Senators questioned officials from Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League on Tuesday about the state of sports broadcasting and the future of streaming live games.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hosted the hearing titled, "Field of Streams: The New Channel Guide for Sports Fans."

The witnesses included Kenny Gersh, Executive Vice President of Media and Business Development for MLB, William Koenig, President of Global Content and Media Distribution for the NBA, and David Proper, Senior Executive Vice President of Media and International Strategy for the NHL.

Committee chair Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) opened the hearing expressing frustration with the new reality of watching live sports.

"Sports viewing has become more splintered, requiring multiple apps and subscriptions just to watch a single franchise's entire season," Cruz said. "Streaming may well be the future, but it shouldn't sideline the fans."

Lawmakers questioned some sports broadcasting practices including game "blackouts" in which a game isn't available in a certain market due to broadcasting agreements and the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act.

That law gave sports leagues antitrust exemptions to sell teams' broadcasting rights together as a consortium. Without it, NFL teams for example, could sell their own individual broadcast rights.

"That would create an even bigger fragmentation," said Ryan Glasspiegel, a media and entertainment reporter for Front Office Sports. "Some of these smaller streaming networks that aren't in the game right now could conceivably get in with a one-team package."

He says given the current sports broadcasting climate, the law is outdated.

"This law was drawn up when there were three channels: ABC, NBC, and CBS, and now obviously we have all these cable channels and all of these streaming services."

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The major U.S. sports leagues now air some games exclusively on platforms including Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Max and Netflix. That means fans who want to watch every game can end up paying extra for multiple streaming subscriptions.

"You're basically clobbering the consumer, making everything more expensive," Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) told the league officials in attendance.

Lawmakers didn't lay out exactly what they wanted to see from the leagues.

While speaking with reporters after the hearing, Cruz noted the committee wasn't necessarily looking for an immediate answer.

"This hearing was meant to be informational, was meant to be a fact-finding exercise," Cruz said, according to Awful Announcing. "As for the specific remedy, I don't know right now."

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) did tout one example of a league and broadcaster reaching more fans.

"Thanks to an agreement between the (Vegas) Golden Knights and Scripps, fans across Nevada are able to watch the Knights free of charge over-the-air on local broadcast television," Rosen said.

Scripps Sports broadcasts games over-the-air for free to fans in places like Las Vegas and has limited rights for broadcasting games from the Women's National Basketball Association and National Women's Soccer League.

(Note: Scripps Sports and the Scripps News Group are owned by the same parent company, the E.W. Scripps Company).

The NFL was notably not represented at the hearing. The Senate committee said it asked NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to testify but said the league refused to attend. Goodwell was in Washington, D.C. on Monday for an announcement about bringing the 2027 NFL Draft to the nation's capitol.

Americans continue to have a bleak outlook on the economy.

Consumer sentiment fell for the fourth straight month, according to a survey from the University of Michigan.

The index of consumer sentiment in April was 52.2, down 8% from March and down 32% from January.

"Consumers perceived risks to multiple aspects of the economy, in large part due to ongoing uncertainty around trade policy and the potential for a resurgence of inflation looming ahead," Joanne Hsu, the Director of the Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan, wrote.

The data from the survey matches other recent polling on consumer sentiment.

A new survey from the Associated Press and NORC found about 6 in 10 adults disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling the economy in general.

The survey found 59% of adults believe Trump has gone "too far" with tariffs. Democrats are far more likely to believe that (86%) compared to Republicans (29%).

It also found 45% of adults say they have major stress regarding their personal finances, while 35% admit to having minor stress over their finances.

More than half of adults said they were concerned about the possibility of the U.S. economy going into a recession.

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But those sentiment surveys are what economists consider "soft data," and they don't match recent "hard data" figures that show an economy that's relatively healthy.

That's because those hard data figures lag behind consumer sentiment, according to Phillip Powell, the executive director of the Indiana Business Research Center and an associate professor of business economics and public policy in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.

"Hard data tells us where the economy has been," Powell said. "Soft data tells us where the economy is going."

Powell worries that given how consumers are feeling, the economy is not headed in the right direction.

"Households spend money based upon how they feel, and so if we can measure how people are feeling before they reach into their wallet, we're going to know how much money they pull out," Powell said. "If tariffs stick, the anxiety is going to stay. ... So not only are we going to see higher prices, but we're going to empty shelves, which makes the fear even worse, which means that we're going to enter a negative spiral, which could take us into a recession."

Americans will get a better sense if the "hard data" follows consumer sentiment in the week ahead. The Bureau of Economic Analysis releases U.S. first-quarter GDP on April 30, and April's jobs report is due out on May 2.

E-commerce platforms are finding themselves in the crosshairs of President Trump's new trade war.

China-founded online marketplaces Shein and Temu announced that beginning April 25 they'll bump up some prices "due to recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs."

The two e-commerce rivals released nearly identical statements announcing their decisions.

The move follows an executive order signed by President Trump to eliminate the "de minimis provision" which allowed shipments of less than $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free.

In 2023, over $1 billion worth of goods came into the U.S. under that exemption, according to the Congressional Research Service. The average shipment was valued at just $54.

Companies like Shein and Temu have depended on the exemption to transform e-commerce by delivering inexpensive goods quickly to American consumers.

"This was really helpful for goods that are very low priced so that they can get a lot of shipments out," said Dana Olsen, the director of the Center for Education and Research in Retail at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business.

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Without the exemption, consumers can expect to pay more, according to Ashley Hetrick, a principal and sourcing and supply chain segment leader at accounting firm BDO.

"We absolutely expect to see price increases across the board," Hetrick said. "The extent of these tariffs, at least for those who are heavily reliant on manufacturing operations or raw materials coming out of China, are simply too high for most companies' margins to accept for a lot of your fashion-based retailers."

The price hikes from Shein and Temu could set the table for other online retailers to follow.

"We should expect to see other retailers follow suit and follow in Shein and Temu's, footsteps of bumping prices up within weeks or months," Olsen said.

The federal government froze more than $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard University after the school said it won't comply with a list of demands from the Trump administration over alleged violations of civil rights laws.

The White House claims its demands are needed to fight antisemitism on campus, but in a letter the administration sent to Harvard on Friday, it gives a list of demands that goes far beyond that. The administration calls for governance and leadership reforms at the school, changes to hiring and admissions policies and the discontinuation of DEI programs.

Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, says the federal government can't dictate how universities operate.

"I think it's appropriate for the federal government to uphold things like civil rights laws," Mitchell said. "We need them to do that. But their job is to say, 'Here's the end we need to pursue,' not to prescribe the means."

Harvard's president Alan Garber responded to the administration in a letter on Monday.

"The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights," Garber wrote. "No governmentregardless of which party is in powershould dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue."

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Lawrence Summers, a former Harvard University president and Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama, said universities can do better, but disagrees with the Trump administration's approach.

"Universities are in need of a great deal of reform, and it's come too slowly," Summers said in an interview with CNN. "But that's not a reason why the government can entirely suspend the law and make up self-serving political demands."

Harvard was among 60 schools on a list of colleges and universities that the Department of Education warned last month that it would investigate for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.

The White House says Harvard has failed to protect Jewish students on campus.

"When it comes to Harvard, the president's position on this is grounded in common sense in the basic principle that Jewish American students or students of any faith should not be illegally harassed and targeted on our nation's college campuses," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday. "We unfortunately saw that illegal discrimination take place on the campus of Harvard."

Garber said Harvard has "made it abundantly clear that we do not take lightly our moral duty to fight antisemitism."

But he says the government is not a cooperating partner in that fight.

"(The government) makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner," he wrote. "Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the "intellectual conditions" at Harvard."

Harvard is not the administration's only target. It has also paused federal funding for schools including the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Cornell and Northwestern University.

Columbia University has been discussing policy changes after the Trump administration threatened to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to it.

On Monday, Columbia's acting president Claire Shipman said the school is involved in discussions with the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. But Shipman said the school "would reject any agreement that would require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy as an educational institution."

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he plans to instruct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop recommending fluoridation in public water systems across the U.S.

"It makes no sense to have fluoride in our water," Kennedy said at an event in Utah on Monday.

Utah is the first state to ban fluoride in public drinking water with a law going into effect next month.

At the same event, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lee Zeldin said his agency is going to re-examine studies on potential risks tied to fluoride in drinking water.

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Fluoride is recognized for its benefits in strengthening teeth and preventing decay, and many dental health experts fear that restricting its usage could adversely affect oral health.

But a movement to limit fluoride in drinking water has grown following a report from the government's National Toxicology Program last year. It summarized several international studies and concluded "with moderate confidence" that drinking water with fluoride concentrations exceeding 1.5 milligrams per liter was linked to lower IQ levels in children.

This concentration is more than double the CDC's recommended level of 0.7 milligrams per liter, while the EPA allows a maximum of 4 milligrams per liter.

"Fluoride at the right concentration and the right level is safe fluoride at a toxic level is not," said Suparna Mahalaha, an assistant professor in Cast Western Reserve University's School of Dental Medicine. "The bottom line is that those studies are looking at levels of fluoride that are much higher than what we have in our safe drinking waters that are monitored here."

CDC recommendations are not mandatory, but they are widely adopted by local governments.

Health experts worry about potential consequences for communities that choose to ban fluoride. Many believe that such restrictions would disproportionately impact individuals with limited access to dental care, particularly seniors and low-income families.

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