Dr Mary L Trump (Neice of Donald Trump) - In less than nine months, Donald Trump and his cronies have enacted nearly half of the Project 2025 agenda. And friend, it’s already eroding our democracy as designed.
From firing tens of thousands of federal workers and replacing them with those loyal to Donald, to weaponizing the Justice Department against critics while protecting him and his allies, to gutting protections for our environment, our health, our civil rights, and so much more, the Trump regime has made clear that they’ll answer to no one but Donald and the billionaires bankrolling his chaos..
January 2, 2026
Gen Z
The Guadian - Amid a nationwide decline of teaching, .... a striking number of gen Z graduates are entering the classroom, despite longstanding concerns over pay and conditions.
Teach For America (TFA), a non-profit education organization, experienced a near 43% increase in applicants for teaching fellowships over the past three years.
A generation whose formative years were spent in isolation during the Covid-19 lockdown is “craving human connection and experiences that feel real”, suggested Whitney Petersmeyer, TFA’s chief growth and program officer. “Teaching is the job where they can find that.”
Gen Z is “responding to the opportunity for purpose and responsibility at a time where many entry jobs feel uncertain or disconnected from impact”, she added.
Jeffrey Epstein
NPR - Two weeks past the legal deadline, the Justice Department has failed to release all of the Jeffrey Epstein files in its possession. The few public documents the DOJ released feature heavy redactions that appear to exceed the limits intended by the law. The government also says some of what was released shouldn’t be trusted. All together, the lack of transparency has fueled the flames of old and new conspiracy theories regarding the convicted sex offender’s life and death.
As we start the year, many people believe that President Trump is one of the powerful few keeping the public in the dark about Epstein, NPR’s Stephen Fowler says. The White House disagrees with that notion. Fowler says he is watching in the coming weeks to see what Congress will do about the DOJ's failure to meet the deadline, especially since the law doesn’t include punishment or enforcement mechanisms.
Trump regime
| NPR - Somali American childcare center operators in Minnesota report that they have received violent threats and seen vandalism after right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video alleging fraud at their establishments. Following the video’s release, the Trump administration cut federal funding to childcare centers, not just in Minnesota but across the country. |
|
Members fleeing Congress
The Hill - GOP lawmakers are fleeing for the exit in droves, with many pointing to a Congress that they argue has grown too dysfunctional and a demanding schedule that leaves little time for their families.
More than 50 lawmakers in both parties have announced decisions to leave their seats, scrambling the calculus on both sides of the aisle ahead of next year’s high-stakes midterms.
The wave of exits could be particularly ominous for Republicans in charge of the House and Senate. The number exiting is nearly on par with 2018, a dismal midterm year for the GOP.
Some lawmakers frustrated with inaction on Capitol Hill plan to run for governor and other state-wide offices, while others are stepping back from public office altogether.
More than 50 lawmakers in both parties have announced decisions to leave their seats, scrambling the calculus on both sides of the aisle ahead of next year’s high-stakes midterms.
The wave of exits could be particularly ominous for Republicans in charge of the House and Senate. The number exiting is nearly on par with 2018, a dismal midterm year for the GOP.
Some lawmakers frustrated with inaction on Capitol Hill plan to run for governor and other state-wide offices, while others are stepping back from public office altogether.
January 1, 2026
Starting seventy years of journalism
Sam Smith - Seventy years
ago I was introduced to what would become a lifetime of journalism. I was a
student at Harvard College and decided to join its radio station, thanks in part to having already become a fan
of Edward R. Murrow. I covered events on
campus as well as sessions of the Cambridge City Council. including a story of
a councilmember who wanted to pave Havard Yard and turn it into a parking lot.
In my sophomore year (1956). I
got a summer job in Washington with the all news station WWDC. They liked my work enough that they offered me
a job when I graduated. The downside of this was that I no longer felt pressure
to do well academically my last two years and I ended up on probation. But the
job came through anyway and the rest of my life was started.
Here is an excerpt from my memoir
which appeared originally in Washington History:
Sam Smith - In the spring
of my sophomore year I read in Broadcasting magazine that WWDC, an independent
station in Washington, DC, was developing a major news operation. Most stations
at the time just ripped and read copy from the wires; the exceptions were
usually network affiliates.
I immediately added WWDC to a
list of 40 stations -- all the others in New England -- to which I sent summer
job applications. The 40 New England stations rejected or ignored me, but WWDC
took me on. And so I returned to my native Washington, which my family had left
when I was ten.
My bosses were two Texas liberals
-- news director Joe Phipps and his assistant Bob Robinson. Short and bald,
Phipps appeared a bespectacled and ambulatory small mouth bass. When excited
his eyeballs almost rubbed against his glasses. His voice ebbed and flowed
between 1950s broadcast fog and full-blown southern oratorical eruption.
Robinson, on the other hand, had an unflappable Texas drawl. A tall man with
white hair, Robinson was as imperturbable as Phipps was instantly reactive.
My initial task -- writing nine
newscasts a day -- interned me in a small corner room with just enough space
for one window, four news tickers, two typewriters, several phones, reams of
yellow copy paper, even more rolls of yellow ticker paper and a maximum of four
human beings.
Each newscast was expected to be
different, whether the news had changed or not. Three of the newscasts occurred
during evening drive time and were 30 minutes apart. This coincided with the
most likely period for accidents and thunderstorms. Since WWDC paid $1 to $5
for every news tip it aired, I would be regularly inundated with accounts of
fallen limbs and fender benders as I struggled to write three newscasts in an
hour and a half. Often the copy ended up like this:
Reports of
damage done by this afternoon's thunderstorm are pouring into the WWDC
newsroom. At least six houses are on fire, nine accidents have occurred and
numerous trees and hot wires have fallen across roads. Police and electric
company officials say their phones have been jammed. . .
That newscast probably cost $13,
representing the number of incidents I managed to squeeze into one
double-spaced page -- all typed in caps with the errors blacked out by a soft
copy pencil.
The news tip system worked pretty
well, although I sometimes suspected that the volunteer rescue squad
dispatchers were calling us before they sent out their equipment, since once
the dispatch had been aired, anyone with a scanner could call in the item. And
on at least one occasion an employee at WTOP even earned a dollar for phoning
in a news tip that he had heard on WMAL.
One of our regular callers was
Dan. Matching Robert Frost's paradigm for the good life, Dan's vocation and
avocation had become one. He sat in his apartment surrounded by police and fire
scanners waiting for tragedy to strike somewhere in the metropolitan region. He
would then call and hoarsely whisper the news: "This is Dan, Sam. I've got
a body for you." And another buck went to Dan.
Writing constantly soon became
tiresome and I discovered various ways to amuse myself. One was to pick a word
for the day and then see in how many newscasts I could use it. It had to be
something like evince or piqued because my
goal, unlike that of station management, was to raise the general tenor of the
WWDC sound. This quixotic effort came to a halt when a blue paper memo from
Bill Robinson made it clear that he had noticed and didn't think much of my
unsanctioned vocabulary lessons.
o
In the late fifties WWDC was the
area's top rated station, but it maintained this status with substantial help
from exclusive broadcast rights to the Washington Senators games. Absent
baseball, WWDC dropped to second or third in evening listening, behind WTOP and
WRC, although keeping its lead in the daytime.
WWDC was sometimes known as
Bubbly Bubbly DC. The song had come from a jingle house, one of the new
parasites of the business -- a firm that provided stations with customized
musical fillers. Knowing that the same jingle, slightly reworked, was being used
by stations all over the country was a reminder of the illusions one could
create in a medium where no one saw what you were doing.
.
FRED
FISKE INTERVIEWS ACTOR TAB HUNTER
[DC Public Library, Washington Post]
Washington radio had always been
a bit different, though -- ever since a local morning man named Arthur Godfrey
started making fun of his advertisers on the air. At least one of them, a
furrier named Zlotnik, the man to see "when your wife is cold,"
became famous mainly as a result of Godfrey's comments about the dirty stuffed
bear in front of his store.
Washington in those days was run
by three commissioners appointed by the president. Many, though, assumed
correctly that the real commissioner was the director of the very white Board
of Trade. The local papers routinely listed the race of victims and
perpetrators in crime stories. A Washington Star veteran recalled "the
grieving widow who called me one day after I'd done an obit about her late
husband, in which I had referred to him as a D.C. native. 'He wasn't no
native,' she shrieked. 'He was as white as you or I!'" And when I went to
cover the annual Brotherhood Week luncheon at a local hotel, a reporter leaned
over and said, "Do you notice the only Negroes in this place are the
waiters?".
This same reporter called me at 2
a.m. the morning after the funeral of Sweet, Precious Daddy Grace, the colorful
bishop of the United House of Prayer for All People. "I'm down here
waiting for them to choose Daddy Grace's successor," he whispered into the
phone, "and I'm the only white person here. How about coming down?"
Later, in January 1961, I made my
only foray into the real world of network television. I was hired for Kennedy's
inauguration by CBS News as a news editor. Along with fellow WWDC newsman Ed
Taishoff, I sat all day capped with a headset in a ballroom of the Hotel
Washington , turning phone calls from CBS correspondents into stories then
placed on Walter Cronkite's personal news ticker. If there was one thing Ed and
I knew, it was how to take news from callers, turn it into copy and get it on
the air fast.
After the summer of 1956, I
returned to Harvard even more determined to go into radio. I was elected WHRB's
station manager but two weeks later received an official letter stating that
"the Administrative Board voted to place you on probation instead of
severing your connection with the University." It had been my second
unsatisfactory term as a result of my infatuation with radio; among the
penalties would be the surrender of my new post. Nonetheless, and in the
tradition of the college's station, I continued on the air under a pseudonym
and comforted myself with the thought that WWDC had asked me to come back. I
toughed it out and eventually graduated without honors but with a job.
I returned to WWDC in the summer
of 1959 upon graduation from Harvard. I started working for Deadline Washington
on my off-days and after work on other days -- putting in 12-14 hour stints.
Often I would be on joint assignment for Deadline and WWDC.
WWDC also received feeds from
other stations. For example, when Nikita Khruschev was visiting the US, we
arranged for a mid-western station to give reports of his tour of an American
farm.
WWDC's news fleet consisted of
two vehicles, a Nash Rambler station wagon and an Isetta minicar. The light
blue Rambler had WWDC NEWS, in reverse image, painted on its hood in large dark
blue letters, thus allowing the sign to be read correctly in a rear view
mirror. The style would become common, especially with ambulances, but at the
time was the sort of novelty WWDC loved.
The Rambler had an even more
startling, albeit unintentional, characteristic. The front seats of Ramblers
folded down to become beds. Unfortunately, this capability had developed an
anarchistic streak in our model, resulting in a tendency for the driver's seat
back to become prone whenever sturdy brake pressure was applied, say at an
ordinary stop light.
The Isetta, an Italian import,
was far smaller than any car on the road today, and powered by a motor scooter
engine. It had four wheels, but they were tiny and the two in back were almost
adjacent to each other. You sat in what amounted to little more than a cockpit
with barely enough room for a 210-pound reporter and a radio telephone. The
door doubled as the entire front end, with the steering wheel swinging out of
the way for entrance and egress. More than once I pulled up to a wall or post
only to remember that I had blocked my own getting out.
AN ISETTA OF THE SAME MODEL THE AUTHOR DROVE AS A RADIO NEWS REPORTER.
It was not the best way to cover
the news. The Isetta had a flank speed of 50 mph on flat, good pavement, and it
practically had to be pedaled up hills. This sometimes interfered with arriving
promptly at the scene of a distant fire, murder or drowning. Nonetheless, no
one at WWDC would admit that novelty in this case had gotten a bit out of hand.
Besides, the Isetta's light carriage allowed me to push it out of mud and sand
in which a heavier car would have become mired.
Everything was simpler. Even the
US Capitol which I wandered around with my mike and tape recorder like it was
my apartment building. Even the US Capitol Police force was comprised mainly of
young men benefiting from the patronage granted their fathers by various
members of Congress. It was a fairly pleasant crowd and you knew you were not
just dealing with a law enforcement officer but perhaps a grad student whose
dad was a buddy of the majority leader.
My favorite Hill cop story from
the period involves a friend who was a bagpipe -playing Lebanese Catholic from
Boston who knew everyone in the Democratic Party and worked for a number of
them including Massachusetts governor Foster Furcolo and, later, Ted Kennedy.
She was on her way to an LBJ State of the Union from Boston but was late and
arrived from the plane still carrying her bagpipe case in which rested not only
the instrument but some pita bread her sister had made.
In a hall crowded with some of
America's most powerful, my friend was told by a Capitol police officer to open
the bagpipe case. The officer was disturbed by what he found inside.
"Don't worry," said my friend. "It's just a bagpipe and some
pita bread. . . Call your chief and tell him Terri Haddad is here with her
bagpipes. He knows me."
The officer did and at the other
end the Capitol Hill police chief issued one blunt order: "Tell her to
play “Danny Boy."
And so for the chief, she did and
then was allowed to repack her instrument and go hear the speech.
Before long, I knew Washington
and its environ like a cab driver and could quickly compute such arcane
calculations as the shortest route from the White House to a six alarm fire in
Upper Marlboro. I also knew every press room in town.
My favorite was at the District
Building, which one entered through swinging doors reminiscent of a frontier
bar. Inside were three desks, a center table and a worn-out sofa. The stuffing
was coming out of the sofa and the covering was greasy and black from years of
resting heads. After Watergate, a sign was posted above the press room sofa. It
read, "Carl Bernstein slept here."
Complementing the novelty of the
station's news fleet was its collection of still rare battery operated tape
recorders. These devices were about three inches thick, five inches wide and
ten inches long.
The recorders were so new that
the engineer's union had initially insisted it send a member out with all
reporters using one. Fortunately for the future of news radio, this particular
piece of featherbedding was scotched. The tape recorders, however, presented a
number of other challenges -- including a deep sensitivity to temperature. More
than once I returned from an outdoor winter taping -- a burial at Arlington
cemetery or a fire -- only to find my recorded voice sounding like Porky Pig as
the batteries returned to full power once back in the studio.
Whatever the machines' faults,
there were fewer than a dozen stations and networks in Washington that had
them, so even a neophyte reporter such as myself had easy access to the most
senior politicians.
In a manual on WWDC news
reporting that I wrote in 1960, shortly before leaving the station, I outlined
some of the peculiarities of the technology:
The various
machines operate in various ways at various times. For example, they have
different proper recording levels and sometimes these change after the machines
have been repaired. . .
Do not let the
speaker hold the mike unless he is in such a position that you can not
comfortably reach him. Saliva does not help the mike crystal.
Covering events
with you on the local level will be the three daily papers, an occasional wire
service man, and sometimes a man from WMAL The basis of successful operation
alongside these other news people is largely intuitive and is worked out by
experience. But if the WMAL cameraman asks you to move the mike a little to the
left, you should do so as long as it does not hamper your work. If you need to
get through a crowd of reporters with a mike, polite requests combined with the
proper quantity of physical pressure will assure entrance.
There are many
events at which over a hundred reporters will be present. Obviously, a
dog-eat-dog attitude could easily result in chaos. A scoop is one thing, but it
doesn't mean cooperation is eliminated.
Covering
national stories, the networks present a problem. The network engineers and
cameramen try to intimidate new independent newsmen and like to play tough.
Some of their requests are responsible. Sometimes they just are trying to give
you a hard time. It gains you nothing to get angry. Be good natured whenever
possible; otherwise go about your business ignoring them . . .
In time this
policy pays off. One cameraman, without being asked, gave me the idea for the
paper clip mike holder. NBC's Johhnie Langanegger repaired a transformer for
me. A cameraman named Skip lent me a screwdriver at a crucial moment. These men
have a job to do and take a certain pride in being old-timers at it. It helps
to remember this . . .
After the
conference there is a mad rush for the few phones available. So the simplest
thing to do is to go the People's Drug Store on the corner of 17th &
Pennsylvania Ave, buy a cup of coffee, sit down at a table and write your story
in relative peace.
 |
THE AUTHOR, 2nd FROM RIGHT, INTERVIEWS JFK RIGHT AFTER HE ANNOUNCED HIS PRESIDENTIAL CANIDACY.
Photo by Hank Walker, Life Magazine.
The stories I covered for WWDC
ran from Eisenhower news conferences, to an interview with Louis Armstrong, to
the murder of the former head of an Illinois college who was found "stark
naked, beaten and dying" in a room of the seedy Alton Hotel, murdered by a
male carnival worker.
My mind became centered on other matters -- such as getting into Coast Guard Officer Candidate
School before my draft board got me. But I know those months changed me even as
they changed the country. I no longer thought of the Capitol as a cathedral,
the exciting had turned a little tawdry, the right choice was less certain and
the important no longer peremptorily apparent.
I had stopped noticing the shine
of the marble. The floors of the House and Senate office buildings became
harder, the hallways darkened, and the doors that lined them seemed to conceal
more than they invited. Even on foggy and rainy evenings, the Capitol dome no
longer floated in the sky but sat lumpy and leaden on top of the Hill, waiting
for a new story to begin.
PHOTOS
WASHINGTON HISTORY, MLK LIBRARY, WASHINGTONIANA DIVISION
Stupid Trump stuff
Occupy Democrats - Stunning analysis reveals that Trump spent a quarter of his 2025 days at golf clubs, costing taxpayers a whopping $110,600,000.
And it gets even crazier...
According to data compiled by the Trump Golf Tracker, Trump visited golf clubs 88 times this year. August was his most golf-crazed month as he visited clubs 10 times. He golfed nine days in March and November and went to his club in West Palm Beach nine times in December.
The astonishing tally completely demolishes the insane MAGA narrative that Trump is the hardest working president in American history. His minions and sycophants are fond of praising his work ethic, but in reality he's busy cheating at golf while his disastrous policies weaken and impoverish our country....
For comparison, President Obama played an estimated 333 rounds of golf over the entire course of his two term presidency. At his current rate, Trump is on track to blow past Obama's eight year total in just four years.
Newsweek - President Donald Trump denied that he fell asleep at recent White House events, instead blaming photographers for capturing him while he's blinking. Video footage of a recent Cabinet meeting appeared to show him motionless and struggling to stay alert.s
At 79 years old, Trump is the oldest person to take office as president, and questions have emerged about his advancing age. At several events, Trump has appeared to have fallen asleep, being photographed or filmed with his eyes closed while sitting in a chair, raising questions about his health.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Thursday that he didn't fall asleep. He said he'll close his eyes because it's "very relaxing to me."
Polls
Newsweek - Recent Economist/YouGov polling illustrates a decline in Trump's approval among middle-class voters–defined as those with incomes between $50,000-$100,000. The shift in sentiment among this pivotal group could influence upcoming congressional elections and reshape the president's political standing heading into 2026...
According to the data, the president’s net approval rating among the middle class fell from -10 in October (43 percent approve/53 percent disapprove), to -12 in November (43 percent /55 percent), and further to -17 in December (40 percent/57 percent).
YouGov’s October polling, comprising a sample size of 1,656 U.S. adult citizens and with a ± 3.4 percent margin of error, was carried out between October 31 and November 3, 2025.
What's the future of science research?
NPR - The Trump administration disrupted much of the federal funding for research in 2025, significantly impacting U.S. science. Administration officials say the changes invigorated federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health, but experts disagree. NPR correspondents Rob Stein and Katia Riddle discuss the future of science discovery with Short Wave host Emily Kwong.
Trump regime alters student loan borrowing and repayment
NPR - The Trump administration and Congress are currently overhauling student loan borrowing limits and repayment timelines. In early December 2025, the U.S. Department of Education announced it had reached a settlement to end the popular Biden-era student loan repayment plan known as SAVE. Now, roughly 7 million SAVE borrowers will need to adjust their plans, as repayment options will undergo significant changes this year. Here’s what you need to know.
Federal government lost 9% of its workers in 2025
Axios - There are 271,000 fewer federal employees than there were at the start of 2025 — about a 9% drop...
- The sharp decline is a result of President Trump's efforts — initially spearheaded by Elon Musk's DOGE — to drastically reduce the size of the federal government.
Most who left the federal workforce weren't technically fired. The bulk of the departures happened in October — when 162,000 people, mostly those who took Musk's "fork in the road," were officially off the books, per the Labor Department. More
Trump wins a case in court
Newsworthy News - Federal judge hands President Trump a crucial victory by greenlighting ICE access to Medicaid data on illegal immigrants, turbocharging mass deportations starting January 2026.
Judge Vince Chhabria rules Trump administration can share migrants’ Medicaid data with ICE, reversing prior blocks.
Democratic states like California and Illinois fund migrant Medicaid, now aiding deportations.
DHS reports 2.5 million illegal aliens removed since 2024 election: 605,000 deportations, 1.9 million self-deportations.
Ruling bolsters Trump’s agenda to end taxpayer-funded benefits for undocumented immigrants.
Federal Judge Vince Chhabria ruled December 2025 that the Trump administration may share migrants’ Medicaid data with ICE effective January 6, 2026. This decision reverses months of legal blocks on the data sharing. Democratic-led states such as California and Illinois provide Medicaid to migrants through state programs. Chhabria determined the sharing is legally authorized under federal law and sufficiently explained in agency guidance. ICE gains a powerful tool to locate and deport undocumented immigrants exploiting public benefits.
DHS data shows over 2.5 million illegal aliens removed since Trump’s 2024 election victory. This total includes 605,000 formal deportations and 1.9 million self-deportations prompted by strict enforcement. The court ruling directly supports this agenda by enabling targeted operations using Medicaid enrollment records. American taxpayers, long burdened by costs of illegal immigration, see relief as benefits data identifies priority cases. Conservative principles of limited government and rule of law advance through restored data access.
Congress officially lets Obamacare subsides lapse
MS NOW - As the calendar flipped to 2026 on Thursday, millions of Americans who purchase their health insurance through Obamacare are ringing in the New Year with an unwelcome gift: health care premiums that are more than doubling in most cases.
At midnight, the Obamacare subsidies that had helped many Americans afford insurance finally expired, after lawmakers failed to agree on a plan to extend the enhanced tax credits.
Now, Americans who rely on Obamacare are hoping Congress might be able to address the skyrocketing premiums in the next few weeks. FULL STORY
By the middle of January, the House is expected to pass a Democratic bill to renew the subsidies for three years. That bill will not become law — it already failed in the Senate previously — but lawmakers in both parties hope the legislation will spur Congress to rally around what has long proved elusive: a bipartisan agreement to address Obamacare costs.
This is a preview of Kevin Frey's latest article. Read the full article here.
New laws in 2026
NBC News - As the country prepares to ring in the new year, new state laws will take effect around the country on a host of issues, including the use of artificial intelligence in health care and elections, paid family and medical leave and rising medical insurance costs.
Some states are looking for ways to soften the blow of higher health care premiums as Affordable Care Act tax subsidies expire after Congress failed to extend them. And on the verge of the coming year’s midterm elections, a slew of more restrictive voting laws are taking effect. Some of the laws
December 31, 2025
Stupid Trump stuff
MSN - President Donald Trump said in an interview Wednesday that construction of his long-teased Triumphal Arch is expected to begin “sometime in the next two months.”...
The proposed structure — modeled loosely on European victory monuments — is one of several high-profile projects Trump has personally championed as part of the semiquincentennial celebrations, a sprawling effort expected to include national and local events across the country.
Justice Department report on Trump's Jan 6 riot
Independent, UK - Donald Trump was “most culpable” for Jan 6 riot and would have been convicted in court, according to the explosive testimony of former special counsel Jack Smith, released Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee.
Smith led the Justice Department prosecutions into Trump following the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters after he lost the 2020 election, and his alleged concealment of classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
Trump's 2024 election victory essentially ended the DOJ effort to hold him criminally liable.
The House Judiciary Committee, led by Republicans, pledged to investigate the Biden administration and Smith in particular over the two criminal prosecutions of Trump that were launched after Trump left office. Throughout his campaign, Trump argued that he’d done nothing illegal and that the prosecutions were political efforts to punish him and prevent his return to the White House.
Trump faced two separate indictments. He was accused of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and prevent Joe Biden from taking the White House despite his own campaign being unable to prove his allegations of election fraud. The president was also accused of taking a trove of documents including some classified materials from the White House upon his departure in January of 2021. More
Why Growing Fear of Nature Could Harm Public Health and Conservation
- Animal phobias affect between 4% and 9% of people worldwide, causing anxiety, stress, and avoidance of natural areas that weakens environmental support
- Research focuses almost exclusively on spiders and mammals while ignoring how people increasingly fear or dislike harmless species
- Evidence suggests a troubling feedback loop: less time in nature may breed more fear, leading to even less outdoor time and stronger disconnection
Iran
NPR - Iran is experiencing its largest protests in years as thousands of people, unhappy with the state of the economy, flood the streets. Inflation in the country has skyrocketed, and the currency has plummeted to a record low. Public anger is growing over sanctions against the ruling government.
Months of anger and frustration over water and energy shortages, civil rights abuses and widespread corruption have fueled the current unrest, NPR’s Jackie Northam says. These criticisms, combined with the economic protests, have the potential to spiral into something significantly larger. The 12-day war Iran had with Israel over the summer was costly. There is now a widespread belief that Israel will start another conflict with the country, which would add more economic uncertainty, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economics professor at Virginia Tech, tells Northam.
Months of anger and frustration over water and energy shortages, civil rights abuses and widespread corruption have fueled the current unrest, NPR’s Jackie Northam says. These criticisms, combined with the economic protests, have the potential to spiral into something significantly larger. The 12-day war Iran had with Israel over the summer was costly. There is now a widespread belief that Israel will start another conflict with the country, which would add more economic uncertainty, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economics professor at Virginia Tech, tells Northam.
Venezuela
NPR - President Trump’s critics say that a strike on a Venezuelan facility is dragging the U.S. even closer to a more dangerous conflict. This week, the president revealed new details about an attack against a Venezuelan dock allegedly used to load drugs onto boats. The latest operation marks the first known U.S. strike inside Venezuela — an escalation of Trump’s campaign against Nicolás Maduro’s government. The strike is significant because it raises the risk of killing people who have nothing to do with narcotics trafficking, NPR’s Franco Ordoñez says. Up until this strike, the U.S. was targeting some sanctioned oil tankers and boats suspected of trafficking drugs. Both of those operations have taken place in international waters.
Trump regime halts federal child care payments to Minnesota
NBC News -
All federal child care payments to the state of Minnesota have been frozen after a viral video alleged widespread fraud at child care facilities across the state. The freeze comes days after FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau had "surged" resources to the state as part of an ongoing fraud investigation that has largely targeted Somali immigrants.
Patel said the FBI's work was in place before a right-wing influencer's video purporting to show certain child facilities weren't operational but were receiving state and federal funds gained traction online.
Nick Shirley, who describes himself as an independent journalist, brought the subject into the spotlight of conservative media in recent days. His report out of Minneapolis was quickly championed by Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk, and the video received millions of views on YouTube and X.
Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill and Assistant Secretary Alex Adams said on X that they had halted the payments and implemented additional requirements for child care payments nationwide. Full story here.
Flu is surging nationwide, and doctors say we’re nowhere near the peak
NBC News - A new variant of Influenza A, nicknamed "super flu," is taking off faster than usual this season. "Just looking at the trajectory of the curve, it’s really a pretty sharp increase that we’re seeing, and it’s not anywhere close to peaking or leveling off," said Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, a senior infectious disease physician at Mass General Brigham in Boston.
The dominant, mutated H3N2 strain emerged over the summer and includes changes to a key surface protein that make it harder for the immune system to recognize the virus.
Older adults and people with chronic conditions are more likely to need hospitalizations if they contract the flu, adding more stress to facilities that already have limited beds because of Covid and RSV cases, according to Dr. Lauren Siewny, the medical director of Duke University Hospital Emergency Department. But doctors warn that young children, particularly infants and young children through age 4, have been hit the hardest.
Symptoms mirror previous flu seasons but can start acutely, such as people experiencing higher fever, shaking, chills, cough and shortness of breath, said Dr. Molly Fleece, associate professor in the division of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Bad news for national parks
Roll Call - From the start of the second Trump administration in January 2025, there has been a steady flow of bad news for staff and services at the [National Park Service] , the arm of the Interior Department that manages the 64 national parks and 369 other units, including historic sites, battlefields, memorials, monuments, preserves and recreation areas.
President Donald Trump’s quasi-federal agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, and, after DOGE, the Interior Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget eliminated more than 4,000 permanent employees through layoffs, buyouts, firings and forced resignations, according to Park Service records obtained by the NPCA. Some staff members also left voluntarily in frustration....
There also were fewer seasonal employees hired than are usually brought on for the park system’s busiest months for visitors, which totaled nearly 332 million in 2024. Visitor statistics for 2025 have not yet been released....
The 43-day partial government shutdown in the fall also took a toll, as thousands of employees were furloughed and others worked without pay. And in recent months there have been other stresses on staff, including orders from the administration to remove all references to diversity, equity and inclusion from Park Service informational materials and items for sale in gift shops.
Your mail-in ballot could get thrown out on a technicality
MS NOW - If you plan to vote by mail, you should plan to get your ballot in even earlier than usual.
That’s because a recent U.S. Postal Service policy change that affects how and when postmarks are applied could lead to some ballots being thrown out even if they were mailed on time.
To the extent that any of us thinks about postmarks — which is probably not much — we probably picture a postal clerk at a counter tapping that round rubber stamp on the upper-right corner of an envelope.
But these days, about the only people who get their mail postmarked by hand are couples sending out fancy wedding invitations. Most mail is postmarked by machine as it’s processed.
A recent Postal Service policy change that took effect this week ended the seven-decade policy of postmarks reflecting when an item is considered mailed. Now, the postmark could mean not when the Postal Service first took possession of an item but the day that that piece of mail was first received at a processing facility.
That means if you drop your ballot in a blue USPS box on Election Day — or your tax return on April 15, for that matter — it may get a postmark of the next day.
Social Security Delayed for Millions Due to Record Backlogs
Newsweek - Millions of Americans receiving Social Security benefits faced delays because of widespread backlogs in 2025, according to a new report from The Washington Post.
A Social Security Administration (SSA) spokesperson disputed the report in a statement to Newsweek, writing: "The Washington Post piece is full of Pinocchios. Social Security provided multiple on the record statements to refute the fake news, but the Washington Post would rather fearmonger seniors than print the truth. An independent OIG audit proved that the Social Security Administration has made profound customer service improvements as a result of technology and staffing decisions.
Nearly 75 million Americans rely on Social Security as part of their retirement, according to a report the SSA released in November. The program provides critical retirement, survivor and disability benefits to those recipients.
While the program remains broadly popular among Americans, it has faced questions about its future and has undergone changes since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, particularly amid cuts made through the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier this year.
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