A number is sent to tens of millions of retired Americans every October that tells them how their money will be spent over the next twelve months. The official announcement of the 2027 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment doesn’t happen until mid-October, but estimates are already going around. The most-watched number right now is 3.8%. The last change was 2.8% in January 2026. That would be a full percentage point more than that. It’s not a big deal, but for people on fixed incomes, a few extra dollars a month can really change how they shop for groceries. The Senior Citizens…
Author: Sierra Foster
Sierra Foster
Born in Kansas City, Sierra Foster writes about politics and serves as Senior Editor at kbsd6.com. She was raised paying attention to this city, not just living in it. Sierra has a strong, deep connection to Kansas City, from the neighborhoods east of Troost to the discussions that take place in the city hall halls. Sierra, who is presently enrolled at the University of Kansas to pursue a degree in Political Science, applies the rigor of academic study to her journalism. She writes about politics in Missouri and Kansas as someone who genuinely cares about what happens to the people in these communities—the policies that impact them, the leaders who represent them, and the civic forces influencing their futures—rather than as an outsider watching from a distance. Her editorial coverage encompasses state-level policy, local government, and the national political currents that permeate bi-state regional life. Whether it's a city council vote or a Senate race, she has a special gift for turning complex policy language into writing that feels urgent, relatable, and worthwhile. Sierra seldom sits still off the page. She claims that playing soccer on a regular basis has sharpened her instincts for political reporting because of the sport's teamwork, strategy, and requirement to read a changing game in real time. She's probably somewhere in Kansas City with her friends when she's not writing or on the pitch, discovering new reasons to adore a city she already knows so well.
Jenny Hansen woke up in a campground tent on Sunday morning with her husband, three kids, one dog, two rats, and two cats. She had been quietly getting ready for this news since Saturday: her home off of Holyoke Avenue was gone. As these fires tend to do when the wind blows, the Old Trails Fire moved quickly through her neighborhood. She said, “It’s just stuff,” with the steady tone that takes work. “That’s what we have to remember.” This weekend, that sentence has been very useful in Spokane. The Old Trails Fire, the Fairview Fire, and the Autumn Lane…
The Plymouth Superior Court doesn’t have a dramatic appearance. It is located in a coastal county in Massachusetts that most people associate with peaceful beach towns and Thanksgiving mythology rather than criminal trials of this magnitude. However, over the last two weeks, something quietly devastating has been taking place inside it: a murder trial that, despite everyone’s apparent desire for a straightforward explanation, keeps eluding it. Five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan are the three children that Lindsay Clancy, 35, is accused of killing. The murders took place inside the family’s Duxbury home on the evening of January 24,…
A mysterious bank deposit was the first thing many people saw when they woke up one morning in late January. No justification. “Lopez Voice Assistant” or “Lopez Voice Asst—Payouts,” a line item that appears in between the regular charges. People’s phones lit up as they asked the same Reddit question: is this a scam? It wasn’t. One of the more troubling privacy cases of the previous ten years was quietly settled by Apple. The Lopez Voice Assistant Settlement began in 2021 when Fumiko Lopez, a resident of California, filed a lawsuit alleging that Siri had been listening in on her…
There are times when filing a lawsuit stops you cold. One of them is the picture of a nervous 59-year-old woman asking Tesla staff to accompany her in a car she had never driven before, only to be turned down. Alemzewd Lawgalet, a federal employee of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, entered an Arlington, Virginia, Tesla store with the intention of taking a Model Y test drive. She left with injuries, a lawsuit, and a story that, for good reason, has since gone viral in the auto industry. The actual incident happened on September 21, 2024. According to Lawgalet, she…
When they see a label that says “Zero Sugar,” most people in a grocery aisle don’t give it much thought. It seems conclusive. Lastly. The kind of straightforward assurance that makes a purchase decision simple, particularly when you’re attempting to eat a little better without giving it too much thought. When James and Abigail Franco purchased Chobani Zero Sugar yogurt at a Costco near Chicago in 2023, they had precisely that thought. A federal appeals court has now determined that their dissatisfaction merits a proper hearing. On July 28, 2026, the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that…
Timothy Stanhope was in the North Carolina National Guard for 23 years. He was sent out, showed up, and did the work. When he began criticizing his unit on Facebook, he wasn’t some outsider trying to stir up trouble or cause a political scandal. As someone who had seen how things worked and grown tired of what he saw, he was an insider. His posts didn’t make people angry. One from 2019 said in a sarcastic way that leaders should have to pass the same fitness tests as regular Guardsmen. It sounds like something a soldier might say under their…
That’s the kind of deal that AMD and Anthropic just made public. Please read it again. The company that makes chips is putting up to $5 billion into Anthropic, the company that makes Claude. In exchange, Anthropic has agreed to buy up to two gigawatts of AMD’s newest Instinct MI450 chips, which AMD says could cost in the tens of billions of dollars just for the hardware. In the first half of 2027, the deployment starts. It’s hard to fully understand the size of it. This is a pattern that the business world has quietly accepted as normal. Companies that…
Being honest costs more than keeping quiet in some situations. A billionaire founder of DeepSeek named Liang Wenfeng had some honest things said in private meetings with investors that have now stopped one of the most anticipated funding rounds in Chinese tech history. DeepSeek told potential investors over the phone at the end of July 2026 that they would not be signing investment agreements as planned. There was no formal statement or press release; just word that the deal was on hold. People who know about the situation say that Liang was suspended a few days after comments he made…
Australia’s rooftop solar seemed like a clear winner for a long time. Put up the panels, use them to make your own electricity, send the extra back to the grid, and watch your power bill go down. That’s exactly what millions of homes across the country did. But what happened next wasn’t planned for, and now there is a new rule that makes solar owners think more about when and how they share their energy with everyone else. The “sun tax” isn’t really a tax put on people by the government. It’s more accurate to call it a two-way pricing…