Updated June 13, 2026 at 10:00 AM PDT

WASHINGTON - Workers have taken down President Donald Trump's name from the Kennedy Center, hours after a court-ordered Friday deadline to remove it from the building, and less than six months after it was first affixed to the iconic performing arts venue. The removal of the more than a dozen bronze letters followed a judge's ruling that the Center could not be renamed without Congressional approval.

In a court filing, Kennedy Center Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Charles Matthew Floca confirmed that President Trump's name has been removed from the building façade, despite what Floca said were weather-related delays. References to Trump on the center's website are also gone.

Just a month into his second term, Trump ousted the Kennedy Center's president, board chair and board members, then replaced them with a group of trustees that soon named Trump as chairman. Soon after, the president's name was added to the building, so that it became, "The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts."

The administration had on Friday asked a higher court to stay the ruling as it argued that Trump's name on the building had helped attract donors and was crucial to raising funds for the Kennedy Center's renovation.

"Without the name, "Trump" on the Building, our fundraising will not only come to a halt," the administration wrote in a court filing, "but any and all monies raised or committed would be obligated to be returned, refunded or terminated."

An appeals court denied that request Friday night. Workers erected scaffolding on Friday around the section of the building where Trump's name had been added in December 2025. Then, in a pre-dawn operation, the laborers draped the scaffolding in tarpaulin, before removing the giant metallic letters. The Kennedy Center had asked a judge to briefly extend the deadline for this removal —because of Friday night thunderstorms forecast for Washington D.C.

Finally, with the scaffolding up, and tarpaulin covering their efforts, workers began to remove Trump's name. Hundreds of people braved the rain and thunderstorms overnight to document the take-down. Some heckled those involved for hiding the removal using tarpaulin – with shouts of "Cover up!" and "Cowards!"

Among the onlookers watching proceedings was Krystal Brewer, 40, who works for a social justice advocacy group. She said removing Trump's name was a way to enforce accountability, maintain government checks and balances, and reclaim a piece of Washington from a president who she said has tried to impose his stamp on the nation's capital. "It's about just not being able to do something just because you think you're the most powerful person and you can defy the courts," Brewer said.

Trump has recently overseen the controversial demolition of the White House's East Wing in favor of a giant ballroom, and ordered large banners of his face to hang from several federal buildings during his second term. "I wanted to see us get a part of our city back," said Brewer. "With all the things that he's trying to destroy and corrupt and taint and alter, it's nice to see a piece of it being restored."

Also among those gathered on the Center's plaza Friday was Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, who initiated the lawsuit to remove Trump's name from the building. She wrote on social media that she had stood outside to watch, writing "No more stalling. It's time for Trump to obey the law."

Watching the tarps go up a little before 2 a.m., Saturday, another onlooker, 60-year-old nurse Mary Foltz, said it was a metaphor for the Trump administration.

"I think there's a lack of transparency — and that's just the epitome of it," Foltz said. "This is a meme."

Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated June 12, 2026 at 6:49 PM PDT

The Justice Department on Friday approved Paramount's proposed $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

After concluding its antitrust investigation into the pending merger, the department said in a statement that it found that the deal posed no threat to competition or consumers of film, broadcast television or streaming.

The decision clears the way for a merger of two rival Hollywood studio titans: Paramount, the owner of CBS, including CBS News, will swallow the much larger Warner, which includes HBO and CNN.

The DOJ''s Antitrust Division concluded that a union of two studio giants isn't anti-competitive because the streaming market has expanded the competition for conventional Hollywood studios, which includes Netflix, Apple and Amazon, as well as smaller streamers. The Justice Department's view is that, for the same reason, consumers won't lose out because there are plenty of other places to get entertainment.

Several states, including California, have raised antitrust concerns. The European Union is investigating as well.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who has been investigating the deal for antitrust violations, said in a post on social media following the Justice Department's approval: "The merger of Warner Bros and Paramount is not a done deal and remains under investigation by my office."

In a statement following the decision, Paramount described the deal as "pro-competitive," and would result in "a stronger company better positioned to compete against dominant technology platforms in an industry increasingly defined by intense competition for audiences, talent, technology, and investment."

The company said it planned to complete the merger as soon as possible, "delivering its benefits to consumers, creators, and the entertainment industry as a whole."

The consolidation will put media mogul David Ellison — son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison — at the helm of Warner Bros. studio as well as its cable and streaming properties, including CNN and HBO. The Ellison family took over Paramount and CBS last summer.

In the months leading up to the regulatory approval, critics in Hollywood feared the deal would consolidate an already concentrated media landscape and lead to fewer jobs and less creative content.

In April, thousands of directors, actors, writers and other industry talent — including Kristen Stewart, Pedro Pascal and Javier Bardem — signed an open letter opposing the merger.

The elder Ellison is also a financial backer and adviser to President Trump on artificial intelligence. Critics of recent changes at CBS under the Ellisons' control are concerned that, as they say has happened with CBS News, the acquisition would make CNN more friendly to Trump.

NPR's Carrie Johnson and Mandalit del Barco contributed to this story.

Copyright 2026 NPR

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said he will approve the latest revision of the city’s budget, which has to address the city’s ongoing structural deficit. The revision restores funding to some recreation centers, libraries and arts programs.

The decisions made in the budget affect services used by San Diegans every day, from road infrastructure to public safety. KPBS has been tracking Mayor Gloria’s budget proposals that aim to tackle the city’s $118 million deficit while balancing public wants. And if you want to try to balance the budget yourself, you can check out the KPBS Budget Challenge.

San Diego's Independent Budget Analyst Charles Modica joined KPBS Metro Reporter Andrew Bowen Thursday for an AMA (ask me anything) on the r/SanDiego subreddit.

People wanted to know more about the city’s relationship with SDG&E, what contributed to the deficit, the price of parking permits and how bike lanes factor into the budget. Modica and Bowen broke down these questions.

Redditor u/Carnitazz asked if the city of San Diego could acquire SDG&E’s infrastructure to avoid rate increases. While Modica said the city is exploring this option, it would require massive up-front costs.

Modica said the biggest costs would likely come from “purchasing the transmission/distribution infrastructure that SDG&E owns.”

Redditor u/Broad-Spare-4432 inquired if the city could raise the price of residential parking permits to cover the cost of the program.

Bowen explained why parking permit fees haven’t increased more.

User u/b_tuccinardi wanted to know how bike lanes fit into the city’s spending. Bowen said it's only a small chunk of the overall budget.

That Redditor also asked why the city of San Diego isn’t using strategies similar to those used by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to balance their budget.

Modica explained what makes San Diego’s situation different.

The City Council approved this year’s budget on Tuesday, after hours of public comment. Many people discussed the controversial contract between the city and Flock Safety, a company that provides automated license plate reader cameras.

Some speakers spoke in support of the surveillance system, while others said it’s an invasion of privacy. The council ultimately did not change the contract.

“I think the technology can be useful, and I think the privacy concerns are also real,” Modica said in an interview with KPBS shortly after the Reddit AMA. “That's a decision for the folks that people in the city elect to make. Because that's the kind of decision that people are elected to make.”

Modica said this was a challenging budget year, and next year is likely to follow the same pattern. He said what it would take to begin to fix the basic infrastructure of the city is up to voters.

“That ultimately requires voter approval of new revenue, and voter approval ultimately requires trust in the city's operations,” Modica said. “So it's important for the city to work well and effectively and efficiently. And it's also important for folks who are demanding and expecting the city to provide programs to be realistic about what those programs cost.”

More in-depth responses to many more questions are live on the Reddit AMA now.

Updated June 12, 2026 at 6:47 PM PDT

SpaceX's newly listed stock leapt on its first day of trading on Friday, after an initial public offering that shattered records and made CEO Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire.

SpaceX stock, listed on the Nasdaq under the SPCX ticker, rose 19% on its first day of trading to close at $160.95. It became one of the world's biggest listed companies on its first day on the market, valued above $2 trillion.

The company raised some $75 billion selling more than 555 million shares at its offer price of $135, making it the biggest IPO in history.

To punctuate the big day, SpaceX launched a rocket in Florida about an hour before the stock market opened. It was the 650th flight of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, according to Spaceflight Now, delivering Starlink broadband satellites into orbit.

Musk was in Starbase, Texas, at the beggining of the day, behind what looked like a Nasdaq-branded podium, while a couple of SpaceX executives, including its President Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen rang the opening bell in New York's Nasdaq Stock Market.

"Whoever you are watching this, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to mars, and ultimately beyond," Musk said, noting it was hard to believe the company had just pulled off the biggest IPO ever.

"I gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of succeeding at all, to be clear," he said of the company's early days. "In fact I told people this, I said 'look, we're probably going to fail, but you know we should give it a try because if we don't, if there's not a new company that enters space, we will never be a truly space-faring civilization."

SpaceX is not short of ambition for how it will use the money it raised through the IPO. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it wants to expand its flagship rocket and satellite communications businesses, and is doubling down on a pivot toward artificial intelligence.

Earlier this year, it acquired Musk's AI startup xAI. SpaceX has plans to expand its data centers on Earth, develop AI microchips and launch what it calls "orbital AI compute infrastructure" — data centers in space.

At the center of it all is Musk, who has an iron grip on the company as chairman of the board and chief executive officer. Musk also holds roughly 85% of shareholder voting power.

The company is not profitable, though. Its IPO prospectus reported a net loss of $4.3 billion in the first quarter of this year, and critics have questioned its stratospheric valuation. Morningstar valued it at just $780 billion based on a discounted cash flow model, a widely used approach to assessing the value of companies.

Morningstar analysts Nicolas Owens and Suryansh Sharma wrote that uncertainty is "very high" when it comes to SpaceX's business, and its governance profile under Musk, who also runs Tesla and other companies, is complicated. "The company faces substantial risks related to strategic execution, technological evolution, market dynamics, regulations, AI buildout, and key-person dependency," they wrote earlier this month.

First of 3 massive IPOs expected this year

The SpaceX IPO is the first of three big tests of investor appetite for AI-related technology companies. OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, and Anthropic, creator of the Claude AI models, have both filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission signaling intent to list shares. Analysts say that could happen this fall.

All three companies are huge, and AI is taking the world by storm, but big question marks hang over future profitability. To date, they have been burning cash to develop artificial intelligence and subsidize usership.

Songyee Yoon, managing partner at Principal Venture Partners, a fund that focuses on AI, cautions that this is still a novel technology, and it's not clear yet which companies will turn out the most commercial and useful models.

The introduction of such a new technology, she says, "comes with a lot of kind of frothy valuation and hype."

Copyright 2026 NPR

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Before Sayuri Tsuchitani became an entrepreneur, she spent two decades on her feet: cutting, coloring and styling hair. A hairdresser's work is physically tough, and Tsuchitani often wondered how she'd manage as she grew older.

When the pandemic shut the Los Angeles salon where she worked, she recognized a chance to make a change: She applied for a loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration, or the SBA, for a business of her own.

"The SBA led me to my success of the American dream," said Tsuchitani, who took advantage of a pandemic-era funding program to open a Japanese head spa: a salon offering blood-flow massages, ayurvedic oil treatments and deep scalp cleanses. She launched one location, then two more; hired one worker, then nine more.

But today, the SBA would disqualify Tsuchitani from its loan program because of a new policy. Tsuchitani is a green-card holder, also known as a lawful permanent resident; she moved from Japan 28 years ago. And in March, the U.S. small-business agency, for the first time in its history, stopped approving loans to firms that are not fully owned by U.S. citizens — and only citizens.

"Unapologetic about it"

The change is part of the quieter side of the Trump administration's push to discourage immigration. As many agencies have limited how noncitizens can qualify for programs — like housing subsidies or commercial trucking licenses — the SBA moved to do the same. Early announcements said the agency would ferret out "hostile foreign nationals" and "illegal aliens." But the SBA's rules had long restricted lending to immigrants, mainly to those living here legally and permanently. And that's what the SBA cut.

"It was a bit of a shock to the system," said Eda Henries, who runs a firm that helps small businesses raise and manage funds. "No one even thought for a second that would be on the table. No one expected that it would include legal permanent residents."

In announcing the policy change, the SBA referred to permanent residents as "foreign nationals." And the head of the agency, Kelly Loeffler, has argued they shouldn't benefit from American taxpayer dollars, though permanent residents pay taxes to the U.S. government just as citizens do.

SBA's small-business loans "are for American citizens, and we're unapologetic about it," Loeffler told Newsmax in March. She has cited an audit last year that found — and stopped — one six-figure loan approved for a business 49% owned by an immigrant without legal status.

In a statement to NPR, agency spokesperson Maggie Clemmons said: "The agency's rule change will help ensure more American citizens have access to funding previously granted to noncitizens. Across every program, the SBA is ensuring that every taxpayer dollar entrusted to this agency goes to support U.S. job creators and workers."

Historically, research has found immigrants are much more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans. Of all the people in the country, about 15% are foreign-born, but they run 20% to 25% of businesses, according to U.S. Census data. A new study this month by the nonpartisan National Foundation for American Policy estimates that immigrants and their children have launched two-thirds of the country's startups valued at more than $1 billion.

The SBA did not respond to NPR's questions about the potential impact of its policy on future job and business creation in the U.S.

SBA is a core pillar of small business

Of all SBA loans last year, the agency said 4% went to businesses involving permanent residents. It's a modest share, but transformative for those companies. For small businesses, the SBA is often the first lender, with affordable rates, to take a risk on an entrepreneur.

"I don't know where our business would be without this," said Cristina Foanene, whose glass company in Fresno, Calif., has received three SBA loans over a decade. The money allowed the company to expand its showrooms and manufacturing facilities to make windows and doors.

Foanene and her husband moved permanently to the U.S. from Romania 20 years ago as investors, bringing with them hundreds of thousands of dollars to start their business. So far, they've hired some 30 people, with more planned. One of their employees recently retired after 19 years with the company.

And it was that first SBA loan that made other investors feel comfortable lending to Foanene's business, she said.

So where will immigrant entrepreneurs turn for big cash infusions now?

"The alternative — it's just really scarce," said Henries, the small-business adviser.

Businesses denied loans mid-deal

Traditional banks often hesitate to deal with small firms. And Henries worries that the new SBA policy will push more business owners toward riskier or predatory lending, including merchant cash advances. Some may not grow their companies, or not start them in the first place.

Similar concerns have some Democrats in Congress trying to reverse the policy. The group — which includes Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. Nydia Velázquez of New York, as ranking members of the Senate and House small-business committees, respectively — introduced a bill to restore the eligibility of legal permanent residents for SBA loans.

The impact is already rippling out, said Henries. The private lenders, such as banks, that issue SBA loans now take longer to verify every owner's citizenship status, she said, and some businesses are left in the lurch.

"I have clients that were in the middle of underwriting — we're in the process of doing deals with lenders and small business owners," Henries said. "These are clients that employ dozens of people and generate revenue, and pay taxes. And all of a sudden, the lenders put the brakes on."

Eight business owners who are legal permanent residents and had received or applied for SBA loans this year declined to speak to NPR on the record, for fear of drawing unwanted attention to their immigration status within the business community.

Foanene is now a citizen and chokes up just thinking about the day she took the oath, calling it one of her proudest moments. She wonders if leaders at the SBA might have a change of heart if they heard more stories like hers.

"It really made me sad," Foanene said. "If they will understand that there are people that are coming here with honest intention of building a business and creating jobs, then I feel like maybe they will say, 'Actually, it is benefiting our country.'"

NPR's Katie Daugert contributed to this report. 

Copyright 2026 NPR

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Economist Caitlin Myers has a striking explanation for why women are having fewer babies: It's the smartphones.

Myers and other researchers have been searching for what's behind the sharp drop in fertility over the last two decades. Birth rates in the U.S. have fallen by 22% since 2007.

At first, economists assumed that the Great Recession was to blame but that births would soon rebound, as they'd done after previous downturns.

But then the economy recovered — and birth rates just kept falling.

If the recession wasn't responsible for the baby bust, what was?

"Whatever it is, it must be big, and it needs to coincide with about 2007 because that's when we see all the births go down," says Myers, a professor of economics at Middlebury College in Vermont.

That happens to be the year that Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, declaring, "Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything."

Maybe even birth rates.

In a provocative new working paper titled "Is the iPhone Birth Control?" Myers argues that the spread of smartphones could explain between a third and a half of the decline in birth rates during that period.

Births fell more in places where you could get an iPhone in the early years

To test that theory, she makes clever use of an accident of history that creates a kind of natural experiment. When iPhones first came out, they worked only with AT&T.

"In some areas of the country, AT&T had broadband coverage and you could get an iPhone, and in other areas, including where I live in Vermont, that coverage was much more limited," Myers recalls. "And what you can see in this simplest of comparisons, births start to fall in the places where you can get one, and they're not falling nearly as much in the places where you can't."

One might argue the results are skewed because smartphones spread faster in urban areas or wealthier communities. But the results hold up even when Myers controlled for variables like population density and local economics.

"You're probably not going to get pregnant if you're not interacting with people in person"

The drop in birth rates has affected women of all ages, but it's most pronounced among teenagers. That sounds plausible to Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University.

In books like Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents, Twenge has documented the profound behavioral changes that accompanied smartphones, especially among young people.

"The smartphone fundamentally changed the way adolescents spent their time outside of school," Twenge told NPR. "They started spending a lot more time online and on their phones and a lot less time hanging out with their friends in person and driving around in a car or going to the mall or just hanging out."

Myers says it's not a stretch to think that this would result in fewer babies.

"If there's one thing I learned in abstinence-only sex ed in the '90s in Georgia growing up, it's that you're probably not going to get pregnant if you're not interacting with people in person — if you're not having sex," Myers says.

In the paper, co-authored with her 24-year-old stepson, Ezekiel Hooper, Myers suggests smartphones also placed access to information about contraceptives and abortion in the palm of users' hands.

The devices also might have depressed birth rates by making it easier for people to find pornography.

"When I talk to my students at Middlebury College, this is the first one they actually bring up," Myers says. "Pornography was proving to be a substitute for in-person relationships."

Apple didn't respond to an inquiry about Myers' paper.

Eventually, copycat phones came along that could be used on other networks, and today smartphones are ubiquitous. Myers says that this raises the question of whether birth rates will level off now or continue to fall.

"I think it's possible that we'll continue to see effects of phones on behavior and outcomes like fertility for years to come," she says. "But we'll just have to keep watching."

Apple is a financial supporter of NPR.

Copyright 2026 NPR

On a recent Saturday in downtown Chula Vista, a teenage court of honor stood lined up in pairs on the stage of Diamonds Event Hall. As Pierce The Veil's Kissing Cars played through the speakers, the teenagers swayed to the music before parting down the middle — girls to the left, boys to the right. They cleared the path for the person of the hour: Asiya Nero. Dressed in a beautiful red ball gown, she glided to the front of the stage to waltz with her chambelán de honor. Two hundred family members and friends cheered her on.

Nero celebrated her 15th birthday, commonly referred to as a "quinceañera" in Latino families. Carmen Montoya-Reyes said she began saving for her daughter’s quinceañera when Nero turned 12. It was important to celebrate her only daughter with a tradition that holds deep cultural significance for her family. It was also important for Nero.

“I want to celebrate, it's the chance to show that I'm becoming an adult," she said two days before her quinceañera. " I'm transitioning from a teenager to adult, and I want this day to be really special.”

In the South Bay, quinceañera businesses are plentiful. On Third Avenue in Chula Vista there are nine quinceañera businesses in two blocks and even more quinceañera halls and dress shops within a two mile radius. These coming-of-age parties are as popular as ever in the South Bay, but they are also expensive.

The Big Picture

"Quinces" almost always include traditional elements such as a Mass, the iconic dress and a reception venue. Most feature a DJ and sometimes a mariachi band. Today, extras like a Tostilocos bar, a dancing robot or a photo booth are common sights. But when tallying it all up, the final price tag can quickly skyrocket.

Families not only have to find a way to cover those costs, but they are also on the hook for their everyday bills under the skyline of San Diego County's ever-increasing cost of living.

San Diegans pay some of the highest costs in the country for basic necessities such as housing, food and gas. Still for many parents, spending the money is worth it.

“I think today it just lets them know how important they are in our lives and how important they are in society,” Montoya-Reyes said about her daughter's celebration.

For many families, this important milestone marks a transition from childhood to adulthood. It’s also an opportunity to connect with culture, friends, family and faith.

Sticker shock

"Darling, don’t be afraid."

The haunting voice of Christina Perri in the chorus of "A Thousand Years" played as Leticia Sareñana held her daughter, Anahi Sareñana, who sparkled in her traditional white quinceañera gown. Together, they swayed for their first waltz.

Leticia, a single mother, initially hoped the event would cost $10,000. But after tallying her receipts, she believes she spent about $22,000. She also received generous gifts and donations from family and friends, including the purchase of Anahi’s $1,600 gown. In total, she estimates the quinceañera cost between $25,000 and $30,000.

“That's actually cheap to be honest with you. I mean, I know of others that spend, you know, a good $50 to $80,000 or so,” Leticia said.

The celebration took two years to plan and was something she had been looking forward to since the day her daughter was born.

A 2019 study by Mi Padrino, an event-planning platform, surveyed 525,000 quinceañeras nationwide and found the average celebration cost $21,781. Adjusted for inflation, that would equal about $28,372 today.

Cutting back

When she began planning, Montoya-Reyes landed on a $5,000 budget. Asiya Nero's mother saved money by paying off her car and trading it in for an older electric vehicle. She also made cuts to discretionary spending like eating out and hasn’t bought any new clothes for herself in three years.

To get more aggressive with her savings she shifted from working as a hairdresser in a salon to cutting hair at home.

“Cutting out all of those things, really gave us the opportunity to, like, be very easy on the budget, you know, it's like it wasn't that sacrificial,” Montoya-Reyes said.

Despite all intentions of sticking to that $5,000 budget, her community wouldn’t have it. Clients started giving her larger tips to help fund the quinceañera. Family and friends stepped into the role of padrinos, which are traditionally both spiritual guides and sponsors.

Asiya was able to show four choreographed dances at her celebration and worked with a flamenco teacher and ballet folklórico instructor for many months on her routines.

Lydia and Ruben Gonzalez are planning a quinceañera for their second daughter, Alexa Gonzalez. Their first daughter Selena’s party cost $28,000 five years ago. For Alexa, they planned a $30,000 budget, but they are already on track to surpass it.

“I know at the end it's going to be what it is, and we're gonna have to be flexible if it goes over.” Lydia shared over the phone from her Paradise Hills home.

The couple began saving two years ago, picking up extra shifts at work and cutting out discretionary spending like eating out and other activities.

Ruben stressed the cultural significance of quinceañeras for their family.

“It has a lot to do with tradition and the changing of a child to becoming a young woman and also confirming their faith and her religion,” he said.

Ways to save

David Calzada is a venue manager with Factory of Dreams, an event space that has been in Chula Vista for 14 years. Calzada said that 90% of their events are quinceañeras.

He often advises parents to stick to the basics and not overspend. But he said some parents don’t take his advice and end up going into debt. That financial strain reflects a broader trend. According to a recent study by the Public Policy Institute of California, Latino households are more likely than white and Asian households to carry unsecured debt (59% compared with roughly 45%).

For families determined to celebrate without breaking the bank, there are several ways to cut costs.

Layaway

For big ticket items like venue rentals and gowns, layaway programs are common in the industry and could be a good option to stagger costs.

"We offer layaway plans ... We can start the layaway plans with $200 and make a monthly plan,” said Osmar Naranjo, a dress designer and owner of Cynderella, a quinceañera gown shop.

Consignment and secondhand

The secondhand market for quinceañera dresses ranges from local Facebook groups to local dress shops. Naranjo said Cynderella will add consignment this year as demand has grown.

Swap meets 

Swap meets can offer deep discounts on secondhand decor and clothing. Montoya-Reyes called the swap meet her first stop before shopping anywhere else.

“A lot of our decoration stuff, we found at the swap meet ... I was amazed how inexpensive it is,” she said.

DIY 

You can often save money by doing projects yourself, but that takes time and skill.

Montoya-Reyes credits DIY as a leading reason she was able to stick to her modest budget. She and her sister handcrafted 150 delicate trees for centerpieces; each tree took about three hours to construct, and it took them a year to complete them all.

Some families opt to host backyard quinceañeras on their property for smaller, more intimate gatherings. These events can save money substantially, but require a lot of planning.

“I had mine in my backyard. Cost was definitely a factor. My dad did his best to get the area set up and my mom did all the cooking.” National City resident Luz Molina wrote in to share.

'Alternative' quince

Not all families who want to celebrate their daughter's 15th birthday choose to do a traditional quinceañera. Some families are choosing instead to do alternative celebrations like family vacations or big gifts instead, which can oftentimes be cheaper.

Making it Work

For many families, though the price is high, this important tradition is worth the stress, the time and the cost.

"Honestly, the excuse of saying, ‘oh we're not going to do one because it's so expensive,’ I don't think it's a valid reason, I really don't,” Montoya-Reyes said. She feels if a daughter wants a quinceañera, a family should find ways to budget and make it happen.

Lydia is eagerly awaiting her daughter’s quince in September.

“We're very excited. Our families are very excited," she said. "We're having family come from far away, like from Mexico …”

Speaking to Leticia two days after Anahi’s quince, she recalled the waltz with her daughter.

“I was whispering to her in her ear. I said, 'this is a moment that I've been dreaming about since I had you. This is a huge milestone for you. This is like the blossoming, you're becoming a young lady, a woman,'” Leticia said.

After two years of preparation, Anahi held her mother tightly as they slowly swayed. Circled by the event photographer and videographer, both mother and daughter smiled through tears. Two hundred beaming loved ones looked on, with almost as many smartphone screens raised to capture the moment.

It had taken a great deal to reach this point, but as Leticia held her daughter — now a young woman — it was clear to everyone in the room that the money spent had been worth it for them. More importantly, the time they spent planning the celebration had brought them closer together.

“This was a magical moment for me," Leticia said. "This was everything that I've ever dreamed of.”

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Federal financial aid is the engine of the country’s higher education system, pouring billions in student loans and grants into California alone, and this summer, the U.S. Department of Education plans to expand aid for students enrolled in short-term job training programs.

Except the state isn’t ready.

Launching a new financial aid program means creating new systems at the state and local level, and the California Student Aid Commission, the state agency in charge, said it needs more help. Although the federal aid program is slated to begin as soon as July 1, Daisy Gonzales, the executive director of the aid commission, has said repeatedly, both in state hearings and in an interview with CalMatters, that the money won’t be available to students until weeks or even months later.

Financial aid systems are “extremely complex,” she said, and the state lacks the infrastructure to build one on the federal government’s timeline.

The new financial aid awards, known as short-term or workforce Pell grants, are an expansion of the federal Pell grant program, which has for decades offered thousands of dollars in cash to low-income students for tuition and living expenses.

Historically, students in short-term job training programs were ineligible for federal student aid. The new Pell grants will give money to students who enroll in programs such as automotive mechanics or information technology, with most lasting about 10 weeks. Both public and private institutions are eligible, and the average student is expected to receive between $1,000 and $3,000, though details haven’t been finalized.

The new grants are part of a national, bipartisan push to further align higher education with the needs of employers, but the results are sometimes lacking.

In 2024, CalMatters investigated how California’s job centers used federal money to help low-income and unemployed adults attend short-term job training programs at for-profit colleges. Thousands of dollars in public subsidies went to those schools to train truck drivers and nursing assistants — careers that have a reputation for low wages, poor working conditions or high turnover rates.

Some of these for-profit schools were under investigation for various violations when they enrolled students. CalMatters found that the majority of truck driving schools had effectively no oversight. Some nursing assistants were making less than $30,000 after graduating.

The new Pell grants for short-term job training programs come with federal regulations aimed to ensure that graduates earn wages above the poverty line in an in-demand career and that only certain kinds of verified schools will be eligible. California is considering state legislation that would further restrict the kinds of programs that could qualify.

Since neither the state nor the federal government rigorously track these short-term job training programs, it’s not clear how many exist and how many students could ultimately benefit. Experts say that California’s community college students could be among the primary recipients, since the state’s 116 community colleges already offer numerous short-term job training programs in the skilled trades, healthcare, technology and public safety. But in an email to CalMatters, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office said it is too early to provide any estimates.

For one approximation, Gonzales points to CalGrant C, which provides state funding to students in job training programs that last at least 15 weeks. This year, roughly 225,000 students were potentially eligible. But unlike the new Pell grants, which could lead to billions in federal spending, CalGrant C has a relatively small budget, serving just under 7,800 students a year.

Are workforce investments paying off? 

In southern San Diego County, many community college students are working full-time jobs but are still unable to afford their living expenses, said Mark Sanchez, the president of Southwestern College in Chula Vista. Many students — including U.S. citizens — are “transitory,” he said, meaning that they live in Tijuana, where the cost of housing is cheaper, and cross the U.S. border for school each day because they can’t afford living in California.

Sanchez has been advocating for the new Pell grants, arguing to state and local officials that they could create a pathway for his students to get higher-paying jobs. His staff estimated roughly 1,500 students could be eligible for the grants in about 50 different programs, ranging from musicianship to accounting.

For students to qualify, schools will need to work over time with the state and federal government to prove that at least 70% of graduates of these job training programs are employed and that their wages are higher than the federal poverty line. The data is scattered and hard to track, and in some cases, information isn’t collected at all, said Su Jin Jez, the chief executive of California Competes, an education nonprofit.

State data can tell you, for instance, that a college graduate is working for a school district and how much they make, but the data can’t tell you what they’re doing at the school, such as whether they’re a teacher, a secretary, a lawyer or a janitor, said Jez. “Our state puts billions into aligning higher education and workforce and we don’t have a good way to understand if these investments are paying off.”

California Competes is sponsoring two bills in the Legislature this year, including one by Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, a Napa Democrat, that will require state workforce agencies to collect more data. The other is by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, a Thousand Oaks Democrat, and will regulate which programs can qualify for the new short-term Pell grants. For the latter bill, Assemblymember Juan Alanis, a Modesto Republican, is a co-author and The Institute for College Access & Success is a co-sponsor.

Separately, the governor’s office has written emergency legislation that contains proposed regulations for the new Pell grants. Though the California Student Aid Commission can’t take positions on bills, Gonzales has openly praised the bill by Irwin and criticized the governor’s proposal saying it “risks creating a fragmented system.”

Avoiding another failure

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature created a new financial aid program, known as the Learning-Aligned Employment Program, which was supposed to give out millions in financial aid to working students to help them secure jobs related to their program of study.

The program was a failure, said Gonzales, who was the deputy chancellor of the community college system at the time. It only had one-time funding and a three-year window to succeed, she said. “What was deeply missing….was the professional development and the technical assistance. You can’t just introduce a new tool, and then say, ‘Students apply.’”

By the end of the three-year window, few students had applied and state legislators decided to cut the program. In an emailed statement to CalMatters, Nicole Kangas, a spokesperson for the student aid commission, said the Learning-Aligned Employment Program is a warning for the new Pell grants.

The expanded Pell grants were approved last summer, but the U.S. Education Department only finalized its regulations last month, giving states less than two months to roll it out before the July 1 start date. Now California officials and colleges have a long list of regulatory and administrative tasks to complete, including creating special agreements between the state and each of its college districts and universities. When the California Student Aid Commission created similar agreements with universities for the Middle Class Scholarship, the contracts were between 60 and 120 pages long and took about nine months to finalize, said Gonzales.

“We really are behind,” she said, adding that multiple other states have already passed legislation. Certain new regulations, such as Irwin’s bill, could give the state “an opportunity to catch up,” she said.

For Sanchez, the challenge is not just administrative. Once the new Pell grants are available, he said Southwestern College still needs to inform current and potential students that these grants exist and convince them to apply.

Even though the majority of community college students are struggling financially — including some who are homeless — many aren’t aware of financial aid, are hesitant to apply or they submit incomplete applications. Less than half of all community college students applied for financial aid last year, and state data shows that even fewer ultimately received it.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

New federal work requirements are rolling out in stages across California’s public benefit programs, leaving many recipients in San Diego County wondering whether the changes apply to them.

CalFresh work requirements took effect June 1, while similar requirements for Medi-Cal are scheduled to begin Jan. 1, 2027.

San Diego County estimates that roughly 400,000 people could be affected by the changes across both programs.

For CalFresh, some people who previously qualified for automatic exemptions may now need to meet work requirements. That includes some veterans, people experiencing homelessness and former foster youth.

However, many people may still be exempt.

People under 18 or over 64, those who are pregnant, people unable to work because of a physical or mental health condition, caregivers for a child under 14 and students enrolled at least half time may still qualify for exemptions.

At the San Diego Food Bank, CalFresh navigators are helping recipients understand the new rules and determine whether they remain eligible for food assistance.

“Our team has been very focused on connecting with the community, letting them know what the requirements are, and then how we can help find exemptions,” said Josue Castro, who oversees the organization's CalFresh program.

Medi-Cal's work requirements are still months away, but advocates say many people are already confused because the rules differ from CalFresh.

“It’s understandable that there is confusion because this is a brand-new requirement that has never been imposed,” said Linda Nguy, an associate director of policy advocacy with the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

Nguy said the exemptions for Medi-Cal are not identical to those for CalFresh. Older adults, people with disabilities, children, former foster youth, Native Americans and parent caregivers are among those who may qualify for exemptions from Medi-Cal work requirements.

“There is a lot of overlap in terms of the requirements, but they don’t perfectly align,” Nguy said.

In a statement to KPBS, the California Department of Health Care Services said it is reviewing the new federal rules and warned they could change how medical frailty exemptions are evaluated, meaning some people with serious health conditions may need to provide additional documentation to qualify.

Nguy encouraged people to seek help early because qualifying for one program does not necessarily mean they will qualify under the rules for the other.

San Diego County said residents with questions about their eligibility can call the county’s access customer service call center at 866-262-9881 for assistance.

Updated June 11, 2026 at 1:39 PM PDT

Elon Musk's mega-conglomerate SpaceX made history on Thursday, raising $75 billion in the biggest initial public offering on record.

In an announcement posted online, SpaceX confirmed the pricing of its IPO of 555,555,555 shares at $135 each. It also said it granted the underwriters of the listing an option to buy an additional 83.3 million shares.

The stock is expected to start trading publicly on Friday under the ticker SPCX. The listing blows past the previous record-holder for the biggest IPO, Saudi Aramco, whose 2019 listing netted $29.4 billion.

SpaceX acquired Musk's AI company, xAI, this year, and that makes it part of a trio of huge artificial intelligence-related IPOs in the works. ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Anthropic, owner of the popular Claude AI models, have also filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin the process of what are sure to be giant IPOs of their own, likely later this year.

Analysts say these three IPOs could reshape markets and inject new volatility into equities, as already sky-high expectations for AI companies come face-to-face with the reality of how these companies are run.

A test of investor appetite

The SpaceX IPO is as much a test of investor appetite for rocketry and artificial intelligence as it is for CEO Musk himself, analysts say. "For a lot of people looking at this deal, whether you want to buy it or not is in part a bet on Elon Musk," said Angelo Bochanis, an associate at Renaissance Capital, which tracks IPOs.

According to the company's listing prospectus, Musk will retain a tight grip on the company by controlling the board and holding more than 80% of stock voting power.

That carries potential risk, Bochanis said. Musk is one of the best-known figures in corporate America and has made Tesla the most valuable car company in the world. But Bochanis notes that Tesla's share price — and profits in 2025 — took a hit when Musk turned his focus last year to leading DOGE, President Trump's controversial effort to ostensibly make government more efficient by cutting back federal programs and staffing.

"There are a lot of people who are really sold on his vision and sold on his expertise running this company thus far," said Bochanis. "There are also a lot of people concerned about the fact that, more than any listing ever, this is a company going public where Elon Musk has near-total say of how everything works. He has his hand in a lot of different jars. His attention is very much divided."

IPOs can be a "sobering moment" for big tech companies

The public listing of shares by SpaceX and, later, Anthropic and OpenAI will also open up these companies to scrutiny that, as private firms, they have not yet faced. Listed companies are required to file public quarterly and annual financial reports, as well as other paperwork, giving investors a look under the hood.

These IPOs are a "sobering moment," said Songyee Yoon, managing partner at Principal Venture Partners, a fund that focuses on AI. Early investors, like venture funds, buy into the possibilities and promise of startups and new technologies like AI, she said. The public market places more value on profits and practical business models — and at present, the public has limited ability to assess these companies' profitability.

"It is true that it's a kind of technology with huge potential, but I think we have to also be grounded in thinking about what we can actually accomplish within reasonable means," she said.

AI is a relatively new technology, she noted, and its development is constrained by resources, including computing power and energy. Popular cutting-edge AI models, like ChatGPT and Claude, also all tend to represent one form of AI, which may or may not end up being the most scalable and useful, she said. Different AI technologies — as well as other companies — could turn out to be more profitable bets.

"We still are very early in terms of innovation and technology development," she said. "There is a long way to go, which means it will be a very bumpy road."

An infusion of cash — and a volatile market

The SpaceX listing comes at a time when stocks, led by tech companies, have been wobbling after huge run-ups amid mounting concerns about the return on investment for AI. On Thursday, the Nasdaq clawed back some ground after shedding more than 7% since hitting an all-time high on June 1.

The SpaceX IPO — along with those of Anthropic and OpenAI — could also lead investors to shift large chunks of money away from other listed companies and into these new ones. This could spark some market turbulence that could even affect the portfolios of people who didn't actively buy SpaceX stock.

The Nasdaq, FTSE Russell and other stock index firms have agreed to fast-track the inclusion of SpaceX shares in their indexes, which means passive investment funds that track indexes, like retirement and education funds, will have to acquire the shares.

"There's a giant risk for volatility," said Bochanis. "If investments are going to get more concentrated, if more people are going to be putting a larger percentage of their money into a couple of names, then that risk of one bad earnings call is really going to be felt by people."

Friday's listing also comes at a time when the stock market and the U.S. economy have been propelled by private venture funds and the government investing hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence companies.

With its IPO price of $135, SpaceX's valuation soared to around $1.75 trillion, making it one of the 10 biggest listed companies on Earth. Analysts say Anthropic and OpenAI are likely to also list with valuations above $1 trillion each.

The IPOs, in addition to enriching early investors, will infuse fresh cash into the companies. In its prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, SpaceX said it will use the money for continued growth of its AI compute infrastructure, launch facilities and vehicles, and satellite constellations.

"There's just tons of money going into this," Ethan Feller, a stock strategist at Zacks Investment Research, said about AI. But, he pointed out, that level of investment is not guaranteed indefinitely. "What would ultimately make the market potentially go down is this liquidity stopping to flow into these things," he said.

Feller said two other factors could put a damper on the flow of money into AI: tougher future regulations for AI firms and higher interest rates prompted by rising inflation.

And these companies will have to prove that they can be profitable.

"The ultimate question that this whole thing hinges on is: These companies aren't profitable yet, [so] how does this business model work?" he said. "What are, ultimately, the margins going to be for running large language models and running this software?"

Once the stock begins to trade Friday, the listing price is only the starting point. It could soar higher or dip lower in the coming days. That's why Rodney Comegys, chief investment officer and head of global equity for Vanguard Capital Management, advises caution for retail investors.

"Investing in an IPO process can be highly speculative, and it's really difficult to determine the path of an IPO on a given day," he said. "Anybody who's thinking about participating in SpaceX's IPO, to do it only in a speculative way, it is really not the best way to do long-term investing."

Copyright 2026 NPR

LOS ANGELES — Federal authorities served a search warrant on Wednesday at a Southern California aerospace facility where a chemical tank overheated last month, forcing 50,000 residents to evacuate because authorities feared a catastrophic explosion.

The warrant signed by a federal judge last week approved the seizure of documents and records related to the "storage, use, or disposal" of methyl methacrylate, the chemical inside the affected tank.

"Samples of the substance within any tank, tote, drum, vat, vessel, or container suspected of containing or having previously contained methyl methacrylate and/or any hazardous substance" were also sought, according to the warrant.

The warrant also orders agents to seize records related to "any cooling equipment or other equipment used to control or regulate the temperature of methyl methacrylate."

The FBI confirmed its agents were searching GKN Aerospace Transparency Systems in the Orange County city of Garden Grove. Multiple vehicles and several federal agents were seen outside the facility Wednesday morning.

Company says it's cooperating with authorities

GKN Aerospace makes cockpit windows, canopies and windshields. The tank that overheated contained 6,000 to 7,000 gallons (22,700 to 26,500 liters) of methyl methacrylate, which is highly flammable. The liquid is used in the manufacturing of plastics and coatings, such as Plexiglas and dental prosthetics.

Exposure to the chemical can cause serious respiratory problems, neurological issues and irritation to the skin, eyes and throat, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The chemical that overheated is still in the holding tank, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency, which is leading the site cleanup and waste removal efforts.

The agency had planned to pump the neutralized methyl methacrylate from the storage tanks into sealed trucks for transport and disposal starting at the end of last week, according to a press release on the agency's website. But on Friday, they said the removal didn't happen "due to unavailable resources."

Once a new date is confirmed, they will provide advance notice to the community.

Responding to a request for comment on the FBI investigation, a GKN spokesperson told the AP on Wednesday morning: "We are cooperating with authorities at our Garden Grove facility and will continue to do so."

GKN Aerospace's Steve Carlin spoke at a community meeting Tuesday evening. He thanked the firefighters and local leaders who responded to the incident at the plant that employs more than 500 people, and apologized to the community.

"On behalf of GKN and the Garden Grove plant I want to say that I'm sorry that this event and this incident occurred. I understand and I realized sitting here tonight what a disruptive event it was and how unsettling it is to the greater community. Particularly unsettling to us at GKN because of the long history that we have with Garden Grove and how connected we are to this community."

Garden Grove city leaders and residents urged GKN Aerospace to consider moving these tanks of methyl methacrylate off of the Garden Grove plant, so the chemical would be far away from residents and businesses. But Carlin said it is very early in the investigation into what happened, so it is too soon to decide what the company might do in response to the incident. He promised to be transparent with the community about the investigation.

Overheating tank risked a catastrophic explosion

The incident was reported on May 21 and evacuations began the next day. The tank overheated because a valve on the cooling system that kept it at 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) failed, officials said.

Crews sprayed water on the tank until the interior temperature stabilized to 92 F (33.3 C), down from 100 F (37.7 C). A sprinkler system was used to douse the tank, and the company said its technical specialists and firefighters removed insulation from the tank to help cool it.

A crack that formed by chance on the tank relieved pressure and helped avert a catastrophic explosion, allowing most evacuees to return home over the Memorial Day weekend. Authorities announced they were lifting the final orders after the temperature on the tank remained stable for four hours without intervention from sprinklers.

Separately, the Orange County District Attorney's Office also is conducting a criminal investigation into the GKN Aerospace plant, according to DA spokesperson Kimberly Edds.

"We have sent a preservation letter to GKN directing them not to modify or destroy any evidence, which the company's outside counsel confirmed receipt," Edds told The Associated Press in an email.

Lawyers in federal lawsuits welcome the FBI's involvement

About a dozen people and businesses that were among the 50,000 evacuated during the chemical emergency have filed lawsuits against the company. Some residents reported strong odors, respiratory irritation, headaches and dizziness. They question why the chemical plant was allowed to operate so close to homes.

Lawyer Rickard McCune represents Big Rob's Pizzeria and Fruit Caboose Concessions in a federal lawsuit claiming GKN Aerospace and parent company Melrose Industries were negligent and put the surrounding communities at risk. He said they're pleased the federal government is investigating. The FBI's involvement will help bring justice to those who were harmed, he said.

Another lawyer, Alex Wheeler, represents Dinh Tran and Drippys Gourmet Ice Cream Sandwiches and said they're relieved that the FBI is using its resources to investigate potential criminal acts.

"As more information becomes public, it's becoming clearer and clearer that the risk to our community posed by GKN's operation of the Garden Grove facility may require a long term and lasting solution," Wheeler said.

GKN did not immediately respond to the allegations in the lawsuits.

Orange County health officials assured residents that no contamination or fumes were released, and that they would keep monitoring the air for several months and checking the sewer and storm drains.

The California incident was the first of two major hazardous chemical emergencies on the West Coast within a week of each other. Five days after the GKN Aerospace situation began, a large tank containing a corrosive chemical at a Longview, Washington paper mill ruptured and imploded, killing 11 people.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Right now, to ride the bus or trolley riders only need to pay $2.50 for a one-way ticket. But come this fall, that could increase to $3 — and to $3.25 in 2027.

“This (fare) isn’t even a cup of Starbucks,” said Vista resident Patrick McIntosh, a monthly public transit user.

He said the fare increases are reasonable.

“It's a good price,” McIntosh said. “We're getting a much better deal than some areas.”

Currently, adult monthly passes are $72. That’s much less than in similarly sized metro areas such as Portland, Dallas and Salt Lake City, according to Mark Olson, MTS' marketing and communications director.

“They were everywhere between $85 to $126,” he said.

MTS fares haven’t increased since 2009, Olson said. But under the proposal, adult monthly passes could increase to $85 this fall and $95 in 2027.

Olson said it’s needed to offset rising costs.

“We’re looking at trying to fill the gap of about $500 million over the next four years,” he said.

Tuesday was the last open house where people can learn about the changes ahead of SANDAG's Transportation Committee meeting Friday, where those changes will be introduced.

“We want to make sure riders are well-informed that this is going to happen,” Olson said.

Blake Parkes, 16, was one of those riders. He stopped by SANDAG headquarters downtown to voice his opinion.

“I'm just a huge fan of public transportation,” he said. “And honestly, a lot of my friends are (too), but many people I don't think would actually come out here to advocate for themselves.”

Transit riders can voice their opinions on the proposed fare increases at sandag.org.

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Soaring gasoline prices, triggered by the U.S. war with Iran, have pushed inflation to its highest level in more than three years.

A report from the Labor Department on Wednesday showed consumer prices in May were up 4.2% from a year ago. That's the biggest annual increase since April of 2023. By contrast, the Labor Department says average wages have risen only 3.4% over the last year, so workers' real spending power has declined.

Prices rose 0.5% between April and May, with higher energy costs accounting for more than 60% of that monthly increase. Gas prices have jumped by well over a dollar a gallon since the war began, strangling shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz — a critical pathway for much of the world's oil supply.

Higher fuel costs also pushed up airfares in May. Airline tickets cost about 27% more than they did a year ago.

Grocery prices showed little change during the month, rising just 0.1%. Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, "core inflation" was 2.9% for the 12 months ending in May, a slightly larger annual increase than the previous month.

Stubborn inflation makes it less likely the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates anytime soon, especially since the U.S. job market appears to be stabilizing. Employers added 172,000 jobs last month.

Gasoline prices have eased in recent days, amid hopes of a possible negotiated settlement between the U.S. and Iran. But with an average price of $4.15 a gallon nationwide, pump prices are still about $1.17 higher than they were before the war began, according to AAA.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated June 10, 2026 at 6:33 AM PDT

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It's a problem the labor movement has decried for years: After a successful union election, it takes far too long — an average of 465 days, according to Bloomberg Law — for workers and their employers to reach a first contract.

In some cases, it takes even longer. Neither the Buffalo, N.Y., Starbucks baristas who unionized in late 2021 nor the Staten Island Amazon warehouse workers who unionized in the spring of 2022 have a contract.

Now, by a vote of 230 to 193, the House has approved a bill that would force employers to the table, allow federal mediators to get involved if a deal is not reached within 90 days, and — if needed — settle the matter through arbitration shortly thereafter.

Twenty Republicans joined Democrats in voting on Tuesday evening to pass the measure, called the Faster Labor Contracts Act.

"No more stop the steals. You got an election, you can get a contract," said New Jersey Democrat Donald Norcross, a union electrician and the bill's sponsor, at a press conference last fall.

Norcross says the measure would be the most significant new protection for workers since before World War II, an assertion echoed by labor leaders.

"This is one of the most consequential labor bills to come before Congress in generations," said Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien in a statement earlier this year. "It has the potential to hold Corporate America accountable for endlessly dragging out negotiations and denying workers the first union contracts they deserve."

Republicans opposed to the bill described it as government overreach, something that would be bad for employers, employees and the economy.

A discharge petition got the bill to the House floor

The bill reached the House floor via a procedural tactic known as a discharge petition — the same tactic used to force a House vote on the release of the Epstein files. Democrats have increasingly turned to discharge petitions, which require a simple majority, to circumvent House Speaker Mike Johnson. Seven Republicans joined Democrats in signing the discharge petition to get the Faster Labor Contracts Act to the House floor.

Now, the measure heads to the Senate, where it faces steeper odds, although it does have the support of several Republicans, including Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, one of the bill's sponsors.

An expedited timeline to get to a contract

For years, Democrats have unsuccessfully pushed for far more sweeping reform to federal labor law through a bill called the PRO Act. The Faster Labor Contracts Act replicates one provision of that bill, creating an expedited timeline for what has to happen once workers vote to unionize.

Within 10 days, employers must begin contract negotiations. If no agreement is reached after 90 days, either party can bring in the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, a federal agency tasked with handling labor disputes, both within government and in the private sector.

If there is still no agreement after another 30 days, the dispute would be settled by a three-member arbitration panel, which would take into consideration the employer's financial status, the employees' cost of living, and the wages and benefits at comparable companies, among other factors. The agreement would be binding for two years or until the two sides settle on something else.

Opponents say it's a "draconian" measure

The CHRO Association, which represents chief human resource officers at 350 large corporations, called the measure "draconian" in a letter to Speaker Johnson.

"Sometimes [contract negotiations] do take time, as frustrating as it is," says Gregory Hoff, the association's general counsel, noting that union contracts can run hundreds of pages long and be in place for years. "It's very, very important to get these things right the first time."

While the CHRO Association does support some kind of reform to speed up the negotiation process, Hoff says giving the government the ability to impose a contract so soon after a union election is not the right solution.

"It's not their fault, but it's unreasonable to expect that the government arbitrator would have a better idea of what's going on on the ground than people who actually work there along with their union representatives, along with the employer," Hoff says.

Another complication is that the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service has been diminished by the Trump administration. The agency is now down to about 90 employees, less than half of what it was before President Trump signed an executive order targeting a number of entities to be "eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law."

"When you think about all the first contracts that might pop up in even just a given year… I think the idea that they could handle all this is highly optimistic," says Hoff.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Southern California stadium workers who threatened to strike for the U.S. men’s soccer team's opening World Cup match said Tuesday they expect to stay on the job after reaching a tentative contract deal with higher wages and more labor protections.

The union representing 2,000 bartenders, servers, cooks and dishwashers at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, announced the deal at a news conference and said workers would vote Wednesday on whether to ratify it. It came after workers last week voted to authorize a strike as contract talks had stalled with the stadium’s food service provider, Legends Global.

In a statement, Legends Global said the company was pleased to reach an agreement with workers and looks forward to providing “an outstanding hospitality experience” at the World Cup matches in Inglewood. Eight matches are scheduled for SoFi Stadium, starting with Friday’s match between the U.S. and Paraguay. The stadium, which opened in 2020, seats 70,000 people and is home to the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers.

Workers said they won wage increases and protections from subcontracting. The tentative contract will give stadium cooks among the highest wages for the job in the country, with many earning $40 an hour in about two years, said Kurt Petersen, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, which represents the workers. That's well above California's minimum wage.

“Economically, it is the strongest agreement at any NFL stadium,” Petersen told reporters outside the stadium near Los Angeles, while workers cheered. “In short, we won every major issue that we brought to the table.”

The contract would last through April 2028 — just ahead of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles — and includes protections against subcontracting and a contribution to build housing for hospitality workers. Some cooks currently make about $31 an hour and will see their hourly wages rise over the next two years to $38 or $39, said Islagisbel Castillo, 21, a suite cook on the bargaining committee.

“This is a very proud moment for all of us,” said Yolanda Fierro, who works at the stadium. “We really want to secure the safety of all our employees.”

One of the key sticking points in contract negotiations was workers' demand for protection on the job in the event of immigration raids, Petersen said.

The Los Angeles area was a target of ramped-up enforcement last summer, and community and union groups have raised concerns about the potential for federal raids during the World Cup. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna last week said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had assured him federal authorities would be at matches to assist with security, not civil immigration enforcement.

Under the deal, Petersen said workers retained the right to strike in case of an immigration raid at work. He said no other collective bargaining agreement in the country includes such a provision.

“We hope we never need to use that right," Petersen said.

The World Cup is expected to draw millions of fans to matches across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, over 39 days this month and next.

Taxin reported from Santa Ana, Calif.

Updated June 12, 2026 at 5:32 AM PDT

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Driving home on a weekday afternoon, New Jersey state Sen. Declan O'Scanlon is mad — real mad.

The World Cup kicked off this week — and the state is set to host eight matches, including the all-important final on July 19. It should be an exciting time — but not for O'Scanlon.

Instead, the legislator, who represents the district around central New Jersey where he was born, is tallying up the money it will cost the state to host all these games. And he has one conclusion.

"My taxpayers are getting ripped off — and we are!" he says.

O'Scanlon is looking at one reality of the World Cup: Hosting the tournament is expensive.

Qatar spent an estimated $300 billion to stage it in 2022, including building shiny new stadiums and other big infrastructure projects to welcome millions of visitors.

By contrast, the 11 American cities hosting games are not spending anywhere near as much, in large part because they already have big and available NFL stadiums.

But with each host city or state having to pony up many of the costs on its own, flash points have emerged, including in Massachusetts, where a standoff over security costs threatened to derail matches that were set to take place at the New England Patriots stadium in Foxborough.

And with the World Cup upon us, many people in New Jersey and other states hosting games are wondering whether it will end up being worth the cost.

$100 million and counting

O'Scanlon estimates that New Jersey has spent at least $100 million to host the games, and some experts believe that's a conservative estimate.

Meanwhile, FIFA — the World Cup organizer — is set to earn at least $11 billion from the World Cup overall, with almost none of that money shared with New Jersey.

Under agreements signed with each of the 11 host cities across the U.S., the costs are lopsided. Host cities must pay for virtually everything, from security for the event to providing their NFL stadiums for FIFA to use almost rent free.

Meanwhile, FIFA is set to earn virtually all the revenue.

FIFA justifies the arrangement by saying the U.S. economy could earn $30 billion from hosting the World Cup, but economists widely pan the numbers as wishful thinking.

O'Scanlon is certain New Jersey will not end up benefiting from the tournament.

"We're not going to get any great economic windfall," O'Scanlon says. "There's not going to be a ton of people here spending a ton of money. It's just not going to happen."

Host cities can benefit from the World Cup if they attract a big influx of visitors. The problem for New Jersey is that many in the state believe visitors will spend the bulk of their time across the river in New York — attending a Broadway show or visiting Times Square.

Even FIFA's own marketing bills the venue as "New York New Jersey," even though the matches will actually take place at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

O'Scanlon says the billing — with New York's name first — stings.

"It's a double kick in the throat!" he says. "We're footing the bill for the most part! And it's in New Jersey!"

From excitement to deep apprehension

New Jersey fought hard to become a World Cup host in the lead-up to 2018, when FIFA awarded the tournament to the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

That was under then-Gov. Phil Murphy. Today, the new administration under Gov. Mikie Sherrill has to pay for the actual costs at an especially challenging time for state finances.

And even if the cost of hosting the tournament ends up being not more than $100 million, that's a lot of money that could have been used elsewhere.

Professor Danielle Zanzalari, who studies state finances at Seton Hall University, says money spent sprucing up train stations for the World Cup — or paying for extra hours for local police — is money that could be used for more important day-to-day matters such as education.

"My gosh, this could fund like all of the issues with education for our youth. But we're spending it so people can, you know, go to a football game," she says, using the other name for soccer.

FIFA says it's bringing the prestige of soccer

FIFA hadn't responded to NPR's request for comment by the time of publication, but it has long argued that host cities and countries benefit from staging one of the biggest sports tournaments in the world.

Qatar, for example, continues to face accusations that it used the 2022 World Cup to improve its image on controversies it has faced, including on human rights, in what's known as "sportswashing."

But Zanzalari questions whether those same benefits apply to New Jersey or New York.

"There's no one that is finding out about New York City because of the World Cup," she says. "There's no one finding that New Jersey is right next door to New York."

Yet New Jersey residents have had to face all the issues that come with hosting a tournament of this magnitude, including cuts to train services for renovations and to accommodate the increased number of visitors.

New Jersey is trying to reduce the costs

The fiscal pressures have spurred New Jersey's leaders to try to make up for some of the costs involved in hosting the tournament.

The state, for example, sparked a lot of controversy by initially saying it would charge $150 for train tickets to MetLife Stadium for World Cup visitors — a price it eventually lowered to $98.

But perhaps the biggest issue for the 11 American cities hosting World Cup games is that it's hard to know exactly how much it will really cost at the end of the day.

Money for the World Cup gets tucked across state budgets, as part of bigger bills for infrastructure projects and other projects, making it hard to track all the escalating costs.

That riles up O'Scanlon, the state senator.

"We'll never know exactly how much this event is costing the taxpayers of New Jersey," he says.

And that presents a big problem for hosts like New Jersey, because one day the World Cup will end — and FIFA will move on.

New Jerseyans, though, will likely still be tallying up the costs.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Following a lengthy and at times combative process, the San Diego City Council will vote Tuesday on the fiscal year 2026-27 budget during a special session.

The proposed budget is based largely on Mayor Todd Gloria's May revisal, which found additional revenue sources to help preserve some library and recreation center hours, shoreline bathrooms and "December Nights," compared to the initial proposal.

"Even in a difficult budget year, we continued looking for ways to protect neighborhood services responsibly," Gloria said. "My May revise restores targeted services in some of our historically underserved communities while still maintaining our focus on the fundamentals for San Diegans: keeping you safe, fixing infrastructure, reducing homelessness and building more homes."

Gloria's proposed additions include protecting recreation center and library hours in Council Districts 4, 8 and 9, Monday hours at Carmel Valley Library and preventing the North Clairemont Library Branch from closing, protection of staffing support for December Nights planning and operations, another $500,000 for youth drop-in centers, and allocating opioid settlement funds toward treatment and support programs through UC San Diego and the San Diego LGBT Community Center.

However, arts funding could still be gutted based on the May revise. Last week, City Council President Pro Tem Kent Lee was joined by Budget Committee Chair Henry Foster III with County Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe and representatives of the Prebys Foundation to announce a public- private proposal to restore San Diego's arts funding, which would have the foundation put up $3 million for arts and culture programs slashed in the current proposed budget.

"Arts are essential to our city," Lee said. "Music, film, artistic expression — this is what makes us human, and it's what transforms a city into a community. Our arts programs create jobs, attract visitors and help define what it means to be a San Diegan. This is not about funding some abstract luxury, it's about protecting one of San Diego's greatest strengths."

The proposal also would adopt recommendations from the city's Independent Budget Analyst's office to shift $6 million from San Diego's Transient Occupancy Tax — essentially a hotel tax — to arts programs, as well as restoring $1.3 million in grants.

"Arts and culture belong in all of San Diego and this funding supports local artists, small businesses, jobs and the community spaces that keep our neighborhoods connected," Foster said. "In District 4, the San Diego Black Arts and Culture District shows why this work matters by honoring history, creating opportunity and making sure culture isn't forgotten. As budget chair, I truly believe this proposal is a responsible way to protect funding that matters to our residents and our local economy."

It would cover around $10.35 million of the nearly $12 million cut under the proposed budget as the city looks to tighten its belt around a $118 million structural budget deficit.

"Our investment is intended to encourage the city to restore arts funding, honor the competitive grants process already underway and strengthen regional support for arts and culture," said Grant Oliphant, CEO and president of the Prebys Foundation. "For decades, San Diego's artists and cultural organizations have been promised a reliable source of public funding. It is time to deliver on that promise, and today marks an important step forward."

Gloria said new sources of revenue to cover the non-art additions include an increase in tourism occupancy tax — charged to those who stay in the city's hotels — and a $4.3 million boost to revenue by recovering rent from the city's golf courses.

"Every private golf course in San Diego pays rent for the land it sits on," he said. "Our public courses sit on public land owned by the people of San Diego. The new legal guidance allows us to properly account for the value of that land, and to make sure the public benefits when the courses succeed."

George Duardo, president of the San Diego City Firefighters, said some cuts slated for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department were worrying — such as bomb squad staffing, the community resource officer, the recruitment and retention officer, fire information officer position and fire academy instructor.

"While (it's) good the city found additional money in the budget, it is unfortunate that it wasn't directed to reverse the proposed cuts to Fire- Rescue staffing and operations," he said. "We are hopeful the council and mayor can truly make public safety a priority and not compromise fire staffing and response times via the cuts on the table."

Council members will also have to weigh significant decisions made Monday evening, when the council voted unanimously to end paid parking at Balboa Park by the end of the year and reduce trash fees for single-family homes.

Paid parking will end on Dec. 31 and the trash fees will be reduced to $38.75 starting next year for the "typical" 95-gallon bin bundle — a number adjusted for inflation from the initial proposal in 2021. Those using 65-

or 35-gallon bins will pay "proportionally less." That amount will increase to $39.91 on July 1, 2028.

The decisions Monday mean the city must find the lost revenue — or slash existing services — from somewhere else. A possible reduction of services includes the elimination of bulky item pickup and delay of an electric vehicle rollout.

"Today's City Council action reflects a compromise reached to protect the city from prolonged litigation and the risk of even deeper financial consequences that could have resulted in far more significant cuts to core services," Gloria said.

"Faced with the potential total loss of more than $150 million and the prospect of additional cuts to police, fire protection, libraries, parks, and neighborhood services, I supported a compromise that helps protect the city's financial stability and allows us to avoid a much more damaging outcome."

The city will immediately stop selling yearly passes for the parking, will stop selling quarterly passes on Sept. 30 and monthly passes by Nov. 30. Those who have already purchased a yearly pass will get a prorated refund from the city.

Single-family refuse pickup is funded by the city's general fund, which all residents pay into through property tax — whether they rent or own a single-family home, a condominium or an apartment. The city takes away 300,000 tons of trash and 150,000 tons of recycling, compostables and yard waste annually.

The San Diego City Council will convene at 1 p.m. Tuesday to discuss and vote on the budget.

A trust fund that helps pay Social Security benefits for more than 60 million retirees and family members is expected to run out of money in 2032.

Unless Congress makes changes by then, seniors will see an automatic cut in their monthly benefits of 22%, according to a report released Tuesday by Social Security Trustees.

"The Trustees recommend that lawmakers address the projected trust fund shortfalls in a timely way to phase in necessary changes gradually and give workers and beneficiaries time to adjust," the report says.

The forecast shows the trust fund will be exhausted three months earlier than was predicted last year. Social Security's finances are challenged by a falling birth rate, reduced immigration and the tax cut passed by the Republican Congress last year. Those moves are partially offset by stronger productivity gains.

The basic challenge for Social Security is demographic. Baby boomers are retiring at a rapid pace, and there are fewer younger workers paying into the system for every senior collecting monthly benefits.

Congress could patch the shortfall by raising taxes, reducing benefits or some combination of the two.

Otherwise, beneficiaries will see their monthly payments cut automatically.

"Nationally, the average monthly cut would total $500, which is more than what the average retired household spends on groceries each month," said a report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Apple took a leap into the AI era on Monday, announcing a long-awaited update to its digital assistant Siri and changes in its operating systems that attempt to more deeply integrate artificial intelligence.

The company's share price fell close to 2% after the news, though. While analysts say the changes have potential, whether or not they are a hit with consumers will have to wait to be seen once they are made available to the public later this year.

The Siri overhaul comes after repeated delays that raised questions about Apple's commitment to AI, as chatbots and agents have taken center stage in the tech world amid a tsunami of AI investments by other companies.

"Today we're taking a big step forward," Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president for software design, said at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, held in Cupertino, Calif. He defended Apple's approach, stressing the company's focus on utility and protecting user privacy.

"Some appear to be racing forward, seemingly pursuing AI for the sake of AI without clear regard for the people — all of us — that it's ultimately meant to serve," he said. "We believe that truly helpful AI must be centered around you and your needs."

As chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude have wowed consumers with their ability to answer complex questions and perform digital tasks, Siri has lagged far behind. On Monday, Apple put on display its new version, with a string of videotaped demonstrations in which Apple employees showed off Siri's new features.

The company said the new Siri, dubbed Siri AI, will be accessible through a standalone app, and also through the search function on the home screen of Apple devices and in various other apps, like Photos. It will be able to access cloud computing networks and the internet, but be informed by a user's personal experiences and information on the user's Apple devices, such as their email and text message history.

Apple executives showed how Siri AI could find information online, give recommendations for things like menus, dig into texts or emails to pull up addresses or other information, and move photos into albums.

A 'prove-it moment' for Apple

Ben Bajarin, CEO of the tech research company Creative Strategies, said there was a low bar for making improvements, given Siri's current limited functionality. He said Apple is in a good position to bring AI to a broad customer base through its popular products.

"It looks like it's a pretty big upgrade," he said of the new Siri and Apple's deeper integration of AI into its systems. "It will work very cleanly into a whole slew of things that consumers might already do."

But, he added, "I think now we'll just have to see how it actually works."

Francisco Jeronimo, an analyst with the consultancy IDC, said Apple appears to want AI to "disappear into the operating system," rather than make chatting with an AI the user's focus.

"If Apple makes AI feel natural, private and useful for mainstream users, it will not just strengthen its ecosystem. It could redefine what consumers expect from every device they use," he said.

Presenters at the conference said Siri AI would be available to U.S. customers later this year in English, with other languages coming soon. It will not be immediately available in the European Union or China, two big markets for Apple, due to international regulations.

Apple is turning to one of its biggest phone hardware rivals for help catching up in AI. In January, Google and Apple announced a multi-year collaboration under which Google's Gemini AI model would be the basis for Apple's AI systems.

Daniel Newman, CEO of the Futurum Group, a tech research and advisory firm, said Apple now faces a "prove-it moment."

"My first reaction — and I think the reason the stock sort of fell — was it's ticking a box, but still uninspiring," Newman said.

"Given the fits and starts of Apple's AI rollout over the last few years, I don't know that they've given us enough reason to believe they can be trusted this time. The proof is going to have to be in the delivery, in the execution," he added.

Newman said the promises Apple made on Monday have potential, and there is clearly a big market for an improved Siri. Investors may also like the fact that Apple is "just paying rent to Google" for Gemini, he said, rather than shoveling money into self-made AI development, like many other tech companies are doing.

Beyond AI, Apple announced new parental controls on app and content access for kids, including the ability to limit which websites they can browse and apps they can download, who can communicate with them, and how much time they can spend on devices.

These updates come at a time when a range of AI and social media companies are facing a slew of lawsuits claiming harms to minors, including mental health troubles and exposure to violent or sexually graphic conversations with chatbots.

Tim Cook's last WWDC as Apple's CEO

Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook opened and closed the main session with brief remarks at the start of what will likely be his last WWDC, but did not play a role in unveiling the new products.

In April, Cook announced that in September he will hand the reins of a company that he helped make one of the world's most valuable to John Ternus, a mechanical engineer by training who currently oversees the development of Apple hardware, like Mac computers and iPhones.

In an April letter announcing the leadership change, Cook lauded Ternus as someone with "the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and honor."

Despite the perception that Apple has had missteps on AI, the company has thrived under Cook, with its share price soaring some 2,000% on a split-adjusted basis during his 15-year tenure as CEO. Cook expanded the array of revenue-generating services that Apple offers, with products like Apple Pay, Apple Music and Apple News+. He also launched a line of custom microchips to power Apple's products.

Still, Cook has taken flak for binding Apple's fate to China as its manufacturing hub, a move that created supply chain efficiencies but has become a political risk that the company is now trying to address through diversification.

Critics have also said Cook lacks his predecessor Steve Jobs' ability to drive wow-factor product innovation, instead delivering a string of incremental device updates over the years.

Closing out the morning keynote on Monday, Cook said "the best is still ahead" for Apple, which he said strives to create the best products to deliver enriching experiences.

"It's been the honor of a lifetime to help advance that mission with teams whose creativity, care and conviction continue to make a lasting difference in peoples' lives," he said.

Note: Apple and Google are financial supporters of NPR.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Something unusual is happening with only a few days remaining before the U.S. men's national team opens its World Cup campaign against Paraguay: Tickets for the match are not sold out.

Although numbers fluctuate regularly, FIFA's ticketing website still shows 132 tickets left to sell for a game that's set to take place in Los Angeles on Friday. Meanwhile, resale platforms such as StubHub and SeatGeek — and FIFA's own marketplace — also show thousands of tickets on sale.

The number is even higher for Canada's opening match against Bosnia Herzegovina in Toronto on the same day, with 226 tickets left in FIFA's website and a high number of tickets available in resale markets.

That's unusual for high-profile events such as the opening matches of the World Cup — traditionally among the hardest to get tickets in the tournament. This year will feature three hosts in the U.S., Canada and Mexico — but so far only Mexico's opening match against South Africa on Thursday looks to be virtually sold out.

Ticketing experts widely agree on the reason: the prices. FIFA dramatically jacked them up for the tournament — especially for high profile games. The most expensive regular seats for the U.S. opener against Paraguay are priced at $2,735 — more than the final cost for the 2022 World Cup final — while the cheapest are $1,120.

Even President Trump said he wouldn't pay those prices.

"I would certainly like to be there, but I wouldn't pay it either, to be honest with you," Trump told the New York Post in a recent interview.

The other two remaining games for the U.S. national have far fewer tickets available, given that prices are well below the ones for the opening match.

Prices have also fallen sharply

There are not only plenty of tickets left to sell — a number of them are also available below FIFA's face value. According to Ticketdata, which tracks prices across the resale platforms, the cheapest pair of tickets for the opening match for the U.S. and Canada was $951 as of Monday morning, while in FIFA's resale platform, tickets were available for as low as $690.

Other games across the 104-match tournament also still have many tickets left to sell — despite FIFA President Gianni Infantino's claim that every match is "already sold out." That's especially the case for lesser well known teams such as the Jordan against Algeria match, which still had hundreds of unsold seats in the FIFA's web site.

Demand for high-profile tickets such as Argentina and Portugal was far higher, however, with many of those games looking largely sold out.

Will the opening matches sell out?

Whether eventually the U.S. and Canada opening matches will sell out is hard to answer. Throughout the sales process, FIFA has closely guarded how many tickets it has actually sold and how many are left to sell, making it virtually impossible to gauge.

In addition, like other teams, FIFA could also sell tickets in other platforms including third-party ones such as SeatGeek, which can further obscure how many tickets are left to sell.

FIFA and organizers, however, are hoping for a surge in excitement that leads to a last-minute rush of sales for the opening matches as well as for those such as Jordan against Algeria that look far from being sold out.

Ben Shields, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, says perceptions so far of the tournament have been shaped by how expensive tickets and travel has been for a tournament taking place across an entire continent.

That, he says, "does not seem to sit well with many."

But that could change.

"The hope or bet — for FIFA is that once the matches start — and the greatest players in the world compete for the most prestigious prize of them all, the sport as business lens will fade into the background and the World Cup will be seen and experienced as the enduring global institution that it is," Shields says. "We shall see."

Copyright 2026 NPR

NPR has hired a new chief content officer less than two weeks after overhauling its newsroom. Nadine Zylstra is tasked with expanding audiences for the public radio network's news, entertainment and music in an increasingly digital world.

Zylstra comes to NPR from Pinterest, where she was the global programming chief. She previously was the global head of YouTube Originals and a top programming executive for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit parent and producer of Sesame Street. She currently sits on the board of directors of PBS SoCal.

A native of South Africa, Zylstra says her first job in the U.S. was as a producer for the cable music channel VH-1 on celebrity news and wanted something different. She has since been hailed for her work promoting understanding across racial and ethnic divides for Sesame Street and programs for women at YouTube.

"I really feel like I've been training for this job my whole life," Zylstra says in an interview. "I really do care about making the world a better place. When I am at my best, it's when that connection between what I do and what I care about really comes together."

NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher praised Zylstra, noting her work at Sesame and Pinterest's reputation as a rare corner of relative kindness in the often harsh world of social media.

"In Nadine, we found somebody who comes out of public media... who understands the importance of media with a mission and a purpose, and as a tool for civic engagement," says Maher in an interview. She says Zylstra will evaluate NPR's portfolio of broadcast shows and podcasts in terms of whether they are fully reaching and serving audiences, and what might be missing from NPR's offerings.

Additionally, Maher says, Zylstra understands the role of "joy and humor" in NPR's programming, and how to create fresh content for new audiences as habits shift rapidly.

Zylstra will start in July and be based at NPR's Culver City, Calif., office but come to NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. at least once a month.

Gary Knell, a former chief executive of Sesame Workshop and NPR, calls Zylstra a dynamic figure who attracts brilliant colleagues.

"She's a creative magnet for talent," Knell says. "She has positive vibes."

Knell says Zylstra came to work at Sesame in New York City after she collaborated with the company to develop a multiracial children's show in her native South Africa. She later helped to create shows in tough spots, such as Kosovo, for the production company.

"I would imagine this is an NPR move to bring in someone who is very familiar with social media platforms and YouTube content and is very able to drive content," Knell says.

Pivotal moment for public media

Zylstra will oversee the leaders of NPR's newsroom, music department, podcasts and related departments. But Maher stresses that Zylstra will not be involved in news decisions. While NPR Editor-in-Chief Tommy Evans will report to Zylstra on strategic matters, he will remain in charge of the journalism, Maher says. He will also remain part of Maher's executive cabinet.

"I felt as though NPR's journalism is rock solid and we've got great editorial leadership, and it was not probably the place where we needed additional layers," Maher says. "I wanted someone who was really thinking about the expansiveness of public media's mission and how we serve our audiences, how we encourage the innovations."

NPR remains one of the most prestigious and wide-reaching outlets in broadcast news. More than 42 million people rely on it each week, on all its platforms, though that figure represents a drop from previous levels.

It continues to win awards for its news coverage, often conducted in concert with member stations around the country. NPR's Planet Money has just spun off a best-selling book. NPR's video series Tiny Desk Concert has 12 million subscribers on YouTube alone. The network created a weekly radio show around it and sold the rights to the format in Japan and South Korea.

Maher recently landed a pair of gifts totalling more than $113 million to improve NPR's tech and distribution channels, strengthen its ties with member stations and market itself more effectively.

And yet, this is a daunting moment for NPR. Broadcast audiences are down throughout commercial and public media. News fatigue has set in. While NPR remains a top podcast producer, it lost its preeminent slot as iHeartRadio created hundreds of podcasts simply by repackaging all its radio shows. And then there's the political backdrop.

President Trump and his allies have rallied supporters by accusing NPR and PBS of bias, a charge the networks deny. Last summer, the Republican-led Congress pulled funding from public media at Trump's urging.

Before that happened, NPR received between 1 to 2% of its annual budget directly from the federal government. Its member stations had relied far more heavily on federal funds; They were, on average, roughly 10% of the stations' revenues.

After losing the funds, layoffs rippled through public media. And because local public radio stations pay NPR to broadcast its shows, such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered, NPR recently determined it must cut about 30 newsroom positions through buyouts and layoffs. Greater cuts were forestalled in part by an anonymous $33 million gift — one of the two announced earlier this year.

The ferocity of changes buffeting the media industry is an opportunity Zylstra says she intends to embrace.

"Part of what's exciting about the moment is putting the user at the center of the experience," Zylstra says.

NPR's track record with chief content officers 

The position of chief content officer has a choppy record at NPR. Kinsey Wilson, an innovator in online news, was the first to hold the role nearly two decades ago. Wilson urged NPR to invest in digital content, acknowledging consumption of broadcast news was sliding.

Shortly after becoming NPR's CEO in 2014, Jarl Mohn eliminated the job. He said at the time that he wanted to quell tensions between the radio and digital sides of the public media network. He also thought it important to strengthen relationships more directly with listeners. Mohn made clear he would be his own chief strategist.

His successor, the late John Lansing, sought to revive the chief content officer position but NPR struggled to fill the role. In 2023, Lansing named Edith Chapin, then NPR's editor in chief, to become acting chief content officer, as well.

Chapin stepped down last summer just days after the Congressional vote to undo more than a half-century of supporting public media. She said the burden of simultaneously performing two grueling top-level jobs for two years had ground her down.

The way Zylstra sees it, content creation and distribution must go hand in glove.

"If somebody is searching for you, you've got to be there. And all the same, you've got to understand why are you there. How does that fulfill your mission? Who are you making this for and how are they experiencing it?" she says. "I think that's how I can help our teams connect the dots across their individual workstreams that move us forward."

Disclosure: This story was written and reported by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by NPR Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editors Vickie Walton-James and Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated June 8, 2026 at 7:02 PM PDT

As vote tallies in the Los Angeles mayoral election trickled in slowly over the last week, unsubstantiated claims exploded on X that a fraudulent plot was underway to deprive the MAGA-backed former reality TV star Spencer Pratt the second-place slot to advance to the November runoff against incumbent Democrat Karen Bass.

A portion of these unfounded conspiracy theories pointed to changing betting odds for the three top candidates on prediction market sites Kalshi and Polymarket to suggest something sinister is afoot with the vote count. Some influencers supercharging such fraud claims online did so in posts sponsored by the companies themselves.

"They are actually doing it. They are counting votes until SPENCER LOSES. Someone DO SOMETHING," Trump-aligned influencer Mila Joy wrote to her half a million followers a day after the election as she reshared a Polymarket post with a graph showing that Pratt's betting odds were falling on the site.

"Is CA cheating to get Spencer Pratt out?" questioned commentator David Freeman, who posts under the handle Gunther Eagleman on X, as he shared a Kalshi post showing the odds between Pratt and progressive Democrat Nithya Raman. The Associated Press called the second-place spot for Raman on Monday afternoon after her vote share overtook Pratt's on Sunday.

At the bottom of both X posts, the words "paid partnership" appear in tiny font, a subtle reference to the millions of dollars Kalshi and Polymarket have pumped into programs that pay influencers to reshare corporate posts as a way to boost engagement.

The Los Angeles mayoral race is the clearest example yet of how prediction market posts about changing betting odds for candidates are being weaponized on X to sow doubt about the integrity of elections.

It's likely a preview of what's to come this year ahead of the midterm election. Kalshi and Polymarket are increasingly pervading ever more corners of daily life. Their rise has set off dozens of legal battles and raised novel questions about the ways betting on just about anything can have real-world consequences. Now it appears they are driving the latest battlefield in political misinformation wars on X.

"From the perspective of the influencer looking to get rich, their only job is to attract attention," Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, wrote in an email. "They will do this by sharing markets that align with what their audiences want to see. And if the betting markets are wrong, it is much wiser for them to allege fraud (and keep the lucrative promotions contract) rather than acknowledge that the gambling sites got it wrong."

In recent days, Kalshi and Polymarket have attempted to rein in some of their paid influencers. After NPR asked Kalshi about several partnership posts on Friday, the company said it told the influencers to take the posts down. Some of the posts, including Freeman's post questioning "CA cheating," have been deleted. Semafor first reported on Kalshi's crackdown.

On Monday, Polymarket told NPR it, too, is pulling back its sponsorship of some creators who were spreading election falsehoods. Joy's post is still live on X with the "paid partnership" tag, but the tag has been removed from posts by two other influencers paid by Polymarket.

"Companies shouldn't be paying people to spread misinformation," said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, who has reviewed the sponsored posts that flew across X. "In the Trump Republican Party, fraud allegations are going to be often received with a lot of enthusiasm, especially when people often get confused about the difference between the odds of someone winning and vote share."

Inside Kalshi and Polymarket paid partnerships 

Paying influencers as social media promoters is a type of "growth hacking" tech startups often deploy to maximize the reach of their brand in an attempt to drive more users to the services.

"It's a high-risk, high-reward situation," said Seton Hall University's Jess Rauchberg, who studies digital media culture. "But it's a strategy that gets people talking about the brand."

Kalshi and Polymarket have offered creators as much as $500 per post, according to two people who formerly worked on partnerships at Kalshi and Polymarket and who were not authorized to speak publicly about the programs.

Inside Kalshi, the approach has sparked debate over what responsibility the company has when creators promote its site by spreading misinformation and other harmful content across X, according to the former Kalshi employee.

A Kalshi spokesperson confirmed on Monday that the company now prohibits anyone in its affiliate program from questioning the integrity of an election or undermining a legal ruling or official determination about an election.

Previously, the company took a mostly hands-off approach to what its affiliate creators posted to boost one of Kalshi's markets, according to the former Kalshi employee.

Before the recent controversy, one of the only times Kalshi cut ties with a paid creator over a post promoting the company was when one of their contributors posted to X celebrating the death of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, the former Kalshi employee said.

Similarly at Polymarket, affiliate posts were given wide latitude, as long as the person posting plugged the company's markets, according to the former Polymarket employee. And there appeared to be little vetting of creators, with Polymarket tapping former Rep. Matt Gaetz as one of its paid contributors. The U.S. House Ethics Committee found Gaetz paid an underage girl for sex.

On Monday, Polymarket said that while it does not have language specifically banning creators from posting election-related disinformation, any post denying the result of an election would violate its rules against spreading false and misleading information.

Polymarket told NPR posts from two of the creators it works with have lost the "paid partnership" tag. It has not asked creators to delete any posts, but told them about the company's content guidelines.

While the company would not specify which creators, NPR confirmed "paid partnership" tags have been removed from Jun. 4 posts by right-wing influencers Benny Johnson and Kangmin Lee sharing the same Polymarket post about Raman's rising odds on the betting site.

Seton Hall University's Rauchberg said the crackdowns are just the latest example of how the rival companies are constantly trying to one-up each other.

"They want to spread this rhetoric that 'Kalshi is for everyone, Polymarket is for everyone,'" she said. "They want to give the impression that they don't have a political affiliation, but consumers are becoming more savvy that both companies are engaging in a type of 'purity politics,' each trying to outdo the other over which is the best app to use."

Not disclosing whether a social media post was sponsored is illegal under rules the Federal Trade Commission adopted in 2024. The Trump administration has not rolled back these rules, but it has also not announced any enforcement actions.

Why California vote counting attracts fraud claims

The Los Angeles mayor race was particularly vulnerable to becoming the focus of election conspiracy theories for a number of reasons. Prediction market data may have been one of them.

Pratt, an outsider candidate who received outsized attention and engagement on X, was favored for second place on betting markets on both Kalshi and Polymarket's sites in the days before the election — even when the largest polls of likely voters showed him in third place.

While the city's mayor is a nonpartisan office, a registered Republican like Pratt faced a challenge in heavily Democratic Los Angeles. But some social media commentators cited his favorable betting odds as evidence he could reach the November runoff.

Posts about what betting markets are saying about a candidate can confuse voters who may not understand the difference between betting behavior and a poll, said Zarine Kharazian, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, who studies online rumors related to elections.

"It runs the risk of confusing people into thinking that, 'Okay, these markets have the pulse on public sentiment about the election and who's going to win,' when that's not necessarily the case," Kharazian said.

Heading into the Jun. 2 primary, election experts were already worried that California's notoriously slow ballot count would provide the opportunity for baseless fraud allegations to blossom.

A large portion of voters in the state use mail-in ballots, a form of voting President Trump has tried to associate with fraud. Election officials must verify mailed-in and dropped off ballots, making them slower to count. The state accepts ballots that are postmarked on the day of the election that arrive within seven days.

Ballots that are counted later in the process typically skew Democratic since more voters from that party embrace voting by mail. This phenomenon has been the basis for unfounded allegations of fraud in recent years, including by Trump.

The challenge has been particularly stark this year because so many Californians waited until Election Day to drop off their ballots, said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

State officials are "doing what they've always done — counting all the ballots, under transparent observation from the candidates and parties, and reporting each batch as soon as they can," Becker said, "yet the profiteers and grifters are loudly echoing our foreign adversaries in spreading lies designed to delegitimize our transparent election process."

President Trump himself has claimed without evidence that there was fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral's race. He called the election race "rigged" in a Truth Social post early Monday, and wrote it was "not possible" for Pratt to lose to Raman after his initial lead when vote counting began. The first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Los Angeles area, Bill Essayli, announced on X days earlier that his office had multiple election fraud investigations underway.

Over the weekend, Essayli debunked one popular conspiracy theory circulating on X — that Pratt had received zero votes in a ballot count update — as false.

Election experts say the baseless fraud allegations in California do not bode well for the upcoming November midterm season.

"I think we're going to get punched in the face so badly on election denialism in November," said Stephen Richer, the former Republican recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona, who dealt with baseless fraud allegations in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He is now a legal fellow at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Richer recalled that during the 2020 election, people trying to undermine the election results latched on to graphs that showed a blue line representing former President Joe Biden's totals suddenly jump higher as ballots were counted.

"And so now it seems that they're using these prediction market graphs to tell a similar story," Richer said.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Roughly 2,000 unionized hospitality workers at SoFi Stadium will wrap up a strike-authorization vote Friday night, setting the stage for a possible work stoppage as the venue prepares to serve as a key location in the World Cup soccer tournament.

Cooks, dishwashers, concession workers, bartenders and servers represented by Unite Here Local 11 began casting ballots Thursday, with the voting expected to end at 6 p.m. Friday. If the workers vote in favor, the union would be free to call for a work stoppage as early as next week, just as the World Cup competition begins.

Union officials said contract talks with Legends Global, which operates food services at the stadium, "have stalled with no significant progress on key economic and security issues."

The union is calling for wage increases and protections against automation that could replace workers. They are also demanding security assurances, including a prohibition of and involvement of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in World Cup security plans.

Union officials said they are concerned that FIFA — soccer's governing body — could turn over workers' personal information to ICE. Since FIFA will control stadiums hosting World Cup games, stadium workers must be accredited in a process that involves them submitting information including Social Security numbers and fingerprints.

The union, in conjunction with the ACLU of Southern California, has filed a complaint with the state calling on Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate the accreditation process.

"We have been very clear, we want ICE OUT of the World Cup and for them to play no role during the games," Yolanda Fierro, a suites runner at Sofi Stadium, said in a statement late last month. "We are seriously concerned that FIFA will hand over our most sensitive personal information and waive our rights under California law, or lose our job working the World Cup. We will not give FIFA the opportunity to share our data with any third party, including ICE and foreign countries' intelligence agencies. We cannot celebrate the World Cup while workers, tourists, immigrant families, and local communities are made to feel unsafe. Los Angeles should be a city of welcome — not fear."

SoFi Stadium is scheduled to host the June 12 World Cup match between the United States and Paraguay.

The results of the strike-authorization vote could be released as early as Friday night. If the members vote in favor, it does not automatically mean a strike will occur. That decision will be left to union leaders, who could call for a walkout at any time.

According to the union, the most recent contract offer from Legends would actually freeze wages for some workers, while providing others with increases of only about 25 cents per hour annually.

Legends Global spokeswoman Stacey Escudero told the Los Angeles Times earlier this week the company "has enjoyed a strong relationship with Unite Here Local 11 for more than a decade and remains committed to reaching a fair agreement through good-faith negotiations. We look forward to delivering an outstanding hospitality experience for fans at the FIFA World Cup matches at SoFi Stadium."

Updated June 5, 2026 at 2:23 PM PDT

The labor market is finding its footing.

U.S. employers added jobs for the third month in a row in May, according to a report Friday from the Labor Department. Job gains for March and April were also revised significantly higher.

Restaurants and bars added 48,000 jobs last month in anticipation of strong summer demand, while the overall hospitality industry added 70,000 jobs. Construction companies and local governments were also hiring. Healthcare, which has been a steady source of employment gains, added another 35,000 jobs.

Banks and insurance companies, meanwhile, cut jobs. The financial sector overall cut 22,000 jobs in May.

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Overall, the report shows hiring has picked up steam this spring after anemic job growth last year. Over the last three months, employers have added an average of 188,000 jobs each month.

Meanwhile, the workforce grew slightly in May as 83,000 people began working or looking for work, while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%.

Despite the uptick in hiring, employers are not having to offer big wage increases to attract workers. Average wages in May were up just 3.4% from a year ago. That's likely not enough to keep pace with inflation — with prices for the 12 months ending in April up 3.8%.

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Prices have been rising rapidly since the U.S. launched its war with Iran just over three months ago. And now, with signs that the job market is stabilizing, the Federal Reserve, under new chair Kevin Warsh, is likely to focus its attention on getting inflation under control.

That makes it unlikely the central bank will cut interest rates any time soon, despite pressure to do so from President Trump.

The Labor Department is set to report on May inflation next week, providing Fed policymakers with another key data point ahead of its next policy meeting in mid-June.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated June 8, 2026 at 6:46 PM PDT

NEW YORK — In Brian Sanchez's slice of Astoria, the FIFA World Cup doesn't begin with the first match. It starts weeks earlier, with the arrival of a sticker album — and a mission.

It's a deceptively simple one: Fill the book with all the stickers representing World Cup teams, players, venues and other tournament details. But these stickers are sold in blind packs, similar to baseball or Pokémon cards, which adds to the fun and the headaches. 

Sanchez, 20, has tried to complete the task before but never succeeded. This year, he planned to skip it altogether, but it was hard to ignore the chatter and excitement among his friends and family — both at home and abroad — who were all participating.

"Honestly it comes down to a little bit of FOMO," he said.

The hunt for stickers, produced by the Italian company Panini, is a decades-old World Cup tradition that's especially popular in Latin America and Europe. In the U.S., interest has been building steadily over the years, but this summer, the buzz is bigger than ever.

Jason Howarth, senior vice president of marketing and athlete relations at Panini America, said retailers reported being sold out of sticker packets within a week of the release in late April — unseen in previous World Cup cycles.

"There's a different energy coming out of it," he said. "Right now, it's outpacing where we were in 2022 by three to five times."

The surging demand comes as collectors face their toughest challenge yet. This year, they need to track down 980 distinct stickers to put the album to bed — 310 more than at the 2022 World Cup and a record number for the company. It's a reflection of the upcoming tournament's historic scale, which is expanding from 32 teams to 48 across three countries.

This edition will also be the second to last men's World Cup sticker album produced by Panini — ending a partnership that stretches back over five decades. Last month, FIFA announced that starting in 2031, U.S.-based Fanatics will be the official supplier of FIFA soccer cards, trading cards and stickers.

On a recent afternoon in Central Park, Sanchez met up with other collectors. Hunched over stacks of stickers, some two dozen people inspected the offerings with laser focus.

With only four stickers missing, Sanchez was already looking forward to earning bragging rights as the first person in his family across the finish line this year.

" I'm feeling pretty accomplished," he said. "I've been trying to get a win, and this is gonna be a huge win for me."

An expensive, labor-intensive but rewarding hobby

A single pack of seven stickers — available online, at corner stores or drugstore chains like Walgreens and CVS — now cost $2, compared to four years ago when five stickers retailed for around $1. That means simply buying enough packs to accumulate 980 stickers would total $280.

Given the costs, finishing the book is rarely a solitary pursuit, and aficionados often meet up to spread the wealth, according to Crista Latvis, 26, who organized the recent sticker swap in Central Park.

"You can't just buy your way into it," she said. "Otherwise,  it's super expensive and you've got to be very lucky."

For many, these gatherings are part of the pastime's draw.

"It's great to meet other people who are also doing it and also excited for the World Cup, especially since it's here," Latvis said.

Sebastian Clavijo, who attended Latvis' swap, said he spent tens of thousands of dollars on his quest this year. Clavijo, 32, has been collecting Panini stickers since he was 4. This year, his goal is to complete the book only with pieces featuring red and purple borders — an even rarer get.

" I just like soccer and I love collecting," he said. "That's my hobby, you know?"

In 2022, Panini introduced stickers with different colored borders that vary in rarity. That element has been an especially big hit with the trading card community and contributed to the hobby's appeal in the U.S., according to Howarth from Panini America.

Panini popularity has grown along with soccer

Demand has always existed in New York, Texas, Florida, among other big states, but it's also emerging nationwide, in places like Phoenix and the Northwest, according to Howarth.

" As soccer has grown, so has Panini," he said.

Howarth believes part of this year's popularity stems from the expanded World Cup format. Teams that have never qualified for the tournament — and therefore never been sticker-fied by Panini — are finally getting their moment.

For some, completing the sticker album is driven by nostalgia for their childhood, family or home country.

Linda Lino never heard of the hobby until she was 18, and her grandmother gave her a Panini sticker book. That was in 2014. Lino has completed every World Cup edition since, in part in memory of her late grandmother.

"It started with my grandma and then it became like a whole family thing," Lino said. "I love the community that it brings together."

That's especially true with her father, who never had the chance to collect stickers when he was a kid in Peru, Lino said. Now, the two are making up for lost time.

"My dad is so excited," she said. "He's like 'I want to help you. I want to put the stickers together.'"

Clemente Lisi, a sports journalist who has written about the Panini sticker phenomenon, said the sticker album serves as a time capsule for the World Cup. With the tournament's return to the U.S. after 32 years, he expects it will produce more first-time collectors looking for a way to remember this summer.

"This may be the only tangible thing from a World Cup unless you go to a game," he said.

Lisi, who also runs Planet Soccer on Substack, anticipates that the U.S. company Fanatics will further cater to the market at home.

" It'll even become more American and more baked into our culture," he said.

Sanchez, the college student from Astoria, dabbles in collecting other items, like vinyls and trading cards. But what he appreciates most about the Panini sticker scene is its supportive and rarely competitive nature.

" The community around the World Cup stickers is something like I've never seen before," he said. "The community is just so nice."

After countless hours of trading and visiting multiple convenience stores, Sanchez found his 980th and final sticker at the swap in Central Park. It was of the Iraqi team. He let out a gasp, followed by a smile that spanned ear to ear. "Let's goooo!"

With a mountain of duplicates left, Sanchez wasn't ready to move on just yet. His next step was to help his mother finish her album.

" I'm going to take a break," he said. "I'm going to celebrate today and then get back to it."

Copyright 2026 NPR

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Kirby Plessas doesn't have an AI subscription. She has two.

As a self-described technophile, she uses chatbots outside of work to plan family parties, tweak cocktail recipes and once to diagnose a broken wine cooler's motherboard. All the help Plessas gets from AI justifies the $40 a month she pays for both OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.

"I wouldn't doubt that within a year I'll probably have a Claude subscription as well," she said.

But for most people, she believes, free AI is good enough. And judging by their spending, Americans agree.

Only about 3% of households were paying for AI in February, using the most recent numbers available from the Bank of America Institute, which researches consumer trends based on the bank's customer transactions.

Yet while the number of personal subscribers remains small — plenty of workplaces and universities do pay for AI services — their ranks are growing fast. About 10% more households paid up in February compared to a year earlier, according to the institute.

"If you think back to Netflix and streaming services, at the beginning the growth was quite slow," said Sekoul Krastev, cofounder of the Decision Lab, a research firm with an emphasis on behavioral science. Krasteve said it isn't the norm to pay for AI — yet.

"Once that status quo is created, subscriptions will definitely start to go up sharply just the way we saw with streaming services," he said.

Plessas puts it this way: "There's a thought out there that we're all going to get addicted to using AI. So when the free ones go away, everyone will have to pay."

Subscriptions get you more 

Even if they worry about how it will affect their daily lives, most Americans use AI. In fact, 51% of Americans said they use AI to research what they're curious about, according to a Quinnipiac poll released in March.

They're just using free versions. Most AI platforms offer them — to a point. For example, OpenAI lets users send its default model 10 messages every five hours before booting them to a weaker version.

"You would get a little notification that says 'Your time has run out,'" said Pam Dean, who now subscribes to both ChatGPT and Claude. "You're stuck in the middle of something and then you couldn't continue."

The main selling point for subscribers is that they get to ask smarter models more questions, more often. A $20 monthly ChatGPT Plus subscription lets users send up to 1,280 messages a day before a downgrade.

Subscribers also get more advanced features, such as being able to create tailored versions of ChatGPT to fit their specific needs.

To prepare for a possible move from Los Angeles to Mexico, Jim Arnold created "Francisco," a ChatGPT version that acts as his Spanish tutor. Francisco corrects Arnold's Spanish and has conversations with him through his computer speakers. Arnold fine-tuned Francisco to speak slower, and to take longer pauses before replying. That gives Arnold a chance to think of the right Spanish word before Francisco interrupts.

Still, Arnold never tried the free version of ChatGPT, and was wondering if paying was worthwhile. So he asked the AI. "And of course, you know, ChatGPT's answer was that I should keep what I'm doing for sure," Arnold said.

Today's version of ChatGPT will remain free …

OpenAI has about 50 million subscribers. Nick Turley, the head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, believes there's room to quadruple the number of users who pay.

Still, Turley said, subscribers will always be a minority of the people who use ChatGPT. He said the company's mission is to keep this tech accessible to benefit everyone: "And one of the ways that we do that is by making sure people can access it for free."

The birth of ChatGPT subscriptions wasn't about revenue, but keeping the site usable, Turley said. AI takes expensive computing power, and in the early days after ChatGPT's launch, putting up a subscription paywall helped the company keep up with demand while still allowing deeper access to those willing to pay up.

"We weren't even trying to make money," Turley said about the launch of the subscriptions. But, he added, "It's been a really nice side effect that that also generates revenue and builds an amazing business."

…but you might have to pay for the next version

Turley believes OpenAI will likely always offer a free version of ChatGPT. But he is not promising a free version of its eventual successor.

That will likely be an agentic AI, a type of AI that can act on its own to do tasks for the user or an organization. Think of an AI agent that can plan a vacation for you, or do your shopping.

OpenAI already offers agentic services, but Turley envisions a version that acts like a personal assistant, thinking of ways to improve your life while you're away from the screen. And that assistant could be so advanced and expensive to run that it might need to stay behind the paywall.

"If we do our job right, many people are going to want to pay and subscribe," Turley said.

Could AI companies use advertisements? 

AI companies do have an alternative option to cover the cost of their services — advertisements. That's how many of the biggest websites, like Facebook, have kept their services free for years.

But Jeff Hancock, head of Stanford University's Tech and Impact Policy Center, said there's a reason AI companies should be cautious about adopting an ad model: "People hate it."

Ads incentivize social media companies to make sure users keep scrolling. The more screen time, the more ads get viewed. And endless scrolling has caused concerns about people's mental health and attention spans.

"People just don't like how social media fits into our lives now," Hancock said.

The second reason to be careful about adopting ads, he said, is that AI is a different kind of tech from social media platforms. The kind of AI personal assistant that Turley described would ideally work in the background, so the user would actually spend less time looking at the screen — a poor match for a business model where the main revenue comes from seeing ads.

"AI platforms have the potential to create a completely different economic model by the incentive being: Is this useful for you?" Hancock said.

Sarah Womer subscribes to several AI platforms. In fact, she rotates subscriptions across different AI, saying they each have their own benefits and personalities. "You're not limited to one flavor of AI, just like you're not limited to one flavor of ice cream," Womer said.

She prefers using OpenAI when she books vacations. But Open AI has been piloting ads for free users and Go tier subscribers, and Womer worries AI companies could skew models to favor their advertisers.

In a statement from OpenAI when the ad test was launched in February, the company promised that ads would be clearly labeled and that they would not influence ChatGPT's answers. Users would be matched with ads, the statement said, based on "the topic of your conversation, your past chats, and past interactions with ads." But promises like that haven't put Womer at ease. So when she uses AI to research products she wants to try — like the best red light face mask — she instead uses her subscription to Kagi, an AI and search engine platform that boasts about its privacy standards and lack of ads.

AI could be paid for through bundling 

ChatGPT launched less than four years ago, and the revenue model for AI services is still very much in flux.

The global investment advisor company BlackRock held a summit in March about upgrading the country's infrastructure, where OpenAI CEO Sam Altman floated the idea that AI services could be sold like electricity – essentially billing customers based on how much they use.

Greg Portell, lead partner at the Kearney consulting firm, believes another potential option is for companies to bundle AI in with other subscriptions — like Amazon Prime or internet service.

He thinks this is likely since Americans are already fatigued by subscriptions. Rather than get consumers to sign up for another monthly expense, it would be easier to just add it to one they're already paying for.

"Every consumer says they have too many subscriptions, but yet every subscription provider is looking at how they can bundle things," Portell said.

Of course, many Americans already use a paid version of AI at work. Those corporate accounts often come with limits on personal use, but Portell wonders if in the future workplaces will lift those limits. Maybe having your job pay for your personal access to Claude or Gemini is the new employee perk.

Google is a financial supporter of NPR.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Anthony Leone and his wife, Corinne Saunders, have already started watching the weather. In a few weeks, they'll be filling coolers and plugging in generators. He has lived in North Carolina's Outer Banks for more than 20 years. So he's familiar with this routine that precedes the inevitable — hurricane season.

As for their cell phones? "We just plan ahead to not use [them]."

Hurricane season runs from June to November, and the National Weather Service said in May it's predicting below-normal activity in the Atlantic region for the first time since 2015. But the chance for at least one very powerful storm remains.

Even though there may be slightly less hurricane activity this year, high winds and rain can still interrupt the power supply stationary cell towers rely on. As a result, cellphone carriers are fortifying their preparations with newer tools such as artificial intelligence and drones, so customers in the path of a hurricane can continue to communicate with loved ones, work from home and render aid.

Strategies the companies are using

Verizon Wireless starts its hurricane response plans about a week before one is forecasted in an area, according to Srini Kalapala, Verizon's senior vice president of wireless engineering and operations. Before a storm, Verizon uses drones to take pictures of a coverage area. It then takes more pictures after a storm to assess the damage. AI sends a precise location of the damage to engineers and technicians as they start their repairs.

"Hurricanes, especially — you don't understand the damage until it's fully done," Kalapala said.

Verizon has an assortment of mobile tools should the company's stationary cell towers give out during a hurricane. Many of them have animals for codenames; for example, COW stands for "cell on wheels," and a HAWK, or "high altitude wireless kennewhat," is a drone that can carry small towers to provide service from the sky. Kalapala said these tools have helped shave restoration times down to minutes and hours.

AT&T also makes preparations about a week before a hurricane. Its disaster response fleet includes boats, barges and helicopters that can transport team members and equipment through hard-to-reach areas including swamps and mountains after a disaster, according to Shannon Browning, the associate director of AT&T's Network Disaster Recovery team. The company will often move equipment across the country as needed throughout the year, for events such as hurricanes, snowstorms and wildfires, he said.

"It used to be [that hurricanes] were very season-specific. And then you started to see that wildfire season crept into hurricane season," he said.

As a result, the company has merged several of its disaster teams into one group, which has helped the company streamline its approach to public safety, Browning said.

Jon Freier, T-Mobile's chief operating officer, said the company prepares for disasters three to five months in advance.

If the power goes out during a storm, it can take a few hours or days to restore service. In the meantime, customers get free satellite service, Freier said, and the company uses AI tools to automatically adjust antennas and conserve backup batteries when needed, which stretches the time period that they can be used.

"From my experience in these disasters, people will go without power a little bit longer, and they're more patient," Freier said. "But they want that smartphone to work, and to be connected."

What some users have experienced

Leone, the North Carolina resident, has had several cell phone providers over the years, with different levels of performance during hurricanes and other major weather events. With his last carrier, getting regular service was a year-round issue; he could only get a signal on highways and at the beach. He has now been with AT&T for more than a decade, and he said his service has been fairly reliable during hurricanes.

"We usually get a text message saying, 'Hey, there's a storm coming,'" and if he loses service in a power outage, "It's only a couple days, usually, before they fix it."

But before civilians' smartphones power up again, first responders' needs have to be met. Many major companies prioritize and tailor networks specifically for first responders — including law enforcement, firefighters and paramedics.

Peter Antevy is the medical director for several fire departments in Broward County, Fla.. He said his teams rely on carriers' cell and Wi-Fi services not just to make voice calls, but to conduct telemedicine appointments, send test results and transmit live updates from 911 dispatch centers to ambulances.

"There is a lot of data that goes back and forth," he said.

So it's important for company representatives to be in the room during local disaster response strategy meetings. Amy Weber, the chief of emergency medical services at the Galveston County Health District in Texas, said representatives from Verizon and AT&T come to her department's meetings to plan what equipment they'll send, and when.

"Communication is always a huge breakdown for first responders, because we get inundated with calls just from the service area, so putting us at top priority helps us be able to do our job," Weber said.

Jackie Santillan, a doctoral student and content creator, said with her old provider, there was just one square foot of her home in the Houston suburbs where she could make a call. With her current provider, T-Mobile, she says not much has changed. She typically has to use Wi-Fi or go a half mile toward the highway to get better service — and that's on a storm-free day, she said.

"I just have a lot of hurricane anxiety. I know that if something were to happen, we wouldn't be able to reach out to anybody," she said.

Santillan started a petition in May demanding a new cell tower in her neighborhood. It had almost 200 signatures as of Tuesday evening. T-Mobile said in a statement that areas with limited connectivity, like Santillan's, are the company's focus as it continues to expand.

"That's why we continue to invest in network resilience and preparedness, including tower buildouts, 5G network upgrades and resiliency enhancements in communities across Texas, North Carolina and throughout the country," the company said.

Copyright 2026 NPR

County officials announced May 28 the launch of the Tijuana River Sewage Crisis Economic Impact Study. It poses questions about how pollution in the river and beach closures have affected local businesses, employment, property values, tourism and school attendance.

The survey has four different versions: for business owners, residents, people who have recently visited the area, and those who work for local community organizations.

Questions for business owners include whether employees have missed work because of health impacts related to the pollution, whether they have struggled to attract new workers or customers and how much revenue they have lost because of the crisis.

Diana Santana is a Nestor resident who manages several properties in Imperial Beach. She said that the pollution is forcing tenants out of the area. It’s evident when driving through the neighborhoods, she said.

“If you drive around Imperial Beach, there (are) so many for rent signs everywhere,” she said. “This smell is driving people out. Since 2014, I have not had this many vacancies. Right now, we have over 14 vacancies… We're entering summer and that's usually when we don't have any vacancies.”

Most of what the county has learned about local economic losses has been anecdotal. A previous survey the county conducted in 2023 also sought to get a pulse on the economic impacts on small businesses in Imperial Beach.

That survey got responses from about 60 businesses. They indicated that several lost at least $100,000 in annual revenue. Some laid off employees and most said they would have trouble staying in business if conditions did not improve. The report concluded that a “full scope of economic impacts” was necessary, but it was not followed up on. It also mentioned that businesses could seek short-term relief through grant opportunities, but it's unclear whether any were ever found.

The new economic survey is designed to capture that “full scope” of impacts. According to the survey’s website, the survey “is just one part of the process and will be considered alongside other research, data, and community input.”

It’s also part of a broader county effort to measure public damages from the pollution crisis and bring relief to residents. Last year, the county Board of Supervisors directed county staff to study economic impacts and the potential health consequences of long-term exposure to cross-border pollution.

In a statement, the county said, “the findings will help guide future funding and long-term solutions.” It did not specify what kinds of solutions, but funding could support additional efforts, such as purchasing more air purifiers for residents and permanently addressing a hot spot of airborne sewage pollution in the Tijuana River Valley.

The survey will remain open for about four weeks, and findings will be published this fall, the county said.

Updated June 4, 2026 at 9:18 AM PDT

Protests have grown tense and often chaotic at the Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, N.J., in recent days, as activists and officials express anger at reports of inhumane conditions faced by immigrants being held there. At times, federal immigration officers have responded to the demonstrations with pepper spray and tear gas.

For Silky Shah, who leads the nonprofit Detention Watch Network and monitors conditions inside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities nationwide, what concerns her most is what the public can't readily see.

"What's happening behind closed doors is that much more horrifying. People being served rotten food. Complete medical neglect. Absolutely no support for people who are inside," Shah says. "That is not unique to Delaney Hall. That is happening everywhere."

In statements to NPR and WNYC, DHS and the private prison contractor GEO Group deny the allegations at Delaney Hall, calling them a "politically motivated campaign by outside groups to dismantle ICE." But detainees across the country have sued over poor conditions at immigrant detention centers.

About a third of people in immigration detention are in facilities run by GEO Group. This week, as former GEO Group executive David Venturella begins his tenure as acting director of ICE, the company and the agency appear more closely linked than ever.

A reliance on private prison companies

GEO Group also operates state prisons, but about half its revenue comes from its contracts with ICE. The company has positioned itself as a one-stop shop for President Trump's mass deportation agenda. It operates nearly two dozen detention facilities nationwide, provides transportation services and electronic monitoring through a subsidiary called BI Incorporated.

"ICE detention in this country relies on this multibillion dollar network of public and private sector interests that profit from the detention of undocumented immigrants," says Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

After Trump took office again last year, GEO Group and other private prison companies such as CoreCivic raced to meet the government's demand for more detention beds, including re-opening long vacant former prisons.

It has paid off: In 2025, GEO Group made more than $250 million in profit, a nearly 700% increase from the previous year.

"Last year was the most successful period for new business wins in our company's history, and we expect 2026 to be a very active year as well," GEO Group CEO George Zoley said on the company's most recent earnings call in May.

Advocates, journalists and investigators have documented substandard conditions at ICE detention centers – public and private alike – for years. And some legal experts warn that reliance on private companies to house detainees incentivizes cost-cutting.

"Private prisons introduce the profit motive into the equation," says Katherine Hawkins, a senior legal analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group.

GEO Group declined an interview request, but told NPR in a statement that its detention centers are monitored by ICE to ensure compliance with government standards, and that the company provides around-the-clock access to medical care, legal and family visits and balanced meals, among other services.

"We are proud of the role our company has played for 40 years to support the law enforcement mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement," the statement said.

'An additional shroud of secrecy'

Private prison companies are not beholden to the same public records requirements the government is subject to, and Eisen says that can reduce accountability.

"When there are deaths in detention, it is oftentimes harder for journalists, the public, to learn about what happened inside," Eisen says. "There's an additional shroud of secrecy when we're talking about corporations managing prisons and jails and detention centers."

Privatization can also allow companies to point questions of accountability toward the government and for the government to point them back toward the company. In its statement to NPR, for instance, GEO Group said any additional questions should be directed to ICE.

And at a congressional hearing this week, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin refused to commit to giving the New Jersey Department of Health full access to Delaney Hall. The state has sued GEO Group asking for that. A similar battle over access to a detention center run by GEO Group has been ongoing in Washington state.

"They don't always have unfettered access to the detention center," Mullin said at the hearing. "There is a difference between federal facilities … and federal privatized systems."

Mullin said he would give access when he is required by law to do so.

'A revolving door'

Hawkins says the growing level of influence GEO Group has in the immigration detention industry is concerning.

"There's a bit of a revolving door between ICE detention operations in particular and some of the private prison companies, where the same executives will go from one to the other and back again," she says.

Venturella, taking over the agency this week, has worked on and off for ICE and the agency that preceded it since the 1980s. In 2012, he went to work at GEO Group for about a decade.

Several other senior DHS officials have also had close ties to the company, including White House Border Czar Tom Homan.

"They are absolutely hand in glove," says Scott Shuchart, former assistant director for regulatory affairs and policy at ICE under President Biden and now a private attorney.

"When GEO comes in for a meeting, it feels like a fraternity reunion," he added. "The big private prison companies, GEO and CoreCivic, have long been the career path destination for senior leadership."

Some lawmakers have expressed concern over conflicts of interest. Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote a letter to Venturella, asking whether he would recuse himself from matters that could benefit GEO Group.

In its statement, DHS told NPR that Venturella is a veteran official with "more than 30 years of experience in federal law enforcement operations, border security and immigration policy."

"The Acting ICE Director abides by all ethics requirements," the statement read.

Immigrant advocates are growing increasingly concerned as DHS rapidly expands its private detention network with a surge of federal funding precisely as the agency makes sweeping personnel cuts to the offices in charge of oversight.

"The human consequences of the lack of care with which they are implementing mass deportations and the recklessness with which they've expanded the detention system are really striking to me," Shuchart says.

He says the outcomes are visible: According to the government's own data, 2026 is already the deadliest year in immigration detention since DHS was founded.

Reporter Gwynne Hogan contributed reporting.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated June 3, 2026 at 2:52 PM PDT

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President Trump has issued an executive order turning an estimated 8,000 federal workers into at-will employees, which means the government could fire them without providing any reason.

The move culminates an effort Trump launched during his first term to strip vast numbers of federal employees of civil service protections designed to insulate their work from political interference.

Nearly all of the 8,000 people affected are at the highest level of the civil service, known as GS-15. The Trump administration characterizes the roles as senior positions with significant influence over policy. They include leaders of policy offices and their chiefs of staff, heads of regional offices, program managers, senior public affairs officers and those overseeing spending and grants.

The number of positions affected by Wednesday's executive order is smaller than many anticipated. Originally, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) estimated some 50,000 positions could be reclassified. The administration has not ruled out expanding the pool at a later time.

Tripling the number of at-will employees

The federal government currently has about 4,000 political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president. Until now, the rest of the workforce of approximately 2 million people could only be fired for certain reasons, such as inadequate performance or misconduct. In those situations, agencies must follow formal processes, including giving the employee an opportunity to appeal.

But in February, the administration finalized a rule creating a new category of at-will employees called Schedule Policy/Career. (During Trump's first term, it was known as Schedule F.)

It was facing multiple lawsuits even before Wednesday's order which spells out which jobs are now at-will.

"The people responsible for protecting our public health, safeguarding our environment, delivering our mail, managing our airports, protecting our public lands, and enforcing our laws should be allowed to do their jobs, not targeted by the same government they serve," said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, one of the organizations suing the Trump administration over the rule. "When government experts can be fired without cause, it's not just federal workers who are harmed — it's the people across the country who rely on these essential services every day."

"This is very much about accountability"

The notion that the federal workforce should be nonpartisan goes back 140 years.

Government jobs were once just handed out to the president's friends and supporters, a practice that led to corruption and incompetence. Then in 1881, a disgruntled and mentally ill jobseeker shot and killed President James A. Garfield, and things began to change.

Starting in the late 19th century, Congress enacted a series of laws granting federal workers job protections as a way to shield the government from corruption and provide continuity from one presidential administration to the next.

The Trump administration argues the move to Schedule P/C does not represent a return to the spoils system, noting that nothing is changing with the hiring process for those who have been reclassified.

But the administration says the status quo allows rank-and-file federal employees to thwart the president's agenda.

"This is very much about accountability," OPM Director Scott Kupor told reporters on Wednesday. "It's also about a restoration, in our mind, of the democratic process."

Given that the president is the person in the Executive Branch who is elected by the American people, the government employees who implement policy must be willing to carry out the president's directives, he explained.

"This provides a mechanism, obviously, for people in those agencies to be able to be removed effectively at will," Kupor said.

He emphasized that no loyalty tests will be used, nor will the Schedule Policy/Career employees lose their whistleblower protections. Under federal law, they also can't be fired based on political affiliation. But it would be up to agencies to enforce the law. The employees no longer have appeal rights.

The president's disregard for the laws governing the employment of federal workers has been clear in his second term. He has shown a willingness — and at times an eagerness — to fire employees he perceives as political opponents, such as Justice Department attorneys involved in Jan. 6 prosecutions, as well as those doing work he doesn't support, such as those at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"It creates bubbles around policymakers"

The extreme politicization that Trump has already brought to government will grow worse if the president is legally able to fire tens of thousands more people for any reason, says Don Moynihan, professor at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy.

"It creates bubbles around policymakers," he says. "If you were a career civil servant and there is bad news that you want to share with the president, you're less likely to do so if you think, 'The minute I share that bad news, I'm going to get fired.'"

Moynihan says this is not an abstract idea. He points to what's happened with political appointees — who lack civil service protections — who raise the president's ire: The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency was fired after the agency issued a preliminary report last year contradicting Trump's assessment that U.S. airstrikes had "completely and totally obliterated" Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. The commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who had previously served as a career economist in the government for more than two decades, was ridiculed and then replaced by Trump after a disappointing jobs report.

A case likely headed for the Supreme Court

Moynihan believes ongoing litigation is one reason the Trump administration has started by reclassifying only a relatively small number of positions.

"By starting with more defensible policy-making roles, they are more likely to win in court," he wrote on his blog back in February. "Once they do, and the rule is cemented as law, they can always broaden its reach, deeper and deeper into the administration."

He predicts the issue will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.

"This is a swing-for-the-fences moment on the part of the administration, where they look at this Supreme Court and think this is the most friendly court that we are going to get on this topic," he says, pointing to a number of emergency orders issued by the Supreme Court last year that have allowed controversial firings to stand while litigation continues.

The theory that the administration has pushed at the Supreme Court, which the court has been willing to entertain, is that Article II of the Constitution gives the president full control of the executive branch, including over positions that Congress designed to be insulated from White House control.

During oral arguments late last year, the conservative majority seemed open to overturning a 90-year precedent that limits the power of the president to fire heads of independent agencies, with Chief Justice John Roberts calling that precedent "a dried husk." A decision is expected soon.

A private sector comparison

Kupor, the OPM director, contends that giving the president more control over the workforce will lead to a more efficient government, pointing to how things work in the private sector, where he spent his career as a tech executive and investor.

"Outside of the federal government, all other organizations — whether for-profit or non-profit — are led by a CEO, who sets the priorities for the organization and ultimately effects those priorities through the hiring of employees who are accountable to the CEO's mission," Kupor wrote on his blog. "Everyone knows what is expected of them and is accountable to the goals of the organization."

Michael Martinez, who formerly served as OPM deputy general counsel and is now part of the legal team at Democracy Forward, says the comparison is flawed.

"It's mission-driven work in government," he says. "That's really for the American people, so that they can rely on the information they're getting" — whether it be the latest jobs numbers or the weather report.

Moynihan points to numerous studies that have found that as systems become more politicized, performance of public institutions drops.

"That's partly because people who have expertise decide, 'I'm not going to stick around if the input that I provide to policymakers is going to be ignored,'" he says.

He notes that one of the great recruiting advantages the government has historically had is the ability to tell candidates that their work will make a difference.

"But if your input and work are just being ignored, that's a much harder sales pitch to make to potential employees," he says.

Copyright 2026 NPR

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When a candidate invests their personal fortune in running for public office, does it represent a rich person trying to buy a seat or does it grant them independence from powerful special interests? Voters will decide on Tuesday in an election that has seen candidates spend more of their own money than any previous election.

Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer put up $213 million to fund his campaign for governor. All together, more than 200 candidates have contributed about a quarter billion dollars of their own money this year. That’s an eight-fold increase since the last time Californians voted for governor in 2022 and the most since California started keeping digital campaign finance records in 1999.

The last time a candidate spent anything close to Steyer was in 2010 when Meg Whitman gave over $140 million to her own unsuccessful campaign for governor, setting a record at the time.

Previous statewide races also saw big spenders: Steve Poizner gave $14 million to his campaign in 2006 running for insurance commissioner; Eleni Kounalakis shelled out upwards of $8 million when she ran for lieutenant governor in 2018; Yvonne Yiu dropped nearly $6 million on her campaign for controller four years ago.

Candidates running for state Senate this cycle have given nearly $4 million to their campaigns – the highest amount recorded for the chamber and more than double the $1.7 million candidates put up 20 years ago. Likewise, current congressional candidates have contributed more than $29 million to their campaigns, the most of any cycle in the past two decades.

And this year, some congressional candidates have set records for self-funding their campaigns.

Two of the five congressional candidates who contributed the most money to their campaigns over the last 20 years are running this election. In the competitive contest to succeed Nancy Pelosi in her San Francisco-based congressional district, Democrat Saikat Chakrabati gave nearly $9 million to his campaign, the most of any congressional primary candidate in state history. Eric Jones, who wants to oust fellow Democrat Mike Thompson from his district representing the North Bay, transferred over $5 million of his personal fortune.

Chakrabarti said the money he’s putting up is to counter the millions being spent against him by opponents and that self-funding his campaign is his best choice in a bad system.

“To go up against that kind of money I have two options,” he said. “I could either spend my time calling big donors for money and then I can go to DC and owe a million people a million favors…so I chose to put in my own resources.”

The increase in self-funding may reflect the need for more money to compete after the Supreme Court in a 2010 decision known as Citizens United lifted restrictions on campaign spending by wealthy people and corporations, said Jeremy Mack, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group The Phoenix Project.

In other words: more money in politics begets more money in politics.

“In California," he said, "it’s often been corporations, real estate and police unions that have often worked together to [fund] similar candidates.”

Maria Colon, a voter in Sacramento who attended a Steyer rally last week, said she views corporate donations as implicit corruption, and while self-funding might be a reason to warrant further scrutiny of a candidate, she understands why some like Steyer are pouring money into their own campaigns.

“Frankly, I think there needs to be caps on how much money needs to be raised,” Colon said. “[Corporations] are not giving you their money for free, bro.”

Money is critical for political campaigns and so candidates who can contribute their own cash might have an advantage, said Wesley Hussey, a professor of political science at Sacramento State University. “A candidate who’s able to put in enough of their own money to start off is a great way to be a viable candidate.”

Andrew Coolidge, a Republican running for Assembly District 3 in the northern part of the state who is the biggest donor to his campaign, said voters should be skeptical of candidates who can fund their own campaign but chose not to.

“I think a candidate who doesn't have some skin in the game is a candidate you have to worry about," he said. "I can feel very comfortable making every decision based on my conscience rather than based upon the opinion of someone else.”

Chris Anderson, a candidate for Lodi City Council who has contributed to his own campaign and attended the Steyer rally, said he likes candidates who can self-fund while raising some questions at the same time.

“There is a part of me that likes the fact that a person is funding their own campaign because they’re less likely to be beholden to a special interest,” he said. “But on the other hand, what special interests got them to where they are?”

Money doesn’t buy everything. Hussey said voters will look at other factors in deciding how to view candidates who spend their own fortunes on their campaigns.

Take Steyer and Whitman. Both had different degrees of involvement in politics before they ran for office. Whitman was involved in both Mitt Romney's and John McCain's 2008 presidential runs, while Steyer has been active in environmental causes for over a decade.

Voters might get more suspicious when a rich candidate shows up without a political track record, Hussey said. “Tom Steyer gave a lot of money to politicians for a long time and tried to kind of enter the political world himself for a while.”

When asked if voters should view his hundreds of millions of dollars as a rich person trying to buy a political office, Steyer said at last week's rally that he believes voters should judge him by the amount of money being spent against him and not as much by the hundreds of millions of dollars he’s put into his campaign.

“In this race there is only one person who isn’t conflicted by taking money from corporations,” he said. “That’s me.”

At a recent public event at Stanford University, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter said she doesn’t think being rich means you’re immune to lobbying.

“That is the same argument that Donald Trump made,” she said. “'You can trust me not to take special interest money because I'm so rich'–I find that unsettling in a democracy.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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When CBS fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday night, the new 60 Minutes executive producer, Nick Bilton, told Pelley it was for insubordination at a staff meeting the day before.

The veteran correspondent argues he was defending the DNA of 60 Minutes and the integrity of its journalism.

The battle royale over the network's most prestigious and profitable news program is part of a broader fight over the direction of CBS News.

And given CBS's acquisition by a billionaire family whose business interests have become intertwined with the political interests of President Trump, it reflects a larger war over control of the media in the current moment.

That father and son, Larry and David Ellison, bought CBS' parent company, Paramount, last summer. In January, they became co-owners of TikTok's U.S. operations. Now they're seeking approval from Trump's regulators to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN.

A glamorous show shorn, for now, of most its stars

But the specifics of this individual episode matter — for 60 Minutes, CBS, its audience of millions, and even the news business itself.

The program has been the most glamorous post in broadcast news. The correspondents are the stars of the show. And now, there are just three of them.

Anderson Cooper left last month, concerned over the direction of the network's coverage. Last week was a virtual bloodbath: correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were fired. So were a producer and two show executives — including Tanya Simon, a longtime staffer who had stepped up as executive producer when her predecessor resigned in protest before the Ellisons' takeover.

With Pelley's ouster, only correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim remain. Now they are considering whether to resign, according to two associates with knowledge.

Their brand-new boss, Bilton, was previously a tech reporter for The New York Times and an investigative reporter for Vanity Fair. He executive-produced a documentary for Netflix about a couple accused of laundering Bitcoin and has been a producer on several other films.

Notably, he has no experience in television news.

Neither does Bari Weiss, whom David Ellison installed as the network's editor in chief last October. The Ellisons also bought her center-right views-and-news site, The Free Press.

She has maintained that the network of Walter Cronkite needs a makeover for the digital moment. She has also contended for years that CBS, along with the rest of mainstream media, is too reflexively anti-Trump, anti-Israel, and too woke.

A rejection of CBS News executives' overtures

Bilton attempted to set a conciliatory tone at Monday's meeting — his first with the show. Pelley, a formidable veteran correspondent and former CBS Evening News anchor, wasn't having it.

Pelley called Bilton unwelcome and unqualified. And Pelley said that Weiss was attempting to "murder" the program.

In firing Pelley on Tuesday, Bilton said the journalist had hijacked the meeting and rejected overtures to work constructively through their differences. (NPR obtained a copy of the firing notice.) Bilton wrote that Pelley's "antipathy to the future of the show came through loud and clear."

In his own statement late Tuesday evening, shared with NPR, Pelley accused CBS's new news leadership of killing 60 Minutes' DNA and pushing him "to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story" and "to include assertions that are unverified."

The accusations, to which CBS has not yet responded, echo those made by Alfonsi and Vega, the two correspondents fired last week.

Earlier this year, Alfonsi publicly complained after Weiss held one of her stories at the last minute, and kept it frozen for weeks, demanding an on-camera interview with a Trump White House official that never played out. It ran, unchanged from the intended version, with additional statements from the administration tacked on to the end.

After being fired, Vega said in a statement obtained by NPR that her team had "experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories."

"Let's call this what it is: censorship, both censorship and self-driven" Vega continued. "It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy."

Weiss previously rejected Alfonsi's and Vega's allegations. (CBS said Vega's claims, for example, were "not based in reality" while expressing appreciation for her work.)

Weiss and Bilton say digital threat requires a 60 Minutes overhaul now

In a meeting this morning, Weiss said that Pelley chose his own path — that is, to be fired rather than to find a way to work through his concerns, according to attendees. The network and Weiss have not yet publicly addressed Pelley's accusations of interference. 

Bilton and Weiss say they respect the show's traditions, its accomplishments and its legacy of enterprise reporting, extended interviews and visual storytelling. It rose in the ratings 9% over the past season under Simon.

The two news leaders say, however, 60 Minutes needs to be overhauled before it becomes increasingly irrelevant in the era of streamers and other sources of news, information and entertainment in the digital age.

Interviews with 12 current and former CBS News staffers, from producers to executives, suggest great reservations and suspicions remain about Weiss' judgment and her ability to handle the prominent and even famous journalists on whom her division relies.

Weiss had initially sought to reinvent the CBS Evening News, dropping a two-anchor format that had sagged in the ratings. Cooper turned down Weiss' overtures to anchor it and left the network altogether, concerned about her approach, according to associates. (They spoke on condition of anonymity because Cooper has not chosen to speak publicly on the matter.)

The ratings have continued to sag under new anchor Tony Dokoupil. And some CBS journalists, including producers who have left the Evening News, have publicly accused Weiss of making editorial decisions driven by politics. She has rejected those claims.

The decision to take on overhauling two key shows — one listing, one highly profitable, both high profile — carries significant risks for Weiss and the network, even apart from other considerations.

But the Ellisons' presence cannot be ignored.

When Shari Redstone was negotiating the sale of CBS's parent company, Paramount, to the Ellisons' Skydance Media last year, the network announced the end of Stephen Colbert's late night show. He had been one of the president's most biting and acerbic critics.

David Ellison also made a series of concessions directly to Trump's chief broadcast regulator, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, gutting CBS's diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and appointing a conservative ombudsman to field complaints of bias against its news reporting.

Carr and other regulators approved the Paramount deal last summer.

The accommodations echo those made by other media titans.

Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos remade the editorial pages of the Washington Post, which he owns, into a far more hospitable zone for Trump at the outset of his second term. So did Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a noted medical device inventor. Amazon and Blue Origin have multi-billion dollar contracts with the federal government. Soon-Shiong's medical research firm routinely has patent applications up for review with federal regulators. One was approved Tuesday.

The Ellisons are hoping to win approval from federal regulators next month for their purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal valued at more than $110 billion. It would include Warner Bros. Studio, HBO and CNN, among other properties.

As Weiss routs CBS News' old guard, the question of what role she might play at CNN — and what changes that portends at CBS — hangs over journalists at the two networks. The fate of 60 Minutes serves as a high-stakes case study for both.

Copyright 2026 NPR

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HAYWARD, Calif. – In an industrial yard off a highway east of San Francisco, AT&T workers crowd around cold, hard evidence of a growing problem.

"Sitting here [is] a truck full of what is stolen copper cable," says Todd Swenson, from AT&T's construction and engineering division. The jumble of cables and wires, about the size of a truck tire, was recovered from a metal recycler. Swenson says that cable actually belongs to AT&T, and was cut down from telephone poles by thieves.

Over the past few years, there has been an alarming rise in copper wire theft in the United States and beyond. The value of copper has roughly doubled in the past year, thanks in part to increasing demand for the metal. So thieves strip it from phone lines, as well as from other infrastructure like streetlamps and EV chargers. Repairs cost companies and communities, vex corporate executives and politicians and tax work crews.

Swenson says record-high prices of copper — buoyed, in part, by the artificial intelligence data center boom — are to blame. "The higher the price of copper is at a recycler and on the market, our theft goes up. Direct correlation there," he says.

This pile of wires might fetch a few hundred dollars at a recycler. But Swenson says the damage could cost the company tens of thousands of dollars to repair.

AT&T executives have grown frustrated with the problem, which is why they've invited NPR on a ride-along to see it firsthand. So we caravan to a railroad crossing, where at 3:40 in the morning, an alarm had gone off alerting the company that cables had been cut down from nearby telephone poles.

The company suspected the work of thieves.

"What they typically do is they cut the cable down, they'll pull it to a location and they start working on stripping it," says Scott Gonzaga, also with AT&T. "Then they burn it to get the sheath off and to get it down to the bare copper." That metal is sold to a middleman or directly to a recycler.

We arrive at the tracks a little before noon, and the aftermath of the crime comes into focus.

The phone and internet cables that should have stretched over the track are gone. A pair of bolt cutters lies in the dirt, along with bits of rubber and plastic stripped from the wires. Down a trail by the train line, there's a string of freshly charred spots in the dirt — what the AT&T crew call "burn pits." An abandoned tent overflows with clothes and junk, and behind it lies a small pile of wires.

In the distance, down the path, there's something else: people.

There are two of them, about 100 yards away, pushing what looks like a large plastic laundry bin.

"This is a first," says Michael Riensch, who oversees efforts to combat copper wire theft at AT&T's global security unit. "We just happened to be here while subjects were on scene."

Gonzaga says he saw one of the two people by a burn pit when he showed up.

"We tried to follow him a little bit just to get a picture of him," Gonzaga says.

The two people with the cart don't seem to be fleeing, exactly. But they are staying out of reach of the AT&T crew. And the crew is keeping its distance, too.

They've already called the police, who are on their way.

Locked-down manhole lids

Last year, AT&T recorded more than 10,400 incidents of copper wire theft nationwide — about 200 a week. Some 4,300 of those were in California.

It's an outsized problem for the company, since only about 3% of AT&T's customers are still connected by copper wire networks. That includes households without access to cell service or fiber optic connections, some in rural areas, as well as some businesses that still rely on old wires for internet or fax connections.

Copper cables, pioneered over 180 years ago by Samuel Morse, often hang next to their modern counterparts, fiber optic lines. When thieves cut cables for copper, they often slice fiber cables, too, because they look similar. A snipped fiber cable is what tripped this alarm.

Susan Santana, president of AT&T West, is on the ride-along. She says homes, hospitals, airports, schools and more can lose connections when cables are cut. The problem is "not an easy one to solve, by any means," she says, but AT&T is trying.

"We have locked down manhole lids with extra bolts. We've put sensors across our lines. In some instances we've had to hire private security guards," Santana says.

AT&T has also offered a $20,000 bounty for information leading to the arrest and conviction of people involved in copper cable thefts.

The problem is not limited to telephone wires. Thieves have been cutting electric cables, too. The California city of San Jose has an online tracker for streetlights that have gone dark after being hit.

EV chargers are also targets. Rick Wilmer, CEO of ChargePoint, the largest charging network in the United States, says it's a problem they deal with every day. He says he got so frustrated that he started prototyping solutions on his own.

"I was so motivated I literally was going down to Home Depot and buying all kinds of different wire and Kevlar and stuff, and wrapping cables and taping it down and trying to cut it with my own pruning shears to see if it was, you know, making it any more difficult," he says.

He handed the project off to company engineers, who developed charger cables that are impregnated with cut-resistant material. The idea, he says, is that a thief might be able to hack off one of those wires, but their shears will be damaged in the process. They won't be able to hit multiple chargers in one go.

Sharing intel, engaging in surveillance

Back at the railroad crossing, the police have arrived. They've sat the two people with the cart down on the track's embankment and are questioning them.

In California, copper thieves face up to three years in prison and hefty fines. The state recently tightened regulations on scrap metal dealers, and bills in the state legislature would raise the penalties for organized copper wire theft and individuals holding wire without proof of ownership.

Rob Bonta, the state's attorney general, says enforcement is key. "The science shows that if people think they will be caught for committing a crime, then that deters them from committing a crime. Even if the punishment is high, but they don't think they're going to get caught, they'll still commit the crime," he says.

He says authorities have been using a playbook of cross-jurisdiction collaboration that previously helped the state tamp down catalytic converter theft and a rash of smash-and-grab robberies at retail stores.

"We started teaming up and engaging [in] investigations, sharing intel, engaging in surveillance. A lot of what worked there is working here," he says.

"So, more participation, more resources, more focus, more dedication, more prioritization by law enforcement agencies, who have a lot to prioritize," he adds. "These are folks that are tackling — you know, murders and rapes and robberies and other important crimes, too."

A frustrating pattern

AT&T also has a longer-term solution in mind: The company wants to move on from its aging copper wire networks, shifting all of its phone service to fiber optics.

But California law won't let it.

Once a monopoly, AT&T is considered the state's "carrier of last resort." Santana says that means it is required to keep copper running in order to serve that tiny fraction of customers who still use it — despite a range of new technologies and offerings from competitors.

"In an ideal world, California would find a way to help us transition, would identify a pathway to transition from maintaining a copper legacy network to allowing us to invest our resources into fiber and wireless, which is what most of the other states in this country have already done," she says.

In late May, AT&T filed a lawsuit against California to allow it to discontinue its legacy copper wire-based phone service in line with Federal Communications Commission authorization to phase it out. The company has pledged $19 billion to modernize the network through 2030.

Bonta's office says it is reviewing the complaint and will respond appropriately in court.

Not everyone is in favor of AT&T retiring its legacy copper wire network, including consumer, farm and small business advocacy groups who argue that doing so could deprive communities without other reliable options of a critical means of communication — especially in an emergency.

At the railroad crossing, Rommel Maghonay, a splicing manager, is overseeing part of the work to replace the sliced cables. It's the fifth or sixth cut cable due to suspected theft that he says he has had to deal with in the past three days.

"On a typical day I've got to pull two, three splicers off their normal assignment" to fix cut lines, he says. "It sets us back on our normal work."

This job will cost AT&T crews four to five hours, he thinks. "It's frustrating sometimes," he says, "because it's happening so often."

The police, meanwhile, finished questioning the two people. With no probable cause — no witnesses to the actual cutting of the cables, and no tools or stolen property on the people — they let them go.

The Hayward Police Department declined to make records relating to the case available to NPR, saying it is still open and under investigation.

Copyright 2026 NPR

In February, four months after being released from federal prison, former Republican congressman George Santos took to social media to express his enthusiasm about attending President Trump's upcoming State of the Union address.

"I'm going to be there for the State of Union in the gallery, guys," Santos said in a video he posted to X a day before the president's remarks.

At the time, traders on the prediction market site Kalshi were placing millions of dollars worth of bets on who would attend. Santos' video confirming his presence sent odds soaring.

But he didn't show up.

"Watching SOTU from an airport tv was not part of the plan! FML," Santos wrote on X, using slang for a more coarse way of saying, "screw my life."

He posted the message as Trump was speaking, making those same odds in the Kalshi market plummet.

What Santos didn't say was that he had already placed bets on Kalshi that he was not going to appear at the State of the Union address, according to three people with direct knowledge of his trades who were not authorized to speak publicly. They say Santos misled the public and turned a profit based on that deception in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Kalshi detected Santos' trades, froze his account and referred the case to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice, which both opened investigations into Santos, according to two people familiar with Kalshi's investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Neither the CFTC nor the Justice Department returned requests for comment. Kalshi declined to comment.

Reached by NPR, Santos said, "Well, that's news to me," when asked about the insider trading probe underway into his activity on Kalshi.

Santos said, "I'm not saying yes, I'm not saying no" when NPR questioned whether he had a Kalshi account.

He went on to say the co-founder of Kalshi, Luana Lopes Lara, is "a fellow Brazilian" whom he personally knows. He said he would call her to get to the bottom of whether an investigation had been launched.

Santos promised to update NPR on how the call went. He did not respond to NPR's follow-up messages.

The person familiar with Kalshi's investigation said Santos, the son of Brazilian immigrants, does not know Lara, a Brazilian-American.

Kalshi has reached out to Santos to interview him as part of the investigation, but he has dodged those requests, according to that same person.

In a post on X on Thursday, Santos said "my legal team is in contact with the DOJ to see what is going on," calling the insider trading accusation "preposterous."

Santos wrote: "I look forward to supplying any information asked of me to any agency that inquires."

A 'manufactured' political rise

Santos' trading on his own movements follows one of the most dramatic downfalls in recent political history.

The 37-year-old former Republican congressman from New York ran for office telling a series of lies and fabrications about his personal life. Those include that he graduated from Baruch College in the top 1% of his class. He also said that his mother was working in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11 attacks. The stories about his academic performance and his mother turned out to be false.

He said he was Jewish. He is not. And he claimed that his grandparents escaped the Holocaust. They did not.

"Virtually everything that he put out about himself when he was running for office was manufactured," said Jonathan Entin, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. "You had to wonder whether anything he ever said about himself had any basis in reality."

Santos' penchant for deception eventually caught up with him.

In January 2023, Santos was sworn in as a U.S. representative and by May of that year, he was hit with an indictment. Federal prosecutors charged him with 13 counts of wire fraud, money laundering and stealing money from political donors. He was expelled from Congress in December 2023. A judge later handed him a sentence of more than seven years in federal prison.

But he served only four months because Trump commuted his sentence last October.

"George Santos was somewhat of a 'rogue,' but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren't forced to serve seven years in prison," the president wrote on TruthSocial at the time.

Prediction markets under scrutiny

The investigations into Santos' trades come during a moment of intense scrutiny of prediction markets, such as Kalshi and Polymarket, which allow bettors to put money down on everything from what will be the most expensive art work sold at auction this year to the timing of the next military strike in the Middle East.

Lawmakers in Washington have been particularly concerned about how people with insider information could manipulate the markets and defraud other bettors. In April, federal prosecutors criminally charged a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier accused of making more than $400,000 betting on the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

Last week, a Google employee was charged by the Justice Department for making more than $1 million correctly betting on search trends based on confidential information from the tech company. Both traders were using Polymarket, which is based overseas in Panama.

Traders on the messaging forum Discord suspected Santos had been duping Kalshi traders.

During the State of the Union address in February, one user with the name Roastinator.exe wrote after losing money betting that Santos would be at Trump's speech: "I want George Santos in Kalshi prison for 15 years!!!"

Another user with the handle Nate Meininger wrote: "that's gotta be a new low if you get rugpulled by George Santos," using finance lingo for when a prediction market suddenly collapses.

While Santos' account has been frozen, his name is still popping up in the world of Kalshi.

Last month, traders bet nearly $90,000 on what words Santos would utter during an interview on Newsmax.

He did say the word "rumor," but avoided the word "corruption."

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The ferry boat Balboa began service Monday morning, its maiden voyage starting from the Chula Vista waterfront.

Owned and operated by Flagship Cruises and Events, the 30-foot-long, diesel-powered Balboa will take up to 32 passengers per trip from the Chula Vista Marina to the Fifth Avenue landing behind the San Diego Convention Center.

The ferry will be more than just a fun way to get downtown, Chula Vista Mayor John McCann said.

"Economically, this is a game changer," he said. "This connection will bring more visitors to Chula Vista supporting our local businesses, restaurants, supporting small entrepreneurs. It will also make it easier for residents to access jobs, and opportunities throughout the region."

Anne Moore, chair of the board for the Port of San Diego, said the ferry has been a long time coming.

"That's why a future ferry terminal was included as part of the Chula Vista master bayfront plan from the very beginning," Moore said.

She said new waterfront development doesn’t have to increase traffic.

"That’s why we want to provide multiple options to get around," Moore said. "Like the bayfront shuttle as well as the expanded Sweetwater bike path. It’s about making it easier for people to enjoy our waterfront."

The Balboa has a speed of 10 knots, or about 11 mph. A one-way trip will take around 45 minutes. But speed isn’t the point of this ride, McCann said.

"Environmentally, this is a step forward," he said. "By offering an alternative to driving we’re helping to reduce traffic congestion on our roads, lowering emissions, and this is about building a more sustainable future while improving quality of life."

A trip on the Balboa will cost $15 each way, and the ferry will make six round trips per day.

Wisconsin-based Sentry Insurance is the new title sponsor at Torrey Pines, taking over another tournament with expansive views of the Pacific Ocean after eight years at Kapalua.

The Sentry will be played Jan. 27-30 next year on the North and South courses at Torrey Pines, the municipal course in San Diego that has been part of the PGA Tour schedule since 1968. The tournament will end on Saturday to avoid a conflict with the NFL’s conference championship games.

Still to be determined is where The Sentry falls when the PGA Tour completes a revamped schedule as early as 2028. It will be the second tournament of 2027, one week after The American Express about two hours away in La Quinta, California.

Sentry had been title sponsor at Kapalua dating to 2018. It started as a winners-only field and then expanded to include the top 50 in the FedEx Cup. But the tournament was not held in 2026 because of a water dispute on Maui that made it unlikely the Plantation course could be ready.

The tour subsequently did away with the Hawaii swing (Kapalua and the Sony Open on Oahu) and found a good spot for Sentry at Torrey Pines when Farmers Insurance did not renew as title sponsor.

The San Diego tournament dates to 1952. Next year will be the 60th time at Torrey Pines, which also has hosted the U.S. Open in 2008 and 2021.

“For 75 years the PGA Tour has hosted elite competition in San Diego, including the last 60 at revered Torrey Pines, and we are proud to build upon that legacy and longtime philanthropic impact with our partners at Sentry Insurance,” PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said in a release.

The Century Club of San Diego will continue to run the tournament. In recent years, a change in sponsorship — such as the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow and the Cognizant Classic of the Palm Beaches — was taken over by the Championship Management arm of the PGA Tour.

“We’re excited to partner with Sentry, a longtime partner of the PGA Tour, and widely known for their reputation for impactful community engagement,” said Marty Gorsich, CEO of the Century Club of San Diego.

Justin Rose won the Farmers Insurance Open in January with a record score of 23-under 265 for a seven-shot victory, the first player to go wire-to-wire at Torrey Pines.

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Anthropic, maker of Claude, one of the most popular artificial intelligence models on the market, has started the ball rolling on an initial public offering.

The company announced on Monday that it has "confidentially submitted" a draft registration statement known as a Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its proposed IPO.

"This gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review," it said in an announcement. "The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors."

Anthropic said the number of shares and price have not yet been set.

The filing sets the stage for what is shaping up to be a trio of potential mega-listings by tech companies: Elon Musk's SpaceX, involved in rocketry and AI, filed financial information in late May for an IPO. And OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is also widely reported to be planning a listing.

"We believe this represents an opening of the floodgates for the IPO market, which has been relatively dormant for a few years, with these three major conglomerates set to go public later this year, but this has turned into a race to reach public markets over the coming months," analysts at Wedbush Securities wrote in a note after Anthropic's announcement.

Anthropic's is already valued at almost $1 trillion

The filing comes a week after Anthropic announced that its valuation had reached $965 billion after its latest round of fundraising. That makes it bigger than OpenAI, which in March said it was worth $852 billion after a recent funding round.

It also comes at a time of great hype and anxiety over AI. Shares in chip stocks and other companies involved in the AI supply chain have been soaring, as companies like Anthropic and OpenAI have been investing heavily in data centers.

But recent polls show that Americans are wary of AI's impact on daily life.

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The buzz on college campuses is that AI is disrupting the job market for young college graduates.

But new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York finds that the culprit may be something else: remote work.

An analysis of federal employment data, paired with a deep dive into the flexible work arrangements at one unnamed Fortune 500 tech company, reveals that companies are less likely to hire recent college grads into occupations that can be done remotely.

Researchers speculate that employers are reluctant to put such workers in a setting where it's harder to absorb lessons from coworkers.

The researchers found the unemployment rate among younger college grads — those under the age of 29 — rose 20% after the pandemic, while unemployment among older college grads fell slightly.

The study compares unemployment rates pre-pandemic, from 2017 to 2019, with unemployment rates after the pandemic, from 2022 to 2024.

Unemployment rose as remote work grew fourfold, the researchers write. "Our analysis suggests that these trends are related, with remote work making it more difficult for managers to train and mentor new employees."

Remote work leads to less feedback on the job

The research began with a look at how much feedback software engineers at a Fortune 500 tech company were getting, says Emma Harrington, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Virginia and one of the authors of the report.

"What we saw was this pretty striking pattern that software engineers got about 20% more feedback if they were sitting near their colleagues than if they were distant from them," she says, adding that that was true even before the pandemic.

But after the pandemic, feedback plummeted.

"And that really hit young workers much harder," says Harrington. "It was these people who had the most to learn that really saw this deficit in feedback."

The researchers then looked deeper into who was getting hired at the tech firm. Turns out, as the company embraced remote work, they switched away from hiring younger people.

"So they used to hire a bunch of new grads for their software engineering jobs," Harrington says. "Then they shifted really towards hiring much older people, like a decade older on average."

Later, the company pivoted again, implementing what Harrington calls a "pretty aggressive" return-to-office policy. At that point, the company resumed hiring new graduates.

"So [there was] some sense that these problems with mentorship were translating into whom this firm was deciding to hire," she says.

A look at the broader economy

The researchers then wanted to see if what was happening at that single tech company was playing out in the broader economy.

Using a widely-used index that measures how feasible it is to do a job from home, the team divided all occupations into two categories: "remotable," which included software engineering, and "non-remotable," which included mechanical engineering.

They found the gap in unemployment between recent graduates and older workers was significantly higher in "remotable" jobs than in jobs that have to be done in person.

The unemployment rate for younger grads in "remotable" jobs jumped by almost a full percentage point after the pandemic, while the unemployment rate among older grads fell marginally.

They concluded that remote work explained nearly two-thirds of the rise in unemployment among young graduates during this period.

"This relative increase in young people's unemployment coincided with the pandemic and has remained elevated since then, as have rates of remote work," the researchers write.

AI isn't disrupting so many jobs for recent college grads — yet

To see how the rise of AI chatbots may have contributed to rising unemployment among the younger set, the researchers used another index that divides occupations into those more exposed to AI, such as engineering and accounting, and those less exposed, such as teaching and nursing.

They found exposure to AI didn't explain the divergence in unemployment rates in the 2022-24 time period. Remote workflows were much more of a driving force, Harrington says, while emphasizing that this could change.

"It's always hard to make guesses about what's going to happen with generative AI," she says. "It's certainly possible that this story could really change over the next few years."

Researchers at the London School of Economics have reached a similar conclusion — that remote work is having a clearer impact on early-career hiring than AI — in a working paper examining new hires in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia.

Regardless of the cause, the New York Fed report warns that a high unemployment rate among young college grads is concerning.

"Early-career experiences can have lasting consequences," the researchers write. "Research finds that individuals who began looking for jobs in slacker labor markets tend to have lower earnings and slower career progression relative to comparable peers who began their job search in better market conditions."

Copyright 2026 NPR

California spiraled toward a primary election Tuesday with its two marquee races defined by uncertainty and a pair of outsider candidates looking to crack open the state’s durable Democratic hierarchy.

In the governor's race, former Fox News TV host and British political adviser Steve Hilton is urging Republicans to unite behind him as he fights for one of two spots in the November election alongside two Democrats, billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer and former state attorney general Xavier Becerra.

In the Los Angeles race for mayor, reality TV personality Spencer Pratt is hoping to turn his insurgent campaign into a surprise upset of Democratic Mayor Karen Bass. The two are tightly clustered with Nithya Raman, a progressive member of the City Council running to Bass' political left.

“We can't give up on LA,” Pratt told applauding supporters at a block party Sunday. “We've got to fight.”

Democrats once feared that the party’s large field of gubernatorial candidates could open a path for two Republicans to advance to November. But in the campaign’s closing days, Hilton warned the opposite could happen — what he called a “doomsday scenario” in which only Democrats advance.

Hilton is pleading with his chief Republican rival, county Sheriff Chad Bianco, to pull out of the contest, fearing an all-Democratic ticket would dampen GOP turnout across the state and reorder races for Congress and the Legislature.

Becerra and Steyer locking out a Republican from the November ballot would be “a disaster for California, it means no change. It’s a disaster for everyone who’s running as a Republican up and down the ballot,” Hilton said on the social platform X.

Bianco said he wasn't backing down.

“It's clear that Steve Hilton supporters should unite and support me,” he posted late Sunday, adding that supporters of the Democratic candidates should vote for him too.

Mail voting began in early May, but just 15% of voters had returned their ballots as of Sunday. That's left the candidates seeing room for a last-minute shake-up in the race's closing days.

A vulnerable mayor looks for a second term in LA

In heavily Democratic Los Angeles, Bass' shaky first term has left her vulnerable. She points to a drop in homelessness, though encampments and rows of rusting RVs remain a common sight in many neighborhoods. Meanwhile, she's still trying to overcome lingering fallout from the 2025 Palisades Fire, the most destructive in Los Angeles history. Bass was in Ghana as part of a presidential delegation when the flames ignited. Pratt lost his home in the blaze and has made the fire and the city's recovery a foundation of his campaign.

At Pratt's block party, Vivian Escalante, a historian who lives in the heavily Hispanic Boyle Heights neighborhood adjacent to downtown, said the quality of life has been sliding for years — dirtier streets, more homeless encampments and a lack of pride in the neighborhood she's called home all her life.

“It's gotten completely worse,” Escalante said, with a Pratt cap perched on her head. The Democratic Party, she said, has “completely abandoned us.”

The LA race is officially nonpartisan, but Bass is a Democrat, as is Raman, who made a last-minute decision to challenge her one-time ally and is among the top group of contenders.

Pratt, who rose to fame alongside his wife, Heidi Montag, on “The Hills,” is a registered Republican who has received a nod of approval — if not an outright formal endorsement — from President Donald Trump. He has sought to distance himself from national politics, saying his concerns are strictly within city limits.

A University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Los Angeles Times, found Bass tightly clustered with Raman and Pratt, with other candidates trailing. The poll of 1,351 likely voters conducted between May 19 and May 24 gave no candidate a statistically significant edge.

The city is at a difficult juncture.

Hollywood jobs have been decamping for years for cheaper filming locations. A downtown renaissance was crushed by extended pandemic closures and many office buildings remain desperate for tenants. The city has long struggled to provide basic services, whether paving buckled streets and fixing sidewalks or keeping streetlights on.

A crowded governor's race with no clear leader

The governor's race has been the most wide open in a generation. More than 50 names are on the ballot.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is banned by law from seeking a third term. Other candidates seeking to replace him include former Democratic U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, Democrat Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, and Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff.

Rebecca Katz, a strategist with Steyer’s campaign, said Sunday that they are “feeling pretty good” but emphasized how close the race was with a sporting reference, “It’s three candidates for two spots, every possession counts.”

Steyer, a former hedge fund manager turned liberal activist, has set spending records hoping to advance to the November contest. Hilton, a former Fox News host who has been endorsed by Trump, has promised to bring down costs in a state with some of the nation's highest gas prices, utility costs and taxes. Becerra has been stressing his experience in arguing he's best prepared to lead the nation's second most populous state, having served as the Biden administration's health secretary, a former U.S. House member and state attorney general.

Broadly, Republicans in the race are promising drastic change after years of Democratic governance — Democrats haven't lost a statewide race in two decades and Republicans last elected a Los Angeles mayor in 1997. Democrats, though in charge for years, are promising to bring down costs and continue to fend off the Trump administration in its numerous conflicts with Democratic California.

A costly emergency

When 33-year-old Tabitha Babcock brought home her Newfoundland puppy Cerulean, she thought she was starting a new chapter.

“So it’s the color blue. It was my favorite Crayola crayon when I was little,” she said.

But just a week later, everything changed.

“He was really sick and he had to go to the E.R. and basically was set on blood transfusions and glucose drips. And it was really sad and life threatening,” Babcock said.

The emergency visit cost about $4,000. At just nine weeks old, Babcock said she was forced into a heartbreaking decision — signing a do-not-resuscitate order.

“I signed it because it was as much as my savings as I had and I was like, ‘I just can’t,’ especially when there was no hope really,” she said.

She said veterinarians didn’t expect him to survive the night.

“(I) dug a little grave for him in my backyard and just laid on the floor with him and was like, you know, ‘Buddy, can you please, like, fight as hard as you can?’”

Cerulean put up a fight.

Now seven years old and weighing about 150 pounds, he’s still by her side. A calm, gentle giant.

“He was such a miracle,” Babcock said. “So that was how we started our journey together. Little trauma bonding.”

But the financial impact lingered.

“We lost that whole cushion. So then it was like, everything else we had to buy continuing on for those multiple months…whether that be medication, special food…it was a stressor for me for sure,” she said. “It probably took a year to feel comfortable in life again.”

The rising cost of care

An analysis of federal inflation data shows prices for veterinary services have jumped about 40% since 2021. That’s faster than overall inflation during the same period.

And dog owners in San Diego spend about 38% more on veterinary care than the national average — about $1,100 dollars a year.

The price increases are especially notable for preventative care.

In 2021, dog dental cleanings in San Diego were estimated at around $320. Now, the cost is estimated at closer to $700. And that's before any extractions or additional treatment.

“It's a big worry that I think of quite often and we try to do a lot of preventative health…for his teeth…but I do know he'll probably need some help and that'll be a big chunk of change,” Babcock said.

Beyond the vet bill

For Babcock, the costs extend well beyond clinic visits.

Food, supplements, and routine care to keep Cerulean healthy can total about $375 every couple of months.

“We used to do raw diet purely for his health and preventative issues later on," she said. "That has absolutely gone up so we absolutely do not do that anymore right now.”

Pet insurance is one option for dog owners to offset unexpected medical bills. But monthly premiums can range from about $30 to more than $150 per month, depending on the dog's age, breed, and coverage limits.

Cerulean has a pre-existing condition. Babcock said it makes finding useful insurance coverage more complicated.

“I had all the comparison charts, all the insurances, what would work…and so ultimately it wasn’t going to help me at that point,” she said.

Now, as Cerulean gets older, she’s reconsidering it.

“We've paid out of pocket, since then, he's not had any major health issues. So we're just, you know, praying and hoping that it continues that way.”

Making it work

Across San Diego County, dog owners say they are feeling similar pressure as the cost of living continues to rise.

Some say they cut spending elsewhere just to keep up with pet expenses. Others say they weigh every decision more carefully when it comes to veterinary care.

For Babcock, the rising cost of caring for Cerulean has also forced bigger questions about staying in San Diego long term.

“I think a big worry is, would I have to move in order to afford a comfortable lifestyle because it is so high in San Diego?” she said.

Still, she says she makes it work.

“He brings me a ton of comfort, a ton of peace,” she said. “I’d sell all my furniture before he’s not going to be taken care of.”

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In 1966, the newly-established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a rule to tackle entrenched discrimination on the job.

Every year, companies with a hundred or more workers would turn over to the government information about the race, ethnicity, sex and job categories of their employees.

This EEO-1 data, as it's known, has helped the federal agency figure out where people of color and women are not getting hired or promoted. Over decades, the EEOC's work has led to settlements worth billions.

Now, as part of a realignment of civil rights enforcement under President Trump, the EEOC is seeking to end its annual data collection while also getting rid of a 1979 regulation that allowed employers to take certain steps to address race and gender imbalances revealed by the data.

Together, the moves would mark an about-face in the civil rights agency's efforts to fulfill its mission.

Andrea Lucas, the Trump-appointed chair of the EEOC, did not respond to NPR's questions about the two proposals, which have been submitted to the White House for review.

But in interviews and public remarks, Lucas has repeatedly warned that programs or policies aimed at helping specific groups, such as Black people or women, are unlawful under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 if they exclude others.

"Regardless of what has happened before, the way to stop discriminating based on race is to stop discriminating based on race. The end. Full stop," Lucas said at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit earlier this month. "I think that that's a more beautiful vision of our country, and I think it's consistent with the text of the statute."

A roadmap for addressing discrimination

The 1979 regulation the EEOC seeks to rescind was issued with this very dilemma in mind: Can a company remedy discrimination by giving special consideration to those who were deprived of opportunities in the past?

The answer back then was yes. The agency gave the go-ahead for mentoring programs and even hiring targets.

"The EEOC says you can take some of these voluntary efforts, even though they will be race- or gender-conscious," says Chai Feldblum, who served on the commission during the Obama and first Trump administrations. "This is the EEOC giving employers the roadmap of how they can take race and gender into account in a positive way and not violate the law."

The guidelines, issued in January 1979, made clear that companies first had to document a problem, and then come up with a reasonable and time-limited plan for how to increase the number of minorities or women in their ranks.

Five months later, the Supreme Court embraced that roadmap. In a 5-2 decision known as Weber, the court found that an affirmative action plan to remedy past discrimination was lawful provided it did not "unnecessarily trammel the interests of white employees" and that it was temporary.

In 1987, the court issued another decision, known as Johnson, extending protection to efforts aimed at helping women.

Now known as the Weber-Johnson standard, it's still the law regardless of what happens with the EEOC's 1979 regulation, says Feldblum. But for how long, she's not sure.

"I think the Supreme Court is just waiting for a case that might allow them to overturn those two important cases," she says.

How data has helped root out discrimination

The more imminent change, assuming the EEOC's proposals go forward, is the demise of the agency's annual collection of employee demographics. Usually, the data collection begins in late spring. So far this year, there's been no word of it.

Since the 1960s, the EEOC has recovered billions of dollars for workers who have suffered discrimination on the job, and in many cases, EEO-1 data played a key role.

"It's one of the first things that you can look at as you're trying to learn more," says Karla Gilbride, who served as the EEOC's general counsel during the Biden administration.

Protecting U.S. workers from unlawful discrimination — already a hard task — could become significantly harder if the government no longer has that data within arm's reach, Gilbride says. Having to subpoena data would make enforcement far more laborious and less efficient.

A lawsuit against Bass Pro Shops

Consider the lawsuit against Bass Pro Shops, first filed in 2011.

The EEOC alleged the company, formally known as Bass Pro Outdoor World, discriminated against Black and Hispanic job applicants by not hiring them — not just at one store, but across the country, even in places with sizable Black and Hispanic populations.

"Store by store by store, sort of the same idea, where you had areas that had a significant number of Blacks and Latinos, and either zero or very few at the stores," says David Lopez, who was the EEOC's general counsel at the time and now leads the Civil Rights, Migration and Workplace Law Initiative at Arizona State University.

The EEOC saw that pattern because it had Bass Pro's demographic data on file. Government investigators could easily compare the outdoor gear shop to other retailers in the same counties. They could also compare Bass Pro's workforce to the available pool of workers in the surrounding areas.

While the data by itself could not prove discrimination, Lopez says it was a green light to agency investigators to dig further.

"Because they had a reason to investigate, they were able to discover that there were managerial comments that were reflective of discriminatory animus, that they were looking for a certain type of person," says Lopez.

Someone who was white, according to the government's complaint.

Bass Pro called the allegations "threadbare" and accused the government of merely relying on "a handful of isolated incidents of alleged inappropriate behavior."

EEOC investigators later bolstered their case, identifying implicated managers and job applicants by name and compiling a list of dozens of Bass Pro stores with a low representation of Black and Hispanic employees.

Finally, in 2017, the company settled for $10.5 million. Bass Pro did not admit to any wrongdoing, but agreed to appoint a diversity director and to make good-faith efforts to recruit and hire non-white candidates.

Lopez considered the settlement a big win, one of many he oversaw in his time at the EEOC that were built on data.

"You can have a hunch, but there's nothing like the cold, hard numbers," he says.

Agency chair says data has been misused

Early indications of the EEOC's plan to stop gathering data came a year ago.

In announcing the opening of the 2025 data collection period, Lucas posted a message warning employers of their obligations under federal civil rights law.

"You must not use the information collected and reported in your organization's EEO-1 Component 1 report to justify treating employees differently based on their race, sex, or other protected characteristic," she wrote.

In an interview with NPR earlier this year, Lucas explained her missive. She said a number of companies have been misusing the data — including in ways that have hurt white people and men.

Lucas believes the only people who should know the gender and race of a company's employees are its lawyers and human resources staff. Instead, after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a white police officer, a number of companies published their demographic data as part of public commitments to address the lack of diversity within their ranks.

Subsequently, she contends, companies began making decisions about whom to hire, promote and interview for jobs based on sex or race, noting some even gave hiring managers financial incentives to hit diversity targets.

That use of demographic data crosses the line, she says. "All it has to do is motivate — in whole or in part — your decision making, and you're into unlawful territory."

Lucas declined to single out any company by name, citing the confidentiality of agency investigations. But according to court documents, the EEOC has accused Nike and The New York Times of discrimination against white employees and job applicants. The two companies are among many that published their demographic data along with their diversity-related goals for several years.

A focus on data in select cases

Paradoxically, Lucas has at times talked up the importance of data.

"There is no other way to protect victims of harassment and discrimination unless you collect information about them," she said while speaking in April at a conference at Harvard organized by the Brandeis Center, an independent civil rights organization.

In that instance, she was defending the EEOC's subpoena, requiring the University of Pennsylvania to turn over employee information that the agency doesn't routinely collect: the names, addresses and phone numbers of Jewish employees who may have witnessed antisemitic acts on campus.

The university has, so far, refused to comply with the subpoena, noting in court filings that it echoes terrifying periods of history for Jewish communities.

"Driving a car without a dashboard"

The profound changes underway at the EEOC have kept David Cohen busy. The president of the management consulting firm DCI Consulting has fielded many calls from confused clients, wondering whether the work they've been doing to promote equal opportunity should continue.

For now, he's telling clients that keeping track of their employee demographics is a smart business move, whether the government requires it or not.

Without it, he says, a company has no way of knowing if it has a problem — whether it's recruiting from too narrow a pool, or has a bad manager somewhere, or is screening out qualified candidates for no good reason.

"It's like you're driving a car without a dashboard. You have no idea what's going [on]. Am I speeding? Am I not speeding? Is my check-engine light on?" he says. "You have nothing."

He's been reminding clients that while priorities have shifted at the EEOC, federal civil rights laws haven't changed.

"Stay within the law, and you will be okay," he says.

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A United Airlines flight from Newark, N.J., to Palma de Mallorca, Spain, pulled a U-turn late Saturday over what appears to have been a suspiciously named Bluetooth device on board.

Flight tracking data shows that the flight, which should have landed in Spain after a nearly eight-hour flight, instead returned to Newark after 4 hours and 24 minutes in the air.

United Airlines told NPR via email that the flight turned around "to address a potential security concern." Multiple posts on social media from self-identified passengers indicate that the problem was a Bluetooth device on board the plane. Several of those passengers posted photos or videos of them on board the flight or in the airport, with timestamps that match the flight's actual schedule.

Some passengers knew little more than that the flight attendants had asked passengers to turn off their Bluetooth devices. One post referenced in-flight announcements with "lots of comments like 'this little joke is ruining it for everyone.' "

Audio from air traffic control, archived by LiveATC.net, sheds a little more light on the situation. One voice on the recording asked what had happened with the flight, which had recently landed back at Newark and remained on the tarmac.

"There's a security detail out there, someone had a Bluetooth speaker and they named it a certain four-letter word," another voice responded. "So they have to inspect the whole aircraft including the cargo area [and] passengers have to evacuate."

"That's crazy," the first voice replied.

"Four-letter word," in this case, doesn't appear to refer to a curse word, but rather a different four-letter word that triggered airline security procedures.

"There is an active Bluetooth network labeled 'BOMB,' " one self-identified passenger wrote on TikTok. (She shared a video of herself drinking sangria, geotagged to Palma de Mallorca, after the flight finally arrived.) Another Reddit post of someone who claimed to be the spouse of a passenger similarly reported that the word in question was "bomb" and that the device was a teenager's speaker.

The flight eventually reboarded and landed in Palma de Mallorca at 3:47 p.m. local time on Sunday, about 9 and a half hours late.

Copyright 2026 NPR

At least one nonprofit organization in San Diego County said Friday it is rationing food to help a growing need for emergency food.

“We’re rationing now,” said Josh Bohannan, the chief strategist for Father Joe’s Villages. “It is going to get worse before it gets better if the policy continues to stay the same as it is.”

Earlier this month, he said, the organization ran out of food during a distribution event for the first time in recent memory, forcing volunteers to turn away about 200 drivers who typically form lines at the nonprofit’s pantry on E Street in San Diego.

On Friday, volunteers rationed hundreds of bags filled with fruit, canned goods, frozen food and cases of soft drinks.

“We’re doubling it up today,” said Johanne Trujillo, a warehouse manager for the organization. “I’m going to say we have about, hopefully, 600 bags to help out. And I’m hoping that’s enough.”

This time, there was enough.

After the two-hour event, a spokesperson said nearly all of the food and drinks were depleted, serving more than 1,000 people.

CalFresh benefits can be used to buy food at most grocery stores.

Signed into law last year, the One Big Beautiful Bill greenlit several changes to CalFresh benefits that have been taking effect this year. In April, some noncitizens became ineligible for benefits.

Come Monday, the new rules will require some adults to work or volunteer for 80 hours a month, and they’ll affect veterans and homeless people unless they are excused for other reasons. According to the San Diego Hunger Coalition, up to 96,000 people in San Diego County are expected to lose their ability to recertify for CalFresh as changes roll out throughout the year.

Roselle Jones said she's one of the several hundreds of thousands of Californians who have already lost their benefits. She said she didn’t meet the income requirements by about $100. Food distribution events like the one Father Joe’s Villages hosted Friday have become vital for her family of five.

“We have to learn how to cut corners now and just slack back on, you know, the things that we had (that) now we don't have," she said. "We just have to get out there and hustle some other kind of way to get money and food.”

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In the hunt for cheaper gas, people are going out of their way for discounted fuel at Costco and Walmart — many of them visiting for the first time. Drivers also are now filling up more often, but topping up with fewer gallons at a time.

As the U.S. war in Iran continues to drive up gas prices, Costco's gas stations have been selling record amounts of fuel, executives told investors on a call Thursday. In fact, Costco had never sold as much gas as it did between April and mid-May, CEO Ron Vachris said, with stations having to get multiple daily gas deliveries to keep up. People have been willing to drive further and wait in line longer to buy cheaper gas.

"A lot of members are increasing their frequency of visiting the gas station to top up in between what would have normally been a gap between getting the tank to empty because of the concern about what might the gas price be tomorrow," said Gary Millerchip, Costco's finance chief.

At Walmart's gas stations, in recent weeks, people have begun to fill up with fewer than ten gallons at a time, for the first time since 2022.

"That's an indication of stress," Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey told investors last week.

"We see with our customers that the high-income customer is spending with confidence," Rainey added later, "while the lower-income consumer is more budget-conscious and perhaps navigating financial distress."

Similarly, the discount gas-station chain Murphy USA also told investors in late April that it had started to draw more first-time shoppers.

"We're also seeing lapsed customers returning to our stores," said CEO Mindy West. "They're changing their behavior and becoming more value-seeking shoppers."

The average U.S. price of regular gas on Thursday was $4.39 per gallon, according to AAA. That's up $1.22 from a year ago. This has Americans devoting a greater share of their paycheck to gas. The latest federal data shows that spending at gas stations in April surged a whopping 21% compared to last year.

A growing chorus is warning of even higher prices to come — potentially within weeks — as global oil supplies are depleting. Oil tankers have been blocked from passing through the Strait of Hormuz near Iran, a vital corridor for global fuel shipments.

At an investment conference on Thursday, a top ExxonMobil executive said that prices could jump by an "order of magnitude" in a matter of weeks, as oil reserves reach "unheard-of inventory levels... really, really low levels," according to Oil & Gas Journal.

Over time, the higher gas prices will also lead to higher prices on store shelves, according to executives at both Walmart and Costco. Rising fuel costs are adding up for companies that transport a lot, including manufacturers and retailers. Plus, the Strait of Hormuz is also a critical route for shipments of fertilizer needed to grow food. And Costco's Millerchip said the cost of petroleum has driven up the cost of resin, which is likely to increase the price of items using plastic or polyester.

Copyright 2026 NPR

As oenophiles across the county celebrate San Diego Wine Week, the industry saw growth and positive trends in the past year, according to a report released today by the San Diego County Vintners Association.

The State of San Diego Wine Industry 2026 report focused on what two- thirds of regional wineries reported as "good" or "excellent" growing conditions in the past year, and despite national trends, stable levels of employment.

"San Diego wineries prove that great winemaking and real hospitality are what keep a wine region healthy," Vintners Association Board President Al Fischer said. "The broader market is going through some changes right now, but our region just keeps adapting with discipline and creativity."

A total of 172 wineries call San Diego County home, from Block 270 Vineyard in Fallbrook in the north to Valentina Vineyards in Dulzura in the southeast. These vintners grow 43 wine grape varieties, with the most common being Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Merlot and Sangiovese.

According to Wednesday's report, 24% of the region's wineries plan to expand with new hiring in the coming year, and wages remain steady — especially compared to Napa and Sonoma, where wages have plateaued or declined from post-pandemic highs.

"San Diego County's wine industry is an economic engine for our rural communities and a powerful draw for tourism," County Supervisor Jim Desmond said. "This report validates that despite headwinds facing the broader industry, our local wine producers continue to distinguish themselves through craftsmanship, innovation and hospitality that sets them apart."

The authors of the report said demand for local wines remains relatively stable, but the real challenge is protecting profitability as costs climb. Additionally, despite the sunny skies in hiring, 41% of respondents to a San Diego County Vintners Association survey said sales have declined.

One change the industry can make to recoup costs is in the price of its tasting fees — the median of which for county wineries is $20, well below the $38 national average.

"Behind every wine bottle from San Diego is a small business creating jobs, supporting agriculture, and welcoming visitors from across California and beyond," said Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego. "I'm encouraged to see this region's wineries growing wages and expanding teams even as the national market tightens. It's a testament to what California's entrepreneurs do best."

San Diego Wine Week runs through Sunday, culminating at its SDCVA Annual Wine Festival at Bernardo Winery from 3-6 p.m.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has had an answer when asked about the sky-high ticket prices for this summer's World Cup: They are simply adapting to the North American market.

That's the justification FIFA has used to sharply increase ticket prices for the World Cup taking place in the United States, Mexico and Canada this summer compared to previous tournaments.

But those increases could come with some serious consequences: The New York and New Jersey attorneys general said on Wednesday they have launched a probe into FIFA over ticket practices.

And it's not just the ticket prices. New York Atty Gen. Letitia James and New Jersey Atty Gen. Jennifer Davenport are also looking at FIFA's sales process, including the way it has allocated tickets to fans and whether the organization's sales tactics have contributed to "soaring prices."

Here's what to know about how FIFA sells tickets — and why it has become such a flash point with just two weeks to go before the start of the tournament.

FIFA's prices draw condemnation

Ticket prices for this tournament aren't just much higher than previous World Cups. For the first time, FIFA has introduced dynamic pricing, leading to sharply higher prices for many World Cup games.

A clear example is for the final match, set to take place in New Jersey on July 19. FIFA initially sold the most expensive tickets at $6,730 — already much higher than the about $1,600 price for the most expensive tickets for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

By its latest sales windows starting in April, the same category of tickets cost $10,990.

The prices have sparked widespread outrage — and drawn wide scrutiny on FIFA. Even President Trump, who has established a close relationship with Infantino, told the New York Post he wouldn't pay the roughly $1,000 for nosebleed seats for the U.S. opening game against Paraguay next month.

Compounding the problem, FIFA back in April also unveiled an entirely new category of tickets called "Front Category" seats, offering front row seats across the stadium, that were priced even more expensively.

A front row seat in the lower bowl for the final costs more than $30,000.

FIFA's sales tactics also under scrutiny

One looming legal question is whether FIFA acted as a monopoly and unfairly used its status to sell tickets, attorneys and ticketing experts told NPR.

Derek Howard, an attorney who also teaches at the University of San Francisco, said FIFA has closely guarded information about how it's pricing tickets, how many tickets are left to sell and when it decides to adjust prices. That's kept ticket buyers in the dark, and FIFA holding all the cards.

"FIFA has been using what we might call scare tactics to create a demand for a ticket and telling people that they have to pay the high prices because if they don't, they're going to miss out on this once in a lifetime event," Howard says. "The problem behind that is that the consumers have no way of knowing whether or not that's true."

Even in the current "last-minute sales" window, FIFA releases tickets across games at periodic times — while encouraging fans to act now. That means someone logging in any given day has no way to know if the tickets being offered are the last remaining or whether more will be available later and at what price.

"Being honest about ticket sales is not complicated. But FIFA has turned buying a ticket to the World Cup into a gauntlet of confusion, fake scarcity, and impossibly high prices — all at the expense of consumers and hardworking New Jerseyans," Davenport said in her statement.

FIFA has wide discretion in assigning seat locations

One of the big peculiarities of World Cup ticket sales is that fans are not able to pick a specific seat until much later in the process.

Initially, fans can only pick between four broad ticket categories; later they are assigned specific seats by FIFA. That's not typical in the U.S., where fans are accustomed to picking the seat they want at the time of purchase.

Seating maps for most stadiums like the one in New Jersey indicated that Category 1 tickets — or the most expensive ones — cover large parts of the lower bowl of a stadium. By glancing at those stadium maps, fans could assume they had a good shot at getting a prime sideline view. What FIFA doesn't clearly spell out is that a number of those sideline seats are reserved for premium tickets and other categories of ticket holders such as corporate sponsors.

There's no way of knowing how many seats are left in any of the sections — and many fans who bought those expensive Category 1 tickets have complained they got stuck in less desirable seats, such as behind corners.

This World Cup is not the first time FIFA has used this blind ticketing system, but it is the first time it's charged such high prices, sparking outrage among fans who feel they've been overcharged.

FIFA can also change seating charts

Like most sports, FIFA divvies up the stadium seating map into different categories with different prices. Lower sideline seats are more expensive than those in the high up, "nosebleed section," for example.

But FIFA reserves the right to adjust seating charts as it wants. That means, FIFA could increase the number of seats considered Category 1, so a fan who thought they were buying in a top-tier section could end up in a previously lower-category seat.

FIFA has traditionally sold tickets this way. But James took issue with that.

"No one should be manipulated into paying sky-high prices for seats, and fans should be able to trust that the tickets they purchase will be the ones they receive," she said in the statement announcing the probe.

FIFA does state that "visual representations of Ticket Categories on the Ticketing Website, such as Stadium maps and illustrations, are for guidance purposes only and may not reflect the actual layout and boundaries of a particular Stadium."

But Howard says that doesn't give FIFA complete immunity from legal action. He said shifting categories after a fan has bought a ticket could be considered a "bait and switch."

So what now?

FIFA had not replied to an NPR request for comment by the time of publication.

But with the start of the World Cup only two weeks away, legal experts concede it would be hard — if not impossible — for FIFA to revamp its sales processes before the tournament.

But FIFA could be liable in the U.S. long after the World Cup ends in mid-July, they say.

FIFA could face class action lawsuits from aggrieved fans. Several Democratic lawmakers have also written to FIFA seeking answers about its ticket practices. And other attorneys general could probe FIFA. California Atty Gen. Rob Bonta said last month the state sent a letter to FIFA "raising concerns about reports of potentially misleading ticketing practices."

FIFA continues to justify its ticket prices saying it is adapting to the American market. That's been lucrative for FIFA. Infantino said the World Cup could earn it more than $11 billion, including broadcast deals.

But those FIFA ticket prices have sparked outrage among fans — and a potential legal mess.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Sign up for the Planet Money newsletter. The world is confusing. Economics can help.

Affordability has been a politically potent word, but an ill-defined measure of financial pain, often used as a reference to inflated prices.

But new research from the Brookings Institution released Wednesday describes affordability by comparing the rising costs of essentials against family incomes. By that measure, the report found, in 2024 45.5% of U.S. households did not earn enough to cover their necessities.

The report concluded that a mere $1,000 hike in the annual cost of living would leave another 3 million households unable to make ends meet.

That precarity is partly due to the gap between inflation and wages. In 2024, national wages saw just a small 1.3% bump, well below the rate of inflation of 2.9% that year, according to the Census Bureau.

"My main takeaway is that when we talk about affordability, we've been focusing on inflation. But there's the income side of the story that we often do not talk about," said Andre Perry, the director of Brookings' Center for Community Uplift.

For the new report, the Brookings researchers gathered household income data for every county in the U.S. and compared those incomes with the estimated costs of necessities like food and transportation in those places.

Households across the country are not earning enough

Housing, healthcare and childcare are especially large chunks of household budgets that families have little control over, said Hannah Stephens, a senior research assistant at the center. "In order to actually solve affordability, we have to deal with these larger, most structural costs that are harming households," she said.

For some families, closing that gap between essentials and income has meant skipped meals, increased debt and delayed medical care, the report found.

Those decisions are playing out across the country, though the data showed some divides across states and racial groups. According to the paper, in 2024, more than 50% of families in New York state could not manage on their incomes. And while households in Washington, D.C., outperformed the national average, with over 60% able to afford necessities, the city's Black residents were significantly worse off, more than 20 percentage points behind the district's baseline. At the same time, Hispanic households did better than the city as a whole, at 3 percentage points higher than the baseline.

There was a brief moment of relief from pandemic stimulus checks

This challenge is longstanding: More than 40% of households were not able to afford what they needed almost every year from 2014 to 2024, according to the report, except for in 2021 and 2022. During those years, Americans' bank accounts were boosted by federal stimulus checks and other forms of government aid meant to help with the COVID-19 pandemic recovery.

Yet the economic health of households relapsed in 2022, when inflation spiked and those federal assistance programs began to expire, shrinking the social safety net at the same time millions of families were moving closer to the edge.

Although the report cites an extra $1,000 in annual expenses as a tipping point many households cannot afford, it does not examine data from 2026, when new financial pressures may have already pushed more families past that point. Gas prices have risen 50% since the war against Iran started at the end of February. Overall, the Consumer Price Index was up 3.8% in April year-over-year — well above the Federal Reserve's 2% target.

A survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, also released Wednesday, found that food insecurity in the U.S. has reached levels not seen since 2020, in the depths of the pandemic. The agency polls people on whether they are relying on food banks or government assistance for their groceries — or are skipping meals.

Many families did receive an extra tailwind this year after Republican lawmakers' signature tax and spending bill led to bigger tax refunds. That's part of what's kept American consumers spending, according to the Bank of America Institute. Excluding spending on gas, year-over-year spending in April was up 4%.

Wages are rising much faster for families already making more

That report also found that incomes have grown quickly between 2025 and 2026 — but for higher-income families. Those households saw pay rise 6% this April compared to a year earlier. But the boost for lower earners was just 1.5%. Economists have been using the term "K-shaped economy" to describe unequal growth, where upper-income households increasingly earn and spend more, while lower-income families earn and spend less.

The Brookings affordability report found nearly 38 million households would be able to get by if workers' wages rose by $10 per hour. But that's a tall order in a nation where the federal minimum wage has been frozen at $7.25 an hour since 2009.

"It's dramatic, in the sense that we're not doing that," Perry said. "But can we do it? Yes."

Copyright 2026 NPR

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President Trump has called for a temporary waiver of the federal gas tax, which costs drivers 18.4 cents per gallon.

It's one of several attempts to relieve pain at the pump as voters grow increasingly frustrated with gasoline prices, which have hit four-year highs thanks to the oil trade disruption triggered by the war with Iran.

A national gas tax holiday would require an act of Congress. Lawmakers have floated the idea, with several bills introduced before Trump called for a temporary pause on the tax.

But even with the president's backing, it's not clear whether his proposal will make it to the floor for a vote. Gas tax holidays are controversial, with advocates arguing they provide quick relief and with critics denouncing them as costly and even counterproductive.

Here's what you need to know.

How much would a federal gas tax holiday save? 

At most, waiving the tax would save drivers 18.4 cents per gallon, or $2.76 on a 15-gallon fill-up. The national average price for a gallon of gasoline is now $4.46, up from around $3 prewar, so the relief would make up for only a fraction of that price spike.

But there are two reasons that drivers might save even less. First, some of the tax savings might instead go toward refineries and gas stations. That's especially true for a shorter holiday, says Kent Smetters, the faculty director at the Penn Wharton Budget Model, which researches the cost of public policies.

"What we generally think is that over long periods of time, most of the tax cut would go to consumers," he says. "But over shorter periods of time, suppliers — even though it's fairly competitive to sell gas — they still have some market power." And that market power means they could hike their prices a little bit, eating into those tax savings and keeping some of the benefit for themselves.

Penn Wharton estimates that about 13.2 cents a gallon in savings would actually reach consumers; Adam Hoffer, the director of excise tax policy at the Tax Foundation think tank, estimates it's about 16 cents.

And second, waiving the gas tax can increase demand for gasoline; that's the natural result of lower prices. That could worsen the supply-demand imbalance that's driving prices up.

A pause on the federal gas tax alone probably isn't large enough to send demand soaring. But Patrick De Haan, an analyst with the app GasBuddy, told NPR this spring that if states widely suspend their own gas taxes, that could push demand — and prices — back up.

That's because state taxes are usually much higher than the federal tax. The amount varies by state — from 9 cents a gallon in Alaska to 70.9 cents in California. On average, states tack on an extra 33.3 cents per gallon.

A handful of states have already cut or paused their gas taxes. Kentucky lopped 10 cents off in May. Georgia completely froze its gas tax in March for two months and has extended its freeze as the conflict with Iran continues.

The price of a gas tax pause

While waiving gas taxes may save drivers a bit at the pump, it means less money for keeping roads safe.

Revenue from the federal gas tax goes into the Highway Trust Fund, which is used to pay for interstate construction and repair, as well as to invest in mass transit. Revenue from state gas taxes is often used for local road repairs.

The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated that when Georgia paused its tax for two months, this cost the state about $361 million.

"Now we're talking real money," Smetters said.

That's less funding available to the state for repairs. "Anytime you take away a source of funding for highway construction and maintenance, then you're running the risk of the roads getting worse and not better," said Rob Bhatt, an insurance analyst at LendingTree, which recently issued a report about the condition of U.S. roads.

Drivers feel the pain of poorly maintained roads in very familiar ways: in potholes and dips. Patrick Marshall, a music teacher in New Orleans, wasn't watching close enough one morning and hit a dip that nearly broke a wheel off his 1989 GMC Sierra. The incident cost Marshall $2,500 and resulted in a 10-block walk to work.

"It's a tough hit to take when it's an unexpected expense," Marshall said.

(Well, not that unexpected — at least not in a city infamous for rough roads. When Marshall leads his students on brass and drum lines through New Orleans' streets, they know to shout warnings of "Pothole!" loud enough to eclipse the trumpets and French horns.)

All those pothole-related damages add up: AAA estimated that damage from potholes cost drivers some $26.5 billion in repairs in 2021.

Overall, this month's LendingTree report, which was based on federal data from 2024, found that 8.9% of the nation's road miles are in poor condition. Rhode Island scored the worst, with 31.5% of road miles rated as poor, with California and Massachusetts coming in second and third at 27.0% and 24.5%, respectively.

Minnesota stood out as the most improved between 2019 and 2024 — the state reduced the share of road miles rated as poor by more than 60%. But nationally, the report didn't find much improvement at all over that five-year span.

And even drivers in Rhode Island, the report's lowest-rated state, say potholes are bad everywhere. "I hit a pothole in New York City about a month ago, though that literally took life out of me," said Rhode Island resident Carleen Quattrucci.

The bigger problem: The gas tax is broken 

Here's even more bad news: The federal gas tax hasn't collected enough money to fully fund highway construction and repairs for years. And that fundamental problem is only getting worse.

It wasn't always like this. The gas tax was based on the premise that the people who use highways the most should pay the most for their upkeep. And the more miles a driver puts on their car, the more gasoline or diesel they purchase, so the more tax they pay — no toll booth required.

From the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, that worked well, says the Tax Foundation's Hoffer.

"The revenue from gas tax collections was sufficient to cover all federal highway road construction and maintenance expenses," he says. "So the drivers were paying for the roads to be maintained and more roads to be built, when they drove on the roads. It was a terrific system."

But the last time the gas tax was raised was in 1993. It was 18.4 cents a gallon then; it's 18.4 cents a gallon now.

Yet since 1993, the cost of road repairs and construction has risen — and the price of gasoline has tripled.

"It's a weird tax," says Smetters, because it's not pegged to the price of gasoline, so it doesn't rise with inflation.

Meanwhile, new vehicles have gotten more fuel efficient, and per capita miles driven per year peaked 20 years ago. That means the government collects less and less with the gas tax.

Now, the tax falls short of the highway fund's needs every year. For 2026, the shortfall is estimated to be $17 billion. Congress has to keep making up the gap with general taxpayer funds.

Raising the federal tax wouldn't fix the problem for long 

Hypothetically, the national tax could be increased. After all, many states' gas taxes are set to raise automatically.

One problem: "Nobody likes gas taxes. Politicians don't like them. Drivers don't like them. Voters don't like them," Hoffer says. "So increasing these taxes is a real political challenge." That's even though higher gas taxes do have benefits. For example, by discouraging driving, they cut down on carbon emissions, which improves air quality and human health. And a well-designed gas tax is a fairer way of paying for highways than drawing from the general tax pool, Hoffer says.

But there's another problem: Gas taxes make less sense as more drivers choose electric vehicles. EVs use roads and highways, so they add to the wear and tear on infrastructure. But they don't burn gasoline. So as EVs make up a growing share of vehicles, even a significantly higher gas tax would be doomed. It would bring in less money over time, because fewer drivers would pay it.

Many states have imposed EV registration fees to address this problem; the federal government is also considering adding one. However, because EVs still make up a very small share of vehicles, this doesn't come close to addressing the gas tax shortfall. Also, in many cases the fee for EVs is — or would be — much higher than the typical driver pays in gas taxes, creating an unfair system. Other potential solutions are being debated too. A lobbying group representing major automakers is pushing for a fee that all car owners would pay based on vehicle weight, so trucks would pay more than sedans. Heavier vehicles are harder on roads.

Some states are experimenting with road-user fees, which drivers pay based on how many miles they drive. In some cases, the programs use odometer readings; in others, they rely on devices or phone apps to measure miles driven. While economists say they're a fairer way to collect revenue — because, like with a gas tax traditionally, the people who use roads the most contribute the most toward their upkeep — those plans can raise privacy concerns, depending on the technology used to track miles driven.

Smetters, of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, also points to congestion fees and toll lanes as alternative funding mechanisms.

None of these ideas has yet caught on as a replacement for the federal fuel tax. But one thing is clear: At some point down the road, this tax is going to run out of gas.

Copyright 2026 NPR

When Colleen in Pennsylvania went to fill up her tank, it was $4.37 a gallon. She wasn't thinking about politics. She was thinking about what she was going to have to give up to keep gassing up her car.

"Telling my kiddos, 'we have to cut back on some stuff so that we can pay to put gas in the car and get from point A to point B,'" she said in a voice memo sent to NPR.

Colleen is one of about a dozen voters participating in Swing Shift, a project from NPR that will regularly check in with swing voters from swing states. The participants have all voted for candidates from both parties over the years and aren't using their full names so they can speak more freely about politics and, in this case, gas prices, without fear of personal or professional repercussions.

Colleen voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 and Trump in 2020. In her voice memo, she said she doesn't feel like political leaders are showing enough concern about the impact of high gas prices.

"I guess their pockets are deeper than mine," said Colleen. "Maybe I should start thinking more about politics as I fill up."

Voters like Colleen have seen slight relief in recent days as gas prices have fallen slightly. But a gallon of regular unleaded is still well over a dollar more than it was this time last year. That could have political consequences in the midterm elections in the fall. But it's already affecting the way voters in NPR's Swing Shift project are living their lives.

John in Philadelphia says he's paying about $4.25 a gallon, a big jump from just a couple months ago.

"How am I feeling about it? Not good." he said. "High gas prices lead to high grocery prices and other prices."

He tends to vote Republican and supported Trump in 2024 after swinging to Democrats in 2020. In his voice memo, John mentioned his wife recently had dinner out with friends at a chain restaurant. Her pasta entree was $30.

"It's unbelievably expensive to do anything," he said.

Lee lives in Nevada, where gas prices are even higher.

"I hear people on the East Coast and the Midwest paying $3 a gallon when I am paying $5.50 for the same gas," he said in a lengthy voice memo detailing his thoughts on the price of gas.

He's upset that gas prices are so much higher in western states and blames Democrats. He voted for former President Joe Biden in 2020 but switched to President Trump in 2024.

"I mean, yeah, technically he's the one who started the [Iran] war, so ultimately you could blame him, but this war is needed," Lee said of Trump.

In a recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, more than 60 percent of respondents blamed President Trump for the current increase in gas prices. Lee might accept that Trump is to blame, but he doesn't fault him.

"It's time we finally take care of Iran, get them handled and if we have to deal with the high gas prices for a couple months, so be it," said Lee.

And, he points out, gas prices were actually higher four years ago when Biden was in office. Lee was angrier then, when the national average for regular unleaded peaked just above $5 a gallon. He blamed Biden's green energy commitments.

Jason in North Carolina, another Swing Shift participant, remembers that price spike too, though in his voice memo he recalled Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as the spark that drove up prices.

Given that context, "I don't feel all that bad about it," Jason said of the $3.67 per gallon he paid in early May.

Earlier this month, gas prices spiked in the Midwest. It was the result of a combination of problems with refinery operations regionally and high global oil prices. That's unfortunately when Michelle in Michigan went to fill up her tank.

"It was $4.96 cents per gallon. Wow," Michelle said.

This was for regular unleaded at one of the cheapest stations around. She swung to Trump in 2024 and is living on a fixed income.

"I feel very frustrated and kind of shocked when I think about it," she said, adding that everyone she spoke to at the gas station felt the same way. "That was a conversation for sure at the gas station."

For Theresa, from outside of Pittsburgh, it was $4.69.

"For the cheap gas," she said.

She's been shopping around for the best gas prices, using apps to look for discounts. She voted for Trump in 2024 and says this is going to affect her vote in November.

"I'm just really going to watch and look at these candidates more carefully to see who I feel is going to be more responsive to our needs and to be able to help out the middle class, because right now we are suffering," Theresa said.

She's already worrying about how much fuel oil will cost this winter when she'll need it to heat her home. That too is tied to the global price of oil.

The NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found 81 percent of respondents said current gas prices are a strain on their household budgets.

"Listen, I ain't gonna lie," said Gerald in Georgia. "This gas is kicking my butt."

Especially since his beloved dually pickup truck runs on diesel fuel, which is even more expensive. But he voted for Trump in 2024 after a lifetime of backing Democrats and still trusts that the president has a plan.

"You know it is my prediction that once the mission is complete, prices will be much much lower," Gerald said, referring to the war. "Fingers crossed."

Like Theresa, he's using apps and cutting back where he can.

Wally, also in Georgia, a fellow Biden to Trump voter, noticed gas prices tick down a little this week, but it was already too late for his Memorial Day weekend plans.

"I just ended up staying at home, hanging out in the back yard, enjoying some quiet time," said Wally. "No fill ups, no state to state trips, just keeping the spend to as much of a minimum as possible."

Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated May 27, 2026 at 6:15 PM PDT

A Google software engineer has been charged with using confidential company information to make $1.2 million on Polymarket, in the second known federal criminal case connected to lucrative trades on a prediction market site.

Michele Spagnuolo, 36, an Italian citizen who lives in Switzerland, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and other counts for allegedly placing bets on search trends based on internal Google data that tracked user searches.

"Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google's confidential, commercially valuable internal data," according to the federal indictment, which authorities unsealed on Wednesday.

Prosecutors say Spagnuolo, operating under the username AlphaRaccoon, placed a number of wagers on Google's most-searched person of 2025.

He bet nearly $1 million that Kanye West's wife, Bianca Censori, would not be the most-Googled person. He also bet more than $600,000 that Pope Leo XIV would not take the top spot, and he placed another wager that the rapper D4vd would be the No. 1 most-Googled individual at a time when most Polymarket traders "assigned near-zero probability" to the singer, who has been charged with murder.

In all, according to prosecutors, Spagnuolo bet $2.7 million on 25 separate outcomes in the Google search market, netting $1.2 million in profit.

The charging documents say once Spagnuolo transferred his winnings out of his cryptocurrency wallet, he removed the name AlphaRaccoon from his Polymarket account.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission brought a separate civil case against Spagnuolo for allegedly violating commodities law.

Spagnuolo did not return a request for comment.

Google said in a statement that the company cooperated in the federal government's investigation into Spagnuolo, who has been placed on leave.

"The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies," said Google spokesperson Jaclyn Vazquez.

Olivia Chalos, Polymarket's chief legal officer, said in a statement that it "is the only prediction platform to date whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States," adding that, since users on the site use crypto to trade, it is "transparent, traceable and bad actors leave footprints."

While the laws that apply to the prediction market industry are less strict than stock market rules, what's commonly understood as "insider trading," or abusing non-public confidential information for profit, is illegal under federal law.

But in prediction market forums on messaging sites such as Discord, users scour markets for large, unusual trades and encourage others to follow those bets with their own wagers.

"AlphaRaccoon has alpha," said one user on Discord, using the slang term for any information that gives you an edge on prediction markets, pointing to Spagnuolo's large bets on the most-Googled person of the year before Google had released it. "Check AlphaRaccoon account" said another user when asked how they should bet on the market.

Prediction markets sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket have erupted in popularity in President Trump's second term, allowing anyone to bet on company announcements, geopolitical events, the outcome of art auctions, elections and a seemingly endless array of other topics.

And as more and more people seek profits in every facet of modern life, online sleuths have increasingly identified wagers that appear too good to be true, suspiciously confident long-shot bets that have netted prediction market traders six- or seven-figure profits.

In one such instance last month, a master sergeant with the U.S. Army Special Forces was charged with using classified information about the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to rake in more than $400,000 on Polymarket.

The Spagnuolo indictment was unsealed a day after President Trump vowed on Truth Social to allow the prediction market industry to "thrive" by asserting federal regulators' "exclusive authority" over the controversial betting sites.

For months, administration officials have been fighting state officials in court over who should police the prediction market industry.

State officials say the platforms are essentially gambling operations and should be subject to state gambling rules, whereas the Trump administration views Polymarket and Kalshi as offering a type of "futures contract" that falls under the umbrella of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has historically overseen markets on things like grain futures, crude oil and precious metals.

Polymarket's most popular platform, which is based in Panama, is technically inaccessible to American users. It was forced to shut down its U.S. operation in 2022 as part of a settlement with federal regulators who said the site was operating without a trading exchange license.

Two years later, the FBI raided the apartment of the company's founder, Shayne Coplan, as part of a probe into whether Polymarket was violating that agreement.

The Trump administration dropped that investigation. Trump officials even invited Coplan to the White House for a summit on cryptocurrency.

The president's oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is an advisor to Polymarket and Kalshi, and a partner in 1789 Capital, which is a major investor in Polymarket.

Copyright 2026 NPR