Sameera Fazili

Former FTC Commissioner Bedoya has a question for you: Have you been surveilled at work and want to know if that's legal? Record in a voice memo and send to the email below.

Today on Volts: The most important election of the year is happening in Georgia next month. Two seats on the (currently all-GOP) Public Service Commission are up & rising electricity prices are on everyone's mind. This is a bellwether for next year's gov & midterm elections!

Journalist Mohammed Haniya shares a “final call” from Gaza: “No internet, violent shelling, earth-shattering demolitions of residential blocks, massacres against the people, near-total lack of communications, tanks reaching the roundabout at the end of Al-Jalaa. Gaza is being exterminated.. and prepared for an extermination and execution the likes of which the world has never seen.. We are now in the most dangerous phase of the war overall.. This is our final call.”

We’ve just updated our spending by income group data for the second quarter of 2025, based on the Federal Reserve’s Financial Accounts and Survey of Consumer Finance. Looking at the data, it’s not a mystery why most Americans feel like the economy isn’t working for them. For those in the bottom 80% of the income distribution, those making less than approximately $175,000 a year – their spending has simply kept pace with inflation since the pandemic. The 20% of households that make more have done much better, and those in the top 3.3% of the distribution have done much, much, much better. The data also show that the U.S. economy is being largely powered by the well-to-do. As long as they keep spending, the economy should avoid recession, but if they turn more cautious, for whatever reason, the economy has a big problem.