Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Food stamp enrollment has fallen by 5.7 million people in a single year
The number of Americans receiving food assistance through the federal government fell sharply over the past year, according to new participation data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dropped by more than five and a half million people between May 2025 and May 2026, one of the…
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Jordan Trought drew eight years and a $6,166,227 forfeiture for a sweepstakes scam aimed at older Americans
A federal judge in White Plains sentenced Jordan Trought, a 31-year-old Jamaican national, to eight years in prison this week for leading part of an international sweepstakes fraud ring that took more than $9 million from more than 200 elderly victims across the United States. The Southern District of New York’s announcement, dated September 10,…
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Prime refunds are going out by check, PayPal or Venmo, and Amazon has not published a mailing date
A $2.5 billion settlement ranks among the largest the Federal Trade Commission has ever announced, yet the agency’s own page for the case currently gives no delivery date for a large share of the money still owed. Amazon has already paid out one round of Prime refunds tied to the case, but a second round…
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Claiming Social Security before full retirement age costs a dollar of benefits for every two dollars earned over the yearly limit
Nearly every year, new retirees are surprised to learn that claiming Social Security before full retirement age doesn’t guarantee they keep every dollar of it if they’re still earning a paycheck. A rule called the retirement earnings test can withhold part of the benefit once outside income crosses a yearly limit, and the math shifts…
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VA made at least one processing error in about a third of the cases where it cut a veteran’s disability pay
When the Department of Veterans Affairs decides to reduce a veteran’s monthly disability check, federal regulation requires that the veteran get a warning first, with real time to respond before the money changes. A government watchdog review just found that guarantee failing far more often than it should. Looking at cases closed in 2024, investigators…
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The White House pledge meant to keep data centers off household power bills is voluntary, and 317 companies have signed
A White House pledge asks the companies building America’s data centers to promise something no regulator has ever required of them: covering every dollar of the power infrastructure their machines need, so the bill does not land on a household account instead. Two hundred sixty-three million Americans now live somewhere covered by that promise, and…
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A Grubhub settlement check dies if it is not cashed within 90 days
More than 640,000 checks and electronic payments are moving through the mail and inboxes of Grubhub drivers and diners right now, and each one comes with an expiration date attached. The Federal Trade Commission is distributing more than $23.8 million to people it says were harmed by the delivery platform’s business practices, and the agency…
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Disaster filers in Indiana, Nebraska, West Virginia and Mississippi have until February 1, and the IRS applies it by address
Four states now share the same tax deadline for reasons that have nothing to do with each other. Storms in Indiana, a wildfire in Nebraska, flooding in West Virginia and a tropical storm in Mississippi each triggered a separate IRS disaster declaration this summer, and every one of them lands on the identical date: February…
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Social Security starts matching federal pension records against 111 million Medicare files this month to test Extra Help claims
A data-sharing arrangement that quietly decides who keeps a valuable Medicare subsidy, and who loses it, is about to restart. Starting September 16, 2026, the Social Security Administration will compare civil service pension records from the Office of Personnel Management against its own Medicare files to check who is correctly receiving Extra Help with prescription…
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Toledo’s median rent is $916, against $3,844 in San Francisco
A one-bedroom renter moving from Toledo, Ohio to San Francisco would need to more than quadruple their housing budget just to keep a similar-sized apartment. Toledo’s overall median rent sits at $916 a month as of August 2026, the lowest of the 100 largest U.S. cities tracked by Apartment List. San Francisco’s median rent is…
