Business

(WASHINGTON) — If the United States defaults on its financial obligations, millions of Americans might not be able to pay their bills as well.

With Social Security and other government benefits at risk amid a political stalemate over the government’s debt ceiling, experts and older Americans told ABC News that the consequences of the impasse in Washington could be dire, including for older Americans who need the money to pay for basic needs such as food, housing or health care costs.

A quarter of Americans over age 65 rely on Social Security to provide at least 90% of their family income, according to the Social Security Administration.

Fred Gurner, 86, of New York, told ABC News that he uses his Social Security payment for his $800 rent. But now there is real risk that his payment might not come in time in June — when the Treasury Department says the government might not be able to send him the money he counts on.

“It’s very stressful, gives me a heart attack,” Gurner said about how the issue has become politicized.

How are Social Security payments affected by the debt ceiling?

Since 2001, the United States has spent more money than revenue it has taken in overall.

To cover the difference, the United States Treasury issues debt through securities, according to University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business professor Olivia Mitchell. Backed by the United States, those securities are happily bought by investors who see it as a safe guarantee they’ll get paid back with interest.

However, the United States and Denmark are the only two countries to limit the amount of debt the government can issue, known as a debt ceiling, Mitchell noted.

Lawmakers can pass new laws that require government spending, but the debt ceiling will remain in place until lawmakers vote to increase it. That has happened 78 separate times in the United States since 1960.

If that debt ceiling does not increase by June 1, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that the country will not be able to satisfy all of its financial obligations.

Beyond not being able to pay interest and principal on government securities — which economists broadly agree would rattle the stock market and possibly damage the U.S. credit rating — the Treasury would be unable to issue new debt to cover expenses like Social Security, according to Mitchell.

The government projects to spend roughly $100 billion on Social Security in the month of June, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

“It’s going to be pretty tight for people for a while, unless Congress and the president can get together on this problem,” Mitchell said.

When would Social Security payments become delayed?

The Social Security Administration plans to send contributions to beneficiaries on four dates next month — June 2, 14, 21, and 28. Those checks would be the first ones at risk of being delayed, according to Max Richtman, President and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

“Millions and millions of Social Security beneficiaries are worried about having the income to pay their basic bills,” he noted.

Lynda Fisher, 80, told ABC News that her budget relies on her monthly Social Security check and that a delay would complicate her essential spending, frustrating the 80-year-old who has spent her life contributing to the system.

“I paid into Social Security, and I paid into Medicare,” she said. “And now they’re trying to take it away. It’s not their money, it’s my money that I paid into.”

Richtman is now actively encouraging older residents to save money in anticipation of a delayed Social Security payment, fearing negotiations will not yield a compromise in time to avoid default.

On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Yellen indicated that certain bills might be prioritized, including interest payments, Social Security and military contractor payments. However, Richtman expressed doubt that such a prioritization would be legally possible.

What does this mean for the future of Social Security?

Some Republican lawmakers have framed the debt ceiling fight as necessary to slow government spending; however, some economists, including Mitchell, see this as a “manufactured crisis” that threatens essential services, retirement savings and the overall economy.

“Every time one of these crises occurs, it’s signaling to the rest of the world, and to American investors that U.S. Treasuries are not as safe as we thought,” Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff said.

Kotlikoff expressed further concern that the Social Security system will have over $65.9 trillion in unfunded financial obligations over the indefinite horizon, based on the entity’s own report.

However, the debate over the debt ceiling appears unlikely to produce a meaningful solution to the broader Social Security shortfall, though, according to Kotlikoff, Mitchell and Richtman.

When will retirees receive their payments?

Mitchell and Richtman remained optimistic that Social Security recipients would eventually receive their checks once a deal is made, albeit with some delay.

“I’m pretty confident that payments would be fulfilled,” Richtman said. “That’s not much comfort to those people who will not be able to pay for their groceries, their utilities or their rent while they’re waiting to receive a back payment.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Max, a new streaming service from HBO, was temporarily down on Tuesday, the morning of its debut.

Users reported an inability to access the streaming service, which carries over content from its predecessor HBO Max while offering new features. Later in the morning on Tuesday, the service appeared to be fixed.

Streaming on Max was initially not working for ABC News and the outage reports started early Tuesday morning, according to outage tracking site Downdetector.

A Max spokesperson told ABC News the company had addressed initial issues encountered by users.

“You must always anticipate issues on a tech rollout of this scale,” the spokesperson said. “We can share that only minor ones have emerged and were quickly remedied.”

The spokesperson followed up about 15 minutes later saying that Max was not down.

Compared with HBO Max, the new service offers eight times as many films and episodes in a high-resolution presentation known as 4K UHD, the company said in a statement on Monday.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Critics of Bud Light burned empty beer boxes and fired bullets at cans as part of an anti-trans backlash against the brand that erupted early last month. Since then, the anger has grown.

Sales of Bud Light have recorded declines for six consecutive weeks after a product endorsement from Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer, set off ire among many conservatives.

Consumer boycotts typically fizzle but this one has expanded for an array of reasons: a hot-button political controversy over a product with ample alternatives, outcry from political figures and celebrities and amplification on social media, experts told ABC News.

The boycott grew even larger, meanwhile, after the initial response from the company was perceived as conciliatory by some LGBTQ advocates, prompting a wave of frustration on the left, the experts added.

“Generally, boycotts get called and have very little effect,” Gerald Davis, a professor of organizational behavior at the Michigan University Graduate School of Business. “For now, everybody is mad.”

Sales of Bud Light fell nearly 25% over the week ending on May 13 compared to the same period a year ago, according to data from Bump Williams Consulting and Nielsen NIQ obtained by ABC News.

The most recent decline showed a deepening of losses after a drop of some 23% the week prior compared to a year ago and a roughly 7% year-over-year drop for the week ending on April 9, soon after the boycott began, the data showed.

Meanwhile, sales of rival beers have surged. Sales of Coors Light jumped almost 23% over the week ending on May 13 compared to a year ago; while sales of Miller Lite climbed 21% over that period, the data showed.

“In the beer world, there are thousands of other options readily available at similar price points,” Anson Frericks, a former Anheuser-Busch executive, told ABC News. “Every grocery store and bar usually has the other options.”

In all, the stock price for Anheuser-Busch InBev, the maker of Bud Light, has fallen about 11% since Mulvaney posted the brief Instagram endorsement video that sparked the backlash.

Anheuser-Busch InBev declined to respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

In response to the initial boycott, Anheuser-Busch InBev posted a statement from CEO Brendan Whitworth on its website.

“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” Whitworth said. “We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”

The company also placed two executives who oversaw the endorsement of Mulvaney’s Instagram post on leave, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.

The response drew sharp criticism from some LGBTQ advocates who considered it a capitulation to the backlash. The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, suspended the company’s Corporate Equality Index score, USA Today reported on Thursday. Previously, the company scored 100, the top rating.

“More and more people on the left are upset that the company is not supporting these progressive values in a more outspoken way,” Frericks said.

The scale and longevity of the backlash also underscore the intensity of anti-trans sentiment among conservatives, experts said.

As of last week, more than 520 anti-LGBTQ bills had been introduced in state legislatures, including over 220 bills specifically targeting transgender and non-binary people, the Human Rights Campaign found.

Far-right House Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. last month reposted a video to her 700,000 followers that sharply criticized Bud Light. Celebrities like Kid Rock and Ted Nugent had previously voiced similar messages.

“This anti-woke agenda and the idea of trans rights broadly has become a wedge issue,” Maurice Schweitzer, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business who studies consumer movements, told ABC News. “It has gained and attracted a great deal of attention.”

Anheuser-Busch InBev stands in a difficult position as it faces frustration on both sides of the political spectrum, said Davis, of Michigan University.

“A dynamic has been set in motion that’s going to be very complicated for the company to navigate,” Davis said. “What stance could they take now that would make one side or the other say, ‘Oh, OK’?”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A man injured in a deadly Detroit gas station shooting has filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil alleging a clerk locked him and two other patrons in the station’s convenience store with the gunman who shot them.

Anthony Bowden’s lawsuit accuses the ExxonMobil Corp. and the gas station franchise owner, SMM Investment Inc., of multiple counts of negligence stemming from the shooting in March in which a patron was killed, and he and another customer were wounded.

“Locking three innocent people inside of a building with a person threatening to shoot them over $4 shows a complete disregard for human life over profit,” Bowden’s attorney, James Harrington of the Fieger Law firm, said in a statement. “This store clerk was obviously trained to lock the door and protect the gas station’s assets at all costs.”

The ExxonMobil Corp. did not respond to a request from ABC News for comment. Owners of SMM Investment Inc. could not be reached for comment.

The shooting unfolded around 3 a.m. on March 6 at an ExxonMobil gas station in northwest Detroit, where the 60-year-old Bowden stopped while on his way to work to use an ATM machine.

Bowden, according to the lawsuit filed on May 16 in Wayne County Circuit Court, claims he was inside the gas station convenience store and overheard the 22-year-old clerk, Al-Hassan Aiyash, arguing with a customer over his credit card being declined when he attempted to pay for $4 worth of merchandise.

As the argument escalated, the customer, identified by police as 27-year-old Samuel McCray, allegedly threatened to walk out of the store with the unpurchased items, according to the lawsuit. Aiyash, who was in a bullet-proof vestibule, locked the front door with a remote security switch allegedly to prevent McCray from leaving while he called the police, the lawsuit contends.

Bowden further claims that he overheard McCray allegedly telling the clerk, “If you don’t let me leave, I’m going to start shooting,” according to the lawsuit.

“The gas station employee did not unlock the door and continued to argue with the gunman,” the lawsuit contends.

Bowden claims he attempted to escape the store, but could not because the only exit door was locked and the clerk allegedly ignored his screams to unlock the door, the lawsuit alleges.

“The alleged gunman made good on his promise and unleashed rounds of bullets into the innocent customers, killing one, and seriously injuring two others,” the lawsuit contends.

The clerk unlocked the door “only after the hail of bullets,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit contends eight minutes elapsed between the time the clerk locked the gas station door, trapping the customers inside with the gunman, and when the door was unlocked.

Killed in the shooting was 37-year-old Gregory Karlos Fortner-Kelly of Detroit, according to the Detroit Police Department. Bowden and another patron were wounded in the incident.

Bowden was shot three times, according to the lawsuit.

McCray fled the gas station store when the door was unlocked and was arrested two days later, according to the Detroit Police Department. He was charged with first-degree murder, two counts of assault with intent to murder and three counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office. He pleaded not guilty to the charges during his arraignment on May 10.

On Thursday, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced that the gas station clerk, Aiyash, was arrested on a charge of felony involuntary manslaughter stemming from the shooting. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on Friday.

“The allegations of the defendant locking the door of the store and not heeding the pleas of the men to be released led to tragic consequences in this case,” Worthy said in a statement.

Aiyash’s attorney, Jamil Khuja, called the case against his client “a reach.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — An entrepreneur accused of grossly exaggerating the value of her college financial planning startup, ahead of its sale to JPMorgan Chase, pleaded not guilty to federal fraud charges on Monday in Manhattan, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office told ABC News.

Charlie Javice, 31, who once made the prestigious Forbes “30 Under 30” list of “big money” entrepreneurs, sold her now defunct tech startup to the bank in 2021 for $175 million — millions of dollars more than the company was worth, federal prosecutors said last month after Javice was arrested.

She was indicted on May 18 on securities fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy charges.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said last month following Javice’s arrest that this should be a warning to “entrepreneurs who lie to advance their businesses [and] that their lies will catch up to them.”

Her spokesperson denied the allegations. Her lawyer, Alex Spiro, could not be reached for comment.

JPMorgan Chase began talks with Javice in 2021 about acquiring her startup, named Frank, which promised to simplify the financial aid process for college applicants.

Representatives for the financial institution were intrigued by its model: Frank’s software would allow students to apply for federal financial aid in under seven minutes, according to company documents cited in the complaint. With Javice’s technology, the complicated FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) process, would be streamlined. Once the form had been complete, it would only take a click, the company boasted.

Javice told the bank ahead of the deal that about four million people had already created an account with Frank. But the startup had far fewer users, argued prosecutors, who said Frank had less than 300,000 accounts at the time.

Before JPMorgan Chase agreed to purchase Frank, the bank requested data to verify its number of users. It was then that Javice turned to her director of engineering and asked him to fabricate a data set, prosecutors said.

When he declined, she hired outside help from a data scientist to create a spreadsheet with about four million rows — one to represent each account, prosecutors said. The rows included the names and emails of those who the company claimed had signed up.

JPMorgan Chase went ahead with the acquisition, paying Javice $21 million for her equity stake in Frank — and $175 million in total. Following the transaction, Javice was retained to work at JPMorgan Chase for another $20 million.

During her tenure at the company, prosecutors say Javice successfully purchased another data set of information but this time containing names of real students. But when JPMorgan Chase sought to launch a marketing campaign to those who they believed to have signed up for Frank, they found some data points missing, prosecutors said.

In Nov. 2022, following an internal investigation, Javice was fired by the company. In April, she was arrested.

Javice’s plea comes just a week before fellow startup founder Elizabeth Holmes, 39, will report to prison to serve an over 11-year sentence. Holmes was convicted in 2022 for defrauding investors about her blood testing technology, which she said could run any test with a single drop of blood.

Javice, who is out on $2 million bail, is scheduled to have her next court appearance on June 6.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Ride-sharing company Uber is launching a new service for teenagers in several major cities and ABC News’ Good Morning America has an exclusive look with one family who has been testing out the service.

Ruth Stern is a mom of two and like many parents, she usually has to figure out the different transportation needs each family member requires for their busy schedules.

“One kid needs to be picked up from school. Another kid needs to get to an activity. There’s a doctor’s appointment that you didn’t anticipate, so it’s a constant juggle,” Stern told ABC News consumer correspondent Becky Worley.

So when the opportunity came up recently, Stern decided to give Uber’s pilot program for teenagers a try.

“I couldn’t be two places at once and I could get my child home safely from a location and still be with my other child,” Stern said.

Stern used the pilot program from Uber to get a ride for her 15-year-old daughter Izzy while she herself went to drive her 10-year-old son to one of his activities.

Stern and her family have so far been a part of the pilot program for a few months.

Now, the ride-sharing company is formally launching the program to a wider customer base, letting parents and guardians add teenager riders to their Uber accounts under a family profile. Teens ages 13 to 17 are included in the program.

Uber’s Vice President of Product Management Sachin Kansal told GMA the process all begins through a parent’s phone.

“You open your Uber app, you go to the account tab at the bottom. Now with this new feature, you can add a teen,” Kansal explained.

To develop this new feature, Uber partnered with the nonprofit Safe Kids Worldwide to address safety concerns around the service.

“There are some nonnegotiables as they roll out this platform of making sure kids buckle up every ride, every time,” Safe Kids Worldwide President Torine Creppy said.

For parents and guardians, the thought of putting a child in a car with a stranger can still be daunting.

“I was nervous. Would the car show up? Would it be somebody she felt safe with?” Stern recalled thinking.

Stern’s daughter Izzy said she also felt nervous the first time she took an Uber ride by herself.

“As a girl, it’s scary. And sometimes, you don’t know what’s going to happen but I felt really comfortable once getting in,” Izzy said.

Uber said it has safety measures in place for teenage riders, including background checks on drivers. The company said it only selects tenured drivers with high ratings for the teen service and drivers are required to ask for a pin number at the start of a ride to make sure teens are getting into the correct Uber car.

Parents can also track their teen’s trip in real time and contact the Uber driver at any time. Families can also choose to opt into an encrypted audio recording of the entire trip with a teen rider. If anything were to happen, Uber said it can access that audio recording to determine what is going on.

With past news stories highlighting the potential dangers of an Uber ride gone wrong, Kansal said the company is committed to riders’ safety.

“I think it’s a high bar and we take the safety of every step very seriously. That’s something that I always ask myself and my team. Are we ready to meet that bar of a parent who’s going to be concerned about the safety of their child?” Kansal said.

Uber for teens is launching in 28 metropolitan areas across the U.S. and Canada.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(LONDON) — Facebook’s parent company, Meta, was fined €1.2 billion, or about $1.3 billion, for failing to comply with the European Union’s privacy policies.

The Irish Data Protection Commission announced the fine on Monday, saying Meta had violated the terms of General Data Protection Regulations, a set of rules for protecting customer privacy in the European Union.

The fine amounts to the largest ever imposed under GDPR, which has been enforced since May 2018. Regulators said data transfers made by Meta between the United States and European Union had failed to comply with “standard contractual clauses” in place since July 2020.

“The unprecedented fine is a strong signal to organisations that serious infringements have far-reaching consequences,” Andrea Jelinek, chair of the European Data Protection Board Chair, said in a statement.

ABC News has reached out to Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, for comment.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — As the U.S. hurtles closer to a default on its debt as early as next month, the economic consequences could prove devastating, especially for millions who stand to lose their jobs.

Even a brief debt ceiling breach of about one week would slash 1.5 million jobs, raising the unemployment rate from 3.4% to 5%, a Moody’s Analytics report found in March.

An extended breach of roughly two months would bring a massive wave of unemployment, cutting nearly eight million jobs and pushing the unemployment rate to 7.8%, the report said.

“The economic downturn that would ensue would be comparable to that suffered during the global financial crisis,” Moody’s Analytics warned of a prolonged debt ceiling breach.

Failure to raise the debt ceiling would send financial markets into turmoil, raise interest rates at a moment when elevated borrowing costs already weigh on economic activity and all but ensure a recession.

The potential job losses, however, would not fall evenly across occupations, demographics and regions, experts said. Instead, some workers would be hit hard while others would be spared.

Here’s what to know about who will lose their jobs first in the event of a U.S. debt default:

Which occupations will be hit first by a debt ceiling breach?

The initial jobs losses that result from a potential debt ceiling breach will center in the construction and manufacturing sectors, Michelle Holder, a labor economist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told ABC News.

If a debt default takes place next month, it would arrive as job gains remain robust but have begun to slow, leaving the labor market vulnerable to a downturn in the goods-producing occupations, she said.

“When the economy starts to slow down, people stop spending money on things you can touch: cars, homes, computers and clothes,” she added.

In turn, job cuts will strike construction and manufacturing because those are the sectors most sensitive to a contraction in consumer demand, as employers try to weather an anticipated decline in revenue, she said.

In the event of a debt ceiling breach, major job losses would also hit financial services, leisure and hospitality and retail, the Moody’s Analytics report found.

Which worker demographics will suffer the first job losses?

The employees most likely to lose their jobs first during a default-induced downturn are Black and Hispanic workers as well as young and less-educated workers, Holder told ABC News.

The initial job losses will also disproportionately affect men because they are concentrated in the manufacturing and construction sectors most at risk, Holder said.

The job cuts are set to arrive weeks after fresh government data showed that the Black unemployment rate reached 3.7% in April, the lowest level recorded since the U.S. began tracking such data in the early 1970s.

Between the late 1980s and mid-2000s, government employment data shows “considerable evidence” that Black workers are among the first ones fired as the economy weakens, according to an economic study published in 2010 in Demography, an academic journal.

“We’re going to see a reversal of this resurgence of Black employees, particularly Black men, in the labor force,” Holder said.

Which states will see unemployment rise the most?
 
The states most vulnerable to job losses are those sensitive to a sudden erosion of the business environment, particularly in regions dependent on tourism- and travel-related spending, the Moody’s Analytics report found.

Such states at risk of sharp job losses include Arizona, Florida and Nevada, the report said.

As consumers cut back on spending and avoid big-ticket purchases amid high borrowing costs, the states reliant upon the auto industry will also face significant difficulty, Moody’s Analytics said. Chief among those states are South Carolina and Michigan, the report said.

The anticipated downturn in manufacturing will also fall disproportionately on goods-producing states like Tennessee and Kentucky, the report said.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — A ticking clock in Washington to avert default by raising the nation’s borrowing limit is drawing attention to the $31.4 trillion debt already accrued by the United States government.

The country hit its current debt ceiling in mid-January and is expected to run out of cash to be able to pay all its bills as soon as June 1, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned Congress, while cautioning that the exact “X-date” for default remains fluid.

As President Joe Biden and leading lawmakers including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy work to hammer out a deal, here’s what to know about how the U.S. amassed its debts so far:

What is the national debt?

Nearly every year, the government spends more than it collects in taxes and other revenue, resulting in a deficit. (The debt ceiling, set by Congress, caps how much the U.S. can borrow to pay for its remaining bills.) The national debt, now at a historic high, is the buildup of its deficits over time.

Only five times in the past half century has the U.S. run a surplus, the most recent being in 2001.

“Each side of the political aisle can blame the other, but the debt is mathematically just a mismatch,” Kent Smetters, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of business who formerly worked at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, told ABC News.

The U.S. has had debt since its founding and has only been completely debt-free once, in 1835.

How did it grow to $31.4 trillion?

The national debt has grown significantly since the early 1980s under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

The largest percentage increases to the debt occurred under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both of whom enacted tax cuts that led to large deficits.

Flashpoints that greatly contributed to the debt over the past 50 years include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic — the latter two prompting sweeping stimulus measures from Congress that cost trillions of dollars.

“Some of the debt is definitely policy-driven, such as in the case of tax cuts. Some of it’s reactive: We had a pandemic, we had a financial crisis, and the government’s going to take a position and step in,” said David Thomson, the director of Sacred Heart University’s history program, who has written about the U.S. debt.

“When you add all those things up, it leads to some pretty significant chunks of change. And that’s gotten us up to that $31.4 trillion mark,” Thomson said.

Who owns the debt?

Much of the debt — $24.6 trillion — is held by the public in the form of financial securities issued by the Treasury Department. Another $6.8 trillion is held by various parts of the U.S. government.

The public debt is held by individuals, corporations, foreign nations and entities, state or local governments and Federal Reserve Banks.

The amount of publicly-held debt has doubled over the past decade, Smetters said, and is considered by many economists to be the most important measure of debt.

Will the debt keep growing?

One model from Wharton estimates that if the government wanted to balance its budget sheets, it would have to either permanently and immediately reduce spending or increase tax revenue.

All spending, including for popular programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, would need to be slashed by 30%, according to the Wharton model. Or the federal government could permanently increase all sources of federal tax revenue by roughly 40%.

“Or some combination of the two,” Smetters said. “Right now, the discussions happening in Washington on both sides are so far away from the actual math of what needs to happen. They’re still dancing around some much bigger issues.”

However, many economists believe some government debt is a good thing. Thomson noted that growing public debt speaks to the fact that many view U.S. bonds and and other securities as among the safest assets in the world.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A year after “soft swinging” allegations embroiled a group of Mormon TikTok influencers in Utah, one of them is opening up about the aftermath of being unwittingly swept into the ensuing scandal, and the effect it had on her mental health.

“I experienced my first real panic attack, which I had never had before, just like rocking back and forth hyperventilating,” Miranda McWhorter said in a recent “Impact x Nightline” interview on Hulu. McWhorter denied participating in the alleged swinging.

The episode explores the industry known as “mom-fluencing” — where mothers amassing huge social media followings by sharing an often curated version of their families’ lives, posting everything from their kids’ hair routines to back to school hacks, while monetizing their content with lucrative brand deals.

Influencing is a multi-billion dollar industry, and moms are said to make up about 30% of that total, according to data from the Center on Digital Culture and Society at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication.

“When you have a mom influencer who has over a million followers, who is incredibly dedicated to her content creation, that’s when you can really start seeing the big money and the million dollar a year contracts. They’re essentially running media empires,” Piazza told “Impact.”

But there’s more than meets the eye with some of these seemingly perfect lives. The big business of influencing also goes hand in hand with the scandals and controversies going on behind the screen — something McWhorter knows firsthand.

When fellow mom-fluencer Taylor Frankie Paul announced she was getting divorced last May, Paul claimed she and her husband had a non-monogamous lifestyle and seemed to implicate other Mormon “MomTok” influencers in her group.

“I don’t know what you would call it, if it’s like soft swinging, but you don’t fully switch if that makes sense and go all the way, and to be honest, I did. We had an agreement, like all of us, and I did step out of that agreement, and that’s where I messed up,” Paul said during a livestream. She added, “No one was innocent, everyone has hooked up with like everyone in this situation.”

All members of the group targeted by the speculation quickly denied their involvement, including McWhorter, who posted that she had “nothing to do with [Paul’s] divorce” and “never soft swapped” with anybody.

McWhorter now tells “Impact” she has since moved away from Utah back to her hometown in Idaho.

“I’ve seen so many people say, ‘Miranda just moved out of Utah to get away from everything and everyone in Utah.’ And though that wasn’t the sole reason, I’m like, ‘I have no shame admitting that I was, like, ‘See ya. This is toxic for me and my mental health,'” McWhorter said.

Paul did not respond to a request for comment.

“Impact” also explored the controversy surrounding 31-year-old mom-fluencer Kathleen Sorenson, who was found guilty after falsely accusing a Latino couple of attempting to kidnap her children in 2020.

Meanwhile, a growing movement of mothers on social media seem to be ditching the idea of posting pristine images of their “flawless” family. Breaking out of that picture-perfect mold are mom influencers like Rosie Nguyen, who’s creating content about the “invisible labor” some moms take on, cracking jokes and writing skits about the messy side of motherhood.

“What blew my mind was that brands started reaching out. And they were like, ‘We want you to be just you.’ And I was like, ‘Stop. And you’re gonna pay me?'” Nguyen told “Impact.”

But when Nguyen first entered the mom-fluencing world, she says she didn’t see many moms who looked like her.

“Being an Asian creator, and an Asian mom content creator, I definitely see that we’re not represented well. There are brands who, you can scroll through their feed and it’s like, not a single diverse person is on there,” Nguyen said.

ABC News’ correspondent Janai Norman spoke to attendees at a conference called “Mom 2.0,” including Jill Smokler, who founded the popular site “Scary Mommy” in 2008.

Smokler, a mom of three, said she created the blog with the goal of documenting “the real side of parenthood.” She sold the blog to a major media company in 2015. Now that her children are older, she’s working to create a new brand called “She’s Got Issues.”

“It’s sort of where Scary Mommy left off, with where we are, where I am now, with older kids, with aging parents, with physical changes,” Smokler said.

But the rules have changed and Smokler is just trying to get back in the game.

“I felt like it shifted from natural, organic content into more calculated content. And my life is not that way. So I couldn’t even — even if I tried — could not portray that type of image. And I wouldn’t want to,” Smokler said.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.