Monthly Archives: June 2026

Americans Are Already Paying Dearly for the National Debt

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A spendthrift government is raising borrowing costs for everyone.By Martha Gimbel

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

June 12, 2026

Fiscal hawks like to drum up interest in the national debt by making the astronomical numbers more tangible. The United States owes $31.6 trillion to public creditors, more than $290,000 for each household. You could spend $1 million every day for almost 86,000 years before having to borrow more. But no one really cares. Talking about how many times all of the dollars laid end to end would go to the moon and back (6,000, as it happens) is just not going to get people to think differently about the national debt.

What should matter is that the consequences of this debt are not off in the future, but already here. The government’s deficits have saddled many American families with higher costs, largely from rising interest rates. The Budget Lab, the policy research center at Yale where I am the executive director, recently estimated that congressional-spending decisions since 2015 have raised Treasury yields by almost a full percentage point, which affects what American households pay to borrow. For someone taking out a 30-year mortgage at last year’s median home price, this rise in long-term interest rates has increased their borrowing costs by about $2,500 a year, or roughly $76,000 over the life of the loan. (The Budget Lab has built a tool to help users calculate their own extra mortgage costs.)

The problem is not just for Americans who are lucky enough to buy a home. The bloated government budgets and waning federal revenues of the past decade are driving up costs across the board. Compared with a world in which these fiscal-policy changes did not take place, the annual borrowing costs on a typical auto loan are now up by about $120, and by about $770 on a typical small-business loan. Credit-card borrowing rates are also hovering near record highs.

Although affordability has become a watchword for politicians who understand that rising prices are hurting American families, lawmakers seem to have forgotten that reducing federal deficits would help bring down prices. In the 1990s, Congress and the White House prioritized bringing deficits down by both cutting spending and raising revenue—moves that lowered borrowing costs for American families by about 0.6 percentage points, according to Budget Lab calculations. But few lawmakers seem to be suggesting the spending cuts and tax increases necessary to lower costs now.

The relationship between federal spending and household costs is mostly one of supply and demand. When the U.S. government needs to borrow funds to cover existing and new promises, these demands compete with those of all borrowers, which drives up interest rates for everyone. Lenders only have so much money to offer, so they can charge more for loans when demand is high. When investors have fewer borrowers competing for their funds, they will lower interest rates to appeal to more people.

Much of the big legislation of the past decade, such as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, pandemic stimulus bills, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, has grown the deficit. Lawmakers have passed some legislation to improve the fiscal outlook, such as the Fiscal Responsibility Act in 2023, which cut spending and clawed back unspent coronavirus-relief funds, but most federal policy has lately involved spending money that the country doesn’t quite have. This is hurting consumers, businesses, and the federal government.

The cost of the war in Iran, which the Pentagon put at $29 billion last month (other estimates are higher), will put slight upward pressure on interest rates (0.002 percentage points), according to our calculator. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which we estimate will raise the deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next decade (not including interest costs), will raise interest rates on a typical 30-year mortgage by 0.4 percentage points by the end of 2030—about $1,060 annually for a home bought at the 2024 median price with a 20 percent down payment—and by 1.5 percentage points by the end of 2055.

Most economists support deficit spending during temporary crises, such as a recession, or in cases where an investment can be expected to generate more government revenues in the future, such as funding for infrastructure. But the United States has been spending far more than it takes in for well over two decades.

The main remedies for these problems—higher taxes and spending cuts—are generally politically unpopular. Every budget fix will have its critics, but some options are more palatable than others. Better funding for the IRS, for example, could help close the “tax gap”—the amount of taxes legally owed that are not paid in a timely way—which the IRS estimated at about $700 billion a year in 2022. Other levers include raising the retirement age and reducing Social Security benefits for high earners, who also tend to live longer; reforming Medicare Advantage, a program that has been shown to allow private insurers to overcharge the federal government; and removing the tax exemption on employer-provided health insurance, so that these benefits can be taxed as income. The Congressional Budget Office regularly publishes policies that could help close the deficit, and Americans need to decide what we’re willing to pay for and what we’re not.

A big challenge in making these hard choices is that the costs and benefits are asymmetrically understood: Whereas the costs of deficits are diffuse, the costs of policies that close the deficit are acutely clear only to those affected. For example, the Budget Lab has estimated that closing the carried-interest loophole could raise more than $100 billion in federal revenues over 10 years, which would help lower mortgage rates by 0.0064 percentage points. But this collective benefit is too slight for most people to know or care about it. The few people who benefit from this tax break, however, in industries such as private equity and venture capital, very much do care, so they are far more likely to push hard to keep it than the millions of affected Americans are to push to end it.

Politicians respond to electoral consequences. Right now there is nothing stopping them from doling out tax cuts and spending promises while also driving up interest rates. Voters may complain that their lives are becoming unaffordable, but hardly anyone seems to appreciate that federal deficits are partly to blame. If we want to see lawmakers actually address this problem, economists need to do a better job explaining the stakes. This means that instead of talking about the fact that our national debt could fill all 32 NFL stadiums with two tiers of construction pallets filled with $100 bills, we should be talking about how deficit spending is making it harder to pay our own bills.

FDA Recalls 40,000 Gallons Of RFK Jr. Milk

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Contaminated Teats Of Health Secretary Produced Tainted Dairy Products

Vats full of milk secreted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. formed the backdrop for an FDA press conference.

Published:

June 8, 2026

WASHINGTON—In what experts are already calling one of the worst outbreaks of foodborne illness in decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an urgent recall Tuesday for 40,000 gallons of RFK Jr. milk.

The recall, which covers all milk produced by the body of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was issued following widespread reports of high fever, nausea, arthritis-like symptoms, and uncontrollable diarrhea among consumers. The FDA urged Americans to throw out any RFK Jr. milk they had in their refrigerators, saying those affected would be entitled to a full refund and should take a 60-day course of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin.

“If you purchased a jug of milk pumped from Secretary Kennedy’s breasts on or after Mar. 4, 2026, you may have noticed a sulfurous smell, streaks of red pus, or visible effervescence in the liquid,” said FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, stressing that anyone who experienced blindness or vertigo after drinking the beverage should consult a healthcare provider immediately, especially if they were pregnant. “We also ask that consumers dispose of the milk by incineration instead of dumping it down the drain, which could result in the substance entering rivers and streams and cause mass aquatic die-offs.”

“We acknowledge our error in ever allowing this man’s milk to make it onto store shelves in the first place,” Makary added.

Kennedy with his milking machine.

According to sources, the recalled Kennedy dairy has been sold at wellness retailers and health food co-ops in all 50 states and includes processed RFK Jr. milk products sold under names such as Bobby Butter, Hyannis Port Farms Cheddar, and Kennedy’s Curse-Reversing Longevity Yogurt. Many of these products have been touted through official channels by the secretary himself, who as a central pillar of his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign has strongly encouraged consumption of his body’s milk.

FDA officials said the RFK Jr. milk was contaminated with E. coli, salmonella, listeria, and a previously unknown pathogen scientists have named Robertococcus kenneddi, which appears to have proliferated exclusively in the squalid and unsanitary conditions in which Kennedy lives. Inspectors described “appalling” conditions in the Georgetown residence where much of his milk was pumped, citing moldy, sweat-soaked gym equipment, five-gallon buckets of rancid beef tallow, and the rotting carcasses of several unidentifiable marine mammals.

“The spread of bacteria by RFK Jr. milk has led to numerous confirmed cases of sepsis, meningitis, and necrosis of the tongue,” said FDA microbiologist Hana Steiner, adding that she had long warned friends and relatives against consuming the poorly regulated substance. “People will say Kennedy should have been pasteurizing his milk, and of course he should have, but I’m not sure it would have mattered. A lot of these bacteria have mutated in the dank, humid piles of unwashed jeans found on the floor of his home, and many have become antibiotic-resistant thanks to his frequent swims in sewage-tainted waters.”

While the FDA has ordered an indefinite halt to the distribution of RFK Jr. milk, some MAHA diehards have decried the crackdown as federal overreach, with Kennedy himself criticizing scientists who have questioned his milk’s safety.

“The probiotic cultures in my milk are a feature, not a bug, and any negative reactions people have experienced are the result of a lack of ferments in the American diet,” Kennedy said in a recent video message in which he is seen pumping and drinking a bright yellow glass of his own milk to demonstrate its safety. “There are no dangerous additives in here, just pure, natural goodness. Americans have neglected their gut microbiomes for so long that even the gentle, nourishing milk of their health and human services secretary upsets their stomachs. That’s how bad things have gotten.”

“The obvious answer is for people to drink more of my milk, not less,” Kennedy continued. “It’ll take more than some misguided recall to stop me from lactating for the health and longevity of this nation.”

One judge, 143 cases: A day inside new high-stakes mass immigration hearings

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Immigration judges are seeing their dockets multiply as part of the Trump administration’s push to speed up deportations. Attorneys for the immigrants worry due process rights will be violated as a result.

June 6, 2026 at 10:34 a.m. EDTYesterday at 10:34 a.m. EDT

A family leaves the San Antonio Immigration Court on June 3. Immigration judges hear upward of 100 cases per day during “mega immigration hearings,” which are beginning this week in several major cities across the country. (Brenda Bazán/For The Washington Post)

By Arelis R. Hernández

SAN ANTONIO — Immigration Judge Cynthia LaFuente-Gaona typically hears a few dozen cases a day in the Texas courtroom where men, women and children come to implore her to allow them to remain in the United States.

But in recent days, her caseload has swelled. On Wednesday, there were 143 names on her docket.

There was a Guatemalan woman who had learned days earlier that her hearing, originally scheduled for next year, had been moved up. Nearby sat a Venezuelan woman who believed she qualified for a crime victim’s visa but hadn’t had enough time to find an attorney. Alongside them, a Colombian asylum-seeker tried to sooth her feverish 4-year-old daughter as she waited to be called.

Many others on the list did not show up at all.

“They rushed up everything,” said the mother, who spoke on the condition that The Washington Post not identify her because she fears jeopardizing her case. She said she has been slowly saving her housekeeping wages to pay an attorney. “I’m running out of time.”

In immigration courtrooms across the U.S., judges are now being asked to conduct “mega master hearings” that the Trump administration hopes will speed up the president’s mass deportation campaign and help clear a 3.5 million-case backlog. The master calendar hearings, as they are known, mark an immigrant’s first appearance in court since entering the United States.

Immigrants who entered the country illegally but were released after claiming asylum at the borderhave long waited years for their cases to go through the immigration court system. Immigration restrictionists argue those delays encourage people to enter illegally because they know they will be allowed to remain for long periods while waiting for a court date. The Department of Justice, which oversees the immigration courts, has fired dozens of veteran judges and replaced them with new recruits, who are being instructed to see cases through expeditiously and grant asylum sparingly.

“Unnecessary delay hurts both aliens with meritorious claims and the American public who wish to see aliens with non-meritorious claims removed as quickly as possible,” a spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review said in a statement.

Immigration attorneys and advocates say they worry the new mega dockets could violate the due process rights of people who do not receive proper notice, can’t find transportation or are confused by the changes and end up missing hearings inadvertently.They also fear that dramatically increasing daily caseloads means judges will not be able to carefully examine each case, potentially dismissing people who have legitimate asylum cases and may then be deported to countries where their lives could be in danger.

“I don’t think there is any problem with trying to process cases more efficiently — it just needs to happen fairly,” said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, policy and practice counsel for American Immigration Lawyers Association. “The administration has shown they are wiling to cut corners for the sake of efficiency, which at the end of the day is not justice and not what we expect of a court in this country.”

In San Antonio, which has one of the nation’s biggest immigration case backlogs, the mass hearings were sparsely attended, which advocates and attorneys said was a result of people either not knowing they had a court date or being too afraid to appear. The consequence for many of those immigrants could be life-altering and irreversible:Most of those who do not appear at their initial appearance will be ordered deported if a judge determines thatthey received proper notice.

LaFuente-Gaona opened her chamber a half-hour earlier than normal to accommodate the expected mass of people. But less than two dozen of the 143 people on her docket arrived.

“That’s a lot of no-shows,” LaFuente-Goaona remarked to the bailiff.

She read those who did appear their rights and spelled out the allegations against them. Then she proceeded to reset most of the cases for August to give them time to find an attorney. One woman whose name she called out, and who did not appear, was listed as having an order of removal by the next day.

Federal data indicates the number of people missing hearings and being ordered deported has risen sharply — a contrast to previous years, when most immigrants have showed up for their hearings. Attorneys note the absenteeism grew when immigration enforcement officers began arresting people at courthouses.

The federal government notifies immigrants of their hearings by mail and through updating digital court files. Some people are contacted by phone if they are being monitored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But advocates say it’s common for immigrants to miss notices because families move, may not have access to the mail or encounter errors while trying to visit the website.

“We are hearing many reports of individuals not receiving timely notice or being adequately advised that virtual hearings are no longer an option,” said Priscilla Olivarez, senior policy attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “They are being set up to fail.”

San Antonio was the first major metropolitan area that tens of thousands of immigrants came to in the U.S. after crossing the border in South Texas during the Biden administration. Many chose to stay. The area is now the target of heavy immigration enforcement and has among the highest ICE arrest numbers in the country.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, whose opinions guide the nation’s 600 immigration judges, have instituted numerous precedent-setting changes during President Donald Trump’s second term. They have narrowed asylum eligibility and removed judges’ authority to issue bonds, effectively applying mandatory detention to all. Immigrants who were once able to log into hearings virtually are now being required to come in person if they do not have an attorney.

Many immigrants are giving up their claims for humanitarian protection and opting to depart the U.S. in exponentially higher numbers.

Court observers said less than a fifth of those scheduled to appear showed upat San Antonio’s immigration court this week as the mass hearings began. Judges spoke in stark terms to those who did come about who would and would not qualify for asylum.

“If you came here only to seek a better life or are escaping general violence in your country, this court cannot help you,” said Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers as a court interpreter repeated her words in Spanish to a handful of people. All but one had traveled hours from their homes in the Houston and Dallas areas to be there.

The judge told the immigrants that the court may be able to help, however, if they had experienced persecution or torture. Then Gonzalez Rogers asked the group to raise their hands if they could respond affirmatively to questions that included whether they had been in the country for 10 or more years, and whether they had a U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse.

No one raised their hand.

When Border Patrol agents encountered border crossers at the Rio Grande during the height of the migration surgein 2022 and 2023, thousands received “notice to appear” forms assigned to the San Antonio immigration court. Immigrants move often and are required to report their new addresses to the court. Gonzalez Rogers, remarking on San Antonio’s “overloaded” caseload, reassigned those out-of-area cases to other courts.

In Gonzalez Rogers’s chamber, two girls, ages 8 and 5,entertained themselves playing with a beaded necklace while their mother spoke before the judge. The family was from Mexico and had traveled nearly four hours from outside Houston for the hearing. The sisters arrived in matching pigtails and western-print jackets. They giggled to each other and let out a squeal when a bailiff bulged his eyes in their direction and pressed a finger over his closed lips.

On the wall opposite the children was a sign taped to the wall: “A warning to self-deport.”

“I’m giving you all time to find an attorney,” Gonzalez Rogers told their mother and the other immigrants there. “But if they say you aren’t eligible, consider voluntary departure.”

A Venezuelan couple arrived at Judge Rifian S. Newaz’s courtroom with their daughter, also hoping to be granted more time. The parents’ hands trembled as they waited for the judge. Their 10-year-old child sat at a lectern nearby with a microphone positioned for someone taller.

The family had entered the U.S. illegally near Brownsville, Texas, in late 2023, the judge said. The father said they had applied for asylum but had done so without an immigration attorney’s help. They hadn’t been able to afford one.

The judge gave them until early September to find a lawyer — less time than has been standard in the past, several immigration attorneys said.

“We were spooked,” said the Venezuelan man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is in the country illegally and fears being targeted. He described how he and his wife had debated whether they should risk the drive from the Austin area and possibly be stopped by local police working with ICE to show up for the hearing. They were worried about all the reports of courthouse arrests and not getting a fair shot.

“We didn’t know whether to come. But we came because for her,” he said looking down at the curly-haired girl. “We want to be legal and do things right. We want her to grow up in a place where she is safe.”

The family quickly hopped into a car because the man had a scheduled check-in at an ICE office right after the hearing.

LaFuente-Gaona’s 143-person caseload was split in two, so that around 70 immigrants had their cases in the morning, and the other half in the afternoon. The judge, who previously worked as a congressional staffer and in the Texas attorney general’s office, has presided over hundreds of cases since 2017. Many are Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants, and most do not have an attorney.

As the judge called out their names, she provided each person with a standard list of legal resources and patiently answered questions through a translator. LaFuente-Gaona pointed to a stack of asylum applications, urging anyone who needed it to take them.

Just five adults and four children appeared before her that afternoon. All the adults were women and some were enrolled in electronic monitoring programs in lieu of detention. All said they had received calls or text messages days earlier alerting them that their hearings had been moved up to Wednesday.

“Your cases have been marked ‘expedited,’” the judge said. “I must address your cases before the end of the year.”

Dojaquez-Torres, of the immigrant lawyers association, said she and other attorneys are concerned that the mass dockets will mean people do not get an individual analysis of their case.

“Judges are getting pressured to move quickly and rush when they are supposed to evaluate each individual case,” she said. “In some courts, they are conducting classroom-style hearings, asking the group to answer by raising their hands.”

The Colombian woman who appeared with her toddler before LaFuente-Gaona earlier that day was so shaken after the hearing that she fumbled and dropped a bottle of Tylenol she was trying to open. The judge gave her until August to find an attorney and stave off a deportation order.

She sighed deeply as she entered the courthouse elevator. She’d entered the country in mid-2024 after fleeing a volatile border region she said has been overtaken by guerrilla violence. She said she had been summoned to court five different times already, but that her hearings had been delayed or continued for different reasons.

She was relieved not to have been detained, and now said she planned to focus on cobbling together enough money to hire a lawyer.

“I just don’t want them to deport me,” she said.