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Owning a house appears further and further out of reach for many people in the U.S. The problem is a national one. The median price for an American home is now just over $400,000. On average, houses cost five years of the median salary for someone working in the U.S. In some cities on the West Coast and in parts of Florida, that ratio is now eight years of salary to buy a home.
Rents have also gone up significantly. Since 2020, the nation’s average rent is 27 percent higher. Some cities have seen much bigger gains – Miami’s average rent is up 51 percent. Housing policy advocates point to one big cause: the U.S. has not built enough housing for a growing population. But “build more housing” is a complex problem, not a single policy fix.
Congress recently turned its attention to the problem of housing affordability. The Senate passed a bill with a basket of different policies, aiming to bring down the cost of housing and encourage more building.
What’s in the bill specifically? And how could those policies make a dent in the housing crisis? And how has the housing crisis evolved in the past few years?
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The U.S. has a long history of getting rid of foreign leaders it doesn’t like. But a new pattern has emerged in the Trump administration’s dealings with its foreign adversaries.
In January, the president ordered a precision military operation that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and brought him to the U.S. The next month, the administration launched a high-powered bombing campaign against Iran, killing the country’s supreme leader and dozens of its top officials.
In both cases, Trump said the countries’ fates were ultimately up to the citizens — a striking change from the nation building during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, the commander-in-chief has his eyes set on Cuba, telling its president his time in office is coming to a close.
Our series, “If You Can Keep It,” continues with a look at what Trump’s military actions in Venezuela and Iran mean for how we fight wars and what comes after.
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As Israel and the U.S. continue to fire missiles at targets within Iran, the American military and President Donald Trump are weighing the costs and benefits of putting U.S. boots on the ground in the Middle East once again.
Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s Department of Homeland Security confirmation hearing saw him clash with his fellow congresspeople. Despite the meeting’s testy tone, the committee cleared Mullin by a single vote, sending his confirmation to the full Senate.
A federal judge ruled this week that Voice of America must reinstate more than 1,000 employees after the Trump administration placed them on leave last year.
And, in global news, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, announced this week that the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t technically closed to all traffic, just to ships controlled by the country’s enemies. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is leaning on Japan to send warships to the passageway, to counteract Iran’s efforts to control the flow of trade.
New reporting from The Guardian indicates that before the U.S. began bombing Iran, security officials from U.S. allies judged that, as talks between Washington and Tehran progressed, a peace deal was in reach.
The U.S. eased sanction on Russia and Venezuela this week to unlock more viable sources of oil as energy prices rise and the war with Iran continues.
We cover the most important stories from around the world in the News Roundup.
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Cases of colorectal cancer in young people have risen nearly 60 percent since the early 2000s. That’s according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and the National Cancer Institute. And a new study out this month by the American Cancer Society found that colorectal cancer is now the deadliest kind for those younger than 50.
But this rise isn’t being felt across all generations in the same way. People born around 1990 are four times more likely to develop rectal cancer than those born around 1950. And for those 65 and older, colorectal cancer rates have actually decreased.
So, what’s going on? And what can you do to protect yourself and your gut health? For those answers and more, we turn to a panel of experts.
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Big changes are coming to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
With Kristi Noem out at the Department of Homeland Security, all eyes are on FEMA to roll out millions of dollars in stalled federal funding for disaster responses. That’s especially true in North Carolina, where the western part of the state is still grappling with the effects of Hurricane Helene.
We sit down with a panel of experts to find out what the future holds for FEMA in the Tar Heel state.
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Wars are fought by militaries — but they’re usually ended by diplomats. So, what happens when diplomacy is sidelined?
Officials from Washington and Tehran engaged in talks for weeks, trying to avoid war before the U.S. and Israel fired missiles targeting Iran weeks ago. Now, as President Donald Trump publicly muses about why the military is engaged in another conflict in the Middle East, experts are wondering why talks were abandoned in the first place. And about the off ramps for all sides involved.
We look at the role diplomacy plays once a war is already raging — and what happens when negotiations, expertise, and international alliances are weakened.
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President Donald Trump and his administration and allies have sent mixed messages about the war with Iran in the first two weeks of the operation. The Secretary of Defense called it war. Now, the Speaker of the House said thus conflict with Iran is not a war.
Whatever the president decides to call the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign – it’s cost the lives of 13 American troops and more than 2,000 people in the Middle East, both civilians and military personnel.
Congress has voted on a resolution to limit the president’s power to continue this campaign – but that effort failed. And the president hasn’t indicated he wants Congress to weigh in. Many Republican members appear unbothered by that fact. At least in public.
What does Trump owe Congress as far as buy-in on war? And how have past presidents involved the legislative branch when deploying the military?
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Two weeks into the war with Iran, the United States has spent more than $10 billion dollars. The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Iranians and seven American service members. Those numbers are likely to grow if there are boots on the ground, a possibility that Trump Administration officials refuse to rule out.
The president traveled to Kentucky and Ohio this week where he went on the defensive, justifying the increase in gas prices and touting the drop in drug prices.
Americans’ faith in the future of fair elections is at an all time low, according to new PBS/NPR/Marist poll.
And, in global news, early findings from a Pentagon investigation indicate that the U.S. may be at fault for a missile strike on an Iranian school. That attack killed at least 175 children, teachers, and other staff.
Israel is widening strikes into Lebanon and threatening to invade the southern portion of the country. The Tehran-backed Hezbollah group has been sending missiles into Israel since the attacks on Iran began nearly two weeks ago. Lebanon is appealing to Israel’s allies to stop the campaign.
And as the world’s attention swings to Iran, how is Hamas regrouping in Gaza?
We cover the most important stories from around the world in the News Roundup.
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Waging war is not cheap. Experts estimate that the U.S. has already spent more than $10 billion launching missiles at Iran in the past few weeks.
Meanwhile, thanks to fighting in the Strait of Hormuz disrupting the global energy supply trade, the price of oil is rising sharply worldwide. With no clear end in sight, how will Congress wrangle the high price tag of the war – economically and politically?
We try and make sense of the cost of war, especially as more and more Americans feel the squeeze in their budgets at home.
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Religion keeps coming up when Trump administration officials discuss their joint military operation with Israel against Iran.
This kind of rhetoric comes as concerns grow over the crumbling of the separation between church and state in the Trump administration’s military. Now, more than two dozen democratic congresspeople are requesting an investigation into a report that some military leaders are using apocalyptic theology in briefings about the conflict – saying that Trump is anointed by Jesus to cause Armageddon.
How is religion showing up in the war against Iran?
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