This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. Greater Manchester Police video shows the three convicted terrorists involved in planning the attack in what prosecutors say could have been the deadliest terror attack in U.K. history. A foiled ISIS-inspired terror plot targeting Manchester's Jewish community has renewed fears over Jewish safety in Britain, after three men were convicted on Tuesday of planning a mass-casualty gun attack. English authorities said the Manchester case exposed a highly advanced ISIS-inspired terror plot that could have become the deadliest terrorist attack in U.K. history Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were convicted at Preston Crown Court of planning a firearms attack against Jewish targets in Manchester. A third man, Saadaoui's brother Bilel Saadaoui, 36, was convicted of failing to disclose information about the plot, according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Prosecutors said the men planned a marauding gun attack using military-style weapons. Saadaoui paid an initial deposit toward the purchase of four AK-47 assault rifles, two pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, with funds raised after selling his home and business. The plot was uncovered through an undercover police operation, and Saadaoui was arrested while attempting to take possession of weapons and ammunition, the CPS said. Brothers Walid (left) and Bilel Saadaoui (bottom right) and another man, Amar Hussein, have been convicted in connection with a foiled terrorist plot intended to target the Jewish community in Greater Manchester. Greater Manchester Police Assistant Chief Constable Rob Potts said the plan could have become "the deadliest terrorist attack in U.K. history," warning that an assault on crowded Jewish sites would have had "catastrophic" consequences, according to Sky News. The court heard that Saadaoui told an undercover officer he wanted to kill "young, old, women, elderly, the whole lot," and described Christian victims as "a bonus," Sky News reported. Saadaoui and Hussein also traveled to the White Cliffs of Dover in March and May 2024 to observe port security, believing they were surveilling how weapons would be brought into the U.K., according to the CPS. The plot was disrupted on May 8, 2024, when Saadaoui was arrested while attempting to take delivery of firearms and ammunition during the undercover operation. Sky News reported that police body-worn camera footage showed armed officers arresting him moments after the handover. Surveillance image showing Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, pictured near Dover, as they have been found guilty at Preston Crown Court of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout surveillance image dated May 8, 2025. Sky News also reported that intelligence sources said MI5 believed Saadaoui had previously been in contact with a British extremist who left the U.K. to join ISIS in 2013. Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu KC told the jury the plan "hardly had the innocence of a teddy bear picnic," describing it as a deliberate attempt to inflict mass civilian casualties, Sky News reported. The foiled plot revived painful memories in a city that has already suffered major terrorist attacks. More recently, counterterrorism police responded to an attack outside a synagogue in Manchester in October when an assailant rammed pedestrians and stabbed worshipers during Yom Kippur services, killing two Jewish men. British authorities declared the incident a terrorist attack, according to Reuters. Money seized from the home of Bilel Saadaoui, 36, who has been found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism as two men, Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, have been found guilty on Tuesday of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on Dec. 23, 2025. The convictions come as new polling shows a sharp deterioration in British Jews' sense of security. A survey published by the Campaign Against Antisemitism in December 2025 found that 51% of British Jews do not believe they have a long-term future in the United Kingdom. Weapons seized from the home of Walid Saadaoui, 38, who has been found guilty at Preston Crown Court of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on December 23, 2025. The survey also found that 96% of respondents said Jews are less safe in the U.K. than before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, while 59% said they avoid wearing visible signs of Jewish identity in public due to fear of antisemitism. Confidence in the police and justice system was also low. Only 14% of respondents said police do enough to protect Jewish communities, 8% said the justice system adequately punishes antisemitic crimes, and 7% said prosecutors do enough to bring offenders to justice, the Campaign Against Antisemitism reported. Efrat Lachter is an investigative reporter and war correspondent. She is a recipient of the 2024 Knight-Wallace Fellowship for Journalism. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper.

A small Mexican Navy plane transporting a young medical patient and seven others crashed Monday near Galveston, killing at least five people and setting off a search in the waters off the Texas coast, officials said. A small Mexican Navy plane transporting a young medical patient and seven others crashed Monday near Galveston, killing at least five people and setting off a search in waters along the Texas coast, officials said. In this image provided by Sky Decker Jr., authorities and volunteers respond to a Mexican Navy plane crash near Galveston, Texas, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. Emergency personnel rush a victim of a small plane crash to an awaiting ambulance, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, near the Galveston causeway, near Galveston, Texas. In this image provided by Sky Decker Jr., authorities and volunteers respond to a Mexican Navy plane crash near Galveston, Texas, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. Air traffic controllers lost communication for about 10 minutes with a small Mexican Navy plane carrying a young medical patient and seven others before it crashed off the Texas coast, killing at least five people, Mexico's president said Tuesday. Authorities initially believed the plane had landed safely at its destination in Galveston, near Houston, before learning it had gone down Monday afternoon, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said. A search-and-rescue operation in waters near Galveston pulled two survivors from the plane's wreckage, while one remained missing, Mexico's Navy said. In this image provided by Sky Decker Jr., authorities and volunteers respond to a Mexican Navy plane crash near Galveston, Texas, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. Four of the eight people aboard were Navy officers and four were civilians, including a child, Mexico's Navy said. Two of the passengers were affiliated with a nonprofit that helps transport Mexican children with severe burns to a hospital in Galveston. “My condolences to the families of the sailors who unfortunately died in this accident and to the people who were traveling on board,” Sheinbaum said in her morning press briefing, without elaborating on a possible cause. U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Luke Baker said at least five aboard had died but did not identify which passengers. In this image provided by Sky Decker Jr., authorities and volunteers respond to a Mexican Navy plane crash near Galveston, Texas, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. Sky Decker, a professional yacht captain who lives about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the crash site, said he jumped in his boat to see if he could help. He picked up two police officers who guided him through thick fog to a nearly submerged plane. She had maybe 3 inches of air gap to breathe in,” he said. It's not immediately clear if weather was a factor. The area was experiencing foggy conditions over the past few days, according to Cameron Batiste, a National Weather Service meteorologist. Mexico's Navy said the plane was helping with a medical mission in coordination with the Michou and Mau Foundation. In a social media post, the foundation offered condolences to the families and said it shared their grief “with respect and compassion.” One child succumbed to his injuries because he didn't receive highly specialized medical care, while another survived after receiving treatment at Shriners Children's Texas in Galveston. Over 23 years, the foundation has helped transfer more than 2,000 patients to that hospital and other medical facilities with burn expertise, according to charity's website. Shriners Children's Texas said in a statement that it learned of the crash with “profound sadness” but wasn't able to provide any information about the child's condition because the child hadn't yet been admitted. This latest crash comes amid a year of intense scrutiny on aviation safety after a string of high-profile crashes and the flight disruptions during the government shutdown driven by the shortage of air traffic controllers. The January mid-air collision between an Army helicopter and an airliner near Washington D.C. was followed by the crash of a medical transport plane in Philadelphia. This fall's fiery UPS plane crash only added to the concerns. Still, the total number of crashes in 2025 was actually down a bit from last year and experts say flying remains safe overall.

Parents and family of children who died at Camp Mystic join Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, second from right, as he signs camp safety bills, Sept. 5, 2025, in Austin, Texas. Patrick Hotze's three daughters made it home safe from Camp Mystic after July's catastrophic floods that killed 25 campers and two teenage counselors. “My heart is broken for them,” Hotze said of the parents whose girls died, including some he described as close friends. For the first time since the roaring flood, the 100-year-old all-girls Christian sleepaway retreat plans to sign up campers in January, forging ahead with a reopening that has divided families and stunned some lawmakers. Campers will start arriving in May, bunking on higher ground than the area where fast-rising waters on the Guadalupe River swept away two cabins. Some families say the decision to let their daughters return is a vital step in their own healing from the disaster that is still under scrutiny. The floodwaters that worsened with terrifying quickness during the July Fourth holiday weekend killed at least 117 people in Kerr County alone. Two victims have still not been found, including an 8-year-old Camp Mystic camper. Next year, Texas legislators are set to hold investigative hearings into the tragedy but have shown little appetite to assign blame. Local leaders in Kerr County, including two who were asleep when the waters started rising, remain in their jobs after defending their preparations and evacuation efforts. “We recognize that returning to Camp Mystic carries both hope and heartache,” Camp Mystic's owners wrote in a letter to families this month. “For many of your daughters, this return is not simple, but it is a courageous step in their healing journey.” It is unclear how many girls will return to Camp Mystic when the camp begins enrollment next month, but a spokesperson said there is “strong interest.” The camp's owner, Dick Eastland, died in the flood and his family has vowed to enhance safety measures before reopening, including two-way radios in every cabin and new flood warning river monitors. This year was at least the fifth time in a century that flooding near the Guadalupe River has turned deadly. An attorney for Camp Mystic, Mikal Watts, said he and camp officials have contacted several former campers who witnessed previous floods and who told them they were nowhere near as high or as powerful as the flooding this year. Hundreds of 911 calls released by authorities this month included a woman who lived a mile downriver and said two of the campers had swept by. “As parents of children who were killed at Camp Mystic last summer, we are deeply hurt but, sadly, not shocked by yet another insensitive announcement from Camp Mystic focused on enrollment,” the parents of six girls who died said in a public statement this month. Liberty Lindley's 9-year-old daughter, Evie, was among those caught in the flooding. She was trapped with her campmates in a cabin dubbed Wiggle Inn, adjacent to the low-lying cabins that were quickly inundated by the flooded river. Many of the girls Evie knew were swept to their deaths. Yet despite the horror Evie endured, floating on mattresses with her friends in the pitch dark before being evacuated by helicopter, Lindley said her daughter didn't hesitate when asked if she wanted to return to Camp Mystic. “I know some people don't understand that or think that's crazy,” she said of her decision to allow her daughter to go back. She recalled talking with Evie — whose twin sister died of leukemia in 2024 — while washing her hair in the bathtub, right after her terrifying ordeal. “And she still looked at me with a smile and said, ‘Mom, I really hope next year at camp we do Mary Poppins again, because I still really want to be Bert.' John Ball, an attorney in McAllen, Texas, whose daughter was at Camp Mystic during the flood, said he has serious reservations, especially after the poor communication from camp officials about his daughter's whereabouts. Ball said he was out of town and didn't learn that his daughter was safe until more than 12 hours after the flooding, when she was able to borrow a cellphone and call him. “That was the hardest part, not knowing,” Ball said.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. Congress' top fiscal hawk is back with his yearly government waste report card, this time uncovering over $1.6 trillion in spending on cocaine experiments on dogs, COVID-19 vaccine influencer campaigns and staggering yearly debt payments. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., unveiled his 11th annual "Festivus Report" on Tuesday, detailing the wonky ways that the federal government dumps taxpayer dollars into pet projects. Paul has long been against Congress' spending habits, routinely voting against appropriations bills and spending packages for not trying to tackle the nation's growing debt problem. His report highlights that even with several lawmakers pounding their chests on Washington's spending problem, Congress can't help but spend more. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., released his annual "Festivus Report" on Tuesday, which included nearly $1.6 trillion in government waste. "No matter how much taxpayer money Washington burns through, politicians can't help but demand more," Paul said. "Fiscal responsibility may not be the most crowded road, but it's one I've walked year after year — and this holiday season will be no different. He lauded moves taken by the Trump administration to slash government spending, like the nearly $9 billion rescissions package that slashed funding for public broadcasting and some foreign aid, Paul said that while the action was "a good start, it's just a drop in the bucket." Paul noted that in the last year, the federal debt has skyrocketed to nearly $40 trillion, up from roughly $36 trillion. "The Congressional Budget Office predicts we will add an average of $23.9 trillion in debt annually for the next decade. The U.S. government will add over $6.53 billion of debt every single day for the next ten years," Paul said. "This year, I'm spotlighting a jaw-dropping amount of government waste — the kind that makes you wonder if anyone in Washington has ever heard the word ‘priorities,'" he continued. "A grand total of $1,639,135,969,608, which includes $1.22 trillion in interest payments on the debt." And several programs highlighted in the report that funneled taxpayer dollars to celebrities, drug experiments, diversity, equity and inclusion programs and several other obscure projects contributed to that staggering figure. The U.S. national debt is more than $36 trillion. There's also the over $7 billion previously allocated by Congress to build electric vehicle charging stations nationwide — only 68 have been built so far, he noted — and schools receiving nearly $200 billion in COVID-19 relief funds that has been spent on "rooms at Caesars Palace, renting out MLB stadiums, and ice cream trucks." The report highlighted several other programs, including over $1 million to hire celebrity influencers for anti-drug campaigns targeting "Latinx" communities, nearly $5 million total for studies looking at the effect of screen time on toddlers and mobile-phone obesity intervention for toddlers, and over $2 million for researchers to take saliva swabs at electronic dance music festivals in New York City. Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. A University of Oklahoma student who received a zero out of 25 on an assignment regarding gender norms says she was targeted for her Christian beliefs, citing a scathing response from the teacher's assistant who doled out the grade. Weeks after a University of Oklahoma student's story about being flunked on a paper that touted her Christian faith caused a viral uproar, the teaching assistant behind the grade has been fired. "Based on an examination of the graduate teaching assistant's prior grading standards and patterns, as well as the graduate teaching assistant's own statements related to this matter, it was determined that the graduate teaching assistant was arbitrary in the grading of this specific paper," the state's flagship school said in a Monday evening statement. Samantha Fulnecky, a junior at the school, received zero out of 25 on an assignment in which she referenced the Bible after graduate teaching assistant William "Mel" Curth, who uses she/they pronouns, scored the paper. The teaching assistant tasked Fulnecky and her classmates with writing a response to a scholarly article titled "Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health During Early Adolescence," which discusses results of a study about gender norms among middle schoolers and the social ramifications children may face for not conforming to gender norms. OU student Samantha Fulnecky, with her Bible, in the Oklahoma Memorial Union, Nov. 24, 2025. The third-year student responded by saying that gender norms should be celebrated, not denigrated. She cited Genesis, the first book of the Bible, in which God created men and women equally, but with separate purposes. "Gender roles and tendencies should not be considered 'stereotypes,'" Fulnecky wrote in her essay. "Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. God created men in the image of His courage and strength, and He created women in the image of His beauty. He intentionally created women differently than men and we should live our lives with that in mind." Students walk on campus between classes at the University of Oklahoma on March 11, 2015, in Norman, Oklahoma. She later described the societal push toward nonbinary gender identification as "demonic." Curth took exception to Fulnecky's essay, and gave her a zero out of 25. "Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting point [sic] for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive," Curth's explanation for the grade said. Curth said the concept of only two sexes is not backed by science. "You may personally disagree with this, but that doesn't change the fact that every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association in the United States acknowledges that, biologically and psychologically, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed," Curth said. Samantha Fulnecky, with her Bible, in the Oklahoma Memorial Union, Nov. 24, 2025. The graduate teaching assistant also called Fulnecky's essay "highly offensive." "I definitely think that I was being punished for what I believe because I very clearly stated in my essay in my response to the article, I very clearly stated my beliefs and stated what — not just my beliefs — but what the Bible and what God says about gender and about those roles," Fulnecky told Fox News Digital amid the uproar. Curth was placed on administrative leave after the student filed a discrimination claim, as the university conducted an investigation. The school also noted that Fulnecky's grade had been restored. "The University of Oklahoma believes strongly in both its faculty's rights to teach with academic freedom and integrity and its students' right to receive an education that is free from a lecturer's impermissible evaluative standards. The University will continue to review best practices to ensure that its instructors have the comprehensive training necessary to objectively assess their students' work without limiting their ability to teach, inspire, and elevate our next generation." Peter D'Abrosca is a reporter at Fox News Digital covering campus extremism in higher education. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. 'Couldn't be more selfless': Actor Rob Reiner praises Biden and his record at Democratic National Convention while defending anti-Israel protests. Sally Struthers is looking back on her time working with Rob Reiner on "All In the Family." During an interview with Woman's World, the 78-year-old actress shared the life-changing career advice she received from Reiner while they were working together on the hit '70s sitcom. "If you can make the show itself more important than your own part, you will wind up offering to give up some of your lines," Struthers recalled Reiner telling her when she noticed her lines kept getting cut when filming the show. The two played Gloria and Michael, a husband-and-wife pair in "All In The Family" playing the liberal counterparts to Struthers' on-screen conservative working-class parents, played by Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton. Both Struthers and Reiner left the show following its eighth season, when their characters moved to California with their son. When Struthers returned to the role of Gloria in the short-lived spin-off show, it was revealed that Michael left her and their son off-camera. "Gloria Bunker Stivic would have remarried," she told Woman's World. When news of Reiner's death broke, Struthers told Deadline: "There are no words. The two reunited on stage at the 2024 Emmy Awards to pay tribute to Norman Lear. "Sally and I were part of a unique television family: not just the Bunkers, but Norman Lear's extended family," Reiner said during the tribute. Following his time on "All In the Family," Reiner went on to direct some of Hollywood's most beloved films, including "When Harry Met Sally," "Stand By Me," "This Is Spinal Tap," "The Princess Bride" and many others. Reiner and his wife Michele were found dead in their Brentwood home on Sunday, Dec. 14, with LAPD Assistant Police Chief Dominic Choi later confirming their bodies were found in their bedroom. Early on in the investigation, the couple's son Nick was named as a person of interest and was later taken into custody. Nick Reiner was formally charged with the murder of his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner. Following the murders, Nick's troubled past involving addiction and mental health issues resurfaced, and the family's neighbors began speaking with the media about his past erratic and violent behavior. "Years ago, when he was young, he was on heroin and cocaine, and he went to rehab and did well and was apparently back to normal, but obviously, that wasn't the case," Maryanne Lewis, who has lived in the Brentwood neighborhood for over 50 years, told Fox News Digital. Another neighbor told the New York Post, "This is not the first time their son has been violent," adding, "I know of another incident a few years back with Nick, but I won't say more than that. I just never thought it would ever get to this point." "Rob was always heartbroken that his son couldn't beat his addiction," the neighbor continued. A neighbor told the media Rob was "heartbroken that his son couldn't beat his addiction." Lori Bashian is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital. Get a daily look at the top news in music, movies, television and more in the entertainment industry. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper.

Patrick Hotze's three daughters made it home safe from Camp Mystic after July's catastrophic floods that killed 25 campers and two teenage counselors. “My heart is broken for them,” Hotze said of the parents whose girls died, including some he described as close friends. For the first time since the roaring flood, the 100-year-old all-girls Christian sleepaway retreat plans to sign up campers in January, forging ahead with a reopening that has divided families and stunned some lawmakers. Campers will start arriving in May, bunking on higher ground than the area where fast-rising waters on the Guadalupe River swept away two cabins. Some families say the decision to let their daughters return is a vital step in their own healing from the disaster that is still under scrutiny. The floodwaters that worsened with terrifying quickness during the July Fourth holiday weekend killed at least 117 people in Kerr County alone. Two victims have still not been found, including an 8-year-old Camp Mystic camper. Next year, Texas legislators are set to hold investigative hearings into the tragedy but have shown little appetite to assign blame. Local leaders in Kerr County, including two who were asleep when the waters started rising, remain in their jobs after defending their preparations and evacuation efforts. “We recognize that returning to Camp Mystic carries both hope and heartache,” Camp Mystic's owners wrote in a letter to families this month. It is unclear how many girls will return to Camp Mystic when the camp begins enrollment next month, but a spokesperson said there is “strong interest.” The camp's owner, Dick Eastland, died in the flood and his family has vowed to enhance safety measures before reopening, including two-way radios in every cabin and new flood warning river monitors. This year was at least the fifth time in a century that flooding near the Guadalupe River has turned deadly. An attorney for Camp Mystic, Mikal Watts, said he and camp officials have contacted several former campers who witnessed previous floods and who told them they were nowhere near as high or as powerful as the flooding this year. Hundreds of 911 calls released by authorities this month included a woman who lived a mile downriver and said two of the campers had swept by. “As parents of children who were killed at Camp Mystic last summer, we are deeply hurt but, sadly, not shocked by yet another insensitive announcement from Camp Mystic focused on enrollment,” the parents of six girls who died said in a public statement this month. Liberty Lindley's 9-year-old daughter, Evie, was among those caught in the flooding. She was trapped with her campmates in a cabin dubbed Wiggle Inn, adjacent to the low-lying cabins that were quickly inundated by the flooded river. Many of the girls Evie knew were swept to their deaths. Yet despite the horror Evie endured, floating on mattresses with her friends in the pitch dark before being evacuated by helicopter, Lindley said her daughter didn't hesitate when asked if she wanted to return to Camp Mystic. “I know some people don't understand that or think that's crazy,” she said of her decision to allow her daughter to go back. She recalled talking with Evie — whose twin sister died of leukemia in 2024 — while washing her hair in the bathtub, right after her terrifying ordeal. “And she still looked at me with a smile and said, ‘Mom, I really hope next year at camp we do Mary Poppins again, because I still really want to be Bert.' John Ball, an attorney in McAllen, Texas, whose daughter was at Camp Mystic during the flood, said he has serious reservations, especially after the poor communication from camp officials about his daughter's whereabouts. Ball said he was out of town and didn't learn that his daughter was safe until more than 12 hours after the flooding, when she was able to borrow a cellphone and call him. “That was the hardest part, not knowing,” Ball said.

When you buy an annual membership or give a one-time contribution, we'll give a membership to someone who can't afford access. We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today? Like many Americans, most countries are in a lot of debt. Developing countries, alone, carry nearly $31 trillion worth of debt. Enough debt to give everyone in the world a check for $3,750. But instead, many countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America are saddled with so much debt that today more than 3 billion people — over one-third of humankind — live in nations that spend more on interest payments than they do on health care or education. But it's gotten far worse in recent years as part of a vicious cycle that will be all too familiar to most Americans who've ever fallen behind on a credit card bill or a student loan payment. No matter how much you pay off each month, somehow the amount you owe seems to grow larger each year. “It's like the Hotel California,” said Penelope Hawkins, senior economic affairs officer at the United Nations focusing on debt and development finance. And when the crisis gets deep enough, indebted countries stop building hospitals, just like deeply indebted Americans forgo health care and trips to the dentist. And their credit rating tanks, meaning that any future loans will be even more expensive. “These aren't just statistics,” said Joel Curtain, director of advocacy at Partners in Health, which has been pushing for reform to the system for resolving runaway debt. “This crisis is embodied in sickness, ill health, and death.” To understand a pernicious piece of how this all works, look no further than the handful of Manhattan hedge funds that effectively control the financial fate of some entire countries — just like they may control your mortgage and your own highly profitable credit card debt. And thousands of miles away, it is ordinary people who face the hidden but profound consequences of that debt deal gone wrong. But as poor countries face down a broader shortage of funding for critical development projects driven by sweeping foreign aid cuts, some activists see a real opening for relief. There is nothing inherently wrong with having some debt. And if you don't have family who can cover the bill, then you probably need to take out loans. And if your country is not wealthy to begin with — if you got the short end of colonialism's stick — then the only way to pay for that is to take out loans. “No country has grown without some debt,” Hawkins said. The problem is, the loans that poor countries take out these days have become so expensive — and the growth they're supposed to fuel is often so sluggish — that they can never pay them back. And yikes, has that bill added up over the years. Developing countries have seen their total debt balloon by almost 160 percent over the past decade. Since you're a responsible news-consuming citizen, this is the moment when you might be wondering: Doesn't the US owe gazillions of dollars to its creditors, too? But they don't, largely because a rich country like the United States gets to borrow in its own currency and it can almost always take out more cheap loans to pay off the old ones. The US does not need to cut Social Security or stop paying for road maintenance to indefinitely manage its debt. Just like low-income Americans often contend with backbreaking interest rates if they want to borrow cash, so too do low-income countries. African nations pay an average of 10 percent interest on their loans, whereas interest rates for rich countries like the US are typically under 3 percent. And this is where we get to Wall Street. Because private creditors like hedge funds and insurance companies increasingly hold the bulk — about 60 percent in 2023 — of low- and middle-income countries' external debt, a trend that has been rising since 2010. For much of the 20th century, when a developing country needed finance, it usually turned to the Paris Club, an informal grouping of Western creditor countries, or newly formed Western-controlled multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, while working more sporadically with private creditors like banks. Then, boom — the Great Recession hit and interest rates plummeted, forcing private creditors to start looking for a new way to earn cash. In fact, bonds became so unprofitable in places like Germany that they entered negative territory a few years after the financial crisis, whereas interest rates across Africa hovered above 5 percent. And these private companies made a killing on those high-interest loans. “It's good business to lend,” said Martín Guzmán, an economist and former economy minister of Argentina. After years of debt drama, a slew of neoliberal reforms compelled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a debilitating economic crisis, the country stopped paying off its $100 billion debt on Christmas Eve 2001. It was the second-largest sovereign debt default in history, one that sent its creditors — from Wall Street barons to pension funds — into a tailspin. In Argentina's case, chronic overspending and cycles of inflation have made borrowing especially expensive. Lenders have to take a haircut on their loans, while the debtor country has to make painful cuts and becomes a sort of pariah in the global financial world. Most creditors eventually accepted new discounted terms to Argentina's debt, but others, hoping to make a quick buck and wash their hands of the crisis, sold off their Argentine bonds — or loan contracts — for pennies to the dollar to vulture funds, investors that specialize in hounding debtors for what they're owed. Creditors who lend to poor and middle-income countries “want to charge high interest rates, but they also demand to be repaid in full when risks happen,” said Tim Jones, policy director of the longstanding advocacy group Debt Justice. “They want to have their cake and eat it too.” After a 15-year battle in New York state court — since about half of all sovereign debt is litigated on Wall Street's turf — Elliott managed to score a highly profitable $2.4 billion settlement, a 392 percent return on the original value of the bonds, but since Eliott paid very little for those bonds, the company earned a profit of 10 to 15 times what it initially paid. At the time, Elliott's CEO, Paul Singer, blamed Argentina for its own “sad path” to financial crisis as a “once very impactful country economically” coming out of World War II. It's true that Argentina was in part a victim of its own mistakes. But it's also true that Argentina, which was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world, has never fully recovered. There is no shortage of reasons that poor and middle-income countries fail to pay off their loans, including the most obvious: overspending. When the southern African country of Zambia defaulted on its debt in 2020, the IMF and other analysts blamed it on years of unsustainable borrowing, corruption, and poorly targeted infrastructure projects underwritten mostly by private creditors and, increasingly, China. “There is a school of thought that whenever a country is in default, it is all the fault of the lenders, and that is usually not the case,” said Gregory Makoff, a self-professed sovereign debt obsessive, author of Default: The Landmark Court Battle Over Argentina's $100 Billion Debt Restructuring, and a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. As a result, 3.4 billion people now live in the 46 developing countries that spend more — $921 billion in 2024, a 10 percent increase from 2023 — on interest payments alone than they do on health or education, according to the United Nations. But for every handful of nations that stop paying their loans, dozens dutifully take out new loans to pay off their old ones each year. One reason that debt burdens are so high today is the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced many countries to take out additional loans to keep their economies and healthcare systems afloat. Add in the war in Ukraine, which drove up energy and food prices globally, and increasingly frequent climate disasters that force countries to borrow even more just to rebuild, and you've got a recipe for the worst sovereign debt crisis in decades. But even as countries' debt balloons, defaults like Argentina's are relatively rare these days, largely because nobody wants to be chased by a vulture fund or find themselves locked out of global financial markets. Instead, many countries are digging deep into whatever savings or spending cuts they can muster to pay off those loans. Developing countries spent $741 billion more on paying back their loans than they received in new finance between 2022 and 2024, the largest gap in 50 years. But despite these payments, their debt has just grown larger, rising at twice the rate of rich countries. If you're an austerity hawk, that might sound like a good thing. These kinds of cuts are compelled by the IMF not because that institution is mean-spirited, but because it's a way to bring countries closer to eventually paying off their loans and finding a stronger financial footing in the long term. “They make sure the money [that comes] in and out adds up” and do their best to avoid catastrophic social spending cuts in the process. But for billions of people around the world, this kind of fiscal responsibility can also mean hospitals that don't get built. Every dollar of interest lining the pockets of Wall Street's Bonobos pants and fleece-lined vests is a dollar less for development. “Western governments tend to only see it as a crisis when people stop paying,” Jones said, but “the real crisis is the fact that they are paying and the cost that's happening through cuts” to service these debts, which he described as “catastrophic for the future.” A lot of loans, many of which carry very high interest rates, because lenders don't trust that the impoverished country will be able to pay them back. Over the past several years, Malawi's total public debt has soared to above 80 percent of its GDP or around $12 billion, up from 35.5 percent of GDP — under $3.2 billion — a decade ago. Since 2019, it has faced back-to-back climate disasters, including the region's worst drought in a century, which has plunged over half of Malawians — most of whom are subsistence farmers — into profound food insecurity. Long story short, if you want to understand the dystopian and often surreal reality of global debt financing, look at Malawi's budget for the coming fiscal year. The country will spend just over $440 million — $20 per person — on health care. And it will spend over $1.25 billion, more than what it spends on health and education combined, on interest payments. Again, these are just interest payments, which go straight into the pockets of commercial banks and foreign investors who own them. Given that 75 percent of Malawians live on less than $3 per day, the government can hardly rely on tax revenue, so it will need to borrow even more money to make those payments on time. In Malawi, he said, a generation of trained local health professionals can't get jobs because the “government is trying to meet austerity measures” imposed by the IMF. “The IMF has been saying that there will be some sort of pain for a while and then later on things will stabilize,” he said. Almost half of low-income countries are now in or at high risk of debt distress, meaning they're struggling to pay their loans. To make matters more complicated, sweeping foreign aid cuts have left many countries scrambling to fill funding gaps this year. Many poor countries normally rely on foreign donors — chief among them, the United States — to subsidize the majority of health and education programs in their country. The United States previously subsidized at least half of all annual health spending in Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Malawi. Countries like Nigeria have already begun taking out new loans to keep their health systems afloat. And so far, it appears that Trump's new foreign policy prerogative will mean that when the US does choose to fund development, it will increasingly be in the form of loans, rather than grants. China, an increasingly important lender for poor countries — especially in Africa — also conducts much of its foreign aid this way, and has also faced its own criticism for leading nations into debt spirals. Many of those countries have no choice but to regularly take out enormous new loans in the aftermath of every new disaster, like Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica. It's a burden that seems to grow every year. These countries “are piling on debt not to build infrastructure, not to grow, not to develop like other countries,” said Ritu Bharadwaj, a climate finance and resilience expert at the International Institute for Environment and Development, but simply “to rebuild and bring the economy back on track” when disaster strikes. Sri Lanka, for example, was recently forced to ask the IMF for a multimillion-dollar loan to fuel its recovery in the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah last month, even as the country continues to recover after defaulting on its loans in 2022. At the time, Sri Lanka's debt crisis forced schools to cancel exams because they ran out of paper. Hospitals canceled surgeries because they ran out of medication. Fuel shortages forced doctors to stitch wounds in the dark and food prices rose by 90 percent, leaving over a quarter of people food insecure. But if there is one silver lining to the aid cuts, it is that countries struggling widely with debt burdens have gained a powerful new moral argument for changing the system. Even some private creditors are calling for change. At recent meetings with bondholders, UNCTAD's Hawkins said, some acknowledged that pushing countries to keep paying unsustainable debts ultimately hurts everyone — including creditors who want borrowers to stay solvent enough to keep doing business. For some activists, the solution starts on Wall Street. Over the past few years, organizers in the financial hubs of New York and London have been exploring changes to local law that could shield vulnerable countries from the most egregious debt litigation. Or more recently, an entity called Hamilton Reserve Bank, which has refused to agree to a debt restructuring plan for Sri Lanka, instead suing the country for $250 million in a lawsuit still ongoing in New York. The proposed New York state law would offer countries a framework for obtaining relief and restructuring their debt, with provisions against private creditors that attempt to hold out on a deal. Amid a concerted lobbying effort from Wall Street firms, the deal failed to move forward this year, but will be coming up for a vote again in the year ahead. Even if this bill — and a similar one in London — passes next year, it's not going to transform the problem overnight. There's no silver bullet for dismantling the debt vortex that so many poor countries find themselves in — especially if it doesn't involve significant loan forgiveness. But anything that makes it easier for countries to renegotiate their debt — which both the New York and London bills aim to do — would be a big win. Unlike individuals or companies, countries don't have the option of declaring bankruptcy. And even when there are no supervillainous vulture funds involved, such renegotiations are “just a monstrous process for a debtor to go through,” said Jones of Debt Justice, citing Zambia, a neighbor of Malawi that defaulted on its loans in 2020 and has been renegotiating its debt ever since. ”My daughter was born around the time the Zambian process started, and she can now read and write,” he said, noting that if New York or London manages to eke out a restructuring bill, then more countries will feel empowered to apply for debt relief. Without it, they'll just keep borrowing, often from multilateral organizations like the World Bank, whose loans are ineligible for restructuring and contingent on painful policies that can stifle development in the long run. Every “extension of term” on loan repayments may give them a “breather,” said Hawkins, but only delays the inevitable for countries made insolvent by deals that were often rotten to begin with. “That horizon is coming very much closer to us.” Here at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you — threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country. Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change. We rely on readers like you — join us. Let's fix the two massive efficiency sinks in American life.

Construction teams will start dropping the red-orange floating devices in the Rio Grande along Texas' southern border in early 2026, Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks said. “We're going to start laying the first string of those buoys down in the Rio Grande Valley in the first part of 2026,” Banks said in a video interview on Dec. 19. This hefty addition will link up with Texas's smaller project in Eagle Pass, and is expected to further reduce illegal border crossings, which are at 55-year lows. The project was funded with money that Congress included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in July. He also said it is backed by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “The support is even greater than it was in his first administration, as he's continued to learn and grow in his understanding and knowledge on the border.” ”There's no doubt that President Trump has expeditiously delivered on his promise to secure our border. While Biden let criminal illegals pour into our country and complained he couldn't do anything to stop it, President Trump immediately proved him wrong, and the American people are safer for it,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson wrote in an email Monday afternoon. “It's amazing what happens when you have a President who believes in empowering Border Patrol to do their job.” A 500-mile stretch of buoys that has already been contracted out will be laid from where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of America near Brownsville, Texas, and stretch westward. A second portion of 400 miles is still being finalized and will be installed on the south-central and southwestern sides of Texas. The buoys will not be placed in areas that are too shallow to float; however, this could change in the coming months. And I think the, you know, talk about morale going up, Agents are really starting to see where all this planning has come to,” he said. The new ones will be up to six feet in diameter and cylinder-shaped, while the original buoys in Eagle Pass are round. The buoys will also contain detection technology that will issue alerts for movement, effectively putting eyes in the water and allowing agents to patrol better. Several sections of the southern border feature a double wall in densely populated areas. “A key component of border security is deterrence. Infrastructure that discourages people from attempting to illegally enter the United States is a positive investment, but it must be accompanied by intelligence, technology, and personnel,” Rodriguez wrote in a text message Monday. But former President Joe Biden, who stopped all border wall construction projects on his first day in office in 2021, opposed fencing off the border to would-be illegal immigrants. We're not going to do that,” Banks said. The buoys are not a new concept to Banks. Greg Abbott (R-TX) tapped the recently retired federal agent to oversee the state's border security operations as illegal border crossings surged during the Biden administration, and continued to spike through early 2024. “When I left the Border Patrol and was appointed by Gov. Abbott to be the Texas border czar, we continued that project in Texas and started deploying those, and they did exactly what we thought they were going to do. The state laid a 1,000-foot string of buoys between Eagle Pass and the Mexican city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) represents more than 800 miles of the border, including Eagle Pass. Limited resources were diverted to dangerous rescue operations and, tragically, recovering bodies from the water,” Gonzales said in a statement. “Buoys are one more tool Border Patrol agents can use to deter illegal crossings, slow activity in the river, and prevent people from attempting to cross in the first place.” “Obviously, the money for this vanity project would be better spent reducing healthcare premiums for Americans,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) in a statement. Banks met with Trump in February 2024 when the presidential candidate visited Eagle Pass and spent time with Abbott's team. “[Trump] got to witness them firsthand,” Banks said. I tell you, one of the things that I'm most impressed with about our president is that he understands that the United States Border Patrol knows how to secure this border, and he listens to us, and he supports us.” Trump, impressed with Banks as the Texas border czar, moved Banks into his administration as the head of Border Patrol in January. Texas still legally owns the buoys in Eagle Pass, but Border Patrol plans to seamlessly link the new buoy to the existing mile-long strand in Eagle Pass, as well as steel wall projects on land, including several that Texas competed for during the Biden administration. The federal government will eventually purchase Texas's portion. A spokesman for Abbott told the Washington Examiner that the state has worked and will continue to work with the Trump White House on border security matters, such as this one. “Texas finally has a partner in the White House, and Governor Abbott continues to work closely with the Trump administration to uphold our nation's immigration laws,” Abbott press secretary Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement. “The floating marine barriers deployed by Texas have been a resounding success, and Governor Abbott is proud to work with the Trump administration and Border Patrol to expand the program.” Trump's first year of his second term has primarily focused on planning and the early stages of construction, with implementation expected to occur in 2026. “We're a little ahead of schedule, which I like,” Banks said, adding that if “[Trump is] happy, I'm happy.” To date, more than 20 miles of steel wall have been installed in the ground since January. “All we need, and have proven time and time again to be effective where we have it, the most significant part, if you ask any Border Patrol agent, is being able to have that road that gives us that lateral access to rapidly deploy east and west along that border,” Banks said. The forthcoming changes, Banks said, are already giving a boost to morale among Border Patrol's nearly 20,000 personnel.

When you buy an annual membership or give a one-time contribution, we'll give a membership to someone who can't afford access. We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today? It's been a rough year if you care about climate change policy in the United States. With the help of Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, whole climate, science, and conservation programs have been gutted, public servants fired, and climate language scrubbed from federal websites. So when we published Escape Velocity back in April — a project arguing that the clean energy transition had gathered enough economic and technological momentum to become effectively unstoppable — it was fair to wonder whether that thesis could survive this onslaught. Looking back at the period since we published the project, what's surprised me most isn't how much went wrong — it's how much progress kept happening anyway. Here are seven developments from 2025 that have me feeling hopeful for our future. • Even with the Trump-era rollbacks, clean energy continued to expand because it's now cheaper, faster, and structurally difficult to stop. • Around the world, solar, wind, batteries, and EVs are winning on cost — which means adoption no longer depends on climate virtue or friendly governments. China, Europe, and emerging markets are driving the transition forward, whether Washington participates or not. • But even in the US, red and blue states alike have kept expanding clean power — often for purely economic reasons. Projects breaking ground now will shape the grid for decades, locking in progress that future administrations can't easily undo. In 2025, the clean energy transition crossed a line that will be hard to uncross. In the first half of the year, solar, wind, and hydropower generated 34.3 percent of global electricity, edging past coal's 33.1 percent — a quiet but historic turning point. Just as striking, solar and wind didn't merely grow alongside rising demand — they met it entirely. The world added 380 gigawatts of new solar capacity in just six months — a 64 percent jump from the same period in 2024 — putting 2025 on track to shatter records yet again. What once felt like “alternative energy” is now the cheapest, fastest power humanity has ever built. If Reason 1 is that the transition crossed a threshold, Reason 2 is who pushed it there: China has turned clean energy into the default global option. It is installing vast amounts of solar, wind, and battery storage at home — but just as importantly, it has driven manufacturing costs so low that clean energy is affordable almost everywhere else. (Let's also be clear that this is all happening as China continues to take more of an all-of-the-above approach — boosting coal and natural gas capacity, too.) A global transition only matters if it shows up in the hardest places. Poland, one of Europe's most coal-dependent countries, generated more electricity from renewables than from coal for the first time in June. Coal also fell below 50 percent of Poland's electricity mix for an entire quarter — a symbolic and material break from the past. Unfortunately, in the US, however, the Trump administration is trying anything it can to save coal, which is beginning to modestly slow down its rate of decline here. Coal demand still reached a record high in 2025, but it's clear that we are at or nearing the peak. Despite aggressive rhetorical and policy attacks on renewables, solar continues to dominate new electricity generation in the United States. And solar energy is the star of 2025: By early December, solar accounted for roughly 75 percent of all new generation installed this year, far outpacing wind, gas, and nuclear. In 2025, states passed clean energy affordability laws, modernized grids, invested in transit, expanded solar access, repealed coal bailouts, launched heat-pump rebates, and defended projects under federal attack. And where it gets really interesting is in Trump country. This year, 80 percent of US solar manufacturing investment went to Republican-held districts, and most of the top solar-installing states now vote red. Of the 20 states that installed the most solar capacity since 2024, 14 of them voted for President Donald Trump last year, and there is now more solar capacity installed in Trump states than in states that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris. States across the country are racing to fast-track wind and solar projects before Trump's rollback of federal clean energy tax credits takes full effect. Since Trump ended the credits in July, states including Colorado, Maine, California, New York, Oregon, and Minnesota have accelerated permitting, procurement, and grid connections to help developers break ground before the July 4, 2026, construction deadline. Those projects will keep generating power for decades, meaning today's scramble will permanently tilt the energy system slightly more toward renewables, regardless of what happens in Washington next. This year, more than one in four new cars sold globally was at least partially powered by an electric motor. That surge wasn't led by the United States or even Europe, but by emerging markets — especially in Southeast Asia — where EVs are becoming the obvious choice for new buyers. Globally, more than 25 percent of new cars sold so far this year were either an EV or plug-in hybrid. According to a new report published this week by global energy think tank Ember, which analysed available monthly data for 60 countries, new markets are making a rapid switch to plug-in vehicles, putting to bed the theory that EV adoption would stall outside of Europe and China. For years, critics dismissed wind and solar as unreliable. In 2025, battery storage finally made that argument feel outdated. Developing technologies are already extending lifespans and cutting costs; solar combined with battery storage and wind with battery storage as a combo deal are even on track to undercut fossil fuels in cost worldwide before the end of the decade. This is what makes renewables infrastructure, not just energy sources. Isn't the insatiable buildout of AI going to derail any positive developments? It's true that data centers are sprouting up across the American landscape like weeds. As of November 2025, the US had built 5,427 data centers — with capacity up by more than 40 percent since the start of 2025 — making it the world's largest data center market by a significant margin. As data center demand explodes, companies increasingly rely on renewables like solar and wind through power purchase agreements — but because those sources are intermittent, developers are pairing them with battery storage and, more often, natural gas plants to provide round-the-clock reliability. In practice, that means data centers are pulling heavily on clean energy where available, while leaning on fossil fuels, especially gas, to guarantee constant power as grids and storage struggle to keep up. But there's even a silver lining here: As the grid needs more and more energy, grid operators are increasingly looking to build out overall capacity with renewable energy sources because they are so cheap. And then there's also something interesting happening that makes me feel hopeful about climate activism: As AI-driven data centers spread across the U.S., community backlash is growing — and fast. This feels like a purpose that the environmental movement, which has seemed unmoored for quite some time now, could glom onto. In places like suburban Philadelphia, Michigan, Georgia, and Virginia, residents are organizing against massive data centers over concerns about rising electricity bills, pollution, and noise. Power prices are already spiking for American consumers, and community opposition has delayed or canceled nearly $100 billion in projects so far. Data centers are turning abstract climate and energy issues into tangible, neighborhood-level fights, offering climate activism a new, concrete target with broad public appeal. And just last week, Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, proposed a moratorium on new data centers because he says artificial intelligence is coming along too quickly and we need time for “democracy to catch up.” None of this means the climate fight is won. It's being driven by economics, technology, and global demand — forces that are far harder to reverse than a regulation. The United States may be choosing to give up its head start. And every megawatt we build anyway still matters — because every fraction of a degree we avoid is lives saved, futures preserved, and disasters that never happen. The Great Smoky Mountains are famous for their blue smoke, but to truly appreciate them you have to look beyond the haze. Let's fix the two massive efficiency sinks in American life. What happens when you kill the country's climate science “mothership”?

President Donald Trump has had a largely successful year at the Supreme Court, but on Friday, he was handed his first loss in months, and more difficult decisions from the justices appear on the horizon. Since the Trump administration took office in January, it has petitioned the Supreme Court's emergency docket more than two dozen times and has been overwhelmingly successful. The administration had a winning streak on the emergency docket dating back to May, but that streak was broken Friday in an immigration judge free speech case, and 2026 could offer more losses at the high court for Trump, as the justices issue opinions on some of his major policies. The Trump administration asked the high court to halt the proceedings of a case in federal court challenging a policy requiring immigration judges to receive permission when giving speeches pertaining to their duties. The administration claims a federal appeals court erred by allowing the case to proceed for additional fact-finding in federal court, rather than deferring to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which deals with disputes brought by federal employees. Chief Justice John Roberts granted an administrative stay on Dec. 5, but the full court later lifted the administrative stay and declined to give the administration its requested pause of proceedings. “At this stage, the Government has not demonstrated that it will suffer irreparable harm without a stay. While the Trump administration racked up its first loss on the emergency docket in months, it has been awaiting a ruling on whether it can deploy troops to Chicago since October. The deployments in Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles include federalizing state National Guard troops to defend federal assets and officials, according to the administration. Trump's attempt to deploy troops to Chicago was halted by a federal district court, an order which was upheld by a federal appeals court, leading to an emergency petition at the Supreme Court. “This case presents what has become a disturbing and recurring pattern: Federal officers are attempting to enforce federal immigration law in an urban area containing significant numbers of illegal aliens,” Sauer wrote in his Oct. 17 petition to the Supreme Court. “The federal agents' efforts are met with prolonged, coordinated, violent resistance that threatens their lives and safety and systematically interferes with their ability to enforce federal law,” the petition continued. The Trump administration has faced a mixed bag of rulings in different National Guard cases across different federal courts, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit being the only lone court to allow a deployment — in Los Angeles — to continue in the interim. There is no set timeline for the Supreme Court to issue orders regarding emergency petitions, meaning an order on the petition could come at any time. While the emergency docket has offered up several wins for Trump early in his second term, the Supreme Court's merits docket appears poised to offer some high-profile losses in 2026. The administration is currently awaiting decisions on the president's sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs and on whether the president can fire independent agency heads without cause, after oral arguments in both cases were held in late 2025. In the first several months of 2026, the high court will hear arguments over whether Trump's birthright citizenship order is constitutional and an emergency docket case over whether to allow the firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, which Trump claims he properly did for cause. The birthright citizenship case is expected to be an uphill battle for the Trump administration, after the executive order was struck down by various courts as unconstitutional.

When jobs or inflation data counter President Donald Trump's preferred economic narrative, he typically offers alternative statistics to shine a more positive light on the economy. But Trump's latest effort asks Americans to buy into some puzzling logic. After America's unemployment rate hit a four-year high of 4.6% in November, Trump made the argument that the job market is far better than it appears. I can do it with one phone call,” Trump said at a campaign-style rally in North Carolina Friday. He said, if he wanted to, he could force government agencies to add jobs that they lost this year through a combination of resignations, attrition and staffing reductions led by the Department of Government Efficiency. And the 4.5% would be down to 2.5% in a matter of moments. I could get it down to zero – hire a couple of million workers,” Trump said. That's no surprise, considering he has been second guessing jobs statistics for a decade – from when he falsely stated during the 2016 presidential campaign that the jobless rate was 42%, to when he fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner this summer over revisions that showed the labor market was worse off than previously expected. But the most significant problem with Trump's message is he once again is asking people to ignore their lived experiences of a weakening job market – and believe in an alternative portrait of America's economy that doesn't match reality. Trump said he could get the unemployment rate down to 2.5% by rehiring all 271,000 workers eliminated from US government payrolls this year. But Trump was off by a factor of 13 – federal agencies would need to employ 3.5 million more people to accomplish that. To get the unemployment rate down to “zero,” it would take more than the couple of million government employees that Trump suggested: Federal agencies would need to add 7.8 million positions. Zero unemployment has never come close to happening – the lowest US unemployment rate ever recorded was 2.5%, last achieved in June 1953. The reason the unemployment rate has risen to 4.6% from 4% when Trump took office is because there were 982,000 more unemployed people in November than in January. Government work is responsible for just a fraction of that. The lived experience of most people in the labor force also shows the job market is stuck: People who don't have work are increasingly complaining that they can't get a job, and folks who have a job are cleaving to them tightly. The era of quiet quitting is over. Quitting, in general, has been out of vogue this year, as people stay in their jobs for longer: The rate of workers who voluntarily quit their jobs fell to a five-year low in October. Exacerbating America's stuck job market is a mismatch between the industries that are hiring and people who are unemployed. For example, jobs are growing in the health care industry, but an increasing number of workers in the leisure, transportation and manufacturing sectors are out of a job. In other words: Who cares if there are nursing jobs if you're trained as a factory or hotel worker? The jobs situation is worse for lower-income workers than high-income employees, and Black unemployment is starting to surge – it rose above 8% in November for the first time in four years. By denying the economic reality that people are experiencing in their everyday lives, Trump is muddying his economic message and making the same political mistake that haunted his predecessor, former President Joe Biden and contributed to the Democrats losing the White House in 2024. But in March 2017, after the first full jobs report of Trump's presidency was released, the unemployment rate fell to 4.7% from 4.8%. “I talked to the president prior to this and he said to quote him very clearly: ‘They may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now,'” said Sean Spicer, the former press secretary, on March 10, 2017. In August 2024, during his most recent presidential campaign, Trump complained about a preliminary annual revision to Biden's jobs numbers that showed the US economy had added 818,000 fewer jobs over the previous year than earlier reported. Former BLS commissioner says firing her was a ‘dangerous' step for the US economy In August of this year, Trump fired then-BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, whom he accused, without evidence, of manipulating the monthly jobs reports for “political purposes.” In that month's report, the BLS revised down the previously reported gains for May and June by a combined 258,000 jobs. Those revisions, though historically large, were not unprecedented. Weaker-than-expected hiring, sampling errors and low survey responses can make the jobs report more challenging to estimate. Calling into question the validity of official data could undermine the government's important role in helping businesses make informed decisions about hiring. It's also a dubious political tactic – Trump's claims that the US job market is better than it really is could sow doubts about his own credibility, particularly on the economy, which is one of his most vulnerable issues with voters in the midterm elections. CNN's Alicia Wallace contributed to this report. Most stock quote data provided by BATS. US market indices are shown in real time, except for the S&P 500 which is refreshed every two minutes. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices Copyright S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and/or its affiliates. Market holidays and trading hours provided by Copp Clark Limited.

But we don't produce them fast enough,” Trump said, as he announced he would meet soon with top US military contractors to ramp up production for the new battleships and other weapons programs. Here's what to consider about the proposed “Trump-class” battleships: A US Navy fact sheet released Monday says the Trump class will be “the most lethal warship to ever be built.” With a length of up to 880 feet and a displacement of 30,000 to 40,000 tons, they'll also be the biggest surface combatants the US Navy has constructed since World War II. Those battleships, like the renowned USS Missouri, which hosted the Japanese surrender in 1945, were 887 feet long and displaced around 58,000 tons. The Trump class would also feature 128 vertical launch cells that can be used for slower-flying Tomahawk cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, or missile defense interceptors. Other armaments would include a rail gun, five-inch conventional guns, and a range of lasers and smaller guns. Overall the planned ships would be 100 times more powerful than those World War II-era battleships, Trump said. The new battleships project would be led by a naval shipbuilding base that has struggled to deliver in recent years and which Navy Secretary John Phelan said this year was in disarray. Then last month Phelan axed the Constellation-class frigate program, which was about three years behind schedule and was expected to yield much smaller and less complex warships than the new battleships Trump now proposes. As far as large complex ships go, the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, the USS John F Kennedy, has slipped about two years behind its scheduled delivery date, which was July of this year. Those delays have been attributed to new landing and weapons elevator systems which the service is still trying to get certified. Then there's the question of who will build these new battleships. US shipyards are already stretched thin with current construction, maintenance and overhaul jobs. “We no longer have the shipbuilding and maritime industrial infrastructure to do this quickly,” said analyst Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain. “A national scale recruitment and training program for shipyard, electrical, information and sensor system workers (would be) required to support this program,” Schuster said. Can South Korean shipyards help ‘Make American Shipbuilding Great Again'? Navy Secretary Phelan just recently pointed out the difficulties in recruiting a workforce, especially when it comes to pay. If workers can make the same money working in an Amazon warehouse or a convenience store, they're less likely to choose the he arduous, backbreaking jobs found in a naval shipyard, he told a defense conference in Indiana last month. Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King's College London, said Washington has the technical know-how to make these ships, but it must overcome the shipyard problem. Schuster noted the Navy's sketchy record on seeing ambitious shipbuilding programs followed through to completion. And, as Schuster points out, recent shipbuilding programs that have reached plan numbers have fallen well short of overall success, specifically the Littoral Combat Ships. That program, which has produced more than three dozen hulls, has seen some of them retired with as little as five years of service as they've been plagued by reliability issues and a lack of a well-defined mission. US Navy chief defends plan to scrap troubled warships even though some are less than 3 years old The Navy cancelled its rail gun program in 2021, when technical challenges proved too difficult to overcome. Rail gun tech uses electromagnetic power to propel a hardened projectile at speeds far higher than current weapon systems - but it requires huge amounts of power and most programs around the world have made little progress so far towards a commercially viable, reliable weapon. Schuster says the Trump administration also needs to make some changes in management if it wants the Trump class to be successful. “This project will be managed by NAVSEA (Naval Sea Systems Command), an organization and staff that has screwed up every surface warship program of this century,” he said. “I believe Trump must clean house in that organization if he wants any shipbuilding program to succeed.” “The US Navy is not known for being at the forefront of automation and innovative solutions in terms of more compact crew management.” Doing so “will require a cultural shift – in light of other new classes being built – of no trifling proportions,” Patalano said. Can the massive ships – about 1,100 feet long, the length of three football fields – survive a conflict with a peer adversary like China? Some analysts say Washington should be focusing on large numbers of small naval vessels, capable of carrying a few missiles or drones each, and dispersing them across a vast range of waterways, negating Beijing's advantage in missile numbers by presenting too many targets to handle. A 2023 Defense Department factsheet notes how Washington is making its forces in the Pacific “more mobile, distributed, resilient, and lethal” to deter adversaries and reassure allies. Like the carriers, large battleships could be putting too much firepower on one platform, critics say. “The advantages of small battleships and unmanned systems are that the quantity can be increased at a relatively low cost and viability can be increased by dispersing risk across multiple platforms,” said Yu Jihoon, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses and former South Korean submarine officer. And large ships aren't only vulnerable to missiles, some say. There's also a question of how they can deal with drones, cheap unmanned platforms in the air and on and below the sea, that Ukraine has shown during its war with Russia can at least disable if not sink surface ships and submarines alike. China displayed an array of undersea naval drones at a military parade in Beijing in September, watched by leader Xi Jinping, who was flanked by Russian leader Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Writing on the website Naval News this month, analyst H I Sutton said large Chinese drones could be used to lay mines that could choke off US naval ports around the Pacific. That's a long list of challenges to the proposed Trump-class battleship program, but analysts say Washington should not be counted out. After all, as Trump said in his speech on Monday, this is the country that ramped up military production enough during World War II to turn out multiple ships in a single day. Schuster sees a more recent example, from the 1960s. Remember, the Soviets seemed to be ahead of us in space, a direct threat to our national security” before Washington launched the Apollo program that saw an American walk on the moon on July 20, 1969. But Schuster doesn't think the US can do it alone this time. South Korean companies think they can help fix it That allied cooperation is in early stages, but seeds have been planted. Trump on Monday praised South Korea's Hanwha Ocean, which is investing billions into the Philly Shipyard, which could be building future US Navy ships.

As authorities investigate the motives behind last week's deadly Bondi Beach attack, leading criminologists note an unusual characteristic differentiating this mass shooting from others: the suspected gunmen were family members working together. Sajid Akram and his son Naveed Akram are accused of killing 15 people at the iconic Sydney shoreline, a crime that could be “the first father-son combination of perpetrators ever” for such an attack, according to Dr. James Densley, a criminology professor and an expert in mass shootings at Metro State University in Minnesota. Mass killings are typically the work of lone actors. “When relatives commit mass violence together, the risk factors look different,” Densley told CNN, noting contrasts in motivations, power dynamics and logistics from lone attackers. Relatives who commit crimes together tend to be “less performative,” with trust and proximity replacing online networks that are often used by lone actors. “These attacks grow out of a shared worldview that's cultivated over time, rather than a single individual seeking notoriety or recognition,” Densley said. “Family members already share time, space, routines, and private conversations. They can test and rehearse ideas without social friction, providing mutual reinforcement.” Cases that demonstrate this include the 2022 Wieambilla shootings in Australia, where two brothers and a spouse acted together to kill three people, and the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack in France by two brothers. And the 2015 San Bernadino terror attack was carried out by a married couple. At Bondi Beach, police say Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24, targeted a Jewish celebration, motivated by Islamic State ideology. The two traveled to the Philippines last month, visiting a region that has endured a painful history of Islamist extremism, and homemade Islamic State flags were found in their car after the attack. The pair are alleged to have recorded videos in which they shared views suggesting they adhered to “religiously motivated violent extremism ideology” and they also practiced shooting ahead of their attack in a rural part of Australia, according to an alleged statement of facts released by a magistrate Monday. That was most evident with the two brothers who orchestrated the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, detonating two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line that killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Praise and approval are other social dynamics in father-son violence, according to Professor James Alan Fox, criminology professor at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. Age often factors into these dynamics too, he adds. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government confirmed Monday it would pursue increased criminal penalties for hate speech offenses and a new aggravated offense for adults who are found to be radicalizing children. “This unprecedented radicalization of our youth must stop. We will not allow extremists to groom and brainwash our children into hate or terrorism,” Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said. Logistics can change when an attack is carried out by more than one person, Densley explained. Having two people splitting tasks -–– scouting, planning, sourcing weapons, transport and surveillance –– allows for a more organized attack without a big external conspiracy. In a father-son attack, parents can also “remove practical barriers, especially if they control the money, transportation, or weapons,” Densley said. Following the attack, police seized six guns owned by Sajid Akram who had a gun license. “This exposes a blind spot in Australia's otherwise strong gun laws because risk is relational, not just individual,” Densley suggested. This is highlighted by experts in the 2021 Oxford High School shooting in Michigan, where 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley gunned down four classmates and wounded six others and a teacher. Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Matthews told the court that James Crumbley provided “unfettered access to a gun or guns as well as ammunition in your home,” while Jennifer Crumbley “glorified the use and possession of these weapons.” “One way of thinking about this is that a parent doesn't just supply a weapon, they supply legitimacy,” Densley added. “When firearms are legally owned, stored in the household, and normalized as part of everyday life, that dramatically lowers the barrier for entry for a younger family member.” Sajid was killed in a shootout with police at the scene.

President Donald Trump departs after speaking at his Mar-a-Lago club, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks as President Donald Trump looks on, at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) The sea service has also failed to build its other newly designed ships, like the new Ford-class aircraft carrier and Columbia-class submarines, on time and on budget. The Navy spent hundreds of millions of dollars and more than 15 years trying to field a railgun aboard a ship before finally abandoning the effort in 2021. Laser technology has seen more success in making its way onto Navy ships in recent years, but its employment is still limited. One system that is designed to blind or disable drone sensors is now aboard eight destroyers after spending eight years in development. Developing nuclear cruise missile capabilities or deploying them on ships may also violate non-proliferation treaties that the U.S. has signed with Russia. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing plans, told The Associated Press that design efforts are now underway for the new ship and construction is planned to begin in the early 2030s. Both Trump and Navy Secretary John Phelan spoke about the new Trump-class warship as a spiritual successor to the battleships of the 20th century, but historically that term has referred to a very specific type of ship — a large, heavily armored vessel armed with massive guns designed to bombard other ships or targets ashore. But after World War II, the battleship's role in modern fleets diminished rapidly in favor of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles. According to a newly created website for the “Golden Fleet,” this new “guided missile battleship” is set to be roughly the same size as Iowa-class battleships but only weigh about half as much, around 35,000 tons, and have far smaller crews — between 650 and 850 sailors. Its primary weapons will also be missiles, not large naval guns. Trump has long held strong opinions on specific aspects of the Navy's fleet, sometimes with a view toward keeping older technology instead of modernizing. He has also complained to Phelan about the look of the Navy's destroyers and decried Navy ships being covered in rust. Phelan told senators at his confirmation hearing that Trump “has texted me numerous times very late at night, sometimes after one (o'clock) in the morning” about “rusty ships or ships in a yard, asking me what am I doing about it.” “I looked at it, I said, ‘That's a terrible-looking ship, let's make it beautiful,'” Trump said at the time. Phelan said the new USS Defiant “will inspire awe and reverence for the American flag whenever it pulls into a foreign port.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry has reportedly begun evacuating the families of its diplomats from Venezuela as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's hold on power grows increasingly fragile. Russia is one of Maduro's most important allies and has continually shown solidarity with the Latin American nation during the increasing pressure campaign directed against it by President Donald Trump. Outside of its public rhetoric, however, Moscow seems to be growing increasingly concerned with the situation. However, Russia's options for assisting its ally if Trump decides to take military action are limited, as its military is focused on the war in Ukraine, and it has few means of projecting power into the Western Hemisphere, even in the best of circumstances. Analysts have noted that the flailing Maduro regime, with little legitimacy and an imploding economy, ranks at the bottom of Russia and China‘s priorities. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Russia's relationship with Venezuela isn't playing into the U.S.'s calculus. “We've always expected them to provide rhetorical support for the Maduro regime … [but] it's not a factor in how we consider this whole thing.” Despite this, Russia has continued to provide rhetorical support for Caracas. Russian warnings against further escalation last week were brushed aside by Washington, with the Trump administration following through on its threat to blockade oil tankers carrying Venezuelan oil. The United States has seized several, while over 100 suspected drug traffickers have been killed in kinetic strikes on drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since Sept. 2.

President Donald Trump dodged committing to the release of the complete Jeffrey Epstein files, but expressed sympathy on Monday for people identified in photographs with the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender in document tranches released from Epstein's estate. The Trump administration failed to meet a legislative deadline on Friday to release the government's Epstein file in its entirety. Photographs of several prominent Americans, including former President Bill Clinton and Trump himself, socializing with Epstein were included in a tranche of documents released on Friday. The president fielded questions on the topic Monday afternoon at Mar-a-Lago, suggesting it was a “terrible look” for Clinton, despite no evidence of wrongdoing. I hate to see photos come out of him, but this is what the Democrats, mostly Democrats, and a couple of bad Republicans, are asking for,” the president stated. “I don't like the pictures of Bill Clinton being shown. I don't like the pictures of other people being shown. “But you probably have pictures being exposed of other people that innocently met Jeffrey Epstein years ago, many years ago, and they're highly respected bankers and lawyers and others,” he continued, suggesting that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), whom he called a “real lowlife,” would ruin those people's lives through their continued pursuit of the entire Epstein file. “Massie is a loser, and he works with the Democrats. “This whole thing with Epstein is a way of trying to deflect from the tremendous success that the Republican Party has.” “In a picture with him because he was at a party and you ruined the reputation of somebody,” he stated. “So a lot of people are very angry that this continues.”