.
“There were 7999 properties for sale at the end of October 2022, but the median time on market was 15 days.
“Homes have been selling extremely quickly for most of this year and this is keeping the number of properties for sale on reiwa.com low.
“Sales are continuing to outpace new listings. For example, new listings in the past four weeks are only 4.5 per cent lower than the same period last year, but the number of sales reported by our members is 10.8 per cent higher.
“As a result, the number of homes currently on the market remains low.”
MEXICO CITY, Oct. 31, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — FIBRA Prologis (BMV:FIBRAPL 14), a leading owner and operator of Class-A industrial real estate in Mexico, announces today that Fitch Ratings ratified our credit rating of BBB with a stable outlook. This rating is one notch above the Mexican sovereign (BBB-/Stable).
A securities rating is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold securities and is subject to revision or withdrawal at any time by the rating organization.
ABOUT FIBRA PROLOGIS
FIBRA Prologis is a leading owner and operator of Class-A industrial real estate in Mexico. As of September 30, 2023, FIBRA Prologis was comprised of 228 logistics and manufacturing facilities in six industrial markets in Mexico totaling 44.2 million square feet (4.1 million square meters) of gross leasable area.
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
The statements in this release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about the industry and markets in which FIBRA Prologis operates, management’s beliefs and assumptions made by management. Such statements involve uncertainties that could significantly impact FIBRA Prologis financial results. Words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “seeks,” “estimates,” variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements, which generally are not historical in nature. All statements that address operating performance, events or developments that we expect or anticipate will occur in the future — including statements relating to rent and occupancy growth, acquisition activity, development activity, disposition activity, general conditions in the geographic areas where we operate, our debt and financial position, are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Although we believe the expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, we can give no assurance that our expectations will be attained and therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in such forward-looking statements. Some of the factors that may affect outcomes and results include, but are not limited to: (i) national, international, regional and local economic climates, (ii) changes in financial markets, interest rates and foreign currency exchange rates, (iii) increased or unanticipated competition for our properties, (iv) risks associated with acquisitions, dispositions and development of properties, (v) maintenance of real estate investment trust (“FIBRA”) status and tax structuring, (vi) availability of financing and capital, the levels of debt that we maintain and our credit ratings, (vii) risks related to our investments, (viii) environmental uncertainties, including risks of natural disasters, (ix) risks related to the coronavirus pandemic, and (x) those additional factors discussed in reports filed with the “Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores” and the Mexican Stock Exchange by FIBRA Prologis under the heading “Risk Factors.” FIBRA Prologis undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements appearing in this release.
Non-Solicitation – Any securities discussed herein or in the accompanying presentations, if any, have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933 or the securities laws of any state and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements under the Securities Act and any applicable state securities laws. Any such announcement does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the securities discussed herein or in the presentations, if and as applicable.
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SOURCE FIBRA Prologis
Texas All Cash Is Helping Property Owners Searching Online For “Sell My House Fast San Antonio”
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Man held for running fake education consultancy to dupe medical aspirantsThe arrested Sharath Goud, 45, hails from Telangana’s Hyderabad and holds a degree in Master of Business Administration (MBA).
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Representative image showing an arrested man.
Bengaluru: Sanjay Nagar police have arrested a man who ran a fake education consultancy firm and duped as many as 18 medical aspirants, police officials said Tuesday. The arrested Sharath Goud, 45, hails from Telangana’s Hyderabad and holds a degree in Master of Business Administration (MBA).
Police officials also recovered Rs 47.80 lakh in cash of the Rs 62 lakh cheated sum.
Goud, who has been in Bengaluru for 12 years, set up ‘Nexus Edu’ consultancy on New BEL Road earlier this year, an investigating official told DH. Sharath paid a sum to an agent who gave him the details of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) aspirants.
“For a sum of Rs 10,000, the agent provided an elaborate list of the contact details of 20,000 aspirants,” the official said, adding that the agent was yet to be arrested.
The suspect then hired a few people, including four women as telecallers. These people approached their potential victims, used subterfuge and promised them medical seats in reputed colleges across the country.
In one such case, a victim was demanded to pay Rs 12 lakh for a seat in Kerala’s PK DAS Institute of Medical Sciences as a finder’s fee in the first week of September after convincing him that the seat of a drop-out would be assigned to his son for a lower sum. After negotiations, Rs 10 lakh was agreed, of which Rs 4 lakh was paid in two instalments, the victim alleged.
The victim, who was promised a medical seat in Kerala, was shocked when he approached the college and found out that he was conned, the officials said. When the victim visited the Nexus Edu office, it was shut.
They traced Goud to a luxurious rented apartment in Hyderabad, where he stayed with his wife and child.
After planning and waiting for nearly 16 hours, the officials arrested Goud. They found that he had withdrawn the cheated sum from his bank account and stored it inside a cupboard, in mainly Rs 500 denominations.
“His bank account had a balance of 46 paise,” the official said.
“He had lied to his wife that he was into a real-estate business and the cash was its proceeds,” he added.
Earlier this month, four people were arrested for running a similar scam and operating a fake education consultancy on Cunningham Road.
In what many thought was bound to happen, former U.S. President Donald Trump has once again come out in favor of Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves heading into the Nov. 7 general election.
Reeves released a new commercial on Tuesday – one day before he and Democratic challenger Brandon Presley are set to take the debate stage – showing Trump endorsing him over “President Biden’s candidate.”
“Crooked Joe Biden is absolutely destroying our country,” Trump said. “Now, Joe Biden wants to put his candidate – and this is his candidate – Brandon Presley in as Mississippi’s governor.”
Trump, who is in the middle of his third presidential campaign after losing a second-term attempt in 2020 to Biden, went on to allege that the current president has directed Democratic donors to contribute to Presley’s campaign.
JUST IN: Former U.S. President Donald Trump has once again endorsed Tate Reeves for Mississippi governor https://t.co/HJq9cE06vl pic.twitter.com/BZrslWDCjm
— SuperTalk News (@SuperTalkNews) October 31, 2023
“Joe Biden’s people are funding Brandon Presley’s campaign. They own him. He’ll do whatever they want him to do,” Trump continued. “It’s really bad for Mississippi. I’m asking you to make time to vote, and you’ve got to vote for Governor Tate Reeves who has my total and complete endorsement.”
While Trump did not call out specific individuals who have donated to Presley’s campaign, Reeves has used multiple opportunities along the trail to call out his opponent for receiving support from Democratic governors Gavin Newsom of California and Phil Murphy of New Jersey, former Georgia State Rep. Stacey Abrams, and “Hollywood liberals” such as Morgan Freeman.
Trump’s endorsement of Reeves is similar to that of 2019 when the former Republican president voiced his support for the then-lieutenant governor just five days before the election. Some speculate that Trump’s endorsement four years ago gave Reeves the edge he needed in defeating former Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood by five points.