Iowa: 52.0
West Virginia: 51.6
South Dakota: 49.6
Indiana: 48.8
Kansas: 48.7
Michigan: 48.4
Nebraska: 48.0
Missouri: 47.7
Maine: 47.4
Ohio: 47.4
August 3, 2026
Housing
Newsweek - Based on our analysis, these are the top 10 states with the highest housing scores, meaning that homeownership there is the most attainable—and affordable—in the country:
Kamala Harris
Congessional
Insider - Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff bought an $8.15 million,
4,000-square-foot home in Malibu’s exclusive Point Dume neighborhood. The area
is described as a star-studded enclave with famous neighbors and is reported as
roughly 94% white and near zero Black residents in its census tract.
The deal adds fuel to claims that national leaders preach
about racial and economic equity while choosing highly insulated, elite
lifestyles. Supporters argue a private home choice does not cancel policy
positions, while critics on both left and right see a widening gap between
political rhetoric and real life.
….The house has four bedrooms, six bathrooms, and sits on
about three-quarters of an acre with wide ocean views, a pool, spa, and other
high-end features. Lifestyle outlets describe Point Dume as a star-studded
enclave with lavish estates and famous residents, including Hollywood figures
and tech billionaires, making it one of Malibu’s most exclusive areas.
Elon Musk
Robert
Reich - Elon Musk will be spending $100 million to
$120 million in at least eight states to help elect Republicans in November,
according to The New York Times. Musk’s spending is set to begin next month,
targeting Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, and
potentially North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. Musk will also spend in House
races in states including California, Wisconsin, and Washington.
Most and least pet friendly cities
WalletHub compared
the pet-friendliness of the 100 largest cities across 23 key metrics. The data
set ranges from veterinarian costs to the number of pet businesses per capita
to walkability.
|
Most
Pet-Friendly Cities |
Least
Pet-Friendly Cities |
|
1.
Scottsdale, AZ |
91.
Chula Vista, CA |
|
2.
Tampa, FL |
92.
Anchorage, AK |
|
3. Las
Vegas, NV |
93.
Newark, NJ |
|
4.
Orlando, FL |
94.
Durham, NC |
|
5.
Cincinnati, OH |
95.
Boston, MA |
|
6. St.
Petersburg, FL |
96.
Honolulu, HI |
|
7.
Birmingham, AL |
97.
Buffalo, NY |
|
8.
Tulsa, OK |
98.
Milwaukee, WI |
|
9.
Atlanta, GA |
99.
Chicago, IL |
|
10.
Irvine, CA |
100.
New York, NY |
Key Stats
- Columbus,
Ohio, has the lowest average veterinary care costs (annual
exam), which is 2.5 times lower than in New York, NY, the city with
the highest.
- Oklahoma
City and Tulsa, Oklahoma, have the lowest monthly dog-insurance
premium, which is 4.1 times lower than in Seattle, Washington, the
cities with the highest.
- Scottsdale,
Arizona, has the most pet businesses (per square root of the
population), which is 8.2 times more than in Newark, New Jersey, the
city with the fewest.
To view the full
report and your city’s rank
Climate change
NBC
News - Fifteen wildfires were
burning across Washington state yesterday, consuming 250,000 acres, an official
said. In Spokane, more than 600 structures were destroyed and 60,000 people
were forced to evacuate. Three blazes, collectively called the Spokane Complex
Fire, have burned more than 7,700 acres and are 0% contained, according to a
federal incident management team.
The fires are “really the worst natural disaster our region
has faced,” Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said yesterday. Winds and dry conditions were quickly fueling
the flames, and temperatures are expected to rise this week.
NPR - The U.S. saw
three major heat domes last month. The latest brought extreme temperatures to
much of the South and parts of the Midwest at the end of July, and the soaring
temperatures shifted toward California and parts of the Four Corners over the
weekend. As record-breaking heat domes and prolonged heat waves become more
frequent, medical experts warn of heat-related health risks, including heat
stroke and sleep loss due to uncomfortable temperatures. Extreme heat increases
the risks for millions of people who lack easy access to air conditioning.
Here's how to stay safe:
🌡️ Try to stay out of the
sun as much as you can and drink plenty of water.
🌡️
If you do go outside, wear light-colored, loose-fitting clothing.
🌡️
Know the warning signs of heat stroke, which include dizziness, headache,
nausea and severe fatigue.
🌡️
As you wait for an ambulance, help someone experiencing heat stroke by
immersing them in cold water
JD Vance
Thomas
B. Edsall, NY Times - Whenever Vice President JD Vance takes
the microphone, he has to decide which combination of his multiple identities
to select for the specific audience before him, a choice he sometimes seems to
find bewildering.
The range of Vance’s
mix-and-match choices includes hillbilly, intellectual, Trump successor, raging
MAGA loyalist and high-tech investor, not to mention veteran threatening other
countries and veteran no-long-wars guy.
Vance’s difficulty finding
well-being, much less genuineness, raises basic questions about his expected
presidential campaign.
Is he, for example, a trustworthy
heir to the Trump mantle or are his real feelings reflected in his 2016 comment
to a friend: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole
like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s
America’s Hitler.”
Vance’s problem is his failure to
find comfort in any combination of identities so that he comes across as
inauthentic, cross-pressured, forced — even counterfeit.
“Vance may be a standout when it comes to personal reinvention,” Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, wrote by email responding to my query, “perhaps partially because it has happened so rapidly and in the social media era.
Rewriting history
M.
Gessen, NY Times - “We live in a country with an unpredictable past.”
This was a saying among the intelligentsia in the Soviet Union when I was
growing up. We never knew which part of our history would be obliterated next.
Now Americans, too, live in a country with an unpredictable
past. Two months into his second term, President Trump issued an executive
order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, in which he
directed officials to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and its
museums, to cut funding to “programs that degrade shared American values” and
to reinstate some monuments removed following the 2020 Black Lives Matter
protests. A very incomplete list of things that have happened since that order
was issued: The National Park Service has been removing signs
about slavery; the statue of a Confederate general has been reinstalled in
Washington; a scathing report by the White House Domestic Policy Council
accused the Smithsonian of using history “as a political instrument to divide,
dispirit and discourage our citizens”; and on July 24, Trump issued a new executive order mandating that signs be installed
outside the Smithsonian “warning visitors about the ideological capture at the
National Museum of American History.”
Re-evaluating history has the potential to change a people’s
future by changing its self-understanding. It can unite people in a genuinely
new project. And then there is the rewriting of history, which is crazy-making.
The Soviet Union repeatedly forced the whole country to unlearn what was
already widely known. In the 1950s, after Joseph Stalin died, the Communist
Party denounced his “cult of personality” and some of the extent of his terror.
A decade later, it reversed itself, exiling or imprisoning authors who wrote
about the crimes of Stalinism. The same process was repeated when the Soviet
Union collapsed. Vast amounts of information about Soviet terror emerged; under
Vladimir Putin that knowledge has been forced back into oblivion.
Middle East
The
Guardian - Esmaeil Baghaei, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, told
reporters at a weekly press briefing on Monday that Iran is not currently
holding any talks with the US, Reuters reports – contradicting
claims made by Donald Trump on Sunday night that talks with
Iran would happen the next day.
Baghaei said that there were no
plans to receive a delegation or send an Iranian one, and that Iran’s current
focus was on negotiations with Oman over the strait of Hormuz.
“We are now going to reach an
understanding on a route acceptable to both sides – neither the northern route
nor the southern route – but one that respects the sovereign rights of
both sides and safeguards our national interests and security,” he said in
an interview with Iranian state television.
On Sunday, Trump told reporters
on Air Force One that he decided to hold off on ordering American
forces to carry out new strikes against Iran at the urging of Gulf allies Qatar,
the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, including a phone
call with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“I said to the crown prince,
‘What would you rather do? Would you rather us do this or not?’” Trump said.
“They said we would much prefer a deal as opposed to an attack, because you
don’t know where these attacks lead.”
August 2, 2026
Weather
AP - A dangerous heat wave will bring record-breaking temperatures to parts of the Western U.S. this weekend, prompting warnings for people to stay inside and heightening wildfire risks in areas that already are dry or burning.
A ridge of high pressure is holding heat close to the ground — what’s known as a heat dome — from Arizona to Montana, though the good news is that it will be relatively short-lived, National Weather Service meteorologists said.
The National Weather Service on Saturday forecast a high of 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46 degrees Celsius) in Las Vegas, the hottest temperature of the year. Phoenix is expected to reach 116F (47C), while El Centro, California, was expected to hit a record 118F (48C). Even parts of Montana were expected to broil, with a record 104F (40C) forecast for Great Falls.
In Las Vegas, Saturday's forecast high was 10 degrees above normal, with meteorologists warning of dangerous heat through Sunday, when the high is expected to be 114, said weather service meteorologist Morgan Stessman.
Overnight lows in the upper 80s to low 90s will make the situation especially dangerous because it doesn't allow people’s bodies to recover. “There's just no relief overnight,” Stessman said.
.The August record for Las Vegas is 116F (47C), while the hottest on record was 120F (49C) in July 2024, which also was the hottest summer on record, Stessman said.
Religion
Press Herald - A recent ruling by a federal appeals court on a case involving religious institutions mostly upheld Maine’s anti-discrimination law, but said one rule about religious expression cannot be enforced.
Maine must no longer enforce a part of its anti-discrimination law that requires religious institutions that accept public school tuition funds to allow all forms of religious expression, a federal judge said this week.
It was the only part of the state’s Human Rights Act that a federal appeals court found to be an issue. The court recently issued a decision on a challenge to the law by two private religious schools. On all other components challenged by the schools, the judges found Maine’s law to be sound.
Maine had long excluded religious schools from its policy that allows public money to be used for private school tuition if students have no local public school options.
But in 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that ban, and the state Legislature amended the Human Rights Act to require all schools receiving public money to follow certain nondiscriminatory hiring and admission practices. That included allowing students to express gender identities different from those assigned at birth, and permitting them to practice a different religion than the school’s.
Money
NPR - More than half
a million Americans filed for bankruptcy last year, a nearly 50% increase over
the past three years. While filings remain below pre-pandemic levels,
rising debt and higher living costs appear to be catching up with many
households.
Health
Nautilus
- The rate of high blood
pressure among women who gave birth shot up 73 percent between 2016 and 2024,
according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control. In fact, more
than 1 in 10 women who gave birth in 2024 were plagued with some form of hypertension
(including preeclampsia), up from a little over 6 percent in 2016.
Even more alarming, the incidence
of hypertension increased in every state and for women of every age, race, and
weight. And because the report drew on data collected at birth, and not prior
medical tests, the issue may be even more widespread than documented by the
CDC.
According to the report, American
Indian and Alaska Native mothers suffered the highest rates of hypertension,
but even Asian women, who had the lowest rates, saw their risk double in the
eight years studied. The incidence of high blood pressure was lowest for
mothers younger than age 20 and those aged 30 to 34 and highest for mothers 40
and older. The rates of high blood pressure also increased along with body mass
index, with heavier women showing a greater risk, but hypertension also went up
among underweight mothers during the eight-year period.
The
Hill - The end of a subsidy program that helped keep costs down for
Medicare drug coverage could leave millions of seniors with higher monthly
costs, a move that undermines the Trump administration’s message of cutting
drug costs.
President Trump often
touts his push for access to cheaper drugs through the TrumpRx platform and
making “most-favored-nation” deals with drug companies. But healthcare advocacy and policy
organizations have said the end of the subsidy program will raise premium costs
and put a burden on seniors at a time when costs are already high.
“President Trump has had a lot of
strong rhetoric on drug prices and negotiating deals with manufacturers to
lower prices, and they’ve taken a lot of different steps to try to bring drug
prices down,” Juliette Cubanski, vice president and director of the Program on
Medicare Policy at KFF, told The Hill.
“But it’s also true that this
move to end these extra premium subsidies for some Medicare drug plans cuts in
the other direction because it could translate to higher premium costs for
millions of people with Medicare,” she said.
The destruction of the American Dream: Some stats
Hartmann
Report - The destruction of the American Dream isn’t
just an abstraction; it’s measurable. In 1980 when Reagan was elected
president, at the peak of the American Dream, fully two-thirds of American
families were in the middle class. A single income could support a family, buy
a house, take an annual vacation, send the kids to college, and even retire
with dignity.
Today, only 43 to 47 percent of
Americans qualify as middle class (depending on whose numbers and what criteria
you use). And it takes two full-time incomes today to achieve what a single
union job gave a family in 1980.
Consider wages. If wages had kept
pace with productivity since 1980, the median American individual worker’s
income would be over $100,000 today. Instead, it’s around $50,000. With help
from the Reagan Revolution, that missing $50,000 has largely gone into
corporate profits and executive compensation: in other words, into the money
bins of the nation’s oligarchs.
Then there’s housing. In 1980,
the median home price was about $47,000, roughly three times the median
(single-worker) household income. Today, the median home price exceeds
$400,000, while median household (two-worker) income is around $75,000. That’s
more than five times the household income, and in many cities it’s ten times or
more. People who could have bought a home in their twenties, like Louise and I
did in the 1970s, now struggle to do so even in their forties.
The same is true of education.
When I attended college in the late 1960s, I paid my tuition working part-time
jobs. My mom paid her way through four years at Michigan State in the 1940s
working summers as a lifeguard and propping airplanes. Today’s post–Citizens
United students graduate with an average of $30,000 in debt, and total American
student loan debt exceeds $1.7 trillion. We’re the only developed country in
the world where this is true, and an entire generation is now starting life in
a financial hole that previous generations never faced.
Or consider healthcare. In 1980,
healthcare costs were 8.9 percent of GDP, and most hospitals and health
insurance companies were required by state law to be nonprofits. Today,
healthcare costs are nearly 20 percent of GDP, and half a million American families
declare bankruptcy every year just because someone got sick. Medical bankruptcy
like this doesn’t exist in any other developed country in the world. Only in
America.
Kennedy Center stops free public tours
NY
Times - The John F. Kennedy
Center for the Performing Arts is stopping free public tours of the center,
which had been a mainstay of the cultural institution for more than five
decades, according to an internal memo. In
a memo viewed by the The New York Times, Brooks Boeke, the director of the
volunteer program, said the center was putting a “temporary pause” on the tour
program, effective Friday. Volunteers serve in a variety of roles at the
Kennedy Center, but only tour guides were mentioned, instructed to stop
reporting for duty “until further notice.”
The memo did not provide a reason
for halting the tour program; it has operated continuously since the center’s
opening in 1971, except for a one-year hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic. The ending of the tours comes after a
volunteer tour guide was featured in a New York Times article detailing
President Trump’s gutting of the iconic cultural institution. Before the memo
was circulated on Thursday, three volunteers had expressed worries to a
reporter that the Kennedy Center would target the tour program in retribution.
Middle East
The Hill - President Trump late
Saturday said he was halting
an attack plan against Iran and pointed to the outline of a deal being
reached as the reason why.
“The U.S.A. is locked and loaded
and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military
Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II. Despite this, we have
just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any
attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to,” Trump wrote on
his Truth
Social platform.
Trump added that the deal “would
include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an
end to Iran’s nuclear threat.”
“Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL,” he added. American officials had told several outlets on Friday that the U.S. was reportedly planning to restart strikes targeting Iran as soon as this weekend.
August 1, 2026
Toys for Trump
Daily Beast - The White House ballroom. The Triumphal Arch. The relined Reflecting Pool. The new 747. Together, they cost a small fraction of just one of the “Golden Fleet” of battleships that President Trump has ordered in a multibillion-dollar scandal that gets less notice than the gilded cherubs in the Oval Office. Their name: The Trump Class.
The first Trump-Class battleship is expected to cost $17.5 billion, with the next two coming in at $14.5 billion each, a total of $36.5 billion for three. A Naval warship expert describes them as hugely expensive, easily targeted behemoths that drain funding for small, more effective alternatives that the U.S. Navy actually needs.
Federal government wants to cut water use in three states
The
Hill - The federal government is proposing potentially steep cuts to
water used by California, Arizona and Nevada, a major step toward figuring out
the management of the dwindling Colorado River.
The river provides water to states throughout the West, including
drinking water and water for agricultural, industrial and municipal uses.
As the West becomes drier,
figuring out how to manage the shrinking resource has been a challenge. A final environmental impact statement
released Friday by the federal government cuts to California, Arizona and
Nevada, collectively known as the Lower Basin states of the Colorado River, of
up to 3 million acre-feet per year.
That could be dramatically deeper
than the 1.6 million acre-feet per year that the lower basin states themselves
have proposed for the next two years.
Arizona’s Department of Water
Resources said in a statement that a cut of 3 million acre feet per year “would
devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy.”
However, the federal government
has yet to release anticipated specific plans for managing the river over the
next two years.
The Washington Post reported
Friday that the forthcoming two-year plan is more in line with the cuts
proposed by the states for the next two years.
Economy
Greg
Gerritt - In the first quarter of 2026 the economic
growth rate was 2.1%, which is not that far off of the long term trend, in which the US has averaged something like 2.3
or 2.4% economic growth per year for the last 40 years. Admittedly the guy who
invented Gross Domestic Product thought it was a really lousy way to measure
the economy, but it is what we use, so it is worth noting. Growth in the second
quarter was 1.5%, mostly due to the stupidity of the Trump administration in
starting a war that has no plan and resulted in a major disruption of global
energy markets and rising inflation. The data from the BEA is adjusted for
inflation, but even so, rising prices caused consumer spending to slow.
Unemployment rates are barely
changed for the last year, the rate nationally is about 4.3%, which is pretty
close to the long term average, though when the rate is lower it is much easier
to find a job so a lot of us prefer to see a rate closer to 3%. But the
interesting thing is that overall employment has barely moved, even in places
in which the unemployment rate is down. I have not done any kind of statistical
analysis, just eyeballed the raw data which is presented as total employment in
each state comparing the last two months, and the same months last year, the
total number of people employed in those same months, and the unemployment
rates in the same months.
Polls
Pew Research Ctr - Far
more Americans support than oppose in-class cellphone bans for middle and high
school students (77% vs. 18%). And for the first time in our surveys, more
people now support than oppose banning cellphones during the entire school day (48% vs. 43%).
Just over half of Americans (53%)
have an unfavorable opinion of the Supreme Court, while 45% have a favorable
opinion. While Democrats largely describe the court’s ideology as conservative,
Republicans tend to see it as “middle of the road.”
Climate change
Study
Finds - Summer heat is more
than a seasonal discomfort. A new study suggests it may be aging people from
the inside out, faster than the calendar ever could. Researchers found that
exposure to extreme heat events was linked to accelerated biological aging in
middle-aged and older adults. Under the study’s strictest heatwave definition,
each additional heatwave event was associated with pushing the body’s internal
clock forward by roughly half a year, though the size of that effect varied
considerably depending on how heatwaves were defined, and was weaker or
statistically insignificant under looser definitions. As heatwaves grow more
frequent and more intense worldwide, that finding carries serious consequences
for public health.
The
Guardian - A senior policymaker
at the European Central Bank has said the climate emergency and the breakdown
of nature poses a dramatically growing risk to the global economy. Frank Elderson, a member of the ECB’s
executive board, said the eurozone lender of last resort was stepping up its
monitoring of the financial risks linked to the destruction of “ecosystem
services”, which are nature-related processes or assets that support human
activity.
ICE
NBC
News - ICE plans to sign contracts for new detention facilities in its
Seattle, Philadelphia, Miami and Denver jurisdictions that together would have
the capacity to hold 5,500 detainees, according to a public solicitation
document. It is the latest sign of the agency’s push to boost immigration
arrests, even as two fatal shootings by ICE officers in recent weeks
have drawn scrutiny across the country.
Health
NBC
News - Starting Wednesday, terminally ill patients in
New York will gain the legal right to end their lives. Under a new law allowing
medically assisted death, patients who a doctor says have less than six months
to live will be able to take a lethal prescription medication that puts them to
sleep, then ultimately stops their heart.
Scope of Hacks on U.S. Water Supply Widens
NY Times - The scope of cyberattacks on U.S. water systems has grown to include at least seven states and may be far wider, officials and experts warned, as the authorities raced to safeguard the nation’s water supply against an assault that increasingly appeared to be the work of Iran.
While there were no indications
that any water supply had been altered or made unsafe to drink, state and local
officials throughout the country were on high alert for potential problems in
vulnerable computers that are commonly used to monitor and adjust water
quality, including chemical-treatment levels and water pressure. Minnesota
first publicly reported the attacks, and now Michigan says its systems have
also been targeted.
The attack has little precedent,
experts said, but has long been the stuff of nightmares and sensationalized
Hollywood thrillers: an apparent cyberattack by a foreign power during a time
of war that could, at least in theory, jeopardize the health and safety of
Americans.
Officials cautioned that they had
not definitively determined that Iran was responsible for the attack and that
the investigation was still preliminary. But they said Iran had stepped up
cyberattacks since the U.S. and Israel launched a war against the country five
months ago, and had previously targeted similar water systems and other
critical infrastructure in the U.S. There seemed no financial motive, making a
criminal attack less likely.
Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
In a court filing, former Fox News host-turned-U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro asked a judge to dismiss the federal indictment against U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who had been arrested and publicly accused by Pirro of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Pirro acknowledged that investigators had concluded the damage wasn't caused by Hearn after all, but by a "flawed installation" of the pool's newly installed liner.
The filing also contained a remarkable bit of finger-pointing: Pirro blamed the Trump administration's own Interior Department for withholding information that could have prevented the prosecution from moving forward. She wrote that officials at the Doug Bergum-led agency failed to disclose that the pool's liner had been improperly installed, despite "dozens and dozens" of requests from prosecutors. "Had [the Interior Department] been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment," Pirro acknowledged.
The
Hill -President
Trump called out U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro on
Saturday for agreeing
to dismiss the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool vandalism
case against former Olympian David Hearn.
The Justice Department moved to
drop the case on Friday, finding that the damage to the tidal basin resulted
from a “rushed and botched installation,” not alleged vandalism. Trump a day
later distanced himself from that decision.
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine
Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,”
Trump wrote in a post on
Truth Social. “I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a
pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass, which had a big 86 47
emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area.”
Politics
Prime Chronicle - California’s voter ID initiative, Proposition 39, would add ID and citizenship checks to state elections. Top Democratic leaders are organizing a major campaign to defeat the measure and protect broad ballot access. Attorney General Rob Bonta changed the official ballot wording, triggering accusations that Democrats are trying to mislead voters. Supporters say the fight shows how political insiders can tilt the playing field even after citizens qualify a measure.
Gavin Newsom - $100,000,000. That is the amount of money Elon Musk plans to spend in order to help Republicans win in the midterm elections this November. That includes Michigan - where control of the House and Senate runs through Michigan — with what will be some of the closest and most expensive campaigns in the country.
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