Plus: Healthcare risks a death spiral, an odd nativity scene in Italy, Amtrak executives give their bonus to their employees, U.S. now charging noncitizens $5000 apprehension fee.
December 16, 2025 ❧ News media turns to gambling, D.C. turns into Silicon Valley, Turning Point USA coming to every Texas high school, and a new pumpkin toadlet enters the chat
Plus: Healthcare risks a death spiral, an odd nativity scene in Italy, Amtrak executives give their bonus to their employees, U.S. now charging noncitizens $5000 apprehension fee.
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HERE & ABROAD
❧ DEEP DIVE: D.C. is Silicon Valley is D.C.❧
Hello! My apologies! I have come down with the flu and don’t want to put you through whatever garbled deep dive I would produce this week. I had planned to write about the ever thinner separation between silicon and state, as Trump rails against those who regulate tech abroad and keeps states from regulating AI at home. Is this a function of Trump’s own business interests, the fact that the tech industry, and especially AI, are propping up the stock market right now, or a myriad of third variables? Whatever it is, it highlights how American tech sovereignty is increasingly conflated with American federal sovereignty, and how this mixed up position is shaping policy.
Art by Kasia Kozakiewicz from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 8, Issue 1
A timeline of recent events I’ve been thinking about:
November 24: The European Union declines to ease its tech regulations in exchange for lower steel tariffs, a condition proposed by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, perBloomberg.That indicates that tech deregulation is one of the Trump administration’s goals in its global policy.
December 4: The U.S. State Department will consider rejecting any H1-B applicants who have worked professionally on “misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety,” per Reuters. Such activities are considered “censorship.”
December 15: Gov. Ron DeSantis says he will continue to push for his AI Bill of Right despite Trump’s executive order per Politico.
All worrying signs of the tech industry’s quest for unchecked power over, well, everything. When is someone going to start saying no?
Art by Kasia Kozakiewicz from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 8, Issue 1
❧ In Other News ❧
❧ AMTRAK WORKERS GET BONUSES, TSA WORKERS GET UNION BUSTING. The federal government is sending mixed messages to those who work within the nation’s transportation apparatus this holiday season. On one hand, the Department of Transportation urged Amtrak executives to forgo 50 percent of their year end bonus so that it could be redistributed to Amtrak workers. Redistributed. The executives complied, and now 18,000 employees will get a $900 bonus, and unions cheered the move. On the other hand, the Department of Homeland Security, under the direction of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, “terminated the collective bargaining agreement covering 47,000 Transportation Security Administration officers,” Reuters reported. Moral of the story: take a train.
Art by Aidan Y-M from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 8, Issue 1
❧ JESUS COULD NOT SAVE THIS MAN IN ITALY. The 38-year-old fugitive almost got away with it. A Ghanaian man, who fled Bologna after being ordered to serve nine and half months in jail for “resisting a public official and aggravated assault,” decided to hide from the police by posing as part of a nativity scene in Galatone, a town in southern Italy. Galatone’s mayor initially didn’t notice the man as she inspected the scene assembled in the town square. He held himself, statuesque, next to white-robed figures; he was wearing a modern-looking green jacket. Still, the mayor was momentarily deceived. According to her Facebook post, she noticed “a detail that seemed harmless, but turned out to be decisive.” She didn’t offer what that detail was, but you can look at a picture of the scene here.
Art from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 8, Issue 1
❧ CNN, CNBC, YAHOO FINANCE GAMBLE THE NEWS. All three news networks have signed deals with one of the two major prediction markets, Kalshi and Polymarket, which are essentially horse race tracks for current events. Yes, these are gambling outfits, even though they will split hairs on this point until they are blue in the face, claiming they don’t meet the legal definition of gambling. Kalshi and Polymarket allow people to bet on anything from elections, to weather, to “What will Trump say during the Hanukkah Reception?” (As of this writing, bets are being placed on whether he will say phrases like “Palestine/Gaza,” “radical left,” and “trillion.”) The aforementioned news networks will incorporate data from their market of choice into their reporting, citing it like polling numbers. In some cases, prediction markets have been more accurate than polls, as in the French presidential election. Writing in Nieman Lab, John Herrman predicted these prediction markets will make the media “terminally addicted to gambling.” There is one obvious downside to making politics feel even more like a game. It’s not. Politics determines the basic conditions of people’s daily lives — and now we can bet on them.
Though Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry courted this ridiculous federal intervention, New Orleans is not rolling over for ICE. Before agents ever set foot in the city, its residents had taken to the streets, protesting and watching for ICE activity, ready to alert the community of what these “dirty dogs” are up to. Hamilton Nolan’s piece for Current Affairs shows us what resisting ICE in New Orleans looks like, currently and practically. He joins his neighbors in becoming “cops on the side of righteousness,” patrolling parking lots and staring down unmarked SUVs, supplied by Ojos, an ICE-watching group, with “a whistle the size of a bullet.” Sometimes you track agents, and sometimes you creep up on a “half-dozen brawny white guys with beards, until it [becomes] clear that it was a group of gay tourists.”
❧ In More News ❧
❧ EXPIRATION OF ACA SUBSIDIES COULD SET OFF DEATH SPIRAL. This one is probably obvious to you if you purchase healthcare through the exchange established by the Affordable Care Act. (The cheapest, most basic insurance option available to me this year in New York was $125 more expensive than what I paid for much better coverage last year, and my providers don’t even accept it.) The Democrats shut down the government to preserve these ACA subsidies, and instead we got flight delays and what healthcare policy experts are calling a potential “death spiral” of rising premiums. The spiral starts when healthy people stop buying insurance, and “the sicker people are the only ones that stay in the program until it becomes no longer sustainable and the insurance company stops even offering the plan,” Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University, told The Guardian. 25 percent of ACA enrollees said they’ll ditch their health insurance if their premium doubles. You have to imagine those are healthier people. Though debate continues in congress, no deal has been reached to extend the premiums.
❧ TEXAS MANDATES TURNING POINT USA IN SCHOOLS. Every high school in Texas will have a chapter of Turning Point USA’s Club America, part of a partnership between Charlie Kirk’s conservative organization and the state government announced last week. Anyone who opposes the chapters “should be reported immediately to the Texas Education Agency,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said. It’s an obvious attempt to bend youth culture back toward Christian nationalist ideas, especially considering that, earlier this year, Texas outlawed discussion of LGBTQ identities in K-12 schools.
ANIMAL FACT OF THE WEEK
Scientists discover pumpkin toadlet in Brazil!
Scientists discovered this new minuscule frog in Brazil, Popular Science reported. It’s bright orange, the size of a pencil tip, and has a croak that is something special. Their unique call is what tipped scientists off to the pumpkin toadlet’s existence amongst the leaf litter. How lucky are we to share a planet with such a thing as a pumpkin toadlet?
Writing and research by Emily Carmichael. Editing and additional material by Emily Topping and Nathan J. Robinson. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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