Taylor Malkov and Haim Pershtein performed a Trump-inspired dance routine on Israel’s version of “Dancing with the Stars” which has gone viral, delighting many Trump supporters.
by ProPublica ProPublica announced that Ryan Little and Kevin Uhrmacher have been hired as deputy editors on our data and news applications teams. Little will serve as one of two deputy data editors, and Uhrmacher will work as deputy news applications editor. Together, they will strengthen ProPublica’s editing capacity and streamline collaboration between our data, interactive and reporting teams. “We’re so happy to have Ryan and Kevin joining us at ProPublica,” said Ken Schwencke, senior editor for data and news applications. “They are excellent managers and journalists, and we’re excited to bring them on to make the already-excellent journalism coming from these teams even better.” Little joins ProPublica from The Baltimore Banner, where he served as data editor and worked on stories that won a Pulitzer Prize, a George Polk Award and an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, among other honors. Those stories included a series revealing the city’s overdose crisis, an investigation of the transit nightmare Baltimore students face to get to school, and how listless container ships like the one that collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge are more common than previously known. Prior to his time at the Banner, Little worked at Mother Jones as a Roy W. Howard fellow. Little previously collaborated with ProPublica in 2022 on a rent pricing investigation that led to a Department of Justice inquiry and a settlement with Greystar, the nation’s largest landlord, who agreed to stop using anti-competitive rent algorithms. He holds a master’s degree from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, where he also teaches data journalism. “ProPublica has set the standard for accountability data journalism, and I am delighted to join the team,” Little said. “I’m eager to pursue audacious, high-impact work together.” Uhrmacher comes to ProPublica from The Washington Post, where he worked for more than 11 years, most recently as graphics assignment editor overseeing data visualization and interactive stories. Uhrmacher was a driving force behind some of the Post’s most impactful visual journalism, including doing graphics editing on work that was a part of three Pulitzer Prizes. He launched numerous trackers, including those that followed state abortion laws and presidential appointees. He also served as a graphics editor and project manager for a database-driven story that detailed the history of enslavers in Congress, which won a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. “I’m thrilled to be joining ProPublica’s stellar news applications team, which has been an industry leader in interactive accountability journalism, including by making consequential data more accessible to the public,” Uhrmacher said. “ProPublica’s work exposing abuses of the public trust — at a global, national and local scale — makes it a top destination for any journalist, and I’m honored that the institution has entrusted me with this role.”
by Maya Miller and Jeremy Kohler ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. During his first term, President Donald Trump frequently turned to the issue of mental health, framing it as a national crisis that demanded action. He linked it to opioid addiction, mass shootings and a surge in veteran suicides — and he later used it to argue against COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures. At times, he backed up his rhetoric with action. His administration issued tens of millions of dollars in grants to expand community mental health services and continued funding contracts to help federal regulators enforce the parity law, which requires insurers to treat mental and physical health care equally. But just months after Trump returned to the presidency this year, his administration paused new rules issued in President Joe Biden’s final months that were designed to strengthen mental health protections and hold insurance companies accountable when they unlawfully denied coverage. That pause came after an industry group that advocates for large employers on issues related to employee benefits filed a lawsuit seeking to block the new rules. What’s more, Congress has curtailed funding for the Employee Benefits Security Administration, or EBSA, a small agency in the Department of Labor that enforces mental health parity in most employer-sponsored health insurance plans. The squeeze is largely due to the expiration of temporary supplemental funding Congress approved just weeks after Biden was elected president but before he took office. While the impact of these changes is hard to measure, federal employees, policy experts and front-line workers warn that suspending the rules and cutting enforcement funding could have serious consequences. They say it could mean longer waits for help when patients challenge insurance decisions, fewer investigations of insurers and employer health plans over possible violations of federal mental health protections, and more people going without care they’re legally entitled to. Their long-term predictions include more untreated mental illness and growing anger at insurers. “Imagine if you are a parent calling about lifesaving care your kid needs,” said Ali Khawar, who was second in command at EBSA before stepping down at the end of the Biden administration. With less money and fewer employees, he said, the agency isn’t equipped to open new investigations quickly. The suspended rules were meant to strengthen enforcement of the 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. The failure to provide the same level of access to mental health care as physical care has been well documented by researchers as well as by a recent ProPublica investigation. We found that insurers often block care, underpay mental health providers and make it hard for patients to find help — sometimes with deadly consequences. The rules, released in September 2024, required health plans to gather and report detailed data on how they restrict or deny mental health claims. If the plans found disparities when compared with medical care, insurers had to explain what they were doing to close those gaps, a requirement the Trump administration put on hold. In his first term, Trump positioned himself as an advocate for expanding mental health services and strengthening parity enforcement. His commission on opioid abuse even recommended giving EBSA more authority to penalize insurers that violate the parity rules, though Congress never approved the proposal. But after returning to office, his administration has moved to roll back several Biden-era initiatives, from solar energy grants to student loan relief. The new parity rules were no exception. Days before Trump’s second inauguration, the ERISA Industry Committee, or ERIC, a trade group representing large employers on employee benefits policy, sued to block the regulations. After that, the Trump administration went to court to ask to have the lawsuit paused while it considered whether to rescind or modify the rules. A federal judge granted the request, and the Trump administration promised not to enforce them during the litigation or for 18 months afterward. ERIC says that the new rules went beyond what Congress intended when it created the mental health parity law and were too vague and burdensome. But advocates for the new rules said the action effectively gutted the parity law’s strongest protections. “The expectation was that these rules would be incredibly significant in driving better compliance,” Khawar said. “So now that it is on hold, it is a significant benefit that will never be realized.” James Gelfand, ERIC’s president and CEO, said he believed the Biden administration went too far. “While we do support mental health parity generally, we don’t support this rule,” he said. “We don’t think that the Biden administration had any authority to write it.” He added that it created “an impossible standard that we can’t meet,” and that rules were “purposely vague so they could choose to enforce against whoever they wanted, whenever they wanted.” EBSA, which safeguards workplace benefits for 150 million Americans, has always had to make do with a small staff, and it was struggling even under the Biden administration, which backed its mission. In a 2023 report to Congress, the agency acknowledged that with one investigator for every 7,700 health plans, its resources “are limited compared to the vast universe that it regulates.” Those limits showed in the results: Between February 2021 and July 2024, EBSA conducted 150 investigations and issued just 70 letters finding violations of the parity law — though in many other cases, the agency worked with insurers and employers to resolve problems without a formal violation finding. And now it is pressing ahead with far fewer employees. The Senate Appropriations Committee has proposed holding EBSA’s base funding at the same level as last year but without the temporary boost Congress provided under the December 2020 No Surprises Act. That law, designed to protect patients from surprise medical bills, included extra funding to help EBSA handle a surge in complaints and new responsibilities. That funding expired a few months after Biden left office. With that support
Right-wing media company Newsmax has agreed to pay out $67 million in a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for promoting lies about the 2020 election. The announcement adds to a tally of over $900 million paid out by right-wing outlets for peddling these lies, underlining their role in spreading mass disinformation. Newsmax, which recently became a publicly traded company, disclosed the payment in its latest filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission submitted on Aug. 15. A display shows a Newsmax logo on the day of their IPO on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on March 31. The company’s cable news channel is a lower-end version of Fox News that launched in 2011 and an outgrowth of the long-running Newsmax website and magazine. Newsmax has frequently played a role in promoting right-wing lies and misinformation while attacking Democrats including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In recent weeks Newsmax hosts have attacked federal judges for ruling against the Trump administration, likening it to the Civil War, and have referred to Social Security as a scheme to “bankrupt the United States of America.” Dominion Voting Systems sued Newsmax over its coverage of the 2020 election, specifically citing the network’s repeated amplification of false Republican claims that electronic voting machines were somehow rigged in favor of former President Joe Biden’s campaign. Donald Trump lost the election to Biden and repeatedly lied and alleged that the race had been stolen from him. In reality, Trump lost the popular vote and the Electoral College. In the course of its suit, Dominion alleged that Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy played a central role in hosting conspiracy theorists like MyPillow boss Mike Lindell and Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to push false narratives about the race. The suit even uncovered an email from Newsmax host Bob Sellers asking his producer, “How long are we going to have to play along with election fraud?” The network also re-aired Fox News segments with more election misinformation. In March, Newsmax announced that it had agreed to a $40 million settlement with Smartmatic, another voting services company that was maligned during election coverage. The embarrassing payout come on the heels of Fox News agreeing to pay out nearly $800 million to Dominion for the right-wing outlet’s repeated airing of election lies and smears. The payments expose how the most well-known and watched conservative media outlets have been caught eagerly promoting falsehoods to their viewers, listeners, and readers—a practice which is ongoing. Related | Check out Trump’s dumb new plan to rig elections Despite these admissions and the cost incurred by the right for lying, the sitting president and his minions continue to claim the election was stolen. On Monday, Trump invoked these lies as part of a push to further restrict voting rights and help the Republican Party win elections. And despite Fox News’ embarrassing settlement, former host Jeanine Pirro, one of the network’s most prominent promoters of the election lies that led to the Dominion settlement, now serves as Trump’s U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and is hard at work parroting lies about crime in the capital. Conservative politicians and sympathetic media organizations like Newsmax and Fox continue to prop each other up and lie to the public, monetary consequences be damned.
When news broke this week that Sherrod Brown would run next year to reclaim a Senate seat in Ohio, Democrats cheered the reports as a huge coup. Before losing a reelection bid last year, Brown had been the last Democrat to win statewide office in a state that has veered sharply to the right over the past decade. His entry instantly transforms the Ohio race from a distant dream to a plausible pickup opportunity for the party. If most Democrats were ecstatic about Brown’s planned comeback bid, Amanda Litman was a bit less jazzed. To be sure, she’s a big fan of Brown, the gravelly-voiced populist who was once seen as a formidable presidential contender. (He never did run for the White House.) But Brown is now 72, and Litman, the founder of a group that encourages and trains first-time candidates, has been among the loudest voices calling for Democrats to ditch their gerontocracy once and for all. “In a year like this, if Sherrod Brown is really the best and only person that can make Ohio competitive, that’s who we should run,” Litman told me. But, she quickly added, “it is a damning indictment” of the Democratic Party in states such as Ohio that a just-defeated septuagenarian is its most viable choice. Litman has called for every Democrat over the age of 70 to retire at the end of their current term in office. A few have heeded that message: Earlier this year, Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois (80), Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire (78), Tina Smith of Minnesota (67), and Gary Peters of Michigan (66) all announced that they would not seek reelection next year. But in some of the nation’s biggest Senate races, Democrats are relying on an old strategy of recruiting—and then clearing the field for—long-serving party leaders with whom voters are already familiar. [Helen Lewis: The Democrats must confront their gerontocracy] In North Carolina, top Democrats aggressively lobbied former Governor Roy Cooper (68) to run for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Republican senator, Thom Tillis. And in Maine, the party is waiting to see if Governor Janet Mills (77) will challenge five-term Senator Susan Collins, the GOP’s most vulnerable incumbent, who is 72. If they run and win, Brown would be 80, Cooper would be 75, and Mills would be 85 at the end of their first Senate terms. Democratic strategists and advocates I spoke with acknowledged the tension between the party’s broadly shared desire to elevate a new generation of leaders and its embrace of older candidates in these key Senate races. But they said the decision was easy in the states they most need to win next year. “The frustration of voters, donors, and younger elected officials is real,” Martha McKenna, a former political director of the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, told me. But Cooper and Brown (and potentially Mills) “are brave patriots who have already shown they know how to run and win, which is thrilling to the Democratic grassroots base.” Any Democrats unhappy with their candidacies, McKenna added, “are defeatist bed wetters who would rather complain from the sidelines than get into the fight.” Winning the Senate is a long shot for Democrats in 2026. They would need to flip at least four Republican-held seats without losing any of their own, and the only blue state where a Senate race is up for grabs is Maine. But even a gain of two or three seats could put Democrats in position to take the majority in 2028, and they hope that a voter backlash to President Donald Trump’s second term, combined with the recruitment of strong candidates, could put states such as North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Iowa, and Alaska in play next year. Republicans have also tried to woo popular governors to mount Senate campaigns, with less success: Governors Chris Sununu of New Hampshire (50) and Brian Kemp of Georgia (61) each passed on the opportunity. Brown lost to Bernie Moreno by three and a half points in a state that Trump carried by 11 points. He will likely start as an underdog against Senator Jon Husted, who was appointed by Governor Mike DeWine to fill the seat that J. D. Vance vacated when he became vice president. But even if Brown falls short, Democrats argue, his strength as a candidate could force Republicans to spend millions of dollars they would otherwise have directed elsewhere. No other Democrat in Ohio can make the same case. [Read: Retirement is the new resistance] The push for Democrats to get younger has been driven not only by the party’s panic over former President Joe Biden’s age and performance last summer, but by the more recent deaths of three House Democrats during the first five months of 2025. The activist David Hogg sparked an internal feud by declaring, soon after becoming the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, that he would back primary challengers to some party incumbents in safe House seats. Younger Democrats did win key Senate seats last year in Arizona, New Jersey, and Michigan. And the party’s leading Senate contenders for 2026 in Texas, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Minnesota are in their 40s and early 50s. “We are in the fight of our lives, and that requires a truly multigenerational front,” Santiago Mayer, the founder of the youth-oriented progressive group Voters of Tomorrow, told me. “Of course we need young people running. We need young leaders who are vocal and visible around the country.” But Mayer said he had no problem with older Democrats such as Brown, Cooper, and (possibly) Mills leading the way in crucial races. “We need to be supporting the candidates who are proven winners,” he told me. Nowhere are Democrats more desperate to win than Maine, where Collins’s resilience has both frustrated the party and scared off some of its rising stars. In 2020, Collins defeated a well-funded Democratic opponent by nearly nine points even as Biden carried the state by the same margin.
The change at the Department of Housing and Urban Development could make it hard for speakers of other languages to access federal services.
As world leaders dash across the Atlantic for crunch talks, what will they and the others present regard as a win?
From Bunn and Pomerleau/Tax Foundation, “Will E.J. Antoni Raise Your Taxes?”: Every year the IRS adjusts more than a dozen tax thresholds to account for inflation, a process called indexing. In 2020 the 10% tax bracket applied to income up to $9,875 for single individuals and $19,750 for married couples. Thanks to inflation indexing, those thresholds are now $11,925 and $23,850, respectively. … The IRS doesn’t come up with those inflation adjustments on its own. It relies directly on the consumer price index, which the BLS publishes monthly. … Will that be true under Mr. Antoni? There are reasons for concern. He co-authored a 2024 paper with Peter St. Onge for the Brownstone Institute that critiques the way government measures the cost of living. Messrs. Antoni and St. Onge created an alternative measure of inflation and used it to claim that the U.S. economy has been in recession—shrinking in every quarter since the start of 2022. … If, as they assess, inflation has been significantly higher than the CPI shows—Mr. St. Onge specifically claimed it was undercounted by half—then millions of Americans have been paying more income taxes than they should have been. On the flip side, consider what would happen if Mr. Trump prefers a political narrative of low inflation and the BLS finds a way to support it. Artificially low inflation numbers would lead to artificially higher taxes as tax parameters are insufficiently adjusted for inflation each year. I honestly hadn’t thought about this implication. According to Antoni-St. Onge, how much did the BEA deflator understate the “true” GDP deflator? The answer: A cumulative 17 percentage points over the 5 years 2019Q1-2024Q1 Source: Antoni and St. Onge (2024). This implies that, over five years, Antoni and St. Onge would have had measured the GDP deflator inflation at 7.4% instead of 4%…
ASIA: The major Asian stock markets had mixed day today: • NIKKEI 225 increased 336.00 points or 0.77% to 43,714.31 • Shanghai increased 31.257 points or 0.85% to 3,728.027 • Hang Seng decreased 93.22 points or -0.37% to 25,176.85 • ASX 200 increased 20.70 points or 0.23% to 8,959.30 • SENSEX increased 676.09 points or 0.84% to 81,273.75 • Nifty50 increased 245.65 points or 1.00% to 24,876.95 The major Asian currency markets had a mixed day today: • AUDUSD decreased 0.00086 or -0.13% to 0.64909 • NZDUSD increased 0.00011 or 0.02% to 0.59218 • USDJPY increased 0.598 or 0.41% to 147.742 • USDCNY decreased 0.00041 or -0.01% to 7.18708 The above data was collected around 12:45 EST. Precious Metals: Gold decreased 3.53 USD/t oz. or -0.11% to 3,332.79 Silver decreased 0.016 USD/t. oz or -0.04% to 37.994 The above data was collected around 12:48 EST. EUROPE/EMEA: The major Europe stock markets had a mixed day today: • CAC 40 decreased 39.40 points or -0.50% to 7,884.05 • FTSE 100 increased 18.84 points, or 0.21% to 9,157.74 • DAX 30 decreased 44.53 points or -0.18% to 24,314.77 The major Europe currency markets had a mixed day today: • EURUSD decreased 0.00429 or -0.37% to 1.16584 • GBPUSD decreased 0.00364 or -0.27% to 1.35090 • USDCHF increased 0.00135 or 0.17% to 0.80745 The above data was collected around 12:52 EST. US/AMERICAS: US Market Closings: Dow declined by 34.30 points (-0.08%) to 44,911.82 S&P 500 declined by 0.65 points (-0.01%) to 6,449.15 NASDAQ advanced by 6.80 points (+0.03%) to 21,629.77 Russell 2000 advanced by 8.52 points (+0.37%) to 2,295.04 Canada Market Closings: TSX Composite advanced by 17.11 points (+0.06%) to 27,922.60 TSX 60 advanced by 0.25 points (+0.02%) to 1,654.94 Mexico Market Closing: S&P/BMV advanced by 1.95 points (UNCH) to 58,322.43 Brazil Market Closing: Bovespa advanced by 1,039.80 points (+0.76%) to 137,380.57 ENERGY: The oil markets had a mixed day today: • Crude Oil increased 0.298 USD/BBL or 0.47% to 63.098 • Brent increased 0.375 USD/BBL or 0.57% to 66.225 • Natural gas decreased 0.0213 USD/MMBtu or -0.73% to 2.9000 • Gasoline increased 0.005 USD/GAL or 0.24% to 2.0841 • Heating oil increased 0.0108 USD/GAL or 0.49% to 2.2358 The above data was collected around 12:59 EST. • Top commodity gainers: Rubber (1.84%), Oat (1.29%), Palladium (1.37%), and Feeder Cattle (0.75%) • Top commodity losers: Canola (-1.31%), Bitumen (-1.32%), Orange Juice (-2.65%), and Cocoa (-1.75%) The above data was collected around 13:07 EST. BONDS: Japan 1.5720%(+0.63bp), US 2’s 3.77% (+0.008%), US 10’s 4.3380%(+1.7bps); US 30’s 4.94% (+0.022%), Bunds 2.7601% (-1.86bp), France 3.4490% (-1.84bp), Italy 3.5920% (-2.73bp), Turkey 31.330% (+208bp), Greece 3.437% (-2.5bp), Portugal 3.153% (-1.9bp), Spain 3.336% (-1.3bp) and UK Gilts 4.742% (+4.21bp). The above data was collected around 13:11 EST.
Leer en Español No commodity is more important for the world economy than crude oil. It, along with coal and natural gas, powers our electricity grids and transport networks, greasing the gears and cogs of our modern life. And when their price shifts, as many readers will painfully remember from the 2021–2023 global energy crisis, the effects on our personal finances and the world economy are considerable. Forecasting what will happen to the price of crude oil and other energy commodities has never been more challenging. The world is destabilizing, with huge implications for oil, gas and coal prices. The U.S.—which, just over 20 years ago, welcomed China into the World Trade Organization—shifts its trade policy erratically, and sometimes via the social media account of its President. Moreover, the nation’s withdrawal from its role as the world’s “policeman” has contributed to the number of conflicts to double globally since 2020, according to the think-tank ACLED, threatening disruption to oil production and shipping. In this fast-moving world, quarterly or even monthly updates to commodity forecasts go out of date quicker than before. Recognizing this, at FocusEconomics, we have expanded our offer to include daily updates of our forecasts via our data platform, harnessing the latest projections from our panel of expert analysts into one number—our Consensus Forecast. Nobody has a crystal ball, but, equally, nobody—businesses, consumers and investors—can afford to wait to see what happens in the future before making investment or spending decisions that need to be made today. Daily Consensus forecasts are the most accurate picture of what the market thinks will happen ahead at any given time. Oil market In the past few months, economists have become more bearish about crude oil prices: In 2025, the price of Brent crude oil is projected by our Consensus to decline 14%, and then by a further 1% in 2026, falling to their lowest level since the pandemic in 2020. Two big developments have led to this greater bearishness. After U.S. President Trump announced his tariff plan in April, the International Energy Agency (IEA) slashed its 2025 outlook for worldwide growth of oil demand by 30%. And then, that same month, OPEC+ began what has ended up being so far a six-long set of pledges to accelerate output hikes, leading the IEA to hike its projection for worldwide growth of oil supply by a whopping 75%. Our panelists were quick to respond to these developments, as explained by economists at ING in early May: “OPEC+ is implementing another aggressive supply hike […]. This increase solidifies a shift in policy. With prospects of further large supply increases in the months ahead, we revised our oil forecasts lower.” Natural gas market In the natural gas market, things have been different. In recent months, our panelists have become more upbeat about the price outlook for the fuel. Our Consensus projects the main U.S. natural gas benchmark, Henry Hub, to trade 51% higher this year than last, and rise a further 8% in 2026. Analysts at the EIU commented: “The heavy draw on stocks during the 2024-25 winter will contribute to the increase in Henry Hub prices in 2025. Rising demand from LNG exporters and increased production costs arising from Mr Trump’s tariffs will also drive up prices.” In contrast to oil, in the natural gas market, the political shock of Trump has made investors more optimistic about prices ahead: He’s rushed to approve licenses to export liquified natural gas, the shipments of which hit 9.1 million tonnes in July—over 1,000% higher than at the start of his first term in November 2016. Meanwhile, a relatively cold U.S. winter drained inventories of natural gas to far below seasonal averages. In this case, our panelists also reacted speedily: Coal market The coal market, already the black sheep among the energy commodity complex as it is the most polluting, has seen the sharpest downgrade in price forecasts since the start of the year. The prices of both Australian coking and thermal coal—the former used for smelting, the latter for electricity generation—are seen falling roughly 20% in 2025 year on year. Samantha Dart and Hongcen Wei, analysts at Goldman Sachs, explain: “We believe global coal balances remain soft and particularly, softer than our previous expectations, given weaker-than-expected coal consumption in H1 2025, attributed to a warmer-than-expected Q1 in Northeast Asia followed by a cooler-than-expected Q2 in South Asia. We accordingly nudge lower our Aug-Sep/Q4 [benchmark Australian thermal coal] price forecasts by 3.0/5.0 USD per metric ton to 117/113 USD per metric ton.” Moreover, Trump’s tariffs have hit especially hard North-east Asian economies, like China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. These nations depend on exports to fuel growth and are the main consumers of Australia’s coal. Prices have also been dampened by a supply glut in China, plus bad weather impeding exports from Australia. Take a look at how our panelists have reacted to these developments below: The post The best way to get oil price forecasts less wrong appeared first on FocusEconomics.
