McDonald’s is cutting prices on some combo meals to woo back customers who’ve been turned off by the rising costs of grabbing a fast food meal.
The price drop may induce its rivals, who have run into some of the same pricing issues, to follow.
Starting Sept. 8, McDonald’s will offer Extra Value Meals, which combine select entrées like a Big Mac, an Egg McMuffin or a McCrispy sandwich with medium fries or hash browns and a drink. Prices will vary by location, but McDonald’s said Extra Value Meals will cost 15% less than ordering each of those items separately.
To kick off the promotion, McDonald’s will offer an $8 Big Mac meal or a $5 Sausage McMuffin meal for a limited time in most of the country. Customers in California, Alaska, Hawaii and Guam will have to pay $1 more for those meals.
McDonald’s for years has seen a steady decline in visits from customers in the U.S. who have household incomes of less than $45,000 per year. CEO Chris Kempczinski said those consumers, and others, no longer see McDonald’s as a good value.
At a McDonald’s near the company’s Chicago headquarters, for example, a 10-piece Chicken McNugget meal costs $10.39.
Higher prices have been been a drag on sales. McDonald’s same-store sales – or sales at stores open at least a year – grew 2.5% in the April-June period, but that was mostly because of higher prices. Fast food visits by lower-income consumers dropped by double-digit percentages industrywide in the second quarter, McDonald’s said.
“Today, too often, if you’re that consumer, you’re driving up to the restaurant and you’re seeing combo meals priced over $10,” Kempczinski said during a conference call with investors in August. “That absolutely is shaping value perceptions in a negative way. So we’ve got to get that fixed.”
McDonald’s job has been made harder by prices that can vary widely around the country. In May 2024, after a post on X about a Big Mac meal in Connecticut that cost $18 went viral, McDonald’s called it an “exception” and noted that franchisees set prices for nearly all U.S. restaurants.
The company also blames higher costs. The average price of its menu items rose 40% between 2019 and 2024, McDonald’s said, to account for a 40% increase in the cost of labor, packaging and food.
But within a month, McDonald’s introduced a $5 Meal Deal, which combined a McDouble burger or a McChicken sandwich with small fries and a small drink. That deal proved so popular it was extended through this summer.
In January, McDonald’s added another promotion, letting customers buy a limited number of items for $1 if they bought one full-priced item. Those deals will remain alongside the Extra Value Menu for now, McDonald’s said.
Other chains are also seeking to grab the attention of potential customers. In late August, Domino’s launched its Best Deal Ever promotion, offering any pizza with any toppings for $9.99.
Overall U.S. fast food customer traffic fell nearly 1% in the second quarter, according to Revenue Management Solutions, a consulting company. The company said price increases were sharply lower than previous quarters, suggesting that chains are already offering more deals.
Congressional Republicans scored a massive victory this summer when they passed President Donald Trump’s tax and spending cuts without a single Democratic vote. But as they return to Washington this fall after a monthlong August recess, they will have to find a way to work with Democrats — or around them — as a government shutdown looms.
The annual spending battle will dominate the September agenda, along with a possible effort by Senate Republicans to change their chamber’s rules to thwart Democratic stalling tactics on nominations. The Senate is also debating whether to move forward on legislation that would slap steep tariffs on some of Russia’s trading partners as the U.S. presses Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine.
In the House, Republicans will continue their investigations of former President Joe Biden while Speaker Mike Johnson navigates a split in his conference over whether the Trump administration should release more files in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
A look at what Congress will be doing as lawmakers return from the August break.
The most urgent task for Congress is to avoid a government shutdown on Sept. 30, when federal funding runs out. And it’s so far unclear if Republicans and Democrats will be able to agree on how to do that.
Congress will have to pass a short-term spending measure to keep the government funded for a few weeks or months while they try to finish the full-year package. But Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass an extension, and Democrats will want significant concessions. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s vote with Republicans to avoid a shutdown in March prompted furious backlash within his party.
The Trump administration’s efforts to claw back previously approved spending could also complicate the negotiations. Republicans passed legislation this summer that rescinded about $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funds and Trump notified Congress again on Friday that he will block $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid.
Democrats have warned that such efforts could tank the broader negotiations. “Trump is rooting for a shutdown,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., posted on social media Friday.
Mexico’s first elected Supreme Court will be seated Monday and observers will be watching closely to see whether it will assert its independence from the governing party that held the country’s first judicial elections.
Just three of its nine justices have any experience on the high court, the rest are new, including the court’s president Hugo Aguilar, a lawyer who spent his career defending Indigenous rights.
The idea of judicial elections came from Mexico’s former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who frequently clashed with judges who challenged his agenda. He said judges elected by the people would be more accountable and less corrupt. Critics said electing judges risked politicizing the judiciary.
The election was supposed to be nonpartisan, but there were instances of voting pamphlets being distributed that identified candidates linked to the governing party. Many voters were simply overwhelmed by the 7,700 candidates vying for more than 2,600 judicial positions.
The Supreme Court, however, will receive special attention. It had been a counterweight at times to the popular López Obrador, whose Morena party also now holds majorities in both chambers of Congress.
It’s an issue that has brought broad international criticism to Mexico. López Obrador expanded the crimes for which someone is automatically jailed pending trial, including for some nonviolent crimes. The policy appears to violate international treaties which Mexico has signed.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Office and the Inter-American Court on Human Rights are among the bodies that have called for Mexico to repeal the policy.
The Mexican government says that it is a necessary tool to take on criminal activity and to protect judges.
But in a country where cases can drag on for years without a trial reaching a conclusion and only one in five of those charged are convicted, critics say the policy violates their rights. Four of every 10 people in Mexican prisons had not been convicted in 2023, according to the Federal and State Penitentiary Systems census.
The previous court declined to take it up in its final days.
A federal judge issued an emergency order blocking the possible deportation of a group of Guatemalan children who had crossed the border without their families, with a hearing scheduled for Sunday, after lawyers said the government appeared to be preparing removals that would violate laws affording protections for migrant kids.
Attorneys for 10 Guatemalan minors, ages 10 to 17, said in court papers filed late Saturday that there were reports that planes were set to take off within hours for the Central American country. But a federal judge in Washington said those children couldn’t be deported for at least 14 days unless she rules otherwise, with a virtual hearing set for Sunday afternoon.
Similar emergency requests were filed in other parts of the country as well. Attorneys in Arizona and Illinois asked federal judges there to block deportations of unaccompanied minors, underscoring how the fight over the government’s efforts has quickly spread.
The episode has raised alarms among immigrant advocates, who say it may represent a violation of federal laws designed to protect children who arrive without their parents. While the deportations are on hold for now, the case underscores the high-stakes clash between the government’s immigration enforcement efforts and the legal safeguards that Congress created for some of the most vulnerable migrants.
At the border-area airport, the scene Sunday morning was unmistakably active. Buses carrying migrants pulled onto the tarmac as clusters of federal agents moved quickly between the vehicles and waiting aircraft. Police cars circled the perimeter, and officers and security guards pushed reporters back from the chain-link fences that line the field. On the runway, planes sat with engines idling, ground crews making final preparations as if departures could come at any moment — all as the courtroom battle played out hundreds of miles away in Washington.
Shaina Aber of Acacia Center for Justice, an immigrant legal defense group, said it was notified Saturday evening that an official list had been drafted with the names of Guatemalan children whom the U.S. administration would attempt to send back to their home country. Advocates learned that the flights would leave from the Texas cities of Harlingen and El Paso, Aber said.
She said she’d heard that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials “were still taking the children,” having not gotten any guidance about the court order.
The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
The wife of South Korea’s jailed ex-President Yoon Suk Yeol and his former prime minister were indicted Friday as part of investigations into his administration and his attempt to overcome opposition by declaring martial law.
Yoon set off South Korea’s most serious political crisis in decades when he attempted to overcome an opposition-dominated legislature that blocked his agenda by abruptly declaring martial law. His decree lasted only hours but triggered months of turmoil that paralyzed politics, disrupted foreign policy and rattled the economy.
Yoon was impeached, then removed from office in April and rearrested last month after his conservative party lost a special election to choose his successor. The new government has appointed three special prosecutors to investigate both the period of martial law and suspicions of corruption that dogged Yoon through his term in office.
Yoon’s wife, ex-prime minister becomes the latest figures to be indicted
A team led by Special Prosecutor Min Joong-ki said it charged Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon Hee, with violating financial market and political funding laws and receiving bribes, about two weeks after she was arrested.
A separate team led by Special Prosecutor Cho Eun-suk said former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo was charged with abetting Yoon’s imposition of martial law, which investigators say amounted to a rebellion, as well as falsifying and destroying official documents, and lying under oath.
Dozens of people have been arrested or investigated over Yoon’s martial law debacle, corruption allegations involving his wife, and other controversies from his three years in office, including an alleged cover-up of a marine’s drowning death during a 2023 flood rescue operation.
Assistant special prosecutor Park Ji-young told a televised briefing that Han was the highest official who could have blocked Yoon’s attempt to impose martial law. Park said Han still played an “active” role in Yoon’s martial law declaration by trying to get Yoon’s decree passed through a Cabinet Council meeting as a way to give “procedural legitimacy” to it.
Han has maintained he conveyed to Yoon that he opposed his martial law plan.
Cho’s team earlier requested the Seoul Central District Court to issue a warrant to arrest Han. But the court on Wednesday dismissed that request, saying it determined that there were little chances that Han would flee or destroy evidence.
While Yoon’s self-inflicted downfall extended a long streak of South Korean presidencies ending badly, Kim is the first former first lady to be arrested and indicted.
Nearly every former South Korean president, or their family members and aides, have been mired in scandals near the end of their terms or after they left office.
The last two presidents elected from earlier iterations of Yoon’s party – Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-back — were both sentenced to lengthy prison terms over corruption charges before being pardoned and released.
Yoon’s surprising but poorly-planned martial law imposition came amid an intense standoff with the liberals, but many critics have speculated Yoon’s move was mainly likely an attempt to frustrate then an opposition-led push to open an independent investigation into his wife’s allegations.
Kim and Yoon are suspected of exerting undue influence on the conservative People Power Party to nominate a favored candidate in a 2022 legislative by-election, allegedly at the request of election broker Myung Tae-kyun. Myung is accused of conducting free opinion surveys for Yoon that used manipulated data, possibly helping him win the party’s presidential primaries before his election as president in March 2022.
In a statement released through her lawyers on Friday, Kim didn’t make specific comments about her charges, but said the media was reporting suspicions as though they were “confirmed fact” and that she plans to “quietly attend the trials.”
Han, who was appointed prime minister, the country’s No. 2 post, by Yoon, was South Korea’s acting leader after Yoon was impeached in mid-December.
After Yoon was formally dismissed as president in a Constitutional Court decision, Han was supposed to continue to head the caretaker government until the June presidential election, but resigned to run for the election. He withdrew from the race after failing to win the People Power Party’s nomination.
The director of the nation’s top public health agency has been fired after less than one month in the job, and several top agency leaders have resigned.
Susan Monarez isn’t “aligned with” President Donald Trump’s agenda and refused to resign, so the White House terminated her, spokesman Kush Desai said Wednesday night.
Her lawyers said she was targeted for standing up for science.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had announced her departure in a brief social media post late Wednesday afternoon. Her lawyers responded with a statement saying Monarez had neither resigned nor been told she was fired.
“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted,” attorneys Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell wrote in a statement.
“This is not about one official. It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science. The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within,” they said.
Her departure coincided with the resignations this week of at least four top CDC officials. The list includes Dr. Debra Houry, the agency’s deputy director; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, head of the agency’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, head of its National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Dr. Jennifer Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology.
In an email seen by The Associated Press, Houry lamented the crippling effects on the agency from planned budget cuts, reorganization and firings.
“I am committed to protecting the public’s health, but the ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency,” she wrote. She also noted the rise of misinformation about vaccines during the current Trump administration, and alluded to new limits on CDC communications.
“For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations,” she wrote.
Daskalakis worked closely with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Kennedy remade the committee by firing everyone and replacing them with a group that included several vaccine skeptics — one of whom was put in charge of a COVID-19 vaccines workgroup.
In his resignation letter, Daskalakis lamented that the changes put “people of dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor in charge of recommending vaccine policy.” He described Monarez as “hamstrung and sidelined by an authoritarian leader.” He added: “Their desire to please a political base will result in death and disability of vulnerable children and adults.”
He also wrote: “I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality.”
HHS officials did not immediately respond to questions about the resignations.
Some public health experts decried the loss of so many of CDC’s scientific leaders.
“The CDC is being decapitated. This is an absolute disaster for public health,” said Public Citizen’s Dr. Robert Steinbrook.
Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota infectious disease researcher, said the departures were “a serious loss for America.”
“The loss of experienced, world-class infectious disease experts at CDC is directly related to the failed leadership of extremists currently in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services,” he said. “They make our country less safe and less prepared for public health emergencies.”
Monarez, 50, was the agency’s 21st director and the first to pass through Senate confirmation following a 2023 law. She was named acting director in January and then tapped as the nominee in March after Trump abruptly withdrew his first choice, David Weldon.
She was sworn in on July 31 — less than a month ago, making her the shortest-serving CDC director in the history of the 79-year-old agency.
Her short time at CDC was tumultuous. On Aug. 8, at the end of her first full week on the job, a Georgia man opened fire from a spot at a pharmacy across the street from CDC’s main entrance. The 30-year-old man blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal. He killed a police officer and fired more than 180 shots into CDC buildings before killing himself.
No one at CDC was injured, but it shell-shocked a staff that already had low morale from other recent changes.
Immigration advocates gather like clockwork outside Seattle’s King County International Airport to witness deportation flights and spread word of where they are going and how many people are aboard. Until recently, they could keep track of the flights using publicly accessible websites.
But the monitors and others say airlines are now using dummy call signs for deportation flights and are blocking the planes’ tail numbers from tracking websites, even as the number of deportation flights hits record highs under President Donald Trump. The changes forced them to find other ways to follow the flights, including by sharing information with other groups and using data from an open-source exchange that tracks aircraft transmissions.
Their work helps people locate loved ones who are deported in the absence of information from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which rarely discloses flights. News organizations have used such flight tracking in reporting.
Tom Cartwright, a retired J.P. Morgan financial officer turned immigration advocate, tracked 1,214 deportation-related flights in July — the highest level since he started watching in January 2020. About 80% are operated by three airlines: GlobalX, Eastern Air Express and Avelo Airlines. They carry immigrants to other airports to be transferred to overseas flights or take them across the border, mostly to Central American countries and Mexico.
Cartwright tracked 5,962 flights from the start of Trump’s second term through July, a 41% increase from 1,721 over the same period in 2024. Those figures including information from major deportation airports but not smaller ones like King County International Airport, also known as Boeing Field. Cartwright’s figures include 68 military deportation flights since January — 18 in July alone. Most have gone to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The work became so demanding that Cartwright, 71, and his group, Witness at the Border, turned over the job this month to Human Rights First, which dubbed its project “ICE Flight Monitor.”
“His work brings essential transparency to U.S. government actions impacting thousands of lives and stands as a powerful example of citizen-driven accountability in defense of human rights and democracy,” Uzrz Zeya, Human Rights First’s chief executive officer, said.
The airlines did not respond to multiple email requests for comment. ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which would not confirm any security measures it has taken.
La Resistencia, a Seattle-area nonprofit immigration rights group, has monitored 59 flights at Boeing Field and five at the Yakima airport in 2025, surpassing its 2024 total of 42.
Not all are deportation flights. Many are headed to or from immigration detention centers or to airports near the border. La Resistencia counted 1,023 immigrants brought in to go to the ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington, and 2,279 flown out, often to states on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose case has become a flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s aggressive effort to remove noncitizens from the U.S., was detained by immigration authorities in Baltimore on Monday to face renewed efforts to deport him after a brief period of freedom.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys quickly filed a lawsuit to fight his deportation until a court has heard his claim for protection, stating that the U.S. could place him in a country where “his safety cannot be assured.”
The lawsuit triggered a blanket court order that automatically pauses deportation efforts for two days. The order applies to immigrants in Maryland who are challenging their detention.
Within hours of Abrego Garcia’s detention, his lawyers spoke with Department of Justice attorneys and a federal judge in Maryland, who warned Abrego Garcia cannot be removed from the U.S. “at this juncture” because he must be allowed to exercise his constitutional right to contest deportation.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said overlapping court orders temporarily prohibit the government from removing Abrego Garcia, and that she would extend her own temporary restraining order barring his deportation.
Drew Ensign, a Justice Department attorney, told the judge that Abrego Garcia’s “removal is not imminent” and that the process often takes time.
Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old Maryland construction worker and Salvadoran national, spoke at a rally before he turned himself in.
“This administration has hit us hard, but I want to tell you guys something: God is with us, and God will never leave us,” Abrego Garcia said, speaking through a translator. “God will bring justice to all the injustice we are suffering.”
Roughly 200 people gathered, prayed and crowded around Abrego Garcia while he walked into the offices for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Baltimore, where he was detained. When his lawyer and wife walked out without him, the crowd yelled “Shame!”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X that Abrego Garcia was being processed for deportation. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office that Abrego Garcia “will no longer terrorize our country.”
Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland for years with his American wife and children, and worked in construction. He was wrongfully deported in March to a notorious prison in his native El Salvador because the Trump administration believed he was a member of the MS-13 gang, an allegation that Abrego Garcia denies.
His removal violated an immigration judge’s 2019 ruling that shielded him from deportation to his native country because he had “well-founded fear” of threats by a gang there.
Abrego Garcia’s wife sued to bring him back. Facing a U.S. Supreme Court order, the Trump administration returned him in June. He was subsequently charged in Tennessee with human smuggling. He has pleaded not guilty and asked a judge to dismiss the case on ground of vindictive prosecution.
The allegations stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Abrego Garcia was driving with nine passengers in the car, and officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. He was allowed to continue driving with a warning.
The Trump administration has said it wants to deport Abrego Garcia before his trial, alleging he is a danger to the community and an MS-13 gang member.
A federal judge in Tennessee determined that Abrego Garcia was not a flight risk or a danger. He was released from jail Friday afternoon and returned to his family in Maryland.
Video released by advocates of the reunion showed a room decorated with streamers, flowers and signs. He embraced loved ones and thanked them “for everything.”
Federal officials argue Abrego Garcia can be deported because he came to the U.S. illegally and that the immigration judge’s 2019 ruling deemed him eligible for expulsion, just not to his native El Salvador.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s lead immigration attorney, told reporters Monday that Abrego Garcia is being held in a detention facility in Virginia.
Trump administration officials have said Abrego Garcia could be sent to the East African nation of Uganda, which recently agreed to take deportees from the U.S., provided they do not have criminal records and are not unaccompanied minors.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have raised concerns about human-rights abuses in Uganda, and say they don’t know when he’ll have a reasonable fear interview, when he can express fears of persecution or torture in the country where the U.S. wants to send him.
There are also unanswered questions about whether he could be imprisoned or sent on to El Salvador, which is prohibited by the 2019 order.
“We don’t know whether Uganda will even let him walk around freely in Kampala or whether he’ll be inside of a Ugandan jail cell, much less whether they are going to let him stay,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
If immigration officials determine that Abrego Garcia lacks a reasonable fear of being sent to Uganda, he should be able to ask a U.S. immigration judge to review that decision, his lawyer said. And if the immigration judge upholds the determination, Abrego Garcia should be able to bring it to the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Sandoval-Moshenberg said that’s the process when someone is slated for deportation to their native country. And he said it should be the same for third-country deportations as well.
“This is all so very new and unprecedented. ... We will see what the government’s position on that is,” he said.
Abrego Garcia informed ICE over the weekend that Costa Rica was an acceptable country of removal because he had “received assurances from Costa Rica that they would give him refugee status, that he would be at liberty in that country, and that he will not be re-deported onto El Salvador,” his lawyer said.
“Costa Rica is not justice,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “It is an acceptably less-bad option.”
The notice to ICE about Costa Rica was separate from an offer made by federal prosecutors in Tennessee to send Abrego Garcia to the Central American nation in exchange for pleading guilty to human smuggling charges. Abrego Garcia declined the proposal.
World shares were mixed on Monday after the head of the Federal Reserve hinted that cuts to interest rates may be on the way.
European markets opened lower, with Germany’s DAX down 0.2% at 24,305.67, while the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.6% to 7,918.34. Britain’s markets were closed for a holiday.
The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.2%.
On Friday, stocks on Wall Street rallied after Fed chair Jerome Powell said in a speech to an annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that he’s seen risks for the job market. That followed a surprisingly weak report on job growth this month that has led many traders to expect a rate cut as soon as the Fed’s next meeting in September, after months of pressure from President Donald Trump for lower rates.
Lower interest rates make borrowing easier, helping to spur more investment and spending, but also potentially fueling inflation. In Asian trading, shares advanced.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed 1.9% higher at 25,829.91, while the Shanghai Composite index surged 1.5% to 3,883.56. It has been trading at its highest level in a decade, despite worries over higher tariffs on exports to the United States under Trump and weak domestic demand at home.
Taiwan’s Taiex gained 2.2% as semiconductor maker TSMC Corp.'s shares advanced 3.1%.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 gained 0.4% to 42,807.82, with computer chip-related companies leading gains.
The Kospi in South Korea climbed 1.3% to 3,209.86.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged less than 0.1% higher, to 8,972.40.
The SET in Bangkok gained 0.7%, while the Sensex in India rose 0.5%.
This week, Nvidia’s earnings report, due Wednesday after markets on Wall Street close, is a key focus of attention.
Nvidia’s role as a key supplier of chips for artificial intelligence and its heavy weighting give it outsized influence as a bellwether for the broader market.
On Friday, the S&P 500 leaped 1.5% for its first gain in six days, while the Dow industrials soared 1.9%. The Nasdaq composite also jumped 1.9%.
Investors love lower interest rates, and stocks of smaller companies led gains. They can benefit more from lower interest rates because of their need to borrow money to grow. The smaller stocks in the Russell 2000 index surged 3.9% for its best day since April.
Still, Powell did not commit to any kind of timing. He said the job market looks OK, even if “it is a curious kind of balance” where fewer new workers are chasing after fewer new jobs. Inflation, meanwhile, still has the potential to push higher.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.25% from 4.33% late Thursday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, sank to 3.69% from 3.79% in a notable move for the bond market.
Intel climbed 5.5% after Trump said the chip company has agreed to give the U.S. government a 10% stake in its business.
Nvidia rose 1.7% to trim its loss for the week. The company, whose chips are powering much of the world’s move in to artificial-intelligence technology, had seen its stock struggle recently amid criticism that it and other AI superstars shot too high, too fast and became too expensive.
Pricey prescriptions and nagging medical costs are swamping some insurers and employers now. Patients may start paying for it next year.
Health insurance will grow more expensive in many corners of the market in 2026, and coverage may shrink. That could leave patients paying more for doctor visits and dealing with prescription coverage changes.
Price increases could be especially stark in individual coverage marketplaces, where insurers also are predicting the federal government will end some support that helps people buy coverage.
“We’re in a period of uncertainty in every health insurance market right now, which is something we haven’t seen in a very long time,” said Larry Levitt, an executive vice president at the nonprofit KFF, which studies health care.
What’s hitting insurers
In conference calls to discuss recent earnings reports, insurers ticked off a list of rising costs: More people are receiving care. Visits to expensive emergency rooms are rising, as are claims for mental health treatments.
Insurers also say more healthy customers are dropping coverage in the individual market. That leaves a higher concentration of sicker patients who generate claims.
Enrollment in the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces swelled the past few years. But a crackdown on fraud and a tightening of eligibility verifications that were loosened during the COVID-19 pandemic makes it harder for some to stay covered, Jefferies analyst David Windley noted.
People who use little care “are disappearing,” he said.
Prescription drugs pose another challenge, especially popular and expensive diabetes and obesity treatments sometimes called GLP-1 drugs. Those include Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy and Zepbound.
“Pharmacy just gives me a headache, no pun intended,” said Vinnie Daboul, Boston-based managing director of the employee benefits consultant RT Consulting.
There are more super expensive drugs
New gene therapies that can come with a one-time cost of more than $2 million also are having an impact, insurance brokers say. Those drugs, which target rare diseases, and some newer cancer treatments are part of the reason Sun Life Financial covered 47 claims last year that cost over $3 million.
The financial services company covers high-cost claims for employers that pay their own medical bills. Sun Life probably had no claims that expensive a decade ago and maybe “a handful at best” five years ago, said Jen Collier, president of health and risk solutions.
Some of these drugs are rarely used, but they cause overall costs to rise. That raises insurance premiums.
“It’s adding to medical (cost growth) in a way that we haven’t seen in the past,” Collier said.
Marketplace pain is in the forecast
Price hikes will be most apparent on the Affordable Care Act’s individual coverage marketplaces. Insurers there are raising premiums around 20% in 2026, according to KFF, which has been analyzing state regulatory filings.
But the actual hike consumers see may be much bigger. Enhanced tax credits that help people buy coverage could expire at the end of the year, unless Congress renews them.
If those go away, customer coverage costs could soar 75% or more, according to KFF.
Business owner Shirley Modlin worries about marketplace price hikes. She can’t afford to provide coverage for the roughly 20 employees at 3D Design and Manufacturing in Powhatan, Virginia, so she reimburses them $350 a month for coverage they buy.
Modlin knows her reimbursement only covers a slice of what her workers pay. She worries another price hike might push some to look for work at a bigger company that offers benefits.
“My employee may not want to go to work for a large corporation, but when they consider how they have to pay their bills, sometimes they have to make sacrifices,” she said.
Employers may shift costs
Costs also have been growing in the bigger market for employer-sponsored coverage, the benefits consultant Mercer says. Employees may not feel that as much because companies generally pay most of the premium.
But they may notice coverage changes.
About half the large employers Mercer surveyed earlier this year said they are likely or very likely to shift more costs to their employees. That may mean higher deductibles or that people have to pay more before they reach the out-of-pocket maximum on their coverage.
Drug coverage changes are possible
For prescriptions, patients may see caps on those expensive obesity treatments or limits on who can take them.
Some plans also may start using separate deductibles for their pharmaceutical and medical benefits or having patients pay more for their prescriptions, Daboul said.
Coverage changes could vary around the country, noted Emily Bremer, president of a St. Louis-based independent insurance agency, The Bremer Group.
Employers aren’t eager to cut benefits, she said, so people may not see dramatic prescription coverage changes next year. But that may not last.
“If something doesn’t give with pharmacy costs, it’s going to be coming sooner than we’d like to think,” Bremer said.
A judge in Mexico said boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. will stand trial over alleged cartel ties and arms trafficking but could await that trial outside of detention, the boxer’s lawyer said.
Chávez’s lawyer, Rubén Fernando Benítez Alvarez, confirmed that the court imposed additional measures and granted three months of further investigation into the case. He described the claims against his client as “speculation” and “urban legends” following the court hearing on Saturday in the northern Mexican city of Hermosillo.
If convicted, Chávez — who took part in the hearing virtually from a detention facility — could face a prison sentence of between four and eight years, Alvarez said.
Chávez, 39, who had been living in the United States for several years, was arrested in early July by federal agents outside his Los Angeles home for overstaying his visa and providing inaccurate details on an application to obtain a green card. The arrest came just days after a fight he had with famed American boxer Jake Paul in Los Angeles.
Since 2019, Mexican prosecutors have been investigating the boxer following a complaint filed by U.S. authorities against the Sinaloa Cartel for organized crime, human trafficking, arms trafficking and drug trafficking.
The case led to investigations against 13 people, among them Ovidio Guzmán López — the son of convicted drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — along with some collaborators, hitmen and accomplices of the criminal organization. Guzmán López was arrested in January 2023 and extradited to the U.S. eight months later.
Following the inquiry, the Federal Attorney General’s Office issued several arrest warrants, including one against Chávez.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said Chávez was wanted since 2023 in Mexico, but that he wasn’t detained because he spent most of the time in the U.S.
“The hope is that he will be deported and serve the sentence in Mexico,” Sheinbaum said in July.
The boxer, who is the son of Mexican boxing great Julio César Chávez, was deported by the U.S. on Aug. 19 and handed over to agents of the Federal Attorney General’s Office in Sonora state, who transferred him to the Federal Social Reintegration Center in Hermosillo.
The high profile case come as the Trump administration is pressuring Mexico to crack down on organized crime, canceling visas of notable Mexican artists and celebrities and ramping up deportations.
Chávez has struggled with drug addiction throughout his career and has been arrested multiple times. In 2012, he was found guilty of driving under the influence in Los Angeles and was sentenced to 13 days in jail.
He was arrested last year for weapons possession. Police reported that Chávez had two rifles. He was released shortly afterward upon posting $50,000 bail, on the condition that he attend a facility to receive treatment for his addiction.
Now that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has signaled that the central bank could soon cut its key interest rate, he faces a new challenge: how to do it without seeming to cave to the White House’s demands.
For months, Powell has largely ignored President Donald Trump’s constant hectoring that he reduce borrowing costs. Yet on Friday, in a highly-anticipated speech, Powell suggested that the Fed could take such a step as soon as its next meeting in September.
It will be a fraught decision for the Fed, which must weigh it against persistent inflation and an economy that could also improve in the second half of this year. Both trends, if they occur, could make a cut look premature.
Trump has urged Powell to slash rates, arguing there is “no inflation” and saying that a cut would lower the government’s interest payments on its $37 trillion in debt.
Powell, on the other hand, has suggested that a rate cut is likely for reasons quite different than Trump’s: He is worried that the economy is weakening. His remarks on Friday at an economic symposium in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming also indicated that the Fed will move carefully and cut rates at a much slower pace than Trump wants.
Powell pointed to economic growth that “has slowed notably in the first half of this year,” to an annual rate of 1.2%, down from 2.5% last year. There has also been a “marked slowing” in the demand for workers, he added, which threatens to raise unemployment.
Still, Powell said that tariffs have started to lift the price of goods and could continue to push inflation higher, a possibility Fed officials will closely monitor and that will make them cautious about additional rate cuts.
The Fed’s key short-term interest rate, which influences other borrowing costs for things like mortgages and auto loans, is currently 4.3%. Trump has called for it to be cut as low as 1% — a level no Fed official supports.
However the Fed moves forward, it will likely do so while continuing to assert its longstanding independence. A politically independent central bank is considered by most economists as critical to preventing inflation, because it can take steps — such as raising interest rates to cool the economy and combat inflation — that are harder for elected officials to do.
There are 19 members of the Fed’s interest-rate setting committee, 12 of whom vote on rate decisions. One of them, Beth Hammack, president of the Federal Reserve’s Cleveland branch, said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press that she is committed to the Fed’s independence.
“I’m laser focused ... on ensuring that I can deliver good outcomes for the for the public, and I try to tune out all the other noise,” she said.
She remains concerned that the Fed still needs to fight stubborn inflation, a view shared by several colleagues.
“Inflation is too high and it’s been trending in the wrong direction,” Hammack said. “Right now I see us moving away from our goals on the inflation side.”
Powell himself did not discuss the Fed’s independence during his speech in Wyoming, where he received a standing ovation by the assembled academics, economists, and central bank officials from around the world. But Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that was likely a deliberate choice and intended, ironically, to demonstrate the Fed’s independence.
“The not talking about independence was a way of trying as best they could to signal we’re getting on with the business,” Posen said. “We’re still having a civilized internal discussion about the merits of the issue. And even if it pleases the president, we’re going to make the right call.”
It was against that backdrop that Trump intensified his own pressure campaign against another top Fed official.
Trump said he would fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook if she did not step down from her position. Bill Pulte, a Trump appointee to head the agency that regulates mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, alleged Wednesday that Cook committed mortgage fraud when she bought two properties in 2021. She has not been charged.
Cook has said she would not be “bullied” into giving up her position. She declined Friday to comment on Trump’s threat.
If Cook is somehow removed, that would give Trump an opportunity to put a loyalist on the Fed’s governing board. Members of the board vote on all interest rate decisions. He has already nominated a top White House economist, Stephen Miran, to replace former governor Adriana Kugler, who stepped down Aug. 1.
Trump had previously threatened to fire Powell, but hasn’t done so. Trump appointed Powell in late 2017. His term as chair ends in about nine months.
Powell is no stranger to Trump’s attacks. Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, noted that the president also went after him in 2018 for raising interest rates, but that didn’t stop Powell.
Business - POSTED: 2025/09/02 13:07
