Work

ABC News - At least 3,500 Long Island Rail Road workers are walking off the job after negotiations on a new labor deal failed overnight. ABC News' Ike Ejiochi reports

Climate change

The US government has proposed a plan for the drought stricken Colorado River that could cut up to 40% of current supplies to Arizona, California and Nevada, as the waterway’s reservoirs continue to plunge to critically low levels.

A top Arizona water official shared details of the Trump administration’s plan at a state meeting on Wednesday.

Under the 10-year plan, which will be finalized in June, the annual amount of water delivered to Arizona, California and Nevada could be slashed by up to 3m acre-feet, according to Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona department of water resources. The reductions would be evaluated every two years.

Three million acre-feet of water is enough to supply 6 million to 9 million households for one year, more than the number of homes in Arizona and Nevada.

Buschatzke said the federal plan would be either implemented under existing Colorado River law or through agreements among the states. He said federal officials had indicated that water cuts across the three lower-basin states would be based on the “priority of the law of the river”. That law, the 1922 Colorado River Compact, gives California the highest priority for water use.

Buschatzke described the proposed federal cuts as “sobering”.

“That’s us, that’s Arizona, and potentially CAP going to zero,” said Buschatzke, referring to water flows on the Central Arizona Project, a canal that transports Colorado River water to central and southern Arizona.

The Colorado river supplies water to some 40 million people in the American west. The plan comes months after the seven states that depend on the river’s dwindling supply missed a February federal deadline to agree upon how water cuts would be divided. The river has lost about 27.8m acre-feet of groundwater in the last 20 years, largely owing to overuse. A record snow drought this year further exacerbated the issue.

The river’s upper basin states, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, have been resistant to water reductions. The states maintain that those downstream, California, Arizona and Nevada bear responsibility for the water’s shortages and thus should carry the burden of cuts.

Independent, UK -   Global warming is causing rivers to slowly lose oxygen, threatening fish and other lives in the waterways, a new study shows.

Researchers in China used satellites and artificial intelligence to track and analyze oxygen levels in more than 21,000 rivers across the globe since 1985. They found oxygen levels have dropped an average of 2.1% since 1985, according to a study published Friday in Science Advances. That doesn't seem like much but it adds up and if it continues or accelerates, rivers in the Eastern United States, India and across the tropics could lose enough oxygen by the end of the century to suffocate some fish and create dead zones, the study said.

Basic chemistry and physics dictate that warmer water holds less oxygen, scientists said. Warmer water, which happens with human-caused climate change, releases more oxygen into the atmosphere.

The Guardian -   The climate crisis should be declared a global public health emergency by the World Health Organization, or millions more people will die unnecessarily, leading international experts have said. The independent pan-European commission on climate and health, which was convened by the WHO, concluded the climate crisis was such a worldwide threat to health that the WHO should declare it “a public health emergency of international concern” (Pheic).

The international spread of vector-borne disease, such as dengue and chikungunya, as well as the health impacts of extreme weather events, global heating, food insecurity and air pollution make a Pheic necessary, said the commission’s report, which will be presented to European ministers on Sunday before the WHO’s world health assembly starts on Monday.

Pheics are the highest level of health alert. Previous declarations include infectious diseases such as Covid and Mpox. While declaring one would not on its own reverse climate change, it would trigger the kind of coordinated international response that the scale of the health crisis demands but has not yet materialised.

The 11-strong independent commission, which includes former health and climate ministers, said: “Far from being a fading priority or fake news, climate change poses an immediate and long-term threat to health, economic, food, water, environmental, personal, community and national security.”

DOJ: Those who oppose the White House ballroom are deranged

New Republic -   The Justice Department is arguing that President Trump’s proposed ballroom will be a “gift to the American people,” and that anyone opposed to the vanity project simply has “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

The latest Justice Department filing from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche regarding the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s lawsuit against Trump’s ballroom relies on the recent White House Correspondent’s Dinner assassination attempt and other MAGA-friendly arguments that display the deep levels of sycophancy present within the Trump administration.

“The assassination attempts make clear what Defendants have been explaining from the start of the case: Presidents need a secure space for significant events, which currently does not exist in Washington, D.C., and this Court’s injunction stalling this Project cannot defensibly continue. To ensure construction proceeds, and to conserve judicial resources, this Court should immediately issue a ruling indicating that it would dissolve its injunction at once,” the filing reads, noting that Trump’s ballroom will have “missile resistant steel columns, Military grade venting, drone proof ceilings, and bullet, ballistic, and blast proof glass”—which will cost at least $1 billion. They even refer to it as the “Militarily Top Secret Ballroom” and allege that the plaintiffs are only suing because it was Trump’s idea.

“That fact is also relevant to the merits here because it is further evidence that rank political bias led to this meritless, dangerous lawsuit being filed. A bipartisan chorus of legislators, analysts, and media pundits have agreed the Ballroom is needed more than ever. The Ballroom is a gift to the People of the United States and to future Presidents,” the filing continues. “Plaintiff’s frivolous suit should be dismissed, and the Court should indicate that it would dissolve its injunction and allow construction of this vital for National Security Project to be completed without any risk of hindrance.”

ICE

New Republic -    Department of Homeland Security officials are plotting to proceed with the construction of ICE’s mega-prisons in Texas and Maryland, despite the ongoing legal challenges, local pushback, and a federal watchdog investigation. 

An internal ICE memo revealed that staffers are exploring what work can be done at a warehouse near Hagerstown, Maryland, even after a judge blocked construction, The Washington Post reported Friday. 

DHS signed a $113 million build-out and operations contract in March with KVG, a defense contractor with no experience overseeing detention centers, to work on the Maryland facility. The contract could grow to $642 million over the next three years.

Last month, a Baltimore judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the project, arguing that the building’s four toilets and two water fountains were not sufficient to accommodate the estimated 1,500-person capacity. 

Polls

Pew Research -  A growing share of U.S. adults (37%) say religion is gaining influence in American life, and more than half (55%) say religion plays a positive role in society. At the same time, most people want churches and other houses of worship to stay out of day-to-day politics and prefer that they not endorse candidates during elections.

Farming

Axios - Farmers across the Midwest are entering planting season under mounting financial pressure, as the Iran conflict drives up diesel and fertilizer prices — deepening the worst agricultural downturn in decades.

• Rising fuel and fertilizer costs threaten to kill more family farms, drive up food prices and further strain rural economies already battered by trade disruptions, inflation and extreme weather.

• Bankruptcies are rising. Lenders are becoming more reluctant to loan to farmers..

Farmers are grappling with a confluence of forces:

• 🔌 Skyrocketing energy prices triggered by the Iran war. Diesel is up 60% from last year.
• 🌾 Spiking fertilizer prices and shortages after Iran blocked shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. 70% of farmers say they can't afford the fertilizer they need.
• Disrupted export markets tied to President Trump's tariffs and Chinese import restrictions.
• Global drought and other weather pressures.

🌽 The crisis is hitting farmers hard across the country:

• In Arkansas, energy and fertilizer costs are way up even as farmers are selling their crops for less.
• In Ohio, first-generation farmer Michael Kilpatrick said his fuel bills are up from $400 to $700, and container costs have risen 30%.
• In Iowa, farmers are dealing with a decline in soybean prices from $13-$15 to around $10 per bushel, as exports to China have fallen due to trade tensions.
• In Minnesota, calls to the state's farm and rural issues mental health helpline are climbing.

For consumers, the crisis is especially noticeable with beef.

• The U.S. cattle herd is at its lowest level in decades, largely due to global drought.  

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Pentagon's $1.5 trillion budget

POGO - Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth returned to Congress this week and immediately faced a bipartisan barrage of pointed questions about the Pentagon’s funding request and the illegal war in Iran. At center stage was the Pentagon’s proposed $1.5 trillion budget — a record-breaking sum that, if approved, not only promises to become a boondoggle of wasteful spending that doesn’t make us safer, but also punts critical expenditures to a broken reconciliation process, a particular point of contention for some Republican lawmakers. Hegseth failed to provide the details that would justify such a massive budget increase for the world’s most heavily funded military.  

 

“One would think that such a massive bump in spending would be accompanied by a detailed plan on exactly what this money would be used for, and a robust debate on how it will achieve our national priorities,” wrote Greg Williams, the director of POGO’s Center for Defense Information, for Federal News Network.   

Democrat Assn of Secretaries of State -  An FBI agent showed up at the home — not the office, the home — of Milwaukee County's elections director. They didn't call or go through official channels. They arrived at her front door.  This is just the latest in the Trump administration's ongoing campaign to intimidate the election officials who stood between Trump and the results he wanted in 2020.

Milwaukee County. Wayne County, Michigan. Fulton County, Georgia. The FBI has visited homes, seized ballots, and pursued election records — in the exact states and counties that were decisive in delivering the 2020 defeat to Donald Trump.

Democrats' Pennsylvania problem

The Hill -  Democrats once hailed Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) as the party’s poster child: A plain-spoken, hoodie-wearing populist who appealed not just to those in his party but to independents and even some Republicans.  Lately, though, some Democrats say he’s appealing to Republicans and turning his back on his party with remarks defending President Trump and attacking his party over their criticisms of the White House.

As the Pennsylvania senator increasingly clashes with progressives and breaks with his fellow Democrats on a string of issues, some in the party are comparing him to former Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), another Democrat who some in the party say boosted Republicans while hurting his side. 

This week alone, Fetterman accused the Democratic base of becoming “increasingly anti-American.” And almost worse, Democrats say, he was the only Senate Democrat to oppose legislation that would stop the war in Iran. 

In a Wednesday appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, Fetterman cut into Democratic attacks on Trump’s remarks that he is not focused on the financial situations of Americans while negotiating with the Iranian government, arguing Trump’s comments were “clipped.”

Donald Trump

Trump: “President Xi said America is a nation in decline. And I said, ‘You’re right.’”

New Republic -  President Donald Trump suggested earlier this week that Venezuela should be annexed by the United States. He reportedly told Fox News correspondent John Roberts—not to be confused with the chief justice—that he was “seriously considering a move to make Venezuela the fifty-first state.”

This is a far-fetched idea, to say the least. Venezuela has no interest in voluntarily becoming a U.S. state, as its acting President Delcy Rodríguez told reporters on Monday. “We will continue to defend our integrity, our sovereignty, our independence, our history,” she said, adding that Venezuela was “not a colony, but a free country.”

Alternet -   During President Donald Trump’s second term, one of his key goals has involved reshaping U.S. cultural institutions to suit his ideological project, and the Smithsonian in particular has become a target of his culture war against diversity and historical narratives that he perceives to be “woke.” Shortly after he entered office, he signed an executive order calling for the museum to remove “anti-American” narratives, which took special aim at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, arguing that aspects of it portrayed American and Western values as “inherently harmful and oppressive.”

While many speculated that this could mean the closure or radical whitewashing of exhibits involving issues like slavery or the struggles of minority communities, according to the Washington Post, the Smithsonian “has managed to push back and mostly hold its ground.” While it has been impacted by what the Post describes as “a few key losses,” it has succeeded at maintaining the majority of its programming through a strategy of sticking strictly to the facts.

For example, as the Post explains, “No single exhibition in Washington may be more scrutinized than the Portrait Gallery’s ‘America’s Presidents,’ and among its critics, apparently, was Trump, whose administration took issue with the wall texts that mentioned his impeachments among other low points of his first presidency.”

Alternet -  Congressional lawmakers and Trump’s own former lawyer are panicking over how racked President Donald Trump’s mind appears to be with illness. “I don't know how anyone can see what he posts or watch him in any meeting and think that he's fit for office,” said one lawmaker speaking to reporters.

Another lawmaker said: “We have strategic ambiguity. But [Trump] is just … He’s confrontational, inconsistent, erratic,” said another congressman, who then fluttered his tongue in a demonstration of Trump’s lucidity.

“I don't trust that man to be able to cognitively make a complete sentence, let alone negotiate with China,” said another,,,

Back in the studio, MS NOW host Ari Melber interviewed Trump’s former attorney Ty Cobb, who offered little good news to deliver on that front.

“In 2017, Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and president of the World Mental Health Coalition, a well-respected psychological professional trained at Harvard and Yale and highly regarded at the national institute of mental health, and 26 of her colleagues and other respected psychiatrists around the world, posted a lengthy article commenting on Trump's malignant narcissism, and the appearance of early frontal lobe dementia,” said Cobb, who served Trump’s White House in his first term. “The symptoms have only gotten worse from there. They are remarkable at this stage of the game, and the wake sleep reversal is a very common symptom highlighted by mental health professionals when discussing Trump's cognitive decline.”

“The reality is what he does late at night causes him to sleep during the day. And that is a very well-known symptom of cognitive decline, frontal lobe dementia, and Alzheimer’s and because he has no impulse control left, he is guided solely by his malignant narcissism now,” Cobb continued.

The Hill -   The U.S. Office of Government Ethics on Thursday released financial disclosure forms showing that President Trump disclosed at least $220 million in financial transactions in the securities of major U.S. companies earlier this year. The reports show a cumulative value of between $220 million and around $750 million, with purchases including securities linked to companies like Oracle, Meta Platforms, Bank of America, Microsoft and Goldman Sachs.

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization told Reuters that the president’s investment holdings “are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial ?institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions.”

“Trades are executed and portfolios are balanced through automated investment ?processes ?and systems administered by those institutions,” the spokesperson said. “Neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments. They receive no advance notice of trading activity and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio management ?of any kind.”

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told NOTUS after it published its own report on Trump’s disclosures on Friday that the president “only acts in the best interests of the American public –– which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”

Ingle added that Trump’s children manage his assets and that there are “no conflicts of interest.”

The disclosures also show that Trump was months late in disclosing tens of millions of dollars in stock trading. Presidents are required to publicly disclose stock transactions exceeding $1,000 within 45 days, with records showing that he was assessed with a $200 fee for being late.

Decline of student test scores

Time - Over the past ten-plus years, American students’ academic achievement has experienced a concerning decline. Test scores for students in grades K through 12 are lower than they were a decade ago in school districts across the U.S., according to new data released Wednesday by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University.

Reading scores were down roughly 0.6 grades in 2025 compared to 2015, and math scores were down about 0.4 grades. This means that students were 60% of one school year behind where their peers were in reading a decade earlier and 40% of one school year behind in math.

The decline began even before 2015, according to a report on the data from the Education Scorecard, a collaboration between the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard University and the Stanford project. From 1990 to 2013, students’ math and reading scores rose steadily. But in 2013, per the report, the U.S. “entered a learning recession” and the rate of improvement in reading and math began to flatten or drop, a trend that continued through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Missing member of Congress

Headline USA-   Rep. Thomas Kean Jr., (R-N.J.) has vanished from public life, missing from both Capitol Hill and the campaign trail for over two months while his office refuses to provide answers about his whereabouts, the New York Times reported.

The Republican lawmaker last cast a vote in Congress in early March. Despite facing re-election in one of the tightest midterm contests in the nation, he has made no campaign appearances. Not a single candid photograph has emerged to calm the concerns of supporters and voters.His office put out a statement two weeks ago claiming the congressman was addressing a “medical issue” and would return “very soon.”  Nobody has seen him since.

Immigrants

The Guardian - As questions still swirl about the six people found dead inside a baking-hot railway car in Texas, immigration advocates warn that the US is about to enter the most dangerous season of the year for immigrants making the perilous journey over the southern border.

Early results shared by the Webb county medical examiner indicate that at least one of the six people found dead in the city of Laredo died from hyperthermia, which occurs when the body is overwhelmed by extreme heat. The same cause of death is likely true for the five others.

The group of six, who ranged in age from 14 to 56, were all from either Mexico or Honduras. Laredo is home to a popular land port teeming with trade activity between Mexico and the US, leading investigators to believe early on that the deaths were the result of smuggling.

As of this writing, investigators believe immigrants boarded the Union Pacific train near Del Rio, Texas, before becoming trapped inside a sealed railcar during the journey to Laredo.

California budget

Gavin Newsom - You won’t hear this on Fox News: California just released a balanced budget that wipes out the deficit this year and next — while protecting health care and safety nets. Meanwhile, Trump added $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit.

Polls

Newsweek -   [A] poll found that only 66 percent of Hispanic voters who cast their ballots for Trump in 2024 approve of his job performance—the lowest point yet in his second term. That’s down from 93 percent who approved of Trump in Pew's February 2025 survey and 75 percent in its January 2026 survey. Among all Hispanic adults, his approval rating was only 22 percent, according to the survey.

NOTICE

Sam Smith - Today through Sunday a favorite cousin of ours will be visiting and thus our news production may be a bit unreliable. Just realize that if I am failing you I am also having a very good time. 

DOJ Investigates Yale for Admitting Too Many Non-White Doctors

Alternet America- The Trump Justice Department has a new target: Yale Medical School, which it is accusing of discriminating against white and Asian applicants by admitting too many Black and Hispanic ones. The investigation, which took a year and produced no actual victims, concluded that Yale defied the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action ban by continuing to weigh race in admissions. Yale said it was confident in its process.

This is part of a broader administration campaign against medical schools that have tried to diversify the physician workforce. The specific numbers, per the DOJ: Black and Hispanic applicants had slightly lower median MCAT scores than white and Asian applicants in the classes of 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Yale’s response was that its admissions process is holistic and that test scores are an imperfect measure of a person’s potential as a physician. The DOJ called this a cover story, which is what you do when you have already decided what you’re going to find before you start looking.

It is worth noting that the DOJ did not announce any investigation into the well-documented underrepresentation of rural Americans in medical schools, or the legacy admissions practices that have been quietly favoring the children of donors for decades. But those aren’t the gaps that animate Trump’s Civil Rights Division.

Gerrymandered America

Edward Luce, Financial Times -    The latest contortion is last month’s Supreme Court’s Louisiana vs Callais ruling, which all but gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act. For Swampians who prefer their history lessons in Hollywood form, watch Selma. Because of rigged polling tests, millions of African Americans in the Deep South were disenfranchised before the VRA passed. Some scholars argue that the US only became a true democracy in 1965. It should thus be of profound concern that in a 6-3 ruling along predictably partisan lines, the court has in effect dismantled the law that put an end to Jim Crow. With apologies to my Irish friends, I cannot resist the Irish joke about the man who is asked for directions. You wouldn’t want to start from here, he said.

The Callais ruling has two implications, one troubling, the other unnerving. The first is its impact on this year’s midterm congressional elections. Within minutes of the ruling, Louisiana’s governor, Jeff Landry, ripped up his state’s district boundaries in favour of one that expunged minority-majority districts — those with black majorities. This was in spite of the fact that voting had already begun in the primaries. Others, including Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, followed suit. If you combine their net impact with Florida’s already planned redistricting and the Virginia high court’s decision to overturn last month’s referendum to rig that state in favour of Democrats, the ruling could upend the midterm outcome in November.

At a stroke, the judges have just added about a dozen seats to the Republican column. Republicans now have an estimated four percentage point advantage in House elections. My guess is that the anti-Republican wave in November will be larger than the party’s gerrymandered windfall. But the battle for control of the House will be much closer as a result. Remember this latest skirmish began last year with Donald Trump asking Texas to redraw its boundaries to produce another five Republican districts as though he was ordering dishes from room service. Trump’s great gift is that he says the quiet part out loud. While justices labour to dress up a naked power grab in abstract legalese, Trump makes plain what this is about.

The unnerving effect of the court’s ruling is to bring into question whether US democracy can survive. I strongly sympathise with Jim Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat, who compares John Roberts’s court to the Roger Taney court. That court’s 7-2 Dredd Scott ruling in 1857 declaring blacks inferior to whites was the opening salvo in the US civil war. That war produced the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, which partially undid the founding framers’ original sin. But the past is not dead; it is not even past. Through Jim Crow, the American south converted defeat on the battlefield into victory in the political arena. Blacks had to await until the 1960s for the fruits of Abraham Lincoln’s union. Now those gains are being flushed away. More

Health

Four drugs that may increase dementia risk

CBS News -.   Alongside other lifestyle changes like ramping up physical movement, Alzheimer's Association CEO and president Joanne Pike says nutrition is one of the primary ways we can promote brain health.  "The Alzheimer's Association conducted a lifestyle intervention research study that showed physical activity, nutrition and brain challenge really saves and increases your cognitive abilities," Pike told "CBS Mornings" co-host Gayle King.

Diet and nutrition play an important role in the association's new "6-Step Challenge," which provides people with everyday tips to support their cognitive function.

A diet geared toward brain health — known as the MIND diet — emphasizes meals that are high in:

Fruits

Vegetables, especially leafy greens

Whole grains

Lean proteins

Those options "are nutrient-rich and dense, with great food value," said Pike. 

Donald Trump

Bloomberg - Trump bought tens of millions of dollars in stocks and bonds of major American companies in the first quarter, his latest financial disclosures showed. The president’s independent financial managers, who make his investment decisions for him, snapped up as much as $5 million each in Nvidia, Oracle, Microsoft, Boeing and Costco.

Media

Alternet -   Prominent right-wing or right-leaning media operations are hemorrhaging money and viewers, but according to a breakdown of the situation from The New Republic, the billionaires keeping the lights on at these companies still do not care.  In a piece published Friday morning, veteran media reporter Parker Molloy gave an overview of the woes currently besetting these more high-profile media operations. CBS News, recently taken over by conservative columnist Bari Weiss and reshaped into a much more MAGA-friendly mold, is bleeding viewers at a rapid rate and taking hits over the sloppiness of its operations. Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire, meanwhile, has seen its YouTube traffic "collapse" by 70 percent since the end of 2024, and recently cut about 13 percent of its staff

People displacement

The Guardian - The number of internal displacements triggered by conflict or violence around the world reached a record high in 2025 – reaching 32.3 million people – which was 60% higher than the previous year. That’s according to a report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, amid conflicts such as those in DR Congo, Sudan, Iran and Lebanon. In total, 82.2 million people were displaced in 2025.

Teenagers

The Guardian -   A new study from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health shows that today’s teenagers are sleeping less than ever before. The findings, which appeared in Pediatrics, showed a consistent decline in sleep across every age category. The latest figures revealed record-low sleep levels for all groups, with only 22% of older adolescents saying they slept at least seven hours each night.


“Some barriers to sleep faced by teens have existed across generations, such as the increased homework and extracurricular demands that come with high school, social pressures to stay up late with peers, and jobs,” said Rachel Widome, lead author on the study and a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

“Other issues, though, are new in recent years, such as increasingly ever-present screens and social media as well as recent society-wide stressors such as the pandemic, social unrest or militarized policing,” she added.


The study also reported growing gaps in sleep outcomes. Black and Latino teens, along with adolescents whose parents have lower levels of education, are becoming increasingly less likely to get adequate sleep compared with other groups. The greatest impact was seen among older adolescents. Sleep time steadily declines as teens age, while both sleep duration and feelings of getting enough rest drop significantly from early adolescence to later teen years.

Polls

Generic Ballot polling trend among Independent voters by Cygnal (A) Oct. 2022 Republicans: 51% (R+9) Democrats: 42% April 2026 Democrats: 48% (D+23) Republicans: 25%

The Hill -  Secretary of State Marco Rubio is gaining traction inside Republican circles amid growing chatter about who could emerge as the leading contender in the 2028 presidential race. A poll out this week showed him outperforming Vice President Vance in a 2028 potential match-up.|

Deep State Tribunal -   Xavier Becerra catapults to the top of California’s 2026 governor primary poll, upending expectations just weeks before voters decide the top-two contenders... Becerra dominates Democrats at 31%, fueled by Eric Swalwell’s late April exit that consolidated votes.  

Layoffs by state

Newsweek    

Red Flag warnings

Newsweek - Millions of Americans across a wide span of the central U.S. are under “Red Flag Warnings” on Thursday.  The National Weather Service  warns that any spark could rapidly turn into a fast-moving wildfire, and is, therefore, advising residents to avoid any outdoor burning until conditions improve. 

 

Money

Newsweek -    More Americans are relying on personal loans to pay for routine living expenses, as inflation, high housing costs and rising debt burdens continue to squeeze household finances, according to a new report from LendingTree.

The report, compiled from online inquiries about personal loans on the LendingTree platform from April 2025 through March 2026, found that 8.2 percent of personal loan requests on the platform are now being used for everyday bills, making it the fourth most common reason people seek a loan.

That figure has more than doubled from 3.4 percent in 2023, when everyday expenses ranked as only the 10th most common borrowing reason.

The findings point to growing financial strain among borrowers who are increasingly turning to loans not for large purchases or debt restructuring, but to cover basic essentials such as groceries, utilities and rent. It comes at a time when the U.S. has recorded its highest inflation in four years—3.8 percent in April—mostly driven by high fuel and energy costs.

The report found those borrowers seeking loans for everyday bills requested an average of $4,317, among the lowest loan amounts tracked in the report. They also had relatively low credit scores, averaging 574, compared with the average U.S. consumer FICO score of 713, according to Experian data cited in the report.

.Younger borrowers are the most likely to seek personal loans for routine expenses. Among Generation Z borrowers ages 18 to 29, 10.5 percent of loan requests were for everyday bills. 

.... Ali Zane, personal finance expert and CEO of IMAX Credit Repair Firm, said the figures show there are broader economic pressures facing younger Americans, rather than irresponsible spending habits.

"There is nothing about Gen Z being spendthrift and careless in the data stating 10.5 percent of Gen Z personal loan requests go for everyday expenses against 5.6 percent of such loans for baby boomers," Zane told Newsweek.

Young less fond of AI than it might appear

Yahoo -   Adults might assume that young people are using AI at record levels to do their homework, that they actively avoid any semblance of critical thought. And while those concerns might be well-founded, that view greatly misunderstands our younger generation’s shifting attitude towards AI.

Even though young people use AI tools quite readily, with 85% of teachers and 86% of students having used one in the 2024-25 school year at some point—many aren’t fond of it at all. Per a Gallup poll, young people’s resentment has grown significantly in the past year, with 48% of Gen Zers thinking the risks of AI in the workforce outweigh its benefits.

It’s part of a broader cultural backlash against AI, with many Gen Zers feeling genuine contempt for the AI-centric future that awaits them.

Drug overdose deaths down

Independent, UK -    Drug overdose deaths in the United States saw a significant decline last year, with approximately 70,000 Americans succumbing to overdoses – a 14% reduction from the previous year. This marks the third consecutive annual drop, representing the longest such decline in decades, according to preliminary federal data released on Wednesday.

The 2025 total is comparable to the figures recorded in 2019, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that decreases were observed across various drug types, including fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine. While the vast majority of states experienced a fall in overdose fatalities, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico notably saw increases.

Gen Z

Democratic Values -  A few weeks ago, Donald Trump signed a defense bill to bring back automatic draft registration.  Starting this December, young men ages 18 to 26 will be automatically added to the Selective Service system without their consent.

Right now, Trump is continually escalating our nation’s tensions with Iran. He’s refused to rule out boots-on-the-ground military involvement, and tens of thousands of American troops are currently stuck in limbo in the Middle East.

At the exact same time, Republicans are pushing laws like the SAVE Act to make voting harder for young people.   This should outrage every American. Plain and simple: they’re making it easier to send Gen Zers to war than to let them vote.