Category: Finance

A rapid series of administrative, staffing and policy changes the Social Security Administration underwent early on in the second Trump administration are making it much harder to get disability benefits that millions of Americans rely on to make ends meet. The agency cut more than 7,100 jobs – more than 13% of its workforce and […]

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected]. What happens to debt when someone dies? – Lucy, age 17, Cincinnati, Ohio Imagine everyone has a large piggy bank that represents everything they own. Inside it are items such […]

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to strengthen the labor market. His immigration platform – including a pledge to conduct the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history – was central to that promise. “For too long, Washington ignored how mass illegal immigration artificially suppressed wages, hurting working-class Americans – especially young men,” wrote Treasury […]

The United States is prepared to provide US$100 million in humanitarian assistance to Cuba, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on May 13, 2026. But there’s a catch. Neither the Cuban government nor its military would be allowed to manage its distribution. Instead, only humanitarian and faith-based partners, such as Caritas – the Catholic Church’s […]

Americans don’t need a press release to know that inflation is rising. Gasoline is above $4 per gallon amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the release of key price data on May 28, 2026, underscores why policymakers are worried these pressures could spread into the […]

America’s bees and beekeepers are losing a valuable ally just when they need its help most. The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to soon close the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, a 6,500-acre agricultural research station in Maryland that is home to the nation’s premier bee research and disease diagnosis hub, the Beltsville Bee Research Lab. […]

Imagine you’re at the supermarket checkout. Your cart is full. The line behind you is long. You tap your card. Declined. You try again. Declined. You haven’t overspent. You haven’t done anything suspicious. But somewhere inside your bank’s computer systems, a machine made a decision about you in less time than it takes to blink […]

You did the right thing this morning. Instead of the one-click default to your laptop’s last opened tab, you opened Etsy and bought a ceramic mug from a maker you’d been following on Instagram. Yesterday, your sister’s birthday gift came from a Shopify store run by a kitchenware designer in Sacramento, California. You felt something […]

Social scientists and commentators have for years been expressing concerns about what they call the “authoritarian playbook.” To be clear, no such book exists. But would-be and actual dictators do tend to follow a common set of strategies to consolidate power. Since the 2000s, populist leaders from Russia to Venezuela have used their countries’ own […]

Nonprofit fraud is in the news a lot these days. Federal investigators in Minnesota prosecuted one of the largest alleged COVID-19 pandemic fraud schemes, in which several nonprofits and individuals are accused of stealing about US$250 million from a federally funded child nutrition program. The defendants were found guilty in 2025, three years after the […]