Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Monday, July 17th. I'm Margaret Tyler in

Furnalla, Boudou. Today on the show, while your sex chromosomes and hormones impact

your risk for some diseases and impact how well your medications work. Plus, antitrust

regulators set their sights on private equity. But first, inflation is cool, so why is life

about to get more expensive for millions of Americans? That's today's one big thing.

Several pandemic-era safety net programs are all set to come to an end around the same time

this fall. And that's going to mean a major economic squeeze for millions of families

who will be paying more suddenly for childcare, student loans, healthcare, and even food.

Axios' Caitlin Owens is here to explain. So, Caitlin, what are these programs that are

so one that everyone's been talking about, obviously, is the student loan pause. And this

was in the news recently, if you remember, because the Supreme Court blocked Joe Biden's

plan to forgive student loans for millions of Americans. And so, you know, people who may

have otherwise seen some loan forgiveness can't use that as a crutch now. So, there's also

pandemic-era funding that goes toward childcare providers. They were stabilization grants that

were passed as part of COVID aid packages. And those must be used by the end of September,

so then there will be no more federal money for that. You know, there's been some estimates

that that is going to put child care providers in a bind where some will close and some will raise

tuition. And one estimate has said that three million kids could lose access to child care.

I mean, at some point, some people might decide that either they can't find child care and can't

work or, you know, that it's just not worth it because they can't afford it. Then there's

snap policies that are going back into place, specifically work requirements. The re-implementation

of those mean that about half a million people are at risk of losing their food stamps.

...