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At a White House event on Nov. 6 announcing price cuts for those blockbuster weight-loss drugs, Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz made an astonishing claim.

Because the price cuts would vastly improve access to the prescription drugs, Oz said, by next year’s midterm elections in November, “Americans will lose 135 billion pounds.”

As though to make sure nobody missed the magnitude of the achievement, Oz hit the word “billion” with all its plosive force: “135 BILLION pounds.”

Well, that would be some achievement. The U.S. population is just over 340 million. Do the math, and Oz’s figure works out to an average weight loss of 347 pounds for every man, woman and child in America.

Oz called the calculation “our estimate based on company numbers,” referring to Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the makers of the most popular drugs in the category. His figure was a vast improvement over what he said was his agency’s original estimate of 125 million pounds.

Perhaps Oz just misspoke; it’s certainly not uncommon for people to substitute “billions” for “millions” in quotidian speech. (More on that shortly.) But his casual retailing of obviously bogus arithmetic points to a broader issue with the numbers the Trump White House routinely injects into its policy statements.

The administration’s suspect arithmetic is in many respects deliberately aimed at portraying some condition as better than the real numbers show.

It’s also reliant, however, on people’s proverbial dislike, even fear, of math — whether we’re talking about calculating the tip at a restaurant or the statistical risk of dying from a lightning strike or in a terrorist attack. The mathematician John Allen Poulos described this phenomenon as “innumeracy,” the title of his classic 1989 book on the topic.

As is the case in all hierarchical organizations, the problem starts at the top. President Trump loves to define his ostensible political achievements and goals with big numbers. For example, he claimed in August to have cut prescription drug prices “by 1,200, 1,300 and 1,400, 1,500%.”

To an unwary listener, that sounds like another major achievement. In mathematical terms, though, it’s impossible: A 1,500% reduction would mean reducing a $100 drug bill to negative $1,400, meaning that the drug company would be paying you to use its product.

In recent weeks, Trumpian innumeracy has cropped up in official dispatches not only in relation to healthcare, but also home mortgages and (especially) inflation. The partisan value of mathematical deception is manifest. But it’s also dangerous.

“One rarely discussed consequence of innumeracy is its link with pseudoscience,” Poulos wrote. That’s at the core of the anti-vaccine movement and the doubts sown by partisan actors in the science of COVID-19‘s origins — specifically, the evidence-free assertions that the virus was concocted in a Chinese laboratory.

Let’s examine the most recent displays of bogus math from the Trump administration.

Healthcare math: Oz employed his weight-loss conjecture to dress up the effect of Trump’s price negotiations with Lilly and Novo Nordisk. The figure he offered as the administration’s initial estimate of 125 million pounds lost by next November’s election was not especially impressive, as it implied an average loss of about one-third of a pound per capita.

If we adjust these stats to cover the 12% of American adults who have taken the drugs — about 3.12 million users — that’s a loss of 40 pounds per user, which is at the very high end of per-user weight loss experiences. A 2023 study found that about one-third of users lost more than 5% of their body weight after about 18 months; for a 250-pound user, that’s a loss of about 12.5 pounds in a year and a half.

I asked the Department of Health and Human Services, Oz’s parent agency, to clarify his statement but didn’t receive a reply. I also asked Novo Nordisk and Lilly what “company numbers” he might have been referring to. Lilly didn’t reply, and Novo Nordisk emailed me to say it had nothing to say on the matter.

Mortgage math: As an ostensible solution to the diminishing affordability of home ownership, the administration advanced the idea of giving homebuyers the option of 50-year mortgages. That’s a big departure from the standard 30-year, fixed-rate home loan, the most popular option.

Trump endorsed this fundamentally unserviceable idea with a Truth Social post in which he depicted himself as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s equal as a “great American President” — indeed, as going one better than FDR, to whom he attributed the introduction of the 30-year mortgage.

(Actually, under FDR the standard mortgage, a three-to-five-year loan with interest-only payments ending in a balloon payment and required refinancing, gave way to fully amortized loans that would be paid off in 15 years; the 30-year mortgage didn’t become the standard until the 1950s.)

What makes the 50-year mortgage such a chuckleheaded product? Let’s do the math.

Here’s a nugget of truth about it: The monthly payment on the same size mortgage at the same rate would be lower on a 50-year term than on a 30-year term. On a $400,000 loan at 6%, the interest and principal payment would be $2,106 for the former versus $2,398 on the latter, an apparent savings of $292 a month. For borrowers living on the edge, that’s a sizable difference.

Here are the catches, however. First, over the life of the loan, borrowers will pay much more in interest for the longer loan — in our examples, the total in interest on the 50-year loan comes to about $650,000, versus $461,000 over 30 years.

Moreover, it’s almost certain that lenders will charge a higher rate for the longer-term loan. No one is quite sure how much higher, but Adam Levitin of Georgetown Law conjectures that it might be higher by a percentage point or more. The monthly payment on a 50-year, $400,000 loan at 7% would be $2,407 — higher than the payment on the shorter loan at the lower rate — and the total interest paid over the term rises to about $774,500.

It’s true that very few borrowers pay off their entire mortgage; Americans stay in their homes an average of 12 years, real estate experts say. That brings the issue of home equity into play.

This is important because a home is the largest single investment for most Americans, with the growth of home equity the financial holy grail of home ownership. Yet equity grows much more slowly under the longer-term loan. At the beginning, most of the monthly payment goes to pay down interest, not principal.

After 12 years of payments, the holder of a 30-year, $400,000 loan at 6% would have accumulated nearly $84,000 in home equity. The holder of a 50-year loan would have accumulated only about $22,000 in equity. (If that loan were at 7%, the gain would be even less — only about $16,500.)

“Homeowners are not building much wealth with a 50-year mortgage,” economist Dean Baker observes.

The 50-year mortgage idea reportedly was sold to Trump by Bill Pulte, the real estate scion serving as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency who’s best known as the instigator of the mortgage fraud accusations against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, and other Trump critics.

After his idea was pilloried by sources including the Wall Street Journal, Pulte stated in a tweet that it was one of “a wide arsenal of solutions” to housing costs. The only solutions he mentioned were assumable mortgages and portable mortgages. The first are loans that can be assumed by new buyers of existing homes, the second are loans that borrowers can apply to their own new homes.

These are pigs in a poke. Mortgage lenders generally are averse to carrying existing loans over to new borrowers or new properties, at least without new appraisals, credit checks and other paperwork. No one in the administration can wave a wand and make them happen. I asked Pulte’s agency to explain his thinking but received no reply.

That brings us to the White House’s inflation math.

On Nov. 10, after the government shutdown rendered the monthly inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics missing in action (perhaps permanently), the White House issued a statement asserting, “President Trump has tamed inflation.”

The statement drew heavily from a report on the consumer economy issued last week by the gig delivery company DoorDash, principally its Breakfast Basics Index, which showed a decline in breakfast prices of 14% from March through September. The index measures price movements for three eggs, a glass of milk, a bagel and an avocado.

A couple of points about this: First, the company acknowledges that the driver of the index decline was the price of eggs; those for the other commodities were stable. Second, Trump has had nothing to do with the price of eggs. They’ve come down sharply since March because of the passing of the avian flu epidemic, which devastated flocks and accordingly the supply of fresh eggs. Finally, the price of eggs bottomed out in early October .

The White House tried to take credit for ending bird flu. “Egg prices are down because the Trump administration implemented a robust plan to tackle bird flu and increase egg production,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told me by email. “The bird flu crisis did not magically disappear.”

Nope, it didn’t: After a lull in cases this summer, bird flu is again on the rise, after a marked increase in infections in October. And — surprise! — that’s when egg prices started heading higher too. Anyway, Desai insisted that “the Trump administration’s policies have cooled inflation.”

DoorDash told me that although its report was published this month, its data collection ended in September. But the company’s full report shows price increases over the last year in baked, canned and jarred goods, and automotive supplies and clothing. The average price of a cheeseburger, soda and fries, it says, rose by 3.8% in the year through September.

The White House still is trying to hide the effects of its economic policies on inflation — especially its tariffs. Just last week, Trump moved to roll back tariffs on coffee, beef, bananas and other foodstuffs to bring prices down.

Despite Trump’s insistence that foreign exports pay the tariffs, his move is an implicit admission that U.S. consumers are paying the price. Desai explained Trump’s tariff climb down as demonstrating Trump’s “nimble, nuanced, and multi-faceted strategy on trade and tariffs.”

The bottom line is that one shouldn’t trust the math coming from this White House. If you do the calculations for yourself, you’ll see why.

WASHINGTON —  A slow drip of revelations detailing President Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein that have burdened the White House all year has turned into a deluge after House lawmakers released reams of documents that imply the president may have intimate knowledge of his friend’s criminal activity.

The scope of Epstein’s interest in Trump became clear Thursday as media organizations combed through more than 20,000 documents from the convicted sex offender’s estate released by the House Oversight Committee, prompting a bipartisan majority in the House — including up to half of Republican lawmakers — to pledge support for a measure to compel the Justice Department to release all files related to its investigation of Epstein.

In one email discovered Thursday, sent by Epstein to himself months before he died by suicide in federal custody, he wrote: “Trump knew.” The White House has denied that Trump knew about or was involved in Epstein’s years-long operation that abused over 200 women and girls.

The scandal comes at a precarious political moment for Trump, who faces a 36% approval rating, according to the latest Associated Press-NORC survey, and whose grip on the Republican Party and MAGA movement has begun to slip as his final term in office begins winding down leading up to next year’s midterm elections.

Attempts by the Trump administration to quash the scandal have failed to shake interest in the case from the public across the political spectrum.

The records paint the most expansive picture yet of Trump’s relationship with Epstein, the subject of unending fascination and conspiracy theories online, as well as growing bipartisan interest in Congress.

In several emails, Epstein, a disgraced financier who maintained a close friendship with Trump until a falling-out in the mid-2000s, said that the latter “knew about the girls” involved in his operation and that Trump “spent hours” with one in private. Epstein also alleged that he could “take him down” with damaging information.

In several exchanges, Epstein portrayed himself as someone who knew Trump well. Emails show how he tracked Trump’s business practices and the evolution of the president’s political endeavors.

Other communications show Epstein closely monitoring Trump’s movements at the beginning of his first term in office, at one point attempting to communicate with the Russian government to share his “insight” into Trump’s proclivities and thinking.

White House officials attempted to thwart the effort to release the files Wednesday, holding a tense meeting with a GOP congresswoman in the White House Situation Room, a move the administration said demonstrated its willingness “to sit down with members of Congress to address their concerns.”

But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York accused the White House and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of “running a pedophile protection program” for trying to block efforts to release the Epstein files.

The legislative effort in the House does not guarantee a vote in the Senate, much less bipartisan approval of the measure there. And the president — who has for months condemned his supporters for their repeated calls for transparency in the case — would almost certainly veto the bill if it makes it to his desk.

Epstein died in a federal prison in Manhattan awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking in 2019. His death was ruled a suicide by the New York City medical examiner and the Justice Department’s inspector general.

As reporters sift through the documents in the coming days, Trump’s relationship with Epstein is likely to remain in the spotlight.

In one email Epstein sent to himself shortly before his imprisonment and death, he wrote that Trump knew of the financier’s sexual activity during a period where he was accused of wrongdoing.

“Trump knew of it,” he wrote, “and came to my house many times during that period.”

“He never got a massage,” Epstein added. Epstein paid for “massages” from girls that often led to sexual activity.

Trump has blamed Democrats for the issue bubbling up again.

“Democrats are using the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures, in particular, their most recent one — THE SHUTDOWN!” the president wrote Wednesday in a social media post, hours after the records were made public.

Trump made a public appearance later that day to sign legislation ending the government shutdown but declined to answer as reporters shouted questions about Epstein after the event.

Trump comes up in several emails

The newly released correspondence gives a rare look at how Epstein, in his own words, related to Trump in ways that were not previously known. In some cases, Epstein’s correspondence suggests the president knew more about Epstein’s criminal conduct than Trump has let on.

In the months leading up to Epstein’s arrest on sex trafficking charges, he mentioned Trump in a few emails that imply the latter knew about the financier’s victims.

In January 2019, Epstein wrote to author Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls,” as he discussed his membership at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s South Florida private club and resort.

Trump has said that he ended his relationship with Epstein because he had “hired away” one of his female employees at Mar-a-Lago. The White House has also said Trump banned Epstein from his club because he was “being a creep.”

“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein wrote in the email to Wolff.

One of the employees was Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s survivors who died by suicide this year. Giuffre said in a civil case deposition that she never witnessed Trump sexually abuse minors in Epstein’s home.

Republicans in the House Oversight Committee identified Giuffre as one of the victims whose names are redacted in an April 2011 email.

In that email, Epstein wrote to Ghislane Maxwell, a former associate who was later sentenced for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors, that Trump was “the dog that hasn’t barked.”

“[Victim] spent hours at my house with him,” Epstein wrote. “He has never once been mentioned.”

“I have been thinking about that…,” Maxwell replied.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that the emails “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”

News over the summer that Trump had penned a lewd birthday card to Epstein, drawing the silhouette of a naked woman with a note reading, “may every day be another wonderful secret,” had sparked panic in the West Wing that the files could have prolific mentions of Trump.

LAS VEGAS — Last offseason, the Dodgers swung big in their offseason pursuit of impact bullpen additions.

After largely striking out, however, they might now have to decide if they’re comfortable doing it again.

The Dodgers don’t have glaring needs this winter, but the back end of the bullpen is one area they will look to upgrade. Although the team has ample relief depth, it has no clear-cut closer as it enters 2026.

The main reason why: Tanner Scott’s struggles after landing a lucrative four-year, $72-million pact last winter.

Scott’s signing represented the second-largest contract, by guaranteed money, the Dodgers had ever given to a relief pitcher (only behind the five-year, $80 million deal closer Kenley Jansen got in 2017). It was a high-risk, high-reward move that, at least in Year 1, quickly felt like a bust.

Scott posted a 4.74 ERA in the regular season, converted only 23 of his 33 save opportunities, and did not pitch in the postseason (in part because of an abscess incision procedure he underwent in the National League Division Series).

The Dodgers’ other big reliever acquisition last winter, Kirby Yates, suffered a similar fate, posting a 5.23 ERA on a one-year, $13-million deal before injuries also knocked him out of postseason contention.

Scott will be back next year, and is one of several veteran relief arms the club is hopeful will make improvements. Still, for a team vying for a third straight World Series title, adding a more established closer remains of interest.

The question now: Will they be willing to do so on another long-term deal? Or will last year’s failed signings make them more hesitant to traverse that same path again?

It might not take long to start finding out.

Already at this week’s general managers’ meetings at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, the Dodgers have expressed interest in two-time All-Star Devin Williams, according to people with knowledge of the situation not authorized to speak publicly.

The 31-year-old right-hander had a down year with the New York Yankees (4.79 ERA, albeit with 18 saves in 22 opportunities), but his underlying metrics remain strong, and the Dodgers’ interest in him dates to last offseason when he was a trade target of the club before ultimately landing in the Bronx.

With a mid-90s mph fastball and signature “Airbender” changeup that has made him one of the most prolific strikeout threats in all the majors over his seven-year career (in which he has a 2.45 ERA and averages more than 14 strikeouts per nine innings), he would significantly improve their ninth-inning outlook.

But the Dodgers’ pursuit of him, which was first reported by The Athletic, could come with a tricky decision.

Williams is expected to have several serious suitors this offseason. And, though some outlets projected him to sign only a one-year deal upward of $20 million, others have him pegged to land a three- or four-year contract.

By nature, the Dodgers typically prefer shorter-term deals, particularly in a role as volatile as relief pitching. If Williams does receive longer-term offers from other clubs, it’s unclear if the Dodgers would be willing to match.

The team could face similar dynamics if it goes after other top relievers on the market, including three-time All-Star and top free-agent closer Edwin Díaz (who also comes with the added complication of a qualifying offer that would cost them a draft pick).

They could wind up having to once again weigh a high-risk, high-reward move.

And on Tuesday, general manager Brandon Gomes struck a decidedly risk-averse tone in the wake of last year’s failed signings.

“It’s one of those things that, I don’t think it’s a ‘need,’” Gomes said of the team’s interest in making another splashy reliever acquisition. “But it could be a nice-to-have, depending on how it all plays out.”

There are other alternatives, of course.

Former Tampa Bay Rays right-hander Pete Fairbanks is one potentially shorter-term target some in the industry see as a fit in Los Angeles, after racking up 75 saves with a 2.98 ERA over the last three seasons.

Former Angels and Atlanta Braves right-hander Raisel Iglesias is potentially another, after amassing 96 saves with a 2.62 ERA over the last three years, thanks to a mid-90s mph fastball and swing-and-miss changeup that have kept him productive even at age 35.

There are other familiar free-agent relievers available this winter, too, from former San Diego Padres closer Robert Suarez to former St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets right-hander Ryan Helsley (who has also been linked to the Dodgers in trade rumors in the past).

The Dodgers could also explore the offseason’s trade market, or roll the dice with a current relief corps that still includes Scott (whose 2025 issues had more to do with execution than quality of stuff), Alex Vesia (who has established himself as one of the top left-handed relievers in the sport) and Blake Treinen (another reliever the team sees as a bounce-back candidate after he struggled with injuries last season in the first season of a two-year, $22 million deal). They will also be getting Brusdar Graterol and Evan Phillips back from injuries, with Graterol on track to be ready for the start of 2026 after missing last year with a shoulder problem, and Phillips expected to return at some point in next season after undergoing Tommy John surgery last June.

For now, however, the team’s search could depend on how the markets for Williams, Díaz and others develop — and whether it’s willing to take another big bullpen swing on a longer-term deal.

“We have so many guys that are capable of closing and have done it in the past,” Gomes said, highlighting the team’s current returning bullpen arms. “But it’s one of the areas we’ll look to potentially add to the team.”

Skenes wins NL Cy Young Award, Yamamoto third in voting

Yoshinobu Yamamoto will always be remembered for his historic performance in the Dodgers’ postseason this past October.

On Wednesday, his regular-season performance received some deserved recognition, too.

While Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes won the National League Cy Young Award as expected, after leading the majors with a 1.97 ERA in just his second MLB season, Yamamoto finished third for a campaign in which he went 12-8, posted a 2.49 ERA over 30 starts, and anchored a Dodgers rotation that was ravaged by injuries for much of the season.

Philadelphia Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sánchez was the NL’s other Cy Young finalist, and was runner-up. Skenes garnered all 30 first-place votes while Sánchez received all 30 second-place votes. Yamamoto collected 16 third-place votes.

Yamamoto’s finish was the highest by a Dodgers pitcher since Julio Urías came in third in 2022.

It caps a year in which the 27-year-old Japanese star made significant strides from his debut rookie MLB season (when he had a 3.00 ERA and was limited to 18 starts because of a shoulder injury) and helped carry the Dodgers to a World Series with a 1.45 ERA in six playoff outings and a grueling 37 1/3 October innings — including back-to-back complete games in the NL Championship Series and World Series, before back-to-back victorious appearances in Games 6 and 7 of the Fall Classic.

Sources close to the situation say Edwards was willing to complete all the duties he has been removed from, with Middlesbrough taking the decisions regarding Friday’s training session and news conference and Saturday’s match.

Middlesbrough are believed to have been angered by Wolves’ approach and Edwards’ openness to taking the job.

It is understood Edwards views the Wolves job as his dream role, having made more than 100 appearances for the Molineux side between 2004 and 2008.

He grew up in nearby Telford and still has family in the area, though the logistics of any move to Wolves are not said to be a key factor.

Warner Bros. Discovery reported a $148 million loss in the third quarter, hitting a sour note as the company began fielding interest from would-be buyers as Hollywood braces for a transforming deal.

Earnings for the entertainment company that includes HBO, CNN and the Warner Bros. film and TV studios fell short of analyst expectations. A year ago, the company reported profit of $135 million for the third quarter.

Revenue of $9.05 billion declined 6% from the year-ago period. The company swung to a loss of 6 cents a share, compared to last year’s earnings of 5 cents a share.

Still, Chief Executive David Zaslav spent much of Thursday’s call with analysts touting his company’s underlying strengths — while avoided giving details about the company’s sale.

“It’s fair to say that we have an active process underway,” Zaslav said.

Warner Bros. Discovery on Thursday reiterated it is forging ahead with previously announced plans to split into two separate entities by next spring. However, the Warner board acknowledged last month that it was also entertaining offers for the entire company — or its parts — after David Ellison’s Paramount expressed its interest with formal bids.

Paramount has made three offers, including a $58 billion in cash and stock for all of Warner Bros. Discovery. That bid would pay Warner stockholders $23.50 a share.

The Ellison family appears determined to win one of Hollywood’s most storied entertainment companies to pair with Paramount, which the Ellisons and RedBird Capital Partners acquired in August.

But Warner Bros. Discovery’s board, including Zaslav, voted unanimously to reject Paramount’s offers and instead opened the auction to other bidders, which is expected to lead to the firm changing hands for the third time in a decade.

Board members are betting the company, which has shown flickers of a turnaround, is worth more than the offers on the table. Despite its rocky third-quarter results, Warner’s stock held its ground in early morning trading at around $22.60 a share.

“Overall we are very bullish,” Zaslav said of the company’s business prospects.

“When you look at our films like ‘Superman,’ ‘Weapons’ and ‘One Battle After Another,’ the global reach of HBO Max and the diversity of our network’s offerings, we’ve managed to bring the best, most treasured traditions of Warner Bros. forward into a new era of entertainment and [a] new media landscape,” he said.

But the company’s results underscored its business challenges.

The studio witnessed a major decline in advertising revenue in the third quarter, reporting $1.41 billion, down 16% from the previous year, which executives attributed to declines in the audience for its domestic linear channels, including CNN, TNT and TLC.

Distribution revenue also took a hit, as the company reported sales of $4.7 billion, a decrease of 4% compared to last year.

Studio revenue increased 24% to $3.3 billion, powered by the success of DC Studios’ “Superman,” horror flick “Weapons” and the latest installment of “The Conjuring.” But even those box office wins couldn’t totally offset shortfalls in other areas of its content business.

Last year, the company was able to sub-license its rights to broadcast the Olympics in Europe, which pushed content revenue to $2.72 billion. But this year, revenue was down 3% to $2.65 billion.

Burbank-based Warner Bros. has had a string of success in theaters, with nine films opening at the top spot globally at the box office. The studio recently surpassed $4 billion in worldwide box office revenue, making it the first studio to do so this year. Warner Bros. last achieved that milestone in 2019.

Zaslav would like to continue with Warner’s break-up plans, which were announced last June.

The move would allow him to stay on to manage a smaller Hollywood-focused entity made up of the Warner Bros. studios, HBO, streaming service HBO Max and the company’s vast library, which includes Harry Potter movies and award-winning television shows such as “The Pitt.”

The company’s large portfolio of cable channels, including HGTV, Food Network and Cartoon Network, would become Discovery Global and operate independently.

Beyond Paramount, Philadelphia-based Comcast, Netflix and Amazon have expressed interest in considering buying parts of the company.

The company said its third quarter loss of $148 million was the result of a $1.3 billion expense, including restructuring costs.

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Uncertainty over pace of cuts

All eyes on Budget