In brief: Today’s post discusses our increasing confidence in the track for Tropical Storm Erin, and takes a look at some of the near- and long-term risks from this system, which should become a hurricane by this weekend. We also discuss a new Blobby McBlobface in the Gulf.
Status of Erin
As of Wednesday morning the Atlantic season’s fifth named storm retains a fairly ragged appearance on satellite, with the National Hurricane Center (a bit generously, maybe?) holding Erin’s intensity at 45 mph. The system continues to encounter somewhat dry air, and sea surface temperatures that aren’t exactly sizzling. So Erin is just kind of slogging westward across the Atlantic. But it is making progress, having moved about halfway between Africa and the Leeward Islands; and Erin continues moving with purpose, at about 20 mph. On this path the storm should find more favorable conditions in the coming days.
Tropical Storm Erin is still facing some challenges this morning. (NOAA)
Those conditions include warmer water and, crucially, rising air that should support further intensification. Accordingly, the National Hurricane Center expects Erin to become a hurricane by Friday, and potentially a major hurricane by this weekend. This is well supported by a suite of models we look at, and seems like a reasonable best guess. Bottom line, Erin is still very likely to become this season’s strongest storm to date, by far.
OK, so where is Erin going?
After several days of uncertainty, our confidence in Erin’s track is increasing. Although it is moving west now, it should slowly turn west-northwest by Friday or Saturday, and then northwest on Sunday as it finds a weakness in the high pressure system to its north. By early next week the storm’s center should lie somewhere to the north of Puerto Rico or Hispaniola, and be turning further north.
Super-ensemble forecast for Tropical Storm Erin. (Tomer Burg)
If we look at the overnight guidance there is a lot of support for this track, and it helps build our increasing confidence. Along this track the center of the storm should approach Bermuda by Wednesday (give or take a day) next week. We’re not saying the track of Erin is a done deal here, as there remains a broad range of outcomes beyond day four or five of the forecast. And we’re going to discuss other risks below. But at this time our land mass of biggest concern is the island of Bermuda. Residents there should be keeping very close tabs on the system.
Other concerns with Erin?
Yes, we have some. Depending on how quickly Erin strengthens (i.e. a slower-to-organize storm would remain further south) we would advise people living in the northeastern rim of Caribbean islands, including Antigua and Barbuda, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico to remain vigilant. These islands are unlikely to see a direct hit from Erin, but they are at risk of higher waves and heavy rainfall beginning late Friday and running through the weekend.
Areas of the US East Coast, such as the Carolinas and Virginias, should also keep an eye on Erin. The risk of a landfall there is very low, but it remains non-zero. More importantly, like the Caribbean islands discussed above, there could be impacts to seas along with heavy rainfall. Overall our concern level for the mainland United States is fairly low, but at a week out we cannot say anything definitive about impacts there.
What about the Gulf?
What about it? I like living there. Good people. Great seafood. This week even the waters near Galveston have even been blue-ish. Oh, you mean the new tropical blob there highlighted by the National Hurricane Center this morning.
Blobby McBlobface comes to the Gulf. (National Hurricane Center)
Well, I don’t have much to say about this this morning. On one hand, yes, the calendar says it is August. So anything tropical in the Gulf at this time of year raises one’s eyebrows. But I’m having a hard time getting too worked up about a tropical low that will find only marginal conditions for development. If we dig into the ensembles there does not even appear to be too much of rainfall threat. For example, based on the European model, the probability of rainfall amounts of 4 inches or greater is near zero for all but a few isolated areas of Mexico. So yes, we’re going to watch this thing. But no, we’re not going to get too excited about it.
What else?
Overall it’s fairly quiet out there today. We’re watching for some flood concerns in southern Kentucky and Tennessee, including the Great Smoky Mountains area. A flash flood watch is in effect for much of this area, where there could be some training rainfall and higher wind gusts. The threat of heavy rainfall should pass this evening or tonight.
Beyond that, it’s mostly just hot out there in the United States, which is to be expected in August.
In brief: Parts of central Houston saw some fairly strong showers and thunderstorms on Tuesday, with a few isolated areas picking up 1 inch, or more, of rain. That pattern of sporadic afternoon storms should occur through Saturday before high pressure asserts a little more control. We also discuss the chances of a tropical system forming in the southern Gulf late this week.
Wednesday
The overall story remains the same for Houston’s weather in the coming days, with hot weather and just enough instability and moisture to support the possibility of scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms. These storms are most likely during the afternoon and evening hours, at a time when kids are coming home from school, participating in after-school activities, or during the evening commute. Today, however, I expect slightly less coverage than we saw on Tuesday. Overall I would say there is about a 30 percent chance of showers, with isolated storms. Highs today will range from the lower 90s near the coast to the upper 90s inland, with plenty of humidity.
Wet bulb globe temperatures remain in the “high” range this week, but that is typical for August here. (Weather Bell)
One thing that’s been noticeable this summer, to me, is the lighter winds. This is because we have not seen tight pressure gradients (i.e. very strong pressure systems) to really draw in the onshore winds. Today, for example, winds will come from the west at about 5 mph, with only slightly higher gusts. Winds may be a little more pronounced on Friday and Saturday, but overall they look to remain in the 5 to 10 mph range for quite a while.
Thursday and Friday
The forecast remains similar to end the work week, with highs in the 90s. Thursday and Friday may see slightly better rain chances, with 50 percent coverage of showers, and a few embedded thunderstorms. The most likely period for these showers remains the afternoon.
Saturday and Sunday
Saturday should see a continuation of this pattern, with highs in the mid-90s for most locations and a healthy chance of showers and thunderstorms. As high pressure starts to build some, I think most of Houston may push into the upper 90s on Sunday, with decreased (but non-zero, to be clear) rain chances. All in all this should be one of our hottest weekends of the year, which is to be expected in mid-August.
Next week
Temperatures for most of next week look hot, in the mid- to upper-90s, with lots of sunshine. I think rain chances will take a step back toward the 20 to 30 percent daily range. So yeah, full-on summer for Houston.
The Atlantic tropical outlook, now featuring a Southern Gulf of Mexico blob. (National Hurricane Center)
The tropics come alive
In the Atlantic Tropical Storm Erin continues to struggle with the intrusion of some drier air, but should soon move into more favorable conditions. A hurricane is likely to form later this week, or this weekend. The majority of modeling still shows the system turning before threatening the United States, but Bermuda is definitely at risk.
The European model ensembles indicate a low-end chance of something developing in the Bay of Campeche on Friday. (National Hurricane Center)
Additionally the National Hurricane Center is tracking a low pressure system that should emerge into the Bay of Campeche on Thursday or so. There is a slight chance of some development over the southern Gulf, and you always want to keep an eye on anything in that region in August. However, none of the models are particularly excited about this tropical low, and the atmospheric conditions are not super supportive. So, at this point, the most likely scenario is that the low has minimal to no impact on our weather. We’ll see.
THE HEAVENS—Moments after spotting hordes of the minuscule creatures skittering across the face of the earth, the Lord, Our Holy Father, reportedly became disgusted Thursday and placed a giant overturned glass atop humanity.
Heavenly sources confirmed the Almighty cursed in surprise when He first spotted the massive swarm of human beings crawling through Creation, but He soon scrambled to overturn a 70-million-foot-tall drinking vessel and contain the planet’s infestation, trapping the enormous mass of 8.1 billion squirming pests inside.
“Gross, gross, gross, they’re getting all over the place!” said the visibly nauseated deity, who after a short search around His Kingdom retrieved a 10,000-mile-wide paper plate He could slide beneath the glass to ensure the scampering throngs didn’t escape. “Ugh, I hate the twitchy way they move. And the tiny hairs all over their bodies. Plus, they’re always kind of moist. Totally creeps me out.”
“Seriously, I might puke just looking at them,” the Lord continued.
According to witnesses, God discovered the human colony late at night after turning over a cloud in heaven’s sanctum sanctorum to find billions of the creatures writhing on the planet below. Several reports confirmed that after trapping humanity, the Almighty Creator exhibited a wide range of coping responses that included wincing in stunned silence as He gazed at the humans from afar, audibly gagging at the sight of saliva dripping from their jaws, and even shouting “Get out! get out!” at the tiny noncomprehending beings for over a minute.
Though he momentarily regained His composure by taking some deep breaths, the Lord is said to have fallen into a fit of dry-heaving after He spotted several humans in Central Europe expelling bodily fluids as they copulated. After recovering once more, He was seen rolling up an ancient scroll and approaching the glass with the papyrus brandished in His Divine Hand.
“If I let them out they’ll infest all of Creation—they breed like crazy,” said He Who Divided the Heavens and Earth, tapping on the side of the glass as several million inhabitants of the North American continent scurried helplessly away inside the cup. “I used to think the ethical thing was to release them, but they always seem to find their way back to me. Then they get into my shit and start eating through everything in sight. Plus, they stink up the place.”
Official records confirmed this is far from the first time the Eternal One has struggled with a human incursion. Once, as a younger deity, the Lord reportedly placed a pair in His garden, gave them fruits and herbs, and even named them, only to grow bored after several months. When He remembered them several years later, Our Heavenly Father was frustrated to discover an out-of-control population scuttling all over the globe.
Since then, God is believed to have grown far more impatient with humanity’s tendency to decimate forests, contaminate food supplies, and spread disease. A small number is enough to send Him stomping on the fleeing beings, and sources said on one occasion He leapt onto His Heavenly Throne and refused to get down until the Holy Ghost exterminated them.
“You can smite a few of these fuckers, but there will always be more on their way,” said the Almighty, grimacing as the appearance of His Eternal Face outside the glass sent huge quantities of the miniscule beings scattering for cover in South America. “You can set them on fire, crush them, even throw them out into space—they always bounce back and start breeding like nothing happened. Maybe I’ll just put a bunch of water in there and see if they drown.”
“Although, that’s never worked before,” the Creator of All Things added.
At press time, God was seen spraying a massive bottle of Axe Body Spray over the entirety of Creation in a final attempt to wipe out the human infestation once and for all.
KENOSHA, WI—After lurking in a fulfillment center parking lot until employees had finished their 12-hour shift, Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos reportedly mugged one of his company’s warehouse workers at gunpoint Friday. “Just take out your wallet real slow and drop it into my hands—no sudden movements!” said Bezos, his face obscured behind a ski mask as he brandished a Colt pistol in the inventory handler’s face, shouting at him to quit crying and empty his pockets of any valuables. “Only $7? What the hell is this? I should blow your fucking brains out right now. At least I got your health insurance card, so you can’t use that anymore. Give me that iPhone 8, and your sneakers, too.” Reached for comment, local law enforcement confirmed a manhunt was in progress for Bezos, who is said to have fled the scene by private jet.
I’m flanked by them in most pictures. Perched atop a yellow parking curb in swimsuits and sneakers, we squint and smile for the camera, a mix of frizzy curls and stray hairs haloing our faces. It’s Memorial Day weekend 1986, and we’re minutes away from learning that Hands Across America will not solve the problem of hunger. But in this shot, we’re full of hope and sisterly adventure, and my diaper, bulging beneath my swimsuit, is, well, full.
In a photo from the previous year, the three of us pose in leotards, showing off our splits atop a gymnastics mat that’s covering shag carpet. Only Sienna, the middle sister, is a gymnast, but I’ll give it a try soon, and promptly quit. She can keep the hand chalk and stubborn wedgies. But I know exactly why I’m smiling in this picture. I can feel it blooming now in my chest, at forty-two: Safe. Complete. We’re all doing the same thing together.
My sisters, six and a half years and five years older than me, didn’t choose the role-model life. Birth order chose them, and they became my guides for how to be in this world. As the baby of the family, I looked up to them. Took their money. Woke up early to eat the best leftover pizza slices. Okay, and once I hid in Sienna’s closet and took a bite from her school fundraiser chocolate bar, wrapped it back up in foil, and denied it when she discovered the work of my baby teeth. What are you, an archaeologist? You’re just a middle school cheerleader in need of new uniforms. But now, seeing myself as the AuDHD baby of the family, who masked her way through the first forty years of life, my à la carte mimicry of them makes so much sense.
Neurodivergence aside (*laugh track plays), can anyone parse sibling influences in a true or worthy way? I’ll take the bait.
Autumn, the firstborn, embodied a more maternal role. When I started talking later than most kids, trying to say “squirrel” while sucking on my Nuk, or passionately explaining how I loved the clapping of dress shoes across tiled floors, my parents recruited Autumn to translate. She’d listen, make guesses, and give me multiple-choice options, somehow never too tired to try.
When neighbors gifted us a doll from Portugal, she named it “Portugali” and sang lyrics I know by heart:
“I’m Port-u-gali and I love to walk, Port-u-gali and I love to talk, Port-u-gali and I love to sing, Port-u-gali, give me a ring! Do-do do-do do-deh-do-deh do…”
I sat on our parents’ bed, watching the stiff doll lean right and left in her hand, waiting for the rhyming words I was so good at spotting, mostly just being without any expectations but to giggle when I wanted.
My oldest sister, who skipped two grades in elementary school and left for college at sixteen on scholarship; who answered Jeopardy! questions faster than Alex Trebek could ask them; and read Waiting to Exhale in one night while the rest of us were satisfied watching Angela Bassett start a fire, set the intellectual bar high. When she visited me in DC in my early twenties, she pointed out the NPR building like it was the empty tomb. “How cool is that, Taz?!” I knew the NPR spoofs on SNL better than I knew NPR, but I paid attention, and, a few years later, interned with Michel Martin.
But Autumn also brought a heavy dose of quirk that made my own weirdness okay. We watched Daria together like we were in on a cosmic joke and sang the words to Indigo Girls’ songs as though we knew what fast-fading love could do to a person’s soul. The summer before I was diagnosed as autistic, I intuitively went back to these songs, downloaded them on my phone, and listened as the deep harmonies and storytelling pulled out a chair for me once more.
And when she left for college, and I stayed behind as a rising fifth grader, I wrote her letters with purposely misspelled words, and drew a winged poodle-type creature for her, called it Mini-Habas. Maybe he served as what writer Ann Hood calls the “objective correlative.” The thing that carries the weight of the emotion in a story.
Sienna, born five years and a day before me, acted as a goofy friend who knew how to do everything well. Your TV and VCR acting up? Have Sienna take a look. Not sure what to wear for picture day at school? Ask Sienna if jelly shoes are still in. Feeling a bit drab-headed into senior year? Sienna can give you a bob with a pair of kitchen scissors that would make ’90s icon Monica jealous. Want to imagine breaking the rules by getting drunk off IBC Root Beer? You know who to call. I don’t remember our dynamic ever really shifting, except for the time when I helped Sienna feed her newborn, who arrived seven months after my son. And here’s how you extract the colostrum. Are we even now?
Most of the time, I was thrilled just to watch her work:
Picture us in the ’80s, duh, and we’re standing at the sink of the shag carpet house’s half-bath. Today’s occasion isn’t a fake baptism or Holy Communion with Welch’s and Mikesell’s potato chips. Beloved, today my sister will fit her Barbie’s broken leg with an expertly constructed cast of toilet paper and water, inserting a popsicle stick if she finds a compound fracture.
“I’m going to marry a Hawaiian man and live in Hawaii and be a doctor,” she tells me. I am honored to be a smelly plebeian in earshot of her wisdom.
“Me too. I’m going to marry a Hawaiian man and be a doctor too.” It’s not the first time she’s shared her keys to a good life, but I need to re-emphasize my commitment. She’s the Naomi to my Ruth. The Ren to my Stimpy. The pitcher of water to my frozen juice concentrate. I still cry if Mom is five minutes late picking me up from school. I’m a long way from being able to set a bone across the Pacific.
After Sienna heals the Barbie at the well, I borrow a porcelain doll from Autumn, break its hollow femur, and make no plans to tell her. When she finds the doll, still adorned in its red velvet dress, in perfect condition from the pelvic floor up, I just stare at her, then at the doll, then into the void, hoping for a Christmas miracle. Jesus, be a leg regeneration.
This is how I perceived our bonds as siblings inside the house. I realize, to the outside world, and especially our predominantly white suburb, we looked a lot alike. We functioned as a unit. The Sharp Sisters. As the littlest, the last hurrah, I had to keep up and live up to the good name my sisters made for us. A Sharp sister skipped grades or made the Honor Roll every time or was a class valedictorian. (Imagine my shame when I failed the gifted program test the first time around after interpreting my teacher’s instructions to be “creative” quite literally. It was an IQ test.) She edited the high school paper or won a national essay contest or tried track and field for fun, and clinched a trip to States. She excelled in science or Spanish or both, and performed in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. These girls turned in their homework, didn’t drink or do drugs, and never worried about parent-teacher conferences. Sometimes they were even asked out by a white classmate who wasn’t afraid of what his parents would say.
Sometimes.
When I couldn’t find a date for the junior prom I’d planned as part of student council (shoutout to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who faced the same predicament), I called Sienna, who was away at college. How humiliating, to be so unlikeable or unattractive that no one would accompany me to a dance for a couple of hours. I cried through my story, embarrassed to admit how I’d failed.
“Taylor, the same exact thing happened to me,” she said.
My sister, the one who’d sent in a picture to Seventeen magazine and was named a semifinalist in some hot mama contest on her first try?
“Yep, the same exact thing, Taz. They think they’re all that.”
That was all I needed.
“Me too,” she’d said this time.
Keep holding on, I’d heard in her voice. Don’t let them take anything else from you. You’re gorgeous, Taz, I’d heard Autumn tell me, often and unsolicited.
There’s a word in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows that describes how my sisters have helped ground me in this life:
kenaway (“ken-uh-wey”) n. the longing to see how other people live their lives when they’re not in public; wishing you could tune into the raw feed of another human existence… if only to give you something to compare your own life against, and figure out whether you’re bizarrely normal or normally bizarre.
I don’t know exactly where I fall on the spectrum of bizarrely normal to normally bizarre, but I lean toward weird no matter what. And I still look at my sisters sometimes and feel the alone-ness of being just a writer, not even a best-selling one, instead of a lawyer or entrepreneur. We aren’t a monolith, it turns out. What did I miss? I ask, or berate, myself on rough days.
Their words, the echoes of “you’re brilliant” and “that’s incredible,” don’t make it all better every time. My sisters have their own lives; they can’t be on call to shore up every place where shame and ableism erode my self-worth. But year after year since 1983, often in moments we didn’t catch on film, they’ve urged me not to turn back from myself. We can see it, they’ve foretold. There’s still more for you here.
“Unlike Americans, who vote directly for presidents, Canada’s parliamentary system means we vote for local representatives,” authors Tim Harper, Sara-Christine Gemson, and Alison Uncles write. “And while tariffs and annexation threats from U.S. President Donald Trump dominated the discourse in Canada’s 2025 federal election — along with concerns revolving around affordability and housing — a pan-Canadian election at its best means, in effect, 343 local elections.”
In a poll commissioned by PPF, 70% of Canadians said more local news in their area would have made them better informed about the election.
In the end, the election was a two-party battle. The vote for the major parties was the highest since 1958 at a combined 85%.
“Call Gina”
About 2.7 million Canadians have one or zero local media outlets. A separate study looking at the collapse of local news found that three of every five Canadian communities had a net loss of local media since 2008.
The province of Newfoundland and Labrador suffered the most, losing three-quarters of all its media outlets outside of the capital of St. John’s.
Residents in one electoral district — also known as a “riding” — in Newfoundland and Labrador told the authors that during the 2025 campaign, they didn’t see the candidates, nor did they read information about them. Their local newspaper The Packet was one of the outlets that shut down. It had stopped printing in March 2020 during the pandemic and permanently closed a year later in 2021.
“There’s nothing out there anymore,” the one-time editor of The Packet, Barbara Dean-Simmons, said. “It’s a wasteland.”
“You can watch the national debate on TV, but there’s no local of anything,” another resident says in the report.
What took the place of local news? Rumors, according to the report, including one that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre would cut funding for an agency critical to the region’s economy.
“What did the local Conservative candidate, civil engineer Jonathan Rowe, have to say about this incipient controversy? Well, no one in Bonavista knew because no one asked him — there is no trusted local news in the towns of Bonavista or nearby Clarenville,” the report notes. “No local news at all, actually.”
The report notes that “many Conservatives across the country,” including Rowe, bypassed news media and “campaigned solely on social media.”
A local elected official said he has a more informal way of getting information out nowadays.
“If I want to make sure people know things in the town of Bonavista, Gina is one of the five or six people I text it to and say ‘please disperse this information,’” Bonavista mayor John Norman says in the report. (Gina is “a local entrepreneur who owns businesses ranging from an auto parts distributor to a year-round Christmas store.”) “She will disperse the facts. I’ve also got a few hairdressers and a barber on my list.”
A difficult transition for some
In Richmond, British Columbia, local news has not kept up with the growing population. (The city has 1.4 local news outlets per 100,000 people.) When Richmond News was founded in 1977, it was one of three daily newspapers in the city. Now, its two rivals have folded and the Richmond News — which has two reporters, only one of whom lives in the community — went fully digital in 2023.
Richmond News publisher Alvin Chow said the site receives an average of 500,000 unique visitors each month, but acknowledged he’s had difficulty bringing “old school” readers over to digital.
“After the 2023 move to digital, the Richmond News sponsored workshops in seniors’ homes to help them migrate. It didn’t work,” the report notes. Chow said six months after the newspaper ceased printing, he was still fielding calls from people complaining their paper hadn’t been delivered.
Meta’s decision to block news on Facebook and Instagram has not prevented Canadians from attempting to use the platforms as an information source.
“Remarkably, 70% of Facebook users and 65% of Instagram users still say they are using those platforms to get their news, even though there was no news on them,” according to the report. Another “14% said Facebook most contributed to their vote decision-making, despite no news being present on Facebook.”
A bright spot in Yellowknife
Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, is described as “a fiercely independent and resilient city.” With seven local news outlets — more than it had in 2008 — Yellowknife also has a local media scene that would be the envy of many other Canadian cities.
The city has 33.6 news outlets per 100,000 people, making it — along with Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon — the best per capita rate of all Canadian communities surveyed in the report.
“Its highly engaged population has a voracious appetite for news, and plenty of local news outlets to sate it,” according to the report. “Residents say this need for news is fueled by the dominance of government in Yellowknife, coupled with its isolation and an attitude that if the community is not covered from within, no one else will do it.”
“Yellowknife might be the most immune community when it comes to local news disappearing. I’m more worried about suburban Ontario than I am the North,” Cabin Radio editor-in-chief Ollie Williams says in the report. “My message to the rest of Canada is ‘worry about where you live, don’t worry about the N.W.T.’”
The independence of federal statistical agencies is “nonsense,” the head of the Commerce Department and one of President Trump’s chief economic emissaries told employees on Tuesday, who said they need to focus only on obtaining “the right answer.”
The comments, coming on the heels of President Trump firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after her agency released a weak jobs report, sparked concern among the staff present for the remarks. Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick immediately followed up his comment by noting accuracy was the only important concept for federal statisticians and stressed they “can’t be twisted by anyone,” according to a recording obtained by Government Executive.
Still, Lutnick seeming to label statistical independence as an irrelevant consideration caught employees off guard and renewed questions of potential political interference in federal statistical work. Trump’s firing of Erika McEntarfer, who had served as BLS commissioner, caused watchdog groups, former agency leaders and current employees to sound the alarm on what the decision could mean for future political interference with their work.
“What is the answer to the question?” Lutnick asked at a town hall for Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis employees when asked about the importance of statistical independence at federal agencies. “As best as humanly possible with as many tools as possible, get the right answer. So independence is a nonsense. Okay, accuracy is the only word that matters.”
Lutnick did make clear he sought only truthful data and would not accept any improper biases. He said that being “honestly accurate” is the driving force of the statistical agencies and anyone who has an opinion on an outcome they prefer is working for the wrong bureau.
“If someone's opinion is driving them, then they're tilting the foundation, and they're going to mess with America,” Lutnick said. “Let's get the answer right. God knows, let's get the answer right. And, therefore, that's all I care about.”
The secretary went on to call for the right answer several more times.
“Get the answer right, and let's try to get America on the right track to take care of all Americans. You are the driver of those statistics that we rely upon. They can't be twisted. They can't be twisted by anyone.”
Robert Santos, who led Census from 2022 until shortly after Trump took office, noted the 2018 Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act codified the independent nature of statistics-related work at federal agencies.
“The core values of the Census Bureau are scientific integrity, objectivity, transparency and independence,” Santos said. “Independence of federal agencies to gather and process data, then publish federal statistics is what the public needs and deserves.”
Lutnick spent much of his address talking up the benefits of AI, calling for federal statisticians to integrate it more into their work, according to one attendee. They should produce more and better data that is delivered on a timelier basis, he said, repeating three times “more, better.” He cited revisions made to BLS jobs data in suggesting that delays in accurate data can lead to bad decisions by policymakers. Trump and other administration officials have taken that line of thinking further, suggesting without any evidence that BLS purposely misrepresented the data to reflect negatively on the president.
Paul Schroeder, executive director of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, said Lutnick’s goal of accuracy could become not credible if he does not ensure independence of the agencies he oversees.
“I certainly disagree that independence is nonsense,” Schroeder said, adding that independence in the context of statistical agencies refers to independence from political bias or favor. A failure to ensure its work is free from such bias, he said, would “harm the accuracy” of the data.
The Trump administration has taken an adversarial approach to the independence that some agencies maintain. Trump signed an executive order this year curtailing the autonomy that many independent regulatory agencies have historically enjoyed, requiring the White House to have more oversight of their actions. Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought prior to taking office told Tucker Carlson that he was focused on “destroying independence at every agency.” In his first time leading OMB during Trump’s first term, he said, he was frustrated by who got to “make the decisions on statistics” and vowed to remove related independence that enabled that mindset.
Violent crime in the United States fell 4.5% in 2024, according to a new FBI report, while property crime dropped 8.1% from the previous year.
The declines continue a trend seen since crime surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when homicides jumped nearly 30% in 2020 — one of the largest one-year increases since the FBI began keeping records in 1930. By 2022, violent crime had fallen close to pre-pandemic levels.
Homicides, which the FBI classifies as murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, dropped nearly 15% in 2024. Reports of other violent offenses also decreased, including rape by 5.2%, robbery by 8.9% and aggravated assault by 3%.
Property crime also fell across all major categories, with motor vehicle theft down 18.6%, burglary down 8.6% and larceny-theft down 5.5%. Reported hate crimes decreased 1.5% from the previous year.
The 2024 report draws on submissions from 16,675 law enforcement agencies — 2.1% more than last year — representing more than 95% of the U.S. population. Every city agency serving a population of 1 million or more people provided a full year of data. Participation in the FBI’s crime data collection is voluntary, and the data is based on crimes reported to police.
About 75% of participating agencies submitted information through the FBI’s new, more detailed National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, which covered 87% of the population.
The data release marks a shift from recent years when participation lagged following the FBI’s 2021 transition to the new system, which required many law enforcement agencies to invest in training and technology upgrades. In 2021, national reporting rates fell below 70% for the first time in two decades, forcing the FBI to estimate results for many jurisdictions.
The FBI’s crime trends report also includes new law enforcement safety data. Sixty-four officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2024, 43 officers were accidentally killed and 85,730 officers were assaulted.
Although the FBI’s 2024 report is a year behind, it aligns with other crime trend reports. The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, recently found that homicides and other serious offenses, including gun assaults and carjackings, fell in the first half of 2025 across 42 major cities compared to the same period in 2024.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
Five years ago, during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, the board voted to change the high school to Legacy High. On Tuesday, it reversed course.
by By Lexi Churchill, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica, and Ellis Simani, ProPublica
An investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found more than 60 instances of nepotism, self-dealing and conflicts of interest among 27 private schools that likely would have violated state laws had the schools been public.
The University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs found that 63% of Harris County voters have an unfavorable opinion of CenterPoint Energy, which supplies electricity to much of the region. Nearly 90% of survey respondents expressed some level of concern about power outages this summer.
A massive effort to reshape downtown Waco is on the fast track, and it’s not too late to give your input. The city of Waco’s Downtown Waco Redevelopment Project is set to begin next year with the groundbreaking for the Barron’s Branch District, a “live-work-play” development along a manmade creek and plaza between Jefferson and […]
I’m really spoiling you with all these Super Derek pictures. You’re finally getting the measure of the character, even in this subtly altered form. Let’s hope this doesn’t mean he fully manifests in Solver at a later date.
President Donald Trump has selected E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to be the next commissioner at the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. Antoni's nomination was quickly met with a cascade of criticism from other economists.
AOL has officially announced it will discontinue its dial-up Internet service after more than three decades, ending support for the technology synonymous with the early days of the internet. What do you think?
“Hopefully it’s part of a broader plan to wind down the internet entirely.”
Michael Shim, Systems Analyst
“Of course they cancel it right when I’m 14% through downloading Titanic.”
Roger Ferlet, Frosting Colorist
“I don’t trust an internet that doesn’t screech in pain.”
Katherine Blunt, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (main link is a paywall-puncturing gift link; also on News+):
Artificial-intelligence startup Perplexity on Tuesday offered to
purchase Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion as it works to
challenge the tech giant’s web-search dominance.
Perplexity’s offer is significantly more than its own valuation,
which is estimated at $18 billion. The company told The Wall
Street Journal that several investors including large
venture-capital funds had agreed to back the transaction in full.
Estimates of Chrome’s enterprise value vary widely but recent ones
have ranged from $20 billion to $50 billion.
Perplexity apparently also told the Journal that the story was theirs exclusively, despite the fact that they also revealed the stunt offer to Bloomberg as well. Prefixing a headline with “Exclusive:” is irresistible catnip to business/investor-oriented publications. The Journal, at least, had the good sense to raise a skeptical eyebrow at the premise in its headline (“Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5 Billion Offer for Chrome”1). Bloomberg, not so much (“AI Startup Perplexity Makes $34.5 Billion Bid for Google’s Chrome Browser”).
The whole premise is ludicrous. Start with the fact that Perplexity is only valued at $18 billion. Add to that the fact that Perplexity is almost certainly overvalued at that price. I don’t know anyone who uses Perplexity, and Perplexity doesn’t develop or run their own LLMs.
But all of this stuff about Google possibly being forced (as a remedy in the US v. Google antitrust case they lost) to sell Chrome doesn’t consider that Chrome, on its own, divested from Google and thus disconnected from Chrome users’ Google accounts, is likely worth little to nothing. I wrote about this at length back in April. Chrome is tremendously valuable to Google. It has very little value on its own. Chrome generates no revenue on its own — it simply serves as an outlet for Google to show its own lucrative search ads without paying traffic acquisition fees to a browser owned by someone else (like, say, Apple or Mozilla or Samsung). Chromium is open source. Microsoft Edge is forked from it. Brave is forked from it. Opera (remember them?) forked from it over a decade ago. Perplexity (or any actually credible would-be buyer of Chrome) could just start their own fork.
There are two things Chrome has that other Chromium browsers don’t: billions of users, and integration with Google account services. Chrome has those billions of users because of the Google account integration. Severed from Google, Chrome users would lose those essential features — possibly including Google Search — and they’d likely begin switching away in droves.
I wrote just last week that Perplexity looks like a scam. Someone is spreading rumors that Apple is sniffing around at buying them, despite the fact that the two companies are an absurdly bad cultural match. I think what’s happening is that the LLM chatbot field is maturing (exemplified by OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT 5 last week), and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas is getting increasingly desperate. Desperate moves to seek an edge in product, and desperate moves to seek publicity that Perplexity’s product can’t garner on its meager merits.
Color me mildly surprised that the Journal’s style guide spells longshot closed up. ↩︎
Spencer played Dee, the smarter, more serious younger sister who offered a steady stream of deadpan roasts of her big brother and his friends. The show, set in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts, was among the first on television to focus on the lives of Black teenagers.
OTTAWA – In what is being called “a tsunami of words,” Prime Minister Mark Carney is still answering a reporter’s question posed to him at a press conference six weeks ago. Liberal MPs and staff are scrambling to keep the government running as Carney shows no signs of arriving at his point anytime soon. “Honestly, […]
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/e0a49511331c9375168fa5278166cd28/0625%20Midland%20Name%20Change%20EH%2030.jpg)
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/b4322f589a588d0461423411266167c5/2.jpg)
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/84f348a4a9f60085bde5d7d6fd237d05/0705%20Hill%20Country%20Floods%20BB%20TT%2035.jpg)
