The New York City Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-1 to freeze rents on about 1 million rent-stabilized apartments for up to two years, giving tenants a win on a central campaign promise from Mayor Zohran Mamdani while revealing tensions over the board's independence.

The board set the annual increase at zero percent for both one-year and two-year leases starting in October. The affected apartments house roughly 2.5 million residents. The board's 2025 study found the average monthly rent in regulated units was $1,599 last year, far below the $3,950 that listings agency StreetEasy said was the median for new market-rate leases citywide.

As Kimberley Hayek reports for The Epoch Times, the decision comes after the board's usual review of wages, inflation, maintenance costs, taxes, and landlord incomes. Tenants at public hearings called for a freeze or outright reduction, citing stagnant pay and higher living costs. Landlord representatives argued that a zero percent increase would hurt building upkeep and mortgage payments. Some owners have offset losses by raising rents on unregulated apartments, the board was told.

The agreement comes after an investigation by federal antitrust enforcers and state attorneys general alleged that Cal-Maine Food, Versova/Centrum and Hickman's Egg Ranch coordinated to artificially inflate daily egg price quotations between June 2022 and March 2025, leading to higher prices for retailers and consumers.

Three major egg producers have reached a $3.3 million settlement to resolve allegations of price fixing after being sued by the Justice Department (DOJ) and 17 U.S. states' Attorneys General.

Just the News reports that the complaint — filed in Iowa's Northern District Court — contends that the defendants conspired to artificially inflate the daily price quotations of market reporting company Urner Barry Publications.

According to the DOJ Office of Public Affairs, a civil lawsuit was filed against Cal-Maine Foods Inc. (Cal-Maine); Hickman's Egg Ranch Inc. (Hickman's); and Centrum Valley Holdings LLC, Versova Holdings LLC, and Versova Management Cooperative (Versova) for unlawful coordinated manipulation of egg prices.

The Attorneys General of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Wisconsin joined the Department in the complaint and proposed settlements.

Robert Owen bought a town to prove socialism works. The DSA should study what happened.

Something is happening inside the Democratic Party, and it is no longer subtle. In Denver this spring, Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old, foreign-born, self-described democratic socialist endorsed by both Denver DSA and the national Democratic Socialists of America, defeated longtime Rep. Diana DeGette in the Democratic primary for CO-1, running on Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and a slate of ambitious economic planks. In upper Manhattan, 32-year-old Darializa Avila Chevalier, NYC-DSA's candidate for NY-13, toppled Rep. Adriano Espaillat. In Brooklyn's NY-7, Claire Valdez, a 36-year-old UAW organizer and former NYC-DSA membership chair who calls herself a proud democratic socialist, captured the Democratic nomination. In Philadelphia, Chris Rabb, a DSA member endorsed by the national organization, won the primary in a seat so blue that DSA's own publication is already calling him the next Democratic Socialist in Congress.

These are not isolated flukes. They join a movement with sitting members. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in NY-14 and Rashida Tlaib in MI-12 appear on DSA's own list of federal officeholders, and more challengers are lined up behind them. Oliver Larkin, a 33-year-old DSA member since 2020, carries the organization's first federal endorsement of 2026 into FL-23. Donavan McKinney, a 34-year-old state representative who publicly brands himself a democratic socialist, is challenging Rep. Shri Thanedar in MI-13. Cori Bush is mounting a DSA-backed comeback in Missouri alongside Hartzell Gray, an open democratic socialist running in MO-4. In Sacramento, DSA-endorsed Mai Vang has advanced to a November runoff against Rep. Doris Matsui. And hovering above the whole wave is the prospect that party insiders now discuss without embarrassment, Ocasio-Cortez, the movement's model and its most famous member, as a serious presidential candidate in 2028.

The Vatican's doctrine office went above and beyond the minimal sanctions foreseen by the church's canon law to respond to the consecrations Wednesday of four new bishops at the society's Econe, Switzerland, seminary.

The Vatican responded aggressively Thursday to a traditionalist society that consecrated bishops without the pope's consent, declaring the Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicating its bishops and priests and warning its faithful they too face the harshest sanctions in the Catholic Church.

The society, known by its acronym SSPX, celebrates the ancient Latin Mass and opposes the modernizing reforms of the Catholic Church, which it considers to be rife with heresies and errors.

During a ritual-filled, five-hour Mass on Wednesday, attended by some 15,500 people and their children, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops in direct defiance of Pope Leo XIV, who had urged the SSPX to hold off for the sake of the church's unity.

Federal prosecutors on June 30 were directed to prioritize investigations into "birth tourism" schemes after the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants.

Colin McDonald, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for fraud, said in a memo to department employees that the U.S. immigration system is being exploited by foreign nationals who travel to the country "under false pretenses" to give birth and secure U.S. citizenship for their children.

He instructed all U.S. attorneys and the Criminal Division to work with the Department of Homeland Security to investigate and prosecute those involved in such schemes.

"Set your AC to 78 degrees, turn off lights/electronics you're not using, and unplug what you can," New York City Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote on X late Wednesday.

New Yorkers are now getting a real-world lesson in what Mamdani's recent "warmth of collectivism" comments actually mean: shared sacrifice, including being told to dial back air conditioning during blistering heat as the risk of power blackouts rises.

The deeper issue here is that years of left-wing climate policies and poor grid management have left the metro area and the broader region increasingly vulnerable during peak-demand hours.

Western media and politicians are misleading the public by hyping Kiev's attacks on Russia while ignoring the devastating losses suffered by Ukrainian forces, independent Dutch journalist Sonja van den Ende has told RT.

In an interview on Sunday, van den Ende argued that while headlines are dominated by Ukrainian strikes on Russian fuel refineries, which are presented as signs of Moscow's weakness, there is little coverage of Kiev's military casualties.

"About 2 million dead soldiers or dead servicemen from Ukraine. So this is not, this is not really headlines," she stated, emphasizing that such figures are buried deep in articles if mentioned at all by Western outlets.

She added that coverage of strikes inside Russia serves as "a distraction" from Kiev's problems.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that states can block biological transgender males from competing in girls' sports. In a 6-3 ruling, the court gave an iron-clad answer to the question.

Writing for the majority in West Virginia v. B.P.J. (consolidated with Little v. Hecox), Justice Brett Kavanaugh held that neither Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause requires schools to carve out an exception for transgender athletes who've undergone hormone therapy or never experienced male puberty. States can draw the line at biological sex, full stop - no judge-administered athlete-by-athlete fairness hearings required. The ruling reverses both the Fourth Circuit (which sided with West Virginia's B.P.J.) and the Ninth Circuit (which sided with Idaho's Lindsay Hecox), and lands squarely in the wake of last year's Skrmetti decision, extending its "this is a sex classification, not a transgender classification" framework from medical care straight into the locker room.

Parents, teachers and doctors risk up to five years in jail if they try to talk their children out of irreversible trans treatments under a "dangerous" new law, campaigners have warned. The Telegraph has the story.

On Thursday, Olivia Bailey, the Equalities Minister, published a draft bill to ban conversion therapy, which aims to suppress or change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

The bill states that people who use physical or psychological abuse to prevent children from saying they are gay or transgender could face up to five years in jail if convicted.

Critics warn this could put parents and teachers at risk of police investigation and possible jail time for having honest conversations with children.

During several recent conversations, people have told me that they've stopped checking their phones in the morning. Not because nothing was happening, but because everything was. They described the feeling as standing under a waterfall of perpetual bad news.

This experience is far from an isolated one. According to Reuters Institute's 2025 Digital News Report, 69 per cent of Canadians at least occasionally avoid the news now.

Globally, 40 per cent report they at least sometimes or often do the same, the highest figure ever recorded. People shared consistent reasons for this: the news put them in a bad mood, they felt overwhelmed and powerless to act.

As a researcher in developmental psychology, focusing on social development and psychological well-being, I argue that news fatigue is not laziness, weakness or a generational decline in civic interest. It's the predictable response of a human brain meeting an environment it was never designed to navigate.