Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

July 12, 2025

The 2025 season at Saratoga Race Course got under way this week, with racing Wednesdays through Sundays until the finale on Labor Day. Skip Dickstein

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

A week has passed since flash flooding devastated the heart of Texas, taking at least 120 lives, many of them children, and still the search continues for more than 160 people believed to be missing.

It’s hard to fathom, and the Fourth of July holiday will never be the same for the loved ones of the lost. But catastrophes also reveal courage in abundance, as demonstrated by U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Scott Ruskan, a former collegiate cross country runner who helped save more than 200 people on his first rescue mission, providing medical assistance and aiding in their evacuation.

“I really just relied on the training we get,” Ruskan told reporters. “Coast Guard rescue swimmers get some of the highest-level training in the world.”

When things go terribly wrong, it’s comforting to know there are Scott Ruskans out there ready to literally jump into action.

HOUSING CRUNCH: Real estate investors bought more than a quarter of all U.S. homes sold in the first quarter of 2025, according to a national company that tracks real estate data. “As traditional buyers struggle with affordability, investors with cash and financing advantages are stepping in to maintain transaction volume,” according to a report by BatchData. About 20% of the nation’s 86 million single-family homes are owned by investors. But seller beware — if your listing agent markets your home without sharing the information with local databases that feed home listings to the rest of the industry, you may find your home blacklisted by Zillow, which draws 221 million monthly visitors.

SLOW AND SCENIC: Ride along with The Wall Street Journal’s Beth Kracklauer and Elizabeth Coetzee as they chronicle in awe-struck detail a four-day paddle over 25 miles of Adirondacks wilderness, an experience the headline writer summarized as, “The Ultimate American Summer Adventure.” You’ll get no argument from us. The report didn’t mention any moose sightings, and if a wildlife expert and state biologist is right, there won’t be any left in New York State if the climate continues warming. In the meantime, a young bull moose has made himself at home at the summit of Goodman Mountain, prompting a trail closure that has lasted more than a month.

A DELICATE DANCE: Politico got Washington talking this week with a piece that wondered how reporters should respond when it’s obvious that the elected officials they cover are no longer as cognitively sharp as they once were. “For people interested in how Washington works,” senior editor and columnist Michael Schaffer writes, “it’s an increasingly common issue in our era of gerontocracy: Just how are you supposed to interact with an elected official who might not be all there?” Reporters often encounter members of Congress at the Capitol and ask them impromptu questions, which, for congressional staff, “means a lot of work keeping track of potential messes. ... It makes for a weird status quo: One set of lawmakers who can be grilled about legislative issues, another who are considered out to lunch, everyone keeping secret mental lists of who’s who, and no one feeling able to publish them because, after all, who can really prove what’s going on in someone’s head?”

DYE HARD: U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants food makers to stop using synthetic dyes in their products, and many have signaled they will do so. But not candymakers. “I think RFK and his team are learning the limits of their power to persuade,” one observer told The New York Times. Mars, which makes M&M’s and Skittles, said its products are “safe to enjoy and meet the high standards and applicable regulations set by food safety authorities around the world,” and a spokesman for the National Confectioners Association, a trade group, signaled that candy makers would not reformulate without federal regulations that force them to.

Hikers pause at Lake Colden Dam in the Adirondacks, with a view to Avalanche Pass in the High Peaks wilderness. Nancie Battaglia

MICRO-CHEATING: It was only a matter of time. Sports books will take action on just about anything you can imagine, including whether a particular pitch will be a ball or a strike. Now, Major League Baseball is looking into suspicions that a pitcher for the Cleveland Guardians may have purposely thrown specific pitches out of the strike zone to cash in, which, The Wall Street Journal reports, “potentially signals that one of the most pernicious forms of corruption in global sports has arrived in America.” It’s called “spot-fixing,” which the The Journal describes as “the practice of manipulating small, discrete events that have little to no bearing on the outcome of a game.” Think a double fault in tennis, or the timing of a yellow card in soccer. “Spot-fixing is the easiest form of corruption ever invented,” Declan Hill, an expert on match-fixing at the University of New Haven, told The Journal. “One desperate athlete can pull it off — and they frequently do.”

A NOSE FOR NEWS: Sienna, a 3-year-old lab and pit bull mix, was making the rounds at a pet adoption event in rural Virginia when she spotted one man in the crowd and headed straight for him, looking into his eyes, placing a paw on his leg and resisting her handler’s efforts to pull her away. It turns out the man has epilepsy and Sienna, despite no known training, was alerting him to the pending onset of a seizure. The man’s wife told The Washington Post that the dog’s actions caused her husband to relax, likely preventing a full-on seizure. “We all knew she was lovable, and she was cute and amazing in the shelter, but we did not know that she had this ability,” a shelter volunteer said. Sienna did not go home with the family, which already has three rescue dogs, but her story spread quickly and she was soon adopted.

MOOCH ON THE LOOSE: You may remember Anthony Scaramucci as a loud-mouthed clown who lasted 11 days as President Trump’s communications director in 2017, but as Fortune reports, he has rebounded quite nicely and is, according to the publication, “arguably, one of the most influential voices in American politics and finance.” There’s a lot more depth to “the Mooch” than you might imagine; for one thing, he is a well-read student of history, and he worries that the country is headed down the same path as fascist Germany. He said many of his banker and hedge-fund friends quietly agree with him, but “they don’t have the balls to speak out.”

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE: Chris Gibson, a former New York congressman who also served as president of Siena College and had a distinguished military career, has published a new book, his third, titled The Spirit of Philadelphia, arguing for a return to the founding principles of cooperation and compromise to address contemporary political dysfunction and disillusionment.

FOOT LOOSE: The TSA will allow passengers at airports across the country to keep their footwear on as they go through security checkpoints, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced this week, ending a nearly two-decade requirement for those who didn’t register (and pay) for TSA PreCheck or similar expedited screening.

CLOSE CALL: A woman plucked a pretty shell from a tide pool in Okinawa, Japan, and discovered after that the snail living inside it can deliver a sting capable of killing a human. She posted a warning video on TikTok that has logged more than 24 million views.

DON’T TOUCH: A 66-year-old woman is facing harassment charges for allegedly yelling at Rensselaer County (N.Y.) Executive Steve McLaughlin at a local restaurant and then hugging him without his consent. “This was bizarre and disturbing behavior that took place in front of my family and other patrons,” McLaughlin said in a statement.

STATE FRAUDITOR: A state auditor was charged with stealing more than $400,000 from a town in the Hudson Valley while he was conducting an audit of the town. He allegedly transferred the funds from the town’s bank accounts to his personal business accounts. He pleaded not guilty.

SILENT TREATMENT: An interim U.S. attorney ordered his office to remove the Albany Times Union and its reporters from the office’s media distribution list after the publication revealed he lied about where he is living. That’ll teach ’em.

“The joy of receiving a letter or card beats technology. My advice would be try it.”
— Sheila McAlpine, who traveled from England to Ohio to meet for the first time the woman who has been her pen pal since 1969, when they connected through a Girl Scout program.

A NEW BARBIE: Mattel this week revealed a new Barbie that has Type 1 diabetes and a wearable insulin pump, saying that it not only lets children see themselves in the doll, but also encourages play “that extends beyond a child’s own lived experience.”  

Some of the linked material in Facing Out requires a subscription to read.

Principal Author: Bill Callen.

Contributors: Mark Behan, Ryan Moore, Kristy Miller, Skip Dickstein and Nancie Battaglia.

FACING OUT is what we do. We help companies, organizations and individuals work effectively with their most important external audiences – their customers, their shareholders, their communities, the government and the news media.  www.behancommunications.com

Facing Out features news and other nuggets that caught our eye, and that we thought might be of value to you, our friends and business associates. Some items are good news about our clients and friends, others are stories that we hope will leave you a bit more informed or entertained than you were five minutes ago. As always, we welcome your ideas and feedback. 

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