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Elon Musk thinks it’s okay to post a picture of someone in the bathroom without that person’s consent–as long as the person is transgender.

Just eight billionaires accounted for a quarter of the gains, led by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Larry Page

The richest 500 individuals in the world added a record $2.2tn to their wealth in 2025, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with just eight billionaires accounting for a quarter of the gains.

The gains increased their collective net worth to $11.9tn, bolstered by billionaire Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory and booming markets in cryptocurrencies, equities and metals.

Around a quarter of the gains were attributed to eight billionaires, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Oracle chair Larry Ellison and Alphabet Inc co-founder Larry Page, though 2024 saw more concentrated net worth gains with the same eight billionaires making up 43% of total net worth gains for the wealthiest 500 individuals in the world.

Costs, insurance delays and difficult-to-obtain mental health treatment plague the US health system

A record 23% of Americans believe the United States healthcare system is “in a state of crisis” and 47% think it has “major problems,” according to a recent poll from the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America.

The poll also revealed that a record 29% of Americans see “cost” as the most urgent health problem facing the US. Experts note that these two perceptions – that the healthcare system is in a state of crisis and that costs are an urgent health problem – are related.

The US healthcare system has long been criticized by those within the medical community and those outside it. Some of the sector’s biggest issues include how US health insurance giants often cause deadly delays to vital medical procedures and care, the rapidly rising cost of drug prices and the dubiousness of those overseeing US health in the current administration. The latter issue most notably centers on the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has been repeatedly lambasted for spreading misinformation and called upon to resign.

Drugmakers plan to raise U.S. prices on at least 350 branded medications including vaccines against COVID, RSV and shingles and blockbuster cancer treatment Ibrance, even as the Trump administration pressures them for cuts, according to data provided exclusively by healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors.

The number of price increases for 2026 is up from the same point last year, when drugmakers unveiled plans for raises on more than 250 drugs. The median of this year's price hikes is around 4% - in line with 2025.

U.S. patients currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines, often nearly 3 times more than in other developed nations, and Trump has been pressuring drugmakers to lower their prices to what patients pay in similarly wealthy nations.

A US appeals court agreed on Tuesday to allow the Trump administration to strip Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood health centers in 22 states and Washington DC.

The order from the three-judge panel of the Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals puts on hold an injunction issued by US district judge Indira Talwani. Talwani’s injunction had blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a provision of its massive tax-and-spending bill that blocks Planned Parenthood from receiving reimbursements from Medicaid, the US government’s health insurance program for low-income people, in the 22 states.

The panel’s decision is only the latest legal volley in the months-long war over the Trump administration’s provision. The appeals court previously lifted another order by Talwani in a separate case, brought by Planned Parenthood, that had also blocked the measure’s enforcement.

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he’s withdrawing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland but left the door open to sending federal forces “in a much different and stronger form.”

His announcement comes after the US Supreme Court last week rejected his request to allow him to deploy the guard to Chicago to protect ICE agents as part of the administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.

“We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, arguing that those cities would be “gone if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in.”

The Danish American who doubted Covid shots is meant to lead drug regulation – but has focused on vaccines

As the US continues making unprecedented changes to its vaccination recommendations, one figure appears unexpectedly: Tracy Beth Høeg, a Danish American sports physician and epidemiologist who first made her name casting doubt on Covid vaccines in the pandemic and has focused upon possible deaths after Covid vaccination in her short tenure at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Health officials planned to announce radical changes to the childhood vaccine schedule earlier this month, aligning the US with Denmark’s immunization schedule, sources say – a major change that would put the US out of step with much of the world with no evidence for benefit. The announcement has been postponed until the new year.

Instead of Vinay Prasad, the top vaccines chief, Høeg is listed to speak at the event. She was recently named acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), the fifth person to lead the center this year.

The Trump administration is closing NASA’s largest research library on Friday, a facility that houses tens of thousands of books, documents and journals — many of them not digitized or available anywhere else.

Jacob Richmond, a NASA spokesman, said the agency would review the library holdings over the next 60 days and some material would be stored in a government warehouse while the rest would be tossed away.

“This process is an established method that is used by federal agencies to properly dispose of federally owned property,” Mr. Richmond said.

Archive: http://archive.today/Ii6qS

The Trump administration is planning a massive propaganda campaign aimed at recruiting thousands of new federal immigration enforcement officers to carry out its mass deportation agenda.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that it had obtained internal documents revealing that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning to spend $100 million over the next year on what the agency describes as a “wartime recruitment” drive.

The propaganda blitz will be targeted at highly specific demographics, including “people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts, or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear,” according to the Post.

Forty-seven men killed by states operating death penalty – almost double last year’s number

US executions have surged in 2025 to the highest level in 16 years, as Donald Trump’s campaign to reinvigorate judicial killings, combined with the US supreme court’s increasing refusal to engage in last-minute pleas for reprieve, have taken a heavy toll.

A total of 47 men – they were all male – have been killed by states operating the death penalty in the course of the year. That was almost double the number in 2024, amounting to the greatest frenzy of capital punishment bloodletting in America since 2009.

The dramatic jump in the practice of state killing will further separate the US from almost all other developed countries. Only Japan, Singapore and Taiwan have staged executions in recent years.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/16453

While Brooke Shoemaker and a rights group representing her in court are celebrating this week after an Alabama judge threw out her conviction and ordered a new trial, her case is also drawing attention to the dangers of "fetal personhood" policies.

"Laws and judicial decisions that grant fetuses—and in some cases embryos and fertilized eggs—the same legal rights and status given to born people, such as the right to life, is 'fetal personhood,'" explains the website of the group, Pregnancy Justice. "When fetuses have rights, this fundamentally changes the legal rights and status of all pregnant people, opening the door to criminalization, surveillance, and obstetric violence."

Since the US Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling ended the federal right to abortion in 2022, far-right activists and politicians have ramped up their fight for fetal personhood policies. Pregnancy Justice found that in the two years after the decision, the number of people who faced criminal charges related to their pregnancies hit its highest level in US history.

Shoemaker's case began even earlier, in 2017, when she experienced a stillbirth at home about 24-26 weeks into her pregnancy. Paramedics brought her to a hospital, where she disclosed using methamphetamine while pregnant. Although a medical examiner could not determine whether the drug use caused the stillbirth—and, according to Pregnancy Justice, "her placenta showed clear signs of infection"—a jury found her guilty of chemical endangerment of a minor. She's served five years of her 18-year sentence.

"After becoming Ms. Shoemaker's counsel in 2024, Pregnancy Justice filed a petition alongside Andrew Stanley of the Samford Law Office requesting a hearing based on new evidence about the infection that led to the demise of Ms. Shoemaker's pregnancy, leading the judge to agree with Pregnancy Justice's medical witness and to vacate the conviction," the rights group said in a Monday statement.

Lee County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Tickal wrote in his December 22 order that "should the facts had been known, and brought before the jury, the results probably would have been different."

Shoemaker said Monday that "after years of fighting, I'm thankful that I'm finally being heard, and I pray that my next Christmas will be spent at home with my children and parents... I'm hopeful that my new trial will end with me being freed, because I simply lost my pregnancy at home because of an infection. I loved and wanted my baby, and I never deserved this."

— (@)

Although Tickal's decision came three days before Christmas, the 45-year-old mother of four remained behind bars for the holiday last week, as the state appeals.

"While we are thrilled with the judge's decision, we are outraged that Ms. Shoemaker is still behind bars when she should have been home for Christmas," said former Pregnancy Justice senior staff attorney Emma Roth. "She was convicted based on feelings, not facts. Pregnancy Justice will continue to fight on appeal and prove that pregnancies end tragically for reasons far beyond a mother's control. Women like Ms. Shoemaker should be allowed to grieve their loss without fearing arrest."

AL.com reported Tuesday that "Alabama is unique in that it is one of only three states, along with Oklahoma and South Carolina, where the state Supreme Court allows the application of criminal laws meant to punish child abuse or child endangerment to be applied in the context of pregnancy."

However, similar cases aren't restricted to those states. Pregnancy Justice found that in the two years following Dobbs, "prosecutors initiated cases in 16 states: Alabama, California, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. While prosecutions were brought in all of these states, to date, the majority of the reported cases occurred in Alabama (192) and Oklahoma (112)."

This is fantastic news!!I wrote in my book how the medical examiner ruled the cause of the stillbirth "undetermined," but the coroner (who lacks medical training) instead listed cause of stillbirth as mom's meth usage on the fetal death certificate.

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— Jill Wieber Lens (@jillwieberlens.bsky.social) December 30, 2025 at 12:25 PM

"Prosecutors used a variety of criminal statutes to charge the defendants in these cases, often bringing more than one charge against an individual defendant," the group's report continues. "In total, the 412 defendants faced 441 charges for conduct related to pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth. The majority of charges (398/441) asserted some form of child abuse, neglect, or endangerment."

"As has been the case for decades, nearly all the cases alleged that the pregnant person used a substance during pregnancy," the report adds. "In 268 cases, substance use was the only allegation made against the pregnant person. In the midst of a wide-ranging crisis in maternal healthcare and despite maternal healthcare deserts across the country, prosecutors or police argued that pregnant people's failure to obtain prenatal care was evidence of a crime. This was the case in 29 of 412 cases."

When the publication was released last year, Pregnancy Justice president Lourdes A. Rivera said in a statement that "the Dobbs decision emboldened prosecutors to develop ever more aggressive strategies to prosecute pregnancy, leading to the most pregnancy-related criminal cases on record."

"This is directly tied to the radical legal doctrine of 'fetal personhood,' which grants full legal rights to an embryo or fetus, turning them into victims of crimes perpetrated by pregnant women," Rivera argued. "To turn the tide on criminalization, we need to separate healthcare from the criminal legal system and to change policy and practices to ensure that pregnant people can safely access the healthcare they need, without fear of criminalization. This report demonstrates that, in post-Dobbs America, being pregnant places people at increased risk, not only of dire health outcomes, but of arrest."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

The clip was part of the latest batch of files the Trump Administration released related to Epstein, but was later taken down without an explanation from the department.

The fake video apparently made it into the FBI’s Epstein files because someone had emailed it to the bureau with a query asking if it was real. According to analysis by Wired magazine, the 12-second video appeared to match footage uploaded to YouTube in 2019 with a description that read “rendering 3D graphics”; other outlets, including the BBC, said they had traced the video back to footage posted on the platform in 2020. A document that was posted just before the video in the Department of Justice’s initial release includes a message from outside the government asking if the video is real, Wired wrote.

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request from TIME on Tuesday about why the footage was removed, or why it was released in the first place.

The fake footage was shared widely on social media Monday and has been cited as an example of the challenges the Department of Justice has faced as it works to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Trump signed into law on Nov. 19, giving the department 30 days to make public all of its case files about Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

The panels’ removal at the Netherlands American Cemetery comes after Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Ever since a U.S. military cemetery in the southern Netherlands removed two displays recognizing Black troops who helped to liberate Europe from the Nazis, visitors have filled the guestbook with objections.

Some time in the spring, the American Battle Monuments Commission, the U.S. government agency responsible for maintaining memorial sites outside the United States, removed the panels from the visitors center at the American Cemetery in Margraten, the final resting place for roughly 8,300 U.S. soldiers, set in rolling hills near the border with Belgium and Germany.

The removal, carried out without public explanation, has angered Dutch officials, the families of U.S. soldiers and the local residents who honor the American sacrifice by caring for the graves.

Unsurprisingly, projects, jobs, and whole companies have been falling as a result of Donald Trump’s war on renewable energy and electric vehicles. Because he loves pollution so much, and is eager to help funnel more money to his billionaire friends in the fossil fuel industry, Trump has been pulling cleantech incentives and doing everything he can to shut down clean energy projects, even ones already fully approved.

In the latest edition of a company biting the dust as a result of this, solar installer Purelight Power wrote a letter to Oregon officials just before Christmas explaining that it had to shut down operations nationally and close its business as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) passed by Republicans in Congress and signed into law by Donald Trump.

Purelight Power was operating in nine states — Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, and Washington — but pulling consumer tax credits for installing rooftop solar systems has dried up business and is forcing the company into bankruptcy. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 had promised solar consumer tax credits for a decade, but they lasted less than 3 years.

Elisa's data cable between Helsinki and Tallinn was damaged on Wednesday, according to the Finnish telecom firm.

According to a police statement, the Border Guard located a vessel suspected of causing the damage. Finnish authorities took control of the ship as part of a joint operation.

The suspected vessel was intercepted by the Border Guard patrol ship Turva and a helicopter in Finland's exclusive economic zone, while the cable damage reported by Elisa is located in Estonia's economic zone.

The police have consulted the National Prosecutor's Office, which has issued a prosecution order.

Police are investigating the incident as aggravated criminal damage, attempted aggravated criminal damage and aggravated interference with telecommunications.

Last Christmas, an oil tanker called Eagle S dragged its anchor along the seabed, damaging several undersea cables between Finland and Estonia. The captain of the vessel claimed the incident was accidental.

Following a trial this past autumn, Helsinki District Court said it lacked jurisdiction in the case.

At 1:00pm on Wednesday, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in a post on social site X that the country "is prepared for security challenges of various kinds, and we respond to them as necessary.

The fungus poses a greater risk for vulnerable populations in nursing homes and hospitals

A deadly fungus that can be considered a superbug due to its resistance to all types of antibiotics is spreading across the country – with thousands of people already infected, according to health officials.

Candida auris, a type of invasive yeast that can cause deadly infections in people with weakened immune systems, has infected at least 7,000 people across 27 U.S. states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The fungus, which can spread easily in healthcare settings such as hospitals and nursing homes, is gaining virulence and spreading at an “alarming” rate, the CDC says.

A veteran jazz ensemble and a New York dance company have canceled events at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, intensifying the fallout at one of the nation’s pre-eminent arts centers after it was renamed to include President Trump.

The center had previously promoted two New Year’s Eve performances by the Cookers as an “all-star jazz septet that will ignite the Terrace Theater stage with fire and soul.” But those performances, like an annual Christmas Eve jazz concert hosted by Chuck Redd, are now canceled.

The Cookers did not give a reason for the decision in a statement on Monday that said, “Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice.”

But the band’s drummer, Billy Hart, told The New York Times that the center’s name change had “evidently” played a role. He acknowledged that the group was concerned about possible reprisals.

THE PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY is confronting a growing problem.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee waged a proud and public campaign to assert its dominance last cycle — sinking more than $100 million into the 2024 elections to oust critics of Israel from Congress. AIPAC spent more on elections that cycle than any other individual single-issue interest group; celebrated its super PAC, United Democracy Project, as “one of the largest bipartisan super PACs in America”; and took credit for endorsing 361 pro-Israel candidates who prevailed in hundreds of races.

That success met with public disgust with Israel’s genocide in Gaza and drove a massive backlash, fueling a growing movement to eradicate AIPAC’s influence and propel insurgent candidates to Congress on pledges to refuse the pro-Israel lobby’s support. Now, as the 2026 midterms approach, AIPAC and its preferred candidates have pulled back from the aggressive electoral strategy they pursued last time.

None of this is to say that AIPAC is planning to let its influence slip away. While the group has not yet publicly endorsed any new candidates this cycle, there’s still time, and it’s working behind closed doors to boost its preferred candidates’ campaigns. Earlier this month, for example, AIPAC’s board president held a fundraiser for an Illinois House candidate who has said publicly that she isn’t seeking the group’s endorsement. In another district in the same state, AIPAC donors rallied around a real estate mogul’s congressional campaign.

The effects of Doge’s initial blitz through the federal government – which included dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), embedding staffers in almost every agency and illegally firing people en masse – are still playing out. Contrary to Musk’s promises, Doge’s success is vague and tough to quantify. Measuring the full impact and determining whether the agency even exists as a centralized entity anymore is difficult, complicated by an ongoing effort from the government to block disclosure of documents, which is itself a symptom of the chaos that the department created.

Although the disarray and destruction left by Doge is evident across the globe, we still do not really know exactly how the agency operated and its true effects. Instead, humanitarian aid organizations are still trying to assess the extent of the damage that Doge created while ethics watchdogs have launched lawsuits trying to compel more transparency out of the government.

“I know it feels like all this happened over the course of several years, but the first year of this administration isn’t even done,” said Nikhel Sus, the deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew). “We still want to know what happened, and we still want the record to be out there, because the public is entitled to this information.”

Outside of the US, Doge’s cuts to USAID have also caused months of turmoil in countries around the world as humanitarian organizations struggle to make up for lost funding and calculate whether they can continue their operations at all. Thousands of aid workers have lost their jobs, testing for diseases such as HIV/Aids has drastically declined and researchers have warned there could be around 14 million excess deaths across the globe in the next five years if the US fails to restore aid funding. Yet because of the nature of Doge’s cuts, non-profits including the International Aids Society (IAS) say that it’s hard to pin down the exact numbers of people who are affected.

The share of U.S. counties where 95 percent or more of kindergartners were vaccinated against measles — the number doctors say is needed to achieve overall protection for the class, known as “herd immunity” — has dropped from 50 percent before the pandemic to 28 percent, according to The Post’s examination of the public records from 44 states and the District of Columbia.

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