James' World 2

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Nearly 900 tornadoes have torn through more than 30 states so far this year, killing dozens of people, shredding buildings and landscapes across big chunks of the Eastern U.S., and costing billions. The oddly fickle and precise mix of atmospheric ingredients needed to generate tornadoes just happens to have occurred over and over again since mid-March, and the season isn’t over yet.

How do tornadoes form?

“In order to get a tornado, you need to have a thunderstorm that’s capable of producing a tornado,” says Jana Houser, a tornado researcher at the Ohio State University. Most often, these are what meteorologists call “supercell” thunderstorms, which feature a circulation pattern called a mesocyclone.

Supercell formation requires a set of conditions that make the atmosphere unstable, and these start with warm, moist air at the surface and cold, dry air above. The instability comes from warmer air’s greater buoyancy, which makes it rise upward. And this mix needs yet another specific ingredient, wind shear, “where winds change speed and direction as you go up with height” in the atmosphere, Houser says. This can create sort of a “tube” of horizontally rotating air. Next, the nascent twister needs an updraft, or upward-moving air, which tightens and speeds up the rotating air, taking it “from spinning like a bike tire” to “spinning like a top.”

All of these conditions are necessary, but they’re still not always enough. “Most supercells don’t even actually produce tornadoes in their lifetime,” Houser says.

The exact mechanics of tornado formation aren’t yet fully understood, but essentially, air rotation at the ground needs to meet a strong updraft aloft; this pulls the rotation in like a figure skater pulling in their arms, as Houser puts it.

Where do tornadoes form?

Tornadoes can—and do—happen wherever the right conditions are present, from Argentina to Italy to Bangladesh. But the U.S. is by far the leader in the average annual number of these storms. North America’s geography naturally promotes a crucial collision of air masses: juicy air streams northward from the bathtub warmth of the Gulf of Mexico, while cool, dry winds rush eastward over the Rockies. The air masses meet over the center of the country, which is how the region centered around northeastern Texas and Oklahoma came to be called Tornado Alley. “If you were to design a place that would get repeated severe storms, you would build something like the central U.S.,” says Rich Thompson, chief of forecast operations for the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center.

But over the past decade or so, that tornado bull’s-eye has changed a bit. A “new Tornado Alley” has emerged about 400 or 500 miles to the east, in part because moist Gulf air is reaching farther east than in the past.

Why do tornadoes mainly form in spring?

“Spring tends to be the peak because it’s a transitional season,” Houser says. Coming out of winter, there is still abundant cold air at northern latitudes and aloft, and at the same time, the sun is shining much more, heating up the surface air to promote instability.

Fall is also a transitional season, but the air aloft remains generally warmer for some time after summer. Tornado activity doesn’t tend to pick up again until later in the fall, when the atmosphere has cooled down again.

The local peaks in tornado occurrence tend to move northward as spring rolls into the summer: the Gulf Coast peaks earlier in the spring, the Southern Plains in May and June, and the Northern Plains and upper Midwest in June and July.

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“The rivers have reversed and the tide has turned entirely against him,” he continued, citing a recent Axios Harris poll that showed Tesla had plummeted from eighth place in the ranking of America’s 100 most visible companies in 2021 to 95th in 2025.

Galloway attributed Tesla’s issues to Musk alienating the company’s core customer base with his turn toward politics over the last year.

In the United States, the Tesla CEO spent millions backing Trump’s presidential campaign and was almost inseparable from him during the transition. He then became the public face of DOGE, an advisory body tasked with reducing government spending.

While Musk became a hero to many of Trump’s supporters, the image of a tech billionaire wielding so much power also sparked a backlash, which mostly targeted Tesla.

Tesla reported a 71% drop in earnings per share year over year during its earnings call in late April and has faced widespread protests at its dealerships and showrooms.

“He is a brilliant guy, but he’s alienated his core demographic,” Galloway said on Friday. “He’s alienated the wrong people. Three-quarters of Republicans would never consider buying an EV. So he’s cozied up to the people who aren’t interested in EVs.”

During Tesla’s recent earnings call, Musk said he planned to step back from his work with DOGE and refocus on the companies that made him a household name. He reiterated that on Saturday.

“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,” Musk wrote on X after the platform had battled with widespread outages.

“I must be super focused on 𝕏/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out.”

The SpaceX CEO also told an audience at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday that he planned to spend “a lot less” on political campaigns in the future.

“If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it,” Musk clarified. “I do not currently see a reason.”

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Elon Musk says he is stepping back from his government work to refocus on his companies.  Scott Olson/Getty Images

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Republicans in Congress intend to cut about US$880 billion in federal health care spending.

One of their primary targets is Medicaid. That government program covers 82 million Americans with health insurance. Most of the people enrolled in the program are low income, have disabilities, or both.

Medicaid, jointly funded by the federal government and the states, is also the biggest funder in the U.S. of long-term care services, whether they are delivered in the patient’s home, another location where they spend part of their day, or a nursing home. That makes it particularly important for older adults and those with disabilities. All states must meet the basic federal guidelinesfor Medicaid coverage. But 41 states have opted to take advantage of the Affordable Care Act provision that expanded eligibility to cover more people under the program.

We are gerontology researchers who study health and financial well-being in later life. We’ve been analyzing what the potential impacts of Medicaid cuts might be.

While the debate about how to reduce the budget focuses largely on dollars and cents, we believe that cutting federal spending on Medicaid would harm the health and well-being of millions of Americans by reducing their access to care. In our view, it’s also likely that any savings achieved in the short term would be smaller than the long-term increase in health care costs born by the federal government, the states and patients, including for many Americans who are 65 and older.

Weak track record

Wary of backlash from their constituents, Republicans have agreed on a strategy that would largely cut Medicaid spending in a roundabout way.

Previous efforts by the GOP in some states, such as imposing work requirements for some people to get Medicaid benefits, have not greatly reduced costs. That’s largely because there are relatively few people enrolled in the Medicaid program who are physically able to be employed and aren’t already in the workforce. Nor have past efforts to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse led to significant savings.

According to widespread media reports, Republicans are considering changes that would cut the amount of money that the federal government reimburses states for what they spend on Medicaid.

In May 2025, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 8.6 million Americans would lose their health insurance coverage should the GOP proposal become law.

Historically, states have dealt with budget cuts by reducing their payments to health care providers, limiting eligibility, or restricting benefits. These reductions all particularly affected home- and community-based services that many disabled and older adults rely on.

About 3 in 4 of the people with Medicaid coverage who receive long-term care through the program get that care at home, in their communities, or both, rather than residing in a nursing home. States save an estimated 26 cents for every dollar spent on those services delivered outside nursing homes.

Losing coverage can be harmful for your health

We recently analyzed data from a nationally representative study of approximately 6,000 people who had Medicaid coverage but lost it when they turned age 65 because their income exceeded 100% of the federal poverty level. In 2025, that cutoff is about $15,560 for a single person and $21,150 for a couple.

Medicaid income eligibility generally drops from 138% to 100% of the federal poverty level at age 65 once Medicare becomes a person’s primary health insurer.

The people who participated in the study had lost their Medicaid coverage upon turning 65 between 1998 and 2020. Our team followed the experiences of these participants over a 10-year period starting at age 65 to see how they fared compared with people who continue to be enrolled in Medicaid after their 65th birthday.

What we found was both surprising and disturbing.

Fewer activities of daily living

Over the decade following that milestone, the people who lost their Medicaid coverage had more chronic conditions and could perform fewer activities of daily living, such as bathing and getting dressed, without any assistance as compared with those who still had Medicaid coverage. In addition, they were twice as likely to experience depression and be in fair or poor health.

As people’s health worsened, they also went to the hospital more often and stayed there longer. They also used outpatient surgery services more frequently.

These services are particularly expensive for the health care system. Depending on the service, it may also be costly for patients. Unlike the comprehensive coverage of Medicaid, the Medicare program fully covers only inpatient hospitalizations, short-term nursing facility care, hospice, some short-term home care, annual wellness visits, vaccines and some basic preventive care. Beyond that, Medicare requires the payment of premiums to help with uncovered services that can also include deductibles and copays.

This arrangement can lead to significant out-of-pocket costs that make health care hard for low-income older adults to afford unless they have both Medicare and Medicaid coverage.

We also found that older people who lost Medicaid coverage were less likely to see their primary care physician for routine and follow-up care, despite being enrolled in Medicare. This explains in part why they are going to the hospital more often, likely avoiding routine health care that may incur out-of-pocket costs and eventually utilizing Medicare-covered hospital care when needed.

In short, we found that exiting the Medicaid program upon turning 65 actually leads to an increase in the use of some of the most expensive health care services, such as inpatient hospitalization and outpatient surgery. So although Medicaid may no longer pay for these costs, the rest of the health care system does.

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Donald Trump’s push to sharply ease oversight of the cryptocurrency industry, while he and his sons have fast expanded crypto ventures that have reaped billions of dollars from investors, including foreign ones, is raising alarm about ethical and legal issues.

Watchdog groups, congressional Democrats and some Republicans have levelled a firestorm of criticism at Trump for hawking his own meme coin, $Trump, a novelty crypto token with no inherent value, by personally hosting a 22 May dinner at his Virginia golf club for the 220 largest buyers of $Trump and a private “reception” for the 25 biggest buyers.

To attend the two events, the $Trump buyers spent about $148m, which will benefit Trump and partners, according to the crypto firm Inca Digital.

Further, the Trump family crypto venture World Liberty Financial that launched last fall, which his two oldest sons have promoted hard, was tapped this month to play a key part in a $2bn investment deal by an Abu Dhabi financial fund in the crypto exchange Binance, which in 2023 pleaded guilty to US money laundering and other violations.

The new WLF deal was announced at an Abu Dhabi crypto conference that drew Eric Trump two weeks before Trump’s mid-May visit to the United Arab Emirates capital, sparking other concerns of improper foreign influence and ethics issues.

Trump’s ardent pursuit of crypto fortunes was highlighted in a report last month from the watchdog group State Democracy Defenders Fund that estimated his crypto ventures as of mid-March to be worth about $2.9bn. That is a striking sum since Trump’s crypto ventures are less than a year old.

Senate Democrats, led by Jeff Merkley of Oregon and the minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, introduced a bill this month that has garnered sizable Democratic backing to block Trump from using his office to benefit his crypto businesses.

Watchdogs say Trump is exploiting his office for personal gain in unprecedented and dangerous ways.

“There is the appearance if not the reality of corruption in the upcoming dinner with Trump on the 22nd at his Virginia golf club for the 220 biggest Trump meme coin buyers and the private reception he’s promised for the top 25 buyers, plus the separate $2bn deal between World Liberty Financial and the Abu Dhabi investment vehicle,” said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics adviser to George W Bush who co-authored the Democracy Defenders Fund report.

“Trump is marketing access to himself as a way to profit his memecoin,” said the Columbia Law professor Richard Briffault, an expert on government ethics. Briffault added: “People are paying to meet Trump, and he’s the regulator in chief. It’s doubly corrupt. This is unprecedented. I don’t think there’s been anything like this in American history.”

Such concerns were fueled when Trump quickly chose crypto industry allies to run the Securities and Exchange Commission and as his “czar” for crypto and AI. Among other moves, the SEC has dropped or put on hold investigations and prosecutions of over a dozen crypto firms.

Fears of possible corruption have also focused on Chinese-born Justin Sun, the biggest investor in Trump’s crypto ventures. Sun bought about $20m of $Trump to become its top purchaser before the dinner on the 22nd, which he attended. Sun previously invested at least $75m in World Liberty Financial to become its lead investor and an adviser.

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A $Trump memecoin, a novelty crypto token that has generated millions for the president and his family as buyers vie for access. Photograph: Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

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