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  • Philly violence prevention groups say they were flourishing. Then the Trump DOJ cut their funding.

    Philly violence prevention groups say they were flourishing. Then the Trump DOJ cut their funding.

    In Kensington, a program to mitigate street violence was hitting its stride.

    After joining the New Kensington Community Development Corporation in 2023, outreach coordinators with Cure Violence began responding to shootings in the neighborhood, connecting folks with mental health services and other wellness resources.

    They hosted men’s therapy groups, safe spaces to open up about the experience of poverty and trauma, and organized a recreational basketball league at residents’ request. Their team of violence interrupters even intervened in an argument that they said could have led to a shooting.

    Cure Violence Kensington was funded by a $1.5 million federal grant from the Department of Justice, part of a Biden-era initiative to combat the nation’s gun violence epidemic by awarding funds to community-based anti-violence programs rather than law enforcement agencies.

    One year after a political shift in Washington, however, federal grants that Philadelphia’s anti-violence nonprofits say allowed them to flourish are disappearing.

    In the spring, New Kensington CDC received a letter from the Justice Department, saying that under the leadership of Attorney General Pam Bondi it had terminated the grant that would have funded Cure Violence for the next three years.

    The work, the letter said, “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.” In the future, it said, the department would offer such grants exclusively to local law enforcement efforts.

    “It was a heavy hit,” said Bill McKinney, the nonprofit’s executive director.

    The cuts come amid a Trump administration crackdown on nonprofits and other organizations it views as either wasteful or focused on diversity and DEI.

    It spent 2025 slashing funds for programs that supplied aid abroad, conducted scientific research, and monitored climate change. At the Justice Department, cuts came for groups like McKinney’s, which aim to target the root causes of violence by offering mental health services, job programs, conflict mediation, and other alternatives to traditional policing.

    In Philadelphia, organizations like the Antiviolence Partnership of Philadelphia and the E.M.I.R. Healing Center say they, too, lost federal funding last year and expect to see further reductions in 2026 as they scramble to cover shortfalls.

    A Justice Department spokesperson said changes to the grant program reflect the office’s commitment to law enforcement and victims of crime, and that they would ensure an “efficient use of taxpayer dollars.”

    “The Department has full faith that local law enforcement can effectively utilize these resources to restore public safety in cities across America,” the spokesperson said in an email.

    Nonprofits may appeal the decisions, the spokesperson said, and New Kensington CDC has done so.

    Attorney General Pam Bondi takes part in an event at the White House on Oct. 23.

    Philadelphia city officials, for their part, say they remain committed to anti-violence programs, in which they have invested tens of millions of dollars in recent years.

    “There are always going to be things that happen externally that we have no control over as a city,” said Adam Geer, director of the Office of Public Safety.

    The reversal in federal support comes at a time when officials like Geer say the efforts of anti-violence programs are beginning to show results.

    Violent crime in Philadelphia fell to historic lows in 2025, a welcome relief after the sharp upturn in shootings and homicides that befell the city at the height of the pandemic.

    A variety of factors have contributed, from shifting policing tactics in Kensington to investigators solving homicides at record rates, putting more violent offenders behind bars. But advocates say local, state, and federal investments in anti-violence programs have played a significant role.

    In 2021, the city announced a large-scale campaign to combat gun violence that, in the past year, included nearly $24 million for anti-violence programs.

    That was on top of the Biden administration’s Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative. Since launching in 2022, the DOJ program awarded more than $300 million to more than 120 anti-violence organizations nationwide.

    In April, many of those groups, including New Kensington CDC, lost funds. And in September, a larger swath learned they were now barred from applying for other Justice Department grants that would have arrived this spring.

    “We’ve seen enormous dividends” from the work of such groups, said Adam Garber, executive director of CeaseFirePA, a leading gun violence prevention group in the state. “Pulling back now puts that progress at risk — and puts lives on the line.”

    Philadelphia feels the squeeze

    Federal grants helped Natasha McGlynn’s nonprofit thrive.

    McGlynn, executive director of the Antiviolence Partnership of Philadelphia, said a DOJ grant called STOP School Violence allowed her organization to launch a counseling program for young people who had been victims of violence or otherwise exposed to it in some of the city’s most violent neighborhoods.

    The nonprofit used the grant to hire therapists to help students develop healthier attitudes around conflict and trauma, she said.

    The $997,000 grant was cut in April, and when McGlynn went to apply for another round of funding in the fall, she learned that nonprofits were no longer eligible. The lost funding means some services, like counseling, could now be eliminated, she said.

    “I would say several positions are in question,” McGlynn said. “I would say the program is in question.”

    Chantay Love, the director of Every Murder is Real, said her Germantown-based victim services nonprofit also lost Justice Department funding in 2025.

    Federal grants are not the nonprofit’s only source of income, Love said, but she along with other nonprofit leaders in the city are considering whether they’ll need to cut back on programs this year.

    Record-setting investment

    The decade before the pandemic saw gun-related deaths in the state climb steadily, spiking during the lockdown as social isolation, school closures, shuttered community services, and higher levels of stress contributed to a spate of gun homicides and shootings that began to ease only in 2024.

    Two years earlier, the state began dispersing more than $100 million to community-based anti-violence programs, much of the money coming from the American Rescue Plan, a sweeping Biden administration pandemic recovery package that also sought to reduce rising gun violence. And when those funds expired, state lawmakers continued to invest millions each year, as did Philadelphia city officials.

    Garber, of CeaseFirePA, said those efforts “get a lot of heavy-lifting credit” for Philadelphia’s historic decrease in violence.

    A report compiled by CeaseFirePA cites studies that found outreach programs like Cure Violence helped reduce shootings around Temple University, as well as in cities like New York and Baltimore, where homicides and shootings in some parts of the city fell by more than 20%.

    While it’s too early for data to provide a full picture on how such funding has contributed to overall violence reduction, officials like Geer, the Philadelphia public safety director, agreed that programs like Cure Violence have helped crime reach record lows.

    Philadelphia acting chief public safety director Adam Geer attends a news conference on Jan. 30, 2024, about a shooting that left an officer wounded and a suspect dead.

    Outreach workers with the city-supported Group Violence Intervention program made more than 300 contacts with at-risk residents in 2025, according to data provided by Geer’s office, either offering support or intervening in conflicts.

    And they offered support to members of more than 140 street groups — small, neighborhood-oriented collectives of young people that lack the larger organization of criminal gangs — while more than doubling the amount of service referrals made the previous year.

    In practice, a program’s success looks like an incident in Kensington in which Cure Violence workers intervened in a likely shooting, according to members of New Kensington CDC.

    In April, a business owner called on the nonprofit after seeing a group of men fighting outside his Frankford Avenue store and leaving to return with guns. Members of the outreach team spoke with both parties, de-escalating the conflict before it potentially turned deadly.

    “Each dollar cut is ultimately a potential missed opportunity to stop a shooting,” Garber said.

    Cutting off the ‘spigot’

    Even as community-based anti-violence programs have risen in popularity, they are not without their critics.

    While some officials champion them as innovative solutions to lowering crime, others say the programs can lack oversight and that success is difficult to measure.

    In 2023, an Inquirer investigation found that nonprofits with ambitious plans to mitigate gun violence received millions in city funds, but in some cases had no paid staff, no boards of directors, and no offices.

    A subsequent review by the Office of the Controller found some programs had not targeted violent areas or had little financial oversight. But by the next round of funding, the city had made improvements to the grant program, the controller’s office found, adding funding benchmarks and enhanced reporting requirements.

    Meanwhile, as Philadelphia continued its support these programs, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department began a review of more than 5,800 grants awarded through its Office of Justice Programs. It ultimately made cuts of more than $800 million that spring.

    Among programs that lost funding, 93% were “non-governmental agencies,” including nonprofits, according to a letter DOJ officials sent to the Senate explaining the decision.

    The balance of remaining funds in the violence prevention grant program — an estimated $34 million — will be available for law enforcement efforts, according to a DOJ grant report. In addition to fighting crime, the money will help agencies improve “police-community relations,” hire officers, and purchase equipment, the document says.

    Agencies conducting immigration enforcement are also eligible for grants, the report says, while groups that violate immigration law, provide legal services to people who entered the country illegally, or “unlawfully favor” people based on race are barred.

    One group lauding the cuts is the National Rifle Association, which commended the Trump administration in November for cutting off the “spigot” to anti-violence nonprofits.

    ‘[T]he changes hopefully mean that nonprofits and community groups associated with advocating gun control will be less likely to do it at the expense of the American taxpayer and that real progress can occur on policing violent criminals,” the NRA’s legislative arm wrote in a blog post that month.

    Nate Riley disagrees.

    Riley, an outreach worker with Cure Violence Kensington, said the cuts threaten to reverse the progress New Kensington CDC has made since he joined the program early last year.

    Nate Riley (from left), Tyree Batties, Dante Singleton, Tyreek Counts, Ivan Rodriguez, and Jamall Green-Holmes, outreach workers with New Kensington Community Development Corporation, making their rounds on Wednesday.

    Cure Violence’s six-person outreach team is made up of people like Riley, who grew up in North Philadelphia and says he is well-versed in the relationship between poverty, trauma, and violence and brings that experience to Kensington.

    “This is a community that’s been neglected for decades,” Riley said. “For lack of a better term, you’ve got to help them come in outside of the rain.”

    In a recent month, Cure Violence outreach workers responded to 75% of shootings in the Kensington area within three days, a feat Riley is particularly proud of.

    He said the program is not meant to supplant the role of police.

    Instead, Riley sees street outreach as another outlet for those whose negative experiences with authorities have led them to distrust law enforcement.

    Those people may alter their behavior if they know police are present, he added, giving outreach workers embedded in the community a better chance at picking up on cues that someone is struggling.

    From Kensington to Washington

    McKinney, with New Kensington CDC, said the group was still expecting about $600,000 from the Justice Department when the grant was cut short.

    The nonprofit has since secured a patchwork of private donations and state grants that will keep Cure Violence running through much of 2026, he said.

    After that, the program’s future is uncertain.

    In the wake of the cuts, national organizations like the Community Justice Action Fund are advocating for federal officials to preserve funding for community-based anti-violence programs in future budgets. Adzi Vokhiwa, a federal policy advocate with the fund, said the group has formed a network of anti-violence nonprofits dubbed the “Invest in Us Coalition” to do so.

    The group petitioned congressional leadership in December to appropriate $55 million for anti-violence organizations in the next budget — a figure that both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have previously agreed on and that Vokhiwa views as a sign of bipartisan support for such programs.

    McKinney, with New Kensington CDC, said it was impossible to ignore that the nonprofit and others like it provide services to neighborhoods where residents are overwhelmingly Black and brown. In his view, the cuts also reflect the administration’s “war on cities.”

    He was bothered that the Justice Department did not seem to evaluate whether New Kensington CDC’s program had made an impact on the neighborhood before making cuts.

    “We’re in a situation where the violence isn’t going away,” he said. “Even if there’s been decreases, the reality is that Kensington still leads the way. As those cuts get deeper, we are going to see increases in violence.”

  • U.S. suspends assistance to Somalia’s federal government, alleging it seized food aid

    U.S. suspends assistance to Somalia’s federal government, alleging it seized food aid

    WASHINGTON — The State Department said Wednesday that it has suspended all U.S. assistance to Somalia’s federal government over allegations that Somali officials destroyed an American-funded warehouse belonging to the World Food Program and seized 76 metric tons of food aid intended for impoverished civilians.

    “The Trump Administration has a zero-tolerance policy for waste, theft, and diversion of life-saving assistance,” the department said in a statement.

    “The State Department has paused all ongoing U.S. assistance programs which benefit the Somali Federal Government,” it said. “Any resumption of assistance will be dependent upon the Somali Federal Government, taking accountability for its unacceptable actions and taking appropriate remedial steps.”

    The suspension comes as the Trump administration has ratcheted up criticism of Somali refugees and migrants in the United States, including over well-publicized fraud allegations involving child care centers in Minnesota. It has slapped significant restrictions on Somalis wanting to come to the U.S. and made it difficult for those already in the United States to stay.

    It was not immediately clear how much assistance would be affected by the suspension because the Trump administration has slashed foreign aid expenditures, dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and not released new country-by-country data.

    The U.S. had provided $770 million in assistance for projects in Somalia during the last year of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, but only a fraction of that went directly to the government.

    The Trump administration made the move after authorities at the Mogadishu Port demolished the WFP warehouse at the direction of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud “with no prior notification or coordination with international donor countries, including the United States,” according to a U.S. official familiar with the alleged incident.

    The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private reporting from American diplomats in the region.

    Located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia is one of the world’s poorest nations and has been beset by chronic strife and insecurity exacerbated by multiple natural disasters, including severe droughts, for decades.

  • Trump immigration policies and a lower fertility rate slow US growth projection, budget office says

    Trump immigration policies and a lower fertility rate slow US growth projection, budget office says

    WASHINGTON — The U.S. population is projected to grow by 15 million in 30 years, a smaller estimate than in previous years, due to President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies and an expected lower fertility rate, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

    The nonpartisan budget office projected that the U.S. population will grow from 349 million people this year to 364 million people in 30 years, a 2.2% smaller gain than it had predicted in 2025. In September, the office issued a revised demographics report that showed Trump’s plans for mass deportations and other strict immigration measures would result in roughly 320,000 people removed from the United States over the next 10 years.

    The country’s total population is projected to stop growing in 2056 and remain roughly the same size as in the previous year, the CBO said. But without immigration, the population would begin to shrink in 2030 as deaths start to exceed births, making immigrants an increasingly important source of population growth, according to the report.

    Even if the limits on immigration and increased deportations end with the Trump administration in three years, “it’s still a demographic shock,” said William Frey, a demographer at the centrist Brookings Institution.

    Social Security and Medicare, which are already buckling under an aging population, will be under increasing pressure with even fewer than expected people in the labor force paying taxes. By the end of the decade, all of the nation’s baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, will be over age 65.

    With fewer immigrants in the labor force and projections for U.S. fertility rates showing a long-term decline below replacement levels, “that reduces the number of kids who are going to be born in that four-year period” of the second Trump administration, Frey said.

    The latest numbers come as Trump has pushed for the largest mass deportation campaign in history. The CBO’s numbers account for the success of those efforts in the first year of his second term in office.

    The administration has used a variety of methods to remove people from the country, including through a visa ban on applications for immigrants from some countries and deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in U.S. cities to track down immigrants who are in the country illegally.

    Trump’s tax and spending law, passed by Congress and signed in July, included roughly $150 billion to ramp up his deportation agenda over the next four years. This includes money for extending the U.S.-Mexico border wall, building detention centers and adding thousands of law enforcement staff.

    When it comes to estimating the nation’s population and future growth, immigration is always the wild card because it varies much more year to year than the number of births and deaths. Immigration has fueled U.S. population growth this decade because of an aging population and fertility lower than the replacement rate. For a generation to replace itself in the absence of immigration, the fertility rate needs to be 2.1 births per woman. But it was expected to be 1.58 in 2026 and is projected to drop to 1.53 in 2036 where it will remain over the next two decades.

    The U.S. Census Bureau said that immigration increased by 2.8 million people in 2024 over the previous year.

    Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, though, demographers and economists have struggled to decipher the impact of his policies on immigrant growth in the United States.

    The bureau’s population estimates for last year have not been released yet, but the Current Population Survey estimated that the number of adult immigrants fell by 1.8 million people from January to November 2025. But those numbers have come under scrutiny, with some experts claiming they may reflect a decline in participation by immigrants in the survey rather than a dramatic drop in immigrant numbers.

    Last September, the CBO reduced its immigration estimate for 2025 by 1.6 million people, and it said Wednesday that the U.S. added 410,000 immigrants last year. Immigration is projected to gradually increase through 2030, and then grow more slowly through 2036 because of fewer international students and temporary workers, before jumping up to an average of 1.2 million people a year from 2037 to 2056, the CBO said.

    “These immigrants bring both themselves and the potential for children in the near term,” Kenneth Johnson, a senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire, said in an email. “They contribute both to the labor force through their arrival but also to the potential future growth of the US population through their potential to have children in the near term.”

  • Attorney for Rob Reiner’s son resigns but says his client is not guilty of murder under state law

    Attorney for Rob Reiner’s son resigns but says his client is not guilty of murder under state law

    LOS ANGELES — The high-profile private attorney for Nick Reiner resigned from his case Wednesday for reasons he said he could not reveal, and he later told reporters that under California law his client is definitely not guilty of murder in the killing of his parents, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner.

    “Circumstances beyond our control and more importantly circumstances beyond Nick’s control have dictated that, sadly, it’s made it impossible to continue our representation,” lawyer Alan Jackson said as he stood with his team outside a Los Angeles courthouse.

    But, Jackson added, after weeks of investigation, “what we’ve learned, and you can take this to the bank, is that pursuant to the laws of this state, pursuant to the law of California, Nick Reiner is not guilty of murder. Print that.”

    Jackson would not specify what he meant and took no questions at the brief news conference, but it was the first direct statement from a Nick Reiner representative about his guilt or innocence in the 3 1/2 weeks since the killings.

    He spoke after a hearing where Reiner was supposed to be arraigned and enter a plea to two charges of first-degree murder. Instead, after meeting with the Judge Theresa McGonigle in chambers, Jackson, at his own request, was replaced by a public defender and the plea hearing was postponed to Feb. 23.

    Jackson does not say why he has to quit case

    Jackson said that for legal and ethical reasons, he could not reveal why he had to resign. He first appeared in court representing Nick Reiner at a hearing a few days after the beloved actor-director and his wife of 36 years were found dead with stab wounds in their home in the upscale Brentwood section of Los Angeles. Jackson did not say how he was hired — or who hired him. Generally, defendants use public defenders when they can’t pay for a private attorney.

    Jackson has become one of the most prominent defense attorneys in the nation in recent years after his defense of clients including Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Karen Read at her intensely followed trials in Massachusetts.

    Deputy Public Defender Kimberly Greene took over as Reiner’s attorney during the hearing.

    “The Public Defender’s Office recognizes what an unimaginable tragedy this is for the Reiner family and the Los Angeles community,” LA County Public Defender Ricardo D. Garcia said in a rare public statement on a case from the office. “Our hearts go out to the Reiner family as they navigate this difficult time. We ask for your patience and compassion as the case moves through the legal process.”

    A Reiner family spokesperson said in a statement after Wednesday’s hearing that “They have the utmost trust in the legal process and will not comment further on matters related to the legal proceedings.”

    Nick Reiner appears in jail clothes, without suicide prevention smock

    During Wednesday’s hearing, Reiner stood behind glass in a custody area of the courtroom wearing brown jail garb and with his hair shaved. Two deputies stood behind him. Jackson and his team stood in front of him on the other side of the glass. At one point, Reiner stood on his tiptoes to peer over the lawyers’ heads to look at the audience. He spoke only to agree to the delayed arraignment.

    McGonigle approved the use of cameras inside the courtroom but said photos and video could not be taken of the defendant. Reiner did not wear the suicide prevention smock he had on at his initial court appearance on Dec. 17.

    Reiner, 32, the third of Rob Reiner’s four children, has been held without bail since his arrest hours after his parents were found dead on Dec. 14.

    Jackson says he ‘dropped everything’ to represent Reiner

    Jackson, a former LA County prosecutor, had given no indication of the plans for his defense.

    He said that just hours after Nick Reiner’s arrest, he and his team were in New York when they got a call about representing him. He did not say who called him.

    “We dropped everything,” Jackson said. “For the last three weeks, we have devoted literally every waking hour to protecting Nick and his interests. We’ve investigated this matter top to bottom, back to front.”

    He said they remain “deeply, deeply committed” to him and said, “We’re not just convinced; we know that the legal process will reveal the true facts.”

    Rob Reiner, 78, and Michele Singer Reiner, 70, were killed early on the morning of Dec. 14, and they were found in the late afternoon, authorities said. The LA County Medical Examiner said in initial findings that they died from “multiple sharp force injuries.” A court order has prevented the release of more details. Police have said nothing about possible motives.

    Prosecutors have said they have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty for Nick Reiner.

    Rob Reiner was a prolific director whose work included some of the most memorable and endlessly watchable movies of the 1980s and ’90s. His credits included “This is Spinal Tap,” “Stand By Me,” “A Few Good Men,” and “When Harry Met Sally …,” during whose production he met Michele Singer, a photographer, and married her soon after.

    A decade ago, Nick Reiner publicly discussed his struggles with addiction and mental health after making a movie with his father, “Being Charlie,” that was very loosely based on their lives.

  • New dietary guidelines urge Americans to avoid processed foods and added sugar

    New dietary guidelines urge Americans to avoid processed foods and added sugar

    Americans should eat more whole foods and protein, fewer highly processed foods and less added sugar, according to the latest edition of federal nutrition advice released Wednesday by the Trump administration.

    Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins issued the 2025-2030 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which offer updated recommendations for a healthy diet and provide the foundation for federal nutrition programs and policies. They come as Kennedy has for months stressed overhauling the U.S. food supply as part of his Make America Healthy Again agenda.

    “My message is clear: Eat real food,” Kennedy said at a White House briefing.

    The guidelines emphasize consumption of fresh vegetables, whole grains and dairy products, long advised as part of a healthy eating plan. Officials released a new graphic depicting an inverted version of the long-abandoned food pyramid, with protein, dairy, healthy fats and fruits and vegetables at the top and whole grains at the bottom.

    But they also take a new stance on “highly processed” foods, and refined carbohydrates, urging consumers to avoid “packaged, prepared, ready-to-eat or other foods that are salty or sweet, such as chips, cookies and candy.” That’s a different term for ultraprocessed foods, the tasty, energy-dense products that make up more than half the calories in the U.S. diet and have been linked to chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.

    The new guidance backs away from revoking long-standing advice to limit saturated fats, despite signals from Kennedy and Food and Drug Commissioner Marty Makary that the administration would push for more consumption of animal fats to end the “war” on saturated fats.

    Instead, the document suggests that Americans should choose whole-food sources of saturated fat — such as meat, whole-fat dairy or avocados — while continuing to limit saturated fat consumption to no more than 10% of daily calories. The guidance says “other options can include butter or beef tallow,” despite previous recommendations to avoid those fats.

    Guidelines were due for an update

    The dietary guidelines, required by law to be updated every five years, provide a template for a healthy diet. But in a country where more than half of adults have a diet-related chronic disease, few Americans actually follow the guidance, research shows.

    The new recommendations drew praise from some prominent nutrition and medical experts.

    “There should be broad agreement that eating more whole foods and reducing highly processed carbohydrates is a major advance in how we approach diet and health,” said Dr. David Kessler, a former FDA commissioner who has written books about diet and nutrition and has sent a petition to the FDA to remove key ingredients in ultraprocessed foods.

    “The guidelines affirm that food is medicine and offer clear direction patients and physicians can use to improve health,” said Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, president of the American Medical Association.

    Other experts were relieved that the guidelines didn’t go against decades of nutrition evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease, but they were critical of the guidelines’ focus on meat and dairy as a primary source of protein instead of plant-based sources.

    “Overall, if people eat the way these are recommended, they will be eating more calories, not less,” said Marion Nestle, a nutritionist and food policy expert who advised previous editions of the guidance.

    The new document is just 10 pages, upholding Kennedy’s pledge to create a simple, understandable guideline. Previous editions of the dietary guidelines have grown over the years, from a 19-page pamphlet in 1980 to the 164-page document issued in 2020, which included a four-page executive summary.

    The guidance will have the most profound effect on the federally funded National School Lunch Program, which is required to follow the guidelines to feed nearly 30 million U.S. children on a typical school day.

    The Agriculture Department will have to translate the recommendations into specific requirements for school meals, a process that can take years, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association. The latest school nutrition standards were proposed in 2023 but won’t be fully implemented until 2027, she noted.

    Science advisers didn’t make ultraprocessed food recommendations

    The new guidelines largely rejected the advice of a 20-member panel of nutrition experts convened by the Biden administration, who met for nearly two years to review the latest scientific evidence on diet and health. Kennedy had criticized the expertise of the panel members and suggested that they had ties to the food industry that influenced their advice.

    Instead, the new guidance relied on a new set of experts revealed Wednesday in supporting documents. Of the 10 experts who led the new scientific review under Kennedy, five reported financial ties to beef, pork or dairy industries or to makers of infant formula or supplements.

    The new group rejected more than half the recommendations of the previous panel, the documents showed.

    That previous panel didn’t make recommendations about ultraprocessed food. Although a host of studies have shown links between ultraprocessed foods and poor health outcomes, the nutrition experts had concerns with the quality of the research and the certainty that those foods, and not other factors, were causing the problems.

    The recommendations on highly processed foods drew cautiously positive reactions. The FDA and the Agriculture Department are already working on a definition of ultraprocessed foods, but it’s expected to take time.

    Not all highly processed foods are unhealthy, said Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital.

    “I think the focus should be on highly processed carbohydrates,” he said, noting that processing of protein or fats can be benign or even helpful.

    More protein recommended

    The guidelines made a few other notable changes, including a call to potentially double protein consumption.

    The previous recommended dietary allowance called for 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight — about 54 grams daily for a 150-pound person. The new recommendation is 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. An average American man consumes about 100 grams of protein per day, or about twice the previously recommended limit.

    Makary said the new advice supersedes protein guidance that was based on the “bare minimum” required for health.

    Ludwig also noted that the earlier recommendation was the minimum amount needed to prevent protein deficiency and said higher amounts of protein might be beneficial.

    “A moderate increase in protein to help displace the processed carbohydrates makes sense,” he said.

    Officials with the American Heart Association, however, called for more research on protein consumption and the best sources for optimal health.

    “Pending that research, we encourage consumers to prioritize plant-based proteins, seafood and lean meats and to limit high-fat animal products including red meat, butter, lard and tallow, which are linked to increased cardiovascular risk,” the group said in a statement.

    Avoid added sugars

    The guidelines advise avoiding or sharply limiting added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners, saying “no amount” is considered part of a healthy diet.

    No one meal should contain more than 10 grams of added sugars, or about 2 teaspoons, the new guidelines say.

    Previous federal guidelines recommended limiting added sugars to less than 10% of daily calories for people older than 2, but to aim for less. That’s about 12 teaspoons a day in a 2,000-calorie daily diet. Children younger than 2 should have no added sugars at all, the older guidance said.

    In general, most Americans consume about 17 teaspoons of added sugars per day, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Alcohol limits removed

    The new guidelines roll back previous recommendations to limit alcohol to one drink or less per day for women and two drinks or less per day for men.

    Instead, the guidance advises Americans to “consume less alcohol for better health.” They also say that alcohol should be avoided by pregnant women, people recovering from alcohol use disorder and those who are unable to control the amount they drink.

  • ICE officer kills a Minneapolis driver in a deadly start to Trump’s latest immigration operation

    ICE officer kills a Minneapolis driver in a deadly start to Trump’s latest immigration operation

    MINNEAPOLIS — An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a Minneapolis driver on Wednesday during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown on a major American city — a shooting that federal officials said was an act of self-defense but that the mayor described as reckless and unnecessary.

    The 37-year-old woman was shot in the head in front of a family member in a snowy residential neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks from some of the oldest immigrant markets and about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020.

    Her killing after 9:30 a.m. was recorded on video by witnesses, and the shooting quickly drew a crowd of hundreds of angry protesters. By evening, hundreds were there for a vigil to mourn the death and urge the public to resist immigration enforcers.

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, while visiting Texas, described the incident as an “act of domestic terrorism” carried out against ICE officers by a woman who “attempted to run them over and rammed them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively, shot, to protect himself and the people around him.”

    In a social media post, President Donald Trump made similar accusations against the woman and defended ICE’s work.

    Protesters gather near the scene of the fatal shooting involving federal law enforcement agents Wednesday in Minneapolis.

    Hours later, at an evening news conference in Minnesota, Noem didn’t back down, claiming the woman was part of a “mob of agitators.” She said the veteran officer who fired his gun had been rammed and dragged by an anti-ICE motorist in June.

    “Any loss of life is a tragedy, and I think all of us can agree that in this situation, it was preventable,” Noem said, adding that the FBI would investigate.

    But Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey blasted Noem’s version of what happened as “garbage” and criticized the federal deployment of more than 2,000 officers to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as part of the immigration crackdown.

    “What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust,” Frey said, calling on the immigration agents to leave. “They’re ripping families apart. They’re sowing chaos on our streets, and in this case, quite literally killing people.”

    “They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bullshit,” the mayor said.

    Frey said he had a message for ICE: “Get the f— out of Minneapolis.”

    A shooting caught on video

    Videos taken by bystanders with different vantage points and posted to social media show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the vehicle at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.

    It was not clear from the videos if the vehicle made contact with the officer. The SUV then sped into two cars parked on a curb nearby before crashing to a stop. Witnesses screamed obscenities, expressing shock at what they’d seen. After the shooting, emergency medical technicians tried to administer aid to the woman.

    “She was driving away and they killed her,” said resident Lynette Reini-Grandell, who was outdoors recording video on her phone.

    The shooting marked a dramatic escalation of the latest in a series of immigration enforcement operations in major cities under the Trump administration. The death of the Minneapolis driver was at least the fifth linked to immigration crackdowns.

    The Twin Cities have been on edge since DHS announced Tuesday that it had launched the operation, which is at least partly tied to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents. Noem confirmed Wednesday that DHS had deployed more than 2,000 officers to the area and said they had already made “hundreds and hundreds” of arrests.

    A large throng of protesters gathered at the scene after the shooting, where they vented their anger at the local and federal officers who were there, including Gregory Bovino, a senior U.S. Customs and Border Patrol official who has been the face of crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere.

    In a scene that hearkened back to the Los Angeles and Chicago crackdowns, bystanders heckled the officers, chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “ICE out of Minnesota,” and blew whistles that have become ubiquitous during the operations.

    Governor calls for calm

    Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he’s prepared to deploy the National Guard if necessary. He said a family member of the driver was there to witness the killing, which he described as “predictable” and “avoidable.” He also said like many, he was outraged by the shooting, but he called on people to keep protests peaceful.

    “They want a show. We can’t give it to them. We cannot,” the governor said during a news conference. “If you protest and express your First Amendment rights, please do so peacefully, as you always do. We can’t give them what they want.”

    Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara briefly described the shooting to reporters but, unlike federal officials, gave no indication that the driver was trying to harm anyone.

    “This woman was in her vehicle and was blocking the roadway on Portland Avenue. … At some point a federal law enforcement officer approached her on foot and the vehicle began to drive off,” the chief said. ”At least two shots were fired. The vehicle then crashed on the side of the roadway.”

    There were calls on social media to prosecute the officer who shot the driver. Commissioner Bob Jacobson of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said state authorities would investigate the shooting with federal authorities.

    “Keep in mind that this is an investigation that is also in its infancy. So any speculation about what has happened would be just that,” Jacobson told reporters.

    The shooting happened in the district of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who called it “state violence,” not law enforcement.

    For nearly a year, migrant rights advocates and neighborhood activists across the Twin Cities have been preparing to mobilize in the event of an immigration enforcement surge. From houses of worship to mobile home parks, they have set up very active online networks, scanned license plates for possible federal vehicles and bought whistles and other noisemaking devices to alert neighborhoods of any enforcement presence.

  • Rubio plans to meet with Danish officials next week to talk about U.S. interest in Greenland

    Rubio plans to meet with Danish officials next week to talk about U.S. interest in Greenland

    U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he plans to meet with Danish officials next week after the Trump administration doubled down on its intention to take over Greenland, the strategic Arctic island that is a self-governing territory of Denmark.

    Since the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump has revived his argument that the United States needs to control the world’s largest island to ensure its own security in the face of rising threats from China and Russia in the Arctic.

    Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenland counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, had requested a meeting with Rubio, according to a statement posted Tuesday to Greenland’s government website. Previous requests for a meeting were not successful, the statement said.

    Rubio told a select group of U.S. lawmakers that it was the Republican administration’s intention to eventually purchase Greenland, as opposed to using military force.

    The remarks, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were made in a classified briefing Monday evening on Capitol Hill, according to a person with knowledge of his comments who was granted anonymity because it was a private discussion.

    On Wednesday, Rubio told reporters in Washington that Trump has been talking about acquiring Greenland since his first term. “That’s always been the president’s intent from the very beginning,” Rubio said. “He’s not the first U.S. president that has examined or looked at how we could acquire Greenland.”

    European leaders express concern

    The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in issuing a statement this week reaffirming that the mineral-rich island, which guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America, “belongs to its people.” Frederiksen warned that a U.S. takeover would amount to the end of NATO.

    “The Nordics do not lightly make statements like this,” Maria Martisiute, a defense analyst at the European Policy Centre think tank, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “But it is Trump whose very bombastic language bordering on direct threats and intimidation is threatening the fact to another ally by saying, ‘I will control or annex the territory.’”

    Rubio, who was on Capitol Hill for a classified briefing Wednesday with the entire U.S. Senate and House, did not directly answer reporters’ questions about whether the administration was willing to risk the NATO alliance by potentially moving ahead with a military option regarding Greenland.

    “I’m not here to talk about Denmark or military intervention, I’ll be meeting with them next week, we’ll have those conversations with them then, but I don’t have anything further to add to that,” Rubio said. He added that every president retains the option to address national security threats to the United States through military means.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that using the military to acquire Greenland was an option, though she told reporters Wednesday that “the president’s first option always has been diplomacy.”

    Some Republican senators said they saw strategic value in Greenland, but they stopped short of supporting military action to acquire it.

    Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall said he hoped “we can work out a deal,” while North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven said some of the discussion about taking Greenland by force has been “misconstrued.”

    “One of the things about President Trump, you may have noticed, is he keeps our adversaries off balance by making sure they don’t know what we’re going to do,” Hoeven said.

    But Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she hated “the rhetoric around either acquiring Greenland by purchase or by force,” adding, “I think that it is very, very unsettling.”

    Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, said the U.S. needs to honor its treaty obligations to Denmark.

    “Any suggestion that our nation would subject a fellow NATO ally to coercion or external pressure undermines the very principles of self-determination that our Alliance exists to defend,” the senators said in a joint statement.

    ‘This is America now’

    Thomas Crosbie, an associate professor of military operations at the Royal Danish Defense College, said an American takeover would not help Washington’s national security.

    “The United States will gain no advantage if its flag is flying in Nuuk versus the Greenlandic flag,” he told the AP. “There’s no benefits to them because they already enjoy all of the advantages they want. If there’s any specific security access that they want to improve American security, they’ll be given it as a matter of course, as a trusted ally. So this has nothing to do with improving national security for the United States.”

    Denmark’s parliament approved a bill in June to allow U.S. military bases on Danish soil. It widened a previous military agreement, made in 2023 with the Biden administration, in which U.S. troops had broad access to Danish air bases in the Scandinavian country. Denmark’s foreign minister has said that Denmark would be able to terminate the agreement if the U.S. tries to annex all or part of Greenland.

    In the event of military action, the U.S. Department of Defense operates the remote Pituffik Space Base, in northwestern Greenland, and the troops there could be mobilized.

    Crosbie said he believes the U.S. would not seek to hurt the local population or engage with Danish troops.

    “They don’t need to bring any firepower. They don’t need to bring anybody,” Crosbie said Wednesday. “They could just direct the military personnel currently there to drive to the center of Nuuk and just say, ‘This is America now,’ right? And that would lead to the same response as if they flew in 500 or 1,000 people.”

    The danger in an American annexation, he said, lies in the “erosion of the rule of law globally and to the perception that there are any norms protecting anybody on the planet.”

    He added: “The impact is changing the map. The impact I don’t think would be storming the parliament.”

  • Trump invites Colombian president to White House after threatening his country with military strike

    Trump invites Colombian president to White House after threatening his country with military strike

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump abruptly changed his tone Wednesday about his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, saying they had exchanged a friendly phone call and he’d even invited the leader of the South American country to the White House.

    “It was a Great Honor to speak with the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who called to explain the situation of drugs and other disagreements that we have had,” Trump posted on his social media site. “I appreciated his call and tone, and look forward to meeting him in the near future.”

    He wrote that the upcoming meeting would take place at the White House.

    That came mere days after Trump said in the wake of the U.S. operation to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro over the weekend that “Colombia is very sick too” and accused Petro of “making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”

    In comments to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump added of Petro, “He’s not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you.” Asked whether U.S. intervention was possible, Trump responded, ”Sounds good to me.”

    Trump now suddenly warming to Petro is especially surprising since Colombia’s president called the U.S. operation in Venezuela an “abhorrent” violation of Latin American sovereignty. He also suggested it was committed by “enslavers” and constituted a “spectacle of death” comparable to Nazi Germany’s 1937 carpet bombing of Guernica, Spain.

    Colombia has long been among America’s staunchest Latin American allies, a pillar of Washington’s counternarcotics strategy abroad. For three decades, the U.S. has worked closely with Colombia, the world’s largest producer of cocaine, to arrest drug traffickers, fend off rebel groups and boost economic development in rural areas.

    Still, before Trump’s conciliatory post, tensions had been rising between the U.S. and Colombia for months.

    The Trump administration imposed sanctions in October on Petro, his family and a member of his government over accusations of involvement in the global drug trade. Colombia is considered the epicenter of the world’s cocaine trade.

    Trump began his monthslong pressure campaign on Maduro by ordering dozens of lethal strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats launched from Venezuela in the Caribbean. He eventually expanded the operations to also target suspected vessels in the eastern Pacific that came from Colombia.

    The U.S. in September added Colombia, the top recipient of American assistance in the region, to a list of nations failing to cooperate in the drug war for the first time in almost 30 years. The designation led to a slashing of U.S. assistance to the country.

    “He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories,” Trump said of Petro on Sunday. ”He’s not going to be doing it.”

  • Fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt a year after being burned down in LA-area wildfires

    Fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt a year after being burned down in LA-area wildfires

    LOS ANGELES — On the first anniversary of the most destructive wildfires in the LA area, the scant home construction projects stand out among the still mostly flattened landscapes.

    Fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt in Los Angeles County since the Jan. 7, 2025, Palisades and Eaton fires erupted, killing 31 people and destroying about 13,000 homes and other residential properties. The fires burned for more than three weeks and clean-up efforts took about seven months.

    For those who had insurance, it’s often not enough to cover the costs of construction. Relief organizations are stepping in to help, but progress is slow.

    Among the exceptions is Ted Koerner, whose Altadena home was reduced to ash and two chimneys. With his insurance payout tied up, the 67-year-old liquidated about 80% of his retirement holdings, secured contractors quickly, and moved decisively through the rebuilding process.

    Shortly before Thanksgiving, Koerner was among the first to finish a rebuild in the aftermath of the fires, which were fueled by drought and hurricane-force winds.

    But most do not have options like Koerner.

    The streets of the coastal community of Pacific Palisades and Altadena, a community in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, remain lined with dirt lots. In the seaside city of Malibu, foundations and concrete piles rising out of the sand are all that’s left of beachfront homes that once butted against crashing ocean waves.

    Neighborhoods are pitch black at night, with few streetlamps replaced. Even many homes that survived are not inhabited as families struggle to clear them of the fire’s toxic contaminants.

    Koerner was driven in part by fear that his beloved golden retriever, Daisy Mae, now 13 years old, might not live long enough to move into a new home, given the many months it can take to build even under the best circumstances.

    He also did not have to wait for his insurance payout to start construction.

    “That’s the only way we were going to get it done before all of a sudden my dog starts having labored breathing or something else happens,” Koerner said.

    Once construction began, his home was completed in just over four months.

    Daisy Mae is back lying in her favorite spot in the yard under a 175-year-old Heritage Oak. Koerner said he enjoys his morning coffee while watching her and it brings tears to his eyes.

    “We made it,” he said.

    Many fear they can’t afford to rebuild

    About 900 homes are under construction, potentially on pace to be completed later this year.

    Still, many homeowners are stuck as they figure out whether they can pay for the rebuilding process.

    Scores of residents have left their communities for good. More than 600 properties where a single-family home was destroyed in the wildfires have been sold, according to real estate data tracker Cotality.

    “We’re seeing huge gaps between the money insurance is paying out, to the extent we have insurance, and what it will actually cost to rebuild and/or remediate our homes,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, a group of 10,000 fire survivors mostly from Altadena.

    By December, less than 20% of people who experienced total home loss had closed out their insurance claims, according to a survey by the Department of Angels, a nonprofit that formed after the disaster to advocate for recovery efforts.

    About one-third of insured respondents had policies with State Farm, the state’s largest private insurer, or the California FAIR plan, the insurer of last resort. They reported high rates of dissatisfaction with both, citing burdensome requirements, lowball estimates, and dealing with multiple adjusters.

    In November, Los Angeles County opened a civil investigation into State Farm’s practices and potential violations of the state’s Unfair Competition law. Chen said the group has seen a flurry of substantial payouts since then.

    State Farm spokesperson Tom Hartman said in an email to the Associated Press on Wednesday that the company has addressed more than 13,500 claims and issued more than $5 billion in payments. He called the investigation a “distraction” and said the company is committed to helping.

    Without answers from insurance, households can’t commit to rebuilding projects that can easily exceed $1 million.

    “They’re worried about getting started and running out of money,” Chen said.

    An uncertain future

    Jessica Rogers discovered only after the Palisades fire destroyed her home that her coverage had been canceled.

    The mother of two’s fallback was a low-interest loan from the Small Business Administration, but the application process was grueling. After losing her job because of the fire and then having her identity stolen, her approval for $550,000 came through last month.

    She is still weighing how she’ll cover the remaining costs and says she wonders: “Do I empty out my 401(k) and start counting every penny in a penny jar around the apartment?”

    Rogers — now executive director of the Pacific Palisades Long Term Recovery Group — estimates there are hundreds like her in Pacific Palisades who are “stuck dealing with FEMA and SBA and figuring out if we could piecemeal something together to build our homes.”

    Also struggling to return home are the community’s renters, condo owners, and mobile homeowners. Meanwhile, many are also dealing with their trauma.

    “It’s not what people talk about, but it is incredibly apparent and very real,” said Rogers, who still finds herself crying at unexpected moments.

    A slow start

    That so few homes have been rebuilt a year after the wildfires echoes the recovery pattern of a December 2021 blaze that erupted south of Boulder, Colo., destroying more than 1,000 homes.

    “At the one-year mark, many lots had been cleared of debris and many residents had applied for building permits, said Andrew Rumbach, co-lead of the Climate and Communities Program at Urban Institute. “Around the 18-month mark is when you start to see really significant progress in terms of going from handfuls to hundreds” of homes rebuilt.

    Time will bring the scope of problems into focus.

    “You’re going to start to see some real inequality start to emerge where certain neighborhoods, certain types of people, certain types of properties are just lagging way far behind, and that becomes the really important question in the second year of a recovery: Who’s doing well and who is really struggling and why?” Rumbach said.

    That’s a key concern in Altadena, which for decades drew aspiring Black homeowners who otherwise faced redlining and other forms of racial discrimination when they sought to buy a home in other LA-area communities. In 2024, 81% of Black households in Altadena owned their homes, nearly twice the national Black homeownership rate.

    But recent research by UCLA’s Latino Policy & Politics Institute found that, as of August, 7 in 10 Altadena homeowners whose property was severely damaged in last year’s wildfire had not begun taking steps to rebuild or sell their home. Among these, Black homeowners were 73% more likely than others to have taken no action.

    Al and Charlotte Bailey, who lost their home in the Eaton Fire, have been living in an RV parked on the property where their house once stood in Altadena, Calif.

    Determined to rebuild

    Al and Charlotte Bailey have been living in an RV parked on the empty lot where their home once stood.

    The Baileys are paying for their rebuild with funds from their insurance payout and a loan. They’re also hoping to receive money from Southern California Edison. Several lawsuits claim its equipmentsparked the wildfire in Altadena.

    “We had been here for 41 years and raised our family here, and in one night it was all gone,” said Al Bailey, 77. “We decided that, whatever it’s going to cost, this is our community.”

  • House takes step toward extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, overpowering GOP leadership

    House takes step toward extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, overpowering GOP leadership

    WASHINGTON — Overpowering Speaker Mike Johnson, a bipartisan coalition in the House voted Wednesday to push forward a measure that would revive an enhanced pandemic-era subsidy that lowered health insurance costs for roughly 22 million people, but that had expired last month.

    The tally of 221-205 was a key test before passage of the bill, which is expected Thursday. And it came about because four GOP centrist lawmakers joined with Democrats in signing a so-called discharge petition to force the vote. After last year’s government shutdown failed to resolve the issue, they said doing nothing was not an option as many of their constituents faced soaring health insurance premiums beginning this month.

    Rep. Mike Lawler (R., N.Y.), one of the Republicans who crossed party lines to back the Democratic proposal, portrayed it as a vehicle senators could use to reach a compromise.

    “No matter the issue, if the House puts forward relatively strong, bipartisan support, it makes it easier for the senators to get there,” Lawler said.

    Republicans go around their leaders

    If ultimately successful in the House this week, the voting would show there is bipartisan support for a proposed three-year extension of the tax credits that are available for those who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The action forcing a vote has been an affront to Johnson and GOP leaders who essentially lost control of their House majority as the renegade lawmakers joined Democrats for the workaround.

    But the Senate is under no requirement to take up the bill.

    Instead, a small group of members from both parties are working on an alternative plan that could find support in both chambers and become law. One proposal would be to shorten the extension of the subsidy to two years and make changes to the program.

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) said any plan passing muster in the Senate will need to have income limits to ensure that it’s focused on those who most need the help and that beneficiaries would have to at least pay a nominal amount for their coverage.

    That way, he said, “insurance companies can’t game the system and auto-enroll people.” Finally, Thune said there would need to be some expansion of health savings accounts, which allow people to save money and withdraw it tax-free as long as the money is spent on qualified medical expenses.

    Democrats are pressing the issue

    It’s unclear the negotiations will yield a bill that the Senate will take up. Democrats are making clear that the higher health insurance costs many Americans are facing will be a political centerpiece of their efforts to retake the majority in the House and Senate in the fall elections.

    Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who led his party’s effort to push the healthcare issue forward, particularly challenged Republicans in competitive congressional districts to join if they really wanted to prevent steep premium increases for their constituents. Before Wednesday’s vote, he called on colleagues to “address the healthcare crisis in this country and make sure that tens of millions of people have the ability to go see a doctor when they need one.”

    Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan, and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Lawler signed the Democrats’ petition, pushing it to the magic number of 218 needed to force a House vote. All four represent key swing districts whose races will help determine which party takes charge of the House next year.

    Johnson (R., La.) 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 program.

    Lawmakers turn to discharge petitions to show support for an action and potentially force a vote on the House floor, but they are rarely successful. This session of Congress has proven an exception.

    A vote requiring the Department of Justice to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, for instance, occurred after Reps. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R. Ky.) introduced a petition on the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The signature effort was backed by all House Democrats and four Republicans.