By Madyson Fitzgerald, Stateline.org

Self-driving vehicle technology continues to advance, prompting a wave of liability and safety regulations from state lawmakers.

This year, lawmakers in Arizona, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada and the District of Columbia enacted legislation to regulate driverless vehicles, according to a database from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

While much of the legislation aims to update existing law to include new definitions for autonomous vehicles, other measures put rules in place regarding insurance, permitting, licensing and road testing.

In total, lawmakers in 25 states introduced 67 bills related to autonomous vehicles, according to the database. California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania currently have bills under consideration. Alaska, Delaware and Washington have bills that will be carried over into the next legislative session.

Governors vetoed two measures this year. Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis shot down a measure that would have required a driver to be present in any commercial vehicle being operated by an automated driving system.

Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a measure that would have put rules in place for “high-risk artificial intelligence systems,” but would have excluded “autonomous vehicle technology” from that category.

As of now, there are no vehicles that have achieved full autonomy, according to the Society of Automotive Engineers’ criteria. But several car companies have introduced automated driving features, allowing drivers to take their hands off the wheel.

Tesla is rolling out its Full Self-Driving feature, a system under which a vehicle can drive itself almost anywhere with minimal intervention from the driver. Tesla Autopilot, which the company made available to the public in late 2024, also helps with basic vehicle maneuvering.

And Waymo, the country’s first autonomous ride-hailing service, is currently operating in Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Los Angeles; Phoenix and San Francisco. The robo-taxi company plans to expand to Miami and Washington, D.C., next.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, vehicle safety is the main benefit of driverless cars. With higher levels of automation, there is less room for human error or driver distractions. The new technology also could improve safety for bicyclists and pedestrians, according to the agency.

But driverless cars have been involved in hundreds of accidents over the past few years. Between 2021 and 2024, there were 696 accidents reported that involved a Waymo vehicle, according to an analysis by California-based law firm DiMarco — Araujo — Montevideo.

And last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system after multiple reports of crashes that occurred in low-visibility conditions.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Amanda Hernández, Stateline.org

For years, state lawmakers have taken the lead on regulating kratom — the controversial herbal supplement used for pain relief, anxiety and opioid withdrawal symptoms. Some states have banned it entirely. Others have passed laws requiring age limits, labeling and lab testing.

At least half of the states and the District of Columbia have enacted some form of regulation on kratom or its components — building a patchwork of policies around a product largely unaddressed by the federal government.

But that may soon change. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is pushing to ban 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH — a powerful compound found in small amounts in kratom and sometimes concentrated or synthesized in products sold online, at smoke shops or behind gas station counters.

Federal health officials announced last month that the compound poses serious public health risks and should be classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, alongside heroin and LSD.

The move marks a significant shift in how federal regulators are approaching kratom, which they attempted to ban in 2016. It also has sparked debate about how the change could impact the growing 7-OH industry and its consumers.

This year, at least seven states have considered bills to tighten kratom regulations, including proposals for bans, age restrictions and labeling requirements.

Kratom, which originates from the leaves of a tree native to Southeast Asia, can have a wide range of mental and bodily effects, according to federal officials, addiction medicine specialists and kratom researchers. Reports of fatal kratom overdoses have surfaced in recent years, though kratom is often taken in combination with other substances.

Kratom and 7-OH are distinct products with separate markets, but they are closely connected. 7-OH is a semi-synthetic compound derived from kratom and only emerged on the market in late 2023, while kratom itself has been available for decades.

Leading kratom researchers also say more research is needed to fully understand the long-term effects of using both substances.

“There’s much we don’t know, unfortunately, on all sides,” said Christopher R. McCurdy, a professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Florida. McCurdy is a trained pharmacist and has studied kratom for more than 20 years.

Research suggests kratom may help with opioid withdrawal and doesn’t seem to cause severe withdrawal on its own. Smaller amounts seem to act as a stimulant, while larger doses may have sedative, opioidlike effects. Very little is known about the risks of long-term use in humans, according to McCurdy.

As for 7-OH, it shows potential for treating pain, but it hasn’t been studied in humans, and it may carry a high risk of addiction. Researchers don’t yet understand how much is safe to take or how often it should be used, McCurdy told Stateline.

While some leading kratom experts agree that kratom and 7-OH should be regulated, they caution that placing 7-OH under a strict Schedule I classification would make it much harder to study — and argue it should instead be classified as Schedule II like some other opioids.

A federal survey from 2023 estimated that about 1.6 million Americans age 12 and older used kratom in the year before the study. The American Kratom Association, a national industry lobbying group, estimated in 2021 that between 11 million and 16 million Americans safely consume kratom products each year.

Since gaining popularity in recent years, 7-OH has appeared in a growing number of products. Some researchers and addiction medicine specialists say many consumers, especially those new to kratom, sometimes don’t understand the difference between products.

“It’s a pure opioid that’s available without a prescription, so it’s akin to having morphine or oxycodone for sale at a smoke shop or a gas station,” McCurdy said. “This is a public health crisis waiting to happen.”

Federal crackdown targets 7-OH, not kratom

In late July, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommended that the federal Drug Enforcement Administration place 7-OH in Schedule I, citing a high potential for abuse. The classification would not apply to kratom leaves or powders with naturally occurring 7-OH.

“We’re not targeting the kratom leaf or ground-up kratom,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said at a news conference. “We are targeting a concentrated synthetic byproduct that is an opioid.”

Makary acknowledged that there isn’t enough research or data to fully understand how widespread 7-OH’s use or impact may be. Still, he said the Trump administration wants to be “aggressive and proactive” in addressing the issue before it grows into a larger public health problem.

While only small amounts of 7-OH occur naturally in the kratom plant, federal officials have raised concerns about U.S. products containing synthetic or concentrated forms of the compound because it’s more potent than morphine and primarily responsible for kratom’s opioidlike effects.

The FDA’s recommendation to schedule 7-OH will now go to the DEA, which oversees the final steps of the process — including issuing a formal proposal and opening a public comment period.

If finalized, the rule could affect both companies selling enhanced kratom products and consumers in states where those products are currently legal.

The DEA backed off scheduling kratom compounds in 2016 after widespread public opposition.

Kirsten Smith, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University who is studying kratom’s effects in humans, said she was surprised by the FDA’s push to schedule 7-OH.

“We don’t really have a public health signal of a lot of adverse events for either kratom or for 7-OH at this time,” she told Stateline. “I was, frankly, always surprised that kratom was pushed toward scheduling at an earlier time point. … I don’t know that we have data to support scheduling even now.”

Still, some advocacy groups, including the Holistic Alternative Recovery Trust, argue the push to schedule 7-OH is driven more by corporate interests than public health, suggesting the kratom industry is trying to sideline competition from 7-OH products.

“We think that this is just happening because of the legacy kratom manufacturers losing market share and wanting to gin up a crisis with this,” said Jeff Smith, the national policy director for the group, who said he has used 7-OH for sleep and pain management.

While his organization supports regulation and safe consumption, members worry the federal government’s move could drive people to riskier substances or push the market underground.

“It’s made a profound difference in my life,” Smith said. “We think it would be tragic to cut it off based on such a paucity of data when there’s so much potential for this product to help people.”

Public health concerns

Federal health officials say a key concern is the growing use of kratom and 7-OH products among teens and young adults.

Some officials and addiction medicine specialists have pointed out that these products often come in flavors and packaging designed to appeal to younger buyers, with few controls over where or how they’re sold. In some states without clear regulations, kratom and 7-OH products are available at gas stations or online, sometimes without any age verification.

“Whenever you go into a gas station and even though it’s behind the glass, it’s kind of eye level, and it has all of these bright colors — it has all of these things that really attract the visual of a kiddo,” said Socorro Green, a prevention specialist with Youth180, a nonprofit focused on youth substance use prevention in Dallas.

Green added that kratom and 7-OH products may be even more accessible to young people in rural communities, where gas stations and convenience stores are often among the few available retailers.

Some researchers and experts say that certain products may not clearly or accurately disclose their 7-OH content and are sometimes marketed or mistaken for traditional kratom.

Some cities, counties and states have responded by banning kratom or raising the minimum purchase age to 18 or 21. But in many areas, enforcement remains inconsistent, and some addiction specialists say clearer federal and state guidance is needed — especially as more people are using kratom and 7-OH to manage pain, anxiety or withdrawal symptoms on their own.

“There needs to be some kind of oversight, including some way of maybe helping to ensure that people know what they’re getting,” said Terrence Walton, the executive director and chief executive officer of NAADAC, the Association for Addiction Professionals.

State regulations

At least seven states have considered or enacted legislation this year related to kratom — ranging from age restrictions and labeling requirements to outright bans.

In New York, lawmakers passed two bills: one requiring warning labels and prohibiting kratom products from being labeled as “all natural,” and another raising the minimum purchase age to 21. Neither has been sent to the governor.

In Colorado, a new measure, which was signed into law in May, prohibits kratom from being sold in forms that resemble candy or appeal to children, increases labeling requirements, limits concentrations of 7-OH, and bans the manufacture and distribution of synthetic or semi-synthetic kratom.

In Mississippi, a new law that took effect in July raised the minimum purchase age for kratom to 21. It also bans synthetic kratom extracts and products with high concentrations of 7-OH. Lawmakers in Montana and Texas introduced similar legislation this year, but neither proposal advanced.

Louisiana is the latest state to enact a kratom ban, which took effect Aug. 1. Meanwhile, in July, Rhode Island became the first state to reverse its ban. The new law establishes a regulatory framework for the manufacturing, sale and distribution of kratom products, set to take effect in April 2026.

As of this year, Washington, D.C., and seven states — Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Rhode Island (until April 2026), Vermont and Wisconsin — have banned kratom. At least half of U.S. states now regulate kratom or its components in some way.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Lane Gillespie, Bankrate.com

Try as we might to avoid it, sudden, expensive emergencies can happen to anyone. A pet might need an unexpected vet visit, your car might need a replacement part or you may experience a layoff. That’s where emergency savings come in: By keeping a savings fund that you only use for emergencies, you can have peace of mind knowing you can tackle any big expense that comes your way.

While keeping an emergency savings fund is important, if you’re working with a tight budget, it may not be easy for you to put aside a few thousand dollars. In fact, nearly a quarter (24%) of Americans say they have no emergency savings, according to Bankrate’s Emergency Savings Report.

Americans have struggled to save for years — since 2011, the percentage of people without emergency savings has bounced between 21% and 29%, according to Bankrate’s Emergency Savings Report, which has tracked people’s emergency savings habits for 14 years. But rising prices since 2022 have made it even harder to save money. While the inflation rate has fallen since its 2022 high, Americans are still struggling with the price of their everyday purchases. Several years of rising prices have led to Americans paying 24.3% more for consumer goods since February 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began in the U.S., according to a Bankrate analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.

Inflation wouldn’t sting as much if Americans received yearly pay raises to match, but wages over the last year haven’t grown fast enough to beat inflation, according to Bankrate’s Wage to Inflation Index. If your income has been stagnant and your everyday expenses are growing more expensive, you’ll have limited funds left over to stash away for savings.

Without emergency savings, you may need to turn to credit cards or borrow money in a pinch, and that’s what many Americans are doing when in financial need. A quarter (25%) of Americans would use a credit card to pay for an unexpected $1,000 emergency expense and pay it off over time, according to December 2024 data from Bankrate’s Emergency Savings Report. With credit card interest rates being over 20%, paying off an emergency expense with a credit card over time will cost you significantly more due to interest charges.

Snowballing economic factors are making it harder to save, especially for younger generations

In a perfect world, you would save at least 20% of your income across retirement accounts, emergency savings and other savings accounts. That’s part of the “50/30/20” rule, which advises you to spend 50% of your income on necessities, 30% on wants and 20% on savings. However, many people are likely to be spending a lot more than 50% of their income on necessities — squeezing the amount they can save.

Consumer prices rose 2.7% year-over-year in June, according to the BLS — the highest annual inflation rate since February. Americans are also squeezed on housing: Nearly half of renters spend more than 30% of their income alone on housing costs, according to the BLS. Similarly, 27% of homeowners pay more than 30% of their income on housing costs, according to product research company Chamber of Commerce.

Add in transportation costs and the rising cost of groceries, and you may easily find yourself cutting into your savings to afford necessities.

While many Americans, regardless of age, are struggling to save money, younger generations today are facing additional stressors that are making saving even more difficult. The labor market is showing signs of weakening, and recent college graduates are particularly struggling to find work as companies slow down on hiring and as AI swallows up entry-level white-collar jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal. What’s more, their spending on non-essentials hasn’t slowed down. Gen Zers (ages 18-28) are the most likely generation to spend more on travel, dining out and live entertainment year-over-year, according to Bankrate’s Discretionary Spending Survey.

Now, Gen Zers and millennials (ages 29-44) are more likely than older generations to have no emergency savings, according to Bankrate’s Emergency Savings Report:

Americans who have no emergency savings in 2025

• Gen Zers (ages 18-28): 34%
• Millennials (ages 29-44): 28%
• Gen Xers (ages 45-60): 24%
• Baby boomers (ages 61-79): 16%

The youngest American adults will likely always have less savings than older generations, since they’re relatively newer to saving. But younger Americans are starting their savings journeys today with added financial barriers that previous generations didn’t face to the same extent. Today’s young adults are kicking off their careers with fewer job prospects and high prices. This can take a toll — 46% of Gen Zers say money negatively impacts their mental health, at least occasionally, according to Bankrate’s Money and Mental Health Survey. This stress has also led to many Gen Zers feeling that planning for their future is pointless, according to CNBC. Without the motivation — or the funds — to save money, more Gen Zers year-over-year have no emergency savings, according to Bankrate:

Americans with no emergency savings, 2024

• Gen Zers: 29%
• Millennials: 34%
• Gen Xers: 31%
• Baby boomers: 16%

How to start — and maintain — an emergency fund when high prices make it harder to save

No matter your age, if you haven’t already started saving, it’s vital to start now, even if it’s only $10 or $20 a month. Building savings is a muscle you need to train — it may be difficult at first, but you’ll be glad to see your progress later.

1. Identify your ‘survival number’

An emergency savings fund should have at least three to six months of expenses stashed away, which is enough to cover most emergencies, like a job loss, car repair or emergency room bill. Saving this amount can be intimidating, but it’s more attainable than it seems.

If you spend $4,000 a month on recurring expenses, such as your rent, utilities, phone bill, groceries and transportation, that doesn’t actually mean you need to save $12,000 to $24,000 in your emergency savings fund. Your emergency fund can be based on your “survival number,” or the minimum amount of expenses you need to survive.

“Every few months or so, I like to go through my budget and identify my six-month survival number,” says Bankrate U.S. Economy Reporter Sarah Foster, who has tracked U.S. wages and inflation for the past several years. “That means including things like rent, utilities and groceries — not nice-to-have extras like streaming subscriptions or monthly facials and manicures. This number usually looks different from my regular budget, and that’s the point. It makes the goal feel more realistic.”

To know your survival number, check your budget and split your expenses into two categories: necessities and non-necessities. Necessities will include your:

• Rent or mortgage
• Utilities, phone and internet
• Insurance and health care co-pays
• Loan payments, such as a car loan, minimum credit card payments and student loans
• Basic groceries, household supplies and pet food
• Transportation costs

Non-necessities will include everything else, including subscriptions, eating and drinking out, personal grooming expenses, hobbies and more — everything you’re able to cut if you lose your job or otherwise need to fall back on your savings.

If you spend $4,000 a month on recurring expenses, you might realize you only spend $3,000 a month on necessities. That means you only need to save $9,000 to $18,000 in your emergency savings fund, which is much more attainable.

2. Start with a savings sprint

If you want to start saving for emergencies, you may need to cut down on spending to make room in your budget. But it can be challenging to suddenly cut down on everyday luxuries like ordering coffee out or getting your nails done.

The good news is, you don’t need to cut out luxuries permanently. To give yourself a head start on your savings, consider a savings sprint. Try cutting out non-essential expenses for a set period of time, such as four or six weeks. Set a savings goal, such as $500, that you can reasonably meet in that time by cutting out non-essentials. Set that money aside in a separate savings account — and don’t touch it.

When the savings sprint timeframe is up, you can go back to spending money on non-essentials — but use that time to figure out what is important for you to spend money on. For example, if after the sprint is up, you realize you actually don’t miss spending money on coffee shops, you can continue funneling that money toward your savings.

It can be hard to find the motivation to keep saving if you are only putting aside a small amount each month. However, a savings sprint gives you a jump start on your emergency savings, providing a motivational boost to watch your savings grow.

3. Make your bank account work for you

You can open a basic savings account at most banks where you keep your main checking account. But keeping your checking and savings accounts close together can make it all too easy to dip into your savings for non-emergencies.

Instead, try opening a savings account with a separate bank from the one where you keep your checking account. It takes several days to transfer funds between most banks, which will discourage you from dipping into your emergency savings too easily.

Any savings account will work to stash your savings, but you might want to consider a high-yield savings account (HYSA), which will offer a higher interest rate than a traditional savings account, which will help your savings grow even faster.

Also, try auto-depositing your savings directly into the account (also known as paying yourself first). By remaining hands-off, it’ll be easier to maintain your new savings habit.

You can keep your savings in one lump sum in a savings account, but some banks today allow you to go one step further. You can split up your funds into savings buckets, meaning you can assign roles to your funds:

Savings buckets let you know where your savings are going by separating them according to your goals, such as an emergency fund, travel fund or house down payment. Not only does this allow you to avoid touching your emergency funds when withdrawing money for a vacation, it serves as a constant reminder of the reasons why you’re saving in the first place.

The bottom line

Saving money isn’t always easy, but it’s vital for your financial health. If you don’t feel like you have enough room in your budget to save, consider cutting expenses where you can by examining your subscriptions, setting spending limits and cutting down on unnecessary spending. Or, you can try selling unwanted possessions or even picking up a side hustle.

Key takeaways:

• Nearly a quarter of Americans don’t have an emergency savings fund. If you’re one of them, that puts you at risk of taking on significant debt.
• It can be challenging to start and maintain an emergency savings fund. Determining the minimum you need to save and starting with a savings sprint can help.
• Opening a high-yield savings account will help you grow your savings without the temptation to use the funds for day-to-day spending.

©2025 Bankrate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Julie Appleby, KFF Health News

People thinking about starting a business or retiring early — before they’re old enough for Medicare — may want to wait until November, when they can see just how much their Affordable Care Act health insurance will cost next year. Sharp increases are expected.

Premiums for ACA health plans, also known as Obamacare, which many early retirees and small-business owners rely on for coverage, are going up, partly due to policy changes advanced by the Trump administration and Congress. At the same time, more generous tax subsidies that have helped most policyholders pay for coverage are set to expire at the end of December.

After that, subsidies would return to what they were before the covid-19 pandemic. Also being reinstated would be an income cap barring people who earn more than four times the federal poverty level from getting any tax credits to help them purchase coverage. Although Congress potentially could act to extend the credits, people weighing optional life changes should factor in the potential cost if lawmakers fail to do so.

“I would hate for people to make a big decision now and then, in a few months, realize, ‘I’m not even going to qualify for a tax credit next year,’” said Lauren Jenkins, an insurance agent whose brokerage helps people sign up for coverage in Oklahoma. “Coupled with the rate increases, that could be significant, especially for someone at or near retirement, when it could easily cost over $1,000 a month.”

Still, how things play out in the real world will vary.

The key factor is income, as the subsidy amount people receive is primarily based on household income and local insurance costs.

People experiencing the biggest dollar increase in out-of-pocket premiums next year will be those who lose subsidies altogether because they earn more than 400% of the federal poverty level. This year, that’s $62,600 for a single person and $84,600 for a couple.

This “subsidy cliff” was removed in the legislation first enacted during the covid pandemic to create enhanced subsidies, but it will be back next year if they expire. About 1.6 million people who earn more than 400% of the poverty threshold bought ACA plans this year, many of them getting some tax credits to help with the premiums, according to KFF data. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

“A lot of small-biz owners fall around that level of income,” said David Chase, vice president of policy and advocacy for the Small Business Majority, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, which is urging Congress to extend the credits.

And a good chunk of ACA enrollment consists of small-business owners or their employees because, unlike larger firms, most small businesses don’t offer group health plans.

In the Washington metropolitan area, “seven out of 10 people who qualify for lower premiums [because of the tax credits] are small-business owners,” said Mila Kofman, executive director of the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority.

Congress must decide by the end of December whether to extend the subsidies a second time. Permanently doing so could cost taxpayers $335 billion over the next decade, but not acting could cause financial pain for policyholders and pose political repercussions for lawmakers.

Because new premiums and smaller subsidies would take effect in January, the potential fallout has some Republican lawmakers worried about the midterm elections, according to news reports.

Republican pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward warned the GOP in a memo that extending the enhanced credits could mean the difference between success and failure in some midterm races, because support for the premium help “comes from more than two-thirds of Trump voters and three-quarters of Swing voters.”

While supporters credit the enhanced subsidies for a record 24 million sign-ups for this year’s ACA plans, critics have blamed them for instances in which sales brokers or consumers engaged in improper enrollment.

“The expanded subsidies were a temporary covid pandemic policy enacted by congressional Democrats on a party-line vote and scheduled to end after 2025,” said Brian Blase, president of the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative think tank. “They have led to tremendous fraud and waste, they reduce employer coverage, and they should be permitted to expire.”

Ed Haislmaier, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, acknowledged that people earning more than 400% of the poverty level would not be happy with losing access to subsidies, but he expects most to stay enrolled because they want to avoid huge medical bills that could threaten their businesses or savings.

“They are middle-class or upper-income people who are self-employed, or early retirees with significant income, which means they have a lot of assets behind that income,” he said. “These are people who view insurance as financial protection.”

He thinks lawmakers would win political support from voters in this category by addressing two of their other major ACA concerns: that annual deductibles are too high and insurers’ networks of doctors and hospitals are too small.

“If you just give these people money by extending subsidies, it’s only addressing one of their problems, and it’s the one they are least upset about,” Haislmaier said. “That is the political dynamics of this.”

Here’s how the expiration of subsidies could play out for some hypothetical consumers.

People in households earning less than four times the poverty rate would still get subsidies — just not as generous as the current ones.

For example, those whose earnings are at the lower end of the income scale — say, just over 150% of the poverty threshold, or about $23,000 — will go from paying a national average of about $2 a month, or $24 toward coverage for the year, to $72 a month, or $864 a year, according to a KFF online calculator.

On the other end of the income spectrum, a 55-year-old Portland, Oregon, couple with a household income of $85,000 would also take a big hit on the cost of their benchmark plan. They currently pay about $600 a month in premiums — about 8.5% of their household income — with subsidies kicking in about $1,000 to cover the remainder.

Next year, if the tax credits expire, the same couple would not get any federal help because they earn over four times the poverty limit. They would pay the full monthly premium, with no subsidies, which would be about $1,800, based on initial 2026 premium rates filed with state regulators, said Jared Ortaliza, a policy analyst at KFF.

People should begin to see insurance rates late this fall, and certainly by Nov. 1, when the ACA’s open enrollment season begins, said Jenkins, the Oklahoma insurance agent. That gives them time to mull over whether they want to make changes in their plan — or in their lives, such as quitting a job that has health insurance or retiring early. This year, open enrollment extends to Jan. 15. Under new legislation, that open period will shorten by about a month, starting with the 2027 sign-up period.

Those who do enroll for 2026, especially the self-employed and people retiring early, should closely track their incomes during the year, she said.

It would be easy to bust through that income cap, she said.

If they do, they’ll have to pay back any tax credits they initially qualified for. Their income might rise unexpectedly during the year, for example, pushing them over the limit. An income bump could come from drawing down more money from retirement accounts than planned, landing a new customer account, or even from winning big at the casino.

“Maybe they win $5,000 at the casino, but that puts them $500 over the limit for the year,” Jenkins said. “They might have to pay back $12,000 in tax credits for winning a few thousand at the casino.”

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Christine Mai-Duc, KFF Health News

Jacob Sweidan has seen his patients through the federal immigration raids of the 1990s, a sitting governor’s call to abolish birthright citizenship, and the highly publicized workplace crackdowns and family separation policies of President Donald Trump’s first term.

But in his 40 years as a pediatrician in Southern California serving those too poor to afford care, including many immigrant families, Sweidan said he’s never seen a drop-off in patient visits like this.

“They are scared to come to the offices. They’re getting sicker and sicker,” said Sweidan, who specializes in neonatology and runs five clinics in Los Angeles and Orange counties. “And when they are near collapsing, they go to the ER because they have no choice.”

In the last two months, he has sent young children to the emergency room because their parents worked up the courage to call his office only after several days of high fever. He said he attended to a 14-year-old boy in the ER who was on the verge of a diabetic coma because he’d run out of insulin, his parents too frightened to venture out for a refill.

Sweidan had stopped offering telehealth visits after the COVID-19 pandemic, but he and other health care providers have brought them back as ramped-up immigration enforcement drives patients without legal status — and even their U.S. citizen children — deeper into the shadows.

Patients in need of care are increasingly scared to seek it after Trump rescinded a Biden-era policy that barred immigration officials from conducting operations in “sensitive” areas such as schools, hospitals, and churches. Clinics and health plans have taken a page out of their COVID playbooks, revamping tested strategies to care for patients scared to leave the house.

Sara Rosenbaum, professor emerita of health law and policy at George Washington University, said she’s heard from clinic administrators and industry colleagues who have experienced a substantial drop in in-person visits among immigrant patients.

“I don’t think there’s a community health center in the country that is not feeling this,” Rosenbaum said.

At St. John’s Community Health clinics in the Los Angeles area, which serve an estimated 30,000 patients without legal status annually, virtual visits have skyrocketed from roughly 8% of appointments to about 25%, said Jim Mangia, president and chief executive officer. The organization is also registering some patients for in-home health visits, a service funded by private donors, and has trained employees how to read a warrant.

“People are not picking up their medicine,” Mangia said. “They’re not seeing the doctor.”

Mangia said that, in the past eight weeks, federal agents have attempted to gain access to patients at a St. John’s mobile clinic in Downey and pointed a gun at an employee during a raid at MacArthur Park. Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement contractors sat in a Southern California hospital waiting for a patient and federal prosecutors charged two health center workers they say interfered with immigration officers’ attempts to arrest someone at an Ontario facility.

C.S., an immigrant from Huntington Park without legal status, said she signed up for St. John’s home visit services in July because she fears going outside. The 71-year-old woman, who asked to be identified only by her initials for fear of deportation, said she has missed blood work and other lab tests this year. Too afraid to take the bus, she skipped a recent appointment with a specialist for her arthritic hands. She is also prediabetic and struggles with leg pain after a car hit her a few years ago.

“I feel so worried because if I don’t get the care I need, it can get much worse,” she said in Spanish, speaking about her health issues through an interpreter. A doctor at the clinic gave her a number to call in case she wants to schedule an appointment by phone.

Officials at the federal Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions from KFF Health News seeking comment about the impact of the raids on patients.

There’s no indication the Trump administration intends to shift its strategy. Federal officials have sought to pause a judge’s order temporarily restricting how they conduct raids in Southern California after immigrant advocates filed a lawsuit accusing ICE of deploying unconstitutional tactics. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 1 denied the request, leaving the restraining order in place.

In July, Los Angeles County supervisors directed county agencies to explore expanding virtual appointment options after the county’s director of health services noted a “huge increase” in phone and video visits. Meanwhile, state lawmakers in California are considering legislation that would restrict immigration agents’ access to places such as schools and health care facilities — Colorado’s governor, Democrat Jared Polis, signed a similar bill into law in May.

Immigrants and their families will likely end up using more costly care in emergency rooms as a last resort. And recently passed cuts to Medicaid are expected to further stress ERs and hospitals, said Nicole Lamoureux, president of the National Association of Free & Charitable Clinics.

“Not only are clinics trying to reach people who are retreating from care before they end up with more severe conditions, but the health care safety net is going to be strained due to an influx in patient demand,” Lamoureux said.

Mitesh Popat, CEO of Venice Family Clinic, nearly 90% of whose patients are at or below the federal poverty line, said staff call patients before appointments to ask if they plan to come in person and to offer telehealth as an option if they are nervous. They also call if a patient doesn’t show five minutes into their appointment and offer immediate telehealth service as an alternative. The clinic has seen a roughly 5% rise in telehealth visits over the past month, Popat said.

In the Salinas Valley, an area with a large concentration of Spanish-speaking farmworkers, Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas began promoting telehealth services with Spanish radio ads in January. The clinics also trained people how to use Zoom and other digital platforms at health fairs and community meetings.

CalOptima Health, which covers nearly 1 in 3 residents of Orange County and is the biggest Medi-Cal benefits administrator in the area, sent more than a quarter-million text messages to patients in July encouraging them to use telehealth rather than forgo care, said Chief Executive Officer Michael Hunn. The insurer has also set up a webpage of resources for patients seeking care by phone or home delivery of medication.

“The Latino community is facing a fear pandemic. They’re quarantining just the way we all had to during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Seciah Aquino, executive director of the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, an advocacy group that promotes health access for immigrants and Latinos.

But substituting telehealth isn’t a long-term solution, said Isabel Becerra, chief executive officer of the Coalition of Orange County Community Health Centers, whose members reported increases in telehealth visits as high as 40% in the past month.

“As a stopgap, it’s very effective,” said Becerra, whose group represents 20 clinics in Southern California. “Telehealth can only take you so far. What about when you need lab work? You can’t look at a cavity through a screen.”

Telehealth also brings a host of other challenges, including technical hiccups with translation services and limited computer proficiency or internet access among patients, she said.

And it’s not just immigrants living in the country unlawfully who are scared to seek out care. In southeast Los Angeles County, V.M., a 59-year-old naturalized citizen, relies on her roommate to pick up her groceries and prescriptions. She asked that only her initials be used to share her story and those of her family and friends out of fear they could be targeted.

When she does venture out — to church or for her monthly appointment at a rheumatology clinic — she carries her passport and looks askance at any cars with tinted windows.

“I feel paranoid,” said V.M., who came to the U.S. more than 40 years ago and is a patient of Venice Family Clinic. “Sometimes I feel scared. Sometimes I feel angry. Sometimes I feel sad.”

She now sees her therapist virtually for her depression, which began 10 years ago when rheumatoid arthritis forced her to stop working. She worries about her older brother, who has high blood pressure and has stopped going to the doctor, and about a friend from the rheumatology clinic, who ices swollen hands and feet because she’s missed four months of appointments in a row.

“Somebody has to wake up or people are going to start falling apart outside on the streets and they’re going to die,” she said.

This article was produced by KFF Health News , which publishes California Healthline , an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation .

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Summer Ballentine, The Detroit News

Michael MacGillivray had planned for months to replace his gas-powered Ford Bronco with an electric vehicle.

As a certified public accountant, he followed congressional debate over President Donald Trump’s sprawling spending and tax legislation, which would end $7,500 tax credits for some first-time EV buyers. When Trump signed the legislation into law July 4, MacGillivray knew he needed to act.

“I was leaning toward the EV regardless, but the tax credit pushed me over the edge,” MacGillivray told The Detroit News while driving his new Tesla Model Y back from a road trip to Toronto.

The 25-year-old Ann Arbor resident is among a surge of what analysts call “fence sitters” buying EVs in the final weeks before the tax credit expires Sept. 30. And automakers are taking advantage of the short-term boost to clear inventory in anticipation of at least a temporary drop in interest once the credits end.

Hyundai’s electrified sales jumped 50% compared to July 2024. Combined sales of electrified Toyota and Lexus models rose 6.7% to 90,426. July was General Motors Co.’s best-ever month for its electrified fleet, according to the company, which said it sold more than 19,000 EVs, a 115% increase from July 2024.

“Everybody wants them right now before the tax credits go away,” said Walter Tutak, dealer trade inventory manager at Champion-Hargreaves Chevrolet dealership in Royal Oak.

Honda Motor Co. reaped a record July in electrified sales, in part because “the impending expiration of EV tax credits led some buyers to pull ahead across the industry,” Jessika Laudermilk, assistant vice president of U.S. sales at Honda, said in an email. The automaker’s Prologue EV recorded 6,318 sales in July, up 82.7% year over year.

“We expect to see this continuing in August and September,” Laudermilk said.

Automakers are not required to report monthly sales, and Tesla Inc. did not disclose data in response to a Detroit News inquiry.

Stellantis NV, which also did not report July sales data, is one of many automakers offering aggressive incentives on both EVs and plug-in hybrids, along with prominent language on its brand sites trying to spur customers into action: “Get your EV incentive while you can!” Jeep says on its website in a promotion for the all-electric Wagoneer S.

“Brands are going crazy with incentives, and it’s good for consumers,” said Lauren Fix, CEO of the consulting firm Automotive Aspects.

Auto reviewer Anton Wahlman, a former technology analyst, said the next few weeks will be “an inventory cleaning event.”

Sam Fiorani, industry analyst at AutoForecast Solutions, said manufacturers will compensate for the loss of the EV tax credit with their own incentives to keep prices stable: “It’s unlikely that you’ll see the prices drop, but you will see leasing deals or customer rebates.”

Analysts expect manufacturers to further scale back production of EVs to match limited interest among buyers, especially as Trump works to remove federal emissions requirements that pressured companies to make those models regardless of market demand.

Stellantis has already started dialing back production of its electrified offerings, with dealers prevented from ordering several models.

“In line with our retail priorities and the plans shared with our dealer network, we are working to ensure our production plan is in line with consumer demand,” according to a statement from the company.

After the industry more broadly scales down production over the course of several years, “they’re only going to sell some of them if they can make money on them,” Wahlman said.

“So there will be far fewer models and they will be priced much higher,” he said.

“In the midterm, you’re going to see EVs disappearing from the marketplace,” Fiorani added. “Currently, they’re encouraged by emissions (regulations) and by the federal incentives, but once those two things go away, then there’s no real incentive for a manufacturer to add a new model to the lineup in a market that’s already crowded with EVs.”

Automakers say they remain committed to EVs in the long run, although many are shifting investments toward hybrids and gas-powered, money-making trucks and SUVs.

“Toyota’s commitment to vehicle electrification is just one important element of its effort to help the world build a zero-carbon future,” Toyota Motor North America spokesperson Derrick Justin Brown said in an email. “Through the current industry shifts, including those around EV tax credits, that commitment remains strong, and there are no current plans to alter our approach.”

Laudermilk said Honda views electrification as “a marathon, not a sprint.”

“We remain focused on expanding our electrified lineup, utilizing our flexible manufacturing to produce ICE, hybrid-electric and battery electric models on the same production lines to meet the needs of our customers,” Laudermilk said.

GM executives have said the company will continue to pursue EV innovations, even as it beefs up its gas-powered fleet with investments at Orion Assembly in Michigan, Tonawanda Propulsion in New York and Toledo Propulsion Systems in Ohio.

Ford Motor Co. last year canceled plans to produce a three-row, battery-powered SUV at its Oakville Assembly Complex in Ontario, planning instead to build gas-powered Super Duty pickups there starting next year. And the Dearborn automaker this month delayed the launch of its next-generation electric van and electric full-size pickup, though it also said it would invest $2 billion to build a midsize electric pickup at Louisville Assembly.

Stellantis this summer announced plans to bring back 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 engines in Jeep SUVs and Ram light-duty pickups as Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress slashed emission and fuel economy standards that had forced the engine’s slow demise in the first place.

Despite the more favorable regulatory environment for gas engines, Fiorani said automakers neglect electrification at their peril.

“A good manufacturer will see that this is the wave of the future and will invest in it,” he said. “A short-term manufacturer will go back to building just ICE vehicles and ignore the future of EV.”

©2025 www.detroitnews.com. Visit at detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Alan Behr, Tribune News Service

The sun drifted teasingly toward the Norwegian Sea, an amber ball suspended as if from a string. It touched down gently on a low peninsula as the Richard With turned to starboard. The finger of land threatened to obstruct the view from those of us standing on a high deck astern, but we checked by our watches: For the second time on our cruise north along Norway’s western coast, we had viewed the sun at midnight. Nods and words of agreement rose in Norwegian, English and other languages.

Here was another bonus for having taken this trip not long after the summer solstice. My primary purpose was to sail the fjords — the long, glacier-formed inlets that jut into Norway’s expansive western coastline. Along the route north, the fjords shelter harbor towns over which verdant mountains rise like castle walls. In front of many, a modest lighthouse stands sentry.

You can tour the fjords by road, but for me, that would be like visiting Paris by helicopter; the point of Paris is to walk it and to feel it, and the point of the fjord communities is to steam into them and to come to know them by sea and by land.

I had boarded my ship, the MS Richard With of the Hurtigruten line, in Bergen, an old trading city with a famous harbor-front row of historic, wood-framed merchant houses. I had wisely allowed myself an overnight at a new and luxurious hotel, the Skostredet, to better manage jet lag and also to treat myself to a funicular ride up the nearby Mount Floyen for dinner at the gourmet Floirestauranten. There, I had checked my backpack for my essentials: a 1961 Leica 280mm telephoto lens retrofitted to a contemporary Leica M11 digital camera; binoculars from the same German source; and a very particular flag, carefully unwrapped around its pole.

By dinnertime the next day, I was aboard my ship and was underway.

Two years earlier, in Oslo, I had struggled to find things that were uniquely Norwegian, so cosmopolitan and diverse had the nation’s capital become. Hurtigruten’s six-night Northern Express would now give me the chance to see Norway among Norwegians. That is in good part because, like others in the line’s fleet, the Richard With is a cruise ship with all the amenities and comforts that the idea of cruising implies, but it is also a ferry, taking locals to ports of call up and down the coastline. At mealtimes, and on shore excursions, I had the chance to get to meet couples and families who were just passing through, to and from homes nearby. All the while, however, I kept secret my purpose for having chosen this northbound route and why the flag furled inside my backpack was part of my visit.

Excursions by bus helped me understand the experience of living and working by the sea, and it was good to walk into towns and along the countryside through which the fjords pushed seawater so imposingly inland. But the biggest thrill came when a group of us donned protective suits in the port of Bode and boarded a flotilla of rigid inflatable boats. Our captain and guide was a solid, agreeable young woman who looked to have lived and worked before the mast since childhood. She steered us up the Salstraumen, a small strait that quickly led us into one of the world’s strongest tidal currents.

Our boat pitched and rocked, our motor seeming at times to wrestle with the strait for control of our destiny as we poured in at high speed under a gray dome of unmoving cloud. We slowed to a swimmer’s pace, and around us seagulls climbed and then dove onto broad whirlpools — the maelstroms — famous vortices of such mythical strength that writers from Edgar Allen Poe to Jules Verne promised that to sail as close to any as we did was to risk being sucked into the depths. Our faces and goggles were now sprayed with water; it was a rugged, yet somehow ethereal thrill — rather as if consciousness had intruded itself upon a darkening dream just enough to offer peace.

Not long after, aboard the Richard With, we celebrated our crossing of the Arctic Circle. When my father had crossed the equator in service with the United States Army in World War II, he had been subjected to an elaborate (and rather rude) initiation ceremony — and got a certificate that I still have. Here was I, decades later, welcomed into my own geographic rite of passage by our ship’s captain, who poured ladles of ice down my back to the cheers of fellow passengers. And I got a certificate. That evening, we welcomed the midnight sun.

71°10’21”N: Our largest excursion group of the trip arrived at the North Cape, the northernmost point on the European continental landmass. A pedestal-mounted skeletal globe marks the spot. I took turns with a father-son team from Poland, snapping each other’s pictures beside the landmark.

We returned to the Richard With and steamed eastward through the Barents Sea. Nearly 1,000 feet below us lay the mangled wreck of the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst — sunk by the Royal Navy on Boxing Day (Dec. 26), 1943. Our final meal aboard ship was dinner, served to me quietly by my waiter as I enjoyed my final view of the sea from my table just below prow-facing picture windows.

We disembarking passengers left early the next morning, along with our luggage, for Kirkenes, population 3,400. The town, which lies on Norway’s short eastern border with Russia, is supported by two notable sources of trade: tourism and espionage. It enjoys an international reputation as a quiet and inviting den of spies, with Russian agents trying to keep an eye on NATO, and with the West appropriately returning the favor.

During the Second World War, when Norway was occupied by the Germans, the Soviet Union bombed the town often; appropriately, the first stop on our tour was the large, dark and cold bunker that could house a good portion of the population during raids.

Then we came at last to the border crossing with Russia. The fjords had topped my European bucket list for years along with one other destination: St. Petersburg.

Scruples now prevent me from visiting what had been Leningrad and that, for all I know, will soon be called Putingrad, so this could well be as close as I will ever get. To remind myself and anyone else who cared to notice why I would not cross the border, from my backpack I withdrew and gently unfurled the flag I had so carefully packed: the blue and yellow national banner of Ukraine. I gave it a good wave in case any Russian border guard was looking and then, with the help of another passenger, planted it in the ground just below the last meters of Norwegian territory.

I spent the night in the Snowhotel, an ice hotel of the kind where you literally can sleep in a large igloo. And, I chose a conventional, comfortable cabin instead, heated to room temperature. After helping to feed the hotel’s resident reindeer, I then flew back to Oslo.

There, I returned to the Munch Museum, where the works of Norway’s famously gloomy (and brilliant) artist Edvard Munch, are on permanent display. On this occasion, however, there was a large temporary exhibition on the themes of illness, injury and death — which is about as an appropriate Munch experience as a curator can offer.

It all seemed to fit, oddly enough. From the fjords, with their majesty, maelstroms, reindeer and tales (and numerous statues) of trolls, to the modern interruption of good daily life brought on by Russia’s merciless war, to the brooding, humanizing power of great Nordic art. I had finally done what I had set out to do two years before: I had seen and at last got an authentic understanding of this austere and yet graceful nation

If you go

At sea: Hurtigruten. The line operates the MS Richard With and similar ships, all to a fine standard. +1-888-969-8297; www.hurtigruten.com/en-us/; reservations@hurtigruten.com. Tip: Book as many shore excursions as you have time to enjoy.

In Bergen: Skostredet Hotel.  Domkirkegaten 6, 5017 Bergen, Norway; +47-55-30-40-50; booking@skostredethotel.no.

In Kirkenes: Snowhotel Kirkenes. Sandnesdalen 14, 9910 Bjørnevatn Tromsog Finnmark, Norway; +47-78-97-05-40; info@snowhotelkirkenes.com

Caution: Beware that third-party reservation services have tarted themselves up to look like they offer the official sites of these and other Norwegian hotels; they are not, and they may charge excessive additional fees.

©2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Meredith Deeds, The Minnesota Star Tribune

MINNEAPOLIS — Long before becoming a global Instagram sensation, the spritz had humble, effervescent roots in the northern regions of Italy, where locals mastered the art of turning a simple drink into a ritual that embodies la dolce vita.

At its core, the spritz cocktail has become synonymous with effortless elegance and sociable sipping; a celebration of balance, where bitter and sweet flavors meet the playfulness of bubbles. Traditionally, a spritz combines a bitter liqueur, a splash of sparkling wine, soda water and plenty of ice, often garnished with a slice of citrus.

In recent years, the spritz has experienced a renaissance. The Aperol Spritz has dominated cocktail menus and social media feeds, becoming a “drink of the summer” not just in Italian cities, but in cities around the world. Its popularity has been fueled by clever marketing, the drink’s versatility and the growing appetite for lower-alcohol cocktails.

Bartenders and home enthusiasts alike have embraced the spritz. It’s easy to make and easy to drink. What’s not to love?

The spritz can vary by region or bartender, but the modern classic — most famously the Aperol Spritz — follows a simple 3-2-1 ratio: 3 parts prosecco, 2 parts bitter apéritif (like Aperol, Campari or Select) and 1 part soda water.

While the formula is deceptively simple, it disguises a world of creativity.

Tea time

Jake Jarecki, the bar manager at Pink Ivy Kitchen & Bar in Hopkins, Minnesota, puts that creative spark to work by always including a spritz on the restaurant’s cocktail menu.

This summer, it’s the Earl Grey Duck Spritz, a name inspired by the Minnesota version of the popular children’s game. The drink itself, though, is not child’s play.

“Whenever I’m developing a spritz for the restaurant, I start out with a really good, well-balanced cocktail,” says Jarecki. In this case, that cocktail includes tea-infused vodka, honey syrup and a splash of lemon juice. “Then I turn it into a spritz by adding bubbles.”

In almost every spritz, those bubbles are a combination of soda water and prosecco, a nod to the cocktail’s Italian roots. And it’s usually the bubbles that make the drink refreshing and light, but that’s not always the case.

The dark side

At Red Rabbit, you’ll find the Midnight Spritz on the extensive spritz menu, and it takes a decidedly darker turn thanks to Italy’s wide varieties of amaro — and beverage director Ian Lowther.

Amaro is a bittersweet Italian herbal liqueur known for its complex, often bitter, and slightly sweet flavor profile. It’s typically made with a blend of botanicals, including herbs, roots, spices and citrus peels. Each brand of amaro (like Aperol and Campari) has its own recipe, resulting in a wide range of flavors and colors.

“In Italy, amaro can be anywhere from very light to very dark in color and flavor, and Italians drink with the sun,” Lowther said. “The darker the sky, the darker the spirit.”

Welcome to the Midnight Spritz.

Red Rabbit’s dark, sexy cocktail starts as most do, with amaro. In this case it’s Cynar, which is made with a blend of herbs and plants. But the artichoke ( Cynara scolymus ) is the most prominent and gives the liqueur its name. Lavender syrup and a little lemon is added, and the drink is topped off with the sparkling red wine Lambrusco instead of prosecco. The result is darker than most spritz cocktails, but still delightfully refreshing, even when the sun is shining.

Combining classics

While the Aperol spritz may be the most popular classic Italian effervescent drink, the negroni might be its most iconic cocktail.

Known for its bitter and sophisticated flavor profile, negronis are typically made with gin, Campari and sweet vermouth, and it makes the perfect base for a spritz. That’s why Robb Jones, bar director at ie – Italian Eatery by Travail, includes a Negroni Sbagliato — negroni with bubbles — on the spritz menu. (Jones also owns Meteor bar in Minneapolis.)

“Balance is key to any cocktail, and our negroni is a beautiful balance between alcohol, acidity, sweetness and bitterness,” says Jones, who finds bitterness to be one of the most important elements to consider when developing a cocktail. “Without bitterness, every other flavor would be one note. The bitterness pushes the other flavors forward.”

Going spirit-free

The term “spritz” can be applied to a wide variety of beverages, and not all have alcohol. At Diane’s Place in Minneapolis, you’ll find a nonalcoholic rhubarb spritz (called Rhuby Tuesday) on the menu. And it happened organically, as many things do for chef-owner Diane Moua.

When Moua was the lucky recipient of several cases of rhubarb, delivered by her father from his small family farm, she immediately turned that bounty into a spiced rhubarb compote to use in one of her memorable pastries.

To use the compote in baking, Moua had to drain off the excess liquid, which created a flavorful syrup. Not one to let something so tasty go waste, Moua gave the rhubarb syrup to bar manager Sarah Atkinson, who turned it into a sophisticated version of an Italian soda by mixing it with a little lime juice and soda water.

So why turn it into a spritz? “We’re all a little dehydrated in the summer,” Atkinson says, “and all you really need for a good spritz is a sunny day, a little bit of ice cold bubbles, and maybe a patio.”

Which is why, more than any other drink, a good spritz tastes like the essence of summer. A spritz offers more than refreshment — it invites a pause, a moment of connection and a taste of la dolce vita, whether you’re enjoying a late afternoon aperitivo in Rome or at a backyard patio with these DIY recipes for Earl Grey Duck Spritz, Midnight Spritz, Negroni Sbagliato and Rhuby Tuesday Spritz.

Pink Ivy’s Earl Grey Duck Spritz

Makes 1 cocktail.

While this fun and inventive cocktail from Jake Jarecki at Pink Ivy takes a couple of steps to make, they are both ultra quick and easy and well worth the effort.

• 6 to 8 blueberries
• 3 tbsp. (1.5 oz.) Earl Grey vodka (see recipe)
• 2 tbsp. (1 oz.) honey syrup (see recipe)
• 1 ½ tbsp. (.75 oz.) lemon juice
• 4 tbsp. (2 oz.) prosecco
• Soda water
• Lemon slice, for garnish

Directions

Muddle the blueberries in a cocktail shaker. Add the vodka, honey syrup and lemon juice and several ice cubes and shake for 10 seconds. Pour into a wine glass. Add more ice, pour in the prosecco and top with soda water. Garnish with a slice of lemon.

Earl Grey Vodka

Makes 1 liter.

Feel free to cut this recipe for tea-infused vodka in half, but keep in mind that any leftovers could change your Arnold Palmer game forever!

• 1 liter vodka
• 8 bags Earl Grey tea

Directions

Pour vodka into a pitcher. Add tea bags and steep for 20 minutes. Remove and discard tea bags.

Honey Syrup

Makes 1 cup.

• ½ c. honey
• ½ c. hot water

Directions

In a measuring cup, stir together the honey and hot water until well combined. Cool.

Red Rabbit’s Midnight Spritz

Makes 1 cocktail.

Looking for a unique spritz that incorporates a dark, full-flavored amaro? This drink recipe from Ian Lowther of Red Rabbit has you covered with a spritz that’s as lovely to look at as it is to drink. Cynar is an Italian apéritif and is widely available.

• 4 tsp. (.66 oz.) lavender syrup (see recipe)
• 4 tsp. (.66 oz.) lemon juice
• 2 tbsp. (1 oz.) Cynar
• ½ c. (4 oz.) Lambrusco
• 3 tbsp. (1 ½ oz.) soda water
• Lemon wheel, for garnish

Directions

Mix the lavender syrup, lemon juice and Cynar together in a wine glass, add ice. Top with Lambrusco and soda water. Garnish with a lemon wheel.

Lavender Syrup

Makes about 2 ¼ cups.

• 1 c. water
• 2 c. sugar
• 2 tbsp. dried lavender flowers

Directions

Bring water to a boil and add sugar. Stir until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and stir in lavender flowers. Chill in refrigerator overnight. Strain out lavender flowers and store syrup in an airtight glass container in the refrigerator.

IE’s Negroni Sbagliato

Makes 1 cocktail.

For a spritz that couldn’t be easier or more refreshing, look no further than Italian Eatery’s version of this classic cocktail from Robb Jones.

• 1 tbsp. (.5 oz.) Campari
• 1 tbsp. (.5 oz.) London dry gin
• 2 tbsp. (1 oz.) Italian sweet vermouth
• Prosecco
• Soda water
• Orange peel

Directions

Pour the Campari, gin and vermouth into an ice-filled wine glass. Top with prosecco and soda water, to taste. Squeeze a 1-inch strip of orange peel over the glass and drop into the cocktail as garnish.

Diane’s Place Rhuby Tuesday Spritz

Makes 1 cocktail.

You won’t miss the alcohol in the light and fruity NA spritz from Sarah Atkinson of Diane’s Place.

• 1.5 oz rhubarb syrup (see below)
• 0.75 lime juice
• Soda water

Directions

Mix the rhubarb syrup and lime juice together in a wine glass. Add ice and top with soda water. Garnish with a spoonful of the cooked rhubarb (from the syrup) or a slice of lime.

Rhubarb Syrup

Makes about 1 cup.

Diane’s Place uses the leftover syrup from making their rhubarb compote. It has cinnamon, ginger, coriander, vanilla and orange zest in the mix. Feel free to add any or all of these ingredients to the pot while you’re cooking your syrup. Or experiment with your own favorite flavors.

• 4 c. chopped rhubarb
• 1 c. granulated sugar
• 1 c. water

Directions

Combine rhubarb, sugar and water together in a medium-sized saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook gently, stirring occasionally, until the fruit is soft and the liquid has thickened slightly, about 20 minutes.

Set a fine-mesh strainer over a large bowl. Pour the rhubarb through the strainer until most of the liquid is in the bowl. Press the solids a little with the back of a spoon to extract more syrup.

If desired, save the cooked rhubarb to use for baking or as a garnish for the drink. Store syrup in an airtight glass container in the refrigerator.

©2025 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit at startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Julie Appleby, KFF Health News

Medicare enrollees who buy the optional Part D drug benefit may see substantial premium price hikes — potentially up to $50 a month — when they shop for next year’s coverage.

Such drug plans are used by millions of people who enroll in what is called original Medicare, the classic federal government program that began in 1965 and added a drug benefit only in 2006. The drug plans are offered through private insurers, and enrollees must pay monthly premiums.

It’s not known whether insurers will pursue the maximum increase allowed, as premium prices for next year won’t be revealed until closer to open enrollment, which starts Oct. 15.

Increases are expected to mainly affect stand-alone Part D plans, not the drug coverage offered as part of Medicare Advantage, the private sector alternative to original Medicare. More on that later.

Policy experts say premiums are likely to go up for several reasons, including increased use of some higher-cost prescription drugs; a law that capped out-of-pocket spending for enrollees; and changes in a program aimed at stabilizing price increases that the Trump administration has continued but made less generous.

One thing is surer than ever, say many policy experts: Beneficiaries should not simply roll over their existing stand-alone Medicare drug plans.

“Everyone should shop plans in open enrollment,” said Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Here are three reasons prices would rise.

1. It’s the Spending!

Every year, insurers keep an eye on what they’re spending on drugs so they can build that into their premium estimates. Spending covers both the prices charged by drugmakers and volume, meaning how many people take the medications and how often.

And it’s up. Spending by insurers and government programs for prescription drugs in 2024 across the market grew more than 10%, which is slightly greater than in recent years, according to a research report published in last month’s issue of the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy. Estimates are not yet available for this year’s trends.

Still, in 2024, researchers found that drug prices overall decreased slightly. Spending rose because of drugs coming on the market and increased utilization, especially for pricey weight loss drugs and another category of medications that treat various autoimmune conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis.

Such increased use is evident in Medicare. Many beneficiaries, for example, are treated for autoimmune conditions. And even though Medicare doesn’t cover treatment for weight loss, many members have diabetes or other conditions that a new type of weight loss drugs can treat.

The Trump administration, according to The Washington Post, is considering a five-year pilot program in which Medicare Part D plans could voluntarily expand access to the drugs, which can cost more than $1,000 a month without insurance. Details have not yet been provided, but the pilot program would not begin in Medicare until 2027.

Another wild card for insurers is the Trump administration’s tariffs on businesses that purchase products made overseas, which could boost drug prices because the U.S. imports a lot of its pharmaceuticals. Much, however, remains unknown about whether drugmakers will pass along any additional tariff costs to consumers.

So, while rising spending is one factor, it isn’t the only reason next year’s premium prices are expected to go up.

2. New Out-of-Pocket Caps for Consumers

Changes made to Medicare aimed at helping people with high out-of-pocket costs for expensive medications may be a bigger factor.

Here’s why: Starting this year, Medicare enrollees have a limit on how much they must pay out-of-pocket for prescription drugs. It’s capped at $2,000, a threshold that will rise each year to cover inflation.

Lawmakers in Congress set those changes in the Inflation Reduction Act under President Joe Biden. The law also shifted a larger share of the cost of drugs used by Medicare beneficiaries from the federal program to insurers.

That $2,000 cap is a big change from previous years, when people taking expensive drugs had a higher threshold to meet annually and were on the hook to pay 5% of the drug’s cost even after meeting that amount. Those additional 5% payments ended last year under the provisions of the IRA.

Before that law passed, “people would spend $10,000 or $15,000 out-of-pocket each year just for a single drug,” Dusetzina said. “The Inflation Reduction Act was necessary to make Part D proper health insurance, but there’s a cost to do so.”

While the cap is a big help for affected consumers, the reduced amounts paid by some beneficiaries — coupled with the cost shift to insurers — could lead plans to spread their increased expenses across all policyholders through higher premiums. A growing number of health plans have also begun to require enrollees to pay a percentage of a drug’s cost, rather than a flat-dollar copay, which can lead to larger-than-expected costs at the pharmacy counter, Dusetzina said.

While consumers not currently taking high-cost specialty drugs may not see a benefit in the $2,000 cap initially, they might one day, say policy experts, who note that drugmaker prices continue to rise and that enrollees could fall ill with a condition like cancer or multiple sclerosis for which they need a very high-priced drug.

“It’s important to think not just in context of those groups who hit the cap every year, but also people are paying more in premiums to protect their future selves as well,” said Casey Schwarz, the senior counsel for education and federal policy at the Medicare Rights Center, an advocacy group.

The new prescription drug cap and other changes apply to both the stand-alone Part D drug plans and Medicare Advantage plans. But those Medicare Advantage plans are not expected to increase the drug portion of their premiums, partly because the private sector plans are paid more per member than what it costs taxpayers for the traditional program.

That means Advantage plans have far more money to add benefits, such as vision and dental coverage, which traditional Medicare does not include, or to use them to cushion the impact of rising spending on drug costs, thus limiting premium increases.

Those additional benefits are advertised to attract customers to Medicare Advantage, which also sometimes offers plans with minimal or no monthly premium costs. There are other differences between traditional Medicare and private sector plans. For example, Advantage members must stick to doctors and hospitals in the plan’s networks, and they may face more prior authorization or other hurdles than in the traditional program.

The growing difference between premiums — fueled by the extra rebates flowing to the private sector plans — “is increasingly tilting coverage toward Medicare Advantage and making traditional Medicare plus a stand-alone PDP [prescription drug plan] unaffordable for many enrollees,” said Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the program on Medicare policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

3. Trump Administration Reduced Funding Meant To Slow Premium Growth

The final factor in the premium increase equation is a program set up to slow the rise of premiums in stand-alone Part D plans.

It began under the Biden administration to offset premium increases tied to changes in the Inflation Reduction Act by temporarily injecting additional federal dollars to help insurers adjust to the new rules.

That plan sent just over $6 billion this year to Part D insurers.

And it had an effect.

The average monthly premium for a stand-alone Part D drug plan dropped 9%, from $43 last year to $39 this year, according to KFF, even when factoring in that some plans raised prices by up to $35 a month, the maximum increase allowed under the stabilization plan for this year.

In a memo released in late July, the Trump administration said it would continue the program for next year, while shaving about 40% of the funding. A government official told The Wall Street Journal that the administration felt that keeping the full funding would have mainly benefited the insurers and cost taxpayers an “enormous, excess amount.”

The stabilization effort next year will send $10 a month per enrollee to Part D insurers to help keep premiums in check, down from $15 this year. Among other changes, it allows insurers to raise premiums by as much as $50 a month, up from the $35 allowed this year.

That would be a substantial increase, Cubanski noted, although it is not clear just how many insurers would pursue the full amount.

“We did see some plans this year were taking premium increases of that $35 amount in 2025, and I fully expect we will see some plans with increases up to $50 a month” next year, she said.

Another reason to take a close look at all the options once open enrollment begins.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By James Royal, Ph.D., Bankrate.com

The cryptocurrency industry has lately begun to heavily promote tokenized stocks, but what exactly are they? More importantly, what advantages do tokenized stocks offer — especially when investors already have safe, no-cost fractional share trading at many brokers?

A tokenized stock is a fancy way of saying that ownership of a stock can be transferred via blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrency. Tokenizing, or digitizing, assets such as stocks, ETFs and other securities allows them to be traded on a specialized digital exchange and potentially directly between investors without the need for an exchange. These tokens are held in a digital wallet, much as crypto coins are, similar to a traditional brokerage account.

“The news cycle for crypto is all about representing traditional financial assets on a blockchain,” says Hilary Allen, professor, American University Washington College of Law. But Allen points out that investors and financial markets will endure major costs for doing so: “There are a lot of protections that are given up by this move.”

In order to establish a tokenized stock, these steps are needed:

— Taking custody of the asset: The asset that will be tokenized needs to be held in custody by a custodian, whose job is to safeguard it on behalf of the token creator.

— Creating the token: A financial institution such as an investment bank or fintech company then creates the digitized token, which corresponds to the asset in custody.

— Setting up smart contracts: Each token is programmed with self-executing smart contracts that give the token’s owner the same rights as stock ownership, including dividend distributions and voting rights, among others.

Once the stock is tokenized, traders can exchange it among themselves on crypto platforms, other decentralized finance platforms or even potentially a traditional stock brokerage. For example, crypto exchange Kraken has created tokenized stocks that it calls xStocks, and now allows trading in 60 major stocks. Meanwhile, brokerage Robinhood launched token trading in the European Union in June, offering access to more than 200 U.S. stock and ETF tokens.

Asset managers BlackRock and Franklin Templeton already offer tokenized money market funds. Goldman Sachs and BNY are teaming up to launch their own tokenized money market funds, too. More firms are exploring the idea of tokenized stocks.

In short, you could think of a tokenized stock as one that trades via blockchain. So what’s the big deal for individual investors? The cryptocurrency industry is breathlessly hyping this as a huge leap forward – as it has done for crypto coins – but the benefits are modest for individual investors, especially buy-and-hold types, and the risks of tokenized stocks are high. In fact, the best stock brokers already offer many of these same benefits to investors at no cost.

The crypto industry touts the following benefits of tokenized stock trading, many of which are already features at top brokers or may soon be features.

Benefits of tokenized stocks

— Increased accessibility through fractional shares: Tokenized stocks let investors trade portions of a share, meaning that high-priced stocks are accessible to even those with a little money.

— Lower cost: The crypto industry touts the potentially lower cost of transactions by eliminating intermediaries via blockchain.

— Transparency: The industry says thatby recording ownership on the blockchain, tokenization ensures that ownership is established.

— Security: Proponents say that blockchain-enabled trading also increases security because ownership is irrevocably established on the blockchain.

— 24/7 trading: Because tokenized stocks are held on a blockchain, they can be traded at any hour.

— Immediate settling of trades: Proponents also point to the immediate settling of trades via tokenized stocks, in contrast to next-day settlement in the U.S.

— More direct access between investors and firms: Tokenization may bypass existing financial intermediaries, letting companies raise money more directly from investors.

Others note the serious risks in tokenizing stocks, particularly in the area of investor protection.

Risks of tokenized stocks

— Potentially irrevocable transactions: Like cryptocurrency transactions, a tokenized stock transaction may be irrevocable. Once it’s done, it’s done, and it may be all but impossible to undo.

— Uncertain legal protections: The legal treatment of tokenized stocks is way behind where the crypto industry is trying to go, exposing investors to plenty of risks. For example, who is considered the issuer of a tokenized stock: the firm that tokenized it or the stock’s original issuer? What happens if an asset is hacked?

— Inflexible smart contracts: Smart contracts programmed into tokenized stocks will not cover all circumstances, says Allen. “It’s not clear how they’ll operate in unexpected environments.”

— Circumventing investor protections: Private investments are private partially to protect investors, not merely to limit investments to the well-heeled, but tokenizing stocks can allow financial players to get around the rules. “It’s absolutely built as an end run around securities laws,” says Allen. “Crypto is built as an end run around securities laws.”

— Loss of trust in American financial markets: One of the potential long-term effects of not enforcing existing securities laws is the erosion of trust in American capital markets. If securities laws aren’t enforced or are enforced inconsistently, then markets simply become a place to rip off investors.

Bankrate reached out to Kraken and Robinhood for further comment but has not heard back.

What’s behind the push for tokenized stocks?

The crypto industry and some traditional financial institutions have talked a big game about tokenization of stocks and some players have moved toward tokenization. But what’s in it for individual investors? Many of tokenization’s supposed benefits touted by the crypto industry are already available for individual investors in the current system.

— Fractional shares already exist: Individual investors can already access fractional shares — on thousands of stocks and ETFs — at the best brokers for fractional shares.

— Stock trading is already commission-free: For individual investors, trading stocks is already free at every major online broker, so there’s no added benefit to using tokenized stocks.

— Transparency and security: Existing brokers already have high levels of security with a proven security process. In fact, it’s the crypto exchanges and other DeFi platforms that have been beset by lax security, fraud and theft.

— After-hours trading: Many brokers already offer after-hours, overnight and pre-market trading on existing stocks. While this is not 24/7 trading, brokers have been expanding access in recent years. Moreover, all-hours access to trading does not benefit long-term investors, who build wealth through the long-term success of the underlying business. Study after study shows that active trading underperforms passive investing.

— “Democratization” of investing: Proponents of tokenization say that it gives access to private investments that are being hoarded by the wealthy. But giving a means to trade a stock — tokenizing it — does not mean that anyone will want to sell it to you. In fact, you should be skeptical when someone wants to sell you what they say is a great investment. (If it’s such a great investment, why are they letting you in on it? It’s not out of the kindness of their heart.)

So, while tokenization may offer a few incremental benefits to individual investors, albeit with significant risks, what’s the real driver of tokenization? Who is actually going to benefit here? It’s the crypto industry trying to make inroads into traditional finance, say experts.

“The crypto industry is waging a multi-pronged battle to get integrated into the financial system,” says Allen. The industry is working to “attract deep pockets” and bring more money into the fold, and tokenized stocks are part of that push, she explains.

So much of the crypto world is about hyping digital currency as “the next big thing.” Part of that process is projecting bombastic price targets for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, ones that are always rising over time. Such hype can make cryptocurrency seem inevitable.

As with cryptocurrency, one of the biggest use-cases for stock tokenization is (illegally) getting around existing laws (in this case, securities laws). So the full-bore adoption of stock tokenization has many potentially destructive effects, including the erosion of investor protections and robust securities laws that protect financial markets. Without these laws, it’s “scammer take all.”

“Investors lose the benefit of the securities laws,” says Allen. She points out that what the crypto industry wants to run roughshod over are the very laws that they claim are roadblocks to their profits. ”We saw what happened in the 1920s and the lack of securities laws.”

Bottom line

Tokenization presents significant risks to individual investors and the financial markets as a whole, while offering few benefits to investors that don’t already exist. Those who try out tokenized stocks should remain wary of their many risks amid an uncertain legal framework.

©2025 Bankrate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Noreen Kompanik, TravelPulse

It is widely believed that Mark Twain said “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than those you did. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the wind in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

There’s just something special about sailing. The open water, sunshine on your face, the wind in your hair and a total sense of freedom, relaxation and centering, a perfect antidote to the stresses of living in today’s modern world.

Whether you decide to be part of a crew manning the sails or just along for the ride, we are so fortunate to have so many incredible destinations here in the U.S. to sail, whether it be a tranquil lake or riding the ocean waves.

Newport, R.I.

Often referred to as the “sailing capital of the world,” Newport offers a deep maritime history, ideal sailing conditions and an important role in international competitive sailing. The coastal town hosted the America’s Cup from 1930 to 1983 and continues to attract sailors from around the globe to its annual sailing events.

Newport has been a longtime training hub for Olympic and professional sailors, and there’s nothing like moving under the impressive Newport Bridge, the longest suspension span in New England.

Chesapeake Bay, Annapolis, Md.

Sailing in Annapolis is a major part of the city’s identity, other than being the location of the United States Naval Academy, where future naval officers are trained in the art. Located where the Severn River meets the Chesapeake Bay, the area offers easy access to both open water and protected coves, making it a sailor’s haven.

The bay’s deep navigable waters make it ideal for recreational and competitive sailing, and the destination hosts numerous sailing and regatta events and boat shows throughout the year.

Charleston, S.C.

This southern belle consistently ranks as one of the top places in the U.S. for sailing, offering incredibly picturesque views. With its historic charm, great sailing conditions and a vibrant maritime culture, it’s only natural that sailors want to be out on the water.

Charleston has some top-notch marinas and yacht clubs, sailing schools and charters, and the College of Charleston sailing team is nationally ranked. My favorite time to sail is at day’s end with an impressive combination of historic skyline, calm harbor waters and glowing sunsets over the Charleston Peninsula, creating an unforgettable experience.

Florida Keys, Fla.

The Florida Keys are home to the only barrier coral reef in North America and the third largest in the world, and sailing here is a tropical dream. The Keys’ multihued waters, warm trade winds and laid-back island culture make for a paradise without having to venture further into the Caribbean with a passport.

Stretching over 129 miles from Key Largo to Key West, the island chain with more than 800 keys offers countless places to sail, anchor, dock and explore. Constant trade winds, shallow warm waters (especially on the Gulf side) and easy access to snorkeling, diving and fishing right off the boat make the Florida Keys a popular sailing destination.

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Known for its mild weather, rich maritime history, picturesque coastline and vibrant sailing community, Santa Barbara is a haven for sailors of all levels. Affectionately known as “The American Riviera,” this jewel of the California coast’s mild winds, calm seas and near-constant sunshine makes for picture-perfect sailing conditions.

Those into competitive sailing can join in the adventure on Wet Wednesday races at the Santa Barbara Yacht Club, a beloved tradition in the sailing community. The region also hosts several regattas and sailing festivals throughout the year.

Finger Lakes, N.Y.

This region consists of 11 glacial lakes and one Great Lake (Ontario), making it a superb destination for the sailing fan. Visitors can choose from a number of sailing companies or use private charters such as Sail True Love out of Watkins Glen and Sail Seneca from Geneva.

The lakes are long and narrow, creating consistent and moderate wind channels that funnel down the length of the lake, making for reliable sailing conditions. Many of the Finger Lakes are deep and clear, good for keelboats, helping to avoid hazards like submerged rocks or sudden shoals. And it’s hard to beat the views, with waters surrounded by hills, vineyards and charming small towns.

San Diego, Calif.

America’s finest city, as it’s often called, is home to almost year-round picture-perfect weather, reliable winds and a stunningly picturesque and protected sheltered bay with easy access to the open Pacific.

San Diego has a long naval and maritime history, which means sailors will not only get great views of the city, Embarcadero and Coronado Island from the water, but also a myriad of U.S. Navy ships. It’s also a great chance to view gray whales, blue whales, dolphins and a slew of various seabirds.

With its vibrant racing and cruising community and notable yacht clubs, this Southern California gem is a true sailor’s city.

San Juan Islands, Wash.

Located in the Pacific Northwest, the San Juan Islands, with more than 170 islands and reefs, are a hidden gem for sailors seeking peaceful tranquility while surrounded by stunning landscapes and quiet coves. Yet they are still considered one of the top sailing destinations in the region.

Situated in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, the islands offer calmer seas, less wind and rain than the outer coast, ensuring smoother, safer sailing. Sailors regularly spot seals, sea lions, porpoises, bald eagles and orcas, especially around San Juan Island.

San Francisco, Calif.

An individual sail might be a challenge here unless you’re a skilled sailor or racer, due to the bay’s strong winds and currents. However, there are plenty of opportunities to get out on the water by a guided catamaran.

Seeing the City by the Bay skyline via water is a rewarding experience, as is sailing beneath one of the world’s most recognizable bridges and past the haunting site of the abandoned Alcatraz Island. You’ll encounter calm waters turning gusty, choppy and tide-driven, but it’s all part of the fun. The city hosts world-class regattas including the America’s Cup and SailGP events.

U.S. Virgin Islands

Sailing the cerulean waters of the U.S. Virgin Islands provides an exhilarating, authentic Caribbean experience without needing a passport. It’s best to hire a boat captain for the day or take a catamaran sail, as you would need a passport to enter British Virgin Island waters.

The three islands making up the U.S. Virgin Island chain are only a few miles apart, making for easy navigation and line-of-sight sailing. Warm water temperatures and steady trade winds make for nearly perfect sail conditions, and the crystalline waters with their colorful, stunning coral reefs and tropical fish make for amazing snorkeling or diving conditions.

©2025 Northstar Travel Media, LLC. Visit at travelpulse.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Karla Marie Sanford, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — The Cortez family piled out of their car and stretched their legs. Finally, after an hour and a half drive from their Long Beach home, they had made it to Little Tokyo — specifically, to One Piece Cafe.

“I was just sitting in the car like, ‘I’m going to be at the One Piece Cafe,’” said Cammy Cortez, who was introduced to the popular manga and anime franchise by her older brother and now runs a “One Piece” fan account on X. “It’s going to be a good day.”

Timed to the Los Angeles Anime Convention, the largest exposition dedicated to Japanese pop culture in North America, the new permanent restaurant is the second official location of One Piece Cafe, in collaboration with Toei Animation, from Andy Nguyen, a serial entrepreneur behind several themed restaurants. The first One Piece Cafe opened in Las Vegas in May 2024.

“One Piece” follows the adventures of protagonist Monkey D. Luffy, who dreams of becoming the Pirate King, and his band of Straw Hat Pirates as they seek the “One Piece” treasure. Fans of the anime have flocked to the Little Tokyo storefront, eager to try Japanese dishes inspired by “One Piece” characters like Sanji’s “Diable Jambe” Chicken Katsu Sando, with 24-hour brined chicken served on sweet honey milk bread, and Zoro’s Onigiri, in honor of the character’s love of rice and a nod to his precision as a swordsman.

The interior dons a nautical theme, with walls that mimic the wooden deck of a pirate ship and characters depicted inside portholes. Branded merchandise includes Luffy’s signature straw hat, themed key chains and even a “Wanted” license plate. Drinks, ranging from slushies to matcha horchata, come in collectible cups.

“It’s not [like] just they slapped the name ‘One Piece’ onto a random restaurant,” said customer Imelda Cardenas. “They really did it justice with the interior and the menu, and the merch they sell inside is really great too.”

Initially premiering in 1999, the “One Piece” anime has 1,136 episodes and counting, with ardent fans deeply immersed in the lore. The manga, by creator Eiichiro Oda, is the bestselling manga of all time. New audiences were also introduced to the franchise in 2023, when Netflix released a massively successful live-action rendition of the anime.

“If you’re a fan of ‘One Piece,’ then you think it’s the best anime of all time,” explained Karime Benmbarek, who came with his older brother Yassine from Northridge to experience the Little Tokyo restaurant. “Even if you’re just a chill fan, you still feel the love through the community.”

Restaurants themed around Japanese pop culture have recently gained footholds in L.A., with Gudetama Cafe and Hello Kitty and Friends Cafe — both within the Sanrio universe — opening in 2024. Local excitement for “One Piece,” however, seems to be approaching the mainstream. In June, the Los Angeles Dodgers hosted a One Piece Night, featuring a limited edition “One Piece” card drawn by Oda. The Los Angeles Lakers collaborated with “One Piece” for their February matchup against the Clippers; exclusive merch from the match now resells for up to $250.

“‘One Piece’ has a pretty big community, and especially with the Lakers and Dodgers collaborating with One Piece, L.A. is bringing anime into their culture as well,” said Yassine, who immediately alerted his younger brother after seeing a TikTok about the restaurant opening. The brothers bond over watching the show and, lured by the chicken katsu sandwich in particular, quickly made a plan to visit in person.

Karime, who tried the chicken katsu sandwich and curry, said, “I’d definitely come back — if my brother can take me.”

As anime, manga and other elements of Japanese pop culture have become mainstream, the understanding of Little Tokyo as a place where people can engage in those interests has also skyrocketed, said Kristin Fukushima, the executive director of Little Tokyo Community Council. This interest in Japanese subcultures — evidenced in the virality of One Piece Cafe — can have a positive impact on other small businesses in Little Tokyo.

After the Benmbarek brothers finished their meal, they planned to make a day of wandering through Little Tokyo. Another group of friends planned to hunt down a collectible in the nearby shops after visiting the restaurant.

“If you become more into anime and manga, that means you’re seeing depictions of not just culture, but also food,” Fukushima said. “So you have more people knowing what real ramen is versus the Maruchan instant ramen, or people who want real sushi and not just California rolls that they can buy in Ralphs.”

“I think it’s just a growing familiarity with what Little Tokyo has to offer,” she said. “Like, how do I further participate in this?”

The timing of One Piece Cafe’s opening comes as Little Tokyo is emerging from June’s ICE protests. Located minutes from City Hall and the Metropolitan Detention Center, Fukushima said many small business owners found themselves in a “lose-lose situation,” with images from the local news keeping people away from downtown out of fear.

Fans of “One Piece,” with its themes of friendship and freedom, are primed to be attuned to these tensions.

“I really like how ‘One Piece’ has a lot of nuanced messages about government powers and how oppressed people can come together,” said Daniel Orozco, who first learned about the restaurant at Anime Expo. “It’s really cool and especially relevant right now with everything going on politically.”

Cardenas started watching “One Piece” during the pandemic and quickly caught up by watching 12 episodes a day. Describing that time, she said, “Everything was really scary and uncertain, and people just wanted answers and a distraction.”

“There’s a message of hope in ‘One Piece’ because the protagonist Luffy wants to be the Pirate King, but underneath it all he’s just fighting for justice,” she said. “There’s a lot of symbolism that can be taken into the real world.”

One Piece Cafe is located at 241 S. San Pedro Street and open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Daniel Chang and Sam Whitehead, Kaiser Health News

MIAMI — GOP lawmakers in the 10 states that refused the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion for over a decade have argued their conservative approach to growing government programs would pay off in the long run.

Instead, the Republican-passed budget law that includes many of President Donald Trump’s priorities will pose at least as big a burden on patients and hospitals in the expansion holdout states as in the 40 states that have extended Medicaid coverage to more low-income adults, hospital executives and other officials warn.

For instance, Georgia, with a population of just over 11 million, will see as many people lose insurance coverage sold through ACA marketplaces as will California, with more than triple the population, according to estimates by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

The new law imposes additional paperwork requirements on Obamacare enrollees, slashes the time they have each year to sign up, and cuts funding for navigators who help them shop for plans. Those changes, all of which will erode enrollment, are expected to have far more impact in states like Florida and Texas than in California because a higher proportion of residents in non-expansion states are enrolled in ACA plans.

The budget law, which Republicans called the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” will cause sweeping changes to health care across the country as it trims federal spending on Medicaid by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. The program covers more than 71 million people with low incomes and disabilities. Ten million people will lose coverage over the next decade due to the law, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Many of its provisions are focused on the 40 states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA, which added millions more low-income adults to the rolls. But the consequences are not confined to those states. A proposal from conservatives to cut more generous federal payments for people added to Medicaid by the ACA expansion didn’t make it into the law.

“Politicians in non-expansion states should be furious about that,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

The number of people losing coverage could accelerate in non-expansion states if enhanced federal subsidies for Obamacare plans expire at the end of the year, driving up premiums as early as January and adding to the rolls of uninsured. KFF estimates as many as 2.2 million people could become uninsured just in Florida, a state where lawmakers refused to expand Medicaid and, partly as a result, now leads the nation in ACA enrollment.

For people like Francoise Cham of Miami, who has Obamacare coverage, the Republican policy changes could be life-altering.

Before she had insurance, the 62-year-old single mom said she would donate blood just to get her cholesterol checked. Once a year, she’d splurge for a wellness exam at Planned Parenthood. She expects to make about $28,000 this year and currently pays about $100 a month for an ACA plan to cover herself and her daughter, and even that strains her budget.

Cham choked up describing the “safety net” that health insurance has afforded her — and at the prospect of being unable to afford coverage if premiums spike at the end of the year.

“Obamacare has been my lifesaver,” she said.

If the enhanced ACA subsidies aren’t extended, “everyone will be hit hard,” said Cindy Mann, a health policy expert with Manatt Health, a consulting and legal firm, and a former deputy administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“But a state that hasn’t expanded Medicaid will have marketplace people enrolling at lower income levels,” she said. “So, a greater share of residents are reliant on the marketplace.”

Though GOP lawmakers may try to cut Medicaid even more this year, for now the states that expanded Medicaid largely appear to have made a smart decision, while states that haven’t are facing similar financial pressures without any upside, said health policy experts and hospital industry observers.

KFF Health News reached out to the governors of the 10 states that have not fully expanded Medicaid to see if the budget legislation made them regret that decision or made them more open to expansion. Spokespeople for Republican Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia did not indicate whether their states are considering Medicaid expansion.

Brandon Charochak, a spokesperson for McMaster’s office, said South Carolina’s Medicaid program focuses on “low-income children and families and disabled individuals,” adding, “The state’s Medicaid program does not anticipate a large impact on the agency’s Medicaid population.”

Enrollment in ACA marketplace plans nationwide has more than doubled since 2020 to 24.3 million. If enhanced subsidies expire, premiums for Obamacare coverage would rise by more than 75% on average, according to an analysis by KFF. Some insurers are already signaling they plan to charge more.

The CBO estimates that allowing enhanced subsidies to expire will increase the number of people without health insurance by 4.2 million by 2034, compared with a permanent extension. That would come on top of the coverage losses caused by Trump’s budget law.

“That is problematic and scary for us,” said Eric Boley, president of the Wyoming Hospital Association.

He said his state, which did not expand Medicaid, has a relatively small population and hasn’t been the most attractive for insurance providers — few companies currently offer plans on the ACA exchange — and he worried any increase in the uninsured rate would “collapse the insurance market.”

As the uninsured rate rises in non-expansion states and the budget law’s Medicaid cuts loom, lawmakers say state funds will not backfill the loss of federal dollars, including in states that have refused to expand Medicaid.

Those states got slightly favorable treatment under the law, but it’s not enough, said Grace Hoge, press secretary for Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat who favors Medicaid expansion but who has been rebuffed by GOP state legislators.

“Kansans’ ability to access affordable health care will be harmed,” Hoge said in an email. “Kansas, nor our rural hospitals, will not be able to make up for these cuts.”

For hospital leaders in other states that have refused full Medicaid expansion, the budget law poses another test by limiting financing arrangements states leveraged to make higher Medicaid payments to doctors and hospitals.

Beginning in 2028, the law will reduce those payments by 10 percentage points each year until they are closer to what Medicare pays.

Richard Roberson, president of the Mississippi Hospital Association, said the state’s use of what’s called directed payments in 2023 helped raise its Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals and other health institutions from $500 million a year to $1.5 billion a year. He said higher rates helped Mississippi’s rural hospitals stay open.

“That payment program has just been a lifeline,” Roberson said.

The budget law includes a $50 billion fund intended to insulate rural hospitals and clinics from its changes to Medicaid and the ACA. But a KFF analysis found it would offset only about one-third of the cuts to Medicaid in rural areas.

Trump encouraged Florida, Tennessee and Texas to continue refusing Medicaid expansion in his first term, when his administration gave them an unusual 10-year extension for financing programs known as uncompensated care pools, which generate billions of dollars to pay hospitals for treating the uninsured, said Allison Orris, director of Medicaid policy for the left-leaning think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“Those were very clearly a decision from the first Trump administration to say, ‘You get a lot of money for an uncompensated care pool instead of expanding Medicaid,’” she said.

Those funds are not affected by Trump’s new tax-and-spending law. But they do not help patients the way insurance coverage would, Orris said. “This is paying hospitals, but it’s not giving people health care,” she said. “It’s not giving people prevention.”

States such as Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi have not only turned down the additional federal funding that Medicaid expansion brings, but most of the remaining non-expansion states spend less than the national average per Medicaid enrollee, provide fewer or less generous benefits, and cover fewer categories of low-income Americans.

Mary Mayhew, president of the Florida Hospital Association, said the state’s Medicaid program does not adequately cover children, older people and people with disabilities because reimbursement rates are too low.

“Children don’t have timely access to dentists,” she said. “Expectant moms don’t have access nearby to an OB-GYN. We’ve had labor and delivery units close in Florida.”

She said the law will cost states more in the long run.

“The health care outcomes for the individuals we serve will deteriorate,” Mayhew said. “That’s going to lead to higher cost, more spending, more dependency on the emergency department.”

(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2025 Kaiser Health News. Visit khn.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Zachary Hansen, Tribune News Service

Electric vehicle startup Rivian plans to hold two ceremonial events to christen the forthcoming construction of its long-delayed $5 billion factory an hour east of Atlanta.

The company will play host to a community event Sept. 14 and a formal groundbreaking ceremony Sept. 16 with stakeholders, media and government officials, including Gov. Brian Kemp. The events at the roughly 2,000-acre project site along I-20 bolster promises by Rivian leaders to begin vertical construction of the factory next year, following multiple delays and setbacks.

“The governor remains excited about the generational opportunity Rivian’s commitment will bring to hardworking Georgians,” a Kemp spokesperson said in a statement. “He, along with the first lady, look forward to joining Rivian and state and local leaders to break ground on this next chapter in Georgia’s ongoing economic success story.”

A Rivian spokesperson added the company is “excited to welcome our future neighbors” at the Sept. 14 community event, which will feature vendors, food, live music and off-road course rides in its vehicles.

“We look forward to continuing our work with our partners and surrounding communities as we strive to provide thousands of new, good paying jobs in this fast-moving industry,” the spokesperson said.

Since its announcement in late 2021, Rivian’s factory plans in Georgia have resembled a roller coaster ride.

Rivian first announced plans to open the factory in southern Walton and Morgan counties in 2024. But the project was pushed back and ultimately paused indefinitely as the company sought to cut costs. But Rivian said it would fulfill its promises to open the plant and meet its commitment to employ 7,500 workers. Rivian has said a $6.6 billion federal loan approved days before President Joe Biden left office would help accelerate the Georgia plant’s launch.

At the time of its announcement, the factory was the state’s largest-ever economic development project. Since Rivian’s announcement, Hyundai has announced and opened an even larger EV factory near Savannah, Georgia.

To recruit the Rivian factory, state and local officials offered the company a $1.5 billion incentive package, which requires the automaker to build its promised plant and meet hiring requirements to see the bulk of those financial benefits and tax savings.

Similarly, Rivian has to break ground on its factory to tap into the federal loan.

The loan’s approval by the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office has been criticized by some Georgia Republicans and allies of President Donald Trump, including members of his campaign’s transition team. Georgia’s senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, lobbied for many of those clean energy incentives, including Rivian’s loan.

“The loan is set up as more of a project finance instrument,” Claire McDonough, Rivian’s chief financial officer, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month. “So it does require Rivian to have broken ground and continue to invest in the site before we’ll have a timeline for an initial (loan) draw out of the facility, which is really by design.”

The site has been graded and is undergoing utility installation. Vertical construction is planned to begin at an unspecified date in 2026, with vehicle production starting by 2028.

Rivian has said the Georgia factory will be the site of expanded production of its upcoming R2 crossover.

“The work that we’ve been doing over the course of the last handful of years is to ensure that we can reduce the timeline between start of construction (of the Georgia factory) and start of production for future vehicles out of the site,” McDonough said.

Jerry Silvio, chairman of the local development authority that helped manage the Rivian project, congratulated the company.

“There is no question about the project’s future — it is secure,” Silvio said in a statement. “And we are charging ahead to deliver jobs, growth and opportunity for our communities.”

Harry Black, Bloomberg News

Artificial intelligence, touted for its potential to transform medicine, led to some doctors losing skills after just a few months in a new study.

AI helped health professionals to better detect pre-cancerous growths in the colon, but when the assistance was removed, their ability to find tumors dropped by about 20% compared with rates before the tool was ever introduced, according to findings published Wednesday.

Health care systems around the world are embracing AI with a view to boosting patient outcomes and productivity. Just this year, the UK government announced £11 million ($14.8 million) in funding for a new trial to test how AI can help catch breast cancer earlier.

The AI in the study probably prompted doctors to become over-reliant on its recommendations, “leading to clinicians becoming less motivated, less focused, and less responsible when making cognitive decisions without AI assistance,” the scientists said in the paper.

They surveyed four endoscopy centers in Poland and compared detection success rates three months before AI implementation and three months after. Some colonoscopies were performed with AI and some without, at random. The results were published in The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology journal.

Yuichi Mori, a researcher at the University of Oslo and one of the scientists involved, predicted that the effects of de-skilling will “probably be higher” as AI becomes more powerful.

What’s more, the 19 doctors in the study were highly experienced, having performed more than 2,000 colonoscopies each. The effect on trainees or novices might be starker, said Omer Ahmad, a consultant gastroenterologist at University College Hospital London.

“Although AI continues to offer great promise to enhance clinical outcomes, we must also safeguard against the quiet erosion of fundamental skills required for high-quality endoscopy,” Ahmad, who wasn’t involved in the research, wrote a comment alongside the article.

A study conducted by MIT this year raised similar concerns after finding that using OpenAI’s ChatGPT to write essays led to less brain engagement and cognitive activity.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Anna Claire Vollers, Stateline.org

As more hospitals have gobbled up private physician practices, costs for childbirth and other services have gone up, according to a new study.

Since the early aughts, the share of physicians in the United States working for hospitals has nearly doubled, according to the study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit research organization.

And as fewer doctors work in physician-owned practices, patients or their insurers end up paying more, the study’s authors found.

For example: Two years after a hospital buys an OB-GYN practice, prices for labor and delivery jump an average of $475 and physician prices rise by $502, according to the study. Researchers focused on births, which are the most common reason for hospital admission among people with private insurance.

This rapid acquisition by hospitals is reshaping a U.S. industry once dominated by tens of thousands of small, physician-owned practices.

Only about 42% of U.S. physicians work in a physician-owned private practice, according to the most recent survey data from the American Medical Association. Nearly 47% work for hospitals, a sharp rise over the past several years. Most emergency room physicians are now employed by hospital systems or by private equity-owned staffing groups.

The new research offers further evidence for how hospital acquisitions of private practices “can result in anticompetitive price increases,” said Matthew Grennan, one of the study’s authors and an associate professor of economics at Emory University, in a news release.

“As a result, I think economists and others in the antitrust community are likely to give more careful consideration to these potential sources of harm,” he said.

Medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States, with about 14 million Americans owing more than $1,000 in medical debt, according to research nonprofit KFF.

These post-merger price increases are driven by reduced competition, Grennan and his fellow researchers found. Yet there’s been little effort by federal or state regulators to halt hospital mergers that could lead to higher prices for consumers.

But states have taken some steps toward lowering medical costs in recent years.

Bipartisan groups of lawmakers in more than a dozen states have addressed so-called “facility fees,” which are charges that some hospitals tack on for patient visits to hospital-owned physician offices.

This year in Oklahoma, Republican lawmakers passed a bill requiring hospitals to make the cost of many of their services more transparent to patients so they’re aware of the costs. Providers can face penalties for noncompliance. A similar Oklahoma law authored by Democrats and passed last year requires debt collectors to submit evidence of a hospital’s compliance with price transparency rules before filing to collect on medical debts from patients.

Some states have capped the rates hospitals or physicians can charge. Colorado sets provider and hospitals rates based on a specific formula if insurance plans aren’t able to lower peoples’ premiums to a certain level, while Montana and Oregon limited the amount hospitals and other providers can charge for their state employee health plan.

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Amanda Hernández, Stateline.org

U.S. families lose nearly $350 billion each year due to the incarceration of a loved one in jail or prison, according to a recent report from the criminal justice advocacy group FWD.us. The estimate includes both direct expenses and long-term losses in household income.

The findings are based on a national survey of just over 1,600 adults conducted in partnership with researchers at Duke University and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Families reported losing an average of $1,803 in income per month when a loved one is incarcerated. That includes the loss of the incarcerated person’s wages and may also reflect reduced work hours by family members to manage court proceedings or provide child care, according to the report.

The researchers also found that families spend an average of $4,200 annually per incarcerated relative.

These expenses include phone and email communication, travel for visits, child care and commissary purchases — such as food, hygiene products and clothing — some of which are marked up as much as 600% above retail prices, according to the report.

The burden is especially acute for Black families, who reported significantly higher expenses, according to the report. Black families reported spending an average of $8,005 per year supporting incarcerated loved ones — 2.5 times more than white families with an average of $3,251.

One in 5 family members reported being forced to move due to a loved one’s incarceration, including 1 in 3 children of incarcerated parents, according to the report. Overall, 9% of family members said they experienced a period of homelessness, a figure that rose to 18% — or roughly 1 in 6 — among those who had an incarcerated parent.

Low wages for incarcerated people, often just cents per hour, only deepen this strain, leaving families to fill in the financial gaps, according to the report. Meanwhile, extended prison lockdowns, staff shortages and overcrowded conditions have further limited access to basic services, including phone calls, visitation, medical care and rehabilitative programming.

Researchers also identified long-term economic consequences after incarceration. Collectively, formerly incarcerated individuals lose an estimated $111 billion in wages each year due to limited job opportunities, according to the report. The report also found long-term financial consequences for children of incarcerated parents, who collectively lose $215 billion in annual earnings — an average of nearly $4,500 per adult child each year.

The survey has some limitations. Many of the cost estimates were self-reported and rounded by participants. Still, previous research has reached similar conclusions. A 2017 report from the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization, estimated that mass incarceration costs governments and the families of incarcerated people at least $182 billion annually.

In 2023, the most recent year available, state governments spent more than $66 billion on corrections, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. That total does not include the additional financial support provided by families of incarcerated people.

Preliminary national data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics shows the U.S. prison population is once again on the rise. At the end of 2023, there were more than 1.25 million people in state and federal prisons, a 2% increase from the previous year. The vast majority were serving sentences longer than one year and were held in state prisons.

The male prison population rose by 2% in 2023, while the number of incarcerated women rose by 4%. Still, both figures remain below their 2013 levels.

Researchers projected that if incarceration rates remain steady, families could face $3.5 trillion in cumulative financial losses over the next decade.

Stateline reporter Amanda Hernández can be reached at ahernandez@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Ben Warren, The Detroit News

More than a dozen Hmong and Laotian Americans living in the Detroit area received a letter summoning them to the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office on July 30.

Many thought it was a request for a routine check-in. It wasn’t, their families say.

Instead, the individuals were taken into ICE custody and have been detained ever since in northern Michigan, Texas and Louisiana. They are awaiting deportation to Laos, a country where the Hmong refugees have never set foot, but which U.S. officials say has agreed to take some detainees.

The Hmong individuals detained came to the U.S. as refugees in the 1970s and 1980s, most from refugee camps in Thailand. ICE says all have criminal records and removal orders, but families, local elected officials and immigrant rights advocates say they are being unfairly targeted.

“The families and elected officials accept that they had been convicted of a crime, but they served their time, and they deserve a second chance,” said Christine Sauve, policy and communications manager at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center.

A spokesperson for ICE, in an email Friday to The Detroit News, said the agency detained “a known gang member who obstructed a murder investigation, multiple child sex abusers, drug traffickers and other Laotian nationals with criminal histories” in the July 30 operation. The spokesperson did not clarify whether all individuals detained had criminal records or provide the names of all detainees.

Many of those detained received removal orders after being convicted of crimes years ago, but were never deported because neither Laos nor Thailand considered them citizens, according to Sauve. Instead, they were required to report for annual check-ins with ICE.

Family members and local elected officials on Friday held a press conference to argue against the deportations.

“This past week has been a nightmare for these family members,” said state Rep. Mai Xiong, a Democrat who represents Warren, Roseville and St. Clair Shores, at the press conference.

Xiong is herself Hmong American, a refugee who fled Laos with her family at a young age. Like hers, the families of the Hmong detainees fled to the U.S. from United Nations-run refugee camps in Thailand, where they went after being persecuted in Laos for their role in the CIA-backed “Secret War” in the 1960s and 1970s.

Under the Trump administration, Xiong said, things have changed. She believes Laos may accept the deportees in exchange for being excluded from a travel ban list. The ICE spokesperson said the agency recently obtained the necessary travel documents to remove the detainees to Laos.

At the press conference at the Hannan Center in Detroit, Xiong, State Sen. Stephanie Chang and state Rep. Donovan McKinney — both Democrats who represent districts that stretch across south Macomb and Oakland counties as well as Detroit — joined the family members of detainees Wa Kang Lor and Sufeng Yang to call for the release of the Hmong refugees being held by ICE.

After reporting to the office for what they thought was a routine check-in, Xiong said, the individuals were detained.

In a matter of days, ICE transported the individuals from Detroit to North Lake Processing Center in northern Michigan, then to Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Texas. Two days ago, ICE transferred them to the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana, where Xiong expects the next step will be deportation.

“It’s like trying to find missing people,” she told The News. She called on ICE to be more transparent about who had been detained and when they might be deported.

Maiyia Xiong, the wife of Wa Kong Lor, one of the detainees, was overcome with emotion as she stepped to the podium, so Rep. Xiong read her prepared statement.

“I never imagined it would be the last time I would see him,” she had written.

When they reported to the ICE office, she said, a woman took her husband’s driver’s license. “Within minutes, his name was called,” Xiong said. “He walked through the door to the back room and never returned.”

Xiong and Lor have four children. Without him, she said, she faces the “unimaginable task of explaining to them that they may never see their father again.”

The ICE spokesperson said Lor was arrested in Pontiac in 2007 for breaking and entering a vehicle, drug possession and carrying an unlawful firearm. He was sentenced to at least 5 months in prison and received a removal order.

Anissa Lee, 20, also spoke. She is the daughter of Sufeng Yang, a Macomb County resident who was also detained on July 30. She came up to the podium, visibly upset, carrying a poster with her father’s face on it.

“The U.S. is the only place he’s ever known, his only home,” said Lee, her voice breaking. “He’s not just a resident here, he’s a taxpayer, a provider and a caregiver.”

Yang takes care of his 82-year-old mother, Lee said, buying her groceries and picking up her medications. “Without him, she won’t be able to get by,” she said.

Yang, according to ICE, was convicted of robbery in Toledo in 2007 and sentenced to three years in prison. Like Lor, he was given a removal order, but never deported.

One of the detainees, Lue Yang, 47, of St. Johns, had his criminal record expunged under a Michigan “Clean Slate” law in 2018. After he came to the United States as an asylum seeker in the 1980s, he pled guilty in 2001 as an accessory to a home invasion and was issued a removal order.

Since then, Lue Yang has turned his life around, advocates say. He serves as president of the Hmong Family Association, a nonprofit that provides services and programming to the Hmong community. According to a letter from more than two dozen Michigan lawmakers to ICE Detroit field director Kevin Raycraft, Yang is the “primary breadwinner” for a family of eight.

He is the only detainee currently being held in Michigan, at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin.

McKinney, whose state House district includes parts of Detroit and Warren, sees the detentions and likely deportations as civil rights violations.

As a result of the ICE operation, he said, families are left knowing little to no information about where their loved ones are being held or how they are doing. It’s cruel.”

Aisa Villarosa, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, which is representing some of the detainees, worries that they will become stateless. She says travel documents are just part of the removal process, citing a number of cases in Laos and nearby Bhutan in which detainees were turned away.

“The Trump administration has made its priorities clear, abusing its power to attack all of us. None of us are safe when families are ripped apart,” she said.

Xiong and Chang said they sent a letter to Raycraft asking him to “immediately release” the Hmong detainees. In total, 28 Michigan lawmakers signed the letter, including Ranjeev Puri, the Democratic House minority leader; and Gabriela Santiago-Romero, who represents southwest Detroit on the City Council.

“ICE should expend its resources by targeting individuals who are truly a threat, instead of indiscriminately detaining and deporting immigrants and refugees without consideration for their contributions to society and our economy or their personal history,” Xiong and Chang wrote.

By Christie D’Zurilla, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Actor Kelley Mack, who played Addy in Season 9 of “The Walking Dead” in addition to doing national commercials and voice-over work, has died at age 33, her family said on social media.

“It is with indelible sadness that we are announcing the passing of our dear Kelley. Such a bright, fervent light has transitioned to the beyond, where we all eventually must go,” the family wrote Tuesday on her Instagram account. She died in Cincinnati after battling glioma of the central nervous system, according to a notice posted on her CaringBridge page.

“Kelley passed peacefully on Saturday evening with her loving mother Kristen and steadfast aunt Karen present. Kelley has already come to many of her loved ones in the form of various butterflies … She will be missed by so many to depths that words cannot express.”

Mack, born Kelley Lynne Klebenow in Cincinnati on July 10, 1992, was raised in towns around Ohio and also in Missouri, Connecticut, North Carolina and Illinois. She moved to Los Angeles after earning a cinematography degree from Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film in Orange in 2014.

Her commercial work included playing Becky in “Fansville” ads for Dr Pepper and her voice-overs could be heard in spots for the Hyundai Ioniq, Budweiser, Credit Karma and more. Her “Walking Dead” character, Addy, was one of the young residents of Hilltop who had a crush on Henry while he had feelings for Lydia. Addy’s reanimated head wound up on a pike at the border of the Whisperers’ territory along with those of Henry and a handful of others who fought bravely but unsuccessfully after being kidnapped by Alpha.

After experiencing pain last fall in her lower back and legs, Mack was diagnosed in late November with a diffuse midline glioma, a rare type of astrocytoma, a cancer that starts in the central nervous system. “Due to the biopsy surgery on my spinal cord,” she said on Instagram in January, “I have lost the use of my right leg and most of my left leg, so I now get around with a walker and a wheelchair.”

She started proton radiation treatments in Cincinnati in mid-January — “It felt like I was filming an episode of my new TV show, set on a space ship floating somewhere in our infinite galaxy,” she wrote on Instagram — and by March had regained some ability to walk despite continuing pain in her lower body.

“Some days are challenging,” she said in April on CaringBridge, listing all the “healthy” things she was trying to do with aid from caregivers — her family members. “We have our emotional hiccups,” she said, “but we remind each other of our positivity and strength. We continue to feel confident in our path forward, God, and in our love for each other all leading up to overcome.”

By July, however, Mack was receiving respite care, which was described as “the toughest part of her journey.”

She is survived by her mother and father, Kristen and Lindsay Klebenow, sister Katherine, brother Parker, grandparents Lois and Larry Klebenow and her boyfriend, Logan Lanier. A celebration of life will be held Aug. 16 in Glendale, Ohio, and at a future date in Los Angeles.

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.