Halloween merchandise hit some stores before the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving items were in already stores in August.

Given that it’s mid-September, retailers are rolling out products for the next winter big holiday: Christmas.

On Tuesday, Target launched a four-pronged approach to its holiday shopping experience.

Prong one: new items. Target is debuting more than 20,000 new items for holiday shoppers, many priced at $5 and most priced under $20. In a news release, the chain announced that is selling twice as many holiday items as last year, and more than half of those are Target exclusives.

Among the items for sale this year, the store highlighted pop-culture collaborations (“Stranger Things,” “Wicked: For Good”), as well as fashion, beauty gifts, Wondershop brand holiday decor and hundreds of exclusive toys.

Prong two: discounts. From Oct. 5 to 11, the store will have its “Target Circle Week” sale, and then it will kick off a series of weekly sales with prices discounted by up to half, starting Nov. 1. Its “Circle Week” sales are for the store’s membership program, which is free to join. Look for discounts on “everyday essentials, fall style picks and holiday gifts,” a news release said. To see what’s on sale, head to its deals page: target.com/c/deals/-/N-atb3q.

One note: Target’s Circle Week overlaps with Amazon’s fall Prime Big Deal Days sale, scheduled for Oct. 7 and 8. So keep an eye out for other sales that week, as more retailers try to compete for your holiday bucks.

Prong three: fast delivery. The chain is rolling out next-day delivery over the coming weeks. San Diego County’s 28 Target stores are behind those in San Francisco and Los Angeles in this respect. Those cities already have next-day delivery. But a silver lining: San Diego is one of only 35 markets getting this next-day delivery service.

Next-day delivery is free for orders over $35 for shoppers who are not part of the store’s loyalty club. For Target Circle 360 members, a paid membership program, or for purchases made using a Target Circle Card, there is no minimum order amount.

Prong four: hiring seasonal workers. “To support its current team, the retailer will hire seasonal staff, offering competitive pay and benefits, flexible scheduling and more,” the news release said. Beginning Sept. 24, visit targetseasonaljobs.com to apply for seasonal positions in all 50 states across Target stores and supply chain facilities.

Sarah Tang and Regeant Panday were following what many consider the path to the American Dream: college, marriage, house, kids. Tang’s parents followed that formula. Her dad pushed her to do the same. 

“You need to buy a house to grow up,” Tang remembered thinking.

The couple decided to forgo a more expensive wedding and reception, opting instead for City Hall nuptials and a small dinner with friends. With savings and some family help, the millennial couple pieced together the roughly $110,000 needed for a down payment last summer on a three-bedroom Bridgeport home.

While Tang, 31, and Panday, 38, were able to achieve homeownership, it has left them “house poor”: spending an outsized portion of their income on homeownership. As a result, they’ve had to make sacrifices. They delayed buying a car. They cut back on dining out. They limit their grocery spending, shopping primarily at Aldi, a chain known for its low prices. 

Despite the austerity measures, the crushing weight of rising housing costs has forced them to press pause on their plans to have kids.

“Ideally having children is a joyous thing where you have a partner and decide you want to grow your family,” Tang said. “But the financial piece is going to be a backstop to diving into that with less anxiety.”

“The American Dream, as much as it is an illusion, it feels unrelenting.”

Home prices and mortgage rates have risen in recent years since the booming COVID-19 pandemic real estate market came to a halt, a phenomenon that has been well documented. As a result, many young Americans have been shut out of the market.

Yet, the costs associated with owning a home — insurance, property taxes, maintenance, utilities — are also surging, causing couples like Tang and Panday to feel further disconnected from the lives they envisioned.

“When people are spending more of their money on housing expenses, they have less money to spend on other items,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “When housing becomes too expensive, it does have a negative effect on local economics and the national economy as a whole.”

President Donald Trump made affordable housing a key part of his campaign. He pledged to bring about lower mortgage rates, to open federal land for housing construction and to ease building regulations.

Seven months into his presidency, his administration has paused efforts to preserve affordable housing redevelopments nationwide. Mortgage rates remain elevated. Provisions to sell federal land were removed from his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has rolled back fair housing protections the agency said were stalling development — protections advocates say will decrease housing opportunities for Americans.

On top of that, Trump’s trade wars continue, which could increase housing costs. Although the rental and for-sale housing markets in Chicago and Illinois as a whole remain more affordable than many coastal cities, such as New York and Los Angeles, and some other states, Illinois still faces a severe housing shortage that is escalating affordability challenges.

Meanwhile, the dialogue around the country’s declining birth rate and how to fix it has ramped up since Trump took office. Trump has dubbed himself the “fertilization president.” Vice President JD Vance has referred to Democrats as “a bunch of childless cat ladies” and has said “we have to go to war against the anti-child ideology” in the United States.

But couples like Tang and Panday who want to have children say it doesn’t make financial sense for them right now. Their housing costs amount to about $4,000 a month, which includes their mortgage payments with an interest rate of 6.575%, property taxes, insurance and utilities. That does not count the surprise maintenance costs.

“Kids deserve to be taken care of well. No one should really struggle or go into debt to just make things work,” Tang said.

Bills, bills, bills

In a home filled with vegetarian cookbooks, verdant plants and two cats named Kaali (a Hindu goddess of destruction) and Aloo (potatoes in Nepalese), Tang and Panday started their second year of marriage.

Tang and Panday’s brick single-family home is wedged between two small multifamily buildings, sitting slightly back from the street on a quiet block. Behind a black iron gate, the door is marked with a wreath, and a cat sometimes lurks in the window. 

Inside, the house is mostly furnished with items courtesy of Facebook Marketplace — the couple are avid users, “a little addicted even” to the platform, Tang said. She calls their design scheme “very typical millennial.” 

Sarah Tang and Regeant Panday share space with their cats Kaali and Aloo, as they eat dinner at their Bridgeport neighborhood home in Chicago on July 17, 2025. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Tang, a nonprofit worker, and Panday, a biotech startup employee, have lived together for five out of the seven years of their relationship. The two met through a dating app in 2018 after they both ended up in Chicago.

They decided to buy a home because they said they were ready to stop moving around, invest in a community and get involved in local issues. Panday had finished his doctorate in biomedical engineering and had a newer full-time job with higher earnings; Tang had been in the workforce for nine years. They landed on Bridgeport partially for commuting purposes — Tang works in Chinatown and Panday works in Fulton Market.

The pair initially considered their house out of budget but quickly realized their ceiling of $450,000 was unrealistic for the neighborhood, especially when housing inventory was so low and homes for sale were receiving multiple offers. It was also a turnkey property, whereas cheaper homes on the market would have required renovations.

The property checked their boxes: ground-floor second bedroom for when their parents come to visit; room to grow their family and for hosting out-of-town guests; a backyard and garage.

So they put in a bid for $505,000, a bit below the asking price. They lost out. After a few months of house hunting, they were disappointed. 

A week later, Tang got a call at work that the initial deal had fallen through. They were asked to rebid. They went with the asking price this time: $520,000. It worked.

“You finally got the thing you set out to want and then you get it. It was a little daunting for sure,” Tang said.

They soon began to feel the ups and downs of being new homeowners.

They didn’t use their backyard for two months because they said they weren’t accustomed to having outdoor space and then remembered to take advantage of it. 

They had people over for dinner and hosted out-of-town guests.

Their insurance was initially quoted $900 lower than where their costs ended up because while the home listing said it was 100% brick, insurance marked their house as mixed material.

They discovered the house has two electric panels, one for the house and one for the garage. Two panels means two delivery fees from ComEd. Their garage electric delivery fee is around $22 for a bill of $4 otherwise. 

The biggest challenge: The house was built around 1890, and it shows through their energy bills.

The couple’s gas bill soared to over $220 in the winter and dropped to $50 in the summer. Their summer electricity bill hit $190 last month, as the air conditioning was constantly running even with the temperature set at 78 degrees. The house easily allows the heat and cold to seep in. They rely on space heaters and open windows. When renting, Tang said their winter gas bills hovered around $120. 

They spent $3,500 on insulation in an effort to address the heating and cooling issues, but it “barely changed anything,” Tang said.

Homeownership expenses — including typical monthly mortgage payments, homeowners and mortgage insurance and property taxes — accounted for 29.2% of the average income earned by a Cook County resident as of the middle of this year, up from the 23.2% historical average based on data collected between 2005 to 2025, according to ATTOM, a national property data provider.

That is lower than the 33.7% national average and slightly higher than the 28% typically recommended by mortgage lenders, the data shows.

For the average Chicago resident, 42% of their mortgage payment is for expenses such as property taxes and insurance, marking it the fourth-highest share in major markets across the country, according to Andy Walden, head of mortgage and housing market research for Intercontinental Exchange, a data and financial technology firm. This is in large part, he said, because of property taxes.

“Now we are a little bit romanticizing the renting days,” Tang said.

Surprise damages 

Van and Lucia Nguyen met Tang and Panday through mutual friends around 2019 and bonded over their affinity for camping. 

The Nguyens, both first-generation Americans and native Chicagoans, also bought a home in recent years: a three-bedroom, 1922-built Chicago bungalow in West Ridge. They needed more space after they got an 80-pound dog named Lupita during the pandemic. 

The couple bought before mortgage rates shot up, in 2021, enabling them to land a 2.85% rate, well below what Tang and Panday secured three years later. The house, which Van Nguyen views as a starter home, sold for the asking price of $390,000 and their monthly costs — including mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance, utilities — are about $2,800.

Van Nguyen, left, mows the lawn while Lucia Nguyen weeds at their home in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood on Aug. 30, 2025. The couple, who both grew up in the Chicago area, were married and closed on their house in 2021. Despite the rising cost of homeownership, the Nguyens desire to move on with growing their family. (Dominic Di Palermo/ Chicago Tribune)

When closing on the house, the Nguyens were able to get $12,000 in closing cost credits since an inspector had noted the roof would likely need replacing.

That day came sooner than expected. When the first big storm hit two months after they closed on the house, Van Nguyen went up to the attic and heard drip-drops. The couple wound up spending around $14,000 on a new roof that fall.

The following spring, another storm hit and their basement flooded. Luckily, the couple had purchased insurance for this type of damage.

They spent $25,000 out of pocket before their insurance reimbursed them for the full amount. Van Nguyen borrowed the money from a sibling, he said, and if not for that, the couple would have delayed the repairs and temporarily moved out.

Even with the reimbursement, the Nguyens hit their insurance policy limit and could not afford to replace everything in their basement. 

The premium on their insurance policy, which is through State Farm, went up 18%. Van Nguyen, who used to work in information technology at Allstate, shopped around for policies about three times in the last four years, he said, and still hasn’t found anything better. 

Nearly 11% of single-family mortgage holders in Chicago switched insurance providers between 2023 and 2024, up three percentage points from 2022, the highest turnover rate in the more than 10 years of data available from Intercontinental Exchange.

Those Chicagoans who switched providers, on average, found slightly better rates elsewhere, paying 1% less than those who stayed with their existing providers, according to Walden of Intercontinental Exchange. Property insurance costs in Chicago rose by 15% — $275 annually — in 2024, Walden said, a tick up from the 14% increase seen nationwide. Over the past five years, Chicago’s single-family homeowners have seen a 60% average jump — $799 annually.

Van and Lucia Nguyen weed the backyard of their home in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood on Aug. 30, 2025. (Dominic Di Palermo/ Chicago Tribune)

Unlike Tang and Panday, the Nguyens are still able to save money and are moving ahead with their plans to have kids. They have family nearby to help and more flexibility with their remote jobs. Even with the “chaos of the world,” Van Nguyen said, he feels confident in their decision, especially as his wife gets older. Van and Lucia Nguyen are both 36.

He can’t imagine selling his house right now. He does not think renting would be cheaper. The only option, he said, would be moving to a state with lower taxes, but he does not want to do that. “The politics don’t line up,” he said. And he would have to move his aging mother, whom he supports financially.

Home

Tang grew up in Hong Kong and Panday in Nepal, both moving to the United States for college.

Prior to Bridgeport, they lived together in a three-floor walk-up in Pilsen with no dishwasher or kitchen counter space and laundry in the basement. They noticed Chicago rent prices blowing up and thought they could get more bang for their buck buying a house, even with the extraneous costs. They are still happy with their decision to buy a home.

“We came here for school and moved around a lot so it’s kind of like you’re living a nomadic life,” Panday said. “Being able to call something your home gives us a sense of stability.”

“I think Chicago … this is where we want to be and we want to build our life, and we have been doing that for a long time. Being able to have our house does mean we aren’t going anywhere for a while,” Tang said. 

“Fingers crossed,” Panday chimed in, laughing.

Regeant Panday walks through his Bridgeport neighborhood home in Chicago on July 17, 2025. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Tang and Panday say they feel a sense of guilt about sharing their housing woes — especially with their friends who are renters. They think to themselves: At least we own a home, right? 

“It’s been difficult adjusting,” Tang said. “It’s been a year, and I don’t think we have gotten to the level of being able to save progressively again. I don’t see that happening for a while.”

Knowing their property taxes are based on reassessments that happen every three years and watching inflation outpace their incomes, they say it is difficult to predict when the money won’t be as tight and they’ll be able to start a family. For Panday, a higher-paying job would be much farther outside the city, he said. Tang is witnessing funding cuts in the nonprofit world.

Tang envisioned starting a family before 35. She and Panday are aware of their biological clocks.

But as long as they aren’t saving money, the kids will have to wait.

ekane@chicagotribune.com 

By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed a first-of-its-kind law that lets anyone sue prescribers and others responsible for getting abortion pills into the state.

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Supporters are heralding the law, which Abbott signed Wednesday, as a way to enforce an existing ban. Abortion-rights advocates are bashing the law, saying it has the potential to turn abortion opponents, aggrieved former lovers and others into bounty hunters.

But it doesn’t mean that organizations will stop sending pills into Texas.

Angel Foster, who runs Massachusetts-based The MAP, which prescribes the regimen of pills to women in every state, said her organization will keep sending pills to women in Texas, as it has about 10,000 times in the past two years.

“We really don’t change things unless we’re legally required to,” she said.

Rebecca Nall, the founder of I Need an A, which runs a website with abortion access information, suggested other providers also won’t change.

“We’re confident people in Texas (and every state) will still be able to get abortion pills by mail,” she said in an email.

Pills are at the heart of a new generation of abortion lawsuits

The majority of abortions in the U.S. employ pills, usually a combination of the drugs misoprostol and mifepristone.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and allowed states to enforce abortion bans, the method has moved to the center of the latest legal and political battles.

At least eight Democratic-controlled states have adopted shield laws that seek to protect medical professionals in their borders who prescribe the pills via telehealth and send them to patients in states where abortion or telehealth pill prescriptions are banned.

Those prescriptions are a key reason that the number of abortions has not fallen despite 12 states enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four more barring it after about six weeks of gestation.

The Texas law allows $100,000 claims against prescribers and others

The Texas law, which is to take effect in three months, builds on an approach the state used when it implemented an earlier abortion ban: leaving enforcement to private people filing lawsuits rather than the government.

Under this measure, anyone could file a claim for $100,000 against people who cause the pills to be sent to Texas.

If a pregnant woman, the man who impregnated her or other close relatives sue successfully, they could be entitled to collect the entire $100,000. Others who sue would be in line for $10,000 — with the other $90,000 going to charity.

The law also answers a provision of shield laws that allows protected prescribers to sue those who sue them. The Texas law says that would not apply for the civil suits that originate there.

One provider says her group won’t be deterred

The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, which provides legal and other support for abortion pill prescribers, is telling members that the shield laws should protect them from civil suits from Texas, said McKensey Smith, the group’s deputy director.

Texas, the nation’s second most populous state, accounts for about one-third of the pills The MAP prescribes.

Foster said that she expects other prescribers to keep sending the pills to Texas, too.

She still anticipates the law will have an impact: Women seeking abortion in Texas could stop telling others that they are planning to seek pills from out-of-state providers lest those confidants use the information to launch lawsuits.

“One of the effects will be to isolate abortion patients in Texas,” Foster said.

Pill access is facing other court challenges

Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, said she expects that people sued under the Texas law will make their own court claims, arguing that it is not enforceable.

“The drug manufacturers and the providers are all willing to take the risk that the shield laws will protect them,” she said.

She said the result could be individual court decisions on whether the Texas law applies in certain circumstances rather than one sweeping ruling.

Those suits won’t be the first legal test around abortion pills, though.

Last month, Texas and Florida asked a court if they could join a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Idaho, Kansas and Missouri that seeks to have some federal approvals for mifepristone rolled back — and possibly blocking telehealth prescriptions for it.

And a New York doctor accused of shipping pills out of state faces two legal actions: criminal charges in Louisiana and a civil judgment in Texas. New York officials are refusing to extradite her or to enforce the judgment.

By THALIA BEATY

NEW YORK (AP) — Open Society Foundations, the family philanthropy of hedge fund billionaire George Soros, has consistently been one of the largest funders of human rights organizations around the world. But what that means has changed in recent years, with a new focus on addressing inequality.

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“It’s about paying attention to how inequality is a deep, deep corrosive instrument to democracy,” Leonard Benardo, senior vice president at OSF, told The Associated Press at the foundations’ offices in New York.

The transformation follows four years of internal upheaval, more than a year of new program selection and a generational leadership change. In some ways, the new emphasis reflects the foundations’ commitment to rethinking and reimagining its work, based on Soros’ own view that in open societies, no person or institution has a monopoly on the truth.

Leaders at the foundations said they remain committed to supporting key parts of the human rights ecosystem. They now provide long term, unrestricted funding to human rights organizations as part of what they call “network grants.” One new program focuses on protecting human rights defenders, especially those that advocate against environmental destruction.

Another constant, Benardo said, is the foundations’ commitment to acting as a “political philanthropy.”

“George Soros and Alex Soros see this place as a political philanthropy and that means a more active participation in questions over power,” said Benardo. Alex Soros, one of George’s sons, took over leading OSF in late 2022.

The foundations, along with its founder, have long drawn the ire of powerful leaders and right-wing movements and recently have been targeted again by President Donald Trump and his administration.

FILE – Alex Soros, left, on behalf of his father George Soros, in the East Room of the White House, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

For decades, it seemed that OSF’s movement for more open societies was proceeding well, Benardo said, as newly independent former Soviet states turned toward some form of democracy. Now, that tide has reversed course, with the rise of authoritarianism.

“It’s forced us to grapple with the limits of what we can achieve and the ways in which we go about it,” Benardo said.

OSF also says it’s increased its support to African countries and the Global South in general, but did not provide specific figures. In 2023, the most recent year funding data appears on its website, OSF said it granted out $125.5 million through its Africa programs.

The foundations have not determined what programming will continue in Europe, but insist that they have not abandoned the continent. Emily Tamkin, author of the book “The Influence of Soros,” said this wouldn’t be the first time OSF has moved away from Europe, if that is what they are doing. After a large group of Central European countries joined the European Union in 2004, the foundations also signaled that they would turn their focus elsewhere.

“It would be new in that they’re pulling away from Europe at a time when the values that they have sought to promote in Europe are on pretty clearly shaky ground,” Tamkin said.

Conspiracies about Soros overshadow the foundations’ actual impact

George Soros has long had a reputation for influencing events around the world, through his financial investments, his political donations and his philanthropy. But right-wing leaders have also found it very convenient to blame Soros for things he didn’t do, Tamkin said.

In August, Trump accused the Soroses of funding violent protest in the U.S. and said they should face racketeering charges.

“We’re not going to allow these lunatics to rip apart America any more,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial. He renewed that call after the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week.

OSF said the accusations were “outrageous and false,” and that its mission “is to advance human rights, justice, and democratic principles at home and around the world.”

Author and publisher Anna Porter, who interviewed Soros for her book, “Buying a Better World: George Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy,” said it’s useful for people in power to have a boogeyman to blame. But it’s not actually true that the Soros is secretly fomenting social chaos.

“There’s no nefarious hidden agenda because Soros has always been very open about putting his money where his ideas are (that) he’s openly supporting,” Porter said.

Many recipients of OSF’s funding highly valued the support, which was often more flexible than grants from other funders. The foundations staff, which has shrunk to 500 from a high of 1,700 before 2021, provided expertise, connections and coaching for recipients.

Altogether, the foundations’ internal reorganization meant the human rights field was already on unstable footing when the second Trump administration slashed foreign aid funding this year. The U.S. had long been among the largest funders of human rights.

Brian Kagoro, the managing director for the Open Society Foundations, said the foundations do not plan to try to fill the gap. Instead, the foundations are trying to orient their programs to “ensure that we start actually building out alternatives that are more rooted in the local as well as regional economies, especially for Africa,” Kagoro said.

New ideas and a focus on their own learning

In this transition, OSF has spent significant time developing new programs and since November, they have published a new digital magazine, The Ideas Letter. Led by Benardo, it commissions essays mostly on topics of political economy. Benardo said fostering critique and unorthodox ideas is one of the foundations’ response to polarization.

“If all you’re focusing on is a one ideological band or a way of reasoning or approach to the world, I think that you’re contributing to a society that has been riven by polarization,” Benardo said.

This search for new ideas continued through the redefinition of their programs, which OSF now calls “opportunities.” For over a year, Kagoro, who is based in Johannesburg, said his team commissioned research, convened experts and consulted polls to determine how they should redesign their work.

The foundations’ staff developed pitches for different opportunities, which were ultimately approved or rejected by the board. Three were approved for Africa, including a five-year program focused on critical minerals and a peace-building program. The foundations also said it will work on democratic futures for eight years in Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal.

Kagoro said they’ve shifted their focus away from electoral cycles in recognition of the potential of recent large movements led by young people, who are not participating in political parties in large numbers.

“It was clear to us that the classical idea of democracy is not what people were fighting for, but they still believed in societies that were more open, inclusive, participatory, in states that were more accountable,” Kagoro said.

They have already launched calls for proposals for the three new African program areas, Kagoro said, and more than half the applications have come from organizations that would be new to OSF.

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.