Every year, millions of families face difficult decisions about how to care for aging parents or relatives. One of the hardest questions that comes up is how to pay for this care. Federal Medicare and Medicaid programs may offer support. But…
In 2017, Puerto Rico experienced the longest blackout in U.S. history—11 months—after two hurricanes knocked out its power grid. Almost a decade later, millions of Puerto Ricans continue to experience rolling blackouts and other uncertainties as the…
Last month, Congress overwhelmingly passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act—legislation aiming to increase the supply and affordability of housing. It includes a restriction on institutional investors’ purchases of certain single-family homes. We…
In recent years, Medicare’s spending on hospice has nearly doubled. We looked at this spending and found that the way Medicare pays for hospice care could be costing taxpayers billions more than it should. Today’s WatchBlog post looks at our new…
As many as one in three Americans dies with Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia. The number of diagnoses is expected to double over the next 30 years. The National Alzheimer’s Project aims to accelerate research and improve care and services…
For avid skiers, low or no snowfall can mean less time on the slopes. For small businesses in ski communities, warm winters and low snowfall can signal hard financial times. When businesses are hit with weather-related disruptions, such as flooding…
Thousands of pedestrians and cyclists are killed on U.S. roadways each year. Bad weather, excessive speed, and poor decisions can result in fatalities. But could the growing number of large vehicles on roads play a role as well? Commercial trucks…
From the humble AA battery to most advanced semiconductors—modern electronics depend on minerals. The U.S. has designated 60 minerals as “critical” to economic or national security. For batteries and semiconductors, which are key to our economy, the…
Description This orbital map shows the path NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took to get to a location the science team has dubbed the “Broom Point member,” a sequence of layered bedrock likely more than 3.9 billion years old. As planned, the rover landed inside Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. It investigated the crater’s western delta…
Description This view looking back up at the outside lip of the 490-foot-tall (150-meter-tall) rim of Jezero Crater was taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance on May 15, 2025, the 1,505th day, or sol, of the rover’s mission to Mars. The bright-colored rocks exposed across the slope, running from middle left to middle right of…
