Conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh appears to be backing away from his "racist immigration enforcement" ruling, which brought the phrase "Kavanaugh stop" into the lexicon. In a podcast segment from Tuesday, two legal experts torched the Trump-appointee for giving "himself the gift of forgiveness," and said that removing his name from racist arrest practices is "never going to happen."

In September, Kavanaugh wrote in a ruling that the "apparent ethnicity" of Hispanic individuals could be a "relevant factor" for federal agents who decide to confront them about their legal status and demand proof of citizenship. This was widely criticized as the Supreme Court condoning racism and flying in the face of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches. Anil Kalhan, a law professor at Drexel University, dubbed these sorts of confrontations "Kavanaugh stops," a term that became increasingly common as news of federal agents harassing Latino individuals increased.

Now, in a ruling from earlier this month, Kavanaugh appeared to try and walk back that previous ruling. Writing in a concurrence to the Court's decision to block Trump from deploying the National Guard to Illinois, the justice added a footnote stressing that race and ethnicity could not be considered by agents conducting "immigration stops or arrests." The overall case did not directly concern immigration arrests, so the note stood out to many observers, who considered an attempt to distance himself from the "Kavanaugh stops" moniker.

Discussing the concurrence on a Tuesday episode of Slate's law podcast, "Amicus," co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern torched "this strange, tacit walk-back."

"It’s the icing on top of the Christmas cake that Brett Kavanaugh, in an unrelated discussion, gave himself the gift of forgiveness for his notorious 'Kavanaugh stops' opinion," Lithwick said.

"I think he is begging us to please cease and desist calling them 'Kavanaugh stops,'" Stern responded. "This footnote is buried in the opinion and doesn’t really have anything to do with it... Wow! Immigration stops can’t be based on race? What a concept! A concept that you, Brett Kavanaugh, rejected just a few months ago, in September, in the Vasquez Perdomo case. Back then, you wrote that immigration stops could be at least partly based on race or ethnicity, and that a person’s appearance as Latino could be one reason for them to be stopped by immigration officers."

He continued: "I think he is trying to rid 'Kavanaugh stops' from the discourse, which is never going to happen. And maybe he’s trying to send a message to the Trump administration to cool it down."

Donald Trump appears to have rewritten the rules at the Kennedy Center to silence Democrats and anyone not appointed by him ahead of his attempt to rebrand the famed institution, according to a new report from the Washington Post.

Trump has been mounting a takeover of the Kennedy Center for most of his first year back in the White House. Back in February, he fired the presidentially-appointed board of trustee members and installed a new round of trustees who promptly voted to elect him as chairman of the center. Earlier this month, the trustees voted to add Trump's name to the Kennedy Center, a move which cannot be done without Congressional authorization, despite the swift moves to add his name to the center's website and physical building. The takeover has prompted a wave of artists to cancel events at the Kennedy Center, and seen its ticket sales and ratings plummet.

The board claimed that this vote was unanimous, but in the aftermath, one of the remaining Democrats on the board, Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, claimed that she had been muted during the process and prevented from voicing her dissent. Beatty is one of the 23 "ex officio" members of the Kennedy Center board, a designation for trustees appointed by Congress.

On Wednesday, the Post reported that the Kennedy Center's bylaws were seemingly changed amid Trump's takeover to bar ex officio members from voting, leaving only Trump's own appointees with the authority to weigh in on changes. In a statement to the outlet, Roma Daravi, the center’s vice president of public relations, claimed that these members had never had voting authorities and the bylaw changes were only bringing them in line with "longstanding precedent."

A deeper investigation by the Post disputed this claim. The Kennedy Center's original charter lists ex officio members as part of the board of trustees and makes no differentiation between voting and non-voting members. Furthermore, recent tax filings by the center list it as having 59 "voting members," "a total that includes both general and ex officio members," the Post explained.

Whether or not these ex officio members had voting authorities in the past "seems to be in dispute," one person with knowledge of the situation told the Post. Sources the outlet spoke to appeared to be split on the matter.

“Theoretically they could vote, but our practice was not to have them vote or count toward quorum,” another anonymous source said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat and ex officio board member, said that there was "no distinction between ex officio and presidentially appointed Trustees when it comes to members’ rights and responsibilities on the board, including voting," and further accused Trump and his loyalists of conspiring to "illegally change the bylaws to silence dissent."

The New York Times editorial board marked the end of 2025 with an extensive breakdown of Donald Trump's "even more lawless" second term, through the lens of the grim day years ago, they argue, it really began, "a day that should live in infamy."

Per the board's argument, "Trump’s second term began to take shape" nearly five years ago during the waning days of his first, on January 6, 2021. On that day, a mob of Trump supporters, summoned to Washington, D.C., and "urged" on by the president, stormed the US Capitol building in an effort to disrupt Congress during its certification of the 2020 election. Trump lost that election to Joe Biden, but spent the week afterwards claiming that he had actually won it and pursuing efforts to get the real results overturned.

The riot ultimately failed to prevent the certification, but it nonetheless unleashed a torrent of violence, mayhem and destruction into the Capitol, in what the NYT board called "one of the most disgracefully anti-American acts in the nation’s history." It was also, however, "a turning point, but not the one it first seemed to be," as it signaled a turn for Trump that would come to define his second term in office.

"It was a turning point toward a version of Mr. Trump who is even more lawless than the one who governed the country in his first term. It heralded a culture of political unaccountability, in which people who violently attacked Congress and beat police officers escaped without lasting consequence," the board explained.

It was not just Trump whose conduct was forever altered after January 6, it was also the Republican Party at large, driven to new depths in its efforts to insulate him from consequences and help push his agenda.

"The aftermath of Jan. 6 made the Republican Party even more feckless, beholden to one man and willing to pervert reality to serve his interests," the board continued. "Once Mr. Trump won election again in 2024, despite his role in encouraging the riot and his many distortions about it, it emboldened him to govern in defiance of the Constitution, without regard for the truth and with malice toward those who stand up to his abuses."

After his reelection in 2024 and return to office, the board noted that Trump even used the events of January 6 as "a litmus test to identify and promote loyalists." Prospective national security hires in the second Trump administration were reportedly asked if they believed that the Capitol riots had been an "inside job." Official and agents involved in efforts to prosecute rioters and hold Trump accountable for his election lies have been "retaliated against," "fired or demoted," or hit with "unjust federal investigations." Kash Patel, Trump's choice to lead the FBI, had notably "promoted the theory that the F.B.I. had secretly encouraged Jan. 6 violence."

Trump also marked the start of his second term by issuing a mass pardon for those who took part in the January 6 Capitol riots, signaling to his supporters that "If you break the law to protect me, you will be supported."

"In Mr. Trump’s second term, he has governed as if Jan. 6 never ended," the board wrote. "The damage to the nation is severe."

Donald Trump's Department of Justice is getting in on the push to force diversity programs out of American businesses with a "novel" interpretation of an 1863 fraud law, but an analysis from MS NOW found that this new "bullying" tactic amounts to "a complete waste of resources."

According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, the DOJ is now attempting to use the 1863 False Claims Act to go after companies that receive government money through federal contracts to make sure they do not have "diversity, equity and inclusion" programs in place. The report specifically singled out Verizon and Google's parent company, Alphabet, as some of the initial targets.

Trump issued an executive order in March calling for the end of all DEI initiatives in the federal government. His administration has also been aggressive in targeting such programs at private businesses with any means available to it, and major companies like Amazon, Target and Paramount opted to roll them back in response.

Examining the new legal tactic at the heart of this push, MS NOW's Hayes Brown explained that the False Claims Act was first introduced to take on defense contractors attempting to bilk the Union government for more money during the Civil War. Recently, it's mostly been used to go after healthcare companies suspected of overcharging the federal government.

This new intended use of the law by the Trump administration, holding companies liable and potentially leveling fines against them for having DEI programs in place while taking government money, would be a "novel" interpretation, Brown wrote, and one that "hasn’t been tested in court and could easily fall flat." Still, he argued, "the mere fact that DOJ is pursuing this route is chilling in and of itself."

Brown also noted that, by utilizing this novel approach to the False Claims Act, the Trump administration is shifting responsibility for its anti-DEI crusade onto the DOJ from the department's civil rights division to its fraud division, which has been ordered to "aggressively" pursue the matter. Aside from being "clear politicization of the legal system," Brown also argued that it represents "a major waste of resources" for the DOJ, which has recently "been struggling with its workload" under Attorney General Pam Bondi's remaking of the department.

"Even if the cases go nowhere, or don’t result in charges, businesses with less money than Google may step up efforts to roll back their diversity programs," Brown concluded. "MAGA pours a lot of resources into achieving its goals, but it prefers that its targets for bullying comply in advance."

Tom Homan, a top White House advisor to Donald Trump on matters concerning border security and immigration, appears to have been skipped over for a typical background check while he was under an FBI investigation for bribery, according to an MS NOW report from Tuesday.

Earlier this year, a report found that Homan, who previously served as an acting director for ICE early in the first Trump administration, had been recorded in September 2024 accepting a restaurant to-go bag filled with $50,000 from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives. The understanding was that Homan was soliciting a bribe in exchange for helping them receive government contracts if Trump were reelected.

According to the new report from MS NOW, "a small group of career lawyers at the Justice Department" were compelled to get this information to Trump's transition team following the 2024 election, believing it could "head off potential embarrassment and a security clearance problem before Trump picked his future Cabinet and top appointees." Trump announced on Nov. 10, just a few days after his reelection, that he would be appointing Homan as his "border czar," an informal but highly placed advisory role in the White House.

"Justice officials felt sure Homan would not be able to obtain a security clearance based on the evidence gathered in the corruption probe, which they and FBI agents believed had shown Homan unsuitable for a trusted senior role in government service, according to the sources," MS NOW's report explained.

Despite this, Trump's resistance to submitting names to the FBI for background checks appears to have stalled these efforts. Trump did not agree to provide a list of potential appointees until Dec. 3, nearly a month after the election and much later than has typical for incoming administrations. This list was not complete, however, containing only "picks who required Senate confirmation and a few other members of agency landing teams," meaning it did not include Homan.

According to MS NOW, the "bombshell" revelation about Homan's bribery probe did not reach Emil Bove, a member of Trump's personal legal team who eventually served as acting deputy attorney general at the start of his second term, until "very late in Trump’s process of shaping the future administration," as the concerned DOJ staffers had to wait until he was formally appointed to a post transition team post. Despite this information, Homan was able to obtain a security clearance, and it's unclear if the probe had any impact at all.

"It remains unclear how Homan was eventually granted a security clearance, or whom Bove alerted after being briefed on the Homan probe," MS NOW's report explained.

Visitors to an American military cemetery in the Netherlands are pushing back following the removal of plaques honoring Black veterans of World War II, according to an NBC News report, seemingly done as part of Donald Trump's anti-diversity crusade.

Per the report, "visitors have filled the guestbook with objections" since the plaques came down earlier this year at the visitor center for the American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands. The two displays honored Black soldiers who took part in the war effort and helped liberate Europe from Nazi control. Operated by the American Battle Monuments Commission, the cemetery is the final resting place for around 8,300 American soldiers.

As NBC noted, the cemetery's graves themselves were dug by an all-Black contingent of soldiers.

"One display told the story of 23-year-old George H. Pruitt, a Black soldier buried at the cemetery, who died attempting to rescue a comrade from drowning in 1945," the report explained. The other described the U.S. policy of racial segregation in place during World War II. Some 1 million Black soldiers enlisted in the U.S. military during the war, serving in separate units, mostly doing menial tasks but also fighting in some combat missions. An all-Black unit dug the thousands of graves in Margraten during the brutal 1944-45 season of famine in the German-occupied Netherlands known as the Hunger Winter."

Emails obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and Dutch News confirmed that the decision to remove the plaques was in direct response to Trump's executive order targeting "diversity, equity and inclusion" programs, an order which has since impacted a wide array of displays, memorials and programs honoring African-American history.

US Ambassador to the Netherlands Joe Popolo -- one of the many wealthy businesspeople and GOP megadonors named to European diplomatic roles by Trump -- spoke out in support of the removal, arguing that the "signs at Margraten are not intended to promote an agenda that criticizes America."

The displays were reportedly removed without any public notice, prompting anger from visiting Americans, as well as local officials and residents. One local who spoke out against the removal to NBC News was 79-year-old Cor Linssen, the son of a Black US soldier and a Dutch mother. Linssen, along with a group of other children of Black US soldiers, visited the cemetery to view the plaques together back in February.

“It’s an important part of history,” Linssen said. “They should put the panels back.”

An evangelical preacher and licensed mental health counselor has been kicked off the ballot for a local race in Dallas, Texas, after her past felony convictions came to light.

Pedra Geter is an evangelical preacher based in Texas. She describes herself as "a Prophet, Evangelist, Mother, Entrepreneur and College Student pursuing my PHD in Human Resource Development" on her LinkedIn page, and more recent materials have referred to her as "Dr. Pedra Geter." The page also lists her professions as "evangelist," "televengelist" and "motivational speaker" dating back to 1999.

Geter had recently been running in the Dallas County commissioner Democratic primary, challenging longtime incumbent Dr. Elba Garcia. On Monday, however, a local NPR affiliate, KERA News, reported that her candidacy had been terminated after past felony convictions came to light, barring her from pursuing public office in Texas.

Geter confirmed that she had received multiple felony convictions in the past, with KERA News uncovering Dallas County court documents showing convictions for fraud, forgery and reckless conduct. At the time she filed to run for office, she had not submitted official paperwork to prove that she had been pardoned of those convictions, as would be required of her under the law. The Texas state constitution forbids anyone convicted of bribery, perjury, forgery or other high crimes from holding elected public office.

"As the filing authority, we've made our ruling," Kardal Coleman, chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party, told KERA News. "Her application was rejected."

Geter plans to appeal this decision on her candidacy, citing the fact that she served time for the convictions and was released from her sentence.

"What [the state election law] states is: To be eligible for public or elected office, a candidate must not have been finally convicted of a felony from which the individual has not been pardoned or otherwise released from the resulting disabilities," Geter explained. "I have been released from the resulting disability."

As of now, Garcia is running unopposed for reelection as Dallas County commissioner.

While the Republican-controlled Congress and Supreme Court remain unwilling or unable to forcibly rein in Donald Trump's worst excesses, his actions in the year to come "could make 2025 a calm sea by comparison," according to a new analysis published by The Hill.

Trump marked his first year back in the White House by consistently pushing the boundaries of presidential authority and grabbing for any and all power that he could. The typical guard rails against such behavior have proved ineffective, with the House and Senate GOP majorities seemingly content to let Trump do as he pleases. The majority conservative Supreme Court has also regularly ruled in favor of the president, and even when they have gone against him, Trump has ignored the rulings.

Writing for The Hill on Monday, Harlan Ullman, a veteran policy and business adviser, as well as a regular opinion columnist for the outlet, predicted that Trump's behavior in 2026 could continue apace and even make 2025 seem tame, due to Congress and the courts being unwilling or unable to stop him in any meaningful way. Even a strong Democratic swing in the midterms, he argued, could possibly give the party enough power to fully rein Trump in.

"The Supreme Court has no police force or army to impose its rulings," Ullman wrote. "A Republican controlled Congress still is in the process of backbone restoration that is unlikely to be completed in time to enforce any Court ruling. Hence, how can there be a constitutional crisis if or when the president is allowed to ignore the court?"

He continued: "The answer is that there will be no crisis, unless or until Congress changes control. Unless Democrats win control of both Houses next year, the Republican Senate will prevent it. If Democrats do win both Houses, unless they build a 60-seat Senate majority (which no one thinks possible), the filibuster will not be overridden."

Ullman also touched on Trump's recent trend of flouting the law to put his name on famed Washington, D.C., institutions, as well as his introduction of a planned "Trump-class" battleships, which experts argue are unlikely to ever see action. As Trump's whims remain unrestrained by any other authority but his own, he mused about what other things might get renamed next year.

"The Institute of Peace and Kennedy Center now bear the Trump name as does the proposed new class of battleships," Ullman added. "One wonders what John Paul Jones and other naval heroes must think about that. Imagine if the late John McCain (R-Ariz.) still strode the halls of the Senate. Yet, there is a tempting target for a name change.'

He continued: "Will the nation’s capital become Washington, District of Trump? Or just Trump, DC? Since the Washington Redskins became the Commanders, perhaps they should be renamed again — the 'Washington Trumpers has a certain ring to it, almost as good as 'Gulf of America.'"

Republicans have had complete control of the federal government for nearly a year now, and after months of chaos, scandal and infighting, they have little "to show for it," according to a new analysis from MS NOW.

The GOP won a trifecta in the 2024 election, as Donald Trump returned to the presidency, while the party held onto its House majority by a thread and took back the Senate. The Supreme Court has also had a 6-to-3 majority of conservative justices appointed by Republicans since 2020, effectively giving the party control in all corners of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government.

Despite this, MS NOW's Hayes Brown on Monday argued that "it’s impressive how little the GOP managed to get done legislatively" despite all that power. Most of the year's legislative achievements were wrapped up in the sweeping and unpopular Big Beautiful Bill spending package, while Trump himself made a grab for all the power he could for the presidency with little to no pushback from Congress or the Supreme Court.

In total, Congress passed only 61 bills in 2025, with over a third of them, 22, focused solely on overturning rules and regulations introduced under former President Joe Biden. Two others were focused on renaming federal buildings. The House set a record for the least amount of votes undertaken within the first year of a new Congress in the 21st Century, 362, with Speaker Mike Johnson frequently calling recesses "early when faced with revolts from his caucus." The Senate, meanwhile, spent most of its year confirming Trump's various nominees as opposed to crafting new legislation.

By comparison, 97 bills were passed out of both chambers of Congress in 2017, Trump's first year as president, when the GOP had a similar trifecta, with the two-year session ultimately passing 344 bills by the end of 2018.

"President Donald Trump spent this year barreling forward in myriad directions, enthusiastically stretching executive power to previously untested boundaries as he implements his agenda," Brown wrote. Little of the president’s energy was spent working with Congress, however, to try to turn his policies into law. Even at times when more leadership could have helped guide an internally divided party, Trump left the heavy lifting to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D."

The lack of legislation was compounded by the fact that the Big Beautiful Bill "contained most of the GOP’s legislative priorities," with Johnson and Thune spending most of the first half of the year hammering out its details. Anything not included in that bill was largely left to the wayside.

Brown also predicted that, as is common for divided Congresses, things could slow down even further if Democrats retake that House majority in the 2026 midterms, as many have predicted they will do.

"Which points up another sad truth: For lawmakers deciding whether to stay or go, this largely wasted year could actually be a high point of productivity," Brown concluded.

Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump's Secretary of Commerce, seems to be "confused about rudimentary economic details," according to a new analysis from MS NOW, making verifiably false claims on a regular basis, and it's gotten worse with his most recent "completely wrong" defense of the economy.

Writing for MS NOW on Monday, Steve Benen, a producer for Rachel Maddow and regular contributor to the network, first highlighted claims Lutnick made back in September that "didn't make any sense." In a post to social media, the billionaire-turned-secretary claimed that the economy under former President Joe Biden "could never reach 3 percent."

However, as Benen pointed out, Biden's economy posted that level of growth "several times," and sometimes saw growth of 4-6 percent. In fact, the total growth for all of Biden's first year in office, 2021, was 6.2 percent, "the strongest in nearly four decades."

"Given that the Department of Commerce, which Lutnick ostensibly leads, is responsible for compiling and releasing GDP data, the secretary’s apparent confusion was difficult to defend," Benen wrote. Still, Lutnick's fundamentally incorrect claims got worse last week.

During an appearance on Fox News, the secretary cited recent preliminary economic data for the third quarter of 2025, including a 4.3 percent growth in the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Lutnick then claimed that this equated to American workers across the board getting a 4.3 percent raise in their income, a complete misrepresentation of what GDP actually is. As Benen explained, while wages and overall economic growth can often move in tandem, they are not inherently linked and move independently of each other all the time.

The question of why Lutnick says things like this, however, remains up in the air, but the trend suggests that he is either incompetent enough to believe the falsehoods he shares, or that he is deliberately using them to spin a narrative about Trump's economy, which voters have turned against considerably.

"The broader question is whether the head of the Commerce Department is genuinely confused about this, or whether he’s pretending to be genuinely confused about this," Benen wrote. "If it’s the former, how did Lutnick manage to get this job? (For that matter, how did he run an investment bank?) If it’s the latter, why would he deliberately choose to appear ignorant about basic information his own department released to the public?"

Donald Trump's much-hyped new battleship fleet, named after himself, "will never sail," a group of experts told CNBC in a new report, owing to the outdated design that will make them a "bomb magnet" in a real conflict.

Earlier this week, the president unveiled a new "Trump-class" of US Navy battleships, which he touted as "some of the most lethal surface warfare ships" and "the fastest, the biggest, and by far, 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built." Despite his enthusiasm from Trump about maintaining "American military supremacy," CNBC on Friday noted the "glaring problem" putting them at odds with reality: "battleships have been obsolete for decades."

"The last was built more than 80 years ago, and the U.S. Navy retired the last Iowa-class ships nearly 30 years ago," CNBC explained. "Once symbols of naval might with their massive guns, battleships have long since been eclipsed by aircraft carriers and modern destroyers armed with long-range missiles."

The outlet conceded that Trump's labeling of these new ships with the outdated model name could be a "misnomer," and the actual ships might be more in line with modern sensibilities. Speaking to several experts about the ships, however, CNBC found that the "Trump-class" fleet is still out of step with naval realities, with Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, arguing that they "would take too long to design, cost far too much and run counter to the Navy’s current strategy of distributed firepower."

"A future administration will cancel the program before the first ship hits the water," Cancian said, also adding that "there is little need for said discussion because this ship will never sail."

Bernard Loo, senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, dismissed the ships as "more of a prestige project" than anything practical. For comparison, he cited the story of Japan’s World War II super-battleships Yamato and Musashi: heavily armed battleships that were the largest ever built. Despite their power, they were sunk by more versatile and fleet-footed aircraft launched from carrier ships before they saw significant use.

If deployed, Loo suggested that "Trump-class" battleships would meet the same "bomb magnet" fate.

"The size and the prestige value of it all make it an even more tempting target, potentially for your adversary," he said.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, suggested that, like with many of Trump's odd decisions, he might be operating with a reverence for symbols of power over realities, and might have a view of American naval supremacy based on the 1980s, the last time that the US recommissioned WWII-era battleships to counter the Soviet Union.

While he may have managed to score reelection last year with a popular vote lead, Donald Trump's "avalanche of outrages" over the course of 2025 have reaffirmed that he is "unfit for office," according to an extensive and scathing breakdown from the editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

As the board noted at the start of its new piece, it "spent 2024 warning of the dangers a second Trump administration could bring." As his first year back draws to a close, the board argued that none of his shocking decisions and actions have been surprising; it's only surprise about it all has been "the speed with which he has upended the American Experiment."

Suggesting that voters last year may have been swayed by Trump's "undeniable luck, charisma, and bravado" and "nostalgia for a pre-pandemic America," the board argued that his reelection has proven to be "a folly" where he is "no longer constrained by the guardrails the conservative establishment placed on his first presidential stint." His first term, meanwhile, was "a fluke," which saw his "worst impulses... kept in check by his cabinet" and with an economy that "sailed swiftly on the course inherited from President Barack Obama."

"Instead of allowing inflation to continue to abate and the U.S. economy to live up to its label as 'the envy of the world,' he haphazardly and likely illegally instituted tariffs on global trading partners that amount to a tax on American consumers," the board explained. "Rather than sitting back and taking credit for curtailing immigration at the southern border, which concerned a large number of voters, he’s lost public support as masked federal agents abuse, harass, and intimidate immigrants and citizens alike."

The board continued: "Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is set to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, all while a shrinking middle continues to lose faith in America’s institutions — some of which have willingly acquiesced to whatever Trump demands."

All the while, Trump has also been using the presidency to enrich "himself, his family, and his cronies" at the expense of everyday Americans, a push typified by the Big Beautiful Bill tax cuts, which disproportionately and overwhelmingly favor the wealthiest Americans. Indeed, a recent report from Politico found that the economy is currently being propped up by spending splurges by the wealthiest 10% of US residents, while everyone else struggles to get by and becomes increasingly agitated over Trump's mishandling of their economy.

"As 2025 ends and a new year begins, we must not allow the avalanche of outrages to numb us to the fact that Trump remains unfit for office," the board concluded.

As his much-touted peace deals begin to look more and more "fragile," Donald Trump is set to host major world leaders at two "desperate" high-stakes meetings at his Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a report from The Daily Beast.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to visit the president at his Florida resort on Sunday to discuss the proposed peace plan blueprint for the ongoing war with Russia, which invaded neighboring Ukraine nearly four years ago. Trump boasted on the 2024 campaign trail that he would be able to end the conflict on "day one" if reelected, but an actual peace deal has proved elusive and complicated during his first year back.

Ukraine has largely balked at recent deals that would have required it to cede the entire Donbas region to Russia. The terms of one proposed deal were so favorable to Russia, in fact, that some GOP lawmakers wondered if the plan had been entirely written by the Kremlin. Despite those issues, allies close to Zelensky believe that negotiations for a peace deal "have entered a critical phase," as Trump previously said he would not meet with the Ukrainian president until a deal was close.

The following day, on Monday, Trump will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the "sprawling" proposed peace plan for ending Israel's conflict with Hamas in Gaza. Among its 20 points, the Daily Beast explained, the plan will include introducing "a new Palestinian technocratic government, and an international stabilization force on the ground." Trump is reportedly looking to "lock in Netanyahu’s support for the proposed "Board of Peace," which the administration hopes to unveil at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.

Netanyahu has reportedly taken issue with various aspects of the proposal, largely brokered by Trump official Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. This includes issues with "demilitarization ideas, the structure of the technocratic cabinet, the makeup of the stabilization force, and the prominent roles proposed for Qatar and Turkey." One source close to the prime minister believes this meeting will see him attempt to convince Trump to pull away from Kushner and Witkoff's ideas. A White House source stated that Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Kushner, Witkoff, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles have all recently begun to sour on Netanyahu, making an appeal to Trump one of the last hands he has left to play.

“It’s JD, Marco, Jared, Steve, Susie. He has lost them," the White House source said. "The only one he has left is the president."

Donald Trump's obsession with television has been widely observed and dissected, but according to Michael Wolff, the obsession runs much deeper and defines Trump's approach to everything, with the author and insider calling him more of "a comedian" than a politician who runs the White House like a "reality television show."

Wolff has, over the last decade, written and reported extensively about the inner workings of Trump's political career, including the 2018 book Fire & Fury, which offered an inside look at his first term so damaging that Trump attempted to block its publication. In the latest episode of "Inside Trump's Head," a podcast he co-hosts for the Daily Beast, Wolff dug deep into the ways in which TV defines Trump's understanding of the world and his approach to everything in his political career. According to Wolff, Fox News founder Roger Ailes once described the president as “that kid whose parents never pulled him away from the television.”

"So he grew up just glued to the television at all times, not doing anything else, not paying attention to his schoolwork, not doing his homework, not really having friends, just glued to the television," Wolff explained.

“It’s really more helpful to think of him in terms of being an actor than in terms of being a politician,” he continued. “In his courtship of the audience, in his own egomania, in his desire for attention.”

Upon entering the White House for the first time, Wolff said that Trump was notable for his lack of attention to any other forms of communication besides TV, explaining that “he didn’t read, he didn’t listen, but you could talk to him through the television.” This created a loop in which White House officials fed information to Fox News, so that Trump would actually hear it.

“The people at Fox News would then echo what the White House wanted them to say so that Trump would hear this and, and he would he would listen and appreciate and understand, because it was on television,” Wolff said. “A very closed circle was being created. He was running a White House that was largely a reality television show. And the television itself was supplying him with much of the script for this show.”

Wolff claimed that "there are very few moments" in Trump's life when he does not have a TV on, such as when he is "in the car or when he’s doing a rally and a public appearance."

Trump is also said to define success heavily based on audience reception, as Wolff noted his obsession with Nielsen ratings for TV programming, as well as his tendency to endlessly repeat things once they get a good response from his base.

“His measure is always a popular audience measure. He’s kind of like a comedian working," Wolff added. "He just throws out stuff, throws it out, throws it out, and you can see him measuring the response. And when he really gets the response he likes, he just repeats it and repeats it and repeats it... To judge him as a politician... you’re not going to get it. You’re not going to understand what’s going on here.”

Donald Trump's economy might be a boon for the wealthiest 10% of Americans, but conditions remain challenging for most others, especially those looking to find a job. According to a Christmas Eve report from Axios, this "labor market pinch" is now impacting one of the most seasonal jobs of them all: Santa Claus.

On Wednesday, Axios reported that the appetite for Santa Claus impersonators in the US has dried up significantly this year. While recent economic troubles are certainly to blame for some Americans cutting out St. Nick from their party budgets, some of the problem has also been "structural and long in the making."

Mitch Allen, operator of Hire Santa, a staffing agency for holly-jolly impersonators, gave the lay of the tough landscape in a statement to Axios.

"People are still having Christmas celebrations, but they are not having as big of an event at their home or office," he said. "They might not have entertainers."

Allen also spoke to NPR about the situation earlier in December, explaining that calls to his agency inquiring about Kris Kringle actors for "malls, schools, offices or a private event" were down 30% compared to the same time in 2024.

For mall Santas in particular, Axios noted, the issues run deeper than recent hardships. As more and more malls have closed up shop over the last few decades, there has naturally been a decline in the demand for impersonators to meet with children during mall shopping trips.

The lagging demand is also being worsened by an increase in the number of impersonators available. While the COVID-19 pandemic saw the number of Santa look-a-likes plummet, the category has rebounded since then, thanks to increased staffing efforts from places like Hire Santa.

"We've worked hard over the last five years to increase the number of Santas that we have in our database," Allen said

Axios also noted that broader demographic shifts in the US towards an older population, on average, have also contributed to there being more Santa Claus performers on the market than consumers need.

Donald Trump's administration has gone to great lengths to spin his first year back in the White House as one of the best and most productive in US history, but as a new analysis from The Guardian laid out, his "erratic and at times confused behavior throughout 2025" has often dominated the conversation, and "questions about his mental and physical performance."

Trump is currently 79-years-old and is officially the oldest individual ever elected to the US presidency. While Trump in 2024 went to great lengths to attack Joe Biden's age and the signs that his ability to hold the job was deteriorating, many of the same concerns have now come to haunt his second term.

As The Guardian points out from the jump, Trump's behaviors during widely publicized meetings offered some of the more prominent and headline-generating examples of his seeming decline, both physically and mentally.

"Trump has appeared to fall asleep during some meetings," the analysis explained. "Amid others, he has drifted off-topic, launching into bizarre segues on interior decor or about whales and birds. His public appearances have lacked focus, and he has used speeches to ramble about how Barack Obama walks down stairs, or to invent stories about the Unabomber."

The last point referred to a digression Trump made in July, where he claimed that his late uncle, John Trump, had taught the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and claimed that his uncle often talked about what kind of student he had been. As The Guardian noted, "that cannot possibly be true," as Kazcynski never studied at MIT, and John Trump died in 1985, 11 years before he was identified by authorities as the Unabomber.

The White House and Trump's Republican allies have responded to these concerns with impassioned defenses of his fitness, "often in hyperbolic terms." A representative for the White House told The Guardian earlier this year that Trump's “mental sharpness is second to none," while his former White House doctor, Rep. Ronny Jackson, claimed that he was the "healthiest president this nation has ever seen."

Democrats hope to make Trump's declining physical and mental state a central message in the 2026 midterm elections, and The Guardian argued that they would "have a fair amount of ammunition" to do so.

"Earlier this year, Trump mixed up Albania with Armenia when discussing a peace deal involving the latter; discussing autism in a speech at the White House, he mused about 'certain elements of genius that can be given to a baby,'" the analysis laid out. "Announcing that 13 grants would be awarded to investigate autism, Trump added: 'Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen.'"

During the same address about autism, Trump also stumbled over his pronunciation of the drug, acetaminophen, a gaffe relentlessly lampooned on late-night comedy shows.

A few of his more recent outbursts have seen Trump speak "without inhibition," leading to comments that alarm and disgust even his most ardent supporters.

"In December alone, he declared Somali immigrants to be 'garbage' and, in a move that shocked even some Republicans, essentially blamed Rob Reiner for his own death," The Guardian explained.

Republicans in Congress are grappling with "major internal divides" as they attempt to navigate key legislative needs heading into 2026, according to Politico, with the ever-present threat of midterm elections looming over them.

In a new report from Wednesday, Politico detailed the internal strife consuming Republicans over how to address the looming issue of healthcare costs. With subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans set to expire in the new year, voters across the nation are set to see their premiums skyrocket, while Republicans have been unable to fully get behind any particular solution. Many fear that continuing to do nothing will further doom the party in the 2026 midterms, as voters are already deeply concerned about rising prices.

One option being floated is to pass healthcare provisions by way of a reconciliation bill, the same method used to pass Donald Trump's contentious One Big Beautiful Bill over the summer, which would allow the GOP to bypass a filibuster from Democrats.

"Some rank-and-file conservatives in the House and Senate are privately discussing a potential centerpiece for a second reconciliation bill," Politico explained. "Using tariff revenues to send taxpayers cash to address rising health care costs after enhanced Obamacare subsidies expire Dec. 31, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the talks."

Many GOP lawmakers, however, have expressed "skepticism" that the party could unify sufficiently to get through the process of crafting another reconciliation bill, considering that the process for the last one was arduous. "Nearly every... House chair" also expressed doubt about a reconciliation bill to Politico, including Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri.

“I don’t see a path of a second reconciliation ever passing,” Smith said.

House Budget Chair Rep. Jodey Arrington of Texas, meanwhile, has been among the senior GOP leadership members pushing for a reconciliation bill, stressing the need to do something of substance to help voters.

“We need to actually follow through on the policies we’ve been popping off about for years that we believe will actually help everybody,” Arrington said. “I feel like there’s a critical mass to start that process.”

Others still argued that many GOP "health initiatives" won't comply with the strict parameters needed in a reconciliation bill. Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican from a district vulnerable in the coming midterms, shot down the idea of such a bill during a recent closed-door meeting, telling House Speaker Mike Johnson that it would "never" happen.

Allies of President Donald Trump, speaking to Politico, said that his plummeting economic approval is "baffling" as the rich prosper while the poor struggle, with one former adviser saying that he "just can’t quite get [his] arms around" the problem.

"President Donald Trump’s economy has exceeded expectations in his first year back in office," Politico's Wednesday stated. "Mainly for America’s wealthiest households, that is."

According to available data, spending splurges by the wealthiest Americans are keeping "Trump's economy humming," with the Royal Bank of Canada finding that the wealthiest 10 percent of the country spent around $20.3 trillion this year, nearly matching the spending of all other earners combined, $22.5 trillion. The US economy, juiced by the wealthy, grew by 4.3 percent in the 3rd quarter. Bank of America also reported 4 percent growth in income from its top earners, compared to the much more stagnant 1.4 percent for lower earners.

"That splurge has been primed by a buoyant stock market, elevated real estate prices and solid wage gains for the wealthy," Politico added.

Despite these gains for the wealthy, middle-to-lower-income earners are still feeling the pinch of soaring prices, and broadly feel as if Trump is not doing enough to fix the cost of living and does not seem to care. Democrats who ran on platforms focused on affordability saw major electoral victories in 2025's off-year elections, signaling the potential for impending GOP doom in the 2026 midterms if things do not turn around for the average consumer.

According to Politico, some of Trump's own allies remain stumped as to how things can be going so well economically for the president, on paper, while his approval across the board is tanking, including Stephen Moore, an economist and former adviser to the president who has worked with the administration on its messaging.

“I’m mystified by the whole argument about affordability. I just can’t quite get my arms around it because it’s a really, really strong economy right now,” Moore told Politico. “If the trends continue as they have over the last six months, it’s going to be harder and harder for the Democrats to sustain this narrative that it’s not a good economy.”

Pundits have increasingly compared Trump's handling of economic messaging to the tactics that ultimately sank the presidency of Joe Biden. While Biden oversaw an economy that, in many ways, rebounded substantially from the ravages of COVID-19 and saw historic stock market gains, everyday Americans felt little of that prosperity, feeling the pinch of major inflation that kicked off in 2022. Despite these troubles, Biden frequently claimed that things were good, and that consumers were just not getting the right message, just as Trump has done in recent months.

Donald Trump's MAGA movement has pushed policies that conflict with "simple human decency," while claiming to stand for Christian values. According to a new analysis from Salon, this is creating "yet another crack in the MAGA coalition," as actual religious leaders and groups push back against Trump's agenda, and as the party risks alienating a significantly growing evangelical demographic.

Writing in a piece published Tuesday, Salon columnist Hannah Digby Parton extensively broke down the religious pushback Trump's second term has received, despite claiming to represent Christian values. The most notable has come from the Roman Catholic Church, as the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff, has spoken out strongly against Trump's inhumane treatment of immigrants. This, in turn, has prompted broader pushback from other Catholic leaders.

"Leo... has called the treatment of undocumented immigrants extremely disrespectful and implored that they be treated humanely," Parton wrote. "The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a 'special message' condemning the policy, saying 'we oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.' The pope’s decision to replace the retiring Timothy Dolan, the pro-Trump Archbishop of New York, with Ronald Hicks, a pro-migrant bishop from Illinois, underscores his intentions."

Parton suggested that Trump's relentless targeting of Latin American individuals as part of his immigration crackdowns represents a "crack in the MAGA coalition," given that Latinos are the fastest-growing evangelical demographic and broke for Trump in 2024 by huge margins. Targeting them so heavily now might directly conflict with the MAGA movement's "self-preservation."

"... This represents yet another crack in the MAGA coalition, even if they don’t acknowledge it," Parton continued. "As a matter of self-preservation, one might have assumed that the Southern Baptists would be supportive of Latino immigrants, especially since they are the fastest-growing group of American evangelicals, the majority of whom voted for Trump in 2024. Evangelical communities are also expanding rapidly in Latin America. Only four percent of that population identified as evangelical 40 years ago; today about 20% do. It seems short-sighted to be so hostile to a group that represents the future of the church. The Southern Baptist leadership’s unwillingness to even engage the question shows that the fault line is present and they don’t know how to deal with it."

Above all, aside from any religious affiliations, Parton argued that "the real schism" in the US currently is between those who understand "simple human decency" and those who do not.

"It’s between the people who understand that and those who gleefully indulge in an orgy of cruelty and inhumanity, even while they display the trappings of Christianity and brag about their piety," Parton concluded.