Take the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For decades, the CDC has been the gold standard of science and health data, not just for this country but for the world. That was, until now.

You may have heard that, a few days ago, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s handpicked CDC advisory panel voted to roll back the long-standing recommendation to vaccinate babies for hepatitis B, even though universal vaccination is credited with virtually eliminating the virus among newborns in the United States.

Later that day, Kennedy’s CDC panel welcomed a lengthy presentation, 76 slides long, about vaccines — not from a doctor or public health expert, but from the secretary’s personal attorney, who has demanded, among other things, that the government should revoke its approval of the polio vaccine — because who among us is not interested in bringing polio back at scale in the U.S......

Turns out, there’s a plan: A few months ago, groups of states in the West and the Northeast formed their own health alliances to provide their residents with guidance about vaccines, based on the best scientific evidence.

After the advisory panel’s hepatitis B vote, these new health alliances rejected the CDC’s advice and told doctors and patients in their states to continue vaccinating at birth.

Just last week in Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill ordering his state’s health department to establish vaccine guidelines for its residents, to make vaccines more available to Illinois children, and to require insurance companies to cover them.....

If states and health institutions, and even insurance companies, start turning away from the federal government to create their own health infrastructure across the country, by necessity, that is a very different kind of country than the one we have been living in.

Part of the foundational problem for Republicans is that they continue to hate the ACA, which they’ve long referred to as “Obamacare.” As recently as Monday, Donald Trump insisted that the reform law is “so bad.” A week earlier, the president similarly condemned the existing system as “a disaster.” Countless GOP officials have pushed similar rhetoric, not just in recent days, but for the last 15 years.

This creates an obvious dilemma for Republican officials: They don’t want to use subsidies to bolster a law that they hate, but if they don’t, consumers will blame them for failing to do the right thing for the American people.

And even though Trump and his party see the ACA as a disaster, much of the country apparently disagrees. Consider the latest national polling report from Gallup:

Americans’ approval of the 2010 Affordable Care Act has edged up to a new high of 57% as the clock ticks down to Dec. 31, when enhanced healthcare subsidies enacted during the pandemic are set to expire unless Congress takes action.

Gallup has tracked Americans’ approval of the ACA since November 2012, and the latest rating is up three percentage points from last year’s, which was similar to the previous 55% high recorded in April 2017 and in November 2020.

...In theory, Republicans might see this, worry about a public backlash and move quickly to protect consumers ahead of this month’s looming deadline. In practice, GOP leaders don’t want to, regardless of the ACA’s growing public support. Tick tock.

That was in December 2014. In December 2025, Donald Trump is also breaking new ground with his interactions with the women who cover his White House, although the Republican incumbent is making a very different kind of point. The Hill reported:

President Trump on Monday lashed out at an ABC News reporter after she pressed him on his comments about controversial military strikes on alleged drug boats, marking the latest instance in recent weeks of the president criticizing a female journalist.

ABC’s Rachel Scott did not deserve a presidential tantrum. She reminded Trump about his own position from five days earlier regarding the release of a Pentagon video of a second strike that targeted the survivors of a Sept. 2 assault on a civilian boat in international waters. The president pretended he didn’t say what everyone had already heard him say, before lashing out the ABC correspondent who asked a perfectly reasonable question.....

The harangue was ugly and unnecessary, but it was also familiar. Consider the list from the past few weeks.

Nov. 14: En route to Florida for his latest golf weekend, Trump fielded a few questions from reporters on Air Force One, and a Bloomberg journalist took the opportunity to ask about one of the Jeffrey Epstein emails. When she tried to ask a follow-up question, the president snapped, “Quiet, piggy.”

Nov. 18: When Mary Bruce, ABC News’ chief White House correspondent, asked Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump whined that the reporter’s question might “embarrass” his “guest,” seemingly unaware of the fact that it’s not the job of the press to protect the feelings of foreign authoritarians. He went on to describe the question as “insubordinate,” as if journalists were somehow employees of the Saudi royal family, before telling Bruce she’s “terrible.”

Nov. 26: When The New York Times ran an article about the president’s stamina, Trump published an online tantrum that concluded with the Republican saying the reporter who wrote the article “is ugly, both inside and out.”

Nov. 27: Trump told a reporter she was “a stupid person” for asking a question he didn’t like about his asylum policies.

Dec. 6: The president slammed CNN’s Kaitlan Collins as “stupid and nasty.”

.....Trump remains exactly who he has always appeared to be. He’s the man in the E. Jean Carroll case. He’s the one on the “Access Hollywood” recording. He’s the Republican who suggested some of the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct weren’t attractive enough to assault. He’s the politician who vowed to “protect” women from the White House, “whether the women like it or not.”

He’s also the one who struggles to treat the women who cover the White House with some modicum of respect and professionalism.

Five years ago, Politico highlighted the president’s “decadeslong grudge against the NFL” and the eagerness with which he has incorporated the league into his broader “culture war strategy.”

Five years later, he’s still at it. NBC News reported:

If the NFL wants to improve its relationship with the current administration, there’s a new way to do it.

Change the name of the sport.

President Trump, who got the royal treatment and them some from FIFA at Friday’s World Cup draw, suggested that the world isn’t big enough for two sports with the same name.

...“But when you look at what has happened to football in the United States, it’s again ‘soccer’ in the United States,” the Republican said. “We seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that’s called football. But when you think about it, shouldn’t it really be called — I mean, this is football, there’s no question about it. We have to come up with another name for the NFL stuff. It really doesn’t make sense when you think about it.”

Trump: We have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that's called football. But when you think about it, shouldn't it really be called— I mean, this is football. There's no question. We have to come up with another name for that. It really doesn't make sense when you think about it.

— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) 2025-12-05T21:02:18.14384354Z

....What’s more, earlier this summer, Trump used his social media platform to argue that the Washington Commanders should return to their previous, offensive name, adding, “I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back. … I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington.” (This is a stadium that the Republican wants to see named after himself.)

For her part, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also recently said, in reference to league officials, “They suck and we’ll win and God will bless us.”

To the extent that the NFL has become a political football, it’s apparently in Democrats’ hands.

As a presidential candidate in 2016, Donald Trump vowed to dramatically improve the U.S. manufacturing sector. He didn’t: Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, American manufacturing slumped during the president’s first term.

As a presidential candidate in 2024, the Republican made similar vows, which are generating similar results. The Wall Street Journal reported:

U.S. manufacturing activity contracted for the ninth consecutive month in November, a decline manufacturers attribute largely to President Trump’s tariffs. The Institute for Supply Management’s PMI for manufacturing came in at 48.2, a decrease from 48.7 in October. The level was below the 50 score that divides contraction from expansion.

Susan Spence, chair of the ISM, said in a statement, “U.S. manufacturing activity contracted at a faster rate, with pullbacks in supplier deliveries, new orders and employment.”

For those concerned about the state of the U.S. economy, the news was discouraging. But from a political perspective, the president’s recent rhetoric makes matters worse.....

The disconnect between presidential rhetoric and American reality, however, is frustratingly familiar. Confronted with rising consumer costs, Trump has argued that consumer costs are falling. Confronted with rising energy costs, Trump has argued that energy costs are falling. Confronted with the worst job growth since the Great Recession, Trump has argued that the U.S. is seeing record job growth.

And confronted with a contracting manufacturing sector, Trump continues to pretend that factories are “booming” nationwide.

It’d be one thing if the president asked Americans for patience and assured the public that he has a credible plan to put things right. But on practically every part of the domestic economy, Trump prefers to play make-believe, pitching an alternate reality with little resemblance to our own.

The Times’ report added, “Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.”.....

Kennedy ignored the advice. Indeed, after the longtime anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist took the reins at the Department of Health and Human Services, Siri’s name popped up quite a bit. In September, for example, after Susan Monarez was fired as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she testified before a Senate committee and spoke about RFK Jr. urging her to meet with Siri. A month later, the Times reported that Siri “has played a role in vetting candidates for departmental jobs.”

Last week, the problem went from bad to worse. NBC News reported:

An anti-vaccine lawyer who has regularly sued federal and state health agencies spoke Friday at a meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel — an unheard-of departure for the committee, which for decades was a trusted source for vaccine recommendations.

After Siri’s lengthy anti-vaccine presentation before the CDC’s once-respected Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (better known as ACIP), MS NOW’s Brandy Zadrozny wrote online, “This panel is anti-vaccine theater. It’s a cruel joke.”....

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a former medical doctor who chairs the Senate committee that oversees HHS, wrote online the day before Friday’s meeting, “Aaron Siri is a trial attorney who makes his living suing vaccine manufacturers. He is presenting as if an expert on childhood vaccines. The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children.”

Nevertheless, despite the circumstances, Siri’s side is winning: On Friday, ACIP, stocked with Kennedy loyalists, voted to stop recommending a life-saving hepatitis B vaccine to infants.

Cassidy described the regressive and radical step as a “mistake” — though as is too often the case, the powerful senator declined to respond with anything meaningful.

Honduras’s attorney general said his country had issued an international arrest warrant for former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking charges until he was released last week after a full pardon from President Donald Trump.

Hernández, 57, is wanted for money laundering and fraud, in connection with allegations that his 2013 political campaign used stolen public funds.

“We have been lacerated by the tentacles of corruption and by the criminal networks that have deeply marked the life of our country,” Honduran attorney general Johel Antonio Zelaya Alvarez wrote in a post on social media. Alvarez said he had instructed law enforcement to arrest Hernández and had alerted Interpol for assistance.

Hernández was released Dec. 1 from U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia, The Washington Post previously reported. The former Honduran president, who was in office from 2014 to 2022, was convicted last year of helping move at least 400 tons of cocaine into the United States, while protecting traffickers from extradition and prosecution......

Federal prosecutors during Trump’s first administration initially accused Hernández of trafficking drugs and weapons in their successful indictments of former Honduran National Police chief Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla and congressman Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, the president’s brother. Bonilla pleaded guilty in 2019 to conspiracy to import cocaine and was sentenced to 19 years in prison. Tony Hernández was found guilty that year of conspiracy to import cocaine and weapons charges and sentenced to life. Both remain in prison.

President Donald Trump has been sending signals that his health is fading — and he's losing his grip on power, according to an analyst.

The 79-year-old president has been dozing off in public meetings and showing other signs of diminished health, including mysterious bruising on his hand and swollen ankles. Foreign policy analyst David Rothkopf told The Daily Beast Podcast that Trump seemed aware of his eventual demise.

“They actually are serious issues because they are evidence that Donald Trump is at the end of his story,” Rothkopf said. “They are signs to the world that this is not a vigorous person. This is not a person whose biography is about their future. It’s about their past, and everybody can see that in Washington.”.....

Rothkopf also highlighted the president's increasingly frequent moves to rename institutions and buildings after himself — such as the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Kennedy Center — as another indicator that Trump is thinking about his legacy as his life comes to a close.

“If you’re watching his Band-Aids and you’re watching his cankles, the number of things he wants to name after himself, I think, is a good indicator of how ill he thinks he is, because this is just him looking for some legacy,” Rothkopf said. “It’s just him saying, ‘Well, that could make me immortal.’ Because I think he realizes that he is shuffling off this mortal coil sooner rather than later.”