Trader Joe’s likes to stock cute, sweet treats, and this chocolate goody, made with milk chocolate and sea salt, has customers scrambling to get a few boxes.
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Anyone who is a fan of McDonald’s Sweet ‘N Sour sauce is probably looking for an affordable dupe to buy from the store, and this one is the closest.
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The hard-right Freedom Caucus is having a rough primary season.
Candidates with backing from the caucus and its allies flopped in primaries from Florida to Wyoming on Tuesday, adding to a string of recent losses for the group.
In Florida, Catalina Lauf lost in a House GOP primary to replace Freedom Caucus member and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds — despite backing from President Donald Trump as well as a late, small ad buy from the Freedom Caucus Fund and millions from other groups supporting her.
Hours later, more than a dozen Wyoming Freedom Caucus candidates in the state’s legislature lost to moderates. The group’s chair, Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, lost to a moderate in the secretary of state race, as did Freedom Caucus candidates for state superintendent and treasurer.
Those losses followed Rep. Andy Ogles’ (R-Tenn.) ouster earlier this month, Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-Texas) defeat in his run for Attorney General and Rep. Ralph Norman’s third-place primary finish in the race for South Carolina governor — all candidates who the Freedom Caucus Fund, the federal campaign apparatus of the House Freedom Caucus, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost.
The State Freedom Caucus Network, which backed the Wyoming legislative candidates, is not officially affiliated with the House Freedom Caucus, but its website says its mission is “building on the success of the House Freedom Caucus” to bring the fiscally conservative principles of the group to statehouses nationwide.
While there have been some wins for Freedom Caucus members this cycle, the combined pattern suggests that the ultra-conservative group’s name and influence is waning with GOP voters, and it comes as the factions of the party battle for relevancy when Trump’s presidency ends.
“They became largely an island of misfit toys: problematic in their party, and not for reasons that are necessarily popular with the public,” said GOP strategist Matthew Bartlett, who served in Trump’s first administration. “So you’ve seen diminished influence, and you’ve seen them losing seats, losing stature.”
In Wyoming, Robert Short, a moderate Republican, defeated Rodriguez-Williams by campaigning on a slogan of “make the secretary of state’s office boring again.”
“What Wyomingites were not and still are not is extremists,” Short told POLITICO, arguing that by pushing an “extremist agenda” in the state, the local Freedom Caucus tried to “usher in a national-driven agenda that really does not have a home in Wyoming. And I think the voters of Wyoming responded resoundingly last night in saying, ‘not up in here.’”
The Wyoming losses were especially notable given how conservative that state is. Just two years ago, Freedom Caucus-aligned members took control of the state legislature and the state and gave Trump the highest vote share of any state in the nation. Two years before that, the state’s GOP primary voters resoundingly ousted former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who defied Trump over his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. It’s still one of only a handful of states where Trump’s approval rating is still positive. So for the Freedom Caucus to get thumped there is particularly notable.
Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus members struggled to pass its priorities and tried to axe broadly popular programs, from public media funding to dismantling the state’s economic development agency. In proposing those changes, the caucus often sparred with more traditional conservatives.
The caucus aimed to secure a supermajority through Tuesday’s primaries to ram its agenda through the legislature. Instead, voters resoundingly rejected them.
“It was a butt-whoopin,” said Wyoming GOP state Rep. Andrew Byron, who ran unopposed on Tuesday and is not a member of the Freedom Caucus. “It was a huge statement by the Wyoming voters that shows that if you’re not willing to govern and listen to your constituents, they react.”
Multiple Republicans in the state, including Byron, pointed to big spending from national outside groups backing the Freedom Caucus that made Wyomingites feel like out-of-staters were trying to influence their politics as reason for the sweeping losses.
“Wyoming people live in Wyoming because we like our way of life,” Byron said. “We’re not good at getting told what to do, and we really appreciate the Wild West out here.”
In a statement posted to social media, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus said it “IS NOT GOING ANYWHERE.”
“Last night’s results will not undo the policy wins we’ve delivered on behalf of the people,” the group wrote.
Their struggles are part of a broader pattern. The Freedom Caucus Fund has failed to elevate its candidates in four of the five races it spent in this year, spending a combined $1.5 million dollars to boost Lauf (who got just $30,000 in support from the group), Ogles, Norman, Roy and Nevada Republican David Flippo (who is the only candidate the group spent for and won).
After publication, a Freedom Caucus Fund spokesperson pointed POLITICO to its 29-2 win-loss record in congressional primary endorsements this cycle. Most of those were for incumbents in uncontested races where the group did not spend.
These candidates didn’t all lose for the same reasons. Ogles had been plagued by various scandals, was running in a newly redrawn district with a number of new voters unfamiliar to him, and had limited campaign resources. Roy was hammered for his past support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and criticism of Trump in the 2024 presidential primary. Norman was running in a crowded field in which Trump was backing another candidate (and he is again in the South Carolina special Senate primary). For her part, Lauf struggled to break out in a crowded 10-way primary in a ruby red seat.
But observers say there’s often a common through-line: The candidates have been mired in controversy.
“In a day and age where candidates matter, they tend to create their own headaches,” Bartlett said. “Sometimes behavioral, sometimes ideological.”
Neither the Freedom Caucus Fund nor a spokesperson for Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) responded to a request for comment on Wednesday before publication. Multiple Wyoming Freedom Caucus members who lost on Tuesday also did not return calls.
The only victory for the group where it spent money this cycle was in Nevada’s 2nd District, where it elevated Flippo in the race to replace retiring Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada), who has declined to support Flippo in the general election for the deep-red seat. In other races where the campaign arm didn’t spend, Donalds and Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) cruised to their states’ GOP nominations for governor, and Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) won the primary to succeed Sen. Tommy Tuberville in the upper chamber.
Some of those candidates, like Biggs and Tiffany, will face tough general election bids in battleground states — providing another test for the Freedom Caucus among a broader swath of voters.
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Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth, Monday April 20, 2026. (Photo by Anne-Marie Caruso/New Jersey Monitor)
Imagine tearing a ligament on a weekend hike and calling around for a price on the surgery, only to find that the same procedure costs twice as much at one hospital as it does at another less than a hundred miles away. No difference in the treatment, no difference in the outcome. Just a difference in the location.
That’s not a hypothetical. It’s what KFF Health News reported happened to Marcelle Crago, a nurse in Asheville, North Carolina, who tore her meniscus while cross-country skiing. Her local hospital quoted her more than $9,000 for the procedure. She postponed the surgery, shopped around, and found an outpatient center down the road, unaffiliated with the hospital, that charged less than a third of that price for the same operation.
It’s a North Carolina story, but Alaskans should recognize the shape of it immediately because we’ve been living a version of it for years.
Alaska has carried the highest or near-highest healthcare costs in the nation for 15 consecutive years, according to Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development data. Costs in Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks run about 50% above the U.S. urban average. Urban Alaskans spend roughly 12% of household income on medical care, compared with 8% nationally. Providers here charge commercial insurers more than twice what Medicare pays for the same professional services, the highest ratio of any state in the country.
These numbers matter because they eventually show up in the places that affect everyday life: family budgets, business expenses, employee paychecks and monthly premiums.
Hospital care drives the bulk of it. Nationally, hospitals accounted for roughly 40% of the total growth in healthcare spending between 2022 and 2024, more than any other part of the system, and consolidation is a major reason why. As more physicians and clinics become part of larger hospital-owned systems, the same visit or procedure often costs more, simply because of where it happens to take place. Alaska is especially exposed. A small population spread across enormous distances means limited providers in any given region. When the next option for care is a plane ticket away rather than a drive across town, the competitive pressure that holds prices down elsewhere doesn’t exist.
To be fair, delivering care in Alaska is genuinely expensive. Recruiting clinicians in a high-cost state, maintaining services across roadless geography and absorbing federal reimbursement pressures are real burdens our providers carry. Healthcare affordability is a challenge we all must tackle together.
But after 15 years among the most expensive healthcare markets in America, we should be willing to ask hard questions about what is driving those costs and who ultimately bears them. Premera Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alaska has served this state since 1952, before statehood. We believe Alaska families and employers deserve a healthcare system that is both high quality and affordable. When healthcare costs rise faster than wages, inflation and economic growth, the consequences are felt by every household and every business that provides coverage. Increasing health insurance claims and premiums are a function of the underlying cost of care, with more than 90% of every premium dollar received going straight to the providers of care, largely driven by hospital costs.
The conversation about healthcare costs cannot stop at premiums. We need greater transparency into the prices charged throughout the healthcare system so Alaskans can better understand what drives the bills they receive. We also need policymakers, purchasers and healthcare organizations to work together to address the factors that make Alaska an outlier year after year.
Affordability is not an insurance issue. It is an Alaska issue.
The nurse in North Carolina only had a road to drive down for more affordable care. For too many Alaskans, that road doesn’t exist. There’s only a plane ticket and a much longer wait.
Until it does, making healthcare more affordable should be a priority for all of us.
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Buc-ee’s brisket doesn’t just come in sandwich form. In fact, customers who are in an especially meaty mood can request this option instead.
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The Associated Press has had its say. The coaches have had their say. Now it’s time for me to chime in on the 2026 preseason top 10. Last year matters no more. New players. New rosters. New season. If you’re putting Indiana at No. 1 because the Hoosiers won the title last year, you’re doing this all wrong. If you’re putting the Hoosiers at No. 1 because you think IU is the best team in the country in 2026, then that’s fine. There’s definitely a stratum for the upcoming season. The top seven seem pretty clear, and one could make the case for any of the top seven to be slotted in any of the seven spots. You wouldn’t get an argument from me. Then again, last year at this time, I said Penn State to make the CFP was the safest bet there was, and then by mid-October, James Franklin was fired. So clearly my crystal ball at this time of the season is spot on. Anyway, here’s how I see it going into the year. We’ll see what changes we get from one week to the next. And trust me, we’ll get them. This page may contain affiliate links to legal sports betting partners. If you sign up or place a wager, FOX Sports may be compensated. Read more about Sports Betting on FOX Sports. To Make CFP: +200Title Odds: +3000 Obviously, coaching staff turnover is a big deal, as Charlie Weis Jr. is no longer in Oxford calling the plays. But with Trinidad Chambliss at QB and Kewan Lacy at RB, the Rebels have a chance against anyone. To Make CFP: +160Title Odds: +1700 Could swap in a few different teams here, but the talent level at LSU appears to be top 10. I don’t know how it will all work out against this schedule, but at least to start, we’ll slot them here. To Make CFP: +210Title Odds: +3000 The Sooners are this year’s prime candidate as the most likely team where the power rating doesn’t align with the W-L record. The defense should be exceptional, but I still have questions about the offense. The OL and RB need to be better, especially against the ridiculously tough slate of opponents the Sooners have lined up. To Make CFP: -240Title Odds: +850 The run of SEC teams begins here. Georgia is the only SEC team I am confident will win 10 games. The defense should be much improved, the schedule is as favorable as it comes in SEC world and talk is the offense should have some game-breakers at WR. Are the Dawgs national champ quality? Yes. But I still think they are behind a few teams in the pecking order. To Make CFP: -350Title Odds: +900 OK, just hear me out for a second. The Hoosiers did a helluva job reloading in the portal while making their title run last season. They also got a boon in recent weeks with the return of Stephan Daley and Kellan Wyatt per a court ruling. They clearly have one of the top rosters in the country, but here are the questions I would ask: Can every high-leverage play go IU’s way again this year? Literally every play they needed to go their way last year did just that. Will the loss of the JMU vets have a bigger impact than maybe we are expecting? Can Josh Hoover eliminate the turnovers and make the plays Mendoza did? Cignetti has said all the right things about Hoover having a defense and a running game to fall back on, but you just never know. To Make CFP: -280Title Odds: +1000 Two things can be true: Miami is potentially more talented than the team that came up just short last year in the national title game and Miami also might have trouble replacing the guts of the team in leaders like Keionte Scott, CJ Daniels, Keelan Marion, Francis Mauigoa and Rueben Bain. After the late-season drive and coming so close last year, will there be complacency or even more motivation? The Canes are as big of a favorite as there is to win a league. And remember, Miami has never won the ACC. If Miami’s talent and leadership come together, this is a national title contender. But if the LBs struggle or the lethal combo of Bain and Mesidor can’t be replaced or depth behind Mark Fletcher doesn’t perform to expectations, then a season which falls short of expectations could be in the cards. Still, I’d expect a return CFP trip. To Make CFP: -200Title Odds: +650 Few teams have been as overrated in the preseason poll lately as Texas. Maybe I’m falling victim to the hype again, but this roster is loaded outside of potential concerns at OL. Although it appears the Longhorns avoided serious injury with Trevor Goosby, they could really use him back for the Ohio State game. The Longhorns added elite players at LB, RB and WR in the portal, and Arch Manning’s growth throughout the 2025 season will serve him and his team well this season. I’m not trying to project a W-L record here, but the Texas schedule is no joke. And I’m curious to see how many losses (if any) the Longhorns find this season and how the CFP will rank them. But it might be fair to ask — if not now, then when for one of CFB’s highest-paid rosters? To Make CFP: -360Title Odds: +600 The writers and coaches have the Buckeyes at No. 1, but I’m going to slot Ohio State here instead. Look, Ohio State recruits as well as anyone, but the Buckeyes’ final two games of last season have me slightly concerned. The offensive line was over-matched by two great defensive fronts and QB Julian Sayin did not look good. How will new OC Arthur Smith fit in? What about the massive losses on the defensive side of the ball? Nobody is — or should be — crying for Ohio State and its problems entering the season, but I don’t think the Buckeyes are a CFP cinch as they’ve been the last two years. To Make CFP: -320Title Odds: +750 The Ducks probably have as few questions as anyone entering the season, but a couple of camp injuries might cloud things just a bit early on. Those close to Oregon have been touting 2026 as the year the Ducks finally break down the door of the national title club. It’s hard to argue with that thought process, as Dante Moore returns with a dangerous WR corps and a dominant defensive front. Oregon’s season has ended in ugly fashion each of the last three years and there’s every reason to believe that will not be the case in 2026. To Make CFP: -800Title Odds: +600 One could nitpick about replacing Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price, or who will be the deep threat at WR, but this Irish team is loaded. Residing in South Bend is one of the best — if not the best — defenses in the country, along with one of the top QBs in the country in CJ Carr. The Irish missed the Playoff last year in a season where they were power rated as a playoff team. Now, the hunger, drive and motivation to get back to the national title game, as they did in 2024 (and win it), is evident. The Irish are No. 1 until they show me they aren’t.Latest Sports News from FOX Sports
Disappearing foods may sound dire, but at least you can prepare yourself for some of the culinary changes that might be coming our way, and maybe pretty soon.
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To ensure your slow cooker barbecue chicken is as flavorful and delicious as possible, be sure to add a can of your favorite cola to the mix.
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WASHINGTON — There’s something about Washington that breeds bureaucracy. Just to create a 1.7-mile racetrack, Penske Corporation needed 1,350 pages of permits. Compare that to 200 or so for a similar-sized course in Detroit. And there in Detroit, the organizers would work with local and state police with a little bit of help from the FBI. Maybe 200 officers in total. Washington? More than 500 National Guard will work the event, in addition to 1,300 Metro Police Department personnel, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms personnel, FBI, Capitol Police, U.S. Parks Police and the Secret Service. Penske Corporation President Bud Denker, who has spent most of the last seven months living in Washington D.C., said he expects 140,000 people each day on Saturday and Sunday. What has been the biggest challenge since President Donald Trump signed the executive order in late January to make the event possible? “Complexity in a compression of time,” Denker told me as he drove me around in a parade car on the nearly completed course Wednesday morning. Such is the challenge for what INDYCAR hopes will be an epic event on Sunday — 147 laps (250 miles) on a course that includes Pennsylvania, Constitution and Independence Avenues. “The places that we’re racing on [are] the three most important streets in our country,” Denker said. In order to have a 40-foot-wide racetrack and a pit road (with a 17-foot-wide pit box and two 11-foot-wide driving lanes) and the walls, they need a 91-foot-wide ride. Pennsylvania Avenue is 92 feet wide. They had 288,000 requests for tickets, the bulk of which were free and will either be inside the track perimeter or in the National Mall area outside the perimeter. There will be approximately 70,000 fans on each side, and their tickets likely won’t let them go both inside and outside the track perimeter. Denker estimates that 40 percent of the fans will come from outside the metro area, with many from the East Coast, where INDYCAR doesn’t have many races. While all street races disrupt local life, the fact that Congress is not in session and school is starting across America, means this is not as busy a time for hotels and restaurants, according to Denker. The concrete barriers for the course were built in Fredericksburg, Virginia. There were 1,800 of them. The pit road walls, which were not as big, came from Chicago. More than 200 manhole covers had to be welded and several had to be covered with a temporary surface because they were recessed into the street. There was also one area from Independence to Maryland Avenue where they had to remove part of a median and take out a traffic light. Rarely would that be done at other tracks, Denker said. Adding to the complexity was the ownership of land that is part of the footprint, which includes various federal properties (such as the Smithsonian, federal office buildings, the National Mall) and city properties. There are reports that Penske has spent $35 million on this race. Denker indicated it was more than that. They have massive three-story temporary suites that should rake in millions to help offset the costs, but they also spent a pretty penny on them. Typically, the temporary suites wouldn’t have restrooms built into them and they would be at the bottom of the structure. But these have them on each floor, at a cost of $1 million, according to Denker. They brought in viewing platforms from the Long Beach Grand Prix (also a Penske race) for those with general admission tickets. The race also has attracted sponsors such as Starlink and Boeing, companies that typically aren’t active in motorsports but whose government business is precious. Penske Corporation only had 13 full-time staff come in from Detroit to do much of the pre-event work. Monumental Sports — which owns the NBA Washington Wizards and the NHL Washington Capitals — handled the suite sales. Harbinger Events, another local company, is handling much of the interior fencing and logistics. The transit authority has been helping get the word out about the traffic disruptions as well as trying to get the word out for people coming to the track on the best way to get there and the entry points. “The INDYCAR Series, Penske Entertainment, they’re working on the event as a whole and making it pretty incredible for everybody that’s going to tune in and we’ll be a part of that,” two-time series champion Josef Newgarden told me on Monday. “I more so want to focus on what the track’s going to be like and what do we need to be doing to win the race?” The first thing he’ll have to do is manage the unique start. Assuming Trump waves the green flag, he most likely can’t be in the flagstand. He would do it from the bulletproof-glass-encased suite in Turn 1. So drivers will take the green just after coming off a turn, which could be an adventure in and of itself. That probably isn’t going to be the easiest way to start a race, but it’s part of the challenge in putting on this spectacle. As workers continued construction of that area, it was pretty easy to see that security measures were being put in place. It is a lot for what will likely be a one-time effort. This was such a big lift, but Denker feels he could do it again. “I could race this course again,” Denker said. “Everybody’s been that cooperative. That’s not the issue. The issue is you only have one 250th anniversary.”Latest Sports News from FOX Sports
South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham has given opponents fresh ammunition to attack her on her biggest vulnerability: her inexperience.
She revealed a major blindspot in her understanding of a critical foreign policy issue, U.S.-Taiwan relations, during Tuesday’s debate for the Aug. 25 snap Senate primary runoff to replace her late brother Lindsey Graham. Her response spread like wildfire on social media, with critics saying it proves she is “unprepared” to take office.
Asked whether Taiwan and the South China Sea are relevant national security priorities, Graham responded: “I’m just going to be honest here … I’m not that informed on national security, so.” She added that “national security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I do support the military.”
It was a notable acknowledgement from a sitting senator, as tensions rise between China and Taiwan — and as the U.S. preoccupation with the Iran war calls into question how reliable a supporter it might be amid fears of a possible future invasion of Taiwan.
The gaffe exposed the exact weakness that her runoff opponent, GOP Rep. Ralph Norman, has been eager to highlight: the senator’s lack of tenure.
His allies immediately piled on.
Norman supporter and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley wrote in a post on X that foreign policy experience is “not something you inherit” — a swipe at Graham’s appointment to fulfill her brother’s current term. Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official, expressed support for Norman, writing that Graham has “worked hard to hide any firm positions, and here she is at least being honest.”
“It very much confirmed many of our suspicions that while she might be a very nice lady, she is woefully underprepared or unprepared to be one of the 100 U.S. Senators in the Senate,” state Rep. Jordan Pace, who is supporting Norman in the runoff, said in an interview.
Norman said in a statement that South Carolinians deserve a senator with “know-how” on foreign policy: “Whether it’s spy balloons flying overhead or buying up land near South Carolina military bases, China continues to prove that it is a threat to the United States.”
Graham’s campaign, asked to clarify her response on U.S.-Taiwanese relations and her critics’ attacks over her misstep, pointed toward comments she made in the spin room after the debate: “What’s important are the people of South Carolina. They’re worried about their pocketbooks more than they’re worried about the South China Sea, quite honestly.”
Graham’s answer is also raising eyebrows among some of her own allies, with less than a week before next Tuesday’s election. And it increases the pressure on President Donald Trump, who had championed Graham’s appointment in July, encouraged her to run for a full term and is even planning to rally with her on Friday to boost her election chances.
“[Darline] just doesn’t have the experience of executing, you have to be able to deliver a story about herself and right now her story is that she’s Lindsey Graham’s sister,” said a former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to speak openly about private conversations.
The White House is still backing Graham, this person said, because the president had a close relationship with the late senator but also sees her as a better alternative to Norman, who endorsed Haley over Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
A second person familiar with the White House’s thinking, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said, “POTUS is still all in on the endorsement.”
The White House declined to comment on Trump’s support for Graham.
Still, the flub highlighted the danger for Trump, as he seeks to propel a political novice into a six-year term in the Senate and avoid yet another stain on his endorsement record. His high-profile rally for Graham in Myrtle Beach later this week is a particularly notable step in a year otherwise marked by a decrease in his explicit campaign travel.
Norman, for his part, said during the debate that Taiwan is a “definite ally” and that Trump is right to enable them to “defend themselves against China.” He declined to take a swipe at Graham over her comment in real time, but that hasn’t stopped his supporters from hammering the newcomer for the embarrassing misstep.
Graham’s stumble was a far cry from her late brother’s hawkish defenses of Taiwan, in which Lindsey Graham had openly criticized the expansionist aims of Chinese President Xi Jinping, called allies of China “dirtbags” and stressed the need to maintain the status quo between Beijing and Taipei to protect U.S. national security interests.
“Anyone running for a seat in Congress should be able to explain to the American people why Taiwan is important to American interests. Taiwan is a vibrant democracy of 23 million people and the source of over 90 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program. “A Chinese takeover by force would shatter U.S. credibility with its allies across the Indo-Pacific.”
American intelligence has long suggested that China’s People’s Liberation Army will be sufficiently capable of seizing the island starting in 2027.
Trump in June said he was open to speaking with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te, despite China’s warnings against doing so, in what would be the first direct dialogue between American and Taiwanese leaders in decades.
But the U.S.’ war with Iran is casting doubt on how effective an ally the Trump administration will be if China does invade Taiwan. Extended naval deployments to support airstrikes against Iran and a corresponding blockade of its ports have left the U.S. without a deployed aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific, as the USS George Washington steams toward the Middle East to relieve the extended Abraham Lincoln carrier, for instance.
The heightened risks and the rapid race to replace Lindsey Graham have left some in South Carolina’s GOP circles feeling less than optimistic about the choice they have to make to select a key proxy in Washington.
“It was shocking how we’re gonna give someone who was on stage last night six years in the U.S. Senate, and I think that’s the overall impression people are having today” said one South Carolina-based Republican operative who has stayed neutral in the Senate race and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “One of these two is gonna get six years in the Senate? Like, big hanging question mark.”
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