"The ultimate outcome will be fewer vaccines and more vaccine-preventable illness," said Dan Jernigan, former director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases until this year...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/04/us-vaccines-vinay-prasad-memo
Amnesty International finds immigrants at Florida facility were shackled and left outside in metal cage for up to a day…
A 15-year quest ends with a monument, drawing crowds and nostalgia as Detroit embraces its cult-film past…
"The time has come to change the tones of submission into tones of defiance—and to tell Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster, if they propose to execute this measure upon us, to send on their blood-hounds. . . . I received my freedom from Heaven, and with it came the command to defend my title to it. . . . I don't respect this law—I don't fear it—I won't obey it! It outlaws me, and I outlaw it. . . . I will not live a slave, and if force is employed to reenslave me, I shall make preparations to meet the crisis as becomes a man. . . ."
Tim Leiweke was accused of 'orchestrating a conspiracy to rig the bidding process for an arena at a public university…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/trump-pardons-tim-leiweke
Abortion providers, and even manufacturers, will be liable for penalties over pills mailed into the state…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/04/texas-law-abortion-pill-access-lawsuit
Ranking Senate Armed Services Democrat Jack Reed said the briefing left him "deeply disturbed" and said the Pentagon "has no choice" but to release the full, unedited video.
"This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration's military activities," Reed said. "This must and will be only beginning of our investigation into this incident."…
In front of the girl, her father and Bruckelmyer, Massie asked her for forgiveness. Looming over her, the three men wept. Then the girl's dad and preacher allowed the man who had been sexually abusing her since kindergarten to hug her.
"It was one of the worst things ever," she told police some 15 years later...
https://www.propublica.org/article/sexual-abuse-old-apostolic-lutheran-church-minnesota
Gentile and his business partner, Jeffry Schneider, were convicted in August 2024 of conspiring to defraud thousands of investors in a capital funds scheme totaling $1.6 billion and using funding from investors to "pay distributions and create a false appearance of success." …
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/03/david-gentile-fraud-restitution-trump-00674963
It's a growing vulnerability that Democrats exploited repeatedly in recent months, with campaigns focused on affordability sweeping key races in last month's elections in New Jersey and Virginia and powering an overperformance in a deep-red House seat in Tennessee on Tuesday...
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/04/poll-americans-trump-voters-affordability-crisis-00674747
Democrats insist the report shows Hegseth's actions threatened troops, and he remains unaccountable.
That could pose a problem if the House or Senate changes hands in 2026 — giving the opposition party subpoena power.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/04/pentagon-releases-report-on-hegseths-signal-chats-00676662
"This is the bill, a clean three-year extension of ACA tax credits, that Democrats will bring to the floor of the Senate for a vote next Thursday, and every single Democrat will support it," Schumer said. "Republicans have one week to decide where they stand."…
There's other disparities in terms of access to health-care providers, which are also important, but the fundamental disparity is people who are uninsured don't get the care they need to maintain their health.
Frum: Americans don't like comparing their way of doing things to anybody else. And when they do compare, the comparison they typically will most often make is to my native Canada, partly because it's next door and speaks English, and partly because it's a system as different from the United States just about as there is in the developed world, so you get a very extreme compare and contrast—very different from what you would do if you compared it to, say, Switzerland or Germany. But how do other countries approach these things? What do they do right that Americans could learn from if Americans were ever minded to learn from anybody?
Gruber: I think, fundamentally, they do two different things, and this comes to, really, debate over single payer. Let's step back and talk about Bernie [Sanders] and single payer. Okay, what is single-payer health care? It really is three different pieces. The first piece, the one we talk about the most and that's the least important, is having one single payer. The second piece is universal coverage. That's something that other countries do right—most countries in the world do right—and that's something we should do. The third piece, which we don't talk about nearly enough, is regulating health-care prices. We're the only developed country in the world which lets the free market determine the prices we pay for health care. Health care is a broken market. The free market should not be determining the prices. There should be government regulation to help determine the prices. Every other country in the world's learned that lesson; we have not...
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/2025/12/the-david-frum-show-jonathan-gruber-health-care/685126/
"This is the third version of the questions that most of the ACIP members received in 72 hours," Hibbeln said. "We don't even have a slide explicitly describing what questions we're supposed to answer."…
Shakeups to the panel's membership and leadership have resulted in chaotic meetings and delayed votes…
Democrats and the targets of Pulte's DOJ referrals have accused the FHFA director, who is also chair of the boards of government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, of leading politically motivated and improperly conducted investigations into public figures who have opposed the president. The FHFA's top internal watchdog position has been vacant since early November, when Reuters reported that Pulte had circumvented the previous Inspector General Joe Allen to make the criminal referrals…
The university accepted nearly equal numbers of male and female prospects, though, like some other schools, it got nearly twice as many female applicants. That math meant it was easier for male students to get in — 7 percent of male applicants were admitted, compared with 4.4 percent of female applicants, university data shows.
The Trump administration's policies may soon put an end to that advantage enjoyed by men at some colleges, admissions and higher-education experts say...
The ROAD package, backed by Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), includes an array of legislation aimed at boosting housing supply. The Banking panel approved the measure unanimously in July...
The decision bolsters Trump's attempt to tilt the playing field toward Republicans before the midterms…
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/04/supreme-court-texas-house-map-00678075
Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) on Thursday announced he will file articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who is at the center of two scandals at the Defense Department.
"This secretary has to go," Thanedar told Fox News host Josh Breslow. "He's incompetent. He's, you know, violated — he has committed war crimes. He must go."…
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5633631-shri-thanedar-pete-hegseth-articles-of-impeachment/
The latest announcement from the administration has raised renewed criticisms of the plan, with New York's Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, saying on X: "Genuine question: Why is the Trump administration so hellbent on people going hungry?"
Similarly, Democrats on the House agriculture committee said: "Yet again, Trump and Rollins are illegally threatening to withhold federal dollars. Snap has one of the lowest fraud rates of any government program, but Trump continues to weaponize hunger."…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/02/trump-snap-benefits-threat-democratic-states
"They contribute nothing. I don't want them in our country, I'll be honest with you," he said. He called Omar "garbage" and said "we're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country".
"These are people who do nothing but complain," he said. "They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing … When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don't want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it."…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/02/trump-somali-immigrants-minnesota
Kremlin aide says Ukraine crisis is no closer to resolution after Witkoff talks, as Russian president accuses European powers of sabotaging peace…
The country is the world's second-largest producer of the popular fish, and the biggest supplier to the US, but its farms are beset by accusations of dangerous labour conditions, antibiotic overuse and ecological harm…
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/dec/02/chile-salmon-farms-fish-industry
When his book Notes on Being a Man was released last month, it raced to the top of the bestseller lists. The US author, tech entrepreneur and podcaster explains his theories on dating, crying – and the rise of Donald Trump…
Republicans face a dire predicament heading into the midterm year, with independent voters breaking away from President Donald Trump and a conservative base losing faith in the GOP majorities on Capitol Hill...
A Guardian investigation reveals Dollar General and Family Dollar stores often fail to honor their shelf prices – charging more at checkout for everything from frying pans to Frosted Flakes…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/customers-pay-more-rising-dollar-store-costs
This matters because, as Texas Republicans were trying to decide whether to redraw the state's maps earlier this year, Trump's Justice Department wrote a letter threatening to sue the state unless it enacted an illegal racial gerrymander. The letter claimed, falsely, that it is illegal for a state to draw any map that includes a district where white people are in the minority, and two other racial groups make up the majority. DOJ told Texas that it must redraw its congressional maps to eliminate several districts that fit this description...
https://www.vox.com/politics/470984/supreme-court-texas-republican-gerrymander-inept
Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Safe Climate Transport Campaign, said that current efficiency standards have motivated automakers to produce cars that use less gas, saving consumers money at the pump. "Trump's action will feed America's destructive use of oil, while hamstringing us in the green tech race against … foreign carmakers," he added. "The auto industry will use this rule to drive itself back into a familiar ditch, failing to compete."…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/trump-fuel-efficiency-rules
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the committee's top Democrat, defended the former special counsel and his tactics in a statement and questioned why Republicans are insisting on having Smith testify behind closed doors. But he also criticized the phone record request targeting Jordan, which was issued before Smith was named to his post...
President Donald Trump argued Tuesday that former special counsel Jack Smith's final report — chronicling the criminal case against him for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago — should never be made public...
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/02/trump-jack-smith-classified-docs-report-00673178
Stan Kroenke doesn't need federal help to make a business flourish. He is worth an estimated $20 billion, a fortune that has allowed him to become one of America's largest property owners and afforded him stakes in storied sports franchises, including the Denver Nuggets and England's Arsenal soccer club.
Yet Kroenke, whose wife is an heiress to the Walmart fortune, benefits from one of the federal government's bedrock subsidy programs, one that props up ranching in the West...
https://www.propublica.org/article/grazing-ranchers-public-lands-trump
John Crowley, president and CEO of the trade lobby group Biotechnology Innovation Organization, said in a statement that Pazdur's exit "raises serious concerns about the repeated turnover in key leadership" and risks U.S. biotech leadership as China seeks to compete in the sector...
"We're nowhere on health care," said one senior House Republican who was granted anonymity to candidly describe the situation...
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/01/senate-barrels-toward-failure-on-health-care-00672273
The pope urged the U.S. to "seek dialogue" instead of pursuing a military incursion...
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/02/pope-leo-us-venezuela-military-incursion-00672810
"Deferred interest is a really nasty gotcha, because a lot of people don't understand what it means," says Rossman. If you don't know the rules, it can end up costing you far more than whatever you saved on that initial purchase, he says...
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/02/some-store-credit-cards-come-with-a-nasty-gotcha-says-expert.html
Group beaten in early hours of morning in village where they volunteered to help protect Palestinians from settler violence
Trump's astonishing intervention in favour of Hernández, who is known by his initials JOH, has baffled many observers, with one Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent calling the move "lunacy".
Why would the US president use his "war on drugs" as a justification for overthrowing Maduro – despite what many see as flimsy evidence that the Venezuelan leader really is a narco boss – while simultaneously offering a Get Out of Jail Free card to a man already found guilty of such crimes in a Manhattan federal court?…
"It's quite unprecedented that you have an illicit market of this nature, that is causing global harm, where there's blatant impunity, and it's happening in this public way."…
They accuse Patel of lacking the experience to lead the FBI and that managers will not take initiative without explicit direction for fear of being fired. Patel's first six months have produced a "troubling picture" of an organization described by insiders as a "rudderless ship", with two sources independently characterizing the director as being "in over his head". One stated he "lacks the requisite knowledge or deep understanding of all the FBI's unique and complex investigative and intelligence programs".
One key accusation is that the FBI has become "internally paralyzed by fear". Managers are "afraid of losing their jobs", and "waiting on directions from the FBI director" rather than taking initiative, according to multiple sources...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/01/fbi-kash-patel-leaked-report
Volkswagen and BMW, Samuelsson says, "can do with they like", but if they take the foot off the electrification pedal, they will just widen the gap for China.
"The Chinese will set up factories in Hungary and Slovakia, Romania … in low labour cost markets. I don't think it's possible to keep them out of the EU with tariffs. You just need to meet them face on and compete with them," he says...
https://www.teguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/01/new-york-city-ice-raid
The emails reveal mounting warnings about Lakanwal, whose erratic conduct raised alarms long before last week's attack. His behavior deteriorated so sharply that a community advocate reached out to a refugee organization for help, fearing he was becoming suicidal...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/01/national-guard-shooting-suspect-mental-health
Referring to how the president used an ableist slur to insult Tim Walz, the Democratic Minnesota governor, a day earlier, Bohacek's post added, "His choices of words have consequences."
"I will be voting NO on redistricting, perhaps he can use the next 10 months to convince voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority."…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/01/trump-indiana-state-senator-redistricting-vote
