Philadelphia local news, sports, jobs, cars, homes

Tag: no-latest

  • Trump announces outlines of healthcare plan he wants Congress to consider

    Trump announces outlines of healthcare plan he wants Congress to consider

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday announced the outlines of a healthcare plan he wants Congress to take up as Republicans have faced increasing pressure to address rising health costs after lawmakers let subsidies expire.

    The cornerstone is his proposal to send money directly to Americans for health savings accounts so they can handle insurance and health costs as they see fit. Democrats have rejected the idea as a paltry substitute for the tax credits that had helped lower monthly premiums for many people.

    “The government is going to pay the money directly to you,” Trump said in a taped video the White House released to announce the plan. “It goes to you and then you take the money and buy your own healthcare.”

    Trump’s plan also focuses on lowering drug prices and requiring insurers to be more upfront with the public about costs, revenues, rejected claims and wait times for care.

    Trump has long been dogged by his lack of a comprehensive healthcare plan as he and Republicans have sought to unwind former President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act. Trump was thwarted during his first term in trying to repeal and replace the law.

    When he ran for president in 2024, Trump said he had only “concepts of a plan” to address healthcare. His new proposal, short on many specifics, appeared to be the concepts of a plan.

    Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, described it to reporters on a telephone briefing as a “framework that we believe will help Congress create legislation.”

    It was not immediately clear if any lawmakers in Congress were working to introduce the Republican president’s plan. A White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and described some details on condition of anonymity said the administration had been discussing the proposal with allies in Congress, but was unable to name any lawmakers who were working to address the plan.

    Few specifics on health savings accounts

    The White House did not offer any details about how much money it envisioned being sent to consumers to shop for insurance, or whether the money would be available to all “Obamacare” enrollees or just those with lower-tier bronze and catastrophic plans.

    The idea mirrors one floated among Republican senators last year. Democrats largely rejected it, saying the accounts would not be enough to cover costs for most consumers. Currently, such accounts are used disproportionately by the wealthiest Americans, who have more income to fund them and a bigger incentive to lower their tax rate.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked at her briefing Thursday whether the president could guarantee that under his plan, people would be able to cover their health costs. She did not directly answer, but said, “If this plan is put in place, every single American who has health care in the United States will see lower costs as a result.”

    Enhanced tax credits that helped reduce the cost of insurance for the vast majority of Affordable Care Act enrollees expired at the end of 2025 even though Democrats had forced a 43-day government shutdown over the issue.

    Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio) has been leading a bipartisan group of 12 senators trying to devise a compromise that would extend those subsidies for two years while adding new limits on who can receive them. That proposal would create the option, in the second year, of a health savings account that Trump and Republicans prefer.

    The White House official denied that Trump was closing the door completely on those bipartisan negotiations, and said the White House preferred to send money directly to consumers.

    Plan follows massive cuts to health programs

    Trump’s plan comes months after the Republicans’ big tax and spending bill last year cut more than $1 trillion over a decade in federal healthcare and food assistance, largely by imposing work requirements on those receiving aid and shifting certain federal costs to the states.

    Democrats have blasted those cuts as devastating for vulnerable people who rely on programs such as Medicaid for their healthcare. The GOP bill included an infusion of $50 billion over five years for rural health programs, an amount experts have said is inadequate to fill the gap in funding.

    The White House said Trump’s new proposal will seek to bring down premiums by fully funding cost-sharing reductions, or CSRs, a type of financial help that insurers give to low-income ACA enrollees on silver-level, or mid-tier plans.

    From 2014 until 2017, the federal government reimbursed insurance companies for CSRs. In 2017, the first Trump administration stopped making those payments. To make up for the lost money, insurance companies raised premiums for silver-level plans. That ended up increasing the financial assistance many enrollees got to help them pay for premiums.

    As a result, health analysts say that while restoring money for CSRs would likely bring down silver-level premiums, as Trump says, it could have the unwelcome ripple effect of increasing many people’s net premiums on bronze and gold plans.

    Lowering drug prices is a priority

    Oz said Trump’s plans also seeks to have certain medications made available over the counter instead of by prescription if they are deemed safe enough. He mentioned higher-dose nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and peptic ulcer drugs as two examples.

    It was unclear whether the White House is asking Congress to take steps to make more prescription drugs available over the counter. For decades, the Food and Drug Administration has had the ability to do that.

    The heartburn drug Prilosec, as well as numerous allergy medications, are among those the FDA has approved for over-the-counter sales. The FDA only approves such changes if studies show patients can safely take the drug after reading the package labeling. Companies must apply for the switch.

    The White House said Trump’s plan would also codify his efforts to lower drug prices by tying prices to the lowest price paid by other countries.

    Trump has already struck deals with a number of drugmakers to get them to lower the prices. As part of that, the drugmakers have agreed to sell pharmacy-ready medicines directly to consumers who can shop online at the White House’s website for selling drugs directly to consumers, TrumpRx.gov.

    TrumpRx did not yet have any drugs listed on Thursday. Oz said drugs will be available on the website at the end of the month.

  • Trump’s promised manufacturing boom is a bust so far

    Trump’s promised manufacturing boom is a bust so far

    Introducing the highest U.S. tariffs since the Great Depression, President Donald Trump made a clear promise in the spring: “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country.”

    They haven’t.

    Manufacturing employment has declined every month since what Trump dubbed “Liberation Day” in April, saying his widespread tariffs would begin to rebalance global trade in favor of American workers. U.S. factories employ 12.7 million people today, 72,000 fewer than when Trump made his Rose Garden announcement.

    The trade measures that the president said would spur manufacturing have instead hampered it, according to most mainstream economists. That’s because roughly half of U.S. imports are “intermediate” goods that American companies use to make finished products, like aluminum that is shaped into soup cans or circuit boards that are inserted into computers.

    So while tariffs have protected American manufacturers like steel mills from foreign competition, they have raised costs for many others. Auto and auto parts employment, for example, has dipped by about 20,000 jobs since April.

    “2025 should have been a good year for manufacturing employment, and that didn’t happen. I think you really have to indict tariffs for that,” said economist Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana.

    Small- and midsize businesses have found Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs especially vexing. Fifty-seven percent of midsize manufacturers and 40 percent of small producers said they had no certainty about their input costs in a November survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Only 23 percent of large manufacturers shared that complaint.

    Smaller companies also were more than twice as likely to respond to tariffs by delaying investments in new plants and equipment, the survey found. One reason could be that taxes on imports raise the price of goods used in production much more than they do with typical consumer items, according to a study by the San Francisco Fed.

    Industries producing more technologically complex goods such as aircraft and semiconductors also are paying an outsize price, according to Gary Winslett, director of the international politics and economics program at Middlebury College. Makers of semiconductors, for example, shed more than 13,000 jobs since April.

    “They’re the ones who need the imported inputs. Really advanced manufacturing is actually what’s getting hit the hardest,” he said.

    Trump’s tariffs, however, are not the industrial sector’s only headache. Factory payrolls began their post-pandemic decline in early 2023, almost two years before Trump returned to the White House.

    High interest rates and a shift in consumer spending patterns are hurting the nation’s manufacturers, economists said. Business loans are more than twice as expensive as they were four years ago, with banks charging their most creditworthy borrowers interest rates of 6.75 percent. That discourages businesses from expanding operations and hiring additional workers.

    After bingeing during the height of the pandemic on durable goods, consumers have gradually redirected their spending to in-person services. Money that once went to makers of furniture, televisions and exercise machines now goes instead to restaurants and entertainment venues.

    In Indiana, the spending switch can be glimpsed in the fortunes of the recreational vehicle industry, a local mainstay. RV shipments soared to a record 600,400 in 2021 as consumers trapped at home by the pandemic hit the road. But by 2024, the work-from-home era was over, and sales fell by nearly half. Thor Industries, the largest RV manufacturer, laid off several hundred workers last year, as demand flagged.

    Once Trump returned to the White House, manufacturers responded by over-ordering imports to beat the anticipated tariffs. That’s left many producers with more inventory than they need, suggesting cuts lie ahead, according to Hicks.

    “The manufacturing job losses that we see now are really just the beginning of what will be a pretty grim couple of quarters as manufacturing adjusts to a new lower level of demand,” he said.

    Modest numbers of manufacturing jobs have been trimmed throughout the economy. In December, Westlake Corp., a Houston-based producer of industrial chemicals, said it would idle four production lines at facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi, putting 295 employees out of work. Speaking on an investor call, company executives blamed excess global capacity and weak demand for the move.

    While the jobs that Trump promised have not materialized, factory output rose in 2025, reaching its highest mark in almost three years, according to Federal Reserve data, and administration officials said it is only a matter of time before the full benefits of the president’s plan are felt.

    Trump’s tariffs and jawboning encourage CEOs to invest in new U.S. plants. Provisions in the president’s signature fiscal legislation permitting companies to quickly write off the full expense of new investments in equipment and research and development expenses will spur modern manufacturing, they said.

    “It also encourages the build-out of high-precision manufacturing here at home, which will lead to high-paying construction and factory jobs,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a speech this month.

    Companies are spending more than three times as much on constructing new factories as they did when Trump was first inaugurated, though less than during the Biden-era peak. The White House last fall hailed recent investment announcements by companies such as Stellantis and Whirlpool. Last month, T. RAD North America, a subsidiary of a Japanese manufacturer, announced plans for a new auto parts plant in Clarksville, Tennessee, which would employ 928 workers.

    Nick Iacovella, a spokesman for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which backs Trump’s manufacturing policies, said the roughly 1 percent shrinkage in factory employment last year was less significant than the uptick in business investment.

    “We saw a significant increase in capital expenditures, which is the earliest signal that reindustrialization is taking hold. Those investments take time to permit, build and staff before they show up in employment data,” he said.

    The president’s hopes of increasing manufacturing employment defy decades of experience in the United States and other advanced economies. American factory jobs peaked at 19.5 million in the summer of 1979 and have been sliding ever since, largely because of the introduction of machinery that can do the job of several workers.

    As two presidents sought to revive domestic production over the past decade, manufacturing employment rode a roller coaster. Factory jobs increased by 421,000 during Trump’s first term before sinking by more than 1 million during the pandemic. President Joe Biden used government subsidies to encourage hiring, especially for green energy projects, and manufacturing payrolls rose more than 100,000 above Trump’s highest mark.

    But those gains evaporated by the end of 2024.

    On Tuesday, the president addressed the Detroit Economic Club, touting “the strongest and fastest economic turnaround in our country’s history.” He boasted about growth, productivity, investment, incomes, inflation and the stock market.

    “The Trump economic boom is officially begun,” the president said.

    All that’s missing now are the jobs.

    GRAPHIC

    https://washingtonpost.com/documents/fa67e068-5b52-48f2-aaf1-1cf62d5ac320.pdf
  • Lawmakers propose $2.5B agency to boost production of rare earths and other critical minerals

    Lawmakers propose $2.5B agency to boost production of rare earths and other critical minerals

    WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers have proposed creating a new agency with $2.5 billion to spur production of rare earths and the other critical minerals, while the Trump administration has already taken aggressive actions to break China’s grip on the market for these materials that are crucial to high-tech products, including cellphones, electric vehicles, jet fighters and missiles.

    It’s too early to tell how the bill, if passed, could align with the White House’s policy, but whatever the approach, the U.S. is in a crunch to drastically reduce its reliance on China, after Beijing used its dominance of the critical minerals market to gain leverage in the trade war with Washington. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a one-year truce in October, by which Beijing would continue to export critical minerals while the U.S. would ease its export controls of U.S. technology on China.

    The Pentagon has shelled out nearly $5 billion over the past year to help ensure its access to the materials after the trade war laid bare just how beholden the U.S. is to China, which processes more than 90% of the world’s critical minerals. To break Beijing’s chokehold, the U.S. government is taking equity stakes in a handful of critical mineral companies and in some cases guaranteeing the price of some commodities using an approach that seems more likely to come out of China’s playbook instead of a Republican administration.

    The bill that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.) and Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.) introduced Thursday would favor a more market-based approach by setting up the independent body charged with building a stockpile of critical minerals and related products, stabilizing prices, and encouraging domestic and allied production to help ensure stable supply not only for the military but also the broader economy and manufacturers.

    Shaheen called the legislation “a historic investment” to make the U.S. economy more resilient against China’s dominance that she said has left the U.S. vulnerable to economic coercion. Young said creating the new reserve is “a much-needed, aggressive step to protect our national and economic security.”

    Rep. Rob Wittman (R., Va.) introduced the House version of the bill.

    New sense of urgency

    When Trump imposed widespread tariffs last spring, Beijing fought back not only with tit-for-tat tariffs but severe restrictions on the export of critical minerals, forcing Washington to back down and eventually agree to the truce when the leaders met in South Korea.

    On Monday, in his speech at SpaceX, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that the Pentagon has in the past five months alone “deployed over $4.5 billion in capital commitments” to close six critical minerals deals that will “help free the United States from market manipulation.”

    One of the deals involves a $150 million of preferred equity by the Pentagon in Atlantic Alumina Co. to save the country’s last alumina refinery and build its first large-scale gallium production facility in Louisiana.

    Last year, the Pentagon announced it would buy $400 million of preferred stock in MP Materials, which owns the country’s only operational rare earths mine at Mountain Pass, California, and entered into a $1.4-billion joint partnership with ReElement Technologies Corp. to build up a domestic supply chain for rare earth magnets.

    On Wednesday, Trump announced in a proclamation that the U.S. is “too reliant” on foreign-sourced critical minerals and directed his administration to negotiate better deals. He said possible remedies would include minimum import prices for certain critical minerals.

    “Reshoring manufacturing that’s critical to our national and economic security is a top priority for the Trump administration,” said Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson.

    The drastic move by the U.S. government to take equity stakes has prompted some analysts to observe that Washington is pivoting to some form of state capitalism to compete with Beijing.

    “Despite the dangers of political interference, the strategic logic is compelling,” wrote Elly Rostoum, a senior fellow at the Washington-based research institute Center for European Policy Analysis. She suggested that the new model could be “a prudent way for the U.S. to ensure strategic autonomy and industrial sovereignty.”

    Companies across the industry are welcoming the intervention from Trump’s administration.

    “He is playing three-dimensional chess on critical minerals like no previous president has done. It’s about time too, given the military and strategic vulnerability we face by having to import so many of these fundamental building blocks of technology and national defense,” NioCorp’s Chief Communications Officer Jim Sims said. That company is trying to finish raising the money it needs to build a mine in southeast Nebraska.

    Relying on allies for help

    In addition to trying to boost domestic production, the Trump administration has sought to secure some of these crucial elements through allies. In October, Trump signed an $8.5 billion agreement with Australia to invest in mining there, and the president is now aggressively trying to take over Greenland in the hope of being able to one day extract rare earths from there.

    On Monday, finance ministers from the G7 nations huddled in Washington over their vulnerability in the critical mineral supply chains.

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has led several rounds of trade negotiations with Beijing, urged attendees to increase their supply chain resiliency and thanked them for their willingness to work together “toward decisive action and lasting solutions,” according to a Treasury statement.

    The bill introduced on Thursday by Shaheen and Young would encourage production with both domestic and allied producers.

    Past efforts to bolster rare earths production

    Congress in the past several years has pushed for legislation to protect the U.S. military and civilian industry from Beijing’s chokehold. The issue became a pressing concern every time China turned to its proven tactics of either restricting the supply or turned to dumping extra critical minerals on the market to depress prices and drive any potential competitors out of business.

    The Biden administration sought to increase demand for critical minerals domestically by pushing for more electric vehicle and windmill production. But the Trump administration largely eliminated the incentives for those products and instead chose to focus on increasing critical minerals production directly.

    Most of those past efforts were on a much more limited scale than what the government has done in the past year, and they were largely abandoned after China relented and eased access to critical minerals.

  • Public mistrust linked to drop in deceased donor organ donations and kidney transplants

    Public mistrust linked to drop in deceased donor organ donations and kidney transplants

    WASHINGTON — Organ donations from the recently deceased dropped last year for the first time in over a decade, resulting in fewer kidney transplants, according to an analysis issued Wednesday that pointed to signs of public mistrust in the lifesaving system.

    More than 100,000 people in the U.S. are on the list for an organ transplant. The vast majority of them need a kidney, and thousands die waiting every year.

    The nonprofit Kidney Transplant Collaborative analyzed federal data and found 116 fewer kidney transplants were performed last year than in 2024. That small difference is a red flag because the analysis traced the decline to some rare but scary reports of patients prepared for organ retrieval despite showing signs of life.

    Those planned retrievals were stopped and the U.S. is developing additional safeguards for the transplant system, which saves tens of thousands of lives each year. But it shook public confidence, prompting some people to remove their names from donor lists.

    Andrew Howard, who leads the Kidney Transplant Collaborative, said last year’s dip in kidney transplants would have been larger except for a small increase — about 100 — in transplants from living donors, when a healthy person donates one of their kidneys to someone in need. The collaborative advocates for increased living donations, which make up a fraction of the roughly 28,000 yearly kidney transplants.

    With the exception of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was raging, organ transplants have been rising year-to-year. Last year’s decline in deceased donors didn’t translate into fewer transplants overall: There were just over 49,000 compared with 48,150 in 2024. Transplants of hearts, livers and lungs continued to see gains, according to federal data. Howard said that was likely due to differences in how various organs are evaluated and allocated for transplant.

    The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations wasn’t involved in Wednesday’s analysis but expressed alarm, calling on its members, hospitals and federal regulators “to unite in restoring public trust and strengthening this critical system.”

  • Moscow agrees with Trump that Ukraine is holding up a peace deal, the Kremlin says

    Moscow agrees with Trump that Ukraine is holding up a peace deal, the Kremlin says

    Moscow agrees with President Donald Trump’s view that Ukraine is holding up a peace deal to end the almost four years of fighting since Russia invaded its neighbor, a Kremlin official said Thursday.

    Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “Yes, we can agree with it, it’s indeed so.” His comments came after Trump said in published remarks Wednesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is an obstacle in U.S.-led peace talks.

    That assessment is at odds with the sentiment of European officials, who have repeatedly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of stalling in negotiations while his bigger army tries to push deeper into Ukraine and Russia relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities.

    Kyiv and Moscow still appear publicly far apart on their terms for a peace deal.

    “I think he’s ready to make a deal,” Trump was quoted as saying of the Russian president in an interview with Reuters. “I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal,” he said, naming Zelensky as obstructing a settlement.

    Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who along with many European and NATO member nations has strongly backed Ukraine, pushed back on Trump’s reported comments.

    “It is Russia who rejected the peace plan prepared by the U.S.,” not Zelensky, Tusk posted on X on Thursday. “The only Russian response (was) further missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. This is why the only solution is to strengthen pressure on Russia. And you all know it.”

    Putin said Thursday that Moscow, like Ukraine, demands security guarantees as part of a prospective peace deal.

    “We must proceed from the premise that security must be truly universal, and therefore equal and indivisible, and it cannot be ensured for some at the expense of the security of others,” Putin said after receiving credentials from foreign ambassadors in the Kremlin.

    “In the absence of it, Russia will continue to consistently pursue the goals it has set,” Putin added.

    Trump’s position appeared to deviate from recent comments by U.S. officials that the American president is running out of patience with Putin.

    U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said last week that Trump is on board with a tough sanctions package intended to economically cripple Russia.

    “This will be well-timed, as Ukraine is making concessions for peace and Putin is all talk, continuing to kill the innocent,” Graham said in a statement.

    Also, the United States accused Russia on Monday of a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation” of its war at a time when the Trump administration is trying to advance negotiations toward peace.

    The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said late Wednesday that “the Kremlin has been delaying the peace process for months in order to protract the war and achieve Russia’s original war aims through military means.”

    A Russian drone struck a playground in the western city of Lviv overnight, according to the head of the regional military administration Maksym Kozytskyi. The blast shattered over a hundred windows in the area, though nobody was injured, he said.

    Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said that no date has been agreed for U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff to make another visit to Moscow for further peace talks.

  • Native Americans are being swept up by ICE in Minneapolis, tribes say

    Native Americans are being swept up by ICE in Minneapolis, tribes say

    For hours, Raelyn Duffy searched for any information that could lead to the whereabouts of her son, Jose Roberto “Beto” Ramirez, who that morning had been forcibly removed from his aunt’s car and detained by masked federal immigration officers in Robbinsdale, Minn.

    Ramirez, 20, is Native American — and a U.S. citizen. But video of his arrest last Thursday shows that the officers were unmoved by his aunt’s panicked screams informing them of his legal status. They yanked Ramirez from the passenger’s seat, slammed him on the hood of another car, handcuffed him and took him away.

    Friends identified Ramirez from a Facebook Live video of the arrest and alerted Duffy, who rushed home, grabbed her son’s birth certificate and called Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    Ramirez, a descendant of the Red Lake Nation, a federally recognized Ojibwe tribe in northern Minnesota, was held in custody for about 10 hours, his mother said in an interview. He is among several Native Americans who have allegedly been swept up in the Trump administration’s surge in immigration enforcement operations in the Minneapolis area that began late last month and has escalated since a U.S. citizen was fatally shot by an ICE agent last week.

    Despite widespread protests over the killing of Renée Good, Trump administration officials say they are surging hundreds more immigration officers into the city and surrounding areas.

    Tribal leaders and members who live in the greater Minneapolis area say Indigenous family members, friends and neighbors have been stopped, questioned, harassed and, in some cases, detained solely on the basis of their skin color or their names. Some immigration experts suggested ICE officers might have racially profiled them and mistaken them for being Hispanic.

    Like Ramirez, four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe were detained by ICE officers soon after the Minneapolis operation began, according to tribal president Frank Star Comes Out. Tribal leaders for days unsuccessfully sought information about their status before learning that one man had been released, he said in a statement Tuesday.

    The other three remain in custody at the B.H. Whipple Federal Building in Fort Snelling, on the outskirts of Minneapolis, where ICE has detained people arrested in the enforcement operation, he said.

    “Members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe are United States citizens,” Star Comes Out said. “We are the first Americans. We are not undocumented immigrants, and we are not subject to unlawful immigration enforcement actions by ICE or Homeland Security.”

    Star Comes Out did not identify the men; he said he is basing his accounts of their arrests on information offered by the tribal community. The Washington Post was unable to independently verify the men’s names or confirm their arrests.

    The Whipple Building stands on the site of a military fort that, during the Dakota War of 1862 between Native American and white settlers, was used to imprison Indigenous people. Two Dakota leaders were executed at Fort Snelling in 1865.

    “The irony is not lost on us,” Star Comes Out said in the statement. “Lakota citizens who are reported to be held at Fort Snelling … underscores why treaty obligations and federal accountability matter today, not just in history.”

    The Department of Homeland Security disputed the tribe’s allegations, saying it has no record of its immigration officers detaining the tribe members.

    “We have not uncovered any claims by individuals in our detention centers that they are members of the Oglala Sioux tribe,” a spokesperson said in response to questions from the Post.

    In Ramirez’s case, Duffy said she heard from him only after he had been held for hours at the Whipple Building. Upon his release, Ramirez regained access to his phone and called her to tell her what had happened.

    “The upper part of his back, back of his neck, you could just see all of it — scratches, or like marks from being hit,” Duffy said, describing injuries she said resulted from his arrest. “He was all marked up. His hands had cuts from the handcuffs.”

    She added: “It’s racial profiling. It’s crazy.”

    The DHS spokesperson did not respond to the Post’s question about Ramirez.

    Elizabeth Hidalgo Reese, Yunpoví, a scholar of American Indian tribal law at Stanford Law School who was born in the Nambé Pueblo, a Tewa-speaking tribe in northern New Mexico, noted that Minnesota has 11 federally recognized tribes and suggested that Native Americans are “getting caught up in this search for Brown people who look a certain way.”

    Some Democratic state lawmakers are speaking out. State Sen. Mary Kunesh and state Reps. Heather Keeler and Liish Kozlowski, members of the Native American Caucus, expressed concerns in recent days that “countless” Native American community members in Minnesota have reported “being harassed, stopped without cause, and interrogated for documentation.”

    The Oglala Sioux Tribe’s leaders said they notified federal officials that detaining tribal members under federal immigration authority is not only unlawful but also violates binding treaties between the federal government and the tribe.

    “These are sovereign nations,” Kunesh said in an interview. “Using members of the tribe as pawns in micromanaging or emotionally manipulating tribes is just abhorrent.”

    Star Comes Out said that federal authorities said they would provide more information on the detained tribe members only if tribal leaders entered into an agreement with ICE that would empower the leaders to help make immigration arrests.

    The Trump administration has pressured localities across the country into what are known as “287(g) agreements,” which deputize local law enforcement to assist in federal immigration enforcement. More than 1,300 jurisdictions across 40 states have entered the agreements, according to ICE. That is up from 135 at the end of fiscal 2024, according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute.

    In a letter to several Trump administration officers, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Star Comes Out said the tribe would not entertain such an agreement.

    “We will not enter an agreement that would authorize, or make it easier, for ICE or Homeland Security to come onto our tribal homeland to arrest or detain our tribal members,” he wrote.

    Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, said the idea that DHS would leverage information on detainees to pressure tribes to enter 287(g) pacts raises “very real concerns.”

    Asked about the allegations, the DHS spokesperson said: “ICE did NOT ask the tribe for any kind of agreement. We have simply asked for basic information on the individuals, such as names and date of birth so that we can run a proper check to provide them with the facts.”

    Kozlowski, who is of Anishinaabe Ojibwe and Mexican American descent, said the situation highlights the imperative for Native Americans in Minnesota to remain outspoken and vigilant about defending their rights.

    “Trump [is] saying: If you don’t come along with our agenda and enter into agreements and your places of business and lands don’t support us, then we will crush you,” Kozlowski said. “But the thing is that they’ve never been able to crush our spirits — ever.”

  • Your body doesn’t need a detox cleanse. Do this instead.

    Your body doesn’t need a detox cleanse. Do this instead.

    The question: Do detox cleanses really work?

    The science: Detox cleanses are all over social media, with people claiming the diets remove toxins, help you lose weight, and supposedly reset your body using a strict regimen of juices, herbal teas, or other liquids; supplements; or fasting or eliminating certain foods.

    But despite the hype, there is little evidence that these cleanses do what they claim, and they can be risky for people with eating disorders and other health issues such as heart and kidney diseases, experts said.

    “This has become a multibillion-dollar industry because people are looking for quick fixes,” said Tinsay Woreta, an associate professor in gastroenterology and hepatology at Johns Hopkins University. “But a quick detox for three to seven days is not going to have the same benefits as a long-term healthy lifestyle.”

    Detox cleanses are touted as a way to remove toxic substances in our bodies from sources such as ultra-processed foods, alcohol, microplastics, air pollution and household cleaners.

    Some juice cleanses, often built around lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, claim to improve liver function, remove toxins, and boost metabolic function, among other things. Others may call for food restriction or a complete fast, herbal teas and supplements, even laxatives or what are known as colon cleanses. Depending on the detox, it may last a couple of days or up to three weeks or so. By the end, you’re told to expect more energy, glowing skin and stronger nails, and a smaller waist. But although you might see short-lived weight loss, you’re unlikely to get actual detoxification, experts said.

    Your body already has a well-established filtration system. Your lungs trap and expel airborne toxins, your intestines remove foodborne organisms, and your kidneys filter your blood and eliminate waste through urine. Your body’s main detox center, however, is your liver, which processes blood from your digestive system and converts toxins such as alcohol into waste products that can be safely eliminated from your body, Woreta said.

    “We don’t have any evidence that if you eat a well-balanced diet that these cleanses are adding anything” — and they can’t undo damage that already has been done to your body, she said.

    A 2014 research review concluded that there was “very little evidence” to support the health claims of detox diets, and favorable studies of commercial ones were “hampered by flawed methodologies and small sample sizes.” In a 2022 review of fad diets, researchers found no clinical evidence proving or disproving weight loss effectiveness of commercial detox diets but noted that “the success rate of dieting, in general, is only 20%.”

    In 2017, researchers reported that juicing or “detoxification” diets may lead to short-term weight loss because of low caloric intake, but the weight often returns once a normal diet is resumed.

    For instance, the popular lemonade diet or lemon detox diet is usually done for a couple of days to a few weeks and excludes solid food. People begin their day with salt water; drink several glasses of a beverage made of lemon juice, maple syrup, water, and cayenne pepper throughout the day; and have a cup of herbal tea at night. This diet provides somewhere between 600 and 1,200 calories per day when adult women need 1,600 to 2,400 calories and men need 2,200 to 3,000 calories, according to the most recent government dietary guidelines.

    More recently, in 2024, researchers analyzed TikTok videos promoting detoxes and other diets and found that the most popular posts frequently made unsubstantiated health claims, which the authors said posed potential risks to users, including disordered eating.

    Juice cleanses can be risky for people who are vulnerable to eating disorders as they can trigger episodes of undereating or, on the flip side, severe overeating, said Rhonda Merwin, a professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University, who was not involved in the study. Cleanses may also lead to other behaviors to get rid of perceived toxins, such as using laxatives or diuretics, which can become frequent and dangerous, she said.

    Fruit and vegetable juices do contain vitamins and minerals and can be a source of antioxidants, though they lack the fiber found in whole fruits and vegetables. But juice cleanses may lack protein, essential fats, soluble vitamins, and fiber, leading to electrolyte and blood sugar imbalances, which can cause lightheadedness, dizziness, and headaches, said Julia Zumpano, a registered dietitian with the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Human Nutrition.

    This is especially a concern for people with cardiovascular or kidney disease and taking medications for those conditions because imbalances of sodium and potassium electrolytes can lead to dangerous arrhythmias, said Wendy Weber, the acting deputy director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the National Institutes of Health.

    Additionally, juices high in certain vegetables may increase the risk of kidney stones for those who are prone to them. Spinach, for instance, can be high in oxalates, compounds that bind to minerals such as calcium and can exacerbate kidney stones, Weber said.

    And although some fruit juices, such as most orange juice brands, don’t contain added sugars, high levels of natural sugars aren’t good for your health. Dietitians recommend one or two glasses of fruit juice a day, and not eight.

    What else you should know

    You may feel better after a cleanse because you’ve cut out processed foods, added sugars, and alcohol. But a cleanse is of short duration. A more sustainable long-term approach is to limit these items and eat healthy whole foods, Weber said.

    Here are more tips from experts:

    • Eat a balanced diet. A balanced diet — such as the Mediterranean diet — of fruit, vegetables, nuts, grains, and lean protein such as fish and chicken and that avoids processed and fatty foods, added sugars, and artificial sweeteners can reduce your risk of liver disease and other health problems, Woreta said. Also, follow nutrition labels for proper portion sizes. Most people eat larger portions than recommended, Weber said, explaining that one serving size of protein should be no larger than the size of your palm.
    • Be physically active. Adults should get at least 150 minutes per week, or 30 minutes five days per week, of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, according to recommendations from the American Heart Association. “Being physically active as much as you’re able to do so, whether walking or taking up a new exercise routine — anything you can really sustain and stick to — that’s what’s going to have long-term benefit,” Weber said.
    • Limit alcohol intake. Even moderate drinking — defined as up to two drinks per day for men and one for women — is linked to a higher risk of developing certain cancers such as breast, colorectal, and esophageal cancers, as well as brain changes and dementia, heart problems, and sleep problems.

    The bottom line: While some detox diets contain vitamins and minerals and can be a source of antioxidants, they don’t meet all your daily nutritional needs and don’t lead to the same long-term benefits as adopting a healthy diet and lifestyle.

  • Vaccines are helping older people more than we knew

    Vaccines are helping older people more than we knew

    Let’s be clear: The primary reason to be vaccinated against shingles is that two shots provide at least 90% protection against a painful, blistering disease that a third of Americans will suffer in their lifetimes, one that can cause lingering nerve pain and other nasty long-term consequences.

    The most important reason for older adults to be vaccinated against the respiratory infection RSV is that their risk of being hospitalized with it declines by almost 70% in the year they get the shot, and by nearly 60% over two years.

    And the main reason to roll up a sleeve for an annual flu shot is that when people do get infected, it also reliably reduces the severity of illness, though its effectiveness varies by how well scientists have predicted which strain of influenza shows up.

    But other reasons for older people to be vaccinated are emerging. They are known, in doctorspeak, as off-target benefits, meaning that the shots do good things beyond preventing the diseases they were designed to avert.

    The list of off-target benefits is lengthening as “the research has accumulated and accelerated over the last 10 years,” said William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.

    Some of these protections have been established by years of data; others are the subjects of more recent research, and the payoff is not yet as clear. The first RSV vaccines, for example, became available only in 2023.

    Still, the findings “are really very consistent,” said Stefania Maggi, a geriatrician and senior fellow at the Institute of Neuroscience at the National Research Council in Padua, Italy.

    She is the lead author of a recent meta-analysis, published in the British journal Age and Ageing, that found reduced risks of dementia after vaccination for an array of diseases. Given those “downstream effects,” she said, vaccines “are key tools to promote healthy aging and prevent physical and cognitive decline.”

    Yet too many older adults, whose weakening immune systems and high rates of chronic illness put them at higher risk of infectious diseases, have not taken advantage of vaccination.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week that about 31% of older adults had not yet received a flu shot. Only about 41% of adults 75 and older had ever been vaccinated against RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, and about a third of seniors had received the most recent COVID-19 vaccine.

    The CDC recommends the one-and-done pneumococcal vaccine for adults 50 and older. An analysis in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, however, estimated that from 2022, when new guidelines were issued, through 2024, only about 12% of those 67 to 74 received it, and about 8% of those 75 and older.

    The strongest evidence for off-target benefits, dating back 25 years, shows reduced cardiovascular risk following flu shots.

    Healthy older adults vaccinated against flu have substantially lower risks of hospitalization for heart failure, as well as for pneumonia and other respiratory infections. Vaccination against influenza has also been associated with lower risks of heart attack and stroke.

    Moreover, many of these studies predate the more potent flu vaccines now recommended for older adults.

    Could the RSV vaccine, protective against another respiratory illness, have similar cardiovascular effects? A recent large Danish study of older adults found a nearly 10% decline in cardiorespiratory hospitalizations — involving the heart and lungs — among the vaccinated versus a control group, a significant decrease.

    Lowered rates of cardiovascular hospitalizations and stroke did not reach statistical significance, however. That may reflect a short follow-up period or inadequate diagnostic testing, cautioned Helen Chu, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Washington and co-author of an accompanying editorial in JAMA.

    “I don’t think RSV behaves differently from flu,” Chu said. “It’s just too early to have the information for RSV, but I think it will show the same effect, maybe even more so.”

    Vaccination against still another dangerous respiratory disease, COVID, has been linked to a lower risk of developing long COVID, with its damaging effects on physical and mental health.

    Probably the most provocative findings concern vaccination against shingles, aka herpes zoster. Researchers made headlines last year when they documented an association between shingles vaccination and lower rates of dementia — even with the less effective vaccine that has since been replaced by Shingrix, approved in 2017.

    Nearly all studies of off-target benefits are observational, because scientists cannot ethically withhold a safe, effective vaccine from a control group whose members could then become infected with the disease.

    That means such studies are subject to “healthy volunteer bias,” because vaccinated patients may also practice other healthy habits, differentiating them from those not vaccinated.

    Although researchers try to control for a variety of potentially confounding differences, from age and sex to health and education, “we can only say there’s a strong association, not a cause and effect,” Maggi said.

    But Stanford researchers seized on a natural experiment in Wales in 2013, when the first shingles vaccine, Zostavax, became available to older people who had not yet turned 80. Anyone who had was ineligible.

    Over seven years, dementia rates in participants who had been eligible for vaccination declined by 20% — even though only half had actually received the vaccine — compared with those who narrowly missed the cutoff.

    “There are no reasons people born one week before were different from those born a few days later,” Maggi said. Studies in Australia and the United States have also found reductions in the odds of dementia following shingles shots.

    In fact, in the meta-analysis Maggi and her team published, several other childhood and adult vaccinations appeared to have such effects. “We now know that many infections are associated with the onset of dementia, both Alzheimer’s and vascular,” she said.

    In 21 studies involving more than 104 million participants in Europe, Asia, and North America, vaccination against shingles was associated with a 24% reduction in the risk of developing dementia. Flu vaccination was linked to a 13% reduction. Those vaccinated against pneumococcal disease had a 36% reduction in Alzheimer’s risk.

    The Tdap vaccine against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (whooping cough) is recommended for adults every 10 years, with vaccination among older adults often prompted by the birth of a grandchild, who cannot be fully vaccinated for months. It was associated with a one-third decline in dementia.

    Other researchers are investigating the effects of shingles vaccination on heart attacks and stroke and of COVID vaccination on cancer survival.

    What causes such vaccine bonuses? Most hypotheses focus on the inflammation that arises when the immune system mobilizes to fight off an infection. “You have damage to the surrounding environment” in the body, “and that takes time to calm down,” Chu said.

    The effects of inflammation can far outlast the initial illness. It may allow other infections to take hold, or cause heart attacks and strokes when clots form in narrowed blood vessels. “If you prevent the infection, you prevent this other damage,” Chu said.

    Hospitalization itself, during which older patients can become deconditioned or develop delirium, is a risk factor for dementia, among other health problems. Vaccines that reduce hospitalization might therefore delay or ward off cognitive decline.

    Health officials in the Trump administration have assailed childhood vaccines more than adult ones, but their vocal opposition may be contributing to inadequate vaccination among older Americans, too.

    Many will not only miss out on the emerging off-target benefits but will remain vulnerable to the diseases the vaccines prevent or diminish.

    “The current national policy on vaccination is at best uncertain, and in instances appears anti-vaccine,” said Schaffner, a former member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. “All of us in public health are very, very distressed.”

    “The New Old Age” is produced through a partnership with The New York Times.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

  • Letters to the Editor | Jan. 15, 2026

    Letters to the Editor | Jan. 15, 2026

    Missed warning

    President Donald Trump issued a warning to Iranian officials that there better not be any shooting of protesters. I’m waiting for him to issue the same warning to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in the good ol’ USA. Or we could deport all the ICE officials to countries where you leave your conscience at home in order to earn your paycheck. I’ll help them pack.

    Carol Rhodes, Barnsboro

    Direct line

    I call on all people of good conscience to unite. Let’s stop allowing the mass media to put us into different camps. Let our goodness unite us across party lines. Please consider this seriously. I see a direct line from the president of the United States pointing a finger at a female reporter exercising her First Amendment rights and saying, “Quiet piggy” to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent pointing his gun and firing three shots to the head of an unarmed mother exercising her First Amendment rights. This is not the American way. All good people must unite to save America’s core principles. Liberals, conservatives, libertarians, independents all share a basic human sense of right and wrong. We must unite on those principles and stop allowing the media to pit us against each other. Start now: Declare the killing of Renee Good unacceptable, not just unfortunate.

    Patrick Shanahan, Philadelphia

    House of contradictions

    The president is a master of contradictions. While claiming to make cities safer by removing criminal immigrants, he is fomenting discord and violence. He promised lower prices and economic security, and instead, many businesses are forced to raise prices due to tariffs. While the stock market has rallied, the roller-coaster ride of wild ups and downs has undermined economic security and slowed hiring by wary corporations. He pledged to avoid foreign entanglements, yet unashamedly engages in saber-rattling over Venezuela and Greenland. While claiming to be fighting a drug war by blowing up alleged drug boats, he pardons convicted drug lords like Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras and Ross Ulbricht of the online Silk Road drug marketplace. He accuses Joe Biden of having done nothing, yet fentanyl deaths dropped almost 30% in Biden’s final year in office due to addiction programs. Insisting he is fighting radical left decadence by imposing “objective” Christian values, he spews hateful, racist remarks, claiming his “morality” dictates his actions. Promising to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, he pushes plans to build Versailles in place of the East Wing. And Truth Social? Anything but.

    John Groch, West Chester

    Fraud and abuse

    In answering a reporter’s question about how long the U.S. will be in Venezuela (Months? A year? Longer?), President Donald Trump said, “I would say much longer.” The implication is that U.S. resources, financial and otherwise, will go to Venezuela. It would be naive to think that some of those dollars won’t find their way into the wrong pockets, never achieve the intended purpose, or duplicate other efforts. These hints of waste, fraud, or abuse will not likely cause the administration to pause any of this work the way it did when it terminated programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development while it looked for waste, fraud, and abuse. None was ever reported, but children were deprived of food, medicine, and education, and communities saw life-sustaining projects ended, leading to starvation, suffering, and death. In Venezuela, it’s the illusion of an imperial U.S. that must be preserved, not the lives of human beings.

    Carol Olivieri, Pennington

    Stay tuned

    I turned on my TV yesterday in the middle of a news broadcast, and the announcer was saying that “the supreme leader vows to continue the crackdown on protesters.” I honestly wasn’t sure if they were talking about America or Iran.

    Stefan Keller, Huntingdon Valley

    Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.

  • Dear Abby | Brother-in-law’s new squeeze is a familiar face

    DEAR ABBY: Please help me move forward. My brother-in-law is dating a woman my husband was intimate with once before we were married. It makes family functions very awkward for me, but most of the family sees it as the past. It was the past, but it is now in our faces. My husband feels the same way.

    Do we just keep the peace and stay away from functions as she seems to be more accepted than I am? We have been married 37 years. Are we being unreasonable??

    — CONFUSED IN THE EAST

    DEAR CONFUSED: Oh, my. It seems like “who goes around comes around.” It’s a shame that you can’t leave the past — a one-night stand more than 37 years ago — in the past and find the humor in this. I suspect it happens more often than you think. Please quit regarding this as a competition between you and your brother-in-law’s girlfriend. Your husband chose YOU. End of contest. If there is cause for embarrassment, it should be hers, not yours.

    ** ** **

    DEAR ABBY: My wife, “Muriel,” and I have been together for 10 years and married for seven. She has worked in animal rescue for much of her life. Muriel thinks she has to save them all. No amount of explaining the financial and other consequences gets through to her.

    We currently have 21 pets living in our house. I have tried searching for support groups that might help, but to no avail. Even if I found such a group, my wife won’t admit there is a problem. Can you help?

    — STUMPED IN THE MIDWEST

    DEAR STUMPED: I’ll try. I will also venture to say that 21 animals living in a house may not be healthy for all concerned. Because your wife is unable to listen to reason, contact animal control services in your city or county and explain what’s going on. (I’m surprised one of your neighbors hasn’t already tipped them off.) Your wife may have a heart of gold, but those creatures deserve a better standard of care than what your wife can give them.

    ** ** **

    DEAR ABBY: I delivered mail for 36 years. For 25 of those years, my route was in a retirement community. I’m retired now, and it upsets me when I am not contacted when someone I was friendly with for 25 years passes away. This is happening more and more.

    Yes, I was their mail lady, but I was also their friend. I got to know and love all my customers. Their children knew who I was. The ones I was closest to are the ones whose deaths upset me the most because I wasn’t notified. I know I’m not a relative, but still it hurts. If they read this, they will know who they are. I’m not angry. I’m just hurt. Do you understand?

    — RETIRED MAIL LADY IN ARIZONA

    DEAR MAIL LADY: Yes, I understand, and I also empathize with you. However, the “children” you describe may not have notified you about their parents’ deaths because, unless they had your contact information, they didn’t know how to reach you.