Pixel Politics
Marcus Bell
the organizer
Connects the policy to your grocery bill and your rent, because that is where it lands. Lifelong Chicagoan, former tenant-union volunteer, makes a chili that has settled arguments.
Latest from Marcus
July Inflation Cooled to 3.4%. The Gas Pump Delivered the Headline; Your Rent Kept the Core.
July CPI landed at 3.4% year over year and 0.1% on the month, the second straight month of deceleration from June's 3.5%. Core eased to 2.5%. Both hit consensus exactly, so the number owes the Fed nothing, and shelter at 3.2% is still doing the sticking.
Riot Sold Three Bitcoins for Every One It Mined. The Loss Headline Is the Sound of a Miner Becoming a Landlord.
Riot Platforms' delayed Q2 call finally happened Monday at 4:30 PM: a $237.2 million net loss on revenue of $174.2 million, up 14 percent. The cash tells the real story: $732.5 million of bitcoin sold in the first half, a $28.0 million write-off on mining gear rerouted to data centers, and a new 20-year lease worth roughly $9.1 billion in initial contract revenue.
Intel Is Selling Stock at $95. The Taxpayer Bought at $20.47. The Arithmetic on That Stake.
Intel upsized its offering to $20 billion, 210.5 million shares priced at $95, closing Tuesday. The US government's 433.3 million shares, bought a year ago with $8.9 billion in already-awarded grant money, are worth about $41.2 billion at that price, an unrealized paper gain of roughly $32.3 billion.
Meta Just Agreed to Texas's Data-Center Rules. The Enforcement Mechanism Is a Yearly Public Report.
Gov. Greg Abbott says Meta will pay its own electricity and water costs, reuse water, take no taxpayer incentives, and publish annual usage reports for its planned Northeast El Paso facility. The commitments are real. What counts as 'its own costs' is now the whole ballgame at the PUCT and ERCOT.
Pritzker to Seven Oil CEOs: Show the Joliet Books by August 21
Illinois gas averages $4.34 a gallon, up more than $1.30 since the Iran war began, roughly $2 billion out of residents' pockets by the state's count. The governor's letters demand refinery margins and executive pay data from seven oil majors by August 21.
Greg Abel Just Showed His Hand: $10 Billion Into Alphabet and a 19-Fold Buyback Surge
Berkshire's second-quarter filing reveals the new CEO's first big swings: a $10 billion Alphabet purchase, buybacks jumping from $234 million to $4.5 billion, and a cash pile that finally shrank, from nearly $400 billion to $365.5 billion.
Berkshire's profit didn't double. Its stock portfolio did.
Net earnings jumped 107% to $25.67 billion, but $12.68 billion of it was paper gains on stocks. Operating earnings, the number Berkshire tells you to watch, rose a steadier 16.3% to $12.98 billion, and cash hit a record $365.5 billion.
The economy lost jobs in July, and the Fed has no guidance left to steer by
Nonfarm payrolls fell 23,000, the first net loss since February, while 103,000 jobs were revised out of the two prior months. Unemployment slipped to 4.1 percent, but only because more people stopped looking.
Warsh Scrapped the Fed's Forward Guidance. Now Every Data Release Is a Coin Flip.
With the Fed's advance signal gone, September rate-move odds swung from 36% to 68% and back to 58% in a week, while Bank of America forecasts three hikes and Citigroup forecasts three cuts.
Peloton posts its first annual profit, and its revenue is still shrinking
Fiscal 2026 net income was $63.2 million against a $118.9 million loss the year before. Fiscal 2027 guidance of $2.3 billion to $2.4 billion points to roughly a 4 percent revenue decline.
Lilly's record $23 billion quarter is really two weight-loss drugs carrying the company
Second-quarter revenue rose 48 percent to $23.0 billion and full-year guidance went up to $85-87 billion. Mounjaro and Zepbound alone brought in $14.8 billion, about 64 percent of the total, money that flows from the patients and insurers paying their list prices.
Four companies, 3,563 jobs, one word: the late-July AI layoffs
Visa cut about 2,600 jobs, monday.com 620, Chime 150 and Magic Leap 193 in the last ten days of July, each citing AI. The executives quoted kept their jobs.
The war is the windfall: BP's profit more than doubles on Middle East oil prices
BP's Q2 net profit more than doubled to $3.91 billion from $1.62 billion as the U.S.-Iran war lifted oil prices, on revenue of $70 billion, up 47 percent. The same price spike that produced the windfall lands on households as higher fuel and energy costs.
Cheaper crude paid Frankfurt and billed London
WTI at $79.60 is $5.07 below Friday's settle, a 5.99 percent fall on our arithmetic against the 5.85 percent the source page prints. Frankfurt's DAX rose 1.50 percent into record territory and Paris 1.31 percent, while London managed 0.09 percent with Shell and BP each down more than 2 percent.
Visa Is Cutting 2,600 Jobs. The Record Names the Chief Executive and None of Them.
About 2,600 positions go, mostly in technology and product, out of a workforce reported at roughly 34,100. That is 7.62 percent, not the 7 percent the coverage repeats, and no public filing in our sourcing names a single worker or a single address.
The War Quarter: Exxon, Chevron, and Shell Book $36.4 Billion as Drivers Pay $4.11
Exxon earned $14.5 billion, double a year ago. Chevron's $12.1 billion was its best quarter ever, Shell's $9.8 billion its second best. The windfall is going to debt paydown, not dividends, while gasoline sits at $4.11 a gallon.
Amazon Ran $7.6 Billion Cash Negative Over the Trailing Year. The Market Cheered Anyway.
Trailing-twelve-month free cash flow swung from an $18.2 billion inflow to a $7.6 billion outflow, a $25.8 billion reversal, while the stock jumped roughly 15 percent. Two outlets printed two different rally sizes, and one wrap never mentioned the cash line at all.
Three Companies Spent $121 Billion in Thirteen Weeks. Amazon's Free Cash Flow Is Now Negative.
Amazon's own release: an outflow of $7.6 billion over twelve months, driven by a $66.1 billion jump in equipment purchases. Meta kept $784 million of $31.9 billion in operating cash. Microsoft's order book is up 84 percent.
Apple 'Beat' by 13 Cents. Its Own Press Release Says 11 of Them Were a Government Refund.
The tariff refunds the Supreme Court forced are in the quarter: $0.11 of EPS and two points of gross margin, by Apple's own disclosure. The operational beat was two cents.
The Renter-Owner Wealth Gap Is the Widest Ever Recorded
The 30-year mortgage sits at 6.66 percent and the 30-year Treasury above 5.2 percent, its highest since 2007. The household translation of those numbers is a gap between people who own and people who rent that has never been larger.
Amazon's Profit Nearly Quadrupled. Two-Thirds of It Was an Investment Gain, and the Company's Free Cash Flow Just Went Negative.
Amazon disclosed the Anthropic gain plainly in its own release. The number that describes the business rather than the stake has been falling for five straight quarters, and this quarter it went below zero.
The Day After Three Fed Officials Voted to Raise Rates, Inflation Printed 4.1% and the 30-Year Hit Its Highest Since 2007.
June PCE came in 0.4 points above forecast. The long bond does not wait for the September meeting - it is repricing now.
The Economy 'Slowed to 1.5%.' The Measure of Actual Private Demand Hit 3.9%, Its Best Since 2023.
The headline was dragged down by an import surge and an inventory drawdown. And the 12.8% federal spending 'cut' is the government selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The Fed Held Rates. Three of Its Twelve Voters Wanted Them Higher - and All Three Said So in the Same Direction.
A 9-3 statement. Hammack, Kashkari and Logan each preferred a quarter-point increase, in a year when almost everyone expected the next move to be down.
Corning Beat on Earnings, Beat on Sales, Guided In Line - and Lost $23 Billion in a Morning.
Core profit was up 30% and sales up 17%. The stock fell 16% because the company hinted that phone companies might spend less next year.
A Chinese Memory IPO Took 10.84% Off South Korea's Stock Market in a Day
Samsung fell 13.4 percent - its worst single day in nearly two decades. SK Hynix fell 14.7, Kioxia 18.3. This is the same event that cost Nvidia $250 billion, seen from the other side of the world.
'Cracker Barrel CEO Finally FIRED.' She Is Stepping Down in August With an Advisory Contract Through October.
No source uses the word fired. The logo debuted eleven months ago. What is real - and the correction should say so - is the sales damage: comparable sales down 7 percent and traffic down 10 percent in the most recent quarter.
Celestica Raised Its Full-Year Guidance After a 62% Quarter. The Raise Requires a Fourth Quarter 17.6% Bigger Than Any It Has Had.
Revenue was $4.70 billion, adjusted earnings $2.54 a share, both above the high end of guidance. Add the first half to the third-quarter midpoint and the new full-year number implies $6.35 billion in a quarter that has not happened.
The Case for a Rate Hike Was Built on an Oil Spike That Has Now Unwound. The Fed Meets Wednesday.
Hike odds went 10.7 percent to 38 percent in eight days, and are back to 32. Brent has given up more than nine percent in four sessions. June inflation fell on every measure - the biggest monthly drop since April 2020.
Apple Is the World's Most Valuable Company Again. Nvidia Lost About $250 Billion in a Day Because a Chinese Memory Maker Went Public.
ChangXin Memory rose 466 percent on its Shanghai debut, raising $8.6 billion. Nvidia fell 4.99 percent, SanDisk 11, Western Digital 7, ASML 5. Apple gained 1.17 percent and took the crown.
America's Second-Largest Liquor Distributor Filed to Wind Down. Nobody Has Said How Many People Work There.
Republic National Distributing filed Chapter 11 on Sunday listing up to $10 billion in liabilities and a plan for 'an orderly wind down.' The headcount is the number missing from every account.
A Spice Company, a Toy Company and a Watch Company Are Suing Over the Tariffs That Cover 99.4% of US Imports
Learning Resources, Burlap and Barrel and Collective Horology went to the Court of International Trade. The duties took effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday and are being collected while the case is pending.
American Airlines Announced 'the Highest Quarterly Revenue in Company History.' It Kept $71 Million of $16.7 Billion - and Your July Fare Is Up 27%.
Revenue rose more than 16 percent. Fares rose 27 percent. Fuel rose 83 percent, to $4.881 billion. What reached the bottom line was four tenths of one percent - and the airline still cut its full-year forecast to a range that includes a loss.
The Odds of a Rate Hike Wednesday Nearly Tripled in a Week - Against an Inflation Number That Just Fell and a 57,000-Job Month.
Markets put a quarter-point hike at 34.2 percent, up from 12.8 percent seven days ago. June CPI came in at 3.5 percent, its first decline in five months. The mechanism that delivers a hike is the 6.58 percent mortgage, not the tanker in Hormuz.
Trump Says the US Is 'Becoming a Global Manufacturing Superpower.' Factory Jobs Are Down 75,000 and Factory Construction Has Fallen More Than a Quarter.
The White House describes a manufacturing rebound and a factory-building boom. The federal record: manufacturing employment is down about 75,000 since the inauguration - where the prior administration added 625,000 - and manufacturing construction spending has dropped 26.4 percent to its lowest since early 2023.
Alphabet Posted the 'Biggest Corporate Profit in History.' Roughly 88% of It Was a Paper Gain on Anthropic and SpaceX - and the Stock Fell 5%.
The $112 billion net income drew record-profit headlines. About $99 billion of it never touched cash: it is an unrealized mark-to-market gain, driven mostly by Anthropic's valuation tripling on paper. Strip it out and the operating quarter is strong but ordinary - and the number that actually moved the stock was a $15 billion jump in planned spending.
Intel Posted Its Fastest Growth Since 2011 - and an $11 Billion Loss. They're the Same Quarter, and the Loss Is a Paper Charge on the Taxpayer's Own Stake.
Revenue up 25% to $16.1 billion, the strongest in fifteen years, beating estimates - and a GAAP net loss of $11 billion. The gap is a $12.5 billion mark-to-market charge on the escrowed shares tied to Intel's CHIPS Act deal, under which the US government holds about 10% of the company. The 'beat' is the non-GAAP line; the loss is the government's equity re-priced.
Bessent Calls the 50% Canada Tariff 'Reciprocity' for What Canada 'Did to Us.' The White House's Own Fact Sheet Admits Canada's Measures Were Retaliation for Trump's Tariffs.
The Treasury secretary says the new 50% tariff on Canada answers Canadian 'discrimination.' The administration's own fact sheet, two sentences apart, calls those same Canadian measures 'retaliation against President Trump's tariffs' - which came first. A thing cannot be both an unprovoked slight and a response to you.
Hegseth Says the Iran War Has Cost $37.5 Billion. The $95 Billion Package He Defended Includes $10 Billion for Voting-Law Changes.
The defense secretary told Senate appropriators the five-month war has cost $37.5 billion and the new request is 'urgent, necessary.' The package's own arithmetic: $70 billion for the war, $12 billion in other security money, $10 billion in farm aid - and $10 billion for voting-law changes, riding a war bill, the same week the same election program rides the defense authorization. Half of last year's $150 billion, one senator noted, is still unspent.
Gas Crossed $4.00 Today. The Standing Promises: $3 'Between June 20 and September 20,' and $2.50 'IMMEDIATELY.'
AAA's national average hit $4.003 on Monday - up 13 cents in a week and 27% from a year ago - as the Iran war pushed crude to a five-week high. Thirty days ago the administration's $3-gas window opened; three weeks ago the president demanded $2.50 at the pump because oil was '$68 a barrel, and heading south.' Oil settled near $83.
The Housing 'Rebound' Was All Apartments. The Homes Families Actually Buy Are Still Stalling.
June's headline was a 19% jump in housing starts, quickly folded into a story of an affordability recovery. Under the topline, nearly the entire gain was apartments snapping back from a weak May. Single-family starts - the owner-occupied homes first-time buyers purchase - were flat, and permits, the pipeline for what gets built next, fell.
Trump and Bessent Blamed 'Gouging' Retailers and Demanded $2.50 Gas. Two Weeks Later Gas Hit $3.94 and Diesel Topped $5 - Because the Bottleneck Is Refineries, Not the Corner Station.
On June 30, the President demanded gas stations cut prices to $2.50 'immediately' or face gouging charges; the Treasury Secretary said retailers had 'record profits'; and days later the DOJ and FTC told states the crude-price drop was 'being withheld from Americans.' By July 16, gas averaged $3.94 and diesel had topped $5. Crude did fall - but the pump price is set downstream of it, at refineries running flat out and drained by record exports.
As Wall Street Slid Into Its Worst Week in Months, Trump Told the Nation Stocks Were at an All-Time High and 401(k)s Were 'Setting Records Every Single Day.'
In his July-16 primetime address the President said the stock market was at its highest point 'of all time' and that Americans' retirement accounts were setting records daily. The market was about 2% below its June record and falling - the S&P down more than 1.5% on the week, the Nasdaq off 2.9%, chip stocks in a bear market. Retirement accounts track those indexes; they were down, not up.
Bessent Promised the Tariff Revenue Would 'Snap Back' by Early July and the Loss Would Be 'De Minimis.' In June Alone the Program Ran a $25.6 Billion Net Loss.
After the Supreme Court struck down the President's emergency tariffs in February, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the public the rates would be restored 'by beginning of July' and the revenue decline would be 'de minimis.' July has come and gone without the restoration, and the interim record is the opposite of de minimis: Customs paid out about $49 billion in refunds in June against $23.6 billion collected - a $25.6 billion net outflow in a single month, roughly $71 billion refunded in all. The companies getting the money say they will keep it, not cut prices.
The White House Says Trump Has 'No Conflicts of Interest.' The Same Week, His Company Started Selling Wall Street Early Access to His Market-Moving Posts.
Responding to a CNN investigation that found the president bought into 20+ companies shortly before promoting them, the White House said his trades run through 'fully discretionary' third-party accounts with 'no conflicts of interest.' Days earlier, Trump Media unveiled a product that sells traders expedited access to the top Truth Social posts - his own the largest - so they can move before the public.
Who Actually Pays the Tariffs? The One Price Index That Strips Out the Duty Says It Isn't China.
The case for the tariffs rests on the claim that foreigners pay them. There is a single official series built to test that - import prices, which exclude the duty and measure what foreign exporters charge. It was released this week, prices on Chinese goods rose, and economists estimate US buyers are bearing about 92% of the cost.
The Tariff 'Money Machine' Ran in Reverse in June: Treasury Paid Out More in Refunds Than It Collected.
The administration has pitched tariffs as a revenue engine that would pay down the debt. In June, after the Supreme Court struck the emergency tariffs, Treasury refunded $49.2 billion - more than the $23.6 billion it took in - a net $25.6 billion loss. The June deficit hit $120 billion, and this year's shortfall has now passed last year's.
The White House Says There's 'No Excuse' Not to Ease Rates - and Told the Fed Chair to 'Drive the Committee to the Right Answer.'
One cooler inflation month, and the administration declared the fight won and began steering a central bank built to be independent of it. The number behind the victory lap was a mostly-energy reversal; core inflation is stuck above target, the headline rate is higher than at inauguration, and the day after the White House spoke, factory prices were climbing again.
June Inflation Fell to 3.5%. It Was Gasoline - and the Oil That Delivered the Drop Is Already Turning Back Up.
The June CPI, released Tuesday morning, cooled from 4.2% to 3.5% - the first decline in five months. Almost all of it was a 9.7% drop in gas after the Iran-truce oil slump. Core inflation held at 2.6%, and the report is being used to claim 'tariffs are costless' - a category error a falling crude price cannot support.
He Posted 'PRICES ARE DROPPING.' The Most Recent Inflation Report Shows Prices Up 4.2% Over the Year - the Fastest in Three Years, and Still Climbing.
Trump's affordability pitch rests on three words: 'PRICES ARE DROPPING (AFFORDABILITY!).' The May CPI has consumer prices up 4.2% year-over-year - the fastest since April 2023 - after climbing from 2.4% in February. The one price that fell was gasoline, off a war-driven spike, and it is still a dollar above where the year began.
The White House Points to One $3.47 Gas Station as Proof Trump Is Lowering Prices. The National Average Is $3.87, Up 72 Cents in a Year - and the White House Says It Has Nothing to Do With the Station.
'Freedom Fuel' launched a pump at $3.47 'for our 47th President.' AAA's Monday national average: $3.872, up ~72 cents (22.8%) from a year ago and rising on the Hormuz crisis. The 'network' is 25 stations run by a three-week-old anonymous Delaware LLC - which the White House says it neither funds nor is involved with.
Social Security's Shortfall Just Grew to $30.3 Trillion. The Plan on TV This Morning Was 'Waste and Fraud.'
The 2026 Trustees Report has the retirement trust fund emptying in 2032 and benefits cut 22 percent when it does, with a 75-year gap that widened to $30.3 trillion from $26.1 trillion. The administration's fix, repeated on Fox again Sunday, is to cut waste and fraud - a rounding error against a shortfall measured in tens of trillions.
In June, the Government Paid Out More in Tariff Refunds Than It Collected. The Deficit Just Overtook Last Year's.
The CBO's June review carries the number the 'tariffs are bringing in billions' story leaves out: net customs duties went negative for the month - more refunds than collections - after the Supreme Court struck the tariffs in February. June swung from a $27 billion surplus a year ago to a $126 billion deficit, and the nine-month shortfall now tops last year's at $1.4 trillion.
The New Endangered-Species Rule Rests Its Case on a Dissent - and Quietly Stops Weighing Habitat in Permits at All.
Friday's rescission of the ESA 'harm' definition ran as a left-right values fight. Two things in the rule's own text went uncovered: it grounds its reasoning in Justice Scalia's 1995 dissent - from a case the government lost 6-3 - and it ends the practice of considering a species' habitat when issuing incidental-take permits. Effective 60 days after it publishes.
He Says He Cut a 'MUCH BETTER DEAL' on the Gordie Howe Bridge. America Never Paid a Dollar for It - and He Is the Reason It Sat Closed.
The midnight post takes credit for 'allowing' a finished, Canada-funded 6.4-billion-dollar bridge to open 'as scheduled' on July 27. The schedule it replaced was mid-June - cancelled at his administration's behest after a demand for half ownership. The 'better deal' diverts half the toll profits that were supposed to repay Canada, collected from Michigan truckers either way.
He Is Holding the Housing Law Hostage for an Elections Bill 'Polling at 97%.' No Poll on Earth Says That - Including the White House's Own.
The Scott-Warren housing package passed 85-5 and 358-32, bars private-equity giants from swallowing more starter homes, and becomes law this weekend whether he signs or not. He called it 'a yawn' and priced his signature at an elections bill whose real numbers are 71 percent in the White House's own release - and 41 percent for the mail-ballot ban at its core.
He Rang the Opening Bell From the Oval Office This Week. At Noon Friday, His Own USDA Said Beef Stays Expensive Through 2027.
The scoreboard week - a first-ever Oval Office bell, a 'BEST QUARTER' post - ran into the July WASDE: production cut, cattle price forecasts raised into next year, ground beef already 6.75 a pound. The 40 percent of Americans who own no stock get the second economy without the first, and the noon report says the second one is not getting cheaper.
Bessent Says Tariff Inflation Was 'the Dog That Didn't Bark.' The Fed's Own Minutes Just Published the Bark.
The Treasury Secretary told Congress the tariff-inflation warning was refuted and repeated it in June: look at the data. The data arrived Wednesday, from the administration's own central bank: inflation at 4.1 percent driven by 'the lingering effects of tariffs,' price pressures 'more broad based,' nine of eighteen Fed participants now expecting a rate hike this year, and one expecting the promised cut.
Trump Says Plants Are Being Built 'for the Most Money Ever.' The Government's Own Data Shows Factory Construction Down 28 Percent.
At the NATO press conference he pointed to car plants, AI plants, and pharmaceutical plants as a record boom. Census Bureau data shows manufacturing construction running at a 174.8 billion dollar annual rate in May - down about 28 percent from the Biden-era peak and falling through his second term.
Scalise Says Gas Was 'Almost $6 a Gallon' Two Years Ago. It Was $3.66, and Even the All-Time Record Never Hit $6.
The House majority leader's baseline is invented: AAA put the national average near 3.66 dollars two years before his interview, and the all-time record is 5.02, set in June 2022. His own CNBC interviewer corrected him on air. The line matters now because it is the answer Republicans are giving for a pump price that is 65 cents higher than a year ago.
Republicans Blame the Migrants. Democrats Blame the Budget Cuts. The Entomologists Say Both Are Wrong.
As the flesh-eating screwworm spreads through Texas cattle, Sen. Marshall says migrants brought it and the DNC says Trump's USDA cuts caused it. Scientists who study the fly say there is no data migrants spread it, the pest reached Mexico before the cuts, and the real cause is a decades-old sterile-fly defense that was allowed to wear out.
The Labor Secretary Says Factory Jobs 'Continue to Grow.' They Are Down About 77,000 Since This Administration Began.
Keith Sonderling called the June report a win: 900,000 jobs created, manufacturing growing. June added 57,000 jobs, less than half what forecasters expected, participation hit a five-year low, and factory employment is down roughly 77,000 over the term.
The Reflecting Pool Job Was Promised at $2 Million. It Has Cost $16 Million, the Coating Peeled, and the Secretary Blames Vandals He Cannot Produce.
Doug Burgum told Sunday viewers the repairs will be 'a small number' and the failure was sabotage - 350 feet of gashes, on video he will not show. The contractor who did it right in 2010 called this approach unfeasible and walked away.
No, $19.2 Trillion Is Not Pouring Into America. The Official Count of Actual Foreign Investment Is $232 Billion.
The claim from the Mount Rushmore stage is 83 times what the Bureau of Economic Analysis just measured - and double the White House's own list of announcements. The real number was a record. It was not enough.
Everyone Is Leaving New York? The Census Counted Three Straight Years of Growth.
A video with 859,000 views says everyone is fleeing. The newest federal estimates show New York back above 20 million after three years of gains - and the audio never actually says the words in the title.
No, New York Did Not Ban Air Conditioning. The One Law on the Books Orders Landlords to Provide It.
A video titled 'New York City BANS Air Conditioning' never says the word ban out loud. The mayor asked, the 78-degree number is eight years old, and the only binding law fines landlords who fail to cool.
They Will Spend the Anniversary Calling It the Largest Tax Cut in History. It Ranks Sixth - Eighth Counting Their Own Tariffs.
Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith says the year-old law is 'the largest tax cut in U.S. history, out of every tax cut that's ever been done.' By the Treasury framework used to compare across eras, 1981 holds the record at more than double the size.
The Pledge Was an Electric Bill '50, 5-0 Percent, Less' Within 12 Months. The Bill Arriving This Month Is a Record.
The deadline he set himself - January 20, 2026 - is five months gone. Household bills rose 6.7 percent last year, this summer's cooling costs hit a record $800, 21.5 million households are behind on their energy bills, and the grid is breaking a 20-year demand record this weekend.
A Headline Says Your July 4 Cookout Is the Cheapest in 10 Years. The Survey It Cites Found the Most Expensive One on Record.
The Farm Bureau priced this year's cookout for ten at $73.82 - the highest in the survey's history, with the highest ground-beef price it has ever recorded. 'Cheapest in a decade' appears only after deflating your groceries by an overall inflation rate above 4 percent.
He Told Gas Stations to Drop Prices to $2.50. The Station Keeps 8 Cents of Your Dollar.
The President ordered retailers to cut pump prices fast. Federal data show the part he is yelling at, the gas station's margin, is the smallest slice of the price, while crude oil his own Iran war pushed up is more than half.
A Think Tank Says a $1 Raise Makes Your Groceries Jump 5.5%. The Real Number Is About a Quarter of a Percent.
The claim is designed to make raising the minimum wage sound like it robs the people it helps. The best evidence, from billions of checkout scans, puts the price effect at a fraction of a percent - and the op-ed misquotes its own source.
'Black Unemployment Is the Best It's Ever Been' Is Off by Almost Two Points
The president said African American unemployment had never been lower, then admitted on stage he did not know where the number came from. The record is public: it is higher now than when he took office, and the actual low was set three years ago.
The 'Worst Inflation in History' Already Has a Record Holder: 1920.
Inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022, the most in four decades. That is a serious number, and it is still not the worst in American history, which was more than twice as high the year after World War I.
'Most Americans Ever Working' Is True the Way 'Most People Ever' Is True
The raw number of people with jobs ticks up almost every year because the country keeps growing. Strip out population and look at hiring, and job growth under this administration has run about four times slower than the stretch before it.
It Was Not the 'Biggest Tax Cut in History.' By the Standard Measure, It Was the 8th.
The 2017 tax law was sold as the largest ever. Measured the way these things are measured, against the size of the economy, it ranks eighth since 1918. The record still belongs to Ronald Reagan.
He Tweeted That Trade Wars Are 'Easy to Win.' Then Taxpayers Paid Billions to the Farmers He Lost.
'Trade wars are good, and easy to win,' the president posted in 2018. The win ran through tens of billions in farm bailouts and the near-total loss of China, the biggest customer American farmers had.
Newsom's Two Billionaire Taxes: The One He Sells vs. the One He Fights
He rolled out a national billionaires' tax the same week he's fighting one at home. The trick is in the difference between income and wealth.
"China's Paying for Those Tariffs." The Receipt in Your Hand Says You Are.
It is one of the most repeated lines in American politics, and it is wrong in a way you can measure at the register. A tariff is a tax paid by the US importer - and study after study lands the bill on you.
Prices Were Supposed to Come Down. Your Grocery Bill Is Still Going Up.
The latest federal numbers are in, and the checkout line tells the story the slogans skip: groceries cost more than a year ago, and some staples a lot more.
There Is No Army of 87,000 Armed IRS Agents Coming for You. Here's the Real Number.
The viral claim is wrong at every joint: the number, the 'army,' the 'armed,' and the 'you.' The 87,000 is a decade of total hires, the guns belong to a 2,000-person unit chasing crypto launderers, and the audits are aimed above $400,000.
They Took Food Off 770,000 Kids' Plates. With Paperwork.
Nobody voted to starve children. They just made the forms impossible. Here's the play.
They're Still Taxing Your Groceries. Here's the Play.
Trump promised to lower grocery prices. They went up. And my own mayor wants to keep taxing them.