Two new reports from the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general found that some of the largest Medicare Advantage insurers are denying prior authorization for long-term and rehabilitative care at rates investigators called “shocking,” NBC News reported.

UnitedHealthcare, CVS Health and Humana had the highest denial rates, with some plans rejecting more than 70 percent of requests. Denial rates across companies ranged from 8 percent to 80 percent for long-term care. When patients appealed, plans overturned 95 percent of initial denials.

The HHS inspector general’s office urged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to collect prior-authorization data more often and investigate the variance.

“The variation in denial rates, ranging from 8 percent to as high as 80 percent among different companies for long-term care, is quite shocking,” an HHS official identified in the report as Erin Bliss, an assistant inspector general at HHS, said.

Mary Barthomew, who led the reports, said the 95 percent reversal rate “indicates an extremely high rate of reversals” and “raises serious concerns that there is a failure occurring at the initial request stage.”

Stakes are high

The financial stakes for households are large. A long-term acute care hospital stay averaged about $49,000 in 2023, and inpatient rehabilitation about $24,000, NBC reported.

Nearly 20 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans run by the three companies named in the report.

Miranda Yaver, an assistant professor of health policy management at the University of Pittsburgh, said the gap in denial rates “underscores the frustration many Americans have expressed — that healthcare decisions are being influenced by profit motives rather than medical needs.”

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pledged authorization reforms, and the New York Times reported that federal investigators have raised concerns about external contractors used by insurers to determine eligibility for specialized care.

A series of unmet promises

The program now called Medicare Advantage was created by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 under the name “Medicare+Choice” (Medicare Part C). It expanded a smaller managed-care option that had existed since the 1980s, when Congress first allowed Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in risk-bearing HMOs.

The pitch to seniors at the time was straightforward: in exchange for accepting a narrower network of doctors and hospitals and tighter utilization controls, beneficiaries would get extra benefits — vision, dental, hearing aids, gym memberships, lower out-of-pocket costs — that traditional fee-for-service Medicare did not cover. The federal government would pay private insurers a per-member capitated rate, and the insurers would manage the care.

Enrollment was modest. Medicare+Choice plans struggled financially through the late 1990s and early 2000s, with many insurers withdrawing from counties they considered unprofitable. By 2003, roughly 5 million seniors were enrolled, down from a peak of 6.3 million in 1999.

In 2003, the program was “rebranded” as Medicare Advantage and numerous benefits were added, including higher payments to doctors and hospitals and lower out-of-pocket spending.

Over the following decade, Medicare Advantage roughly doubled its market share. Enrollment crossed 50 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries in 2023, meaning that for the first time, a majority of America’s seniors received their Medicare coverage from a private insurer rather than directly from the federal government.

By 2025, more than 33 million Americans were enrolled. UnitedHealthcare, Humana and CVS Health (which acquired Aetna in 2018) emerged as the three dominant carriers.

The promises that drove that growth — promises plans made directly to seniors in television ads, mailers and call-center pitches — generally included:

• No or low monthly premiums beyond Part B.

• Extra benefits not covered by traditional Medicare: dental, vision, hearing aids, fitness memberships, over-the-counter drug allowances, transportation, sometimes groceries or utility allowances for chronically ill members.

• Out-of-pocket caps that traditional Medicare lacks.

• Care coordination — a single plan managing primary, specialist and prescription care.

• Prescription drug coverage bundled in.

The trade-offs that drew scrutiny

The trade-offs were always there, but they became more visible as the program grew. Medicare Advantage plans use prior authorization, narrower networks, and managed-care utilization tools that traditional Medicare does not.

Independent researchers and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) repeatedly found that the federal government pays Medicare Advantage plans more per beneficiary than it spends on comparable traditional Medicare enrollees — by roughly $83 billion in 2024 according to MedPAC estimates — driven in part by “risk-adjustment” coding practices that make enrollees appear sicker on paper.

The Department of Justice has pursued multiple False Claims Act cases against the largest Medicare Advantage carriers alleging inflated risk-coding. The Department of Health and Human Services inspector general has published a series of reports — including today’s — finding that plans deny prior authorization at far higher rates than traditional Medicare would, and that 95 percent of those denials are overturned on appeal, suggesting the initial denials are systematically wrong.

Where the program stands now

As of 2026, Medicare Advantage covers a majority of Medicare beneficiaries, is the single largest line of business for UnitedHealth Group and Humana, and faces converging pressure: federal rate cuts, tightened risk-adjustment rules, slower star-rating bonuses, and growing congressional and inspector-general scrutiny of marketing practices and care denials.

The promises that built the program — extra benefits, lower out-of-pocket costs, simpler care — remain the marketing message. The newer questions are whether seniors who become seriously ill find those promises hold up when they need long-term, rehabilitative or specialized care, and whether the federal government’s premium payments to plans deliver value commensurate with their cost.

When the June 2012 derecho ripped across Northern Virginia, it left some Fairfax County homes without power for 10 days in 100-degree heat. Then-Governor Bob McDonnell called it the largest non-hurricane outage in state history.

Fourteen years later, the storm still defines how the region thinks about backup power — and it explains why every severe-weather forecast now sends a fresh wave of homeowners searching for whole-home generators and, increasingly, battery storage systems.

We’re using Fairfax County as an example because, like much of the country, it’s not ideal for solar-battery combinations — heavy tree cover, often cloudy, touchy HOAs, etc.

Like many things, the idea of a battery-powered backup system sounds pretty simple. Hook it up, get it charged and you’re good to go, right? Wrong. Like many things that sound simple, home batteries are complicated and may not be the best choice for many homeowners. If you have an electric vehicle, that presents another set of options that will be covered in a future story.

Choosing the best power backup has gotten more complicated in the last few years. Home batteries from Tesla, FranklinWH, and Enphase have matured into credible whole-home backup solutions. But the federal 30% residential clean-energy tax credit expired December 31, 2025, stripping roughly $8,000 to $10,000 from typical battery projects and reshaping the math.

So for the Fairfax County homeowner who watched the lights flicker again on June 11 — when a wind event knocked out 25,000 local customers — the question is straightforward: Does a battery system actually justify its price premium over a traditional standby generator?

What it costs to install

A two-unit Tesla Powerwall 3 system providing 27 kilowatt-hours of storage runs $26,000 to $35,000 installed in Fairfax County, according to pricing from SolarReviews and Northern Virginia installers. FranklinWH’s aPower 2 system lands in a similar range.

A Generac Guardian 22-kilowatt natural-gas generator — the closest equivalent in whole-home capability — installs for $11,600 to $17,800, including the automatic transfer switch, gas plumbing, concrete pad, and permits. A propane version of the same generator, paired with a 500-gallon tank, runs $13,100 to $21,000.

The installed-cost gap is roughly $11,000 to $15,000 in favor of the generator. Without the federal tax credit, none of that gap is recoverable through incentives. Virginia has no statewide residential battery rebate, and Dominion Energy’s customer programs are limited.

The 10-year picture

Operating costs partially offset the upfront difference. Using current Washington Gas rates of about $1.20 per therm, a Generac 22-kilowatt consumes roughly $26.50 per month in fuel for weekly “exercise” cycles plus typical outages.

Add an annual service contract — $220 to $535 in the Northern Virginia market, based on quotes from Kennedy Electric, NNG Generator, and Unity Services — and the total monthly cost of generator ownership runs $50 to $75.

Propane is dramatically more expensive to run. Virginia retail prices held around $3.50 per gallon in early 2026, per Energy Information Administration data, putting standby costs near $113 to $135 per month including service.

Batteries, on the other hand, are nearly free to operate. Standby parasitic draw and occasional grid top-offs add $5 to $20 per month to a Dominion bill that’s already climbing — the utility added about $11.24 per month for typical customers in January 2026 after a State Corporation Commission rate decision.

Over a 10-year horizon, including roughly 60 hours of outage runtime per year, the total cost of ownership shakes out like this:

• Natural gas generator: about $20,500

• Battery system: about $31,700

• Propane generator: about $30,600

Natural gas wins on dollars by roughly $11,000. The battery and propane setups land essentially tied.

The silence question — and a Fairfax loophole

A Generac 22-kilowatt produces 67 decibels at 23 feet under load. Fairfax County’s noise ordinance, Chapter 108.1, caps continuous residential noise at 60 decibels during the day and 55 at night. On a typical Northern Virginia lot where the property line might sit 15 to 25 feet from the generator pad, that math doesn’t work.

But it doesn’t have to. Section 108.1-5-1 of the county code fully exempts backup generators from noise limits during power outages. Weekly exercise cycles get a separate carve-out: permitted between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. for up to two hours per day. Generac’s Quiet-Test™ mode runs the engine at low speed at about 55 decibels — comfortably within daytime limits.

A battery system, by contrast, produces 40 to 50 decibels from inverter cooling fans. It is effectively silent. No code exemption needed, no neighbor friction, no exhaust. For homeowners on tight lots, in noise-sensitive HOAs, or simply with light-sleeping neighbors, that distinction matters more than the spec sheet suggests.

Your local government quite likely has similar rules. It’s worth checking before making a major investment.

How long the power lasts

This is where the resilience tradeoffs sharpen.

A two-Powerwall system runs a typical Fairfax home for 12 to 24 hours on a single charge. Trim to essentials — refrigerator, lights, internet, a few outlets, no air conditioning — and that stretches to four or five days. But without solar, there is no autonomous recharge. Once depleted, the home goes dark until Dominion restores service.

A natural-gas generator runs indefinitely, provided the Washington Gas pipeline stays pressurized. Through the 2012 derecho, the utility’s underground infrastructure held for the vast majority of affected customers. Pipeline failure during a regional emergency is rare but not impossible: a February 2026 main rupture in Centreville cut service to 46 homes.

A propane generator with a 500-gallon tank delivers about 5.5 to 6.5 days of runtime at typical loads — enough for nearly every Fairfax outage in recorded history, but tight for the longest events. Pre-storm refills are essential; delivery trucks face the same downed-tree obstacles as everyone else.

The verdict

For most homes, a natural-gas standby generator remains the lowest-cost path to whole-home backup. It runs as long as the pipeline does, it costs $11,000 less over a decade than the alternatives, and, at least in the Fairfax area used in our example, Washington Gas’s infrastructure has proven storm-resilient.

Batteries justify the premium in three specific situations: when solar panels are part of the project (unlocking Tesla’s unlimited-cycle warranty and autonomous recharge), when neighborhood noise or HOA restrictions make a generator impractical, and when typical outages are short enough — under 18 hours — that 27 kilowatt-hours of storage is sufficient.

Propane fills a niche: homes without a natural-gas connection that want multi-day backup without dependence on the utility gas grid.

A growing hybrid option pairs a single Powerwall with a smaller propane or natural-gas generator — silent operation for short outages, indefinite duration for the next derecho. It is not the cheapest answer. But for homeowners who want both quiet and resilience, it may be the most honest one.

Sources: Washington Gas current rate filings; Dominion Energy residential tariff schedules; EIA Virginia propane retail prices; Generac and Kohler manufacturer specifications; Tesla Powerwall Limited Warranty (May 2026); Fairfax County Code Chapter 108.1; Virginia State Corporation Commission 2025 Grid Modernization Report; June 2012 derecho documentation; FFXnow and AlexandriaBrief storm reporting.

Perplexity.ai provided research assistance for this story.

A District of Columbia subscriber filed a proposed class-action lawsuit Thursday accusing The Washington Post of secretly harvesting roughly 10 years of personal data from its digital subscribers and using that data to charge longtime, engaged readers more for the same product than newer or less-engaged ones — a practice the complaint and a growing body of federal regulatory research call “surveillance pricing.”

The 43-page complaint, brought by Chelsea Blink of Washington, D.C., in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, names The Washington Post and alleges violations of the District’s Consumer Protection Procedure Act and unjust enrichment. It seeks treble damages or $1,500 per violation, whichever is greater, plus punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and an injunction barring the practice.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers told reporters Thursday the case could expose the paper to “millions, if not billions” of dollars in liability if certified as a class. The filing arrives at the intersection of three fast-moving stories:

• a Federal Trade Commission inquiry into surveillance pricing that has continued through two administrations;

• a House Oversight Committee investigation opened in March by Chairman James Comer of Kentucky; and a

• wave of new state laws — already on the books in Maryland and Connecticut, pending the governor’s signature in New York and under consideration in California — aimed at regulating, disclosing or outright prohibiting algorithmic pricing of consumer goods and services.

What the complaint says

Blink, a daily Post reader who has subscribed since 2016, alleges in the complaint that since at least the mid-2010s, The Washington Post has “covertly harvested [subscribers’] personal data through their phones, computers, or tablets, collecting, aggregating, and analyzing deeply personal information that it would later weaponize to determine how much more money it could extract from each Subscriber to maximize its profits,” Mediaite reported Thursday afternoon after reviewing the filing. The complaint calls the practice “personalized algorithm pricing” or “surveillance pricing.”

The data harvested, according to the complaint, included demographic and professional details drawn from user profiles together with what the filing describes as “detailed records of content interaction” — the everyday rhythms of reading the newspaper. Those records included “ordinary habits” like “reading the morning headlines, checking an election update, [or] following a favorite columnist,” Mediaite reported, citing the complaint.

The central allegation is that the more The Post learned about a reader, the more it could charge that reader.

“Rather than rewarding loyalty, The Post’s system converted Subscribers’ engagement into leverage against them,” the complaint reads, as quoted by Mediaite. “Longtime Subscribers would end up paying more than new customers simply because the company knew more about them.”

The complaint argues that subscribers had no reasonable way to know about or consent to the practice: “While many consumers may understand that free services, such as social networking and search sites, may gather information from users to pay for the service, a reasonable consumer would not suspect that a paid news site, like The Post, would gather this information from its Subscribers in order to increase subscription prices for certain Subscribers,” Mediaite reported.

The proposed class is broad. It would include “All current and former Subscribers who purchased a subscription to The Post at any point during the applicable statute of limitations and who maintained an active subscription at any point when The Post was gathering data for its surveillance pricing model,” Mediaite reported, citing the complaint.

NPR and other outlets have reported the Post has roughly 2.5 million digital subscribers, a figure that has been stable for about four years, according to Mediaite.

The lawsuit names The Washington Post as the defendant; the complaint references owner Jeff Bezos and publisher and chief executive Will Lewis as the executives presiding over the alleged practice, Mediaite reported.

The plaintiffs’ law firm and the damages math

The Clarkson Firm a national plaintiffs’ firm with nine offices, including in Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami, is leading the case, Mediaite reported.

Partner Tim Giordano told Mediaite there was “pretty widespread outrage” among subscribers when the Post’s practice surfaced in March, that Blink was “one of many consumers who reached out to us” and that the firm is “hearing from people each week” and may add new named plaintiffs as the case develops, Mediaite reported.

Giordano said the disclosures the Post eventually made about its algorithmic pricing “lacked any meaningful opt-out for consumers” and that the firm sees potential exposure of “millions, if not billions, in damages, given that the scheme operated nationwide,” Mediaite reported.

The conservative arithmetic the firm sketched: if just 10 percent of the Post’s roughly 2.5 million digital subscribers were charged inflated prices, all renewed annually over a four-year window, and each were entitled to the $1,500 statutory minimum under the District’s Consumer Protection Procedure Act, the bill would land at about $1.5 billion, Mediaite reported.

The Clarkson Firm’s founder and managing partner, Ryan Clarkson, framed the case in broader terms in a statement Thursday.

Kristen Simplicio, a partner and one of the lead attorneys, called surveillance pricing “widely condemned as unfair and deceptive” and said the Post’s “exploitation of its subscribers shows just how far companies will go to pad their bottom line,” Mediaite reported.

Giordano said the firm believes virtually “every subscriber nationwide was affected,” Mediaite reported. On the statute-of-limitations question — a likely defense given that the alleged conduct dates back roughly a decade — Giordano said it was “too premature to get into the weeds,” but argued “there was absolutely no disclosure until earlier this year,” according to Mediaite.

What pushed the practice into public view

The Post’s pricing model first surfaced publicly in March. Subscribers receiving renewal emails noticing a price increase found, at the bottom of the email, a single asterisked line: “This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data,” Washingtonian magazine reported in a March 12 explainer that triggered the broader story.

The disclosure was added, the complaint argues, only because a New York algorithmic-pricing transparency law that took effect in late 2025 required it. Even then, the Post did not formally disclose the practice until a March 2026 renewal email, PJ Media reported.

A Post spokesperson responding to Washingtonian directed the magazine to a blog post by the publication’s engineering team explaining an AI-driven “smart metering model” that determines how many free articles anonymous and registered readers may access before hitting the paywall. The blog post did not address how the Post uses subscriber data to set subscription prices, Washingtonian reported. The Post has not publicly explained the specific factors its renewal pricing algorithm considers.

Luca Cian, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business who studies algorithmic pricing, told Washingtonian that he did not have firsthand knowledge of the Post’s model but that such systems typically draw on user demographics and location, browser histories, IP address, the type of device a reader uses, the volume of articles read, renewal history and inferred financial status, Washingtonian reported.

Common proxies for income include whether a reader uses an Apple device versus an Android device, and whether an IP address resolves to a neighborhood whose average home value can be looked up on Zillow, Cian told Washingtonian. Cian estimated only “probably 0.5 percent of the population” takes meaningful steps to limit data collection — for instance, by using a basic phone or a VPN. “There is very little privacy left,” he told the magazine, Washingtonian reported.

The federal context: FTC inquiry, House investigation, and a growing patchwork of state laws

The Post case lands in the middle of a federal investigation that has continued — quietly — across administrations. Then-Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina M. Khan opened a study of surveillance pricing in July 2024, ordering eight intermediary firms to disclose how they use algorithms and personal data to set prices, the FTC announced at the time.

In January 2025, the FTC published initial findings showing that “retailers frequently use people’s personal information to set targeted, tailored prices for goods and services — from a person’s location and demographics, down to their mouse movements on a webpage,” Khan said in the staff perspective. Staff also flagged behaviors like cursor pauses, abandoned-cart durations and parallel searches on other sites as inputs to pricing models.

Although the Trump administration ended public commentary on the study shortly after taking office in January 2025, current FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in April 2026 that the agency had not closed the inquiry.

“I take the matter of personalized pricing very seriously. I have directed my team to start investigating whether the commission should issue a policy statement regarding the necessity for certain disclosures when highly personalized pricing is employed to establish individual prices,” Ferguson said, Yahoo News reported. Ferguson said the FTC had opened a parallel inquiry into Instacart after the grocery-delivery company piloted and then canceled a surveillance-pricing trial.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, opened a separate congressional investigation in March into the use of AI and consumer data to set prices, PJ Media reported.

The state-law picture, meanwhile, is changing month by month. Maryland and Connecticut have already enacted laws explicitly prohibiting “surveillance-based pricing” using consumer data, Fox News Latino reported.

The New York State Assembly has passed a bill that would similarly prohibit the practice and that is awaiting the governor’s signature; New York’s earlier disclosure law — passed in November 2025 — already requires companies that use algorithmic pricing to tell consumers they are doing so, Washingtonian reported.

California’s omnibus consumer-privacy regime, broadly considered the strictest in the country, is already being read by regulators to cover algorithmic price-setting; the state legislature is separately weighing rules on algorithmic pricing among competitors. Maryland Governor Wes Moore separately introduced legislation aimed at grocery stores using consumer data to charge individualized prices, Washingtonian reported.

What surveillance pricing looks like outside the newspaper aisle

Newspapers are a comparatively novel target for the technique, but the practice is well documented in retail and grocery. The FTC’s January 2025 staff perspective described a cosmetics company targeting promotions to specific skin types and skin tones, and intermediaries surfacing higher-priced products based on consumers’ search and purchase activity, the FTC reported.

A 2025 multi-station Channel 2 Action News investigation found that one shopper was quoted a television price almost $200 higher than another, and that two testers were charged nearly $100 more than other customers for the same grill, Yahoo News reported.

Instacart’s pilot, which the company canceled after public criticism, was alleged to have produced price gaps of up to $2.56 on a single grocery item between shoppers, Washingtonian reported, citing public-interest research. Amazon was reported to have charged local school districts vastly different prices for identical supplies, sometimes on the same day, Washingtonian reported.

Academic research is mixed on whether personalized pricing helps or harms consumers overall. A 2022 working paper by Jidong Zhou of Yale’s School of Management and Andrew Rhodes of the Toulouse School of Economics found that personalized pricing tends to benefit consumers in aggregate when most people buy the product and producing it is cheap, but to harm consumers when products are produced for a narrow audience or when one firm holds a disproportionate share of consumer data, Yale Insights reported.

A separate Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development laboratory experiment found that consumers consistently said they view personalized pricing as unfair and believe it should be prohibited, even when the practice is disclosed, the OECD reported. The OECD also found that mandated disclosures did little to change purchasing behavior in practice.

What happens next

Blink’s case is at the earliest stage. No defendant response is on file. The next steps will be service on The Washington Post, scheduling and a likely motion to dismiss in which The Post can be expected to argue that subscribers consented to data collection in the user agreement, that any harm is not redressable under the District’s consumer-protection statute, and that the bulk of the proposed class falls outside the District’s three-year statute of limitations.

Plaintiffs’ counsel will likely respond that subscribers could not have consented to a practice that, on their telling, was not disclosed for roughly a decade.

The Washington Post had not issued a public statement on the lawsuit as of Friday morning. The Post’s spokesperson did not respond to Mediaite’s inquiry before its Thursday report, Mediaite reported.

Former Post executive editor Marty Baron, who has emerged as a leading internal critic of the Bezos-Lewis era, told Mediaite the recent stretch of staff layoffs and management decisions were “among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations” and that Bezos’s “ill-conceived decisions” had made the paper’s challenges “infinitely worse” by driving off readers and “betraying the values he was supposed to uphold,” according to Mediaite.

For consumers, the case is one of the first public tests of whether the surveillance-pricing inquiry that began at the FTC in July 2024 has any teeth in court. For news publishers, it raises the possibility that the dynamic-pricing tools that have become standard in retail, travel and groceries — and that some industry strategists have explicitly recommended for newspaper subscriptions, INMA reported at its World Congress — may carry liability that other consumer-facing industries have so far escaped.

For The Post, it is a fight that begins on familiar ground: its own city, its own readers, its own court.

—

Perplexity assisted in researching this story

Stellantis is piling up unsold vehicles on U.S. dealer lots faster than any other automaker, a buildup that industry analysts say sets the stage for aggressive summer discounting on Jeep, Ram, Chrysler and Dodge models — even as the broader new-vehicle market shows signs of strengthening.

The CarGurus May 2026 Intelligence Report identified Stellantis as the fastest-growing original equipment manufacturer for inventory last month, outpacing an industrywide gain of about 4.6% above year-ago levels. That growth runs counter to the rest of the market, where a 5.7% year-over-year jump in new-vehicle retail demand pulled supply tighter at most brands.

“Tighter supply where sales are working, looser supply where sale volume is not clearing inventory fast enough,” Erin Keating, executive analyst at Cox Automotive, wrote in a June 11 report. “The opposite pattern remains most visible at Stellantis, where Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep continued to post materially higher supply levels year over year as inventory growth outpaced demand.”

The gap is striking. Cox Automotive pegged the industrywide average at 76 days’ supply in May, while end-of-April data showed Dodge at 142 days, Chrysler and Ram at 135 days each, and Jeep at 128 days, according to Carscoops, citing Cox. Toyota, by contrast, was clearing its lots in about 36 days. Total industry inventory stood at 2.89 million vehicles, up about 13% from a year earlier.

Dealers motivated to move ‘em out

For consumers, lopsided supply typically translates into bigger price breaks. Stellantis dealers are already advertising stacked offers on 2026 models, including $1,500 retail bonus cash on Jeep Grand Cherokees, $1,000-under-invoice pricing on Ram trucks, and 90-day no-payment financing through Stellantis Financial Services, according to dealer incentive listings posted this month.

Buyers should still shop carefully. CarGurus found that average new-vehicle listing prices climbed to $50,700 in May, the highest level since September 2023, as the overall mix drifts toward premium trims. The $30,000-to-$40,000 segment posted the steepest year-over-year decline in share, meaning the deepest discounts are concentrated on higher-priced models rather than entry-level inventory.

Analysts caution the Stellantis pattern is not new. Cox Automotive flagged the same brands as “problem-child” inventory holders in its December 2025 report, and the company spent much of 2025 cutting production to clear bloated lots. The current buildup suggests that effort has stalled, giving consumers a narrow window to push for steeper concessions before the automaker tightens supply again.

June 2026 incentive cheat sheet — Jeep, Ram and Dodge

What follows is a snapshot of national factory incentives in effect as of mid-June 2026, compiled from manufacturer sites, Kelley Blue Book, Edmunds, TrueCar and dealer incentive bulletins. All offers expire June 30, 2026 unless noted. Dealers can stack regional, loyalty, conquest and trim-specific bonuses on top of these, so the actual out-the-door discount is often larger than the national number suggests. Ask your dealer to itemize every rebate code on the worksheet.

Top national offers by model

Stackable bonuses worth asking about

• Owner loyalty cash: $2,000 on Grand Cherokee for current Jeep owners

• Conquest cash: typically $500–$1,000 when trading in a competing brand

• Military bonus: $500 on most Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler models for active, reserve, retired and recently discharged service members and 100% disabled veterans

• First responder bonus: $500 for police, sheriffs, firefighters, EMTs and paramedics

• Mobility assistance: $1,000 on Grand Cherokee and select models for adaptive-equipment purchases

• Stellantis Financial Services 90-day deferral: no payments for 90 days on subvented and standard-rate contracts, Tier 1 and Tier 2 only, on most Ram and Jeep models

• Employee Pricing for All: Stellantis revived this program in 2025 to combat tariff-driven price increases and has periodically extended it; it remains stackable with select retail incentives on most non-fleet trims. Ask the dealer whether it is currently active for your target model.

Dealer-level discounts to look for

National factory cash is only part of the picture. With Stellantis brands carrying 128 to 142 days of supply versus the 76-day industry average, individual stores are layering on their own price cuts to move metal:

• Ram 1500: $1,000 under invoice pricing advertised at multiple dealers, in addition to factory cash

• Jeep Grand Cherokee: $2,500 off Altitude trims and $3,000 off Limited trims have appeared as dealer-level discounts in recent weeks, with some stores advertising up to $7,000 off select 2026 stock

• Jeep Compass: stacked dealer offers reaching $7,500 in combined incentives at some locations

• Dodge Durango: combined incentives advertised up to $10,000 at some dealers

What this means for shoppers

The deepest discounts are concentrated on higher-priced trims — Grand Cherokee Summit, Ram 1500 Limited, Dodge Durango — because that is where Stellantis carries the most unsold inventory. Buyers shopping the $30,000-to-$40,000 segment will see thinner cash but stronger financing offers, particularly 0% APR on Ram 1500 mainstream trims.

Three negotiating tips for consumers:

1. Ask the dealer to print the full incentive worksheet showing every applicable rebate code. National cash, regional bonuses, loyalty, conquest, military and first-responder offers can usually be stacked.

2. Compare the 0% APR offer against the cash rebate. On a $50,000 Ram 1500, taking $3,500 in bonus cash and financing at market rates may save more total interest than choosing 0% APR with no cash.

3. Get a quote from a second dealer in a different ZIP code. Regional incentives vary, and Stellantis days-supply imbalances are uneven by market.

Average listing prices for used vehicles crossed $30,000 in May for the first time in nearly three years, while new-vehicle demand turned positive year-over-year for the first time in 2026, according to a CarGurus report that adds to mounting evidence the U.S. auto market found firmer footing this spring.

The report found average used listing prices ran 5.1% above year-ago levels, the first time they have topped $30,000 since August 2023. New-vehicle retail demand rose 5.7% from May 2025 and was up 6.2% from April, ending a seven-month streak of year-over-year declines on the new side of the lot.

“That’s an encouraging signal after the run of YoY declines we’d been flagging,” wrote Kevin Roberts, CarGurus’ director of industry analytics, in the report.

Independent industry data released over the past two weeks broadly confirms the turn. J.D. Power and Global Data projected May new-vehicle sales of 1.49 million units, up 5.8% year-over-year and the first positive monthly comparison since September 2025. Cox Automotive estimated the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales at roughly 16.1 million in May, up from 15.9 million in April and from 15.6 million a year earlier. Car Dealership Guy pegged the SAAR at 16.2 million, with industrywide volume up about 0.6% to roughly 1.48 million units.

Cox Automotive’s Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, which tracks wholesale rather than retail prices, rose to 212.6 in May, up 3.6% year-over-year on an adjusted basis and 0.3% from April — separate confirmation that used values are rising into the summer selling season.

CarGurus said both franchise and independent dealers contributed to a 4.1% month-over-month and 3.2% year-over-year gain in used demand. Late-model inventory drove much of the activity: vehicles one year old or younger grew to 12.8% of used demand, up from 10.4%. Units eight years and older still accounted for about a third of demand, reflecting the affordability pressure that has shaped the 2026 market.

New car prices climb towards $51,000

On the new side, average listing prices climbed to $50,700, up 1.7% year-over-year and the highest reading since September 2023. The $30,000-to-$40,000 tier posted the largest year-over-year decline in share as the mix continued to drift toward premium models. New inventory ran about 4.6% above year-ago levels, with Stellantis the fastest-growing original equipment manufacturer.

Analysts cautioned that May’s rebound came against a softer comparison. Year-earlier sales in April and May 2025 were depressed after a tariff-driven pull-forward of demand earlier that spring, making year-over-year gains easier to post. Cox Automotive said the year-to-date SAAR is still tracking near 15.7 million, well below the 16.4 million pace through the same period in 2025.

Hybrids continued to do disproportionate work. Car Dealership Guy reported that hybrid lineups “separated the winners from the losers” at the OEM level in May, echoing a CarGurus finding earlier this year that hybrid models carry the tightest market days supply of any powertrain.

Stabilizing but not getting cheaper

For consumers, the data points to a market that is stabilizing but not getting cheaper. New transaction prices remain near record highs, the supply of new vehicles priced below $30,000 has shrunk roughly 60% over the past five years according to CarGurus, and used prices are climbing again after a brief April dip.

Buyers searching the $30,000 range are increasingly being pushed into lightly used inventory — a shift CarGurus and Cox Automotive have both described as the defining feature of the 2026 market.

If Wednesday’s 4.2 percent consumer-price report was a shock, Thursday’s producer-price reading was a higher-voltage one. The PPI for final demand rose 1.1 percent in May, far above the 0.7 percent that economists polled by Dow Jones had expected, CNBC reported.

The annual reading hit 6.5 percent, the highest since 2022. Core PPI excluding food, energy and trade services rose 0.8 percent for the month — the largest one-month increase since March 2022 — and 5.1 percent annually, the highest since October 2022, CNBC reported.

Goods carried the load. Final demand goods rose 2.8 percent, the largest one-month increase since the data series began in December 2009. Energy prices within the goods category jumped 10.7 percent, and wholesale gasoline alone jumped 23.4 percent, CNBC reported. Energy was responsible for about 80 percent of the goods increase, and goods were responsible for about 80 percent of the headline PPI gain. In the services sector, portfolio management fees jumped 4.8 percent.

The implications for consumers are about lag, not direction. The PPI reading captures prices charged by U.S. producers; those costs flow into retail shelves over the next several months. With both CPI and PPI now running well above the Fed’s 2 percent target, “the current inflation environment is expected to keep the [Federal] Reserve on the sidelines for the near term,” CNBC noted, in its PPI summary.

Trump on Thursday said the data showed his policies were working, The New York Times reported; the White House dismissed the inflation print as temporary for the third consecutive month, according to the Times.

Jobless claims hit a 4-month high

The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for unemployment benefits rose to 229,000 in the week ended June 6, an increase of 4,000 from the prior week and the highest level since early February, the Associated Press reported.

Analysts polled by FactSet had projected 216,000. The four-week moving average rose 4,250, also to 229,000. Continuing claims, which lag a week, rose 24,000 to 1.9 million for the week ended May 30. The claims figure is historically low but no longer reassuring at the margin, and that combination — a softening labor market with sticky inflation — is the textbook stagflation problem.

The bond market’s response has been to bet on the Fed being unwilling to bail out either side. CME Group’s FedWatch tool now shows traders pricing a 60 percent probability of at least one quarter-point rate hike by December, CNBC reported, and the FOMC’s June 17 meeting — Kevin Warsh’s first as chair — is widely expected to leave rates unchanged. The European Central Bank raised rates a quarter point Thursday to fight imported Iran-war inflation, the Associated Press reported. The Bank of Japan is set to raise rates to a 31-year high next week, Reuters reported, and the Bank of England is widely expected to follow Thursday.

Effects on households

Households see the consequence on Bankrate’s mortgage screen. The national average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.55 percent Thursday, with the 15-year fixed at 5.92 percent, the 5/1 ARM at 5.69 percent and the 30-year jumbo at 6.69 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Fannie Mae, which began 2026 forecasting that rates would fall below 6 percent by year-end, now expects them to remain above 6 percent through December. The 30-year fixed has been ticking up, not down, in recent weeks despite the relief rally in oil — a sign that the bond market is more focused on the PPI and CPI prints than on whatever ceasefire Trump announces next.

President Donald Trump has nominated Brian Johnson, a former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau deputy director who is now a senior compliance executive at Capital One, to be the next director of the agency, the White House announced this week.

Johnson, if confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term, would inherit a bureau that has been largely dormant since Trump returned to office and installed Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought as acting director in February 2025.

He is Trump’s third pick for the job. Earlier nominations of Jonathan McKernan and Stuart Levenbach were withdrawn or returned by the Senate, the latter widely described as a procedural maneuver to extend Vought’s acting tenure, according to the ABA Banking Journal and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

A familiar hand at the bureau

Johnson served at the CFPB from December 2017 to March 2020, including stints as acting deputy and then deputy director under Trump-era director Kathy Kraninger, where he oversaw rulemaking, supervision and enforcement, according to law firm Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor and Patomak Global Partners.

Before joining the bureau, he spent more than five years as chief financial institutions counsel on the House Financial Services Committee. He later was a partner at Alston & Bird, then a managing director at the Washington consultancy Patomak Global Partners, before joining Capital One in November 2024 as vice president and U.S. card compliance officer, according to Ballard Spahr and prior congressional testimony.

Friends & foes react

Industry groups quickly welcomed the pick. The American Financial Services Association called Johnson’s experience “deep and directly relevant” and urged the Senate to act promptly, according to an AFSA statement. The Consumer Bankers Association also praised the nomination, Reuters reported.

Consumer advocates and Senate Democrats were sharply critical. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee and the bureau’s architect, said in a statement that Johnson is being lined up to continue dismantling the agency once Vought’s clock runs out.

“Starting in August, Russ Vought can no longer legally serve as Donald Trump’s hatchet man at the CFPB,” Warren said. “So here comes the next hatchet man to try to finish the job and gut an agency that has returned more than $21 billion to cheated consumers,” according to The Epoch Times.

Johnson himself has taken a less absolutist line than Vought, who has publicly called for the bureau’s elimination. In 2023 testimony to the House Financial Services Committee, Johnson called the CFPB “ripe for reform” but said that “properly structured and managed, [the CFPB] is capable of great good,” according to his prepared remarks and The Epoch Times.

The timing question

The nomination’s timing has drawn attention from legal observers because Vought’s authority to lead the bureau on an acting basis is set to expire on or around Aug. 1, 2026, under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, according to Sheppard Mullin and Brownstein.

Earlier nominations had reset that clock. But after the Senate returned Levenbach’s nomination on Jan. 3, 2026, many observers concluded the 210-day FVRA window had run out, meaning Johnson’s nomination will not extend Vought’s tenure, Ballard Spahr attorneys Alan Kaplinsky and Adam Maarec wrote.

Instead, the move appears designed to position Mark Paoletta — the CFPB’s chief legal officer, who was named deputy director in early June — to step into the acting director’s chair when Vought’s authority lapses, the Ballard Spahr lawyers wrote.

The Consumer Financial Protection Act separately provides that the deputy director serves as acting director when the director is absent, and a pending Senate nomination would allow Paoletta to remain in that role indefinitely while the chamber considers Johnson, according to Sheppard Mullin and the National Independent Automobile Dealers Association.

“If the goal were simply to keep Vought in office, the nomination would not seem to accomplish that objective,” Kaplinsky and Maarec wrote. “If, however, the goal is to ensure that a Senate-confirmed Director is eventually installed while maintaining a leadership structure aligned with the Administration’s policy objectives, the nomination makes considerably more sense.”

Paoletta, a longtime Trump ally who serves concurrently as OMB general counsel, has helped drive the bureau’s restructuring, including proposed staff cuts and a sharp pullback in enforcement, the NIADA reported.

The Ballard Spahr authors said they nonetheless believe Johnson is a serious candidate. “Knowing Johnson as we do, we very much doubt that he would allow himself to be used in that fashion,” they wrote.

What’s next

The Senate Banking Committee has not yet set a hearing date. If the chamber takes no action and returns the nomination at the end of the current session in early January 2027, it is unclear whether Paoletta’s authority would lapse, whether a new 210-day acting window would open, or whether he could continue indefinitely under the CFPA’s succession provision — questions the Ballard Spahr attorneys said have “surprisingly little judicial guidance.”

The CFPB, created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act in the wake of the financial crisis, oversees banks, credit-card issuers, mortgage lenders, debt collectors and other consumer-finance companies. Its director serves a five-year term.

NHTSA — Major New Vehicle Recalls

Honda recalls more than 1 million vehicles over tire repair kit injury hazard

Honda Accord Hybrid, Honda CR-V Hybrid, and certain other Honda models are being recalled because a defective tire sealant bottle in the emergency tire repair kit can build excessive pressure, causing the cap to detach and become a projectile. Honda has received dozens of warranty claims and multiple injury reports. More than 1.04 million vehicles are affected. (Reuters)

Jeep recalls more than 1 million vehicles over fire risk

Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Gladiator are being recalled because wiring connected to the electric-hydraulic power steering pump can overheat and ignite, even when the vehicle is parked and turned off. Owners are being advised to park outside and away from structures until repairs are completed. Approximately 1,076,999 vehicles are affected. (NHTSA)

Honda recalls 880,000 SUVs and pickups over suspension failure risk

Honda Pilot, Honda Passport, Honda Ridgeline, and Acura MDX are being recalled because corrosion of rear suspension components can lead to reduced vehicle control and increased crash risk. Approximately 880,514 vehicles are covered by the recall. (Reuters)

CPSC — Significant Consumer Product Hazards

Walmart recalls 165,000 dressers over child tip-over hazard

Mainstays 9-Drawer Fabric Dressers were recalled because they can tip over if not anchored to a wall, posing serious injury, entrapment, and death risks to children. The products fail federal stability requirements under the STURDY Act. About 165,000 units are affected. (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission)

Baby bottles recalled due to choking hazard

Boon NURSH 8 oz Reusable Baby Bottles were recalled because the hard plastic outer shell can bubble or peel, creating loose plastic fragments that pose a choking hazard to young children. About 40,000 bottles are affected. (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission)

Sauna blankets recalled over fire and burn hazards

SLF Sauna Blankets can overheat during use, creating fire and burn hazards. Approximately 3,600 units were recalled following multiple overheating reports. (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission)

FDA

No major new nationwide FDA food, drug, or medical-device recalls were identified as significant national consumer alerts during this review period.

USDA FSIS

No major new nationwide USDA FSIS meat or poultry recalls were identified during this review period.

Highest-Priority Hazards

1. Fire risk in more than 1 million Jeep Wranglers and Gladiators.

2. Projectile injury risk from defective Honda tire-repair kits affecting more than 1 million vehicles.

3. Suspension failures in nearly 900,000 Honda and Acura vehicles.

4. Child tip-over and entrapment hazards involving recalled dressers.

5. Fire and burn hazards involving sauna blankets.

6. Choking hazards involving baby bottles.

Most urgent consumer alert: The Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator recall, because affected vehicles can potentially catch fire even while parked and turned off. (NHTSA)

The Labor Department reported Wednesday morning that the Consumer Price Index rose 0.5 percent in May and 4.2 percent over the past year, up from 3.8 percent in April and the hottest annual figure since April 2023.

Energy did almost all the work. Energy prices rose 3.9 percent on the month and 23.5 percent over the past year, CNBC reported, and the Labor Department said energy accounted for more than 60 percent of the monthly CPI increase.

Gasoline alone jumped 40.5 percent from a year earlier. Airline fares climbed 2.7 percent on the month as carriers passed energy costs through. Shelter rose a more modest 0.3 percent and is up 3.4 percent annually.

Used cars ticked up 0.1 percent, new vehicles fell 0.3 percent, and motor-vehicle insurance dropped 1.7 percent — a rare bright spot in a report dominated by what gets pumped into a tank.

Eating gets expensive

Groceries kept squeezing households. Food at home rose 2.7 percent from a year earlier and overall food prices ticked up 0.2 percent on the month, CNBC reported.

“Inflation is painfully high,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, told CNBC; he said the rate is likely near a peak but will not return to anything that feels reassuring to consumers for roughly a year.

Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, told CNBC that gasoline, groceries, electricity and health care are all running above 3 percent annually — the categories Americans encounter every week.

The market reaction was unambiguous. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 953 points, a 1.9 percent loss, The Wall Street Journal reported; the Nasdaq composite fell 2 percent and the S&P 500 lost about 1.6 percent, with industrial stocks the hardest hit and eight of 11 S&P sectors lower on the day.

President Trump greeted the print with a Truth Social post saying “I love the inflation,” tying his remark to plans for new tariffs. The Wall Street Journal’s analysis of paycheck math was less rosy: “Wage Gains Wiped Out by Gas Prices,” its CPI live blog summarized.

Oil climbs back above $92

Wednesday’s market drop happened against a louder geopolitical backdrop. U.S. forces launched a second day of strikes against Iran, and Tehran “fires back and says” it will not relent, NBC News reported in a live blog. President Trump “pledges Tehran will ‘pay the price’ for not accepting deal,” CBS News reported on its live updates page, after Iran shot down an Army Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz Monday.

Energy markets did not need to be told twice. WTI crude futures climbed 2.9 percent in early Asian trading Thursday to roughly $92 a barrel as supply-disruption fears returned. Rystad Energy warned that “if hostilities resume in earnest” prices could “move towards $150 per barrel,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

At the pump, the squeeze is already on. The Energy Information Administration’s June 1 reading had retail gasoline at $4.31 a gallon, up 38 percent from $3.13 a year earlier and from $4.12 on April 27. Prices have eased slightly to about $4.15-$4.16 in AAA and EIA data since, the Associated Press reported, and a gallon has now been above $4 every day since March.

“The Middle East situation is still unresolved,” Bjornar Tonhaugen of Rystad told CNBC, warning that if the strait stays closed, oil could escalate to $140 a barrel or more by October or November. Zandi added that even if the conflict de-escalates, oil and gasoline prices are likely to remain above pre-war levels because traders will price in future Hormuz risk indefinitely.

The New York Times’ interactive gas-price map, updated this week, showed the West Coast and Northeast bearing the brunt of the increase.

Meta has quietly removed facial-recognition technology from software associated with its AI-powered smart glasses just days after reports revealed the company had embedded code capable of identifying strangers in public.

The apparent reversal follows a report by WIRED and analysis by privacy advocates who discovered facial-recognition systems hidden within the Meta AI companion app used with the company’s smart glasses. Researchers said the software contained components designed to convert photographs of faces into unique biometric signatures that could potentially identify individuals encountered by users in public spaces.

According to researchers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a June 5 update to the app appears to have removed the facial-recognition functionality. EFF’s Threat Lab said a review of the updated software found that the code responsible for triggering “Person recognized” alerts had disappeared, along with machine-learning models and databases allegedly intended to detect, digitize, and store facial biometric data.

Public scrutiny credited

Privacy advocates described the rapid removal as evidence that public scrutiny forced Meta to retreat from plans that could have dramatically expanded facial-recognition technology into everyday consumer products.

“The company’s actions speak louder than its public statements,” EFF researchers wrote in an analysis of the update. “Less than 48 hours after the public learned about the system, Meta removed nearly all traces of it from the application.”

The controversy centers on the growing capabilities of smart glasses, which combine cameras, artificial intelligence, voice assistants, and internet connectivity. Consumer advocates have long warned that adding facial recognition to wearable devices could create a network of users capable of identifying strangers without their knowledge or consent.

Meta has previously explored facial-recognition technology. The company shut down its facial-recognition system on Facebook in 2021 amid mounting legal, regulatory, and public pressure. That system had been used to identify people appearing in photos and videos uploaded to the social network.

Legal exposure over the issue

The company has faced significant legal exposure over biometric privacy issues. In 2021, Meta agreed to pay $650 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging its facial-recognition practices violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act, one of the nation’s strongest biometric privacy laws.

Privacy groups say the latest episode demonstrates why voluntary corporate commitments are insufficient to protect consumers.

“While Meta appears to have backed away from this feature for now, there is no guarantee it won’t return in another form,” privacy advocates warned. Researchers noted that Meta has not publicly explained whether it plans to revive the technology in future products or what happened to any data that may have been collected during internal testing.

The incident comes amid increasing concern about the spread of facial-recognition systems across both public and private sectors. Consumer groups argue that biometric information is uniquely sensitive because, unlike passwords, faces, fingerprints, and other biological identifiers cannot easily be changed if compromised.

Advocates are renewing calls for comprehensive federal privacy legislation that would limit the collection and use of biometric data, require informed consumer consent, and give individuals the right to sue companies that misuse their personal information.

Why this matters

The controversy highlights a growing clash between rapidly advancing AI-powered consumer devices and privacy protections. As smart glasses and wearable AI products become more sophisticated, consumer advocates warn that facial recognition could transform ordinary citizens into a decentralized surveillance network unless clear legal safeguards are established.

For now, privacy groups consider Meta’s apparent retreat a victory. But they caution that the broader battle over facial recognition and biometric privacy is far from over.

NHTSA — Significant New Vehicle Recalls

Honda recalls more than 880,000 vehicles over suspension failure risk

Honda Pilot, Honda Passport, Honda Ridgeline, and Acura MDX are being recalled because rear suspension components can fail, potentially causing a loss of vehicle handling and control and increasing crash risk. The recall covers approximately 880,514 vehicles. Dealers will inspect affected vehicles and install reinforcement kits or replace components as needed at no cost. (Reuters)

Jeep recalls more than 1 million vehicles over fire hazard

Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Gladiator are being recalled because wiring associated with the electric-hydraulic power-steering pump can overheat and ignite, even when the vehicle is parked and turned off. More than 1.07 million vehicles are affected. Owners are being advised to park outside and away from structures until repairs are completed. The recall follows dozens of reported fires and at least one injury. (Midland Daily News)

Kia recalls 6,264 Telluride SUVs over seat-belt defect

Kia Telluride and Telluride Hybrid models are being recalled because a defect in the driver’s seat-belt emergency-locking retractor may prevent the belt from functioning properly in a crash, increasing injury risk. Dealers will replace the seat-belt assembly. (New York Post)

Continuing Major NHTSA Recalls

Ford recalls nearly 420,000 SUVs over seat-belt malfunction

Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator are being recalled because front seat-belt retractors can unexpectedly lock, preventing proper extension or retraction. The defect can reduce occupant protection in a crash. About 419,967 vehicles are affected. (Houston Chronicle)

Ford issues “Do Not Drive” warning

Certain Ford Bronco Sport and Ford Maverick vehicles may have improperly installed front lower control-arm ball joints that could detach and cause loss of steering control. Approximately 4,653 vehicles are involved. (CT Insider)

CPSC — Major Consumer Product Hazards

Walmart recalls 165,000 dressers over child tip-over hazard

Mainstays 9-Drawer Fabric Dressers sold by Walmart were recalled because they can tip over if not anchored to a wall, creating serious injury, entrapment, and death risks for children. The units fail federal stability requirements. (New York Post)

Baby bottles recalled over choking hazard

Boon NURSH 8 oz Reusable Baby Bottles were recalled because the hard plastic shell can peel or bubble, creating loose pieces that pose a choking hazard to children. Approximately 40,000 bottles are affected. (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission)

Sauna blankets recalled over fire and burn hazards

SLF Sauna Blankets can overheat, creating fire and burn hazards. About 3,600 units were recalled after multiple overheating reports. (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission)

Lounge chairs recalled after finger amputation injury

Giantex Outdoor Lounge Chairs were recalled because users can place fingers into a pinch point while adjusting the chair, creating an amputation hazard. The recall followed a reported finger amputation. (LiveNOW)

FDA

No major new nationwide FDA food, drug, or medical-device recalls were identified as significant national consumer alerts during this review period.

USDA FSIS

No major new nationwide USDA FSIS meat or poultry recalls were identified during this review period.

Highest-Priority Hazards

1. Vehicle fire risk affecting more than 1 million Jeep Wranglers and Gladiators.

2. Suspension failures affecting more than 880,000 Honda and Acura vehicles.

3. Seat-belt defects affecting Ford, Lincoln, and Kia vehicles.

4. Potential loss of steering control in certain Ford Bronco Sport and Maverick vehicles.

5. Child tip-over hazards involving recalled dressers.

6. Fire and burn hazards involving sauna blankets.

7. Choking hazards involving baby bottles.

8. Finger-amputation hazards involving adjustable lounge chairs.

Largest newly identified recall: Jeep’s recall of more than 1.07 million Wranglers and Gladiators due to a fire risk that can occur even when the vehicles are parked. (Midland Daily News)

Nearly one in five U.S. adolescents and young adults have turned to artificial intelligence chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Character.AI or Meta AI for help when they were feeling sad, angry, nervous or stressed, according to a new RAND-led study that researchers said should prompt urgent conversations among parents, clinicians and regulators.

The nationally representative survey, published June 1 in JAMA Pediatrics, found that 19.2% of Americans ages 12 to 21 — an estimated 8.2 million young people — have used generative AI tools for mental health advice. That is up from 13.1% in a comparable RAND survey conducted a year earlier, an increase of more than 40% in roughly 12 months.

The share of young people relying on chatbots for emotional support is now roughly equal to the share who report receiving counseling from a mental health professional, the researchers said.

Most are doing it in secret. Sixty-three percent of young chatbot users said they had not told anyone — a parent, doctor or friend — that they were seeking mental health advice from AI, and nearly 43% said they consulted a chatbot at least once a month, the study found.

“The speed of growth is attention-grabbing, but so is the fact that most young people who use these tools for mental health advice say they are not telling anyone,” said lead author Ryan McBain, a senior policy researcher at RAND.

McBain called the figures “a sad number, because you’d hope that young people would have the sorts of supportive relationships that they would feel comfortable and empowered reaching out to those around them”

What the study measured

Researchers at RAND surveyed 1,009 adolescents and young adults ages 12 to 21 in November 2025 through RAND’s American Life Panel. The survey did not distinguish between chatbots designed specifically for therapy and general-purpose tools used for emotional support, and it carried a completion rate of 58.4%, which the authors said means findings “contain uncertainty and may be subject to nonresponse bias.”

Use was more common among females than males and more common among 18- to 21-year-olds than among 12- to 14-year-olds. Respondents who had recently discussed mental health with a physician were also more likely to report using AI chatbots for the same purpose.

Ninety-two percent of users said the AI advice they received was somewhat or very helpful — but the researchers cautioned that the rating may reflect chatbots’ well-documented tendency to validate and flatter users rather than the actual clinical quality of the guidance.

A separate RAND, Brown University and Harvard analysis published in JAMA Network Open) in November 2025 had pegged the figure at 13.1%, with rates climbing to 22.2% among 18- to 21-year-olds — suggesting the trend has accelerated as AI tools became more deeply embedded in young people’s daily lives.

A ‘pseudo-relationship’ for vulnerable users

The findings land amid mounting concern from physicians and psychologists that commercial chatbots are not safe substitutes for licensed care. The American Medical Association cited the JAMA Pediatrics study in calling on Congress to act on AI mental health tools used by minors.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has issued a health advisory warning that generative AI chatbots and wellness apps should not be relied on to deliver psychotherapy, urging developers to prevent unhealthy dependencies and to create specific safeguards for children, teenagers and other vulnerable users.

Researchers convened by the National Academy of Medicine have warned that AI chatbots may be uniquely capable of causing harm because they “simulate an actual relationship and its associated emotions” rather than simply serving up information.

Adolescents are especially susceptible to that “pseudo-relationship” because their brains are still developing, the panelists said, and chatbots’ tendency toward unconditional affirmation can be “addictive” and crowd out the difficult conversations and critical thinking young people need to develop, according to the National Academy of Medicine.

The same panel documented instances in which chatbots represented themselves as licensed nurses or therapists, shared information about lethal means of suicide, simulated sexual content with minors and coached young people on how to hide mental health symptoms from adults.

A 2025 Stanford University study similarly found that leading therapy-style chatbots exhibited stigmatizing responses toward conditions such as alcohol dependence and schizophrenia, and in some test scenarios enabled rather than challenged dangerous user behavior.

Multiple lawsuits have alleged that chatbot interactions contributed to the suicides of minors, and Illinois last year became one of the first states to bar AI from making independent decisions in therapy.

Calls for guardrails

McBain said the new findings underscore the case for tighter regulation, including requirements that developers track performance, report serious incidents and continuously evaluate how their tools affect users in high-risk situations.

National Academy of Medicine panelists recommended that developers limit how long minors can converse with a single chatbot, reset chatbot memory daily to prevent harmful ideas from compounding, bar chatbots from representing themselves as licensed professionals, route any signal of distress immediately to crisis services, prohibit the sharing of lethal-means content under any circumstances and ban the use of minors’ data for monetization or personalization.

Maybe a real chat, not a chatbot?

For now, the researchers said, the most important intervention may be the simplest: a conversation.

“Many young people appear to be using AI chatbots for mental health advice privately, without the knowledge of parents, clinicians or other adults,” said co-author Jonathan Cantor, also a senior policy researcher at RAND. “That makes it especially important for adults to start conversations about how AI tools are being used and the role they should and should not play.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Remember how much fun it was getting those nasal swab COVID tests? Adding to the inconvenience, many patients had trouble getting results and wound up paying much more than they expected. A large swatch of those complaints have just been settled in court.

GS Labs has agreed to a $4.87 million multistate settlement of complaints that it overcharged patients and failed to deliver COVID-19 test results promptly. Patients affected by the settlement should soon be contracted.

“[Consumers] deserve medical testing with integrity, fair pricing, and timely results. Unfortunately, GS Labs exploited the huge demand for testing to make large profits while not fulfilling their obligations to patients,” said Dave Sunday, Attorney General of Pennsylvania, one of the states that brought the complaint against GS.

“This settlement will return money to [those] who were relying on this company to provide critical and timely medical information.”

The multistate coalition investigated numerous problems with GS Lab’s nationwide testing practices from 2020 through 2022, including:

• GS Labs intentionally advertised inflated “cash prices” for COVID-19 tests, sometimes as high as $380 per test, or nearly $1,000 for multi-panel tests. These “cash prices” were used to justify overcharging patients with insurance coverage, the states charged. While GS Labs offered a “discount” from these “cash prices” to those actually paying in cash, almost 30,000 patients still paid much more than the market rate for their COVID-19 tests.

• For hundreds of thousands of patients, GS Labs guaranteed test results within 3 days and failed to deliver on that promise, sometimes taking a week or longer to send test results to patients.

• Despite advertising that patients with insurance would have no out-of-pocket costs, the company charged administrative fees as high as $49 per test to about 70,000 patients.

Online restitution

Under the terms of the settlement, GS Labs will pay $3.6 million in restitution to patients, including $1.8 million for cash-paying patients that were overcharged for tests, $1.7 million for patients that were charged administrative fees, and $33,692 for cash-paying patients that did not receive test results within 3 days. The settlement creates an online restitution mechanism that will be funded and administered by GS Labs, with oversight by the multistate coalition.

The company will also pay $1.25 million to the multistate group.GS Labs has stated that it no longer offers testing services and is not operational. As part of the settlement, if GS Labs decides to resume testing services, the company must make several changes to its advertising and sales practices.

This settlement was negotiated by the Attorneys General of Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Washington. Joining them in the settlement, alongside Attorney General Sunday, are the Attorneys General of Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, and South Dakota.

Against every macro headwind, the housing market staged a small rebellion in May. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes rose 3.2 percent from April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.17 million units, the fastest pace since December and a 3.2 percent gain from May of last year, the Associated Press reported.

The Wall Street Journal called it “the biggest rise this year.” The median sales price ticked up 1.3 percent from a year earlier to $429,300.

The rebound came in the teeth of rising rates. The national average 30-year fixed mortgage stood at 6.57 percent Tuesday, up 3 basis points from Monday and 3 basis points from a week earlier, with the 15-year fixed at 5.94 percent and the 5/1 ARM at 5.81 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported. The 30-year jumbo rate jumped 8 basis points in a single day to 6.74 percent.

Refinance rates were higher still, with the 30-year refi at 6.72 percent. Freddie Mac data show the 30-year fixed briefly dipped below 6 percent in late February before climbing back to roughly 6.5 percent by early April, CBS News reported, and has hovered there since.

No slippage expected

Fannie Mae, which had forecast earlier this year that rates would slip back below 6 percent by year-end, now expects them to remain above 6 percent for the remainder of 2026, The Wall Street Journal reported. With a CPI print likely to spook the rate market further and the Fed widely expected to hold its benchmark steady at its meeting later this month, the path back to a 5-handle on 30-year rates has gotten longer, not shorter.

Bloomberg has scheduled a Thursday live event titled “What Could Jumpstart the US Housing Market?” — a question many buyers and sellers are asking. The Tuesday data answered some of it: pent-up demand from a slump that began in 2022 is now strong enough to absorb six-and-a-half-percent mortgages.

The biggest consumer-safety story of the day arrived Tuesday with a single instruction: park outside.

Stellantis is recalling more than 1.3 million Jeep Wrangler SUVs and Jeep Gladiator trucks globally, including more than 1 million in the United States, over a defect in the electric-hydraulic power steering pump wiring that can overheat and ignite, CNBC reported.

The recall covers model years 2021 through 2025, and the danger persists even when the vehicle is parked with the ignition off, Bloomberg reported.

Stellantis told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration it has identified at least 72 fires potentially associated with the issue, along with one injury. The company said a “faulty electrical connection may cause the connection to melt, ultimately increasing the risk of a fire,” CNBC reported, citing the recall filing. Owners are told to park outdoors and away from buildings and other vehicles until repairs are made, Bloomberg reported.

Not the first time

The recall extends a regulatory file that NHTSA opened in September 2024 over engine fires in roughly 800,000 Wranglers and Gladiators from the 2021-2023 model years, CNBC reported. The current campaign also reaches into Canada, Mexico (about 23,000 vehicles) and other international markets (about 125,000), CNBC reported.

The remedy — inspections and, where needed, replacement of the wiring harness or the entire electric-hydraulic power steering pump — is not expected to be available until July at the earliest, CNBC reported. For owners with no driveway or detached garage, that is six weeks of careful parking and crossed fingers.

The Stellantis campaign comes on top of last week’s Ford recall of 1.74 million U.S. vehicles for a rearview-camera defect that can prevent images from displaying, Reuters reported, and a separate Volvo recall of more than 40,000 EX30 electric SUVs over battery-pack overheating risks, also according to Reuters. Together, the three campaigns put roughly 3 million additional vehicles into the U.S. recall pipeline in less than a week, the busiest stretch of safety actions so far this year.

The government’s new Social Security and Medicare trustees’ reports show the nation’s bedrock retirement and health programs drifting closer to automatic benefit cuts in the early 2030s, with the main trust funds projected to run short of money sooner than previously forecast unless Congress steps in with tax hikes, benefit changes, or both.

The sobering numbers are already fueling renewed calls from budget hawks for prompt action and from seniors’ advocates for revenue‑focused fixes that protect promised benefits.

There is nothing new about this. Policy makers and anyone who pays attention have known for years that adjustments are needed to keep the programs going. But Congress steadfastly passes the buck while both parties demagogue the issue while proposing little in the way of a solution.

Key findings from the trustees

The latest annual reports from the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees show that the combined Social Security retirement and disability trust funds are projected to be unable to pay full benefits around the mid‑2030s if Congress does nothing.

One widely cited takeaway is that the main Social Security retirement trust fund is now projected to be depleted around 2032–2033, at which point incoming payroll taxes would cover roughly three‑quarters of scheduled benefits, triggering automatic across‑the‑board cuts absent legislative changes.

The Medicare Hospital Insurance (Part A) trust fund is also projected to exhaust its reserves around 2033, several years earlier than previously forecast, leaving it able to pay only about 89% of promised hospital benefits from ongoing revenues.

Trustees and outside summaries note that population aging, slower‑than‑expected fertility, rising health‑care costs, and recent benefit‑expanding legislation are driving the deterioration in both programs’ finances.

• Over the standard 75‑year window, analysts estimate Social Security faces a long‑range shortfall on the order of tens of trillions of dollars in present‑value terms, underscoring that the gap between dedicated revenues and promised benefits continues to widen.

What it means for beneficiaries

If lawmakers do not act before the projected insolvency dates, Social Security would still pay benefits, but only at a reduced level tied to incoming payroll tax revenue, with estimates of roughly 75–80% of scheduled benefits after trust‑fund depletion.

Analysts warn that a typical couple retiring in the early 2030s could see their annual Social Security benefits cut by thousands of dollars if Congress allows the trust funds to hit insolvency with no fixes in place.

For Medicare Part A, hospitals and other providers would face an immediate across‑the‑board reduction in payments—roughly an 11% cut at the projected depletion date—raising concerns about access to care for seniors and people with disabilities.

Advocates stress that low‑ and middle‑income retirees, people with disabilities, and older adults in rural or underserved areas would be most vulnerable to sudden benefit or payment cuts.

Political and expert reaction

The Treasury Department and other trustees frame the report as a call for “timely action” by Congress, saying earlier, gradual policy changes would better protect current retirees and give younger workers time to adjust.

Fiscal watchdogs, including the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, say the new projections confirm that Social Security and Medicare are “on an unsustainable path” and that waiting until the last minute would force steeper benefit cuts or tax increases.

Some budget hawks emphasize that Social Security and health‑related spending are consuming a growing share of the federal budget—now in the mid‑40% range—crowding out other priorities and adding to long‑term debt concerns.

Advocacy groups for seniors counter that the programs remain fundamentally sound if lawmakers are willing to raise additional revenue, and they argue that across‑the‑board benefit cuts should be off the table in any reform package.

What’s next in the policy debate

Policy analysts say Congress has a familiar menu of options: raising or eliminating the cap on wages subject to Social Security payroll tax, gradually increasing the payroll tax rate, adjusting the benefit formula, raising the full retirement age, or some combination.

Health‑policy experts add that Medicare’s outlook hinges heavily on broader efforts to slow hospital and drug‑price growth, expand value‑based payment models, and reduce fraud and waste in the program.

Across the political spectrum, experts note that enacting changes sooner would allow for smaller, more targeted adjustments; delaying action until the trust funds are on the brink of insolvency would likely force abrupt, politically painful decisions.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has announced the creation of a first-of-its-kind Affordability Response Team within the California Department of Justice, an initiative aimed at identifying and prosecuting unlawful practices that increase costs for consumers.

The new unit will bring together attorneys and investigators from multiple divisions within the state DOJ to pursue cases involving alleged illegal conduct that contributes to the state’s affordability crisis.

“Californians, we hear you: The cost of living is much too high,” Bonta said in announcing the initiative. He said the team would investigate practices that unlawfully raise prices and create a coordinated enforcement pipeline focused on affordability issues.

Corporations, landlords and scammers targeted

According to the Attorney General’s office, the Affordability Response Team will examine a wide range of conduct affecting consumer finances, including alleged unlawful actions by corporations, landlords, scammers, and other market participants.

The effort is designed to expand ongoing consumer protection and antitrust work already underway within the California Department of Justice while creating a dedicated structure focused specifically on affordability.

The announcement signals a growing willingness among state officials to treat affordability as a consumer protection issue rather than solely an economic policy challenge.

Rising costs driving financial stress

California officials cited escalating costs across multiple sectors, including housing, groceries, healthcare, childcare, utilities, and transportation.

The state noted that affordability pressures have hit lower-income households particularly hard. Young adults are also facing increasing challenges. According to data cited by the Attorney General’s office, nearly one-quarter of Californians between ages 18 and 24 live in poverty.

Healthcare costs remain another major concern. State officials said seven in ten Californians report that healthcare expenses place financial strain on their households.

Americans relying more heavily on debt

The announcement comes amid growing signs of consumer financial distress nationwide.

Food prices remain elevated and are expected to continue increasing over the next year. Consumer advocates have reported growing reliance on food banks and other assistance programs as families struggle to keep pace with rising expenses.

At the same time, household debt has reached historic levels. U.S. credit card debt climbed to a record $1.28 trillion by the end of 2025, according to figures cited by California officials. Credit card delinquency rates have also risen sharply, with the share of balances at least 90 days past due reaching its highest level in 15 years during the first quarter of 2026.

Growing state scrutiny of affordability issues

The California initiative reflects a broader trend among state attorneys general increasingly using consumer protection, antitrust, and unfair competition laws to address affordability concerns.

Recent enforcement efforts around the country have focused on alleged price-fixing, hidden fees, junk fees, rental housing practices, healthcare consolidation, prescription drug costs, and deceptive business practices that can increase costs for consumers.

While the Affordability Response Team has not yet announced specific investigations, the Attorney General’s office said the unit will serve as a central hub for identifying and pursuing cases involving unlawful conduct that contributes to rising consumer costs.

What this means for consumers

For California consumers, the new team could mean increased scrutiny of businesses and individuals accused of using deceptive, unfair, or anticompetitive practices that drive up prices.

For businesses operating in the state, the announcement serves as notice that California regulators intend to make affordability-related enforcement a higher priority, particularly where officials believe rising costs are linked to unlawful conduct rather than normal market forces.

Affordability Watch

The creation of California’s Affordability Response Team comes as consumer advocates continue warning that many households are reaching a breaking point. Rising housing, food, healthcare, insurance, and utility costs have combined with record household debt levels to create significant financial pressure.

Whether enforcement actions can meaningfully reduce costs remains to be seen, but California’s move could become a model for other states looking for new ways to address consumer affordability concerns.

Dogs will turn on you sometimes, usually because they have come to fear you. So, does that explain why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), once the unflagging protector of American consumers has switched sides and begun biting the hand that once fed it?

The Washington Post’s Andrew Ackerman recently recounted the startling tale of how the federal agency created after the 2008 financial crisis to protect consumers from abusive financial practices has switched its allegiance under the Trump administration. He describes how the CFPB, once targeted for elimination by administration allies, is now being used to pursue political and ideological priorities.

The CFPB was established in 2010 following the financial crisis and was charged with policing unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices by banks, lenders, credit card companies, and other financial firms. Over the years, the agency recovered billions of dollars for consumers through enforcement actions and settlements.

But now the agency’s goal seems to be protecting businesses from consumers.

From dismantling to repurposing

The administration initially moved aggressively to shrink the bureau, reducing staffing and curtailing enforcement activity. But rather than eliminating the agency entirely, officials have redirected its focus toward issues that align with broader administration priorities.

For example, the report says CFPB leadership has begun examining certain nonprofit and mission-driven lenders that Acting Director Russell Vought has characterized as ideologically biased or “woke.”

The shift marks a significant departure from the bureau’s traditional emphasis on protecting consumers from large financial institutions, debt collectors, mortgage servicers, and payday lenders. Critics argue that the agency’s resources are increasingly being used to pursue political objectives rather than consumer protection.

Consumer advocates raise alarms

Consumer groups have expressed growing concern about the bureau’s direction. Advocates note that the CFPB has historically served as one of the federal government’s primary defenses against predatory financial practices, helping consumers challenge illegal fees, deceptive lending, credit reporting errors, and other financial harms.

Recent reporting has documented other changes at the agency, including the removal of thousands of pages of consumer guidance, enforcement announcements, and educational materials from its website. Critics say those actions reduce transparency and make it harder for consumers to access information about their rights, according to The Guardian.

The concerns come at a time when consumer complaints remain high. According to recent reports, Americans filed millions of complaints involving financial products and services in recent years, ranging from credit reporting disputes to debt collection and banking issues.

Political battle continues

The CFPB has long been a lightning rod in Washington. Republicans have frequently argued that the bureau wielded excessive regulatory authority and imposed costly compliance burdens on businesses, while Democrats and consumer advocates have defended it as an essential safeguard against financial misconduct.

The latest developments suggest that the debate has entered a new phase. Rather than dismantling the CFPB outright, the administration appears to be redefining how the agency uses its authority and whom it targets.

What this means

For consumers, the practical impact may depend on which financial issues the CFPB chooses to prioritize in the coming months. If enforcement against major financial institutions continues to decline, consumer advocates warn that fewer federal resources may be available to address scams, deceptive lending practices, illegal fees, and other marketplace abuses.

At the same time, administration officials argue that the changes are necessary to curb regulatory “overreach” — being a little too pro-consumer — and refocus the agency’s mission.

As the CFPB enters its second decade, its future role in protecting consumers appears increasingly tied to broader political battles over the scope and purpose of federal regulation.

Survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, elder abuse and other forms of exploitation in Vermont will gain new protections from debts fraudulently incurred in their names under legislation recently signed by Vermont Gov. Phil Scott.

Consumer advocates say coerced debt is one of the least visible but most damaging forms of financial abuse, trapping victims in years of collection actions, damaged credit scores and barriers to housing and employment.

The new Vermont law prohibits creditors and debt collectors from holding consumers responsible for debts incurred through fraud, duress, intimidation, force, coercion or identity theft.

The legislation is intended to help survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, elder abuse, exploitation of people with disabilities and other vulnerable populations whose identities or financial accounts have been misused by abusers.

“We are pleased to see Governor Scott and the Vermont Legislature take action to help people who have been forced to take on debt because of abuse,” said Carla Sanchez-Adams, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC). “This law provides relief for people with wrongfully damaged credit histories and ends the aggressive debt collection tactics that add to the suffering caused by coerced debt.”

How the law works

Under the new law, consumers who believe a debt was coerced can submit supporting documentation to creditors or debt collectors.

Once that documentation is received, collection activity must stop while the creditor conducts a reasonable investigation.

If the investigation determines that the debt was coerced, any collection lawsuit or arbitration proceeding must be dismissed. Existing judgments must be vacated, and creditors must ask credit reporting agencies to remove information related to the coerced debt from the consumer’s credit file.

Advocates say those credit-reporting provisions may be among the law’s most significant protections because damaged credit histories can linger for years after abuse ends.

A widespread but underreported problem

Economic abuse occurs in an estimated 94% to 99% of domestic violence cases, according to research cited by victim advocates. Coerced debt is a common tactic, often involving credit cards, personal loans, utility accounts, medical debt, auto loans and buy-now-pay-later accounts opened or used without meaningful consent.

Abusers may pressure victims into signing loan documents, open accounts using stolen personal information, or force them to take on debt for household expenses while withholding resources needed to repay it.

The resulting financial damage can make it difficult for survivors to leave abusive situations or establish independent lives afterward.

Consumer advocates say victims frequently discover the debts only after collection notices arrive, wages are threatened with garnishment, or they are denied housing, employment or credit.

Growing national movement

Vermont joins eight other states that have enacted laws specifically addressing coerced debt: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New York and Texas.

Many of the measures are based on the National Consumer Law Center’s Model State Coerced Debt Law, which provides states with legislative language designed to help victims challenge fraudulent debts and repair their credit histories.

“Without state action, coerced debt victims will continue to face the negative economic impacts of the abuse, including damaged credit histories that can deprive a survivor of access to much-needed housing, employment, and utility resources,” said Andrea Bopp Stark, senior attorney at NCLC.

Consumer takeaway

Consumers who believe debts were opened or incurred through coercion, identity theft or abuse should keep copies of police reports, court orders, protection orders, identity theft reports and other documentation that may support a coerced-debt claim.

Advocates say victims should also review their credit reports regularly for unfamiliar accounts and seek assistance from legal aid organizations, domestic violence programs or consumer protection attorneys if they discover suspicious debts.

As more states adopt coerced-debt protections, supporters hope survivors will no longer be forced to spend years paying for financial obligations created by their abusers.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York economists released the May edition of their Survey of Consumer Expectations on Monday, and the results paint the most pessimistic picture of the household economy since 2022.

The share of respondents who said their financial situation was “much worse” than a year ago jumped roughly 2.7 percentage points to 13.3 percent, the highest reading since July 2022 — itself a peak hit during the worst of the 2021-2022 inflation shock.

The combined “much or somewhat worse than last year” share reached 48.7 percent, the highest reading since January 2023, and the CBS News report on the same data put the number even more starkly: “nearly half of Americans now say they’re worse off financially” than a year ago.

Outlook for change not very encouraging

The forward-looking numbers in the survey are no friendlier. The share of consumers expecting their finances to be either much or somewhat worse in the year ahead rose to 36 percent; only 22.9 percent expect improvement.

The gap between those expecting better and worse outcomes is now at its lowest point since October 2022.

Household-spending growth expectations fell 0.4 percentage point from April. Rent-price expectations rose 1.74 percentage points; food-price expectations rose 0.58 percentage point; gasoline-price expectations actually fell 0.5 percentage point, the only category that softened. Year-ahead inflation expectations slipped 0.1 percentage point to 3.5 percent, while three-year expectations held at 3.1 percent and five-year at 3.0 percent — all stubbornly above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.

That backdrop sets up Wednesday’s May Consumer Price Index, which arrives at 8:30 a.m. ET. CNBC’s writeup of the New York Fed survey pegged Dow Jones consensus at 4.2 percent year-over-year for headline CPI and 2.9 percent for core CPI excluding food and energy.

The Wall Street Journal flagged the same consensus, with core expected to rise from 2.8 percent in April to 2.9 percent in May. CBS News, citing FactSet data, put headline CPI consensus at 4.2 percent, which would mark the highest annual pace of inflation in three years.

Federal Open Market Committee meets June 16-17, and market expectations indicate a near-zero probability of a rate cut, with growing odds the central bank may instead deliver a quarter-point hike before year-end.

Small-business optimism is back to its October 2024 low, erasing nearly all the post-election bounce

A second data point from Tuesday morning reinforced the household survey. The National Federation of Independent Business reported its Small Business Optimism Index fell 0.6 point in May to 95.3, the lowest reading since October 2024 and a near-total erasure of the post-election rally that had carried the index to a six-year high of 105.1 in December 2024.

The Wall Street Journal’s report on the same release confirmed the figure. The 95.3 May reading sits below the index’s long-term average of 98 — a threshold the NFIB describes as the line separating expansion-leaning small business sentiment from contraction-leaning.