Ben Keys

Tough chart: Home prices, mortgage payments and incomes since 2020 — all indexed to zero. (via JBREC)

JUST POSTED: Today at The NYT we are publishing a major investigation into how President Trump used his executive powers to expose millions of Americans to greater cancer risks. A six month-long investigation built on more than 10,000 pages of FOIA records. Read it www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c...

To folks who follow me on Bluesky & appreciate the journalism I do. Can you please read the EPA story and post on social media platforms if you are so moved. This kind of work is important. But it only matters if people read it and engage with it. Here's the link. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c...

Trump has made more stock trades in his second term than all 535 members of Congress combined.

This is one of the most holy sh*t stories I’ve ever read in my life. www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-...

Not just the fastest, or the cheapest, or the best, but the *only* possible solution to climate change is a rapid global buildout of clean energy infrastructure. If you're standing in the way of that, you're not working on climate change & should be honest with yourself about your priorities.

median homes used to cost three times the median income or less in 75 of the nation’s largest 100 housing markets in 1990. Today, that’s true in only three out of 100 markets. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his.

A memo from senior insurance-industry officials warning that insurance modelers are being pressured to downplay climate in their models & that many insurers are already planning their exist from key markets. An explosive fuckup on the scale of the mortgage crisis is building.

Billions of dollars’ worth of contracts predicting oil would fall and the S&P 500 would rise were placed about 15 minutes before Trump announced a U-turn on Iran in a post on Truth Social. CFTC staff began to investigate...then were told to lay off. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Excerpts from Michael Lewis on DOGE (Guardian article). 1. Gavin Kliger, white nationalist, refused to shake hands with the Black IRS staffer who briefed him on privacy issues. Or pay attention. Kliger now has a defense start-up valued at 1.4B thanks to DOGE. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Trump’s comments suggesting Iran “take out” U.S. cities are already putting frontline House Republicans on the defensive in some of the country’s toughest races.

Trump on global warming: "That didn't work out because the planet got cooler. In fact, you know the ice that was melting? It right now just set a record. It's the biggest ice cube that's ever been in the history of the world ... they're doing the scam with data centers, by the way."

Sen. John Kennedy made an ass of himself at the Jack Smith hearing. He asked Smith if he believed in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. He asked Smith about the disappearance of union boss Jimmy Hoffa in 1975. Smith remained polite while this asshat performed his reprehensible routine.

When they get back in power, Democrats need to go all-in on higher education. We need a campaign of reinvestment in public universities across the country that makes the Morrill Land-Grant Act look like nothing by comparison *and* a GI Bill of Rights-style program of tuition grants.

phewww Trump at -29 in Pennsylvania, down from -19 just a month ago

IT IS TIME. buff.ly/pykYN6f

What if all reporters refused to show up for any Trump White House briefings and networks (including Fox) declined to air them to show solidarity with CNN, Politico, and MSNOW?

What? A sudden 30% decline in national housing prices would be a sign we're in like a serious depression. After the housing bubble burst in 2006/2007, national house prices fell "only" 27% peak to trough fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSH...

I feel like we are so used to living in a time of madness that we can't grasp just how insane the Kennedy Center dispute is. Trump took something that was running just fine and destroyed it because he couldn't put his name next to the murdered president whose memorial it is. That's completely nuts.

Why I don't think "get a better risk map" solves climate issues in housing markets. We can't even figure out non insane ways to deal with houses that are literally currently falling into the sea.

A few weekends ago I went to Miami and attended 9 open houses in extremely high-risk flood areas to see what agents are telling prospective buyers about them. Here is my journey

100 years ago: “The 1926 hurricane has become a benchmark in South Florida history, a dividing point in time, much like B.C. and A.D. It has achieved a mystique of almost biblical proportions — akin to Noah’s flood or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.” — Miami historian Arva Moore Parks.

Summer 2026 was the warmest on record for the contiguous U.S., according to NOAA, surpassing previous records set in 1936 and 2021. August also set a new temperature record, while drought expanded across much of the country. Visit Climate.us for more climate news, data, and trends.

Trump Says Recession Unfortunate But Necessary Step To Get To Depression https://theonion.com/trump-says-recession-unfortunate-but-necessary-step-to-get-to-depression/

It’s actually an accomplishment to get this many things this fundamentally wrong in just one profoundly stupid paragraph

The Kennedy Center was a beloved Washington institution, enjoyed by millions of people. It has been destroyed for no real reason. Just vanity, carelessness, indifference. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Here's why you can blame the government for your high interest rates. They're running deficits at war and recession levels, even with unemployment low. All that government borrowing puts upward pressure on interest rates, making loans more expensive for the rest of us. https://youtu.be/DLsWHniyg0Q

Something weirdly not noted in a lot of the coverage of the extortionate threats to murder the Kennedy Center unless it’s reimagined as a shrine to Trump: There was no dire fiscal crisis until Trump’s goombahs started mucking with it. Its finances were fine. projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/o...

Some real estate agents and researchers say home buyers and sellers should not pay this out-of-pocket fee. n.pr/4rc0nbX

Ossoff: "We are witnessing people drunk with power who are utterly reckless, utterly corrupt, and obviously believe that they live with impunity. They believe they're untouchable. They believe they're invincible. Let's prove them wrong."

The insurance industry is increasingly pushing homeowners into expensive, risky policies with light coverage and lighter regulation. Our $3 trillion climate-insurance hole just gets deeper Gift link to my @opinion.bloomberg.com column: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Ossoff: "Then there's the ex-staffer posting swastikas and Klan regalia. And the neo-Nazi with a million followers who produces neo-Nazi propaganda at Collins's house ... a man who won't take responsibility for what happens under his own roof can't be trusted with our national affairs."

The US President's new proposal to tax international students has been approved by the White House for release this week. It's an unprecedented $100,000 tax on int'l grads who stay to work after graduation on Optional Practical Training (most grads do), a crucial bridge to remaining by any channel.

JUST IN: A federal judge concludes that DHS leaders arbitrarily decided to cut FEMA staff by 50% even though it damaged the agency's ability to fulfill its mission — and leaders hid their comms about it on auto-delete Signal chains. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

you can be arrested if you give water to people waiting on line to vote

“He thinks voters are stupid. Republicans control the House. They control the Senate. They control the White House. If they wanted to spend a trillion dollars right now cutting checks, they could do it,” says Chris Hayes on Trump’s desperate and implausible $5,000 bribe to voters.

Today is a bad day for global bond markets. The problem with trying to artificially cap long-term yields - as with Treasury buybacks - is that yields jump if markets think buybacks are too small. This tells you underlying upward pressure is intense... robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/global-bon...

There have been so many impeachable offenses, but lying about how you were a hero on a day that 2,753 people died in NYC in the 9/11 disaster—when you were on the other side of town, safely calling local media to brag about how you now had the tallest downtown building—is such a despicable one

Yeah for sure, the same guy who hid in a catering cart and left the rest of his cabinet to be missile bait was *totally* at Ground Zero

Any news outlet that spent even one segment or one article on "Joe Biden is old" in 2024 should be going wall-to-wall with stories about the dementia-ravaged 80-year-old who keeps posting AI garbage and telling insanely obvious lies about himself. And yet

It should not be up to natural history museums to monetize their collections in order to justify their existence. defector.com/how-the-u-s-...

What Pablo Torre did was ridiculously impressive. Uncovered a conspiracy between rich guys, withstood a propaganda campaign by one of the richest guys in the world with a pretty good reputation, didn't buckle or panic, and just kept reporting. That's some Pulitzerin' right there.