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  • ‘I’m fine. The Eagles lost’: Fan’s Facebook post about the Birds sparks police welfare check

    ‘I’m fine. The Eagles lost’: Fan’s Facebook post about the Birds sparks police welfare check

    For Jake Beckman, a devout Eagles fan who lives in St. Louis, last week’s Monday Night Football loss against the Los Angeles Chargers was a low point.

    Beckman was a little drunk. Jalen Hurts was having a bad night. The Eagles would go on to lose 22-19 in overtime with Hurts committing five turnovers, including a personal record of four interceptions and a fumble.

    “You saw the game,” Beckman said. “It really sucked.”

    Like many chronically online fans, Beckman, 34, turned to Facebook during his misery — something he regrets now.

    “I posted, ‘Probably going to kill myself. I’ll let you know,’” he recalled. “It wasn’t a real threat. It was a ‘Be right back, gonna go brush my teeth with sandpaper, gargle with Diesel, and floss with razor wire’ kind of thing.”

    Self-effacing jokes and coping humor are common within NFL fandom. So much so, there’s even merch that leans into the bit.

    5-0 since this btw
    byu/Teammomofan inJaguars

    About an hour later, at 11:30 p.m. there was a knock at Beckman’s door. A uniformed police officer was standing on his front porch.

    “Someone called in reference to your Facebook post,” the officer can be heard saying in now-viral doorbell camera footage Beckman posted online afterward.

    “The Eagles lost, man,” Beckman can be heard saying. “I know,” the officer responds. “I’m fine,” Beckman said.

    The officer makes sure: “You don’t plan on hurting yourself?”

    Beckman tersely responds, rattling off stats about Hurts’ poor performance.

    The officer confirms once more, thanks Beckman for his time, and tells him to take it easy as Beckman can be heard closing his front door. Beckman turned to Facebook once again to post about the experience.

    As the officer walks away, the doorbell footage shows him letting out the tiniest smirk.

    “The cop who was at my door was a certified dude, and I absolutely appreciate that he was empathetic to what I was going through,” Beckman said.

    The video’s been watched 15 million times on Beckman’s Instagram alone, and has been shared and reshared across countless social media platforms, sports fan pages, and accounts.

    Beckman, a stand-up comic and writer covering the Eagles and NFL for the sports blog FanSided, said that when multiple people asked him if someone actually called the police, it inspired him to check his Ring doorbell app for footage. The entire exchange was recorded. He showed his friends.

    “Looking back, I kind of knew it was funny, but I was bummed out,” he said. “I didn’t completely grasp that I had just told a cop, who was at my house for a wellness check, that Jalen Hurts threw a bunch of picks.”

    A friend told Beckman to send him the video so he could format it for social media and add subtitles.

    “He said that’s the kind of thing that’d go mega-viral,” Beckman said. “Turns out, he was right.”

    Since then, he’s been glued to his phone looking at the responses. The majority are fellow NFL enthusiasts who recognize Beckman’s humor all too well. A few passed judgment.

    “The Eagles lost and the dogs are barking. This man is overstimulated to the max,” one comment said. “As an Eagles fan, this is a legitimate wellness check,” another wrote.

    All in all, Beckman says the experience has been affirming.

    “People say the internet is … super negative,” he said. “They’re probably right, but having my notifications full of people all being on the same page about the absurdity of some dummy who was bummed out and dismissive when a cop was doing a wellness check has been pretty cool.”

    He acknowledged that his joke probably took things too far.

    “After all of this, I think I have to say that you shouldn’t joke about suicide,” he said. “That’s not cool.”

    Still, the fandom is serious business — especially for an away fan like Beckman.

    “People around here don’t get it. On Feb. 13, my wife and I drove 14 hours straight from St. Louis to Philly for the parade,” he said. “People understood why I did it, but they didn’t get it. Sports mean something in St. Louis, but it doesn’t mean everything.”

    All that to say, Beckman said he’ll be a bit more careful with his Facebook posts moving forward. It doesn’t hurt that the Eagles went on to dominate in a 31-0 win over the Las Vegas Raiders this weekend.

  • Mamdani gets 74,000 resumés in sign of New York City’s job-market misery

    Mamdani gets 74,000 resumés in sign of New York City’s job-market misery

    More than 74,000 people, with an average age of 28, have applied for roles in Zohran Mamdani’s new administration. Those figures are both a measure of enthusiasm for New York City’s incoming mayor and a sign of how tough the job market is for young people in the five boroughs.

    Young voters and volunteers fueled the 34-year-old Mamdani’s fast rise from a relatively unknown Queens assemblyman to mayor-elect of America’s largest city. A lot of them had time on their hands: New Yorkers aged 16 to 24 faced a 13.2% unemployment rate in 2024, 3.6 percentage points higher than in 2019, according to a May report from the New York state comptroller.

    New York City had a 5.8% unemployment rate overall in August, 1.3 percentage points above the U.S. average. The city added roughly 25,000 jobs this year through September, compared with about 106,000 during the same period in 2024, according to city data.

    Mamdani’s campaign pledge to lower the cost of living in New York resonated with voters struggling to find jobs and establish themselves at a time when rents have stayed high and income growth has slowed. Now he’s looking to hire an unspecified number of roles across 60 agencies, 95 mayoral offices, and more than 250 boards and commissions, with senior roles a priority, according to his transition team.

    The typical size of the New York City mayoral staff — commissioners, communications, operations and community affairs — is about 1,100, according to Ana Champeny, vice president of research at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit finance watchdog. City government in total hired 39,455 people in 2024, according to New York City data.

    Applications for roles in Mamdani’s administration have come from workers of all experience levels and from a wide range of backgrounds and industries, said Maria Torres-Springer, co-chair of the mayor-elect’s transition team. About 20,000 of the applicants came from out of state.

    When Barack Obama was elected U.S. president in 2008, workers submitted more than 300,000 job applications to his administration. Blair Levin, who co-led the technology transition team for Obama, said he received around 3,000 of those resumes. He whittled the pool down to 75, a relatively easy task because he needed applicants with specific tech and economics skills, he said.

    Without invoking the term “AI,” Torres-Springer said the applications would be filtered using “the typical technology that any big corporation would have in an applicant-tracking system.” The resumes will then be sorted and matched to different agencies.

    Mamdani’s avid use of social media, which helped him connect with young people during his campaign, has continued into his transition efforts, creating excitement — among young people especially — about the prospect of joining his administration.

    “The average age does tell a particularly interesting story in two ways,” Torres-Springer said. “It might be because of volatility in the job market but it’s also because I think we are attracting, the administration is attracting, New Yorkers who may not have considered government in the past.”

    Take David Kinchen, a 28-year-old data engineer who moved to New York from northern Virginia three years ago. Since getting laid off from a job in fraud detection at Capital One, he has applied for more than 1,000 roles and completed at least 75 interviews without an offer, he said. Kinchen volunteered for Mamdani’s campaign and applied to the administration, highlighting his tech credentials and a passion for photography.

    “I did data engineering, so I could help with database decisions. There was also a creative option on the application, since I could work as a staff photographer too,” Kinchen said.

    Another applicant, 22-year-old Aurisha Rahman, has struggled to find a job since graduating with a civil-engineering degree from Hofstra University on Long Island.

    “The job market is even worse than it was last fall,” Rahman said. Mamdani’s resumé portal was one of the few places she found open to entry-level applicants.

    Rahman, who was born and raised in Queens, said she wants to give back to the city where she was raised and wouldn’t be picky about a position. “Whatever they need, I’ll do it. I don’t care,” she said. “Right now, it’s better to be busy with something than nothing.”

  • Saturn’s moon Titan may not have a buried ocean as long suspected, new study suggests

    Saturn’s moon Titan may not have a buried ocean as long suspected, new study suggests

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Saturn’s giant moon Titan may not have a vast underground ocean after all.

    Titan instead may hold deep layers of ice and slush more akin to Earth’s polar seas, with pockets of melted water where life could possibly survive and even thrive, scientists reported Wednesday.

    The team led by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory challenged the decade-long assumption of a buried global ocean at Titan after taking a fresh look at observations made years ago by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft around Saturn.

    They stress that no one has found any signs of life at Titan, the solar system’s second-largest moon spanning 3,200 miles and brimming with lakes of liquid methane on its frosty surface.

    But with the latest findings suggesting a slushy, near-melting environment, “there is strong justification for continued optimism regarding the potential for extraterrestrial life,” said the University of Washington’s Baptiste Journaux, who took part in the study published in the journal Nature.

    As to what form of life that might be, possibly strictly microscopic, “nature has repeatedly demonstrated far greater creativity than the most imaginative scientists,” he said in an email.

    JPL’s Flavio Petricca, the lead author, said Titan’s ocean may have frozen in the past and is currently melting, or its hydrosphere might be evolving toward complete freezing.

    Computer models suggest these layers of ice, slush, and water extend to a depth of more than 340 miles. The outer ice shell is thought to be about 100 miles deep, covering layers of slush and pools of water that could go down another 250 miles. This water could be as warm as 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

    Because Titan is tidally locked, the same side of the moon faces Saturn all the time, just like our own moon and Earth. Saturn’s gravitational pull is so intense that it deforms the moon’s surface, creating bulges as high as 30 feet when the two bodies are closest.

    Through improved data processing, Petricca and his team managed to measure the timing between the peak gravitational tug and the rising of Titan’s surface. If the moon held a wet ocean, the effect would be immediate, Petricca said, but a 15-hour gap was detected, indicating an interior of slushy ice with pockets of liquid water. Computer modeling of Titan’s orientation in space supported their theory.

    Sapienza University of Rome’s Luciano Iess, whose previous studies using Cassini data indicated a hidden ocean at Titan, is not convinced by the latest findings.

    While “certainly intriguing and will stimulate renewed discussion … at present, the available evidence looks certainly not sufficient to exclude Titan from the family of ocean worlds,” Iess said in an email.

    NASA’s planned Dragonfly mission — featuring a helicopter-type craft due to launch to Titan later this decade — is expected to provide more clarity on the moon’s innards. Journaux is part of that team.

    Saturn leads the solar system’s moon inventory with 274. Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is just a little larger than Titan, with a possible underground ocean. Other suspected water worlds include Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa, both of which are believed to have geysers of water erupting from their frozen crusts.

    Launched in 1997, Cassini reached Saturn in 2004, orbiting the ringed planet and flying past its moons until deliberately plunging through Saturn’s atmosphere in 2017.

  • Jack Smith tells lawmakers his team developed ‘proof beyond a reasonable doubt’ against Trump

    Jack Smith tells lawmakers his team developed ‘proof beyond a reasonable doubt’ against Trump

    WASHINGTON — Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers in a closed-door interview Wednesday that his team of investigators “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trumphad criminally conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to portions of his opening statement obtained by the Associated Press.

    Smith also said investigators had accrued “powerful evidence” Trump broke the law by hoarding classified documents from his first term as president at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., and by obstructing government efforts to recover the records.

    “I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 election,” Smith said. “We took actions based on what the facts and the law required — the very lesson I learned early in my career as a prosecutor.”

    He said that if asked whether he would “prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president was a Republican or Democrat.”

    The deposition before the House Judiciary Committee gave lawmakers of both parties their first chance, albeit in private, to question Smith about a pair of investigations into Trump that resulted in since-abandoned criminal charges between the Republican president’s first and second terms in office. Smith was subpoenaed by the Republican-led committee this month to provide testimony and documents as part of a GOP investigation into the Trump inquiries during the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.

    The former special counsel cooperated with the congressional demand, though his lawyers noted that he had been volunteered more than a month before the subpoena was issued to answer questions publicly before the committee — an overture they said was rebuffed by Republicans. Trump had told reporters that he supported the idea of an open hearing.

    “Testifying before this committee, Jack is showing tremendous courage in light of the remarkable and unprecedented retribution campaign against him by this administration and this White House,” Smith lawyer Lanny Breuer told reporters. “Let’s be clear: Jack Smith, a career prosecutor, conducted this investigation based on the facts and based on the law and nothing more.”

    Smith was appointed in 2022 to oversee the Justice Department investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden and Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Smith’s team filed charges in both investigations but abandoned the cases after Trump was elected to the White House last year, citing Justice Department legal opinions that say a sitting president cannot be indicted.

    Multiple prior Justice Department special counsels, including Robert Mueller, have testified publicly but Smith was summoned for just a private interview. Several Democrats who emerged from Smith’s interview said they could understand why Republicans did not want an open hearing based on the damaging testimony about Trump they said Smith offered.

    The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said the Republican majority “made an excellent decision” in not allowing Jack Smith to testify publicly “because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president and all the president’s men involved in the insurrectionary activities” of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

    “Jack Smith has just spent several hours schooling the Judiciary Committee on the professional responsibilities of a prosecutor and the ethical duties of a prosecutor,” Raskin said.

    Democrats are demanding that Smith’s testimony be made public, along with his full report on the investigation.

    “The American people should hear for themselves,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) said.

    The committee chairman, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, told reporters, “I think we’ve learned some interesting things.” He declined to discuss what was being said in the room, but reiterated his position about the investigations.

    “It’s political,” he said.

    Smith’s interview is unfolding against the backdrop of a broader retribution campaign by the Trump administration against former officials involved in investigating Trump and his allies. The Office of Special Counsel, an independent political watchdog, said in August that it was investigating Smith, and the White House issued a presidential memorandum this year aimed at suspending security clearances of lawyers at the law firm that provided legal services to Smith.

    The deposition also comes as Republicans in Congress, aided by current FBI leadership, look to discredit the investigations into Trump through the release of emails and other documents from the probes.

    In recent weeks they have seized on revelations that the team, as part of its investigation, had analyzed the phone records of select GOP lawmakers from on and around the Capitol siege, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the building to try to halt the certification of Trump’s election loss to Biden.

    The phone records reviewed by prosecutors included details only about the incoming and outgoing phone numbers and the length of the call but not the contents of the conversation. Smith’s lawyers have said Republicans have mischaracterized the phone record analysis and implied something sinister about a routine investigative tactic.

    On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a batch of internal FBI emails leading up to the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago. In one email, written weeks before the search, an agent wrote that the FBI’s Washington field office did not believe that probable cause existed to search the property.

    But Republicans who trumpeted the emails as proof that the Biden Justice Department was out to get Trump omitted the fact that agents who later searched the property reported finding boxes of classified, even top-secret, documents. In addition, the then-head of the Washington field office has testified to lawmakers that by the time of the search, the FBI believed probable caused existed to do it.

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene says ‘dam is breaking’ within GOP against Trump

    Marjorie Taylor Greene says ‘dam is breaking’ within GOP against Trump

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) on Tuesday said President Donald Trump has “real problems” within the Republican Party, adding in an interview with CNN that the president is out of touch with voters on key issues such as affordability.

    Greene told Kaitlan Collins on The Source that the “dam is breaking” in terms of Trump’s hold on support within the party and that she expects Republicans to struggle in next year’s midterm elections.

    Citing the backlash to Trump’s comments on the death of director Rob Reiner, the 13 House Republicans who voted with Democrats to overturn Trump’s executive order on collective bargaining and Indiana Republicans’ rejection of the president’s redistricting push, Greene said she expected “pushback” within the party to grow as lawmakers enter the campaign phase for the upcoming elections.

    “I think the midterms are going to be very hard for Republicans,” Greene said. “I’m one of the people that’s willing to admit the truth and say I don’t see Republicans winning the midterms right now.”

    The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Greene’s interview.

    Greene had carved out a high-profile role as one of Trump’s most vocal allies, first in the “Make America Great Again” movement and then with her support for the “America First” agenda. But after weeks of speaking out against the president on several issues, Greene and Trump had an acrimonious public split last month after she joined with Democrats on a discharge position to compel a House vote calling on the Justice Department to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

    Trump, who has called Greene a “Lunatic” and “traitor,” withdrew his endorsement of her reelection. Days after the spat, Greene announced she would resign from Congress as of Jan. 5 and has since criticized the administration for being out of touch with core issues affecting MAGA voters, such as the cost of living and healthcare.

    Speaking to the Washington Post this week, Greene described herself as a “bellwether” who is closely attuned to Trump’s base. “I say it, and then within four to six months, everybody’s saying the same thing,” she said.

    Trump’s advisers have put the criticism down to “cyclical” feedback and have planned for weekly election rallies so Trump can highlight his achievements, the Post has reported. Polling shows Trump maintains support from the vast majority of the party, even though recent polling shows this has dipped slightly below the usual 90% approval mark.

    In the CNN interview Tuesday, Greene said she had only broken with Trump on a few issues — such as the release of the Epstein files, artificial intelligence regulation and foreign workers — “but he came down on me the hardest.”

    “He’s got real problems with Republicans within the House and the Senate that will be breaking with him on more things to come,” she added.

    Greene also said Trump’s supporters “didn’t appreciate” the president’s reaction to the death of Rob Reiner, who was found stabbed to death alongside his wife, photographer Michele Singer Reiner, in their Los Angeles home Sunday. The couple’s son Nick Reiner faces two counts of first-degree murder, among other charges, in their deaths.

    In a social media post less than a day after the Reiners’ bodies were found, Trump suggested the director’s death was somehow linked to his past criticism of the president: “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”

    Trump’s comments drew bipartisan backlash, including from some prominent figures on the right.

    “I thought that statement was absolutely, completely below the office of the president of the United States,” Greene told CNN. “Classless and it was just wrong.”

    In the interview, Greene described affordability as a “crisis” that Trump has failed to tackle.

    “What I would like to see from the president is empathy for Americans,” she said.

    “Donald Trump is a billionaire, and he’s the president of the United States. When he looks into a camera and says affordability is a hoax and just totally tries to make nothing out of inflation, he’s talking to Americans that are suffering, and have been suffering for many years now, and are having a hard time making ends meet.”

  • Millions are pledged to a Syrian Australian man who stopped a gunman and became a national hero

    Millions are pledged to a Syrian Australian man who stopped a gunman and became a national hero

    WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Like many Australians strolling at Bondi Beach on long, warm summer evenings, Ahmed al Ahmed just wanted a cup of coffee with a friend. Around him, a bloody massacre erupted as two gunmen targeted Jews during Hanukkah festivities at a park close to the shore.

    Soon al Ahmed was creeping, bent over, between two parked cars, before barreling directly toward one of the unsuspecting shooters. In footage that has been viewed millions of times around the world, the 44-year-old father can be seen tackling one of the gunmen, wrestling the man’s shotgun from his grip and turning it on the attacker.

    The story of the Syrian-Australian Muslim shop owner who put an end to the rampage of one of the shooters on Sunday has been seized upon by a country desperately seeking comfort after one of its darkest hours: the slaying of 15 people as they celebrated their Jewish faith.

    In this photo released by the Prime Minister office, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets Ahmed al Ahmed at St George Hospital in Sydney on Tuesday.

    Millions have been raised for Bondi hero

    “At a moment where we have seen evil perpetrated, he shines out as an example of the strength of humanity,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday, as he left a Sydney hospital where al Ahmed is being treated for gunshot wounds. “We are a brave country. Ahmed al Ahmed represents the best of our country.”

    A fundraising page established by Australians who had never met al Ahmed had attracted by Tuesday night donations by some 40,000 people, who gave 2.3 million Australian dollars ($1.5 million). Among the supporters was the billionaire hedge fund manager William Ackman, who pledged AU$99,000.

    Father of two faces a long recovery

    Al Ahmed, who is married with two young daughters, faces a long struggle ahead, those who have spoken to him since Sunday’s massacre say. He was shot multiple times in the left arm, apparently by the second gunman in the attack as the man fired indiscriminately from a footbridge.

    He has already undergone surgery and more operations are scheduled, said Lubaba alhmidi Alkahil, a spokesperson for the Australians for Syria Association, who visited al Ahmed in a hospital late Monday. The “quiet and humble” man was conscious but frail and faced at least six months of recovery, Alkahil said.

    A prime minister and a president are fans

    In the days since the attack, a pile of floral tributes and notes of thanks has grown outside the small tobacco store al Ahmed owns opposite a train station in suburban Sydney. Meanwhile, he has received visits at the hospital from Australia’s leaders, apparently telling Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales state, that he’d take the same action again.

    He has been hailed as a hero by world leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump and Australia’s Governor General, who is the representative of Britain’s King Charles in the country. Minns said al Ahmed saved “countless” lives in what the premier said was “the most unbelievable scene I’ve ever seen.”

    Al Ahmed was once a police officer

    Al Ahmed lived in the town of Nayrab in Syria’s Idlib region before he arrived in Australia, his cousin Mohammad al Ahmed told the Associated Press. He left Syria in 2006 after finishing his studies, before the 2011 mass protests against the government of then-President Bashar Assad that were met with a brutal crackdown and spiraled into a nearly 14-year civil war.

    Nayrab was heavily bombed by Assad’s forces with most of the town’s houses flattened and reduced to rubble. On Tuesday, al Ahmed was the talk of the town.

    “Ahmed did really a heroic job,” his cousin, Mohammad al Ahmed told the Associated Press. “Without any hesitation, he tackled the terrorist and disarmed him just to save innocent people.”

    Ahmed al Ahmed’s parents, who came to Sydney this year to reunite with their son, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that their son had served with the police and in the central security forces in Syria. Father Mohamed Fateh al Ahmed said his son’s “conscience and soul” compelled him to act on Sunday.

    “I feel pride and honor because my son is a hero of Australia,” the father said.

    Tale of heroism gives hope amid tragedy

    In the aftermath of the mass killing, a country roiling from one of the worst hate-fueled attacks ever on its soil — allegedly committed by an Australian resident who arrived from India in 1998 and his Australian-born son — looked for hope amid their grief. Stories of heroism have started to emerge.

    They included the tale of a married couple, Boris and Sofia Gurman, who were both killed while trying to stop one of the shooters as he climbed from his car and began the massacre, their family has told Australian news outlets.

    Reuven Morrison, 62, was also killed while trying to stop the horror, according to his daughter, Sheina Gutnick. After al Ahmed wrestled the gun from one shooter, a person Gutnick identified as Morrison is seen throwing objects at the gunman — before he was shot by the second man.

    Acts of courage like these were cited by many on social media and in news outlets as examples of what being Australian should mean.

    “When he did what he did, he wasn’t thinking at all about the background of the people he’s saving, the people dying in the street,” Mohamed Fateh al Ahmed said of his son. “He doesn’t discriminate between one nationality and another, especially here in Australia there’s no difference between one citizen and another.”

  • Four Republicans, including Pa. Reps. Fitzpatrick, Bresnahan and Mackenzie, defy Speaker Johnson to force House vote on ACA subsidies

    Four Republicans, including Pa. Reps. Fitzpatrick, Bresnahan and Mackenzie, defy Speaker Johnson to force House vote on ACA subsidies

    WASHINGTON — Four centrist Republicans broke with Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday and signed onto a Democratic-led petition that will force a House vote on extending for three years an enhanced pandemic-era subsidy that lowers health insurance costs for millions of Americans.

    The stunning move comes after House Republican leaders pushed ahead with a health care bill that does not address the soaring monthly premiums that millions of people will soon endure when the tax credits for those who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act expire at year’s end.

    How Affordable Care Act premiums are estimated to rise across the region

    Democrats led by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York needed 218 signatures to force a floor vote on their bill, which would extend the subsides for three years.

    Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York signed on Wednesday morning, pushing it to the magic number of 218. A vote on the subsidy bill could come as soon as January under House rules.

    “Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.” Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

    Johnson told reporters Wednesday that “I have not lost control of the House” and he noted that Republicans have a razor-thin majority that allows a small number of members to employ procedures that would not usually be successful in getting around leadership.

    “These are not normal times,” said Johnson, R-La.

    Brian Fitzpatrick has a plan to extend ACA subsidies and avoid premium hikes for millions. He’s ready for an uphill battle.

    Origins of a Republican revolt

    The revolt against GOP leadership came after days of talks centered on the health care subsidies.

    Johnson had discussed allowing more politically vulnerable GOP lawmakers a chance to vote on bills that would temporarily extend the subsidies while also adding changes such as income caps for beneficiaries. But after days of discussions, the leadership sided with the more conservative wing of the party’s conference, which has assailed the subsidies as propping up a failed marketplace through the ACA, which is widely known as “Obamacare.”

    House Republicans pushed ahead Wednesday a 100-plus-page health care package without the subsidies, instead focusing on long-sought GOP proposals designed to expand insurance coverage options for small businesses and the self-employed.

    Fitzpatrick and Lawler tried to add a temporary extension of the subsidies to the bill, but were denied.

    “Our only request was a floor vote on this compromise, so that the American People’s voice could be heard on this issue. That request was rejected. Then, at the request of House leadership I, along with my colleagues, filed multiple amendments, and testified at length to those amendments,” Fitzpatrick said. “House leadership then decided to reject every single one of these amendments.

    “As I’ve stated many times before, the only policy that is worse than a clean three-year extension without any reforms, is a policy of complete expiration without any bridge,” Fitzpatrick said.

    Lawler, in a social media post, similarly said that “the failure of leadership” to permit a vote had left him with “no choice” but to sign the petition. He urged Johnson to bring the plan up for an immediate floor vote.

    Jeffries, for several weeks, had called on Republicans to sign his discharge petition. He particularly challenged Republicans in competitive congressional districts to join the effort if they really wanted to prevent premium increases for their constituents.

    “Mike Johnson needs to bring the bill to the floor today,” Jeffries said. “Our position from the very beginning was that we are standing on the right side of the American people who want to see the Affordable Care Act tax credits extended, and we’re appreciative that we now have the bipartisan coalition to get that done.”

    Path ahead is uncertain

    Even if the subsidy bill were to pass the House, which is far from assured, it would face an arduous climb in the Republican-led Senate.

    Republicans last week voted down a three-year extension of the subsidies and proposed an alternative that also failed. But in an encouraging sign for Democrats, four Republican senators crossed party lines to support their proposal.

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., argued against the Democratic extension as “an attempt to disguise the real impact of Obamacare’s spiraling health care costs.”

  • SS United States set to sink, despite 11th-hour efforts to intervene

    SS United States set to sink, despite 11th-hour efforts to intervene

    The 990-foot SS United States could be making waves as an artificial reef at the bottom of the Florida Panhandle coast as early as March, according to a tentative timeline from its new owners in Florida.

    Even so, hope still springs eternal for the most ardent swath of ship enthusiasts who would rather see it restored to its former glory than swimming with the fishes.

    As tourism officials in Okaloosa County report being about 80% done with the remediation work required to meet state and federal requirements for sinking, the New York Coalition to Save the SS United States has urged the New York City Council to intervene to the best of its abilities: a move that appeared to be gaining some traction in recent weeks, until it wasn’t.

    Can a Brooklyn businessman save the SS United States from sinking? No, say the ship’s old and new owners.

    A resolution introduced by NYC council member Gale A. Brewer last year finally got a committee hearing in late November.

    The symbolic gesture calls on Congress to pass legislation that would allocate funds for restoration and to bring the ship to New York City’s Gowanus Bay Terminal. It also appeals to President Donald Trump, a fellow New Yorker, to sign the legislation.

    Okaloosa County, respectfully, is hearing none of it.

    “We purchased the vessel specifically to become the world’s largest artificial reef,” said county spokesperson Nick Tomecek. “Anybody that thinks otherwise, that’s just pipe dreams.”

    Various owners have sunk more than $40 million into buying, maintaining, and reimagining the SS United States during its time in Philly

    Brewer is aware the odds are against those hoping to reacquire the ship. She acknowledged the resolution was a “Hail Mary” during last month’s committee hearing.

    Though the resolution moved to the full council, it has not been put on the calendar for a vote — the last session of the year was Thursday.

    The SS United States is pulled out into the Delaware River and ready to bid its farewell from Philadelphia as people gather to watch it leave in the Delaware River in Gloucester City, N.J., on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025.

    Brewer could not speak to why the resolution did not get a hearing until a year after she introduced it, but she understands how, despite support on the 51-member council, it has not been put to a vote in the full body.

    “Just like in Philly, we got everything under the sun — restaurants, small business, parking, it’s just endless,” Brewer said. “I think there’s lots of support, but it’s not like number one on anybody’s list.”

    Brewer said the priority would be to stop the sinking of the ship. Once the SS United States was in New York City, preservationists, donors, and lawmakers could figure out the best way to redevelop the ship, though she could see it as a restaurant.

    If this figure-it-out-as-we-go approach sounds familiar, it’s because that was the path the SS United States Conservancy, the ship’s previous owner, took when it bought the vessel in 2011. The conservancy aimed to save the ship from the scrapyard and spent years courting potential developers while it sat parked in Philadelphia, even publishing a 2023 feasibility study for a mixed-use development that would cost about $400 million.

    In many ways, the New York City resolution is also a tried-and-tested approach. As the SS United States faced eviction from its berth along the Delaware River, the conservancy launched public campaigns calling on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to step in and help the vessel find a new home.

    Passenger ship aficionados take a last look at the SS United States docked at pier 80 in South Philadelphia Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025 before it is towed away to Alabama

    The conservancy sent its pleas to then-President Joe Biden, as well as members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

    Much to the chagrin of preservationists, no politico ever came, despite the conservancy’s assurances that whoever championed the ship would be rewarded with all the jobs redevelopment would create.

    Whether Trump, his administration, or this iteration of Congress would intervene at the eleventh hour is anyone’s guess.

    The New York Coalition to Save the SS United States, which launched as a nonprofit in October 2024, wrote to Trump this year asking him to intervene shortly before the ship left Philadelphia, to no avail.

    In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Pensacola after the ship’s departure, the coalition said it had “no means of knowing whether the Executive Branch of the United States is even aware of the Letter, let alone whether it is being considered.”

    The White House did not immediately respond to questions about whether the ship’s saga had reached Trump’s desk and if the administration would be inclined to step in.

    Either way, time is working against the coalition.

    The suit warned of how some of the prep work in Mobile, Ala., could hinder preservation efforts.

    “… the twin stacks of SSUS will be removed, as will other parts of her superstructure,” read the suit. “Once this is done, any hope of preserving the Ship afloat and intact will be lost forever.”

    Those smokestacks were indeed removed at the end of summer.

    So were all portholes and windows, along with the ship’s radar mast and propeller, according to an Okaloosa County update last week.

    Despite the coalition’s fears laid out in the suit, Dan Sweeney, who cofounded the group, hit a more optimistic note, saying it was not too late to stop a reefing.

    “The Big U remains an important symbol of America,” he said of the SS United States. “It could also prove to be a robust economic development engine. These two reasons are more than enough for us to continue the effort, and many people across the country agree. For us, it’s ‘damn the torpedoes.’”

    Okaloosa County officials, meanwhile, say the months ahead will be used to finish cleaning the ship, removing nonmetal items, cutting holes throughout the ship because the sinking will not be able to be done with explosives, and coordinating with state and local agencies on a sink date.

    Should work continue at its current pace and no delays in inspections, the SS United States could be sunk as early as March.

    Alex Fogg, the natural resources chief for Destin-Fort Walton Beach, said weather delays, of course, are always possible.

    Tomecek reiterated that the county was working with the SS United States’ previous owners to build a land-based museum, which would feature the eye-catching smokestacks and other preserved ship memorabilia and artifacts.

    He understands the renewed interest in “saving” the ship, though it would have been turned into scrap had Okaloosa officials not stepped in. In any case, Tomecek said, these efforts come too little, too late.

    “I think that when [the SS United States] was sold to the county, a lot of folks kind of woke up and realized what was going on, when, in fact, they should have been worried about her the past 30 years, when she was sitting in Philadelphia,” Tomecek said.

  • Warner Bros asks its investors to reject the takeover bid from Paramount Skydance, saying Netflix’s will be better for customers

    Warner Bros asks its investors to reject the takeover bid from Paramount Skydance, saying Netflix’s will be better for customers

    NEW YORK — Warner Bros. is telling shareholders to reject a takeover bid from Paramount Skydance, saying that a rival bid from Netflix will be better for customers.

    “We strongly believe that Netflix and Warner Bros. joining forces will offer consumers more choice and value, allow the creative community to reach even more audiences with our combined distribution, and fuel our long-term growth,” Warner Bros. said Wednesday. “We made this deal because their deep portfolio of iconic franchises, expansive library, and strong studio capabilities will complement—not duplicate—our existing business.”

    Paramount went hostile with its bid last week, asking shareholders to reject the deal with Netflix favored by the board of Warner Bros.

    Paramount goes hostile in bid for Warner Bros., challenging a $72 billion offer by Netflix

    Paramount’s bid isn’t off the table altogether. While Wednesday’s letter to shareholders means Paramount’s is not the offer favored by the board at Warner Bros., shareholders can still decide to tender their shares in favor of Paramount’s offer for the entire company — including cable stalwarts CNN and Discovery.

    Unlike Paramount’s bid, the offer from Netflix does not include buying the cable operations of Warner Bros. An acquisition by Netflix, if approved by regulators and shareholders, will close only after Warner completes its previously announced separation of its cable operations.

  • The Trump administration’s immigration raids are testing this sanctuary city

    The Trump administration’s immigration raids are testing this sanctuary city

    GRETNA, La. — Siomara Cruz was not troubled when she saw two Latina immigrants handcuffed earlier this month by masked immigration agents outside a restaurant in this New Orleans suburb.

    “They need to do things the proper way,” said Cruz, 59, a housewife whose parents emigrated from Cuba. “The law is the law. Every country has their law, and you’ve got to respect it.”

    Across the street, Tracey Daniels said it was “awful” to see immigration agents in an unmarked SUV detain a Latino man outside the gas station kitchen where she was preparing lunch plates of red beans, rice, and fried catfish.

    “They’re just snatching these people, snatching them away from their families,” said Daniels, 61. “Now they got people afraid to come outside, businesses closing.”

    The immigration operation, dubbed Catahoula Crunch by the Department of Homeland Security, follows similar crackdowns in Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, N.C., and other cities. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement earlier this month that 250 people had been arrested since the start of the operation.

    The mission is exposing stark divides in and around New Orleans that reflect broader national reactions to the administration’s immigration raids — and who should help enforce them.

    Across 10 national polls in November and early December, 43% approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of immigration, while 55% disapprove. The share of people who approve of Trump’s handling of immigration has dropped from about 50% in March. Last week, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, signed a law seeking to limit immigration enforcement in his state as he continues challenging the administration’s aggressive campaign there.

    New Orleans is a “sanctuary city,” where officials have historically refused to support federal immigration sweeps. But new state laws designed to penalize those who impede immigration enforcement could put officials and officers at risk if their departments do not cooperate with federal operations.

    And some surrounding police departments, including in Gretna, have signed 287(g) agreements to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport people who authorities say entered the country illegally.

    Those agreements have also divided residents. Some said that immigration enforcement should fall exclusively to federal agents — that having local officers partner on the issue risks alienating immigrant communities or violating people’s rights. But police supporting the operations said they get more complaints about crime in their communities than they do about Catahoula Crunch.

    Gretna Deputy Police Chief Jason DiMarco said his 150-person force needs to serve everyone in its diverse community, but added that having so many undocumented residents in the city makes it harder to identify suspected criminals. Last month, he said, local police accompanied ICE agents on a raid that picked up four suspects, including an alleged MS-13 gang member. DiMarco noted that within the last year, Gretna police have investigated several serious crimes committed by undocumented suspects, including one who fled the country after allegedly killing an immigrant who had come to the United States legally.

    Now, because of the 287(g) agreement, officers can coordinate directly with ICE.

    “If they run across an illegal immigrant in their day-to-day patrol activities … they can actually detain the person, check their legal status, and if they aren’t here legally, we can contact ICE and they’ll come and get them,” DiMarco explained of the partnership during an interview at his office earlier this month.

    DiMarco, who is from Gretna, has watched the city of nearly 18,000 grow more diverse, to include a member of his own family who emigrated from Honduras. Like many in the New Orleans area, his family tree includes immigrants from several countries, including France, Italy, and Cuba.

    “New Orleans is the original melting pot of the world,” he said. “… People from every walk of life lived in this city. And they intertwined and managed to live together cohesively.”

    So far, DiMarco said, he hasn’t fielded any complaints about his department’s work with ICE. Even if people don’t agree, he said, officers have a duty to enforce the law, including one signed in June by Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, that criminalized “any act intended to hinder, delay, prevent, or otherwise interfere with or thwart federal immigration enforcement efforts.”

    Anyone in violation could face jail time or fines.

    “We don’t get to pick and choose which you can and can’t enforce,” DiMarco said.

    But DiMarco also worries the ongoing raids may make immigrants even more hesitant to report crime.

    “We don’t want somebody to get victimized and get picked on, whether they be illegal or not,” he said. “Nobody deserves to be a victim of a crime.”

    Most Catahoula Crunch activity has been to the west of New Orleans in Jefferson Parish, which includes Gretna and other towns where law enforcement agencies signed 287(g) agreements. In last year’s presidential election, 55% of Jefferson Parish voted for Trump, while 82% of neighboring Orleans Parish voted for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

    Kenner, Jefferson Parish’s most populous city, has more than 64,000 residents — about one-third of whom are Latino, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Police Chief Keith Conley said Kenner partnered with ICE at the request of local business owners, including immigrants.

    “We had members of our community pleading with us to keep our community safe,” Conley said, describing gang activity that he said had its roots in Central American countries that residents of Kenner had fled. “They saw the ways of their home countries coming here. When I have business leaders coming to me, I have to respond.”

    Conley said his city has experienced “some pretty heinous crimes” in recent years, including murder and child sexual assaults.

    “And we weren’t getting much cooperation” from federal officials, he said. “It was a failure at the top.”

    Landry requested a National Guard deployment to New Orleans in September, citing an alleged increase in violent crime, even though police and city leaders say crime has decreased and federal support is not needed. The city’s homicide rate is nearly the lowest in 50 years. Violent crimes — including murders, rapes, and robberies — have all decreased 12% through October compared with a year ago, according to New Orleans police.

    Conley and some Jefferson Parish residents, however, said they are grateful the Trump administration has sent federal agents into their region. Outside a Lowe’s hardware store in neighboring Metairie, where immigration agents were spotted this month, Howard Jones, 71, said he was supportive of local law enforcement agencies joining the operation.

    “I’m all for people being deported who are not here legally,” said Jones, a retired data warehouse analytics consultant and self-described moderate conservative who voted for Trump the last three presidential elections.

    But Gloria Rodriguez, 38, a Mexican immigrant who works in construction, said she did not like seeing local police involved. Though she is a legal permanent resident and her husband and 18-year-old son who were in the truck with her are U.S. citizens, they carried their passports and immigration paperwork in case they were stopped by federal agents.

    “They should not cooperate with immigration, just do their job and get criminals out of the streets instead of hardworking people,” Rodriguez said, adding that she has been troubled by reports of U.S. citizens being caught up in the immigration crackdown.

    “What if they take us?” she said.

    Unlike their counterparts in Gretna, Kenner, and other cities with 287(g) agreements, New Orleans officials have resisted cooperating with the Trump administration’s efforts.

    New Orleans police adopted a policy that prohibits officers from assisting federal immigration enforcement except under certain circumstances, such as a threat to public safety. The policy resulted from a 2013 federal consent decree to address a history of unconstitutional practices, including racial profiling. Last month, a federal judge ended the consent decree, but Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said last month that immigration remained a civil issue, adding that police would not enforce civil laws but instead ensure that immigrants “are not going to get hurt and our community is not in danger.”

    Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, has since encouraged Kirkpatrick to have officers “fully cooperate” with federal immigration officials.

    Murrill warned that New Orleans police policies “appear to conflict with current state law,” referencing this year’s statute that says thwarting federal immigration efforts could be considered obstruction of justice.

    Kirkpatrick did not respond to a request for comment, but a department spokesperson said in a statement this month that “NOPD is not involved in, informed of, or responsible for any enforcement activity conducted by ICE, DHS, or U.S. Border Patrol.”

    The police department’s role, the statement added, “is to enforce state and municipal criminal laws. We do not handle or participate in federal immigration enforcement.”

    Murrill is also embroiled in a legal battle with the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, which operates city jails under a federal consent decree and has refused to cooperate with ICE.

    Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino has appeared in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Kenner, and other areas with agents, where he has been met with protests and signs of support. Anti-ICE protesters confronted Bovino and temporarily shut down a New Orleans City Council meeting this month, but other residents posed for photos with Bovino while holding a homemade sign that read: “Thank you ICE.”

    New Orleans Mayor-elect Helena Moreno is already pressing federal officials to prove they are targeting only immigrants with violent criminal histories. Moreno, a Democrat who will be the city’s first Latina mayor, will not take office until Jan. 12. But she said she is concerned Catahoula Crunch is creating a “culture of fear” and forcing businesses to close and workers to stay home. She created a website advising residents of their rights, and the city council launched an online portal where they can report alleged abuse by federal officers.

    Some New Orleans business owners posted “ICE Keep Out” signs this month, while others said they worried that doing so could make them targets. Antoine’s Restaurant in the French Quarter held meetings with employees — all documented — to address their fears after seeing reports of masked immigration agents conducting raids in armored vehicles.

    “It’s giving a lot of people anxiety, including our employees,” said Lisa Blount, whose family owns the restaurant, as she stood near the packed bar. “We are in a busy season, an important, celebratory time in New Orleans. We’re not going to let them bully their way in.”

    A few streets away, Dominican immigrant Diomedes Beñalo was unloading gold chairs for a wedding and said he wished local police would do more to protect residents’ rights. He questioned why federal agents are hiding their faces.

    “That seems like a thing that can make them violate people’s rights,” said Beñalo, 40, adding that undocumented immigrants’ civil rights should not be violated.

    “The police should make sure that doesn’t happen,” he said. “That’s what we pay police to do.”