WASHINGTON D.C. (KEYT) – On Wednesday, members of the California congressional delegation announced that a federal watchdog has agreed to investigate billions in federal energy investments selectively terminated by the Trump Administration earlier this year.

"[T]he Office of Inspector General recently announced an audit which will review the Department of Energy’s processes when cancelling financial assistance and whether those cancellations were in accordance with established criteria," read a letter from Sarah Nelson with the U.S. Department of Energy. "This work will help ensure that these activities are conducted consistently with applicable laws, regulations, and Departmental policies and procedures."

The $7.6 billion in grants were authorized through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which was signed into law in 2021.

"Donald Trump and his administration have launched an unlawful campaign of vengeance toward California, and their illegal cancellation of 79 energy grants to California was the latest example," said Senator Adam Schiff, one of 30 members of Congress who requested the restoration of funding in October. "I’m pleased to see that at our request, the Energy Department’s acting Inspector General is opening an investigation into this clear political targeting, which the Trump administration has openly admitted in court was intended to punish blue states."

In May of this year, Secretary Wright issued a Secretarial Memorandum that required all financial awards through the federal agency to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis to, "identify waste, safeguard taxpayer dollars, protect America's national security, and advance President Trump's commitment to deliver affordable, reliable, and secure energy for the American people."

"On day one, the Energy Department began the critical task of reviewing billions of dollars in financial awards, many rushed through in the final months of the Biden administration with inadequate documentation by any reasonable business standard," Secretary of Energy Chris Wright argued regarding the terminated funding. "President Trump promised to protect taxpayer dollars and expand America’s supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy. Today’s cancellation’s deliver on that commitment."

On Oct. 1, the Trump Administration's Budget Director, Russell Vought announced on X/Twitter that Department of Energy projects in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington would be terminated.

Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being cancelled. More info to come from @ENERGY.

The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA

— Russ Vought (@russvought) October 1, 2025

Each one of the states slated for feder

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, Gloria Pazmino, CNN

New York (CNN) — With under two weeks to go before he’s sworn in, New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has not announced many hires for his administration. One of the few that he has announced was forced to almost immediately resign Thursday after her past antisemitic tweets came to light.

Catherine Almonte Da Costa, whom Mamdani named his director of appointments just on Wednesday, in 2011 tweeted about “money-hungry Jews” and other similar comments, in posts first reported by The Judge Street Journal, a newsletter about New York politics.

In a statement, Da Costa said, “I spoke with the Mayor-elect this afternoon, apologized, and expressed my deep regret for my past statements. These statements are not indicative of who I am. As the mother of Jewish children, I feel a profound sense of sadness and remorse at the harm these words have caused. As this has become a distraction from the work at hand, I have offered my resignation.”

Mamdani’s transition also provided a statement from the mayor-elect: “Catherine expressed her deep remorse over her past statements and tendered her resignation, and I accepted.”

Several New York political insiders told CNN that they questioned the incoming administration’s vetting process, given that she was picked despite tweets that were revealed so quickly after her announced hire.

Mamdani has so far named only one deputy mayor and no commissioners other than retaining current Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

Beyond the delays themselves was the latest in Mamdani’s struggles to convince key leaders of the city’s Jewish population that he is not overlooking or fostering antisemitism.

Mamdani, who will become the city’s first Muslim mayor, is a fierce critic of Israel while also vowing to fight antisemitism. But he has faced questions about his initial refusal to disavow chants like “globalize the intifada” or his statement criticizing a synagogue after a protest outside of it.

Da Costa would have been in charge of other hires in the incoming Mamdani administration. A Dominican immigrant who grew up in Queens, Da Costa has worked in government for years and previously served in former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration in his office of appointments.

“Obviously, I would strongly disagree with those statements. I think I’ve been very clear on my views on that,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who represents parts of Brooklyn and held off for months in endorsing Mamdani in part because of concerns about the incoming mayor’s approach to antisemitism, told CNN on Thursday afternoon.

Jeffries added he’d have more to say after reviewing the story.

The Anti-Defamation League’s New York/New Jersey chapter, which highlighted Da Costa’s old tweets, said her posts “echo classic antisemitic tropes and otherwise demean Jewish people.

“Tweeting about ‘Money hungry Jews’ is indefensible,” the ADL chapter said on X.

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Tools shape everything about an employee’s workday: how they communicate, track information, move between tasks, and experience their workflow. And while organizations invest heavily in software to boost efficiency, productivity depends just as much on how those tools fit together. A streamlined system can speed up work and keep teams aligned; a fragmented one does the opposite. Many employees feel stuck in tech stacks that create more friction than clarity because of overlapping apps, duplicated platforms, and scattered systems that turn simple tasks into multistep searches and constant switching.

Buddy Punch’s survey of more than 500 U.S. operations leaders reveals just how widespread this problem has become. Tool sprawl isn’t a niche issue or the result of unusual complexity; it’s the default operating environment for most organizations today. The following report explores how tool overload affects the modern workday: how it slows workflows, scatters information, and drains time through constant switching.

Key Findings

• More than half of organizations (52%) say they’re using too many tools, and only 1 in 4 operate on a consolidated system.
• Teams rely on multiple apps across every core function, with communication especially overloaded as half of organizations use three or more tools just to stay in touch.
• Frustration grows with tool count, and employees in organizations using six or more tools are significantly more likely to say their tech stack is overwhelming.
• Tool switching has become a major time sink: 72% of organizations estimate losing at least 5% of weekly hours to navigating between platforms.
• Most employees (82%) say tool overload harms efficiency, and more than 40% of organizations have already cut or eliminated tools to reduce complexity.

How Do Workplaces End Up With So Many Tools? The Slow Creep of ‘One More App’

For most companies, a scattered tech stack didn’t happen by design; it accumulated one problem, one department, and one “quick fix” at a time. A chat tool here, a scheduling app there, a project board for one team, a spreadsheet for another. Over time, those decisions add up.

The survey shows just how deeply this pattern is embedded: 51% of companies use multiple tools that each serve a “distinct purpose.” In theory, that sounds reasonable. In practice, it often means switching between apps that perform overlapping tasks, fragmenting work rather than streamlining it.

Only 24% have consolidated most work into one or two core platforms, signaling that true integration is still the exception, not the norm.

Which of the following best describes your organization’s overall approach to tool usage?

Read more

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At best, most Americans are skeptical about cryptocurrency (Pew recently reported that 63% of Americans have little confidence in crypto’s reliability and safety). But that hasn’t stopped crypto from becoming a staple in the investing world, with the global market value of cryptocurrency leaping 36% in 2024. So, if you’re hoping to join the ranks of the 562 million people who are crypto owners worldwide, it helps to go into your investment with eyes wide open to scams and risks. And one of the biggest of all? Rug pulls.

Here, Spokeo digs into what rug pulls are, how they affect the sector at large, and what you can do to avoid falling victim to one.

What Is a Crypto Rug Pull?

Since it first broke into the mainstream in 2018 (it’s been available since around 2009), crypto has become central to the online scam artist’s repertoire, especially in popular grifts like online and over-the-phone phishing, catphishing, and identity theft. Scammers like to target crypto as it’s difficult to trace; there’s no centralized banking authority to flag suspicious transactions, and unlike most bank transfers, crypto transfers can’t be reversed. And the problem is so widespread that consumers around the world reportedly lost $2.2 billion to crypto scams in 2024, 21% more than they did in 2021.

Despite their popularity, those day-to-day scams aren’t crypto rug pulls, but rug pulls rely on many of the same elements — namely, crypto’s lack of traceability and centralized accountability.

In a crypto rug pull, a person or group accrues assets from the public by selling a token (that’s crypto’s digital representation of assets — the “currency” in cryptocurrency), commonly promising a big return on investment, or even exclusive rewards and other incentives for investing. Once they’ve scooped up tons of assets from those token investments, they suddenly shut the project down entirely and often “coincidentally” disappear from public view at the same time. This, of course, leaves them holding a great big bag of money while their victims have nothing to show for it but piles of worthless tokens. The rug has been pulled out from under them in one swift motion.

Types of Crypto Rug Pulls

Crypto rug pulls generally follow the same cadence of “gather assets and unceremoniously bail,” but they do vary in terms of execution. Crypto rug pulls typically fall into one of these categories:

• The team exit is probably the most well-known type of crypto rug pull. Here, the team behind the coin drums up support and investment, and then falls off the map, leaving investors with a worthless token.
• Similarly, some crypto rug pulls revolve around completely fake projects that never even co

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When Carol Kolseth got her biopsy results back after a routine mammogram in October of 2024, she knew treatments for the cancerous lump in her breast would have to be scheduled around lapses in her health insurance, they told The Daily Yonder.

That’s because Carol and her husband — two alfalfa, soybean, and wheat farmers from the small town of Plummer, Minnesota — were about to lose their state-administered insurance plan. Their income had risen above the plan’s eligibility mark, which is for people whose income is 200% below the federal poverty line.

That left the Kolseths with two options: Go uninsured, or enroll in an individual health insurance plan through a marketplace administered by the Affordable Care Act.

Given Carol’s cancer diagnosis, they went with the second option, signing up for a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan at the silver level that provided them a $4,000 annual deductible. Their income qualified them for an enhanced premium tax credit, which knocked several hundred dollars off their monthly premium.

But now those credits are set to expire at the end of 2025, as Congress did not pass an extension before Dec. 15, the deadline to enroll in individual health coverage for 2026. The Kolseths face a similar dilemma as they did last year: to continue with their health insurance plan — which is set to increase from $1,603 per month to $1,972 without those tax credits — or go uninsured, hoping that Carol’s cancer doesn’t come back.

The Kolseths are just two of 25.2 million Americans enrolled in an individual marketplace plan who are grappling with a potential hike in their monthly premiums. These plans are available to people who do not get employer-sponsored health insurance. Many enrollees are self-employed or own a small business, like a farm.

The vast majority of these individual marketplace enrollees get coverage through a plan administered by the Affordable Care Act, which is what the enhanced premium tax credits apply to. In 2023, 93% of enrollees with an Affordable Care Act plan received a credit that lowered their monthly premium costs.

The enhanced premium tax credits were first enacted in 2021 by the American Rescue Plan Act. Their goal was to expand the affordability of health coverage options for people who are under the age of 64 and whose incomes are above 100% of the federal poverty line. The credits also apply to people whose incomes are too high to qualify them for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP). The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 extended the tax credits to the end of 2025.

Over the four years they have been in place, the enhanced premium tax credits saw record enroll