This is a web version of The Lever’s daily email newsletter.

🔥 Today’s Lever story: Private equity investors are buying up the dental industry, to the detriment of patients.

🎧 ICYMI on Lever Time: Your burning questions about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and subsequent legal cover-up answered by the journalist who broke open the case.

👇 Spend three minutes reading this 986-word newsletter to learn about: 

  • What the back-to-school economy reveals about U.S. education.
  • Trump’s latest move to hamstring antitrust regulation.
  • How prescription drug pricing is killing people.
  • The powerful lobbying group seeking millions in defense spending carveouts.
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TODAY'S NUGGETS

🎒 Parents pay as feds delay. With fall just around the corner, U.S. parents are feeling the sting of rising retail costs: A new survey finds a whopping third of respondents with at least one school-aged child said they could not afford everything their child needs for back-to-school shopping this year, and of those parents, just under half plan on incurring debt to pay for school supplies. A majority said they plan to sacrifice necessities, including food, to get their child what they need for the year, while 45 percent report they’re considering cutting their working hours because they can’t afford after-school programming. 

  • The Trump administration is still holding more than $4 billion in frozen Department of Education funds earmarked for local schools, leading to teacher layoffs just weeks before students are set to return to class.