That, though, turned out to be the least of my problems.

Using my home Wi-Fi connection, I checked my email and discovered a notification that $20,000 was being transferred from my credit card to an unfamiliar Discover Bank account.

I thwarted that transfer and reported the cell phone issues, but my nightmare was just starting. Days later, someone managed to transfer $19,000 from my credit card to the same strange bank account.

I was the victim of a type of fraud known as port-out hijacking, also called SIM-swapping. It’s a less-common form of identity theft. New federal regulations aimed at preventing port-out hijacking are under review, but it’s not clear how far they will go in stopping the crime.

Port-out hijacking goes a step beyond hacking into a store, bank or credit card account. In this case, the thieves take over your phone number. Any calls or texts go to them, not to you.

When your own phone access is lost to a criminal, the very steps you once took to protect your accounts, such as two-factor authentication, can be used against you. It doesn’t help to have a bank send a text to verify a transaction when the phone receiving the text is in the hands of the very person trying to break into your account.

Even if you’re a relatively tech-savvy individual who follows every recommendation on how to protect your tech and identity, it can still happen to you.

Experts say these scams will only increase and become more sophisticated, and the data show they are on the rise.

I am not the most tech savvy person, but I am a law-school educated journalist who specializes in finance reporting. Due to the very online nature of my job, I was taught all the methods of staying safe online: constantly changing my passwords with multi-factor authentication, signing out of apps that I don’t use regularly and keeping my personal information off the internet.

Still, despite being safe, I was vulnerable to criminals. And it took a lot of time and legwork before I got my money and phone number back.

The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center reports SIM-swapping complaints have increased more than 400% from 2018 to 2021, having received 1,611 SIM swapping complaints with personal losses of more than $68 million.

Complaints to the FCC about the crime have doubled, from 275 complaints in 2020 to 550 reports in 2023.

Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security, an online security company, says the rate of the crime is likely much higher since most identity thefts are not reported.

She also says two-factor authentication is an outdated way of keeping consumers safe, since it’s possible to find anyone’s phone number, birthday and social security number through any number of public or private databases on the web.

The ability of thieves to obtain your personal information was again made clear Friday when AT&T said the data of nearly all of its customers was downloaded to a third-party platform in a security breach two years ago. Although AT&T claims no personal information was leaked, cybersecurity experts have warned breaches involving telephone companies leave customers vulnerable to SIM swapping.

As of now, switching numbers from one phone to another is easy and can be done online or over the phone. The process takes less than a few hours so long as a criminal has your personal information on hand.

While consumers need to be smart about having a variety of different passwords and protections, consumers need to “put pressure on companies where its their job to protect our data,” Tobac said.

“We need them to update consumer protection protocols,” she said, since two-factor authentication is not enough.

FCC rules have recently changed to force companies to do more to protect consumers from this type of scam.

In 2023, the FCC introduced rulemaking that require wireless providers to “adopt secure methods of authenticating a customer before redirecting a customer’s phone number to a new device or provider” among other new rules. Companies could require more information when a customer tries to port over a phone number to another phone — from requiring government identification, voice verification or additional security questions.

The rules were scheduled to take effect on July 8, but the FCC on July 5 granted phone companies a waiver that delays implementation until the White House Office of Management conducts a further review.

The wireless industry had sought the delay, stating among other reasons that companies need more time to comply. CTIA, which lobbies on behalf of the companies, said the new rules will require major changes in technology and procedures both within the wireless companies and in their interactions with phone manufacturers.

But if the FCC rules had been in place, my phone number might have been harder to steal, experts say.

Ohio State University Professor Amy Schmitz says the new FCC rules make it easier for consumers to protect themselves, but it is still reliant on action and awareness of the consumers.

“I still question whether consumers will be aware of this, and will take action to protect themselves,” she said.

It took ten days to get my number back from Cricket Wireless — and that wasn’t until I told company representatives that I was writing a story about my experience.

In that period of time the scammer was able to access my bank account three times and eventually successfully transferred $19,000 from my credit card— even though I removed my number from the bank account, froze my credit, changed all my passwords, among other measures.

Bank of America worked to reverse the $19,000 wire after I visited a branch near the AP bureau in Washington.

Cricket apologized for the error and said in an email that its “expectation is to deliver a much better customer experience.”

“Fraudulent port-outs are a form of theft committed by sophisticated criminals,” reads a company statement that was emailed to me. “We have measures in place to help defeat them, and we work closely with law enforcement, our industry and consumers to help prevent this type of crime.”

An AT&T representative told me in an email that “all providers are working to implement the FCC’s new rules on port-outs and SIM swaps.”

I’m still unsure of how this person got access to my accounts, whether through my social security number, phone number or date of birth, or possibly a recording of my voice.

It was a hard lesson in how vulnerable we are when you lose control of our personal information that is so publicly available.

The post What’s worse than thieves hacking into your bank account? When they steal your phone number, too appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.

Visa on Wednesday announced major changes to how credit and debit cards will operate in the U.S. in the coming months and years.

The new features could mean Americans will be carrying fewer physical cards in their wallets, and will make the 16-digit credit or debit card number printed on every card increasingly irrelevant.

They will be some of the biggest changes to how payments operate in the U.S. since the U.S. rolled out chip-embedded cards several years ago. They also come as Americans have many more options to pay for purchases beyond “credit or debit,” including buy now, pay later companies, peer-to-peer payment options, paying directly with a bank, or digital payment systems like Apple Pay.

“I think (with these features) we’re getting past the point where consumers may never need to manually enter an account number ever again,” said Mark Nelsen, Visa’s global head of consumer payments, in an interview.

The biggest change coming for Americans will be the ability for banks to issue one physical payment card that will be connected to multiple bank accounts. That means no more carrying, for example, a Bank of America or Chase debit card as well as their respective credit cards in a physical wallet. Americans will be able to set criteria with their bank — such as having all purchases below $100 or with a certain merchant applied to the debit card, while other purchases go on the credit card.

The feature, already being used in Asia, will be available this summer. Buy now, pay later company Affirm is the first of Visa’s customers to roll out the feature in the U.S.

Some of Visa’s new features are in response to online-payments fraud, which continues to increase as more countries adopt digital payments. The San Francisco-based company estimates that payment fraud happens roughly seven times more often online than it does in person, and there are now billions of stolen credit and debit card numbers available to criminals.

Other new elements are also in response to features that non-payments companies have rolled out in recent years. The Apple Card, which uses Mastercard as its payment network, does not come with a printed 16-digit account number and Apple Card users can request a fresh credit card number at any time without having to dispose of the physical card.

Visa executives see a future where banks will issue cards where the 16-digit account number, if the new cards come with them, is largely symbolic.

Among the other updates unveiled by Visa are changes to tap-to-pay features. Americans will be able to tap their credit or debit cards to their smartphones to add the card to mobile wallets, instead of using a smartphone’s camera to scan in a card’s information, or tap the card to their smartphones to approve a transaction online. Visa will also start implementing biometrics to approve transactions, similar to how Apple devices use a fingerprint or face scan to approve transactions.

The features will take time to filter down to the banks, which will decide when or what to implement for their customers. But since the banks and credit card companies are Visa’s customers, and issue cards with the Visa label, these are features that the financial institutions have been asking for.

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President Joe Biden recently spent three days in Pennsylvania, a pivotal state in the 2024 campaign, and he plans to be in Virginia and Florida this coming week. The Democratic incumbent is seeking an edge over Republican Donald Trump as he ramps up his travels around the country.

Here’s a look at how much it costs and who pays the bill during the campaign season.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
It’s not cheap to fly the president’s fleet.

The White House uses Sikorsky helicopters known as Marine One when the president is aboard, as well as custom Boeing 747s that are immediately recognizable as the iconic humpback Air Force One. (Sometimes the president uses a more modest modified 757 if his destination is nearby or if a runway isn’t long enough to accommodate the bigger plane.)

Marine One costs between $16,700 and almost $20,000 per hour to operate, according to Pentagon data for the 2022 budget year. Air Force One is even more expensive: roughly $200,000 per hour.

But those figures only scratch the surface of the real cost. There also are military cargo planes that travel ahead of the president to make sure his armored limousines are in place, not to mention the enormous security apparatus that follows the president everywhere.

New aircraft are in the works because the current versions are decades old. Sikorsky is producing 23 updated helicopters to serve as Marine One. Boeing is building two new Air Force One planes, and they are scheduled to be finished by 2028. According to the Pentagon, the planes will come with all enhancements, including “a mission communication system,” a “self-defense system” and even “autonomous baggage loading.”

WHO PAYS FOR THE TRAVEL?
When the president flies for political purposes, the campaign is supposed to pay the bill. But during an election year, the line between governing and campaigning can be fuzzy.

For example, Biden held an official event Wednesday in Pittsburgh, where he announced his proposal for higher tariffs on steel imported from China. The event, however, was a not-so-subtle opportunity for the president to rub shoulders with union members who are critical to his reelection, and he jabbed at Trump in his remarks. (At one point Biden joked that the former president was “busy right now,” a reference to the hush money trial that recently got underway in New York.)

It’s up to the White House counsel’s office to figure out what percentage of the president’s travels are campaign related. That determines how much the federal government should be reimbursed by the Biden campaign. Sometimes the calculations aren’t straightforward, such as when the White House adds an official event to an otherwise political trip.

Norm Eisen, a White House ethics lawyer under President Barack Obama, said both Republicans and Democrats have usually hewed closely to regulations.

“We had a set of rules on how to do the allocations,” he said. “They’re intricate, and we stuck to them.”

No matter what, taxpayers end up on the hook for most of the cost. Campaigns do not pay for all the Secret Service agents and the rest of the security apparatus. In fact, they usually only cover the cost of Air Force One passengers who are flying for explicitly political purposes — sort of like buying a ticket on a particularly exclusive private jet.

HOW MUCH HAS BIDEN PAID?
Biden’s campaign and his joint fundraising committee have been stockpiling travel cash in an escrow account maintained by the Democratic National Committee. From January 2023 until the end of last month, they deposited nearly $6.5 million.

Some of that money goes to general campaign logistics, such as staff expenses and advance work. The account is also used to reimburse the federal government for official aircraft used to transport the president, the first lady, the vice president and the second gentleman when they travel for the reelection effort.

So far, not much money has found its way back to the U.S. Treasury. As of the latest data available, just $300,000 has been provided.

It’s safe to assume that Biden’s campaign will end up forking over much more than that once the campaign is over. Trump’s team reimbursed the federal government nearly $4.7 million for travel expenses during the 2020 race.

But Biden probably won’t have trouble covering his bills. His campaign and the DNC had more than $192 million in cash on hand at the end of March.

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Reaching the United States was a harrowing ordeal. Silva, 25, her husband and their then-7-year-old daughter braved the treacherous jungles of Panama’s Darien Gap, traveled the length of Mexico, crossed the Rio Grande and then turned themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol in Brownsville, Texas. Seeking asylum, they received a work permit last year and found jobs in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

“My plan is to help my family that much need the money and to grow economically here,” Silva said.

Her story amounts to far more than one family’s arduous quest for a better life. The millions of jobs that Silva and other new immigrant arrivals have been filling in the United States appear to solve a riddle that has confounded economists for at least a year:

How has the economy managed to prosper, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs, month after month, at a time when the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates to fight inflation — normally a recipe for a recession?

Increasingly, the answer appears to be immigrants — whether living in the United States legally or not. The influx of foreign-born adults vastly raised the supply of available workers after a U.S. labor shortage had left many companies unable to fill jobs.

More workers filling more jobs and spending more money has helped drive economic growth and create still-more job openings. The availability of immigrant workers eased the pressure on companies to sharply raise wages and to then pass on their higher labor costs to their customers via higher prices that feed inflation. Though U.S. inflation remains elevated, it has plummeted from its levels of two years ago.

“There’s been something of a mystery — how are we continuing to get such extraordinary strong job growth with inflation still continuing to come down?’’ said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Labor Department. “The immigration numbers being higher than what we had thought — that really does pretty much solve that puzzle.’’

While helping fuel economic growth, immigrants also lie at the heart of an incendiary election-year debate over the control of the nation’s Southern border. In his bid to return to the White House, Donald Trump has attacked migrants in often-degrading terms, characterizing them as dangerous criminals who are “poisoning the blood” of America and frequently invoking falsehoods about migration. Trump has vowed to finish building a border wall and to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Whether he or President Joe Biden wins the election could determine whether the influx of immigrants, and their key role in propelling the economy, will endure.

The boom in immigration caught almost everyone by surprise. In 2019, the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that net immigration — arrivals minus departures — would equal about 1 million in 2023. The actual number, the CBO said in a January update, was more than triple that estimate: 3.3 million.

Thousands of employers desperately needed the new arrivals. The economy — and consumer spending — had roared back from the pandemic recession. Companies were struggling to hire enough workers to keep up with customer orders.

The problem was compounded by demographic changes: The number of native-born Americans in their prime working years — ages 25 to 54 — was dropping because so many of them had aged out of that category and were nearing or entering retirement. This group’s numbers have shrunk by 770,000 since February 2020, just before COVID-19 slammed the economy.

Filling the gap has been a wave of immigrants. Over the past four years, the number of prime-age workers who either have a job or are looking for one has surged by 2.8 million. And nearly all those new labor force entrants — 2.7 million, or 96% of them — were born outside the United States. Immigrants last year accounted for a record 18.6% of the labor force, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of government data.

And employers welcomed the help.

Consider Jan Gautam, CEO of the lodging company Interessant Hotels & Resort Management in Orlando, Florida, who said he can’t find American-born workers to take jobs cleaning rooms and doing laundry in his 44 hotels. Of Interessant’s 3,500 workers, he said, 85% are immigrants.

“Without employees, you are broken,” said Gautam, himself an immigrant from India who started working in restaurants as a dishwasher and now owns his own company.

“If you want boost the economy,” he said, “it definitely needs to have more immigrants coming out to this country.”

Or consider the workforce of the Flood Brothers farm in Maine’s “dairy capital’’ of Clinton. Foreign-born workers make up fully half the farm’s staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk — 18,000 gallons each day.

“We cannot do it without them,” said Jenni Tilton-Flood, a partner in the operation.

For every unemployed person in Maine, after all, there are two job openings, on average.

“We would not have an economy, in Maine or in the U.S. if we did not have highly skilled labor that comes from outside of this country,” Tilton-Flood said in a phone interview with The Associated Press from her farm.

“Without immigrants — both new asylum-seekers as well as our long-term immigrant contributors — we would not be able to do the work that we do,” she said. “Every single thing that affects the American economy is driven by and will only be saved by accepting immigrant labor.”

A study by Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson, economists at the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, has concluded that over the past two years, new immigrants raised the economy’s supply of workers and allowed the United States to generate jobs without overheating and accelerating inflation.

In the past, economists typically estimated that America’s employers could add no more than 60,000 to 100,000 jobs a month without overheating the economy and igniting inflation. But when Edelberg and Watson included the immigration surge in their calculations, they found that monthly job growth could be roughly twice as high this year — 160,000 to 200,000 — without exerting upward pressure on inflation.

“There are significantly more people working in the country,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week in a speech at Stanford University. Largely because of the immigrant influx, Powell said, “it’s a bigger economy but not a tighter one. Really an unexpected and an unusual thing.’’

Trump has repeatedly attacked Biden’s immigration policy over the surge in migrants at the Southern border. Only about 27% of the 3.3 million foreigners who entered the United States last year did so through as “lawful permanent residents’’ or on temporary visas, according to Edelberg and Watson’s analysis. The rest — 2.4 million — either came illegally, overstayed their visas, are awaiting immigration court proceedings or are on a parole program that lets them stay temporarily and sometimes work in the country.

“So there you have it,’’ Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former CBO director who is president of the conservative American Action Forum, wrote in February. “The way to solve an inflation crisis is to endure an immigration crisis.”

Many economists suggest that immigrants benefit the U.S. economy in several ways. They take generally undesirable, low-paying but essential jobs that most U.S.-born Americans won’t, like caring for children, the sick and the elderly. And they can boost the country’s innovation and productivity because they are more likely to start their own businesses and obtain patents.

Ernie Tedeschi, a visiting fellow at Georgetown University’s Psaros Center and a former Biden economic adviser, calculates that the burst of immigration has accounted for about a fifth of the economy’s growth over the past four years.

Critics counter that a surge in immigration can force down pay, particularly for low-income workers, a category that often includes immigrants who have lived in the United States longer. Last month, in the most recent economic report of the president, Biden’s advisers acknowledged that “immigration may place downward pressure on the wages of some low-paid workers” but added that most studies show that the impact on the wages of the U.S.-born is “small.”

Even Edelberg notes that an unexpected wave of immigrants, like the recent one, can overwhelm state and local governments and saddle them with burdensome costs. A more orderly immigration system, she said, would help.

The recent surge “is a somewhat disruptive way of increasing immigration in the United States,” Edelberg said. “I don’t think anybody would have sat down and said: ‘Let’s create optimal immigration policy,’ and this is what they would come up with.”

Holtz-Eakin argued that an immigration cutoff of the kind Trump has vowed to impose, if elected, would result in “much, much slower labor force growth and a return to the sharp tradeoff’’ between containing inflation and maintaining economic growth that the United States has so far managed to avoid.

For now, millions of job vacancies are being filled by immigrants like Mariel Marrero. A political opponent of Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro, Marrero, 32, fled her homeland in 2016 after receiving death threats. She lived in Panama and El Salvador before crossing the U.S. border and applying for asylum.

Her case pending, she received authorization to work in the United States last July. Marrero, who used to work in the archives of the Venezuelan Congress in Caracas, found work selling telephones and then as a sales clerk at a convenience store owned by Venezuelan immigrants.

At first, she lived for free at the house of an uncle. But now she earns enough to pay rent on a two-bedroom house she shares with three other Venezuelans in Doral, Florida, a Miami suburb with a large Venezuelan community. After rent, food, electricity and gasoline, she has enough left over to send $200 a month to her family in Venezuela.

“One hundred percent — this country gives you opportunities,’’ she said.

Marrero has her own American dream:

“I imagine having my own company, my house, helping my family in a more comfortable way.”

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Have a look at some of the numbers, history and lore behind the (not quite) every four year phenom that adds a 29th day to February.

BY THE NUMBERS
The math is mind-boggling in a layperson sort of way and down to fractions of days and minutes. There’s even a leap second occasionally, but there’s no hullabaloo when that happens.

The thing to know is that leap year exists, in large part, to keep the months in sync with annual events, including equinoxes and solstices, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

It’s a correction to counter the fact that Earth’s orbit isn’t precisely 365 days a year. The trip takes about six hours longer than that, NASA says.

Contrary to what some might believe, however, not every four years is a leaper. Adding a leap day every four years would make the calendar longer by more than 44 minutes, according to the National Air & Space Museum.

Later, on a calendar yet to come (we’ll get to it), it was decreed that years divisible by 100 not follow the four-year leap day rule unless they are also divisible by 400, the JPL notes. In the past 500 years, there was no leap day in 1700, 1800 and 1900, but 2000 had one. In the next 500 years, if the practice is followed, there will be no leap day in 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2500.

Still with us?

The next leap years are 2028, 2032 and 2036.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN WITHOUT A LEAP DAY?
Eventually, nothing good in terms of when major events fall, when farmers plant and how seasons align with the sun and the moon.

“Without the leap years, after a few hundred years we will have summer in November,” said Younas Khan, a physics instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Christmas will be in summer. There will be no snow. There will be no feeling of Christmas.”

WHO CAME UP WITH LEAP YEAR?
The short answer: It evolved.

Ancient civilizations used the cosmos to plan their lives, and there are calendars dating back to the Bronze Age. They were based on either the phases of the moon or the sun, as various calendars are today. Usually they were “lunisolar,” using both.

Now hop on over to the Roman Empire and Julius Caesar. He was dealing with major seasonal drift on calendars used in his neck of the woods. They dealt badly with drift by adding months. He was also navigating a vast array of calendars starting in a vast array of ways in the vast Roman Empire.

He introduced his Julian calendar in 46 BCE. It was purely solar and counted a year at 365.25 days, so once every four years an extra day was added. Before that, the Romans counted a year at 355 days, at least for a time.

But still, under Julius, there was drift. There were too many leap years! The solar year isn’t precisely 365.25 days! It’s 365.242 days, said Nick Eakes, an astronomy educator at the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Thomas Palaima, a classics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said adding periods of time to a year to reflect variations in the lunar and solar cycles was done by the ancients. The Athenian calendar, he said, was used in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries with 12 lunar months.

That didn’t work for seasonal religious rites. The drift problem led to “intercalating” an extra month periodically to realign with lunar and solar cycles, Palaima said.

The Julian calendar was 0.0078 days (11 minutes and 14 seconds) longer than the tropical year, so errors in timekeeping still gradually accumulated, according to NASA. But stability increased, Palaima said.

The Julian calendar was the model used by the Western world for hundreds of years. Enter Pope Gregory XIII, who calibrated further. His Gregorian calendar took effect in the late 16th century. It remains in use today and, clearly, isn’t perfect or there would be no need for leap year. But it was a big improvement, reducing drift to mere seconds.

Why did he step in? Well, Easter. It was coming later in the year over time, and he fretted that events related to Easter like the Pentecost might bump up against pagan festivals. The pope wanted Easter to remain in the spring.

He eliminated some extra days accumulated on the Julian calendar and tweaked the rules on leap day. It’s Pope Gregory and his advisers who came up with the really gnarly math on when there should or shouldn’t be a leap year.

“If the solar year was a perfect 365.25 then we wouldn’t have to worry about the tricky math involved,” Eakes said.

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH LEAP YEAR AND MARRIAGE?
Bizarrely, leap day comes with lore about women popping the marriage question to men. It was mostly benign fun, but it came with a bite that reinforced gender roles.

There’s distant European folklore. One story places the idea of women proposing in fifth century Ireland, with St. Bridget appealing to St. Patrick to offer women the chance to ask men to marry them, according to historian Katherine Parkin in a 2012 paper in the Journal of Family History.

Nobody really knows where it all began.

In 1904, syndicated columnist Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, aka Dorothy Dix, summed up the tradition this way: “Of course people will say … that a woman’s leap year prerogative, like most of her liberties, is merely a glittering mockery.”

The pre-Sadie Hawkins tradition, however serious or tongue-in-cheek, could have empowered women but merely perpetuated stereotypes. The proposals were to happen via postcard, but many such cards turned the tables and poked fun at women instead.

Advertising perpetuated the leap year marriage game. A 1916 ad by the American Industrial Bank and Trust Co. read thusly: “This being Leap Year day, we suggest to every girl that she propose to her father to open a savings account in her name in our own bank.”

There was no breath of independence for women due to leap day.

SHOULD WE PITY THE LEAPLINGS?
Being born in a leap year on a leap day certainly is a talking point. But it can be kind of a pain from a paperwork perspective. Some governments and others requiring forms to be filled out and birthdays to be stated stepped in to declare what date was used by leaplings for such things as drivers licenses, whether Feb. 28 or March 1.

Technology has made it far easier for leap babies to jot down their Feb. 29 milestones, though there can be glitches in terms of health systems, insurance policies and with other businesses and organization that don’t have that date built in.

There are about 5 million people worldwide who share the leap birthday out of about 8 billion people on the planet. Shelley Dean, 23, in Seattle, Washington, chooses a rosy attitude about being a leapling. Growing up, she had normal birthday parties each year, but an extra special one when leap years rolled around. Since, as an adult, she marks that non-leap period between Feb. 28 and March 1 with a low-key “whew.”

This year is different.

“It will be the first birthday that I’m going to celebrate with my family in eight years, which is super exciting, because the last leap day I was on the other side of the country in New York for college,” she said. “It’s a very big year.”

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Studies have shown that the strongest tropical storms are getting more intense because of climate change. So the traditional five-category Saffir-Simpson scale, developed more than 50 years ago, may not show the true power of the most muscular storms, two climate scientists suggest in a Monday study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They propose a sixth category for storms with winds that exceed 192 miles per hour (309 kilometers per hour).

Currently, storms with winds of 157 mph (252 kilometers per hour) or higher are Category 5. The study’s authors said that open-ended grouping doesn’t warn people enough about the higher dangers from monstrous storms that flirt with 200 mph (322 kph) or higher.

Several experts told The Associated Press they don’t think another category is necessary. They said it could even give the wrong signal to the public because it’s based on wind speed, while water is by far the deadliest killer in hurricanes.

Since 2013, five storms — all in the Pacific — had winds of 192 mph or higher that would have put them in the new category, with two hitting the Philippines. As the world warms, conditions grow more ripe for such whopper storms, including in the Gulf of Mexico, where many storms that hit the United States get stronger, the study authors said.

“Climate change is making the worst storms worse,” said study lead author Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at the Lawrence Berkley National Lab.

It’s not that there are more storms because of climate change. But the strongest are more intense. The proportion of major hurricanes among all storms is increasing and it’s because of warmer oceans, said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy, who wasn’t part of the research.

From time to time, experts have proposed a Category 6, especially since Typhoon Haiyan reached 195 mph wind speeds (315 kilometers per hour) over the open Pacific. But Haiyan “does not appear to be an isolated case,” the study said.

Storms of sufficient wind speed are called hurricanes if they form east of the international dateline, and typhoons if they form to the west of the line. They’re known as cyclones in the Indian Ocean and Australia.

The five storms that hit 192 mph winds or more are:

— 2013’s Haiyan, which killed more than 6,300 people in the Philippines.

— 2015’s Hurricane Patricia, which hit 215 mph (346 kph) before weakening and hitting Jalisco, Mexico.

— 2016’s Typhoon Meranti, which reached 195 mph before skirting the Philippines and Taiwan and making landfall in China.

— 2020’s Typhoon Goni, which reached 195 mph before killing dozens in the Philippines as a weaker storm.

— 2021’s Typhoon Surigae, which also reached 195 mph before weakening and skirting several parts of Asia and Russia.

If the world sticks with just five storm categories “as these storms get stronger and stronger it will more and more underestimate the potential risk,” said study co-author Jim Kossin, a former NOAA climate and hurricane researcher now with First Street Foundation.

Pacific storms are stronger because there’s less land to weaken them and more room for storms to grow more intense, unlike the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, Kossin said.

So far no Atlantic storm has reached the 192 mph potential threshold, but as the world warms more the environment for such a storm grows more conducive, Kossin and Wehner said.

Wehner said that as temperatures rise, the number of days with conditions ripe for potential Category 6 storms in the Gulf of Mexico will grow. Now it’s about 10 days a year where the environment could be right for a Category 6, but that could go up to a month if the globe heats to 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. That would make an Atlantic Category 6 much more likely.

MIT hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel said Wehner and Kossin “make a strong case for changing the scale,” but said it’s unlikely to happen because authorities know most hurricane damage comes from storm surge and other flooding.

Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, said when warning people about storms his office tries “to steer the focus toward the individual hazards, which include storm surge, wind, rainfall, tornadoes and rip currents, instead of the particular category of the storm, which only provides information about the hazard from wind. Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale already captures ‘catastrophic damage’ from wind so it’s not clear there would be a need for another category even if the storms were to get stronger.”

McNoldy, former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate, and University of Albany atmospheric sciences professor Kristen Corbosiero all say they don’t see the necessity for a sixth and stronger storm category.

“Perhaps I’ll change my tune when a rapidly intensifying storm in the Gulf achieves a Category 6,” Corbosiero said in an email.

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Myriad baseless rumors emerged on social media — everything from claims that Swift has played a part in Pentagon psychological operations to the idea that she and her two-time Super Bowl champion boyfriend are key assets in a secret plot to help President Joe Biden get reelected in 2024. Another variant: That the Chiefs’ success was rigged as part of the plan for the game on Feb. 11 in Las Vegas.

Political and media figures on the right, including former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, political activist Laura Loomer and One America News Network host Alison Steinberg, have amplified the allegations.

The claims are ludicrous and may well reflect the fear on the right that someone as famous as Swift, whose landmark Eras Tour is the first tour to cross the billion-dollar mark, could indeed influence the presidential race should she urge her legion of fans in one direction.

Pop culture and politics have long been entwined. The entertainment industry has been a deep well of political contributions. And candidates often try to draft on the celebrity of stars to add to their own allure.

The potency of the impact is less clear. In Swift’s case, there is some proof that she can at minimum generate more voter registration.

In September, Swift posted a short message on her Instagram account encouraging her 272 million followers to register to vote. The post led to more than 35,000 registrations on the nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org.

Swift’s massive fan base gives her a powerful voice. An SSRS poll conducted in October 2023 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults called themselves at least casual fans of the singer, with 8% saying they’re big fans. The poll also found that 8 in 10 U.S. adults said they had heard of her relationship with Kelce and the majority of those familiar with it considered it a real relationship, rather than a publicity stunt.

“Pop culture people identify with this stuff, they pay attention to it. And that’s what moves politics now. It’s attention and identity,” Joel Penney, an associate professor at Montclair State University whose research includes the intersection of politics and pop culture, said. Indeed, Donald Trump’s improbable march to the presidency in 2016 was propelled in part from the celebrity he gained as a reality television star.

But the false claims about Swift are of such an extreme nature that they will test the limits of how potent a conspiracy theory can be. Penney sees the recent deluge of posts aimed at Swift as an attempt to preemptively blunt her impact by discrediting her.

Penney said Swift’s influence could prove a difficult force to contend with, especially if she publicly supports Biden, as she did in the 2020 race.

The attacks on Swift could also galvanize young voters who want to rally around her.

“Young people are fighting their political battles through a language drawn from pop culture,” said Henry Jenkins, a professor at the University of Southern California who also studies politics and pop culture. “That’s what connects them. That’s what they’re engaged with.”

Both Swift and Kelce have made public statements about politics and other issues that put them at odds with the far-right.

Swift broke her long-standing refusal to discuss her political views in 2018 when she announced in an Instagram post that she would be voting for Tennessee’s Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen and Democratic House incumbent Rep. Jim Cooper. She also slammed then-U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican candidate, citing Blackburn’s opposition to certain LGBTQ+ rights and her vote against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2013. Blackburn won election to the Senate.

In 2020, Swift endorsed Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in an interview with V Magazine, noting that “under their leadership, I believe America has a chance to start the healing process it so desperately needs.”

Kelce faced criticism in September for appearing in an ad promoting the double dose of the flu and COVID-19 vaccines, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The ad was part of a partnership with Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company that developed a vaccine in response to the pandemic and has since become a common mark for anti-vaccine activists and conspiracy theorists.

Pop culture figures and the industry that surround them have been enmeshed in political campaigns long before the duo some fans refer to as Swelce. Former President Bill Clinton first appeared on MTV during his 1992 campaign while he was still governor of Arkansas. Major stars including Johnny Cash, Mary Tyler Moore and Willie Nelson endorsed former President Jimmy Carter more than 40 years ago when he made his second run for the White House. Ronald Reagan got his start in politics after a career as an actor.

“That question of, does this stuff work in pop culture? It absolutely can,” Penney said. “And it does. And history has shown that.”

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But belief in conspiracy theories isn’t new and it’s quite common, according to decades of surveys.

Psychologists say conspiracy theories survive because humans have a basic need to explain the world around them.

When something challenges people’s understanding, they sometimes fill in the blanks with their best guesses. Or in times of uncertainty, they seek out voices of those who claim to know what’s going on — and that may provide some comfort.

Consider conspiracies about vaccines containing microchips. Such conspiracies speak to concerns about the pace of technology. They gained a lot of traction at an especially uncertain and frightening time, during COVID-19 lockdowns.

These theories can make believers feel like they have insider information about what’s really going on, even if that’s not backed up by facts.

The internet has made it much easier to find and spread these falsehoods. Many websites and personalities have embraced conspiracy theories to home in on that natural human need to attract audiences.

And with so much information online, it’s hard to know what and whom to trust.

The Associated Press undertook an examination of conspiracy theories, speaking to experts in psychology, to people who believe in such theories today and to people who consider themselves reformed theorists.

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Strikingly, the flare-up of debate in Catholic ranks coincides with developments in two other international Christian denominations — the global Anglican Communion and the United Methodist Church — that are fracturing over differences in LGBTQ-related policies.

Taken together, it’s a dramatic illustration of how – in a religion that stresses God’s love for humanity – divisions over marriage, sexuality, and inclusion of gays and lesbians are proving insurmountable for the foreseeable future in many sectors of Christianity.

Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University and pastor of an American Baptist church, says it’s become increasingly difficult for Christian denominations to fully accommodate clergy and congregations with opposing views on same-sex relationships, particularly as such marriages have become legal in much of Europe and the Western Hemisphere.

“A lot of denominations are in the position where you have to make a decision — you can’t be wishy-washy anymore,” said Burge, a specialist in religious demographics. “That’s the tension they’re facing: how to keep older conservatives in the fold while attracting younger people.”

For global denominations — notably Catholics, Anglicans and United Methodists — Burge sees another source of tension: Some of their biggest growth in recent decades has been in socially conservative African countries where same-sex relationships are taboo.

“African bishops have this ammunition,” Burge said. “They say to the West, ‘We’re the ones growing. You have the money, we have the numbers.’”

Kim Haines-Eitzen, a professor of religious studies at Cornell University, said Christianity — throughout its history — has been divided over differing theological views, such as whether women could be ordained as clergy.

“Christianity is incredibly diverse — globally, theologically, linguistically, culturally,” she said. “There are bound to be these incredibly divisive issues, especially when bound up in scriptural interpretation. That’s what keeps world religions alive — that kind of push and pull.”

ANGST AMONG ANGLICANS
Among Christian denominations, the Anglican Communion is second only to the Catholic Church in geographic spread. Divisions over marriage, sexuality and LGBTQ inclusion have roiled the communion for many years, and they widened Dec. 17, when Church of England priests offered officially sanctioned blessings of same-sex partnerships for the first time.

The Church of England’s ban on church weddings for gay couples remains, but the decision to allow blessings has infuriated several conservative Anglican bishops from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific.

Caught in the middle is the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby — the top bishop of the Church of England and ceremonial leader of the Anglican Communion.

Welby says he won’t personally bless same-sex couples because it’s his job to unify the world’s 85 million Anglicans. That hasn’t appeased some conservative bishops, who say they no longer recognize Welby as their leader.

The decision to allow blessings of same-sex couples followed five years of discussions about church positions on sexuality. Church leaders apologized for a failure to welcome LGBTQ people but also affirmed the doctrine that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

“What we have proposed as a way forward does not go nearly far enough for many, but too far for others,” said Sarah Mullally, bishop of London.

UNITED METHODIST SEPARATION
A slow-motion breakup is underway in the United Methodist Church. A few years ago, it was the third-largest denomination in the United States, but a quarter of U.S. congregations have recently received permission to leave over disputes involving LGBTQ-related policies.

Of the more than 7,650 departing churches, most are conservative-leaning congregations responding to what they see as a failure to enforce bans on same-sex marriage and the ordaining of openly LGBTQ people.

There’s no firm estimate of how many members are leaving, as some who belong to departing congregations are joining other UMC churches. But UMC officials are preparing to cut denominational agencies’ budgets in anticipation of lower revenues from church offerings.

United Methodist rules forbid same-sex marriage rites and the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals,” but progressive Methodist churches in the U.S. have increasingly defied these rules.

Conservatives have mobilized like-minded congregations to exit; many are joining the new Global Methodist Church, which intends to enforce such rules.

More than half of United Methodist members are overseas, many in conservative African churches. When UMC delegates meet this spring, they’re expected to debate proposals to liberalize ordination and marriage policies, and make it easier for overseas churches to leave.

SPLITS IN OTHER PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS
Presaging the UMC schism, several other mainline Protestant denominations over the past two decades endured splits resulting from irreconcilable differences between supporters and opponents of LGBTQ inclusion. For example, after the Episcopal Church ordained an openly gay bishop in 2003, some dioceses and conservatives formed the Anglican Church in North America.

Similar liberal/conservative differences prompted hundreds of congregations to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) after they embraced LGBTQ-inclusive policies.

Some conservative denominations — such as the Southern Baptist Convention and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — have adhered firmly to policies that reject recognition of same-sex relationships and ordination of openly LGBTQ people. These policies have prompted departures, but no major schism.

Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptists’ public policy commission, reiterated the SBC’s position in a statement asserting that the Vatican — under Pope Francis — “has been on a trajectory that seems destined for the allowance of same-sex marriage.”

“The reality is marriage has been defined by God … It is a union between one man and one woman for life,” Leatherwood said. “Southern Baptists remain anchored in this truth.”

ORTHODOX CHURCH DISAPPROVAL
The world’s second-largest Christian communion, after the Catholic Church, is the Eastern Orthodox Church, with an estimated 220 million members, concentrated mostly in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. To a large extent, Orthodox Christians disapprove of same-sex marriage and relationships.

In Greece, where the government is pledging to legalize same-sex marriage, the Orthodox Church has expressed strong opposition.

Russia’s Orthodox Church has supported tough anti-LGBTQ legislation enacted with the support of President Vladimir Putin.

NON-CHRISTIAN FAITHS
Debate over LGBTQ inclusion hasn’t been as divisive in the world’s other major religions as in Christianity.

In the Muslim world, there’s widespread disapproval of same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage; many Muslim nations criminalize homosexuality. However, some LGBTQ-inclusive mosques have surfaced in North America and other places.

Among Jews around the world, there are varying approaches to LGBTQ issues, but relatively little high-profile rancor. Orthodox Judaism disapproves of same-sex marriage and sexual relations, while they’re widely accepted in the Reform and Conservative branches.

In Hinduism and Buddhism, there is no universal, official position on same-sex marriage. Many practitioners of the two faiths disapprove of such unions; some communities are more accepting.

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Even in 2009, $7.25 was not a lot of money. But in 2024, paying someone $7.25 for an hour of labor is deeply exploitative. A full-time employee working 52 weeks per year will earn just $15,080, well below the poverty line for a family of any size. The real value of the minimum wage is 40% lower than it was in 1970. This is the longest period without an increase since the federal minimum wage was established in 1938. If the minimum wage had kept pace with worker productivity gains since 1968 — when the value of the minimum wage peaked — it would have reached $23 per hour by 2021.

While some states have adopted higher minimum wages, there are still 20 states where the federal minimum applies. While inflation and a tight labor market have made it harder for employers to hire at the federal minimum, there were still 141,000 people who earned $7.25 per hour in 2022. Hundreds of thousands more report being paid below the minimum. (There are exceptions to the minimum wage for “workers with disabilities, full-time students, youth under age 20 in their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment,” and others.) While some people assume the typical minimum wage worker is a teenager working part-time, the majority of minimum wage workers are full-time workers over the age of 25.

Raising the minimum wage to $15 would not only benefit workers currently making less than $15, but also many workers earning more than $15. Overall, 40 million workers would benefit from a federal minimum wage increase to $15 — about 25% of the total workforce. According to the Congressional Budget Office, a $15 minimum wage would lift nearly 1 million people out of poverty.

New research shows that increasing the minimum wage does not result in job losses. A September 2023 study published by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment looked at McDonald’s workers in 47 large counties that established a minimum wage of $15 or more by the beginning of 2022. The study found that “the near-doubling of the minimum wage” in these counties actually resulted in “positive employment effects.” The researchers attributed this to “reduced employee separation rates” because workers were more satisfied with their jobs.

Increasing the minimum wage is politically popular, with about two-thirds of Americans supporting an increase to $15 per hour. But repeated efforts to increase the federal minimum wage over the last 15 years have all failed. Powerful lobbying groups have convinced members of Congress to put corporate interests over the will of their constituents.

Corporations for exploitative wages

The staunchest resistance to minimum wage increases has often come from Corporate America. In 2021, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – a group that represents virtually every major American corporation – publicly opposed the $15 minimum wage hike, arguing that the “mandate does not reflect a data-driven approach.” Neil Bradley, the executive vice president and chief policy officer of the Chamber, said that “there’s nothing sensible about $15.” The trade group claims it is open to raising the minimum wage in a “thoughtful approach.” But it maintains that a $15 minimum wage is “politically motivated.”

“There’s no reason Congress shouldn’t discuss raising the minimum wage, we just think that the $15 number is a political number that’s not based on a real economic analysis,” Glenn Spencer, the senior vice president of the employment policy division at the Chamber, said.

The National Restaurant Association (NRA) is another fierce opponent of wage increases. As the largest trade group for the food service industry, representing fast-food chains and restaurant operators like McDonald’s and Darden Restaurants, the NRA spends millions at both the federal and state level to block paid sick leave and higher minimum wages. In 2021, the NRA claimed that raising the minimum wage to $15 would “lead to dramatic job cuts,” “hurt small and independent businesses,” and “trigger higher consumer costs,” among other things. Previously, the group has been affiliated with the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council.

Most recently, a 2023 New York Times investigation found that the NRA was using food safety classes to fundraise for its legislative efforts. Known as ServSafe, the training program is completed by millions of restaurant workers nationwide, who pay “around $15” to take the class. The NRA acquired the program in 2007 and then “helped lobby states to mandate the kind of training they already provided — producing a flood of paying customers.” Since 2010, “[m]ore than 3.6 million workers have taken this training, providing about $25 million in revenue” to the NRA, the Times reported.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has also been vocal against minimum wage increases. The group, which claims to stand up for small businesses, says it “strongly opposes” a $15 per hour minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage to $15, the NFIB claims, would result in “extraordinary damage” and “harmful consequences.” In response, the group says that it’s “ramping up grassroots efforts against current minimum wage hike proposals” and boasts that it has “a track record of defeating federal minimum wage hike efforts.”

Why tipped workers still make $2.13 an hour

The federal minimum wage for workers who receive tips is just $2.13 per hour and was last raised in 1991. The Department of Labor defines a tipped employee as someone who “customarily and regularly receives more than $30 per month in tips.” While the federal tipped minimum wage used to be tied to the federal minimum wage, and was “always at least half [the minimum wage] at the federal level,” in 1996, the NRA succeeded in having the two separated. Since then, it has never been increased.

The federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 per hour is the standard in 16 states. An additional 26 states and the District of Columbia require that employers pay tipped workers a wage higher than $2.13, but still lower than the state’s minimum wage. Only eight states have stopped using the tipped wage, including Alaska, California, Minnesota, and Nevada. In 2022, the New York Times reported that at least 5.5 million workers are estimated to be paid a tipped minimum wage.

Despite the fact that employers of tipped minimum wage workers are required to pay their employees the difference if their salary and tips do not amount to the full minimum wage, the law is often not enforced. A survey conducted by the Department of Labor between 2010 and 2012 of 9,000 full-service restaurants found that “84 percent had violated the subminimum wage system.”

The tipped minimum wage is rooted in racism. Wealthy Americans who traveled to Europe discovered the practice of tipping in the 1850s and 1860s, but most Americans resisted the custom, “deeming it both inherently condescending and classist.” Tipping was not popularized in the United States until after the Civil War, when newly emancipated Black people were hired in restaurant and hospitality jobs, and employers wanted to avoid paying them. According to the Shriver Center on Poverty Law, “tipping was introduced as a way to exploit the labor of former slaves.”

The tipped minimum wage continues to enable the exploitation of workers and disproportionately affects people of color. According to a 2018 report published by the Leadership Conference Education Fund and Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, “[a]lmost 40 percent of people who work for tips are people of color.” An Economic Policy Institute report found that, in 2014, 27.1 percent of Black workers in the restaurant industry lived in poverty, compared to 13.9 percent of white restaurant workers. Studies have also shown that customers tend to discriminate against Black servers and give them lower tips than white servers, even if the quality of the service is the same.

Tipped minimum wage workers are also commonly victims of sexual harassment. A study conducted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported that “1 in 7 sexual harassment charges between 2005 and 2015 were brought by food service and accommodation workers.”

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This article is a contribution of Popular Information, an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism. It was first published on Substack.

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