Credit card debt down again

WalletHub - The Federal Reserve released its latest Consumer Credit report ... and WalletHub’s analysis of the data reveals that consumers paid off $60 billion in credit card debt during the first quarter of 2026. 

• Q1 Relief: At $60 billion, the decrease in credit card debt during Q1 2026 was around 6% larger than the decrease in Q1 2025.
   
• Debt Is Well Below the Peak: Total credit card debt as of Q1 was roughly $1.35 trillion on an inflation-adjusted basis, or around 14% below the record high.
   
• Household Debt Has Some Breathing Room: The average household credit card balance was around $11,153 at the end of Q1 2026, after adjusting for inflation. That’s $2,263 below the record high....
  
  
• 2026 Projection: WalletHub projects that total credit card debt will rise by $60 billion during 2026.

Trump regime says it has the right to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty

New Republic -    During oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington Friday, lawyers for the DOJ presented the government’s case for continuing construction on Trump’s increasingly expensive White House ballroom without the approval of Congress.

In order to demonstrate Trump’s supposedly far-reaching power to destroy and alter national monuments at whim, the DOJ lawyers claimed that if the president wanted to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty in New York, there would be no one with the standing to challenge him.

“If the government decides very quickly to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty, the people whose ancestors—that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the government moved too fast—nothing can be done?” Judge Patricia Millett asked, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

“I think that’s right, yes,” the government responded.

The Statue of Liberty, like the White House, is managed by the National Park Service. Demolishing it would require legislative approval and rigorous public and regulatory review under the National Historic Preservation Act.

This argument features in the DOJ’s primary claim that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the group behind the lawsuit, has no standing to challenge the construction. The DOJ also argued that construction on the ballroom can’t actually be stopped by the courts, and could only be stopped by Congress.

Meanwhile. . .

Two dozen activists protesting U.S. military aid to Israel blocked the Golden Gate Bridge for four hours. They face up to 15 years in prison.

Children and unsecured guns

6.7 million U.S. children live in a household with at least one unsecured firearm — a stark increase from the previous estimate of 4.6 million children in 2015. That means roughly one in 10 children lives in a home with a loaded, unlocked gun, contributing to the eight kids a day who are unintentionally killed or injured by family fire: a shooting that results from someone misusing an unsecured firearm from the home. 

Wildfires

Inside Climate News - As bad as things got in Los Angeles in January 2025, when 31 people died and more than 16,000 buildings were destroyed by wildfires roaring into residential neighborhoods, many wildland firefighters look back on the rest of last year as a dodged bullet.

Across the nation, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), which coordinates the federal wildfire response, the total area burned in 2025 was about two-thirds of the average over the past 10 years.

This year is shaping up to be a very different prospect, wildfire experts warn. Key environmental indicators show that the nation is a tinderbox, gripped by widespread drought and with a light snowpack in the mountains that will offer little relief as its remnants melt away.

At the same time, upheaval in the federal wildland firefighting effort and the loss of many staff qualified to join wildfire incident teams since Donald Trump took power for the second time have left firefighters deeply concerned about their ability to mount an effective response.

As of the end of May, the NIFC reported that some 2.4 million acres had burned in wildfires for which it had generated incident reports. That’s almost double the 10-year average for the time of year.

ICE

The Guardian -   s Mark was getting ready for his high school graduation, he thought about how his dad would have probably insisted on adjusting his slacks – they were a bit tight – and fixed up his tie. “He would want me to look my best,” he said. But his dad and namesake, Marco, was 2,000 miles away. He had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Maryland just before Christmas and deported to El Salvador in March.

When he walked up to the podium and got his diploma last week, he felt a sense of relief – like he had walked out of a nightmare. His mother, Rosie, told him afterwards: “Congratulations – we finally made it though.”

Mark used to love school – he took advanced placement classes, he had a girlfriend and a tight-knit group of friends that his mom calls “wholesome”. But everything began to unravel after Marco was arrested, and then deported. “For a lot of this semester, I just didn’t want to go to school,” he said. “Even after I came to terms with what happened to my dad, I never, never ever wanted to be there."

Mark is one of tens of thousands of US citizen children separated from their parents by the US immigration system. A Guardian investigation found that during the first seven months of Donald Trump’s presidency, his administration arrested the parents of at least 27,000 children – including 12,000 US citizen children. During that period, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was deporting about twice as many parents each month compared with 2024.

Trump and the GOP

The Hill -   Tensions are rising between President Trump and Senate Republicans, and their disagreements spilled into public view this week when GOP senators repeatedly used amendment votes on a $70 billion budget reconciliation bill to create distance from the president.

Three Republican senators facing tough races in November — Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), John Husted (Ohio) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska) — scrambled to distance themselves from some of Trump’s most controversial recent proposals, such as construction of a 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom or his proposed “anti-weaponization” fund, during a marathon vote series on the reconciliation bill.  

Republican senators who lost their re-election primaries last month due to Trump’s support for their opponents, such as Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), are becoming more assertive in voicing their independence.

And Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who is trying to keep Trump’s agenda moving on schedule, is having to put out fires in the Senate Republican conference left and right because the White House and the administration has announced some of its most controversial moves right before critical Senate votes, roiling GOP whip counts on Capitol Hill.

Who's supporting the White House ballroom?

AlterNet America -   According to a report released Thursday by Public Citizen, 14 of the 27 known corporate donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom project have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion in the six months since construction began.

The White House signed a secret funding agreement, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, that permits donors to remain anonymous. Lockheed Martin led the way with $43.8 billion in new or expanded contracts. Booz Allen Hamilton followed with $4.2 billion. Palantir received just over $1 billion. Other donors whose government business grew include Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Caterpillar, and T-Mobile.

The contracts are only half the story. Public Citizen also found that 16 of the 27 known donors face federal enforcement actions or have seen government scrutiny reduced, including antitrust cases involving Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Nvidia.

Workers

Wolves & Sheep

House votes support for Ukraine

Antiwar -   The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill to provide Ukraine with billions in additional military aid and increase sanctions on Russia, a move that comes as the more than four-year-old war between Russia and Ukraine is escalating.

The Ukraine Support Act passed in a vote of 226-195, with 18 Republicans joining Democrats in supporting the effort. Just one Democrat, Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN), voted against the bill.

The legislation was introduced last year by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and, according to media reports, would provide Ukraine with over $1 billion in military and reconstruction aid. The legislation states that it will make up to $8 billion in direct loans available for Ukraine and the US’s NATO allies.

The bill also includes $250 million for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a US state-funded media outlet, and authorizes it to open “new bureaus to help expand its ability to reach audiences on the periphery of the Russian Federation.”

Supreme Court vs. black voters

New Republic  -    The Supreme Court handed down a bombshell order on Tuesday night that made racial gerrymandering effectively impossible to challenge in court, expanding upon last month’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais to eliminate the last vestiges of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—and with it, the primary mechanism for protecting multiracial democracy in the American South.

Tuesday’s 6–3 order in Allen v. Milligan, which was technically unsigned, allows Alabama—and, in the future, other states—to enact legislative maps even if a federal court rules that they were enacted with racially discriminatory intent. This decision goes well beyond the court’s ruling in Callais, which focused on VRA claims under Section 2 about gerrymandered maps with a racially discriminatory effect.

The decision gives carte blanche to Southern state lawmakers to eliminate majority-Black districts as soon as they feasibly can—or, in Alabama’s case, even if it is not actually feasible or practical. In 1957, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered Southern states to desegregate their schools “with all available speed.” In 2026, the court’s conservative majority is demanding the elimination of Black electoral power in the South on the same timescale.

New jail construction quietly booming

In These Times -   New jail construction is quietly booming across the United States. Some may be surprised to learn that during the most intense jail-building years, from 1990 to 2005, a new facility opened every 10 days.  There are nearly 2 million people presently caged in more than 6,000 correctional facilities across the country, including 1,566 state prisons and 3,116 local jails. Recent data shows that number has only grown, and the push to build new jails and prisons continues.

Currently, a new $3 billion jail in Brooklyn is moving ahead, a $1.25 billion prison in Alabama is nearly complete and, among many others, lawmakers in Hawai’i are considering a new $1 billion mega-jail, a facility with more than 1,000 beds.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, while the stated goals of jail construction are safety, security, and solving jail overcrowding, the result is most often hundreds or thousands of new jail beds to incarcerate even more people and a windfall for contractors in charge of designing and building new jails.

Workers

Independent -    The American job market is showing unexpected resilience this year, rebounding from a challenging 2025 despite persistent economic uncertainty and elevated energy prices exacerbated by the war in Iran. While unemployment is projected to hold steady at a low 4.3% in May, according to FactSet, the pace of job creation remains significantly slower than the boom experienced in the wake of pandemic lockdowns.

This complex landscape has left workers, jobseekers, and employers navigating an awkward "no-hire, no-fire" environment.

This rebound has been partly attributed to substantial tax refunds, a result of Donald Trump’s 2025 tax cuts, which have provided an economic boost, helping to offset the impact of higher energy prices following the United States and Israel's attack on Iran in late February

Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, described the situation as a "labor market purgatory," noting, "Those who have jobs are clinging to them, while those without are left wanting."

This stagnation is particularly acute for young people entering the workforce and for individuals who have been laid off. In April, more than a quarter of the unemployed had been jobless for over six months, a notable increase from less than 20% two years prior.

NY Times - The economy added 172,000 last month, more than economists had expected, while the unemployment rate stayed at 4.3 percent.The robust reading follows other data suggesting that labor demand has found its footing after a year of trade policy swings, immigration enforcement disruption and an exodus from the federal government. With revisions, March and April added 93,000 more jobs than previously reported.

Average hourly earnings grew 3.4 percent from a year earlier, the slowest rate since August 2021. That’s now substantially behind the rate of inflation, although it may reflect the composition of job growth, as more lower-wage jobs have been added in recent months.

The economy added 172,000 last month, more than economists had expected, while the unemployment rate stayed at 4.3 percent.Leisure boom: Growth was led last month by leisure and hospitality, which packed on 70,000 jobs. Some of that may have been early hiring for the World Cup as cities across the country prepared for an influx of tourists. Health care, which has been the steady fuel of job growth over the past several years, added another 35,000 positions.

The federal government was about level, after having lost about 350,000 jobs since peaking toward the end of 2024. But local government surged, adding 55,000 jobs in May, mostly outside education.

Polls

A new poll shows the bloc of Zionist parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu winning a governing majority on its own for the first time, a major shift in the political landscape ahead of elections that must be held by late October.  The survey, published Thursday by Zman Yisrael, a sister site of The Times of Israel, gives the anti-Netanyahu Zionist bloc 62 seats in the 120-member Knesset, one more than the 61 needed to form a government. The pro-Netanyahu bloc wins 50 seats, with the two mainly Arab parties, Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al, taking the remaining 8.

Artificial Intelligence

The American Prospect - Most people involved in artificial intelligence can agree on one thing: AI is coming for your job.  Anthropic’s CEO predicts Great Depression levels of unemployment in the next five years. Bill Gates says that within ten years humans won’t be needed “for most things.” Corporate leaders say AI-driven layoffs are already starting, with Intuit firing thousands just this week, citing AI.

Businesses justify their huge investments in AI by committing to spending less on labor, and AI firms sell their products promising to help them do it. Regardless of whether AI is yet good enough to replace workers, their plan is clear: lay off millions of workers, justified by AI.

One entity seems totally unaware: the United States government. The only major AI proposal advanced this Congress was a failed effort to prevent states from regulating the industry.

The path we are on is clear: AI will make a small number of investors and executives even richer, while it eliminates jobs for millions of Americans—and the government does nothing about it.

... An AI tax should target the companies that stand to make billions of dollars by laying people off. 

ICE

Congressional Insider, New Jersey Anti-ICE protests at Delaney Hall in Newark turned violent, with assaults on federal officers and clashes stretching over multiple nights.

• A conservative journalist, Cameron Higby, says protesters swarmed, assaulted, and robbed him while he filmed — a pattern seen at other ICE facilities.
• Evidence confirms a volatile, sometimes lawless protest environment, but public records on the specific Higby attack remain incomplete.
• Both left and right see a justice system that cannot keep order or tell the full truth, deepening distrust in institutions and media narratives.

Canada more fair to gay and transgender folk

Congressional Insider -   Government of Canada policy openly states that people facing persecution because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or sex characteristics can seek refugee protection through its in-country asylum program or resettlement channels. Canada’s rules instruct its refugee board to apply specific guidance for these claims, recognizing the extra barriers people face when they do not fit social norms. That is a stark contrast with a U.S. system where backlogs and shifting rules leave many feeling the door is effectively closed...

Canadian immigration and refugee lawyers report a “noticeable increase” in transgender Americans looking for ways to leave the United States and seek refuge in Canada as political hostility rises. A peer-reviewed study of asylum migration found that Trump-era immigration policies were a major driver of people heading north, even if they do not fully explain every case. At the same time, Canada’s own data and caps show that the government’s dedicated LGBT resettlement scheme is still numerically small, suggesting a growing trickle, not yet a wave.

Immigration

The Hill -  A federal judge on Friday vacated a series of Trump policies enacted in the wake of a deadly attack on National Guard members, forcing immigration agencies to again process immigration applications from citizens of nearly 40 countries.

In the days surrounding last Thanksgiving, President Trump barred the processing of any immigration application for those from 39 travel ban countries, halting the ability to get green cards and leading to widespread cancellation of naturalization ceremonies. 

He also put a stop to the processing of asylum claims from any country and ordered a review of all immigration benefits bestowed to those from the 39 travel ban countries under President Biden.

Rhode Island-based U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell found all of the actions were unlawful.  “More than six months ago, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) enacted a series of policies that threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo,” McConnell wrote in the 135-page ruling.

“USCIS’s hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to anything that these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of their birth.”

The ruling is a major victory for immigrants and their advocates, who had seen processing come to an abrupt halt — a pause that threatened to push some legal immigrants on time-limited visas to overstay the bounds of their status.

The Guardian -   Detainees at Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail said guards were denying them food and fresh water on Thursday until they signed documents presented to them in English that they did not understand.

In an audio recording of a telephone call to an immigration advocacy group heard by the Guardian, more than half a dozen detainees alleged that the water given to them over the last three days was “rotten” and containing mosquito larvae, in an apparent attempt to pressure them to sign.

.....“They took all the water, and they don’t want to give us water,” one detainee said in the call to a representative of the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that has acted as a liaison between detainees and their families. “They haven’t given us lunch, and they are mistreating us here. Right now, at this very moment, half past one in the afternoon, we haven’t had lunch here in Alcatraz, and they wanted to make us sign a paper in English that we don’t know what that paper says.

House passes bill cutting food aid for pregnant women, children

Under the legislation, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children — more commonly known as WIC — would lose $141 million in funding for fruit and vegetable benefits for the nearly 5.4 million children and pregnant and postpartum women enrolled, according to an estimate from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Senate has yet to consider the legislation

Middle East

Shortlysts  - Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a new ceasefire deal, which was reached after a fourth round of U.S.-mediated talks in Washington. The new ceasefire is contingent on the ‘evacuation of all Hezbollah operatives’ from an area between the Israeli border and the Litani river, about nineteen miles to the north, which is currently occupied by Israeli ground forces.

A spokesman for Hezbollah said the group has rejected the new ceasefire agreement, calling it ‘humiliating’ for Lebanon and the Lebanese people. The U.S. and Israel said the new deal is contingent on a cessation of hostilities by Hezbollah.

Ukraine

The House passed a bill that would provide aid to Ukraine, with 18 Republicans joining Democrats in another rebuke of Trump’s foreign policy.

Anti-weaponization fund

Roll Call -   The Senate passed a nearly $70 billion reconciliation bill for immigration enforcement early Friday morning after rejecting repeated attempts by members of both parties to prohibit or restrict a Justice Department “anti-weaponization” fund.  On a mostly party-line vote of 52-47, the Senate sent to the House a bill designed to fund immigration agencies for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term without new restrictions on federal immigration agents sought by Democrats. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the sole Republican to join all Democrats in opposition.

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White House ballroom

The Hill -   The Trump administration on Friday is set to make its case before a federal appeals court on why it believes it has authority to build the White House ballroom without further approval from Congress.   The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has agreed to allow construction to proceed until it rules on whether the project can proceed. That decision will determine next steps for the project, which President Trump has been pressing for weeks. 

The legal battle has unfolded in the aftermath of shootings at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and one just outside the White House. The Justice Department has described both as attempts on Trump’s life, telling judges that it heightens the need for the ballroom, which Trump has described as having military-grade security.

“The Ballroom is on time, under budget, and free to the American taxpayer, while benefiting future Presidents by serving as a ‘safe haven’ from attackers such as the two recent would-be assassins,” the Justice Department wrote in court filings last weekend. 

The hearing also comes as the project faces congressional pushback. Six GOP senators voted with Democrats on Thursday in support of a proposal that would explicitly block the project. 

Black voters

NY Times -   Millions of Americans .... live in states where Republicans are drawing maps that dilute the power of Black voters, and those who share their interests. Just on Tuesday, the Supreme Court allowed Alabama to eliminate one of only two Black-majority districts. By the fall elections, and almost certainly by the next presidential election, new maps will be in place.

The Supreme Court decision in April severely weakened the Voting Rights Act by allowing political parties to gerrymander voting districts for partisan advantage, no matter the effect on Black voters. The effort to destroy Black political power in the South is among the greatest betrayals of Black Americans, and those who have voted alongside them, by the federal government in living memory. It will have far-reaching consequences for all Americans, and for our democracy. Despite this, the work of mobilizing a response is largely falling to Black people.

The ultrarich keep losing Democratic primaries

MS NOW -  Tom Steyer ran for governor of California as a climate crusader endorsed by Bernie Sanders’ political organization, Our Revolution. He also spent at least $216 million of his own money on the race — and in the end, that was the only thing voters seemed to remember. With nearly 58% of the vote counted, he is running third. 

For generations, a personal fortune was among the surest assets in American politics — the thing that bought name recognition, blanketed the airwaves and cleared a primary field. This year, for Democratic candidates across the country, it is starting to look like a liability. 

The timing is unkind to the ultrawealthy. In a March YouGov survey, 77% of adults said the wealthy have too much political power, and 52% said the government should try to reduce the share of wealth held by billionaires. More than half of adults told a May Politico poll that cost of living is the “worst they can remember.” Against that backdrop, self-funding candidates — once a recruiter’s dream — have become a harder sell. 

Steyer, who made his money founding and running a hedge fund, found that out the hard way. In California’s liberal electorate, his wealth became the case against him. His advertising blitz provoked attacks: Xavier Becerra’s campaign posted videos telling voters they “have the power to put an end to the Tom Steyer ads.” With a one-time billionaire tax set to appear on the November ballot, the idea of electing one of the ultrawealthy at the same moment proved too much for some. “In the end, I didn’t want to vote for a billionaire,” one voter, a 22-year-old UC San Diego student, told The New York Times plainly. 

The Platner problem

Sam Smith - When I first heard Graham Platner willingly describe some of his past sins from which he had morally matured, I tried to recall, in my seven decades of covering news, when some other politician had been as decently public about their wrong doings. I have still failed to come up with an answer.

Now Platner is being accused of further sins which he denies. Was he unique but not unique enough?

Well, in the first place, you vote practically for candidates based not primarily on their personal behavior but on their political action.  

Secondly, if we knew as much about all members of Congress as we now have heard allegedly about Platner he would be far less newsworthy.

Which is why this Maine voter plans to stick with Platner despite his alleged misdoings. His victory would be a tribute to his open recovery from some past wrongs and a role model for others.

Hmm ...

Republicans Against Trump - Trump compared the UFC cage on the White House South Lawn to the Eiffel Tower and said he might keep it there permanently: “We're building something in front of the White House that's quite attractive to a lot of people.... And I'm looking at it, and maybe we'll never ever take it down."

Health

Study Finds -   Americans born after 1970 are already dying at higher rates from heart disease, cancer, and external causes than people born before them were dying at the same ages, a pattern researchers call alarming given how many years these cohorts still have ahead. A separate nationwide deterioration in death rates began around 2010 and hit nearly every living adult at once, driven mainly by stalling progress against cardiovascular disease after decades of improvement.

Americans born in the 1950s marked the generational turning point: cohorts born before them tended to show steadily improving survival, while every generation since has fared progressively worse across most major causes of death.

Researchers warn that if current trends continue as post-1970 cohorts age further, the United States could face an unprecedented long-running stagnation, or even a sustained decline, in overall life expectancy.

The Guardian -  Three scientific papers that raised questions about vaccine safety and were used by the Trump administration to justify controversial changes to US vaccine policies have over the last two months been removed, retracted or placed under investigation by the journals that published them.

Axios - Democratic states are pushing back on the Trump administration's rules for new Medicaid work requirements, warning that a chaotic rollout in the coming months could lead to even more people losing their coverage.

The first-ever work requirements in last year's Republican tax-and-spending bill were already controversial — but now there are new clashes over the way the administration wants to implement them.

Six Democratic governors led by Oregon's Tina Kotek last week called on the administration to "stop forcing states into an unworkable rollout" of the requirements by a Jan. 1 deadline.

They asked for an extension, citing what they called shifting guidance from the federal government.

Instead, the administration on Monday released a rule that imposed a stricter-than-expected approach to granting exemptions from the work requirements.

Among other things, people with cancer or HIV may not qualify for a "medically frail" exemption — unless the condition significantly impairs the ability to work.

Without an exemption, people ages 19 to 64 would have to work or participate in 80 hours of community engagement per month to keep their Medicaid coverage.  MORE

Housing prices drop

Newsweek -   After years of relentless price growth, U.S. home asking prices are now falling at their fastest pace in nearly a decade according to new data from a real estate listings website.  High mortgage rates, stretched affordability, and geopolitical uncertainty tied to the Iran war continue to weigh on demand.

The sustained cooling marks a clear shift in the U.S. housing market: after the pandemic-era boom pushed prices to record highs, buyers are stepping back, forcing sellers to cut expectations.

Realtor.com said the national median listing price has been falling for seven consecutive months now, as mortgage rates remain high and rising inflation fuels Americans’ fear over what could come next.

In May, the median listing price fell 2.4 percent year-over-year to $429,500—the steepest annual decline in data going back to 2017.

Return of the Dixiecrat South

The American Prospect  - It has been just one month since the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court effectively nullified Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), making it lawful for states to draw congressional districts that systematically dilute the votes of Black and Latino Americans. Within hours, Southern states responded. Florida legislators passed a GOP gerrymander the day the decision was announced. Alabama moved to eliminate majority-minority districts even after primary-election votes had been cast, though an appellate court has temporarily blocked the state from proceeding. (UPDATE: The Supreme Court waved the gerrymandered map through last night.) In Tennessee, the district representing Memphis—majority-Black—was cracked into three, all now majority-white, all expected to turn red. By 2028, South Carolina will likely gerrymander out of existence the district that has elected the state’s only Black congressman, civil rights icon James Clyburn