2025-12-24 06:12:05
The Supreme Court blocked President Trump on Tuesday from deploying National Guard troops in Chicago as part of his campaign to use the military to police the streets of Democratic-led cities.
The Trump administration had argued that Chicago was in chaos—referring to protests against immigration enforcement—but the Supreme Court’s order reads, “At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.”
In October, Trump called 300 members of the Illinois National Guard into federal service to protect federal agents enforcing immigration policies in Chicago under a federal law that allows the president to federalize members of the Guard if they are “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States” or if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion.” He federalized members of the Texas National Guard the next day.
The state of Illinois and the city of Chicago challenged the deployment in court, arguing that Trump abused that federal law to punish his political opponents.
Lower courts ruled against Trump. On October 9, U.S. District Judge April Perry said she “found no credible evidence that there is a danger of rebellion” and issued a temporary restraining order in favor of the state.
The Supreme Court agreed with the decision, saying that the president can only call on the National Guard if regular military forces couldn’t restore order.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
“There is no basis for rejecting the President’s determination that he was unable to execute the federal immigration laws using the civilian law enforcement resources at his command,” Alito wrote.
Trump has also tried to deploy the National Guard in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Portland.
A federal appeals court ruled last week that the National Guard deployment in Washington can continue, but a federal judge blocked Trump from sending the National Guard to Portland in November, and another judge ordered the National Guard to leave Los Angeles earlier this month.
The Trump administration has often gone to the Supreme Court for help when its policies have been blocked by lower courts. In this case, Trump is trying to normalize military policing of protests against him.
This is the first time the high court has weighed in on the president’s use of the National Guard to enforce immigration policies. While the decision only applies to Illinois, it will likely support similar challenges from other cities.
2025-12-24 04:43:53
The Department of Education said Monday that the Trump administration will begin to garnish earnings from student loan borrowers in January.
This is the first time borrowers’ paychecks will be at risk since pandemic-era policies paused payments in March 2020.
Starting the week of January 7, around 1,000 borrowers in default will get notices of their status. The number of notices will increase every month throughout 2026, according to an email from the Education Department reviewed by several news organizations.
According to quarterly reports from the Education Department, as of June 30, there were about 5.3 million borrowers in default.
An individual is in default on their student loans if they have not made a payment in over 270 days. After this deadline, the Treasury Department can collect the debt by ordering an employer to withhold up to 15 percent of a borrower’s pay and taking income tax refunds and federal payments like Social Security benefits. The Education Department must notify people in default 30 days before taking their wages. During that window, people can request a hearing to challenge the order or negotiate repayment terms.
Earnings can be withheld until the loan is paid in full or the individual is removed from default status, but the New York Times reported that the Monday email from the Education Department did not say how much would be deducted from wages.
This past April, when the department announced it would resume collecting defaulted student loans, it said that 4 million borrowers are in late-state delinquency, meaning they had not made a payment in 91–180 days. “As a result there could be almost 10 million borrowers in default in a few months.”
“American taxpayers will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for irresponsible student loan policies,” US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said at the time.
In May, the Trump administration restarted taking tax refunds and Social Security benefits.
This comes at a horrible time for borrowers. As I reported last week, the 20 million–plus people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace will experience huge spikes in premium costs. Additionally, two weeks ago, the Education Department ended Biden’s student loan forgiveness program for being too generous.
But as McMahon said in April, the Department of Education will help “borrowers return to repayment—both for the sake of their own financial health and our nation’s economic outlook.”
2025-12-24 02:12:11
In another assault on reproductive rights by the Trump administration, the US Department of Veterans Affairs sent out a memo on Monday announcing that it will no longer provide abortion or abortion counseling.
This change stems from a Department of Justice legal opinion on December 18 that reinstated exclusions on abortions and abortion counseling that the Biden administration had removed in 2022. That Biden-era ruling expanded abortion access for veterans in cases of rape, incest, or threats to life and health, even in states with bans.
The DOJ cited a rule the VA proposed in August that argued Biden demonstrated federal overreach by expanding abortion access just months after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But, according to the VA, Biden’s decision forced taxpayer funding for abortion.
“Pregnant Veterans and VA beneficiaries deserve to have access to world-class reproductive care when they need it most,” Denis McDonough, Biden’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs, said in 2022, calling it “a patient safety decision.”
The new directive, obtained by Mother Jones, states that it won’t prohibit care to “pregnant women in life-threatening circumstances, including treatment for ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages.” However, these exceptions often do not work. According to Jessica Valenti, a writer on feminism and politics, exceptions “are deliberately crafted to be impossible to use” and only exist “to make Republicans seem a little less punishing.”
Half of the states in the country protect the right to abortion. The VA’s ban will also apply in those states.
The Department of Veterans Affairs did not respond to Mother Jones’ questions about the removal of exceptions in cases of rape, incest, or health emergencies and the usurping of state laws.
The scale of this issue is significant. According to the VA’s own numbers, there are more than 700,000 family members who are eligible for its care. There are over 2.1 million women veterans and thousands of transgender men and non-binary veterans who may need abortion care.
The VA’s memo also states that employees may request to opt out of providing “any aspect of clinical care based on their sincerely held moral and religious beliefs, observances, practices, or exercises,” which could leave the door open for more discriminatory lawmaking in health care access.
For the Trump administration, that is the point. Project 2025 recommended that the Veterans Health Administration “rescind all departmental clinical policy directives that are contrary to principles of conservative governance starting with abortion services and gender reassignment surgery.” Roughly half of the president’s judicial nominees have anti-abortion records.
2025-12-23 20:30:00
The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. This is a non-exhaustive and totally subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy, discontent, or curiosity. Happy holidays.
Every seventh cigarette, I think about how I am an idiot.
Do I even need to mention the mass death? Smokers’ life expectancy is 10 years lower than that of nonsmokers; 1 in 5 deaths in the United States is related to smoking. Cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable death in the US. Have you recently read a list of diseases that kill you? I did—because I looked up what cigarettes do to me. The usual sources of expiration listed unhappily in paragraph two of an obit—lung cancer (of course), but also coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes, the flu, and COPD—are all caused by smoking.
I pride myself on not being too health-conscious. But I am also not a fool. It is obvious that my lungs are becoming mottled with black soot like some 19th-century chimney sweep when I ask, “Any chance I could bum one?” outside every bar. You can feel your heart clog, and your body weaken, when you smoke. Let’s not be naive. All smokers know this. Some don’t care. Many do. Over 50 percent of smokers want to quit. But only around 8 percent of us successfully and permanently do.
Still, during that Seventh Cigarette of Shame, I’ll be honest: I don’t think of my health. It is the small humiliations of smoking that drag me down. I ponder my leftist credibility as I partake in a useless “pleasure” that is connected with labor practices—and political money—that are often evil. (I judge a DoorDash user’s choice to join the worst of capitalism, yet I don’t ever judge a smoker. How lazy is that?) I shamefully think about the fact that I am being duped—my consent manufactured!—by advertising campaigns. And I run through the rolodex of childish explanations people give about smoking, each as pathetic as loving Catcher in the Rye too much past the age of 19.
This last point stings. I despise the faux intellectualism of smoking. People speak of touching death, or some half-assed nihilistic thrust against the mainstream, paraded as a reason to smoke. The glamor of cigarettes irks me, almost as much as the phlegmy cough I hurl some mornings after too many Marlboro Reds. “Beautiful people do it, really talented people do it,” actor Fernanda Amis (yes, daughter of the late British author Martin) told the New York Times, live from the Lower East Side, in one of the seemingly endless articles about how smoking is cool now. “It goes with things that I admire.” She continued by noting the “contemporarily atypical” nature of smoking.
Worse than the long-term diseases might be this particular affliction: saying silly shit to explain to yourself all the reasons you have for liking cigarettes. Please go ahead and strike me down dead early, either way, if I am telling you that I am smoking because of a Nietzsche quote.
Worse than the long-term diseases might be this particular affliction: saying silly shit to explain to yourself all the reasons you have for liking cigarettes.
And yet, as bad as smoking feels, it also feels quite good. On a cold day, if you, like me, enjoy smoking—which I do, frankly; I love it—then you will know that for every Seventh Cigarette of Stupidity, there are three of casual nothingness and three of pure, unadulterated joy. There are many cigs of felicity.
There is the cigarette after a run, when my lungs are fresh. I take in smoke, and I inhale deeply. The head rush mimics the sublime experience of my first-ever nicotine. (I recently bonded over this pleasure with my girlfriend’s father. See! Smoking helps in so many ways; smoking is pro-social—we smokers love to say this.) There is the cigarette outside a show, away from the cramped and the sweaty. At a party, there is the cigarette to avoid a conversation; at a party, there is the cigarette to start a conversation. There is the cigarette after a long, useless fight—with partner, colleague, friend, or relative—in which I breathe out, like a zen ritual of pure release.
And there is my favorite cigarette. It is when I smoke while listening to a perfect song. This is when I lean into music that I want to fully immerse myself in: country (George Jones, Don Williams, Jerry Jeff Walker), strange jazz (Loren Connors, Ben LaMar Gay), slow rap (Ka). At these moments, I feel quite good alone, a difficult stability for me to find.
So then, I contain multitudes. I love cigarettes. I hate cigarettes. I have been smoking cigarettes on and off since I was a teenager. I have been quitting for five years—which is to say: I have smoked regularly for five years, but with more guilt.
Here is where, in theory, I should say: The problem with smoking is that it is obviously addictive. The issue is nothing more complicated than my brain is broken. But recently, I read a forthcoming book from Princeton University Press by Hanna Pickard, What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction. It has changed my understanding of my habits—and maybe it will change yours, too.
First, let me point out something Pickard makes clear in her work: Addiction is heterogeneous. Your relationship with drugs—from the crippling ones to the caffeine in coffee—might not be what I am describing here. In this piece, I’m saying nothing to anyone but myself. So let us relinquish, as Pickard writes, “the idea of a universal explanation of addiction or underlying ‘essence’ that makes it what it is.”
Great. Unburdened, we can explore new ways to think about desire to the point of self-harm.
Pickard’s book disputes what she calls the brain model of addiction. In a famous study in 1985, researchers put rats in a container with a lever that gave them cocaine. “You will not be surprised,” Pickard writes, “the rats in this experiment took a lot of cocaine.”
A month later, the rats looked like our current view of addiction: They had stopped eating and drinking and had basically killed themselves. Thus, our stereotype of the addict is formed. “The rat relentlessly pressing the lever, the human whom drugs have made into a walking zombie,” Pickard writes, “these are the poster children of the currently dominant scientific paradigm of addiction, which sees it as a brain disease causing compulsive drug use.”
But, convenient as the model may be, is it true? Pickard doubts it. Think about the situation the rats found themselves in. Imagine you were alone in a cage with nothing but cocaine. What would you do? You’re basically being tortured. There’s nothing to do but coke; it is the only relief as you “live for weeks on end without any respite from the boredom, the loneliness, the misery, and the suffering.”
It took years for scientists to run the same experiment, but with other options. The results were stunning. What about when rats were given the option of a social reward? “They found that, when given a choice between pressing a lever for methamphetamine or heroin or pressing a lever to get one minute of playtime with another rat, almost 100 percent of the rats—including those who showed every indication of addiction-like behavior…chose to press for playtime with the other rat.”
Pickard concludes something that felt revolutionary, for me at least, to read: Many times, drug use is “the misery of a life where addiction is the best thing on offer.”
Feeling bowled over by this, I emailed her to make sure I understood her argument. “The brain disease model claims that addiction IS a brain disease. I think this is not what addiction is,” she explains. “I think it is a pattern of drug use that has gone wrong.” The question then becomes, she says, “Why is a person using drugs when doing so is so destructive to them?”
There are many answers to that question, Pickard notes. But they aren’t always as easy, or clear, or one size fits all. They have to do with self-identity, joy, habits, and the many, many strange complications of the self.
This paradigm shift really has helped me understand why I smoke. How much is my smoking about self-identity? How much is it about struggling toward concrete actions that make sense of myself to myself?
This insight has implications for broader research, too. “Keeping clearly in mind the idea that what we are trying to do is explain behavior—drug use gone wrong—is part of how we make sure we don’t sideline all possible explanations and end up focusing on only one,” Pickard told me over email. That means we can and should be thinking far beyond just the brain disease model for helping people who find themselves addicted. This allows research to continue to move beyond just sending money toward solving the brain model of addiction.
This year, what I found particularly monstrous about cigarettes was not all the stuff I already knew about them—how much they suck and hurt me and kill and profit big business—but also, how much I loved them anyway. I’ve come to see that it will be impossible for me to quit until I’ve accepted that the pain of cigarettes outweighs the good.
Reading Pickard, I felt empathy for those rodents. I have used cigarettes most when my life resembles that of a coked-up rat—feeling as though there is nothing else to do but smoke. When I am stuck in a situation in which being addicted feels like my best option for bringing a little novelty to my life, smoking is the easy way to get “happy.” I suppose it goes without saying that when I’m feeling good, not just about but in my life—when I am truly happy—I smoke less. The worst thing about being addicted to something, in the end, is that it has revealed how indifferent I have been to looking past a cloud of smoke to find a little fun.
2025-12-23 20:30:00
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The Trump administration has said it is immediately pausing all leases for offshore wind farms already under construction, in the heaviest blow yet to an industry that the administration has relentlessly targeted throughout the year.
Trump’s Department of the Interior said that it was halting the building of five wind projects due to “national security risks”. The department said it would work with the US Department of Defense to mitigate the risk of the wind turbine towers creating radar interference called “clutter” that could, in some way, hamper the US military.
“The prime duty of the United States government is to protect the American people,” said Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior. “Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers.”
The halt will affect the Vineyard Wind 1 project off the coast of Massachusetts, Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind in New York, Revolution Wind off Rhode Island, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind in Virginia.
All of the projects were reviewed and approved under Joe Biden’s administration, which found there were no undue national security concerns raised by the developments. Democrats have pointed to two assessments by the Pentagon of Revolution Wind that found the project “would not have adverse impacts to DoD missions in the area”.
Wind developers and regional grid operators have warned that Trump’s attack on offshore wind will cost billions of dollars in investment, thousands of jobs, and a new supply of clean electricity that will help prop up grids facing heightened new power demand from the rapid advance of artificial intelligence.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that a Trump order to ban wind project permits was “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law”. The judge struck down the order following a legal case brought by 17 states and Washington, DC.
However, in halting the under-construction wind farms, Trump has escalated his battle against a beleaguered wind industry that he has long reviled, since he objected to the sight of wind turbines from his Scottish golf course more than a decade ago.
“Wind is the worst,” the president said.
“Wind is the worst,” the president said at a Pennsylvania rally on 9 December. “That’s a scam. They ruin your valleys. They ruin your peaks. And [it’s] the most expensive energy.”
In fact, wind is among the cheapest energy sources, with costs falling sharply in recent years. Clean-energy advocates had hoped for a late blossoming of offshore wind in the US, which has lagged several countries in Europe, but this has been hampered by animosity from the Trump administration as well as some local opposition.
“For nearly a year, the Trump administration has recklessly obstructed the build-out of clean, affordable power for millions of Americans, just as the country’s need for electricity is surging,” said Ted Kelly, lead counsel at Environmental Defense Fund.
“We should not be kneecapping America’s largest source of renewable power, especially when we need more cheap, homegrown electricity. Instead, this administration has baselessly attacked wind energy with delays, freezes and cancellations, while propping up aging, expensive coal plants that barely work and pollute our air.”
2025-12-23 20:00:00
I just turned 26, which means I was unceremoniously booted off my parent’s health insurance and had to fend for myself in the wild west of American health care. For a freelancer like me, this meant I had to buy health care on the marketplace.
First, I had to figure out what that even is.
Let’s go back to 2010, when I was a small child who didn’t have to worry about understanding the word “deductible.” That year, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare. The law established marketplaces where people could buy health insurance if they didn’t get it through work, Medicare or Medicaid. It also gave tax credits—or a dollar amount you subtract from how much taxes you pay—to lots of people who got insurance this way.
By 2014, those marketplaces were up and running. That year alone, over 5.4 million people saved an average of $276 per month thanks to the credits, according to data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Then in 2021, Congress poured a lot more funding into these tax credits. They increased the tax credits that enrollees got and made more enrollees eligible. From 2021 to 2025, the total annual premium tax credits that Marketplace enrollees received went up by about $87 billion, and the number of Americans getting these tax credits went up by about 12 million.
The catch? Those enhanced tax credits were only extended through the end of 2025. As Congress negotiated budget legislation to stop the government from shutting down during September, voters pressured Democrats to fund health care and stand up to Republican lawmakers aiming to gut health care spending. So, Democrats insisted that they would only vote for budget legislation if it included funding for these ACA tax credits. Republicans refused, and the government shut down.
It was the longest shutdown in history and it looked like Democrats really were not going to back down until we got extended tax credits. But then, they did— to everyone’s dismay, which I covered live here. The Democrats agreed to open the government for the promise of a vote on ACA subsidies.
So basically, we are exactly where we were: on the cusp of a lot of people losing health insurance. Or, having to pay for much more expensive insurance. How much more expensive? I did the math.
At the heart of these price hikes is a standoff between lawmakers over funding tax credits that help people pay for Obamacare coverage. Basically: Democratic lawmakers want to fund those tax credits; Republican lawmakers don’t. (Along with a whole lot of shutdown shenanigans that have once again punted a vote over the matter to December.) Without relief, nearly 22 million people who get those credits can expect to pay more.
Think you’re safe if you weren’t getting these tax credits anyway? Think again! Insurers that are part of Affordable Care Act Marketplaces (i.e. where you buy health insurance through Obamacare) proposed a median premium increase of 18 percent—about 11 percentage points higher than last year’s median. And think you’re safe because you get health insurance through your job? Also, think again! Next year is expected to see the highest increase in the total health benefit cost per employee since 2010. In other words, more money is gonna come out of your paycheck to pay for your health insurance—about 6 to 7 percent more on average.
But how much more you’ll be paying depends on factors like your age, where you live, and whether you’re married. I don’t know you like that, so enough about you. Let’s talk about me. I’m an unmarried 26-year-old living in Illinois. Here, insurers have requested rate changes as high as 38 percent. That kind of increase to my current premium would have me paying over $430 per month for health insurance. That’s roughly the same as my grocery budget, about a third of my rent, more than four times my utilities, and it would force me to choose between buying the occasional little treat out or saving enough to retire in this lifetime.
This got me thinking about how Republicans convinced anyone that getting rid of these subsidies was a good idea in the first place. I decided to do some decoding.
Why say “medicaid reforms” when trying to kick people off of Medicaid? Why did GOP lawmakers insist they couldn’t negotiate over health care if the government was shut down? Why lie about federal spending on undocumented people’s health care?
To understand, I turned to an unlikely source: my high school English notes on ‘Language in Thought and Action’ by S.I. Hayakawa. The book can help answer: Why do politicians sound like that?
Take House Speaker Mike Johnson. After the government shut down, he discussed “Medicaid reforms, not cuts.” Then he clarified what reforms he had in mind: “Kick those people off,” he said of groups that he believed to be improperly enrolled. The difference is a matter of semantics, or more specifically, what Hayakawa calls “affective connotation.” That’s our personal feelings attached to language. After all, if 74 percent of surveyed Republicans approved of Medicaid (per a June KFF poll), wouldn’t you—a GOP politician—avoid admitting to cutting it?
Next, take JD Vance lying about Democrats demanding “billions of dollars” for undocumented people’s health care. Even if we put aside the cruel implication that undocumented people don’t deserve affordable health care, the claim isn’t true. But pitting undocumented people against other Americans reinforces what Hayakawa calls the two-valued orientation—an “us vs. them” mentality that politicians use to mobilize their base.
Lastly, take Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s vague statements about needing to reopen the government. What does that mean, actually, and how did he want to get there? This is another rhetorical device Hayakawa calls “abstraction.” We all do it to streamline conversation. But we can also use it to point fingers or absolve ourselves of blame, like talking about reopening the government without specifying how one might—or might not—do that. So next time you’re listening to politicians use maddeningly euphemistic terms to describe real people’s future pain, don’t be outwitted by tactics basic enough to be taught in high school.
But are people buying it? I sought out Americans across the political spectrum to see their thoughts on the changes to the ACA.
Some conversations went so in-depth I had to make videos just devoted to them. You can watch all seven videos here.
Now what? I have some final reflections:
First, discontent with political leaders is running high. When the government shut down, affordable health care was at the center of lawmakers’ fight over funding the government. Democrats wanted any funding legislation to include an extension of tax credits for people on Affordable Care Act marketplace plans. Republicans refused. Then, a group of Senate Democrats broke ranks to reopen the government without extending the credits. People who’ve voted Republican before have shown frustration with GOP leaders for their refusal to extend the credits, and liberals and leftists alike have derided the Democrats who didn’t hold the line after the country endured the longest government shutdown in US history.
Second, the credits expiring will have widespread impacts. Although the millions of Americans receiving the credits now will be most directly impacted, others will feel ripple effects. Private insurance is set to get more expensive, and other people not receiving the subsidies also face higher costs and more limited coverage.
Third, in addition to the massive humanitarian toll that limiting access to affordable health care will take, the economy will also suffer. Many small business owners—people who Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, have called “the backbone of our economy”—expressed fear and anxiety over the rising costs of their marketplace plans as their subsidies are set to expire.
Oh, and last week, Republicans blocked yet another ACA vote.
