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  • The U.S. homeownership rate may not be as high as you think

    The U.S. homeownership rate may not be as high as you think

    Americans often think of homeownership as both a goal and a norm — after all, the U.S. homeownership rate is 65%, and as high as 75% in some states.

    But one Federal Reserve economist says that we’ve been measuring homeownership the wrong way and that U.S. adults are about as likely to rent or live in someone else’s home as they are to own their own.

    Erik Hembre says his work “should reframe the basic number we have in our head. I went from a baseline of about two-thirds of people own their homes and that’s just the way it’s always been, to: Well, it’s closer to half.”

    The difference in the standard numbers vs. Hembre’s numbers basically comes down to whether to count houses or people.

    The homeownership rate is generally given as the percentage of homes that are occupied by their owners. If there are 10 homes on a street and seven of them are owner-occupied while three are rented, that’s a 70% homeownership rate.

    Hembre, instead, came up with what he calls HPOP: the homeowners-to-population ratio. He counted up all Americans over 18 years of age, then looked at how many of them live in a home they own. The number is 53%.

    The reason Hembre’s homeownership rate is so much lower than the standard 65% national owner-occupancy rate is that many adults live in a home where the owner lives, but they aren’t the owners of the unit. If you’re living with a relative in the relative’s house or renting a room from a friend who owns the house, you don’t count as a homeowner in Hembre’s metric.

    Hembre attributed the difference to several causes. A small amount comes from roommates and from elderly parents who reside in their adult children’s homes; a bit more comes from other relatives such as siblings. The largest share by far is due to the high rate of adult children who live in their parents’ homes.

    “Younger households are becoming less likely to be homeowners. HPOP really makes that point more clear,” Hembre said.

    Overall, both HPOP and the owner-occupancy rate have fallen about 2% nationwide since 2006, but the patterns of who owns homes have changed. While adults in their 20s and 30s struggle to buy homes, the HPOP for people over 70 has risen five points since 2006, as elderly people remain in their own homes longer. “Those are kind of balancing each other out,” Hembre said.

    He also analyzed the HPOP of different groups, such as ethnic groups and married-vs.-single people. The differences indicate who is most likely to live in owner-occupied homes without being owners themselves. Married people have a 76.9% HPOP, not much lower than their 80.8% owner-occupancy rate. People who have never been married have a 17% HPOP, far below their 36.4% rate of living in owner-occupied homes. (Widowed, divorced, and separated people all fall somewhere in between.)

    For calculation purposes, Hembre treated both partners as the owners of a home if one partner owns it, for both married and unmarried couples.

    Michael Neal, a housing analyst at the Urban Institute, said Hembre’s measure avoids one of the pitfalls of standard metrics, which tend to lump everyone under the demographics of the person considered the head of household.

    “There are interracial couples where the head of household is not Black; we might be missing some families where there’s homeownership by a Black person. … Maybe there are two people who are two different age groups who are married,” Neal said. “In some cases, this can really matter for being accurate and providing accurate measures for policymaking.”

    States with expensive housing, such as Hawaii and California, tended to have the biggest differences between their owner-occupancy rates and their HPOPs.

    Dennis Shea, who leads the Bipartisan Policy Center’s housing program, found Hembre’s metric interesting but cautioned against discounting the standard measure of U.S. homeownership too much. Many of the non-homeowners tallied in HPOP, he noted, are people such as college students and nursing home patients who wouldn’t be expected to be homeowners.

    “I think it’s a useful new analytical approach that might provide insights about where people truly are in their economic journey,” Shea said. “I wouldn’t draw some drastic conclusion that somehow the true picture of homeownership in the United States has been radically changed by this new approach.”

    Hembre noted that the idea that only half of adults are homeowners doesn’t mean half will always be renters or guests in someone else’s home. “Between the ages of 18 and 70 or 80, most people do become homeowners at some point. This is about if they are at any given time.”

  • Indiana authorities say at least 5 people have died in flooding across the state

    Indiana authorities say at least 5 people have died in flooding across the state

    Indiana authorities say at least five people have died in flooding across the state this week, as first responders worked to rescue more people Saturday from rising waters in neighborhoods along the White River in Indianapolis.

    The state has been hammered over the past week by heavy rains, resulting in rivers and creeks surging.

    More than 90 people and their pets were rescued Saturday as floodwaters rose along the White River in Indianapolis and authorities in central Indiana responded to what many described as historic flooding.

    The damage so far was concentrated along the river corridor from Hamilton County and into the northern Indianapolis suburbs. Farther east in Delaware County, sheriff deputies on Friday found the body of a 58-year-old woman who they believe died after trying to drive through floodwaters.

    Gov. Mike Braun confirmed Saturday that President Donald Trump intends to approve his request for federal resources to help in response to the flooding and the recovery.

    Braun said his heart is with the families who have lost loved ones due to the flooding over the past week. He also warned people to take the flooding seriously and stay away from floodwaters.

    Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett was joined by emergency managers during a briefing Saturday as he urged residents along the river to evacuate. A day earlier, he had declared a local emergency as heavy rains resulted in creeks and streams swelling throughout central Indiana.

    “This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime type floods,” Jacob Spence, director of Marion County Emergency Management, told the Associated Press. “So yeah, this is an unprecedented event and unfortunately we’re setting some new records.”

    The National Weather Service reported that more than 11 inches of rain fell over a two-day period in some areas. The White River crested at more than 24 feet in the communities of Anderson and Noblesville, surpassing records set in 1913.

    Flash-flood warnings and watches were issued across a swath of central Indiana on Saturday, and forecasters with the National Weather Service warned that more showers and thunderstorms would be moving into the area throughout the day. In Warren County, forecasters reported 2 inches of rain falling in six hours.

    Forecasters expected the White River to crest Saturday evening in the Indianapolis area, where National Guard vehicles were among those helping with the rescue efforts. Rita Reith, a spokesperson with the Indianapolis Fire Department, put the number of rescues at 91 people and 45 pets as of early afternoon.

    “The water is still rising, so heed the warnings,” said Todd Wilson, director of the city’s public works department.

    Residents posted videos on social media that showed vehicles stranded in high water, a power pole being toppled by rushing water, and flooded intersections.

    Earlier this week, severe storms wreaked havoc across other parts of the Midwest, causing tornadoes, heavy rains, and flash flooding. Storm damage was reported from the Chicago area all the way to western Pennsylvania.

  • Democrats’ 2028 presidential calendar gives Black and Latino voters and union members an early say

    Democrats’ 2028 presidential calendar gives Black and Latino voters and union members an early say

    AUSTIN, Texas — Democrats seeking the party’s presidential nomination in 2028 will need to prove themselves early on in states where Black and Latino voters and union members are key supporters, under an election-year calendar approved Saturday.

    The primary lineup pushes Iowa from the traditional top spot and makes South Carolina the leadoff state, voting on Jan. 22, 2028, followed by Nevada on Feb. 1. New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan, and Virginia round out the early states throughout February, according to the plan endorsed by the Democratic National Committee at its meeting in Texas.

    DNC Chairperson Ken Martin said that to win the general election, “You have to be battle-tested in a way that you already have campaigned in front of and for the support of various communities throughout the country.” That is why the calendar designed by the party matters, he said in an interview.

    Some potential candidates in what is expected to be a large field have visited early-voting states such as South Carolina. Party leaders have said the order gives candidates the best shot at winning back the White House after Republican President Donald Trump’s second term.

    “They have to show that they can go to the South and talk to Black voters and rural voters, as well as out West, talking ranching and mining issues, to a border state, to union members,” said party strategist Karen Finney, who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns. “Whoever survives will be battle-tested.”

    Former presidential candidate Howard Dean, a onetime Vermont governor, recalled his tenure as national party chairperson, when Democrats solidified Nevada and South Carolina as early states behind Iowa and New Hampshire. The latest change is even better, he said.

    “These states look more like the country” as a whole, he said, “whereas Iowa and New Hampshire don’t.”

    Rita Hart, chairperson of the Iowa Democratic Party, said bypassing her state in the early going would sideline important voter voices and give a political edge to Republicans, who are expected to keep Iowa atop their calendar.

    Nonwhite voters claim top billing

    As the first-in-the-South primary, South Carolina was more decisive than Iowa and New Hampshire for nominees Barack Obama in 2008, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020. All three dominated among South Carolina’s large Black population, which can yield more than half the state’s Democratic primary electorate.

    With Nevada and New Mexico following, candidates will be required to court more Latino voters early in the process.

    Shifting from Iowa and New Hampshire does not mean little-known candidates cannot catch fire, as Pete Buttigieg did in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2020, when he was a 37-year-old former mayor. They just will not be able to do it with an almost entirely white audience.

    “If you can’t go to every part of this country and make your case, you should not be running for president,” Finney said.

    The progressive vs. establishment dynamics may shift

    There is disagreement over how Democrats’ split between progressives and mainstream liberals may or may not surface in the nominating calendar.

    “I think our primary voters up north are probably a little different than primary voters in South Carolina,” said Boyd Brown, a former DNC member from South Carolina. “It’s not the woke ideologies that we just can’t get away from” in other places.

    Nina Smith, a former Buttigieg adviser who now works closely with progressive causes, disagreed. Smith said Black South Carolinians, especially, have gravitated to more moderate candidates — twice rejecting Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in favor of Clinton and Biden.

    But, she said, “Southern Black voters are more progressive than they’re given credit for” on policy but also “realists” about what is possible.

    “Living through Jim Crow and other oppressive structures will force you to be take that approach,” she said.

    Smith said that with South Carolina leading off and many Southern states following on Super Tuesday soon after the early lineup concludes, progressives will have to take the time to listen and then tailor their messages.

    “A lot of Black voters don’t necessarily see themselves in the ideas and arguments that progressives put forward,” she said.

    Unions will get a spotlight in the early-voting states

    Nevada has the service industry unions because of Las Vegas; Michigan has the auto industry and associated manufacturing support industries; Virginia is home to more federal workers than any other state.

    “Labor is still so important,” Dean said.

    Beyond seeking the backing of organized labor, the campaigns and the party will look to unions for help in spreading Democrats’ message to voters and getting people to the polls.

    More scheduling efficiency for candidates

    Campaigns struggle to balance many demands such as meeting voters in person, raising money, and dealing with the logistics of travel. As a result, places such as Nevada have gotten short shrift in the past because candidates, most from the eastern part of the country, have concluded the investment of time is not worth it.

    An expanded calendar offers more clustering opportunities.

    A swing to the West could hit two early states — Nevada and New Mexico — and include a fundraising stop in California, full of Democratic donors. A South Carolina trip could mean fundraisers and public appearances in Atlanta, Charlotte, and Raleigh, both in North Carolina. Virginia offers proximity to donors and national TV studios in Washington; the same options are available by adding a New York City stop on the way to New Hampshire.

    Bre Maxwell is a DNC member from South Carolina who said the state’s smaller size and lower media costs are a financial equalizer, allowing not only the best-funded candidates to have an impact.

    “They can campaign from the top to the bottom in a day,” Maxwell said.

    It’s about primaries, with a clear look to November

    Of the six early states, all but South Carolina have been competitive in general elections.

    That means that even before Super Tuesday, the Democratic candidates will have spent significant time and resources in states worth a combined 43 Electoral College votes. That is not insignificant on the way to the 270 needed to win.

    Television ads and news coverage can spill over, as well. Markets targeting parts of South Carolina also reach portions of North Carolina and Georgia.

    After all, Brown said, the point is to put a Democrat in the White House.

    “This is not a social or a debate club. It is a political party,” he said.

  • Entrenched, embattled, and defiant, the Taliban celebrate 5 years in power

    Entrenched, embattled, and defiant, the Taliban celebrate 5 years in power

    The black and white flags of the Taliban were flying high along the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, as the group celebrated five years in power on Saturday.

    A shiny Mercedes drifted in front of graffiti praising the Taliban fighters’ “sacrifice,” the word painted in crimson, with depictions of drops of blood. Young Afghans chanted independence songs below posters hailing how “the carpet of democracy” had been removed for Islamic rule.

    But the triumphant tone is only half the story. The Taliban may be boisterous in Kabul and have a tight grip on power, yet elsewhere they find themselves targeted and face crises both at home and abroad.

    They face a conflict just short of open war with neighboring Pakistan. They’re dealing with new waves of attacks from armed groups that want to topple them. Add to that mass unemployment, international isolation, and growing domestic discontent, and the Taliban face their most serious threats since their return to power in 2021.

    It is too early to tell whether all those challenges will escalate and threaten their survival as a governing force. And as the scenes of celebration on Saturday showed, the Taliban are popular among many.

    Still, the threats they face have cracked the veneer of security and stability that the Taliban have heralded as their primary achievement — and their main selling point to the world.

    As workers were preparing Kabul for celebrations Thursday, a resistance group claimed responsibility for the killing of the Taliban mayor of a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan. Two weeks earlier, another Taliban official had been assassinated in the same province.

    A tight grip on power — and yet

    The Taliban are holding Afghan society in a chokehold that spares no one. Girls and women face restrictions to a degree unseen anywhere else in the world. Religious minorities are witnessing the forced closure of their places of worship. Anyone who voices criticism is repressed. United Nations staff members face arrests; journalists and rights workers suffer forced disappearances.

    The Taliban are collecting taxes and building roads, dams, and canals. European countries have welcomed them in Brussels to facilitate the deportation of Afghan migrants and asylum seekers. They have expanded trade ties with Central Asian states and want the Trump administration to come back to Afghanistan.

    Whenever a sign of dissent emerges in a province, the country’s secretive and ultraconservative leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, places a key ally in a leadership position to keep things in check.

    And yet the signs of trouble that have appeared in recent months are impossible to ignore.

    Troubles in the North

    Sporadic sounds of gunfire reverberated across the remote mountains of northeastern Afghanistan on a recent evening. Weary Taliban fighters peppered drivers with questions at checkpoints dotting the main road snaking through the province of Badakhshan.

    On the same road, two attackers had killed a senior provincial Talib official a week earlier. A small group of anti-Taliban fighters had briefly seized control of a police headquarters in a nearby district.

    Now fighting between the Taliban and another group opposing their rule was continuing in another district of Badakhshan. The province, bordering China, Pakistan and Tajikistan, is emerging as a hot spot.

    On a trip to the province this month, we talked to residents ready to support anti-Taliban groups because they said they were fed up with the Taliban’s iron grip, the lack of job opportunities, and the government’s confiscation of natural resources.

    We drove through dozens of checkpoints and witnessed the heavy presence of intelligence officers in the isolated village where anti-Taliban fighters had stormed police headquarters.

    The clashes and the attacks have so far been scattered. The leader of one of the anti-Taliban groups described them as “opportunity targets” aimed at challenging the Taliban’s sense of control. But the leader, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the group’s strategy, said the number of attacks would only increase in coming months.

    Tensions in the East

    An underequipped Afghan army waits nervously at the border with Pakistan. Once a sponsor of the Taliban, Pakistan has launched dozens of airstrikes on Afghanistan, killing 500 civilians since October, according to the United Nations, and has threatened to use even more force if the Taliban don’t rein in militants who are staging attacks on Pakistani territory.

    The mistrust goes both ways: The Taliban have accused Pakistan of supporting the armed groups that have attacked Taliban outposts in Badakhshan.

    Whether, or to what extent, Pakistan is actively supporting anti-Taliban groups is not clear, but suspicions are running high.

    “The Pakistanis are happy to be portrayed now as a potential patron for the armed opposition to the Taliban, because that increases their leverage over the group,” said Fabrizio Foschini, a researcher at the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

    Food, education, and the economy

    The picture on the domestic front is also grim. Extreme hunger has been spreading fast from one province to another after aid cuts last year plunged millions into deeper food insecurity. The Taliban’s ban on secondary and university education for women and girls is stifling development, experts say.

    The Taliban have deprived 2.4 million Afghan girls of an education, according to UNESCO — the equivalent of all school-age girls in New York, Mexico City, and Moscow combined — and they are forced to stay home indefinitely.

    Some scattered signs of discontent have popped up. At a rare protest in June, demonstrators chanted “Work, education, freedom,” similar to what their Iranian neighbors chanted in 2022. And the leader of a large religious minority warned the Taliban in May: Don’t squeeze Afghan society too much, or it will explode.

    The potential to spiral?

    The Taliban know the world wants a stable Afghanistan — one that isn’t a source of refugees, drugs, or terrorism.

    They assert that the country no longer poses a security threat to the region or the West. They say that they have cracked down on the Islamic State militant group, and that they want peaceful relations, based on trade and diplomacy, including with the U.S.

    Since the Taliban no longer carry out suicide attacks, bomb schools, or target the security forces they now represent, their main argument may hold.

    “The greatest achievement we have had over the past five years is security,” Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said in an interview with the New York Times in Kabul on Wednesday.

    They don’t want their various crises to spiral either.

    All the ingredients for things to get out of control in Afghanistan again are here, analysts say: A vast population of unemployed young Afghans are fertile ground for radicalization, especially as economic opportunities are nearly nonexistent. And with animosity growing between Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is unclear who might come to the Taliban’s aid: Afghanistan is, once again, a pariah state, with barely any allies.

    The past five years have brought some predictability and an end to almost two decades of fighting, which many Afghans have welcomed, despite the immense hardship and repression. But the country remains shattered, and the fragile peace is already at risk.

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

  • Navy weighs major warship redesign to match Trump’s preferences

    Navy weighs major warship redesign to match Trump’s preferences

    The U.S. Navy is considering a major redesign of its new aircraft carriers to better match President Donald Trump’s preferred aesthetic for the warships, according to seven current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

    The service is evaluating the feasibility of moving the multistory tower that acts as the carrier’s command center farther forward, toward the middle of the ship, to resemble older vessels, the officials said. The review, which has not been previously reported, is in response to Trump’s concerns about the “look” of the new Ford-class ships, where the tower is near the rear, these people said.

    The timing and extent of the Navy’s evaluation is unclear, with current and former officials cautioning that the service was concerned that such a change would require significant time and money. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.

    Moving that command center, known as the “island,” would be the second major design change prompted by the president, who on Thursday issued a national security memorandum directing the Navy to develop a plan to revert to older steam-powered catapults on future carriers. The systems help launch jets off the ships’ flight decks.

    Trump’s preference, current and former officials said, is for the new aircraft carriers to look more like those that were in service during World War II.

    The Navy also examined the issue during his first term as president, said a former senior U.S. official. A study found that moving the island could cost billions of dollars in redesign costs and significantly delay the program, this person said.

    “It came back that the cost and time to do so would just be extraordinary,” the former official said.

    There are three Ford-class carriers in various stages of development. The USS John F. Kennedy is undergoing sea trials and getting closer to joining the fleet while the USS Enterprise and USS Doris Miller are under construction. The first carrier in the class, USS Gerald R. Ford, is already in service and recently finished a lengthy combat tour in the Middle East.

    Plans call for building up to 10 Ford-class carriers over the next four decades, at a projected future cost of $22 billion each, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Navy’s most recent shipbuilding plan.

    Relocating the island would be “a major redesign,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer who studies the service at the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington. Such an alteration to the carrier’s layout, he said, would affect the ship’s buoyancy and weight and come at a significant cost.

    “You could change it,” he added, “but it’s very disruptive.”

    The Pentagon and the Navy referred requests for comment to the White House, which pointed to the new national security memorandum when asked about Trump’s desire to relocate the island on future Ford-class aircraft carriers. The memorandum does not address the issue.

    Another U.S. official familiar with both the potential changes to the catapult and the island said that the Navy is taking both matters seriously because of the delays and severe cost overruns they could create.

    Trump’s interest in the redesign modification marks the White House’s growing influence over the complex mechanics of naval shipbuilding.

    Since returning to office, Trump has promised to “resurrect” the lagging industry, and he has already issued multiple executive orders addressing the matter.

    Thursday’s national security memorandum would, among other changes, revert the Ford class’ advanced electromagnetic catapult system to steam power. The document emphasizes the administration’s preference for “proven, reliable,, and affordable technologies and ship designs.”

    Such a change, multiple officials said, also could run into the billions of dollars and exacerbate chronic delays in the U.S. shipbuilding industry.

    The lead Ford-class carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, required 17 years to construct. Its design incorporated new technology that led to delays — including the electromagnetic catapult, a feature the Navy has since credited as being highly effective.

    The Ford class of carriers will phase out its predecessor, the Nimitz class, which dates back to the late 1960s.

    Relocating the island to the back of the newer vessels was done for efficiency and safety, three U.S. current and former officials familiar with the program told the Post. It not only creates more parking space for aircraft close to the carriers’ catapults, allowing crews to reduce the amount of time it takes to launch jets, it also improves landing safety by reducing the chance for turbulence when planes come back to land, the officials said.

    The Navy’s surface fleet has been plagued by years of delayed maintenance and low readiness rates, in part because of how often past U.S. administrations have deployed carriers to confront global crises.

    Amid the ongoing Iran war, the Pentagon under Trump has further stretched the readiness of its carrier fleet while surging naval assets to the Middle East to conduct strikes and enforce a blockade of Iranian ports.

    The USS Ford itself faced an extended deployment that ended earlier this year after a fire rendered many crew members’ sleeping quarters uninhabitable. Officials also acknowledged that the Navy’s newest carrier experienced problems with the “vacuum collection, holding, and transfer” system that supports hundreds of toilets on board.

    Democratic lawmakers this week called on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to investigate new reports of rapidly worsening conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been deployed to the Middle East since November. Families of sailors aboard the Lincoln have been outspoken about the situation, and the Navy is investigating a man-overboard incident it says may be connected to mental health issues.

    While speaking to reporters on a trip to Panama on Thursday, Hegseth called the reports “completely misrepresented.”

    On Friday, as questions continued to swirl around conditions on the ship and its lengthy deployment, Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews that the Lincoln’s time at sea had been “not nearly long enough.”

    The Lincoln is on an extended combat deployment that has seen its sailors at sea for 200 days without a port call to provide the crew some rest. It is scheduled to be relieved by the USS George Washington in the coming weeks.

    Trump has repeatedly shown interest in the design of Navy warships. Last year he unveiled plans for a new class of battleships to lead his vision for a Golden Fleet, prompting criticism from many naval analysts and lawmakers who argued the ships would waste scarce American shipbuilding power on a design the service does not need.

    The Congressional Budget Office has since estimated that the Trump Class battleships would cost about $275 billion over 30 years, coming at a cost of $18 billion per ship after finishing the first one.

  • Navy carrier’s problems are tied to attacks on U.S. base early in war

    Navy carrier’s problems are tied to attacks on U.S. base early in war

    WASHINGTON — The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln’s supply problems began soon after the first day of the war, as Iranian missiles and attack drones fell on a Navy base in Bahrain.

    The Iranian attack, retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli assault on Tehran, Iran, destroyed much of the base. And as it went up in smoke, so did a major logistics hub the Navy has relied on for decades.

    The Navy needed a Plan B to continue feeding the sailors working around the clock to keep warplanes flying strike missions, and later to maintain a blockade of Iran’s ports.

    With the threat of Iranian attacks at other ports in the region, the Pentagon looked to a base under British command on the island of Diego Garcia as its supply hub. Diego Garcia is south of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and roughly 2,200 miles from where two aircraft carrier strike groups have been operating in the Gulf of Oman.

    The loss of the hub in Bahrain has contributed to a host of reported problems on carriers supporting operations against Iran, as Democratic senators raise concerns about the Lincoln’s 5,000 sailors and their nearly nine-month deployment.

    Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) said in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the reported problems included shortages of basic supplies and the deteriorating mental health of its crew members.

    On Friday at a military air base in Maryland, President Donald Trump dismissed those concerns. “That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with another, very similar, ship,” he said.

    The Lincoln’s replacement is the Japan-based carrier USS George Washington, which earlier this week was heading west through the Strait of Malacca in Indonesian waters en route to the Middle East.

    Another carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush, has been operating in the Middle East for months since deploying from Norfolk, Va., on March 31.

    When asked if the carrier deployments were too long, the president said, “No, no, no, not nearly long enough.”

    Hegseth had a similar response on Thursday when a reporter asked how long the United States could maintain its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

    “We can hold it as long as we need to, indefinitely,” he replied.

    At the war’s outset, Keir Starmer, then the British prime minister, denied the Pentagon access to Diego Garcia for use in the operation against Iran. That decision drew Trump’s ire, and Starmer ultimately relented on March 1, granting the U.S. military access to the island for what he described as a “specific and limited defensive purpose.”

    A U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive logistics, said the Navy began using Diego Garcia as the main shipment point shortly after the Navy’s base in Bahrain was heavily damaged.

    The use of Diego Garcia as the Navy’s new logistics hub may explain why Iran fired two medium-range ballistic missiles at the island on March 20.

    One of the missiles fell into the Indian Ocean short of its target. A Navy warship shot down the other.

    The San Diego-based Lincoln has been at sea for nearly nine months without what the Navy calls a “liberty port” — where sailors can get off the ship for a few days.

    Bahrain is one of the two ports where U.S. aircraft carriers in the region have typically moored so their crews can get some downtime. The other, the Emirati port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, is also well within the range of Iranian missiles.

    The Trump administration relied on yet another carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, in the Caribbean for its pressure campaign against Venezuela and later extended its deployment to the Middle East to launch airstrikes against Iran. So far the war has seen the commitment of a significant portion of the Navy’s fleet of aircraft carriers, which will go down to 10 with the expected retirement of USS Nimitz next year.

    While six months is the typical length of a Navy deployment at sea in peacetime, some carriers have done far longer stretches following the 9/11 attacks. The Ford’s 326-day deployment, however, broke the record for the longest by a carrier since the Vietnam War.

    But in that war, carriers assigned to Yankee Station, a section of the Pacific off the coast of Vietnam, would often head to the Navy base at Subic Bay, Philippines — a short two-day transit away — where sailors could take a break from running nonstop flight operations and the ship could load up on ordnance, food, fuel, and other necessary supplies.

    By tradition and Navy regulation, the commanding officer of a warship can request a “beer day” for their crews when they have been at sea for 45 straight days or longer. Given the Lincoln’s time at sea, the crew would have been eligible for five beer days already.

    A spokesperson for the U.S. 5th Fleet, which covers naval operations in the region and would authorize beer days, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday about whether any of the ships participating in the Iran war had requested them.

    In an interview, Rep. Mike Levin (D., Calif.) said his constituents included sailors aboard the Lincoln, and their family members had reached out to express their concerns about the deployment.

    “It gets back to that big picture, which is: What is the mission here?” Levin said. “That’s what the families want to know.”

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

  • Killings and other violent crimes dropped sharply in 2025

    Killings and other violent crimes dropped sharply in 2025

    Violent crime and murder rates across the United States fell sharply between 2024 and 2025, according to FBI data, the largest year-to-year decrease since the federal government began tracking nationwide crime rates in 1936.

    The 2025 murder rate of 4.1 killings per 100,000 residents is the lowest the country has seen since the mid-1950s, the agency said.

    The FBI released those figures Friday as part of its annual national crime statistics analysis, known as the Uniform Crime Report, which amasses data from more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the country to paint a holistic picture of public safety trends in the U.S.

    Those trends were reflected in Philadelphia, which recorded 222 homicides in 2025, the city’s lowest annual total since 1966. There were 935 shooting victims in Philadelphia in 2025 — marking the first time the city’s annual total dropped below 1,000 since at least 2007, and a 61% decline in shootings from 2021.

    The unveiling of this year’s FBI report, though, was unconventional. Instead of the announcement originating from the FBI or the Justice Department, it came from President Donald Trump, who broke the news during a visit to the New York police academy on Long Island on Friday.

    “Today, I’m thrilled to announce that the FBI has just released the new Uniform Crime Report, showing that in 2025 we achieved the single largest reduction in violent crime in American history,” Trump said to applause. “Together, we’re showing what is possible when you finally have a president in the White House who supports our police, who lets you do your jobs, and who always backs the blue.”

    Many criminal justice experts take issue with that analysis, at least in part, since violent crime began falling well before Trump took office.

    FBI Director Kash Patel and newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche joined Trump, who was visiting Long Island to campaign for Bruce Blakeman, New York’s Republican gubernatorial candidate and the current Nassau county executive.

    The arrival of the FBI’s annual crime report came about a year after the Trump administration began ramping up his tough-on-crime messaging and deploying troops to some of America’s streets — sending the National Guard, dispatching federal task forces, increasing immigration enforcement, and taking temporary control of the D.C. police department.

    The president has credited those decisions for the crime declines in 2025, which include an 18.1% drop in murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, an 18.5% drop in robberies, and a 12.4% drop on property crimes, according to the FBI report. The White House has touted it as the “Trump effect.”

    But the FBI’s data shows that, after a spike during the coronavirus pandemic, nationwide violent crime began plummeting in 2023 when President Joe Biden was still in office. By January 2025, when Trump returned to the White House for his second term, homicides had already fallen significantly.

    That trend continued throughout 2025, according to the FBI figures and other independent analysis by various policing and criminal justice policy organizations. Criminologists and law enforcement experts broadly agree that it is difficult to assign credit — or blame — for the ebbs and flows of national crime rates.

    “Lots of places are having historic decreases right now,” said crime data analyst Jeff Asher. “And the feds aren’t everywhere.”

    An accurate understanding of the numbers is critical, experts said, so that police and policymakers can operate from a shared set of facts when making choices about public safety.

    “There’s a saying: ‘There’s lies, there’s damn lies, and there’s statistics,’” said Matthew Cavedon, director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice. “The numbers don’t tell you the human story. They can tell you correlation all day long, but they aren’t going to tell you causation. It’s a tricky one.”

    Those who study crime trends tend to avoid drawing conclusions based on a one- or two-year change in the data, Cavedon said, because the fuller story plays out over decades.

    “As with every edition with these kind of reports, the feeding frenzy begins to take credit,” Cavedon said. “Everybody wants to be able to go to the public and the voters and say, ‘This is exactly what did it.’ It’s a bit of a fool’s errand to even try.”

    The White House public safety narrative, he said, deserves skepticism, especially the claim that U.S. cities were out of control until Trump deployed the National Guard and began deporting undocumented immigrants.

    “That’s too simple of a story,” Cavedon said, pointing to Canada, where crime rates have also been dropping but where U.S. law enforcement policy is irrelevant.

    After the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, released its semiannual crime report last month, Executive Director Adam Gelb said the consistency of the downward trend nationwide means that “macro-level forces are playing a major role.”

    In Philadelphia, experts and city officials have pointed to a number of possible causes for the drop in crime: expanded violence prevention programs, improved law enforcement technology, better coordination between city leaders, and a return to day-to-day life after the disruptions of the pandemic.

    “We are seeing changes in criminal justice policy and strategy, advances in technology and surveillance, and broad shifts in society and culture, all happening at the same time,” Gelb said last month. “Crime is falling across too many different kinds of cities to credit any one policy, party, or program.”

    That analysis has not deterred Trump in recent weeks from claiming credit — especially for declines in D.C., where he declared a crime emergency last August.

    “I’ll tell you, because D.C. is very personal for me … it was so bad when I got there a year and a half ago,” Trump said in Long Island. “Can you imagine our nation’s capital? One of the most dangerous cities in the country. We’ve taken it to one of the safest cities of the country.”

    Trump said that crime in the District had dropped by 81%, but in recent appearances with reporters he has also referred to drops of 88% or 92%. When asked to clarify Trump’s remarks about D.C. crime drops, White House officials pointed to arson incidents, which dropped from four in 2025 to one in 2026.

    The White House also cited the District’s homicide rate, which has fallen significantly in recent years, but not by the rates cited by Trump.

    At Friday’s rally in Long Island, the law enforcement facility had been transformed into a MAGA rally filled with hundreds of his supporters. A pair of police cars were parked inside the building under a “thin blue line” flag. Trump spoke from beneath a “Making America Safe Again” banner, flanked by law enforcement officials in uniform who stood behind him on risers.

    He praised the work of Patel and Blanche and pledged to continue pumping federal tax dollars into police departments and law enforcement efforts nationwide.

    “Is there anybody that’s in favor of defunding the police in this particular room?” Trump said.

    “No!” the crowd yelled in unison.

    Staff writer Denali Sagner contributed to this article.

  • Magnitude 7.7 earthquake strikes off Indonesia’s coast, killing at least 47 and toppling buildings

    Magnitude 7.7 earthquake strikes off Indonesia’s coast, killing at least 47 and toppling buildings

    MAUMERE, Indonesia — A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia early Saturday, killing at least 47 people, collapsing buildings, and causing panic in a region prone to deadly quakes. Authorities said dozens more residents were injured and warned that the death toll would almost certainly rise.

    Authorities issued a tsunami warning and urged coastal residents to move to higher ground, but later lifted the warning when Indonesia’s meteorological agency said monitoring showed no significant sea-level changes that posed a threat to coastal communities. Some smaller tsunamis were reported.

    The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake hit eastern Indonesia’s Flores region at a depth of 6 miles at 5:58 a.m. local time. Its epicenter was 42 miles north-northwest of the city of Ende in East Nusa Tenggara province.

    Wuake triggers landslides, generates small tsunamis

    The meteorological agency said the quake was followed by at least 235 aftershocks, with the largest recorded at magnitude 6.2.

    The agency’s sea-level monitoring stations acknowledged some small tsunamis reached coastal villages in Manggarai and East Manggarai regencies. Videos obtained by the Associated Press showed the coastal village of Riung in Ngada regency blanketed in mud and debris after what the agency described as a 5.3-foot tsunami. Fishing boats were stranded ashore, infrastructure damaged, and homes surrounded by sediment left by receding waters.

    Waves measuring 3.1 feet were observed in Maurole, Ende Regency.

    Tsunami waves exceeding 1.6 feet were detected in Bulukumba, South Sulawesi, and Sape in Bima Regency.

    A strong, land-based earthquake of 6.9 magnitude hit North Sumatra province in western Indonesia on Saturday afternoon, according to the USGS. It struck 107 miles beneath the earth’s surface, meaning it was too deep to cause significant damage or casualties, Indonesian authorities said.

    The quake has caused buildings to collapse

    East Nusa Tenggara Police Chief Rudi Darmoko said power outages hampered the spread of information about the impact of the earthquake in cities and villages, complicating search and rescue efforts.

    “We are continuing to collect reports of damage and casualties, but there are communication disruptions,” Darmoko said. He said quake-triggered landslides in Ende regency blocked the Trans-Flores highway, a roughly 435-mile paved mountain road spanning Flores Island, from Labuan Bajo to Larantuka.

    The head of the National Disaster Management Agency, Suharyanto, said rescuers have recovered at least 47 bodies, mostly in Sikka, Manggarai, and East Manggarai, and at least 50 people were taken to hospitals.

    Suharyanto, who like many Indonesians uses a single name, said the quake flattened at least 157 houses and damaged nearly 200 more, forcing about 2,000 villagers to abandon their homes and move to temporary shelters. The powerful temblor also destroyed more than 100 public facilities, including schools, medical centers, and churches.

    The death toll could rise because landslides triggered by the earthquake buried or cut off many remote villages across six regencies on Flores Island, said Fathur Rahman, who heads the Search and Rescue Office in Maumere, the capital of Sikka.

    Some remote villages are completely buried, he said, and damaged infrastructure and a lack of heavy equipment were hindering rescue efforts.

    Authorities deployed three helicopters and a rescue vessel to support logistics and emergency response operations, including potential evacuations. East Nusa Tenggara consists of numerous islands and presents significant transportation and access challenges.

    Residents ran for their lives when quake struck

    The quake was felt across much of Flores island with initial reports indicating heavy damage.

    Yohanna Embu, who lives in Sikka, said people ran in a panic to higher ground.

    “Many buildings here were damaged … I saw that the waiting room at the port terminal in Maumere had collapsed,” she said.

    Students at St. Peter Major Seminary in Sikka who were attending morning Mass fled when the roof of an assembly hall collapsed, said the Rev. Guidelbertus Tanga, rector of the seminary, known locally as Ritapiret Seminary, on the predominantly Catholic island of Flores.

    “Our students and nuns ran out in panic beneath a collapsing roof,” Tanga said. “At least one priest suffered a broken leg after jumping from the second floor of a building during the quake.”

    The quake also struck Labuan Bajo, a gateway town to eastern Indonesia’s Komodo National Park, one of the country’s best-known attractions. Damage was reported in Bima, a city in neighboring West Nusa Tenggara province, and in parts of southern Sulawesi island.

    Indonesian authorities initially issued a tsunami warning for parts of East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi, and Southeast Sulawesi provinces, and urged residents to stay away from beaches and riverbanks. The agency located the shallow undersea quake near Flores island.

    Indonesia, a vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity because of its location on the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.

    Most notably, a powerful earthquake caused a tsunami in 1992 that killed about 2,500 people on Flores, part of a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia, while in 2018, a magnitude 7.5 quake spawned a large localized tsunami that wiped out coastal areas, killing more than 4,400 people.

    In December 2004, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra in western Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

  • With U.S.-Iran talks stalled, diplomatic efforts expand to unlikely European players

    With U.S.-Iran talks stalled, diplomatic efforts expand to unlikely European players

    WASHINGTON — Faced with an increasingly bellicose Iran as talks to end the war have stalled, the Trump administration appears to be reaching out to a broader swath of countries that might be able to help pressure Tehran or ease its hardline position where traditional mediators have not succeeded so far.

    While discussions between Iran and Oman, as well as between Iran and Pakistan, Turkey, and Qatar, persist at an uneven and unpredictable pace, the U.S. administration quietly has expanded its outreach to include perhaps unlikely interlocutors in Europe.

    Just this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met in person in Washington with the foreign minister of Austria on Tuesday and held a call with the foreign minister of Greece on Wednesday.

    Those interactions were not notable beyond the normal course of relations between the U.S. and two close European allies. The official State Department readouts of the discussions were bland and vague and did not mention Iran by name as a topic of conversation.

    But it then emerged that both foreign ministers — almost immediately after their talks with Rubio — spoke Thursday with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

    The apparent new tack to break the negotiation logjam comes as the U.S. and Iran are both pushing for control of the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial oil shipping corridor. President Donald Trump faces little wiggle room in his next steps as the economic fallout from the war and dwindling stockpiles of key weapons pose political problems for Republicans ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections.

    A desperate push is on to break the diplomatic logjam

    The entry by Austria and Greece is likely less of a formal mediation attempt, analysts say, and more reflective of a desperate push to halt the conflict because of the impact it has on an increasing number of countries, beyond those in the Middle East.

    “Everyone is just urging both sides to stop this reckless game of chicken,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group.

    It also shows how much Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced countries, which otherwise were neutral bystanders to the larger conflict, to exercise any diplomatic sway they may have on their Iranian and American counterparts to kick-start a lasting resolution.

    Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned that any efforts by Greece, Austria, or any other nonmediating country could prove to be futile.

    “While the calls to both sides may entail encouraging both Iran and the U.S. back to the negotiating table, such efforts fall short of mediation, which is a very complex endeavor and requires trust to be built by the mediator with both sides,” Yacoubian said.

    She added that it’s not something that any country can “just jump into.”

    Rubio discussed Iran with his Austrian and Greek counterparts

    The State Department said Friday that it could not comment on the timing of calls by other countries’ foreign ministers and maintained that Rubio had made no requests of either to get in touch with Iran or pass messages to Araghchi.

    One European diplomat, who was briefed on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity to detail sensitive diplomatic conversations, said the timing of the calls was not an accident.

    The State Department did allow, however, that Iran had been a topic of conversation in Rubio’s discussions, which occurred as Trump is facing serious political headwinds over a war for which he has offered shifting objectives.

    No longer purely about making Iran incapable of producing a nuclear weapon, the immediate goal has become reopening the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s oil usually passes through and which was open before the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.

    “That’s goal number one: Keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over our country,” Vice President JD Vance said in an interview Thursday on Fox News Channel. But he did not say anything about the strait being open and toll-free for transiting ships, as he had in the past.

    The second goal, Vance said, is to ensure that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon.

    The two European countries have key connections to war’s fallout

    Austria and Greece may not be obvious choices to assist on the Iran portfolio, but Vienna is home to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will play a key role in any resolution to the Iran’s nuclear program, and hosted the final negotiations that resulted in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Greece is a major maritime nation in the Mediterranean and has significant shipping interests in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.

    In statements from the Austrian, Greek, and Iranian foreign ministries, it was clear that Iran had been a top topic in all of the conversations this week.

    The Greek foreign ministry said Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis had been briefed by Araghchi on “regional developments, and in particular on the ongoing talks regarding the Strait of Hormuz.” It said Gerapetritis “underlined the importance of freedom of navigation and maritime security.”

    The Austrian foreign ministry offered Austria’s services as a venue for further potential talks with Iran and said Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger had stressed to Araghchi “the urgency of restoring stability in the region through serious diplomatic efforts.”

    “There can be no military solution,” it said. “A diplomatic solution remains possible. Our priority is to safeguard freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.”

    Iran’s foreign ministry, expectedly, took a different tack in explaining the calls.

    It said Friday that in Araghchi’s calls with his European counterparts they discussed “mechanisms for the future management of the Strait of Hormuz,” which he said had been disrupted by the “unlawful aggression by the United States and the Israeli regime against Iran.”

    In both calls, he accused the U.S. of violating the interim deal signed by both sides in June to end the immediate hostilities and begin broader talks to end the war.

  • A surprise credit after an overseas purchase: The tariff refunds now flowing through shippers

    A surprise credit after an overseas purchase: The tariff refunds now flowing through shippers

    NEW YORK — If you bought something from an overseas vendor last year, it might be time to check your bank account.

    Shippers including FedEx and UPS that acted as customs brokers for imported packages and received tariff refunds from the U.S. government have started to pass on those refunds to the customers that originally paid the tariffs.

    The refunds to consumers are the last step in a monthslong process that kicked off in February when the Supreme Court struck down sweeping tariffs implemented by President Donald Trump in March 2025 under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act on goods from almost every country. The court ordered the government to return the tariffs it collected.

    So far, about $100 billion in tariffs have been refunded to companies who paid them under a system set up by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

    That doesn’t mean Americans will get anywhere close to what they paid in tariffs, since most were paid indirectly. In 2025, the Trump tariffs amounted to an average tax increase of $1,000 per U.S. household, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., group that studies taxes.

    But some consumers are getting some of what they paid directly back from shippers including UPS, DHL and FedEx. The refunds are being rolled out in phases based on what date they were paid. Shippers have said they’ll return the refunds on a rolling basis as they receive them.

    Tariff refunds from shippers will be directly refunded to credit cards or bank accounts

    Most big overseas retailers paid the tariffs themselves and passed them along to retailers with a line item in their invoice that was part of the total bill, or indirectly by raising prices. But some smaller sellers left the tariff to be paid when it reached the U.S. In those cases, shippers paid the bill and charged the recipient of the package.

    FedEx said it has begun the process of issuing $800 million in tariff refunds it received from the government back to the customers that paid them. Customers don’t need to apply to receive their refund, but they can enter tracking numbers for purchased items into a portal on the FedEx website to see whether or not they are due a refund.

    UPS said in April it had paid $5 billion in tariffs on behalf of clients and would begin the process of applying to the government for refunds. In the first phase, it applied for $500 million in refunds and said customers should get refunds one to three months after it receives reimbursement from the Treasury.

    DHL similarly said that it has filed claims for almost all eligible shipments where it served as the importer of record and is returning the refunds it has received.

    “The volume and pace of refunds continue to depend on CBP’s processing of claims,” DHL said in a statement.

    Major retailers say they could give back some refunds but mostly will use them to lower prices

    Unlike shippers who collected tariffs directly from customers, most big retailers passed on tariffs in indirect ways, changing their product lineups or partly absorbing higher costs, making a consumer refund unlikely.

    Amazon executives said last week the company received $600 million in tariff refunds in the second quarter.

    In a call with investors, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company isn’t the importer of record on most of the goods it sells and that it has absorbed some tariff costs. But he said the company has “identified a limited set of circumstances where we can trace that we pass specific import charges on to customers.” In those circumstances, he added, “we will proactively contact affected customers and automatically issue refunds to them.”

    Otherwise, he said, Amazon will use tariff refunds to lower prices for customers.

    That echoes what other large retailers have said. In May, Cori Barrie, outgoing CEO of Best Buy, the nation’s largest consumer electronics chain, said the retailer is an importer of record of only about 2% to 3% of what it sells and that the company would use any refund it gets to “deliver value back to our customers.”

    And Costco CEO Ron Vachris said the company planned to return “in some form” the tariffs that were passed on to consumers.

    “How much we return and when depends on a variety of factors, including how much refund money we receive and when it arrives as well as developments in the lawsuit filed against the company regarding the return process,” he said in a quarterly earnings call in May.

    Dozens of class-action lawsuits have been filed

    Some shoppers are suing to get the tariffs they paid in the form of higher prices back from companies. More than 80 class-action lawsuits have been filed by customers across the country against retailers including Costco, Nike, Amazon, Walmart and others.

    The lawsuits will face difficulty because plaintiffs will have to prove they paid for price increases that were specifically tied to the tariffs, according to Lori Leskin, partner and co-chair of law firm Arnold & Porter’s Consumer Products Practice Group. None of the lawsuits have yet been certified as class action, which would mean they apply to all customers.

    “It’s going to be very hard for anyone to establish that the price increase they paid was due to tariffs and not some other market force,” she said. “Most of them are just talking about price increases, and to be able to trace a price increase due to a single factor is going to be really difficult given the multifactorial approach that most companies take.”