The price of health care tops the US public’s long list of economic worries ahead of the midterm elections, according to new polling data, as “affordability” has become a buzzword championed by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Two-thirds of Americans report worrying about health care more than groceries, utilities, gas or housing, according to research published by the health policy research firm KFF. Over half of adults said the cost of their health care increased this year, with the majority saying Congress did the “wrong thing” by not extending Affordable Care Act credits that helped pay for insurance coverage.

More than four in 10 voters intend to cast their ballots with their health insurance bills top of mind this November, KFF’s report showed. The poll was conducted just after the ACA subsidies expired on Jan. 1, which sharply raised premiums. The end of enhanced tax credits will cause an estimated 7.3 million people to lose ACA coverage in 2026, 4.8 million of whom will become uninsured, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

The financial strain caused by the tax credits’ expiration is compounded by the rising price of insurance, with companies increasing ACA premiums by nearly 22% for 2026, the group said. Premiums for private insurance, like that offered by employers, have also been on the rise, increasing 6% or more for families during the last three years.

Lawmakers are tapping into the public’s health care woes, with Democrats shutting down the government for 43 days last year in an ultimately failed effort to extend the subsidies. Last week, members of Congress from both parties grilled health insurance executives on rising premium and prescription drug prices, with many of the lawmakers citing market concentration as the reason for high costs.

In response to those costs, President Donald Trump has proposed the government give money to Americans to help them purchase health care directly, rather than subsidizing coverage. Dubbed the “Great Healthcare Plan,” it has garnered criticism that it could leave behind many Americans with less to put into a health savings account.

Public sentiment on the administration’s actions differs. While 89% of Democrats and 72% of independents disagree with Congress’s move not to extend the ACA tax credits, almost two-thirds of Republicans and those who identify as MAGA supporters champion the move. Additionally, the vast majority of voters say Trump is not focused enough on domestic affairs, like the cost of living.

According to KFF, Americans’ health care worries may give Democrats an edge with less than 10 months before the midterms.

The polling showed that Democrats have a double-digit advantage over Republicans when it comes to who voters trust in determining the future of Medicaid, the government’s insurance program for the poor, with similar results for the addressing the ACA, the Medicare program for the elderly and the cost of health care as a whole. However, when it comes to who to trust with the cost of prescription drugs, a signature of Trump’s second term, voters are notably split.

Robert Bosch GmbH doesn’t expect to see significant improvement in its key markets until next year, adding to cost pressures that already triggered a wave of job cuts.

Unveiling its 2025 annual results Friday, privately-held Bosch said the world’s biggest automotive supplier won’t hit a 7% margin target until 2027 at the earliest because of sluggish demand and high costs. The maker of drivetrain components and power tools said early signs of a global economic slowdown this year are set to compound the impact of tariffs, raising price pressures.

Bosch has repeatedly pushed back its margin ambitions in recent years.

“The target is still set in stone – it’s just that the stone has a habit of moving around,” Chief Executive Officer Stefan Hartung told reporters, indicating the manufacturer may need to accelerate shrinking its workforce beyond the 13,000 cuts it announced last year.

Securing competitiveness and investment capacity in the long run means “we need to do much more to reduce our personnel expenses and streamline our organization,” Bosch said in a statement.

Competition from Chinese rivals and software-focused companies is intensifying, squeezing traditional automotive suppliers. At the same time, carmakers are developing more technologies in-house, eroding their bargaining power. Germany’s auto sector has responded with a wave of job cuts.

Bosch is leading those reductions among suppliers, with plans to eliminate a total of 18,500 positions. That includes the 13,000 cuts announced in September in its Mobility unit, although operational redundancies at German sites are ruled out until the end of 2027. Talks with labor representatives on socially responsible measures are ongoing.

Last year’s returns on earnings before interest and tax fell to around 2% from 3.5% in 2024 and below expectations, Bosch said. Revenue edged up by 0.8% to €91 billion ($109 billion), held back by a decline in Europe, its biggest market.

Currency effects led by the dollar’s weakness and tariffs weighed on results, while intensifying competition, weak demand from carmakers and restructuring costs continued to pressure performance.

“It’s a tough struggle to achieve the most socially acceptable approach possible,” Hartung said, declining to comment on further layoffs. “We hope that we won’t have to do anything on that scale in the coming years.”

President Donald Trump’s efforts this week to “de-escalate” controversial deportation tactics in Minnesota in the face of widespread public dismay has caused a new wave of blowback from his base of hard-line anti-immigration advocates.

The president is caught between competing interests: a loyal base of voters who elected him on a campaign promise of “mass deportations,” and a broader electorate that is increasingly uncomfortable with an aggressive approach that has led to the shooting deaths of two American protesters by federal agents this month.

The conflicting viewpoints are evident within the administration, too, with advisers divided along similar lines and offering opposing feedback on whether and how drastically to shift Trump’s immigration strategy, according to people aware of the conversations.

Trump is also navigating a collision of his own instincts: his desire for flashy roundups of foreign-born criminals, and his recognition that the broader public, including business leaders he identifies with who rely on immigrant labor, have soured on the expansion of those roundups to noncriminals in workplaces.

The conflict has put the normally resolute Trump in an unusual spot, needing to tread carefully on an issue that he has previously plowed ahead on with threats and swagger. The result has been mixed signals from the White House – and fresh evidence of the difficult task Trump faces in a midterm election year of appeasing both his MAGA base and a broader swath of voters.

Earlier this month, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to allow him to send the military to Minneapolis – and suggested that “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING.” He also sharply criticized two Minnesota Democrats, Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, calling them “useless” earlier this month.

This week, however, the president characterized conversations with Walz and Frey as positive and productive. He told Fox News that he wanted to “de-escalate a little bit” and that his talk with Walz “couldn’t have been a nicer conversation.”

Yet Trump has not articulated a clear shift in immigration strategy, leaving the public unsure of where he actually stands or what comes next.

He sidelined Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem from the Minnesota operation – a tacit but rare show of disapproval toward a Cabinet member. He has not taken parallel action against senior aide Stephen Miller, who is widely viewed as the architect of Trump’s immigration policies – and who advised Noem on how to respond publicly to the shooting death of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday, according to a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, both Miller and Noem labeled Pretti a “domestic terrorist.” Miller also called him an “assassin.” Trump and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have not defended the officials’ rhetoric but also have not publicly criticized their job performance.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Miller said the initial information he received about the shooting from the Department of Homeland Security was “based on reports from CBP on the ground.” Miller said the White House is now working to determine why Customs and Border Protection at the time of the incident was not using the extra personnel that DHS had sent to Minnesota for “force protection.”

Noem asked for a meeting with Trump on Monday evening – after Trump announced that his border czar, Tom Homan, would be taking over operations in Minnesota. The gathering lasted for hours, according to two people who spoke anonymously to describe a private meeting. Noem and her top aide, Corey Lewandowski, joined the president and other aides to discuss issues including the border wall and Minneapolis, one of the people said. Separately, Lewandowski and Homan, who have previously clashed, have spoken and agreed to work together, the person added.

The White House’s efforts to make adjustments on tactics have not stanched the bleeding in public opinion.

The most recent flood of criticism has come from pro-Trump users online and top influential MAGA commentators. Some called Trump’s pivot a “betrayal.” Others warned, as they have about other issues for months, of the risk that the base could sit out November’s elections.

Fresh public polling showing increased “anti-ICE sentiment” and “increased support of sanctuary cities” makes clear that the administration must change its deportation tactics, said Mark Mitchell, head pollster at the conservative Rasmussen Reports.

An Economist/YouGov poll released this week – with most respondents answering after the Pretti shooting – found that 55 percent of Americans have little confidence in ICE, an increase of 10 percent since mid-December. The decline in trust for ICE has been most pronounced among independent voters, the poll found, with 67 percent now saying they have little confidence in the immigration agency, compared with 49 percent last month.

By contrast, 60 percent of Republicans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in ICE, highlighting the gap between Trump’s own party and independents and Democrats.

And the president’s sudden interest in cooperating with Walz and Frey and his suggestions about going easy on longtime immigrant workers have amounted to a “rug pull” for the base in his rhetoric, Mitchell said. While polling hasn’t yet showed Trump’s base punishing him, the midterms already look increasingly problematic for the GOP, Mitchell said, and concern remains about declining enthusiasm among Trump supporters. Mitchell met with Trump in November to warn him of frustration within his populist base.

“Ten years, this has been the core part of his platform – ‘They all have to go home … Build the wall,’” Mitchell said. Trump talking about only focusing on removing violent criminals sounds like he has “caved on the major campaign promise.”

Within the MAGA base, the president’s supporters want as aggressive an offense as Trump can conceive.

“This is an inflection point – you blink now and you’re going to blink forever. You bend the knee now, you’ll bend the knee forever,” Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump adviser and influential MAGA commentator, said on his show Wednesday as he continued urging the Trump administration to ramp up deportations and to not “de-escalate” or draw back federal agents from Minnesota. “I don’t care how many people I’ve got to deport. I don’t care.”

Some prominent Trump supporters are also concerned about the actions by some members of Congress, possibly emboldened by Trump’s recent change of tone, to renew efforts to pass immigration reform.

The White House has pushed back on the notion that Homan’s elevation amounts to a dialing back of deportations. A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy, said the administration has “not wavered” in its deportation mission, but Trump doesn’t want to see Americans injured because of clashes with immigration officials.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the administration “will never waver in standing up for law and order and protecting the American people.”

“Any left-wing agitator or criminal illegal alien who thinks Tom’s presence is a victory for their cause is sadly mistaken,” she said.

This isn’t the first time in Trump’s second term that the MAGA base has erupted over his comments on immigration policy, which have consistently revealed his sensitivity to the concerns of business leaders and average conservatives put off by the deportation of otherwise law-abiding immigrants.

In late spring, after hearing complaints from friends and donors about deportation roundups at farms, hotels and restaurants hurting operations and scaring off workers, Trump announced that “changes are coming” to spare the agriculture and hospitality fields.

Trump’s base similarly went off on him. Even some top advisers were blindsided, privately insisting that no such policy changes were in the works and chalking up the suggestion to Trump’s habit of trying to smooth public conflicts with rhetoric.

Miller at the time raised concerns to the president about his stated plans for “changes” to protect migrant workers, according to a person who spoke anonymously to describe private conversations. Miller had been calling for a drastic increase in deportation numbers to keep up with the administration’s aggressive goals. Homan told The Washington Post soon after Trump’s announcement that he had not discussed any such changes with the president and wasn’t a part of crafting a policy to carve out workers.

During a speech a few weeks later in Iowa, Trump acknowledged he had gotten “into a little trouble because I said I don’t want to take people away from the farmers,” before describing supporters who were unhappy with his comments as “serious radical-right people.” The comment further inflamed tensions, with influential MAGA commentators including Bannon and Charlie Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA shot dead later last year, accusing the administration of preparing to offer amnesty to some illegal immigrants.

A number of Republicans in Minnesota said they were glad to see Trump shift course this week. They said they welcomed the arrival of Homan and the apparent truce between Trump and local leaders.

“I’m just grateful that we’re moving in a direction to get back to being sensible,” said Jim Abeler, a GOP state senator in Minnesota who worried that federal agents were violating people’s rights. “There are people afraid, there are citizens afraid to leave their homes, to go buy groceries because of their skin color or their nationality. … It’s past time.”

Yet on Wednesday, the president also signaled that he was aware of the latest criticism from within his base. A day after speaking favorably of his conversation with the Minneapolis mayor, Trump posted on Truth Social that Frey was “PLAYING WITH FIRE” by saying he would not enforce federal immigration laws.

Toyota Motor Corp. kept its title as the world’s biggest carmaker for a sixth year, widening its lead over Volkswagen AG by posting record sales despite trade turmoil and growing competition.

Global sales in 2025 – including those of subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors Ltd. – rose 4.6% from the prior year to 11.3 million units, the company said Thursday. Production climbed 5.7% to 11.2 million. VW’s total group sales fell 0.5% to 9 million vehicles.

The numbers show that Toyota has been able to remain on track despite US President Donald Trump’s trade war and the rise of Chinese carmakers. Global car manufacturers have been warning that they face billions of dollars in losses due to tariffs, as they raise prices, shift production to the US or pare output.

Toyota and Lexus brand vehicles in the US saw an 8% bump in sales and rose almost 10% in production, thanks largely to a rebound in the popularity of gas-electric hybrids. Total sales in Japan, which accounted for about 18% of the worldwide total, increased 12%.

Trump imposed a 15% tariff on Japan that would encompass all cars and car parts imported to the US. While the island nation dodged a bullet by talking the president down from steeper duties, that still represented a sizable increase from previous rates of 2.5%. Most Japanese automakers looked to soften the impact by moving to increase output in the US, but still they collectively bore billions of yen in losses as a result.

Honda Motor Co.’s global annual sales fell 7.5% to 3.5 million units. That included a 24% drop in China, it said Thursday. Production shrank 9%.

Nissan Motor Co. sold about 3.2 million vehicles, down 4.4% from the previous year.

Among its peers, Toyota was one of the few to regain some stability in China, where domestic electric vehicle brands led by BYD Co. have claimed much of the world’s largest passenger vehicle market. BYD, which overtook Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. last year as the world’s biggest EV maker, delivered 4.6 million vehicles in 2025 – almost half of which were fully-electric.

In contrast, Toyota sold just under 200,000 battery-powered EVs last year. Only 4,227 units were delivered to customers in Japan, where they have yet to break through like they have in other major markets.

A Waymo autonomous vehicle hit a child near a Santa Monica elementary school last week, the company and federal regulators said Thursday.

The crash happened during the school’s drop-off time on Jan. 23. The child ran into the street from behind a double-parked SUV, officials said. The Waymo detected the child and braked, slowing itself to 6 mph before impact, the company said in a blog post outlining the incident.

The company, part of Google parent Alphabet, said the child walked to the sidewalk and Waymo called 911. The victim was not identified.

The safety of autonomous vehicles is under intense scrutiny as Waymo and its competitors deploy robotic taxis to cities across the country. Waymo has established itself as the industry leader, expanding into more cities last year and preparing to launch in others over the coming months. The company says it provided 15 million rides last year.

The company says its data shows that its systems reduce injury-causing crashes by 81 percent, although it has still driven relatively few miles compared with humans.

Autonomous vehicles have struggled in some instances to pick up on the kinds of visual cues that people rely on to navigate in their cars. But their arrays of sensors and computerized brains can also give them superhuman abilities. In the Santa Monica case, Waymo said a human driver would probably have hit the child at a higher speed. That difference, the company said, is “a demonstration of the material safety benefit of the Waymo Driver.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal vehicle safety regulator, said it would examine the California crash to determine whether the vehicle “exercised appropriate caution given, among other things, its proximity to the elementary school during drop off hours.” Waymo said it would cooperate with the investigation.

The crash happened the same day that the independent National Transportation Safety Board said it was opening an investigation into Waymo’s behavior around stopped school buses in Austin. School district officials said in November that they had documented 19 cases of Waymos “illegally and dangerously” passing buses.

Over the past few years, millions of Americans have seen their electricity bills skyrocket. Since February 2020, electricity prices have increased by an average of 40 percent across the country. In some areas, the rate is even faster – in Washington, D.C., electricity costs increased 93 percent from July 2020 to July 2025.

But the rise in costs hasn’t affected each type of user equally. According to recent data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), residential electricity costs – the average price faced by ordinary home and apartment dwellers in the U.S. – rose by 10 percent between 2022 and 2024. Commercial users, spanning everything from small corner stores to giant, energy-sucking data centers, have seen rates increase just 3 percent. And industrial users saw prices fall by 2 percent during the same period. The data was recently covered by Yale Climate Connections.

That means that even as huge data centers – some using as much electricity as a small city – have plugged into the grid in recent years, they aren’t seeing the same spikes in prices as residential customers. That may come as a surprise to many electricity users.

“This is a phenomenon that utility regulators have to protect people from,” said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School.

There are a few good reasons companies may pay less for electricity than people living in homes and apartments. A huge portion of electricity costs come from the poles, wires, and transformers needed to bring high-voltage electricity into homes scattered across suburban and rural neighborhoods. Those poles and wires are also the parts of the electricity system that are most vulnerable to extreme weather – and spending on them has skyrocketed in the past few years as utilities contend with an aging grid and rising threats from wildfire and hurricanes.

“California has seen a gigantic increase in distribution costs because of wildfire issues,” said Severin Borenstein, professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. “And California is 7 or 8 percent of national load – it’s not nothing.”

Big commercial players such as data centers, on the other hand, can often plug directly into high-voltage transmission lines – bypassing the distribution system entirely, and leading to lower prices. According to the EIA, the average electricity price at the end of 2024 was 16 cents per kilowatt-hour for homes and apartments, and just 13 cents for commercial customers.

But there are more complex reasons as well. To set prices for each sector, utilities submit plans to their local regulator, and then face a complex system of political bargaining and negotiation. In theory, each group is supposed to pay an amount that aligns with the cost to bring them power – but in practice, different groups can lobby for lower prices.

“This is not a physics problem that has one right answer,” Peskoe said. “Everybody comes in with their own self-interest.”

In general, residential customers have the least lobbying power, compared with large data centers or other companies. “Residential consumers feel like they don’t have a voice in our utility regulatory system,” said Charles Hua, founder and executive director of PowerLines, a group that works to lower costs of electricity for consumers around the country.

In late 2023, for example, the grid operator PJM, which manages transmission from Ohio to Maryland, approved a $5 billion project to update transmission lines, partly because of data centers. In Virginia and Maryland, most of the costs of that project were borne by residential customers – even though the transmission line was not primarily for the use of people living in homes and apartments.

Then there’s another issue. Historically, utilities have tried to attract commercial facilities – including things like data centers – to an area in an attempt to boost jobs and the local economy. They have done that by offering preferential rates, trying to draw in facilities that could, in principle, go anywhere around the country.

From a utility perspective, drawing in data centers makes sense: Utilities make their profits off big capital spending, like building new power plants or transmission lines. But if companies offer artificial intelligence data centers a break on costs, to attract their business, that cost could get shifted onto residential consumers.

According to a report from Harvard University earlier this year, utilities often sign special contracts with data center customers that place them outside standard pricing agreements. “I’m not even sure if data centers are paying the ‘commercial’ price,” said Peskoe, one of the authors of the report. “We were finding across states the way data centers were coming online in many states was through these secret contracts.”

For example, the utility El Paso Electric in Texas offered Meta a special electric rate to build a $1.5 billion data center – at the time, the utility promised that the rate would not be pushed onto residential consumers. But, according to the Harvard report, the utility also petitioned to keep the proposal hidden from public view. Other utilities in Minnesota, Indiana and Wyoming have taken similar steps.

Some states have started to take action to treat data centers as a separate class of customers – with their own prices. Virginia recently established a new class for data centers and other huge users of electricity, with agreements in place to make sure the data centers pay for more of the grid upgrades required. Other states, including Wisconsin, are looking to do the same.

But at the end of the day, experts warn that continued increase in residential prices will anger voters – and contribute to inflation. “Electricity is the new eggs,” Hua said.

GRAPHICS

Democrats are voicing growing confidence about their long-shot push to reclaim control of the Senate, identifying a narrow path to the majority in November’s midterm elections that is still strewn with obstacles.

Breaking Republicans’ 53-47 grip on the chamber was once seen as an almost impossible goal for the party, with nearly two-thirds of the seats on the ballot coming in states that President Donald Trump won in 2024. While it remains a steep climb, a string of recruiting wins, persistent voter concerns about the cost of living and a backlash to much of the Trump administration’s agenda have moved Democrats closer to what would be a seismic upset, according to a review of public polling and interviews with strategists, officials and nonpartisan analysts.

“I’m so much more confident than I was a year ago,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said in an interview this week. “If I had to bet money, I’d bet we take back the Senate.”

Still, Democrats are facing a forbidding map, on which almost everything would have to go right for them to net the four seats they need to flip the chamber. All but two of the Republican-held seats they are targeting are in states that voted for Trump in 2024 by double-digit margins. Democrats are also defending two seats of their own in states that Trump won. And they must navigate some potentially divisive and expensive primaries.

“At this time last year there was no path for the Democrats. There is a path now, but every single thing has to go right for them,” said Jessica Taylor, who analyzes Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “So Republicans are still favored at this point.”

Democrats are hoping to oust Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) – the only Republican senator who represents a state that Kamala Harris won – and pick up an open seat in North Carolina, where Trump won by three percentage points in 2024.

After that, they are eyeing four seats in states Trump won by double digits: Alaska, Ohio, Texas and Iowa. In the interview, Schumer identified Alaska and Ohio as the most promising of the four.

But Democrats are also playing defense in Michigan and Georgia, both of which Trump won in 2024. And they are defending an open seat in New Hampshire, a state Harris won by less than three points.

National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Joanna Rodriguez described Schumer’s recruits as “failed career politicians no longer aligned with the values of their states.” Alex Latcham, who runs Senate Leadership Fund, the flagship Senate GOP super PAC, said he was confident Republicans would hold the majority – even though he’s taking no race that Schumer is targeting for granted.

“If his path to the majority is dependent on winning every single battleground seat plus holding every single defensive race, then I think that’s a very tall task for him,” Latcham said in an interview.

Here’s a closer look at where the battle for the Senate stands:

Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire

Even as Democrats aim to flip seats, they will need to hold their own, which is no easy task. In Georgia, a purple state that has swung back and forth in recent election cycles, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) is expected to face a challenging reelection fight. Republicans have attacked him for voting against Trump’s tax and spending bill, and Ossoff is running on issues such as protecting access to health care, which he hopes will cut across party lines.

The competitive and contentious May Republican primary will include Reps. Buddy Carter and Mike Collins – who have each pitched themselves as strong Trump allies – and former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley, who has the backing of Brian Kemp, Georgia’s popular Republican governor.

“We definitely have seen Democratic energy and we’ve seen independents who normally lean Republican more often than not voting Democrat,” said Georgia Republican strategist Brian Robinson. It doesn’t help, he said, that Ossoff can stockpile money while Republicans fight it out for the nomination.

In Michigan, the Democratic field is unsettled after Sen. Gary Peters (D) decided not to seek reelection. Rep. Haley Stevens, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed, a former Wayne County public health official, are vying for the Democratic nomination.

Already, Stevens, seen as the establishment preference, has attacked her opponents for supporting policies that she said hurt Michigan’s manufacturing industry, suggesting a contentious race to come.

Republicans have rallied around former congressman Mike Rogers, who also ran for Senate in 2024. Some Democrats in the state worry that none of their contenders have the political chops of Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who defeated Rogers two years ago by about 20,000 votes.

A recent Detroit News/WDIV poll showed some warning signs for Democrats in head-to-head matchups between their candidates and Rogers. Peters said he was not surprised by the polling showing an essentially tied race between Rogers and Stevens, which he said reflects voters’ greater familiarity with Rogers after his 2024 campaign.

“Whoever our Democratic nominee is is going to be a lot better known [by November] – is going to be extremely well-known,” he said.

The New Hampshire race is seen as a surer bet for Democrats. There are primaries on both sides, but for the Democrats, it’s considered a lock for Rep. Chris Pappas, a four-term congressman. For Republicans, it’s a bit less certain. Former senator John Sununu is aiming to win back a seat he held for one term before losing it in 2008 to Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, who is retiring this year. But first he has to beat former senator and ambassador Scott Brown, who represented Massachusetts from 2010 to 2013, in the primary.

Sununu, because of his famous political family in New Hampshire, is considered by many in the party to be Republicans’ best shot at flipping the seat.

Maine and North Carolina

Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat Collins in 2020. But the moderate Republican, who has forged a singular political brand in Maine, won by nearly nine points even as Joe Biden carried her state by a similar margin.

Schumer is optimistic about beating Collins this year – but Democrats cannot turn their full attention to defeating her until after what could be a fractious primary that pits Gov. Janet Mills against Graham Platner, an oyster farmer backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

Schumer is backing Mills, but Platner has ridden a surge of populist enthusiasm. He also has a trail of controversial online postings from his past, including responding dismissively to a cartoon about sexual assault in the military in 2013. The Marine Corps veteran also changed a tattoo that was criticized for resembling a Nazi symbol.

The Democrats are also split by age: Platner is 41, while Mills is 78 and would be the oldest freshman ever elected to the Senate if she wins the primary and defeats Collins.

Democrats don’t need to worry about a primary in North Carolina, where Schumer persuaded former governor Roy Cooper to run for the seat that Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is vacating. He is likely to face Michael Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chairman. Cooper was a top recruit for Democrats, who believe his time as a popular governor will help them win a Senate seat in the state for the first time since 2008.

Tillis won his races in 2014 and 2020 by less than two points and said the race to succeed him this year could be even tougher for Republicans.

“It’s going to be a real challenge,” Tillis said.

Alaska, Ohio, Iowa and Texas

In Alaska, Schumer persuaded former congresswoman Mary Peltola to challenge Sen. Dan Sullivan (R), and in Ohio he recruited former senator Sherrod Brown to run against Sen. Jon Husted (R). Peltola and Brown lost their seats in 2024, though both of them ran ahead of Harris.

Early polling indicates each race is competitive.

An Alaska Survey Research poll conducted this month right before Peltola entered the race found her at 48 percent to Sullivan’s 46 percent. A Bowling Green State University poll conducted in October found Brown at 49 percent and Husted at 48 percent among registered voters.

Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in Alaska since 2008, when Mark Begich narrowly defeated Republican Sen. Ted Stevens. Begich lost his seat to Sullivan six years later.

Former Democratic congressman Tim Ryan, who lost the 2022 Senate race in Ohio to now-Vice President JD Vance, said he thought Brown and other Democrats would need to separate themselves from Schumer and the rest of the national party to win.

“There’s going to be probably a significant effort to tie our candidates to him,” Ryan said, referring to Schumer. “That’s still an Achilles’ heel for Democrats.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who defeated Brown in 2024, said he was confident that Husted would beat him, too.

“I thought I had permanently retired the old b——, but I guess not,” Moreno told reporters.

Democrats are eyeing two other races: One in Iowa, where Sen. Joni Ernst (R) is not running for reelection, and another in Texas, where Sen. John Cornyn (R) is facing two primary challengers.

Schumer said he could describe why Democrats have a shot in Iowa in one word: soybeans. Iowa is a major soybean exporter, and those exports have been hurt by Trump’s tariffs.

But Democrats have not won a Senate race in Iowa since 2008, and their candidates are in a competitive primary there, while Republicans have rallied around Rep. Ashley Hinson.

Democrats are also facing a primary in Texas, where Rep. Jasmine Crockett is running against state Rep. James Talarico. Democrats believe their chances depend more on who wins the Republican primary, in which Cornyn is facing state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. Paxton has faced an impeachment trial in the state Senate in which he was acquitted and allegations of infidelity, among other controversies.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said he and other Republicans have tried to persuade Trump to endorse Cornyn without success. Without the president’s endorsement, GOP strategists say no Republican is likely to win a majority of the vote in the March 3 primary, forcing a runoff on May 26.

“That’s 10 weeks of spending in a state where it’s $8 million a week on television and 22 media markets,” Thune said.

Republicans will need to take the race seriously if Paxton wins the primary, Latcham said. While Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in Texas since 1988, former congressman Beto O’Rourke came within three points of defeating Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in 2018.

“Ted Cruz is a far stronger, far more talented candidate than Ken Paxton,” Latcham said.

President Donald Trump made an obscene gesture with his middle finger and mouthed an expletive to a factory employee who shouted at him during a tour of a Ford plant in Michigan on Tuesday – a reaction the White House said was “appropriate” given the heckling.

Now the autoworker is off the job and online fundraising in his support has generated more than $800,000 in pledged financial support.

A cellphone video captured Trump, who was visiting the Ford F-150 plant in Dearborn, twice mouthing “f— you” as he pointed to someone calling up to him from the factory floor below. The president subsequently raised his middle finger toward the heckler as he continued walking. He then waved.

Out of frame in the video, a person can be heard yelling “pedophile protector” just before Trump mouthed the insult – an apparent reference to the Trump administration’s handling of the investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

White House communications director Steven Cheung confirmed that the scene captured in the video was authentic.

“A lunatic was wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage, and the President gave an appropriate and unambiguous response,” Cheung said in a statement to The Washington Post.

The incident was not the first of its kind in modern memory. In 1976, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller (R) was photographed raising his middle finger toward university students in Upstate New York.

TJ Sabula, a 40-year-old United Auto Workers Local 600 line worker at the factory, told The Post that he was the one who shouted at Trump. He said he has been suspended from work pending an investigation.

“As far as calling him out, definitely no regrets whatsoever,” Sabula said, though he added that he is concerned about the future of his job and believes he has been “targeted for political retribution” for “embarrassing Trump in front of his friends.”

Sabula identifies as politically independent and said he never voted for Trump but has supported other Republicans. He estimated that he was roughly 60 feet away from Trump on Tuesday and that the president could hear him “very, very, very clearly.” He said he was specifically referencing Trump’s handling of the Epstein matter.

“I don’t feel as though fate looks upon you often, and when it does, you better be ready to seize the opportunity,” Sabula said. “And today I think I did that.”

An online fundraiser was started Tuesday evening that sought to raise money for Sabula after his suspension.

“Let’s rally and support TJ and help him pay some bills,” read the description of the GoFundMe fundraiser, which had collected just over $330,000 as of late Thursday morning. A second GoFundMe account was at more than $480,000 as of late Thursday morning.

Trump toured the factory before giving a speech at the Detroit Economic Club. Elsewhere on the tour, Ford workers could be seen cheering and taking selfies with the president.

Officials at Ford did not respond to a request for comment. Trump was joined during the tour by Bill Ford, Ford’s executive chairman and the grandson of Henry Ford, and Jim Farley, the company’s president and CEO.

Trump has faced criticism from Democrats – and in some cases from within his MAGA movement – for dismissing the federal investigation into Epstein. The president has also repeatedly referred to that investigation as a “hoax.”

Trump was friends with Epstein and traveled in the same social circles before cutting ties in the early 2000s. He initially opposed legislation requiring the Justice Department to release its files on Epstein. After it became clear last year that Republicans did not have the votes to block the effort, Trump said he would no longer oppose releasing the files.

Trump has not been accused of participating in Epstein’s criminal conduct.

The Justice Department division that regularly handles investigations of police shootings has not been brought into the probe of an immigration officer’s fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The decision so far to not involve the Civil Rights Division’s criminal section provides a window into the unusual way the Trump administration has handled the investigation. The move has deepened doubts, already raised by Minnesota officials, about whether the shooting will receive a fair and scrupulous examination.

“When you put that together with the state authorities being excluded from even access to the evidence – like shell casings, the car – I don’t have any confidence that a use-of-force investigation is actually even happening when it comes to the death of Renée Good,” said Keith Ellison, the Democratic attorney general of Minnesota.

“I don’t know for certain that they are not doing anything, because they have been amazingly uncommunicative. But they are not telling us what they are doing.”

President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem have all declared the shooting justified, despite an investigation not being completed and video footage that challenges parts of their narrative.

The fatal shooting last week of 37-year-old Renée Good has ignited protests nationwide and sharp disagreements between the administration and local and state authorities about what happened.

Administration officials have said the FBI would be investigating the killing. State leaders said last week that federal law enforcement had blocked local officials from accessing evidence. Local, state and federal officials typically work together on high-profile probes.

Vance last week ruled out any involvement by state or local officials in investigating the officer who shot Good, saying that “the idea that [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz and a bunch of radicals in Minneapolis are going to go after and make this guy’s life miserable because he was doing the job that he was asked to do is preposterous.”

Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said last week that it was “open to conducting a full investigation of the incident should the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI reconsider their approach and express a willingness to resume a joint investigation.”

Law enforcement officers are rarely charged for using lethal force.

The law provides significant leeway for officers to decide when use of force is needed. A robust federal investigation could determine that the officer was justified in shooting Good, legal experts noted. Such a conclusion can only be accurately reached if law enforcement officials examine all relevant state and federal laws and their application to the facts in the case, they said. A thorough investigation, for example, might conclude that the officer’s first shot at Good was justified, but that the next two were not.

The Civil Rights Division is typically involved in such investigations because the federal law that enables the Justice Department to probe whether officers used excessive force is a civil rights statute that prohibits law enforcement from denying a person their rights under “color of law.” The officers responsible for the killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Tyre Nichols in Memphis, for example, were tried by Civil Rights Division prosecutors and convicted by juries under this law, generally referred to as Section 242 for its place in the U.S. criminal code.

Federal regulations do not require Civil Rights Division prosecutors to participate in such investigations. The head of the division, Harmeet K. Dhillon, would need to be involved, however, if the Justice Department decided to pursue civil rights charges.

Legal experts said that it is possible that the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota could handle such an investigation on its own, but that it would be highly unusual not to involve the expertise of the Civil Rights Division.

They also said that in the beginning stages of probes, it’s common practice for FBI agents to be on the ground at the shooting scene and lead the investigation, but that agents typically consult Civil Rights Division prosecutors from the start to ensure that all relevant factors are being looked into.

Civil Rights Division prosecutors would typically work alongside FBI agents to guide investigatory strategy on a case. Prosecutors would also be needed in the early investigatory stages to help with the legal process, including with grand jury subpoenas and appearances.

The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment and would not say whether the U.S. attorney’s office is meaningfully involved in the investigation. U.S. attorneys’ offices often announce involvement in a high-profile investigation.

“It is highly unusual for the Civil Rights Division not to be involved from the outset with the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office,” said Vanita Gupta, the head of the division during the Obama administration and the associate attorney general during the Biden administration.

“I cannot think of another high-profile federal agent shooting case like this when the Civil Rights Division was not involved – its prosecutors have the long-standing expertise in such cases,” she added.

Several former law enforcement officials who reviewed video footage of the moments surrounding the shooting and spoke to The Washington Post faulted the actions taken by the ICE officer – identified through court records as Jonathan Ross, an employee of the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division.

The officials said Ross placed himself at needless risk by stepping in front of Good’s vehicle, escalated the situation and went against best law enforcement practices. Law enforcement officers should not position themselves in front of vehicles, and they need to try to de-escalate confrontations and must generally avoid shooting into moving vehicles, these officials said.

The videos show that Good’s vehicle did move toward the ICE agent as he stood in front of it. The footage also shows that he was able to move aside and fire at least two of his three shots from the side, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Under Dhillon, the Civil Rights Division has dramatically changed its mission, and the workforce has been reduced, with the majority of the section’s nearly 400 attorneys having left since Trump began his current term in office. The division changed mission statements across its sections to focus less on racial discrimination and more on fighting diversity initiatives. Some of the sections within the division are so understaffed that they cannot effectively complete their workloads, people familiar with the section said.

But while the Civil Rights Division’s criminal section has also seen widespread departures, people familiar with the section said it still has the expertise to respond to cases such as the Minnesota one. The section’s chief and deputy are both career attorneys who served in those positions during the Biden administration.

Some of the most notable changes of direction by the Civil Rights Division have involved police use of force. In May, the administration moved to abandon an agreement that would force changes within the Minneapolis Police Department.

Federal officials also said they were backing out of a similar agreement in Louisville.

In July, the Civil Rights Division requested that a Louisville police officer convicted in connection with a raid that resulted in Breonna Taylor’s death be sentenced to one day in prison – far less than what federal guidelines recommend.

Administration lawyers suggested in an unusual sentencing memo to a judge that the Biden administration should not have prosecuted the officer on the civil rights charges on which a jury convicted him.

Lindsey Rector added up the costs as she waited for her son to finish his baseball lesson.

That was $60 a week right there. A new bat: $500. His club baseball team in Boynton Beach, Florida, and its three practices a week were $3,000 a year. Out-of-town tournaments cost extra. Last summer, the team traveled to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. This summer, it will be Cooperstown, New York. She figures she spends at least $8,000 a year on baseball for her 12-year-old son, Cruz Thorpe.

She knows he loves the game. She’s less certain she can afford it.

“You’re just trying to do everything you can to make these dreams come true for your child,” Rector said. “But it’s just so money-driven.”

She even tried a GoFundMe campaign to raise some of the $4,000 she’ll need to reach Cooperstown Dreams Park, where preteen baseball teams from across the country flock each summer for weekly tournaments. A single mom working for an online education platform, she felt a little guilty asking for help. But she’s not alone: GoFundMe said “competition travel” was the top sports fundraising cause in 2025.

Youth sports has transformed over the past two decades, shifting from low-cost grassroots programs run mostly by local groups toward a high-priced industry filled with club teams, specialized training and travel tournaments staged at gleaming youth sports complexes – changes fueled, in part, by private equity and venture capital investment.

It’s a supercharged “pay to play” model that promises better opportunities and college recruitment, with little evidence to support it. But parents find it hard to resist, despite the sticker shock.

Many parents are struggling to keep up, according to a survey conducted by the Aspen Institute’s Sports and Society Program in partnership with Utah State University and Louisiana Tech University. Family spending on youth sports jumped 46 percent from 2019 to 2024, the survey found, reaching an estimated $40 billion a year. That’s more than the annual revenues of the NFL and NBA combined.

The impact on a family’s pocketbook varies, with costs rising for older kids and those participating in activities such as ice hockey or gymnastics. The Aspen Institute found families spent an average of $1,016 a year for one child’s primary sport, while other surveys have reported that the average youth club activity costs $3,000 to $5,000 a year.

A New York Life survey in 2025 found 20 percent of parents said money worries had led them to reduce or drop their child’s participation in youth sports, and nearly 60 percent of parents in a 2022 Lending Tree survey described youth sports as a financial strain. A 2019 Harris poll for TD Ameritrade showed that even wealthier parents – those with more than $25,000 to invest – who had kids in a club sport were stressed, with 1 in 3 taking fewer vacations and 1 in 5 finding a second job to afford it.

“Nobody is all that happy with the current system,” said Tom Farrey, executive director of the Aspen Institute sports program. “It’s broken at best.”

The costs of youth sports go far beyond paying for teams. Parents now have to pay fees for their kids just to try out for teams – $50 is not unusual – or even to watch them play.

“BIGGEST SCAM EVER,” said a mother online about being charged an admission fee to a club volleyball tournament she was already paying for her child to play in.

Some youth sports companies have been sued over the sky-high fees they charge, with the competitive cheerleading company Varsity Brands reaching a $82.5 million settlement in 2024 after a group of parents alleged it used anticompetitive tactics to raise costs for its competitions, camps and apparel.

And parents sometimes are banned from live-streaming their own child’s matches because the game rights have been sold.

That’s what happened last year to Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, who was told to stop using his phone to live-stream his youngest son’s ice hockey game or “my kid’s team will be penalized and lose a place in the standings,” he recalled during a speech on corporate concentration that was noted in a report by online news site the Lever.

“You can’t videotape your child’s hockey game to show to their grandparents!” Murphy said.

Black Bear Sports Group, the nation’s largest owner-operator of hockey rinks, said in a statement its policy applies only to parents broadcasting games on their phones, which it calls a “significant safety risk” without the consent of the other players. Its streaming service charges $14.99 to watch a single hockey game.

While “pay to play” has been a concern in youth sports since at least the early 1990s, it has taken on new dimensions in recent years.

“It’s wildly out of control,” said Jeremi Duru, an American University law professor who directs the school’s Sport and Society Initiative. “It’s sad. I feel like the joy of youth sports has been corroded.”

John Engh, executive director of the National Alliance for Youth Sports, a nonprofit focused on recreational sports, said youth sports has flipped from being run mostly by local rec programs to being dominated by club teams.

Farrey of the Aspen Institute said club sports start to peel off players from low-cost community teams in the second grade. By the fifth grade, he said, parents often feel they have no choice but to make the switch, too, as their child’s friends leave and the number of players dwindles.

Katherine Van Dyck, a senior legal fellow at the left-leaning American Economic Liberties Project, told House members during a recent hearing on the cost of youth sports that local and state parks and recreation budgets were slashed after the 2008 financial crisis. She said private equity investors, which tend to be driven by profit, filled the void by bankrolling club teams and travel tournaments.

A market report from business consultants Red Chalk Group in April said youth sports has become “a magnet for investment activity” as firms look “to capitalize on this growing demand.”

Outside the hearing, Farrey said many of the problems with youth sports existed before private equity, “but it’s gotten a lot worse since then.”

Rector grew up in an era when sports mostly meant local rec teams with volunteer coaches.

She recalled playing low-stakes softball and basketball as a child. It cost something like $80 a season, and she just had to turn up on Saturdays. She also did competitive cheerleading, which required some fundraising and travel to regional tournaments. But the scale was different: She and her friends got by with car washes and “canning” – standing in the street and asking drivers for spare change.

“It just wasn’t as intensive,” she said.

Investors have poured money into youth sports leagues as well as megaplexes where teams can compete on the road.

Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris and his private-equity business partner David Blitzer in 2024 launched Unrivaled Sports, buying nearly 200 youth flag football leagues, along with the baseball tournament operations of Cooperstown All Star Village and Ripken Baseball. Unrivaled declined to comment. The company does not share revenue numbers, but Dick’s Sporting Goods paid $120 million for a minority stake in Unrivaled in May.

Another private equity-backed firm, 3STEP Sports, has rolled up more than 1,000 youth sports clubs and leagues across the country in recent years. The company, which is also private and does not publicly disclose its revenues, did not respond to a request for comment.

Later this year, a youth sports megaplex is set to open in Springfield, Illinois, boasting the world’s largest air-supported dome, with room for more than 12 volleyball courts, six basketball courts and two softball fields.

“I don’t know of one community that isn’t thinking about optimizing their parks and recreation assets,” said Jason Clement, CEO of the Sports Facilities Companies, which operates roughly 50 properties focused on youth sports tourism. Those facilities can host tournaments 50 weekends a year – a big boost to local sales tax and hotel tax revenue.

But it’s not clear that these pricey new options make kids into better athletes, especially since club sports often come with year-round commitments requiring a focus on a single sport from an early age. Experts say that can backfire, citing studies that show specialization, especially before the teenage years, hurts performance in most cases.

“There’s a huge industry that sells parents on the idea of what develops kids and gets them ready to be elite athletes, but it doesn’t bear out in the evidence,” said Eric Post, manager of sports medicine research at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee.

Joseph Guettler, an orthopedic sports surgeon in Bingham Farms, Michigan, who treats kids with overuse injuries, said even he “drank the Kool-Aid” and started his four kids in club sports early.

Parents want the best for their kids, he said, “but maybe we’re not pushing them necessarily in the best way.”