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The atrocities and the fury mount. Astoundingly, after a murderous thug shot a mother of three in the face in broad daylight - "He didn't kill her because he was scared, he killed her because she wasn't" - state terror has ramped up with more lies, goons, attacks on "gangs of wine moms," brutish agitprop literally echoing the Nazis'. So when mini-Bovino went to take a leak at a store, the people's wrath, a bittersweet splendor, erupted. Their/our edict: "Get the fuck out."
For now, Trump's America keeps getting scarier and uglier. He's threatened to (illegally) withdraw the US from the world’s most vital climate treaty and 65 other agencies doing useful work. He's trashing a once-thriving economy because he doesn't know how it works, scapegoating longtime Fed chair Jerome Powell, who's (startlingly fighting back, flipping off autoworkers, admiring non-existent ballrooms. After (illegally) killing over 100 Venezuelans and abducting their president - Chris Hedges: "Empires, when they are dying, worship the idol of war" - he called oil executives to a dementia-ridden meeting where in a reality check one brave skeptic argued Venezuela is historically "uninvestable." He ordered invasion plans for Greenland - wait what - that joint chiefs are resisting as "crazy and illegal": “It’s like dealing with a five-year-old.” And in a supreme irony overload, he's menacing U.S. protesters while warning Iran's killers of protesters they'll "pay a big price" and urging Iran's people to "take over your institutions." We can't even.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, he's sending yet more thugs, persisting in calling Renée Good "a professional agitator" - Professional Agitators 'R Us! - and warning a besieged, traumatized community, "THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!" Up is down and MAGA minions dutifully follow suit. Tom Homan: "We've got to stop the hateful rhetoric. Saying this officer is a murderer is dangerous. It’s ridiculous. It’s just gonna infuriate people more." Newsmax and GOP Rep. Pete Sessions agree: Dems have to quiet their "rhetoric," cease "honking of horns," and stop "putting an iPhone on your face." "STOP THE MADNESS," shrieks David Marcus on Fox, blasting "organized gangs of wine moms" across the country - Wine Moms 'R Us! - using Antifa tactics to "harass and impede" ICE: "It's not civil disobedience. It isn’t even protest. It’s just crime." Here, Renée Good was "a trained member" of groups "executing missions that put law enforcement and the public in harm’s way," probably all part of "criminal conspiracies."
To support the insane narrative that the brazen murder of a mother of three in her car in public constitutes "an attack on our brave law enforcement," DHS released crude, "pathological," Goebbels-worthy propaganda that repeats the first day's lies and includes footage of when Good "weaponized her vehicle” by “speeding across the road" while failing to mention it was when "she had just been shot in the fucking face and her dead foot hit the pedal." No wonder the mindless carnage goes on. A thug leers to a cuffed protester she should've "learned her lesson," she asks what lesson, he snarls, "Why we killed that fucking bitch." And gangs of goons rampage door-to-door, barging into households of kids with guns and tasers ready. One brave, calm woman records it all, demands a warrant, barks get your hands off me, mocks how big and bad they are flashing a light in her face and sneers that, on the street, "You're all some pussies without that shit on your chest...Your mamas raised a bitch if you can wear that outfit proudly."
Last week both Illinois and Minnesota, and each state's targeted cities, filed federal lawsuits to end their invasions by thousands of armed, masked, violent goons racially harassing, terrorizing and assaulting their communities. The courts may yet halt the deadly mayhem; the regime sure as shit won't. In the wake of the DOJ's predictable, outlandish announcement they won't investigate Good's murder, multiple attorneys in the civil rights division - for decades "America’s last line of accountability when federal agents kill" - have resigned, the latest in a flood of departures totaling over 250, a 70% reduction. In their stead, the FBI seized control of the "investigation" after blocking local law enforcement's access to evidence. Kash's Keystone Cops are now looking into, not Jonathan Ross, but Good and her "possible connections to activist groups" - also, because there truly is no low, her widow's. "This isn’t a cover-up," said one former DOJ attorney. "It’s the end of civil rights enforcement as we've known it."
Experts say the escalating malfeasance and accompanying thuggery are the logical culmination of a longtime "culture of violence" within border control agencies. Ryan Goodman of Just Security describes a scathing 2013 report, commissioned but then buried, that specifically cites agents' proclivity for standing in front of blocked vehicles as a pretext to open fire on drivers attempting to flee a tense encounter. Thank God we don't see that anymore. Nor do we have to see Stephen Miller's nightmare vision of Dems in power making "every city into Mogadishu or Kabul or Port-au-Prince," complete with roaming convoys of masked, armed, hefty hoodlums snatching people off the streets, dragging them out of their cars, beating them up, kneeling on their necks (illegal under post-George-Floyd Minnesota law), and brutalizing them for unknown offenses until they go limp, fate unknown, like in this video by Ford Fischer last week. For MAGA, ICE proudly represents "the fearsome power of the American state." But don't call them fascists.
It was sick Greg Bovino's knee on that neck. Then he went on Sean Hannity's show to praise Jonathan Ross for shooting Renée Good three times in the face - "Hats off to that ICE agent" - because "a 4,000-pound missile is not something anyone wants to face." Hannity readily agreed it was "not even a close call...There is no ambiguity for anyone with eyes to see that (Good) had been taunting officers," which is not true, also definitely a death penalty offense. Later, Bovino claimed that 90% of the public "are happy to see us." Last week, a YouGov poll disagreed, finding a majority of Americans disapproved of the murderous job ICE is doing, and almost half support abolishing it entirely. That may be why, when Bovino went to take a piss last week at a Target in St. Paul, accompanied by a phalanx of surly stormtroopers with itchy trigger fingers and nervous cameras held aloft, they were met by pure, gut-level fury, and a crowd of we the people with no fucks left to give. More video from Ford Fischer of News2Share.
A handy transcript: "You’re a fucking bum. you’re a bitch. and if your wife’s got a problem, fuck her, too. you guys are all bitches. you can’t do shit to me. you can’t do a thing. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out. nobody wants you here. right. get the fuck out. walk the fuck, you stupid bitches. get the fuck out of here. coward. you’re a fucking coward, bitch. you’re a fucking bitch. fuck you. hold on, babe, I’m on the phone with these bitch-ass niggas. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out of here, you stupid bitches. you’re a fucking coward piece of shit. fuck you. and if you didn’t have a gun or a vest, I would beat the shit out of you. take that fucking badge off, and that fucking gun, and see what happens to you. you shut the fuck up, you’re not fucking tough. you’re a bitch and get the fuck out, you fucking pussy. you fucking bitch-ass white boys. I’ll fucking spit on you. fucking get out of here. get the fuck out. shut the fuck up. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out. nobody wants you here."
Among Minnesota's ICE victims was a Marine veteran who said she was following agents "at a safe distance" when they rammed the car, broke the window, dragged her out by the neck, slammed her face into the ground, tightly cuffed her and snarled, per their memo, "This is why we killed that lesbian bitch." Shaken, she told a reporter, "I took an oath, and they're spitting on it. They're Nazis. They're Gestapo. This isn't Germany." Not yet. But close, says James Fell's Sweary History: "Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says 'fuck' a lot." When ICE Barbie, "this puppy-killing, plasticized bag of fascism" called Good a domestic terrorist, he notes, her podium read, "One of Ours, All of Yours" - the phrase Nazis used when the Resistance killed "murderous motherfucker" Reinhard Heydrich, and Nazis retaliated by killing thousands of Czechs and most of the village of Lidice, where they (wrongly) thought the assassins came from. Kill one of ours, we murder all of yours: "This is what DHS is threatening should people dare to resist the American Gestapo."
Dark echoes keep coming. In more Goebbels-worthy agit-prop, the Dept. of Labor just posted a bizarre musical photo montage captioned, "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage," which even X's AI chatbot Grok noted is just like the Nazi slogan, "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" - One People, One Realm, One Leader. Huh, said many: "Sounds familiar," "Sounds better in the original German," "I didn't have DOL dropping race-baiting propaganda with moody techno music on my 2026 Bingo card," "I remember this one from history books," "Can't wait for the sequel! Labor Creates Liberty!" and, "That 1930s retro energy really matches the new vibe." The video added, "Remember who you are, American." Rob Kelner responded, "I remember who I am. I am the grandchild of immigrants, in a nation that welcomed all four of my grandparents, dirt poor...fleeing tyranny." We have fallen so far, and lost so much. But some truths remain: "There is no world in which these are the good guys. None."
"Get it all on record now. Get the films. Get the witnesses. Because somewhere down the road of history, some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander of the Allied Forces, on atrocities committed by the German Nazis.

The massive energy needs of artificial intelligence data centers became a major political controversy in 2025, and new reporting suggests that it will grow even further in 2026.
CNBC reported on Thursday that data center projects have become political lightning rods among politicians ranging from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the left to Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the right.
However, objections to data centers aren't just coming from politicians but from ordinary citizens who are worried about the impact such projects will have on their local environment and their utility bills.
CNBC noted that data centers' energy needs are so great that PJM Interconnection, the largest US grid operator that serves over 65 million people across 13 states, projects that it will be a full six gigawatts short of its reliability requirements in 2027.
Joe Bowring, president of independent market monitor Monitoring Analytics, told CNBC that he's never seen the grid under such projected strain.
"It’s at a crisis stage right now," Bowring said. "PJM has never been this short."
Rob Gramlich, president of power consulting firm Grid Strategies, told CNBC that he expects the debate over data centers to become even more intense this year once Americans start getting socked with even higher utility bills.
"I don't think we’ve seen the end of the political repercussions,” Gramlich said. “And with a lot more elections in 2026 than 2025, we’ll see a lot of implications. Every politician is going to be saying that they have the answer to affordability and their opponents’ policies would raise rates."
Concerns about data centers' impact on electric grids are rising in both red and blue states.
The Austin American-Statesman reported on Thursday that a new analysis written by the office of Austin City Manager TC Broadnax found that data centers have the potential to overwhelm the city's system given they are projected to need more power than can possibly be delivered with current infrastructure.
"The speed in which AI is trying to be deployed creates tremendous strain on the already tight resources in both design and construction," says the analysis, which noted that some proposed data centers are seeking more than five gigawatts, which is more than the peak load for the entire city.
In New York, local station News 10 reported last year that the New York Independent System Operator is estimating that the state's grid could be 1.6 gigawatts short of reliability requirements by 2030 thanks in large part to data centers.
Anger over proposed data centers has even spread to President Donald Trump's primary residential home of Palm Beach County, Florida, where local residents successfully postponed the construction of a proposed 200-acre data center complex.
According to public news station WLRN, locals opposed to the project cited "expected noise from cooling towers, servers, and diesel generators, along with heavy water use, pollution concerns, and higher utility costs" when petitioning Palm Beach County commissioners to scrap the proposal.
Corey Kanterman, a local opponent of the proposed data center, told WLRN that his goal is to shut the project down entirely.
"No good comes of having an AI data center near you," Kanterman said. "Put them in the location of least impact to the environment and people. This location is not it."
The US labor market appears to be running on fumes under President Donald Trump, as the latest jobs report revealed that the American economy added just 50,000 jobs in December, below economists' consensus estimate of 55,000 jobs.
The report, released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), also found that the US economy as a whole created just 584,000 jobs in 2025, which is less than a third of the 2 million jobs created in 2024 during the last year of former President Joe Biden's term.
The 2025 figure also marked the lowest number of annual jobs created since 2020, when the economy was shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone couldn't put a happy spin on the jobs report after its release, as she noted that the gains of just 37,000 private-sector jobs on the month were "much weaker than expected."
"Private sector payrolls coming in much weaker than expected" -- Maria Bartiromo and company cope with an underwhelming December jobs report (wait for Stephen Moore's bonkers commentary at the end) pic.twitter.com/C5D8qu5h8f
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 9, 2026
Digging further into the report, Bloomberg economic analyst Joe Weisenthal observed on X that manufacturing employment has been hit particularly hard in recent months, despite Trump's vow that his tariffs would lead to a manufacturing revival in the US.
"It's not just that total manufacturing employment is shrinking," he explained. "The number of manufacturing sub-sectors that are adding jobs is rapidly shrinking. Of the 72 different types of manufacturing tracked by the BLS, just 38.2% are still adding jobs. A year ago it was 47.2%."
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, noted that the weakness in the labor market extends beyond the manufacturing sector, as there has been "almost no hiring outside of healthcare and hospitality" since the start of Trump's second term.
Richardson also observed that "there was almost no hiring since April" of last year, when Trump announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs that sent shockwaves through the global economy.
Economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, zeroed in on downward revisions in prior jobs reports, reinforcing that the current labor market is anemic.
"With the revisions, the average for the last three months was a fall of 22,000 [jobs]," Baker explained. "The healthcare and social assistance sector added an average of 49,000 jobs over this period, which means that outside of healthcare the economy lost an average of 71,000 jobs in the last three months."
Alex Jacquez, chief economist at Groundwork Collaborative, said the jobs report reflected a "lifeless economy," and he pinned the blame on Trump and his trade policies as a top reason.
"Working families face sluggish wage growth, fewer job opportunities, and never-ending price hikes on groceries, household essentials, and utilities," said Jacquez. "Despite the president's endless attempts to deflect and distract from the bleak economic reality, workers and job seekers know their budgets feel tighter than ever thanks to Trump’s disastrous economic mismanagement."
Economist Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute took a look at the jobs numbers and concluded the US labor market now is far weaker than the one Biden left Trump nearly one year ago.
"The slowdown in job growth this year is stark compared to 2024," Gould wrote on Bluesky. "The average monthly gain was only 49,000 in 2025 compared to 168,000 in 2024. Over the last three months, average job growth was actually negative, meaning there are fewer jobs now than in September."
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the Navy Federal Credit Union's chief economist. That error has been corrected.
President Donald Trump's shuttering of USAID last year will have a long-term negative impact on children throughout the world, according to a report released on Thursday by Oxfam.
In its analysis, Oxfam estimates that a child under the age of five could die every 40 seconds by 2030 thanks to the Trump administration's dismantling of American foreign aid programs.
Oxfam says it's basing its projections on "calculations in [the] Lancet’s impact evaluation and forecasting analysis from last July, which projected "4,537,157 child deaths by 2030."
The report also pointed to estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and Gates Foundation, which calculates "an additional 200,000 child deaths" for children under five last year. This lines up with data published by the Boston University School of Public Health last year estimating over 250,000 child deaths caused by the drastic slashing of foreign aid funding under the Trump administration.
Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, said that "we have run out of words to describe the depths of suffering" caused by Trump's destruction of "the entire global aid system."
"We are seeing years of progress unravel, and more children suffer and die preventable deaths because of these cuts," Maxman added.
The report also highlighted the specific impacts cuts have had in Sudan, the Philippines, and Syria.
Mayfourth Luneta, deputy executive director of the Center for Disaster Preparedness Foundation, an Oxfam partner in the Philippines, said that due to the Trump aid cuts, her organization had to cancel programs across eight communities that were impacted by floods and earthquakes last year.
"The Philippines was hit with the most powerful storms on Earth recorded last year," Luneta said. "Communities were devastated, families were left with nothing."
Shabnam Baloch, country director for Oxfam in South Sudan, described the impact that aid cuts have had on a country that is undergoing a horrific civil war.
"Water borne illnesses are spreading rapidly, starvation is imminent for many, and while needs are rising, lifesaving organizations are working with a fraction of the resources we had in previous years," said Baloch. "Oxfam, along with many other vital organizations, will be forced to scale down our programs without immediate intervention."
Sara Savva, deputy director-general the alliance of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East and the Department of Ecumenical Relations and Development (GOPA-DERD), an Oxfam partner in Syria, said her organization had "to drastically reduce the scale and scope of our programs for Syrian families and Iraqi refugees residing in Syria" in the wake of the Trump administration's cuts.
"We were notified we will no longer receive funding from the US government, and thousands of people are left without crucial services necessary to rebuild their lives after a catastrophic civil war," Savva said.
The father of three children who were hospitalized in Minneapolis on Wednesday night accused federal agents of launching flash-bang munitions and tear gas into their family van after they were caught up in protests against the Trump administration's deadly immigration crackdown.
"Officers threw flash bangs and tear gas in my car. I got six kids in the car," Shawn Jackson told KMSP. "My 6-month-old can't even breathe."
The explosions were strong enough to trigger the car's airbags.
"They were innocent bystanders driving through what should have been a peaceful protest when things took a turn," Destiny Jackson, the children's mother, explained.
Destiny Jackson said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents "began to start throwing tear gas bombs everywhere."
"We were trying so hard to get out the way but didn’t want to harm anybody with our car in the process," Jackson added. "One of the bombs rolled under our truck, and within seconds our truck lifted up off the ground, and the airbags deployed, the car doors locked themselves, and the car began to fill with the powerful tear gas. We fought hard to get the doors open and get all of the kids out. Bystanders had to help."
Shawn Jackson’s kids were taken by first responders to the hospital from the scene. He said he was trying to leave his relative’s house when a flash bang detonated his airbags and tear gas filled his car pic.twitter.com/clGdMl8sYu
— Max Nesterak (@maxnesterak) January 15, 2026
Shawn Jackson told KMSP while holding up his child’s car seat: "This was flipped over. My car filled with tear gas; I'm trying to pull my kids from the car."
Destiny Jackson said she performed CPR on the infant after the baby stopped breathing and lost consciousness.
Three of the children—the 6-month-old infant and two others, ages 7 and 11 years—were taken by ambulance to a local hospital for treatment.
"My kids were innocent, I was innocent, my husband was innocent, this shouldn't have happened," Destiny Jackson told KMSP. "We were just trying to go home."
Jackson said that neither she nor her husband have ever protested before—but now they feel they have good reason to do so.
"I'm mad as hell," Shawn Jackson said during an interview with Sky News. "But now there's gonna be hell on wheels. They're definitely gonna have to pay for this."
"This just shows how they don't care," Jackson said of the federal agents. "I was arguing with the officers to call the ambulance for five minutes... He knew there were [children] in the car; he didn't even try and help."
Also on Wednesday in Minneapolis, a federal officer shot and wounded a man who the US Department of Homeland Security said was an undocumented Venezuelan pulled over during a "targeted traffic stop." DHS said the man fled after exiting his vehicle, that a fight ensued when an officer caught him, and that the agent shot the man in the leg after a pair of bystanders came to the targeted individual's aid and attacked the officer.
Protests have been mounting in the Twin Cities following last week's killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross and the Trump administration's subsequent effort to portray the victim as a domestic terrorist.
Demonstrators are also condemning what many opponents call the invasion and occupation of Minneapolis and other cities, as well as the Trump administration's wider campaign targeting undocumented immigrants for roundup, detention, and deportation.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, said that “armed, masked, undertrained ICE agents are going door to door ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live.”
State and local officials in Minnesota have implored the Trump administration to end its operation in the state. Meanwhile, Trump threatened Thursday to invoke the Insurrection Act—which hasn't been used since the Los Angeles uprising in 1992—to deploy troops to quell Twin Cities protests.
The ACLU, the ACLU of Minnesota, and a trio of law firms on Thursday filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of people "whose constitutional rights were violated" by federal operatives in the state.
“The people of Minnesota are courageously standing up to the reign of terror unleashed by the Trump administration,” plaintiffs' attorney Robert Fram said in a statement.
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to hire private military contractors—including possibly the notorious mercenary Erik Prince—to provide security as the US works to plunder Venezuela's massive oil reserves.
CNN reported Thursday that "multiple private security companies are already jockeying to get involved in the US presence in Venezuela" as American oil giants push for physical security guarantees before they back President Donald Trump's push for $100 billion in investment in the country.
"Interest is high given the potential payday; during the Iraq War, the US spent some $138 billion on private security, logistics, and reconstruction contractors," the outlet noted. "One source suggested that Erik Prince, the former Blackwater founder and controversial Trump ally, could also be tapped for help. Prince’s Blackwater played an outsized role in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion, providing security, logistics, and support for oil infrastructure. But the firm came under intense scrutiny following the 2007 deadly shooting of Iraqi civilians."
Prince is currently operating in the region, having partnered with Ecuador's right-wing government as part of a crackdown on organized crime that has been replete with human rights abuses.
News of the Trump administration's potential use of private mercenaries in Venezuela came after the US officially completed its first sale of Venezuelan oil. The sale, valued at $500 million, came days after Trump met with top oil executives at the White House to discuss efforts to exploit Venezuela's oil reserves following the illegal US abduction of President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.
Darren Woods, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, said his company would need "durable investment protections" before making any commitments in Venezuela.
CNN reported Thursday that the Pentagon has "put out a Request for Information to contractors about their ability to support possible US military operations in Venezuela."
"Contractors are also in touch with the State Department’s overseas building operations office to cite interest in providing security if and when the US embassy in Venezuela reopens," according to CNN.
"It’s not safe to be an OB-GYN in red states, so they are turning to robots to care for pregnant woman. This is not an innovation success story."
Alabama is among the states that have seen a significant drop in the number of obstetrician-gynecologists working there since Roe v. Wade was overturned and cleared the way for states to ban abortion, resulting in doctors being unable to provide standard care and in a number of cases, placing patients in serious and even deadly danger.
On Friday, at a White House roundtable on healthcare in rural areas—some of the hardest-hit by the lack of OB-GYN care in states with abortion bans—one of President Donald Trump's top health officials suggested the exodus of doctors from Alabama and other crises in healthcare access have resulted in positive innovations as care is outsourced to "robots."
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said that since Alabama "has no OB-GYNs in many of their counties," the state is "doing something pretty cool."
"They're actually having robots do ultrasounds on these pregnant moms," said Oz.
Dr Oz: "Alabama has no OBGYNs in many of their counties, so they're doing something pretty cool. They're actually having robots do ultrasounds on these pregnant moms." pic.twitter.com/sEwd4OJss9
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 16, 2026
CMS, which oversees the new Office of Rural Health Transformation, recently highlighted in a report about rural healthcare Alabama's Maternal and Fetal Health Initiative, which it said "provides digital maternity care by using telerobotic ultrasound devices and labor and delivery carts to rural hospitals."
Oz asserted that robotic ultrasounds will help to reduce Alabama's maternal mortality rate, which is the highest in the United States, as medical centers will be able to detect health issues and abnormalities.
But observers said that praising an outcome of the dearth of maternal healthcare in the state—which has been at least partially caused by Trump's push to overturn Roe and Republicans' efforts to ban abortion—was "horrific."
"The severe lack of OB-GYNs," said the labor-focused media group More Perfect Union, "is a crisis, especially in rural America."
Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, added: "It’s not safe to be an OB-GYN in red states, so they are turning to robots to care for pregnant woman. This is not an innovation success story. It’s a dystopian horror story."
A 2024 analysis by the Association of American Medical Colleges found that in the year following the US Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, applicants for OB-GYN residency programs plummeted 21.2%.
The ruling allowed Alabama's near-total abortion ban—which has only one ostensible "exception" for cases in which a pregnant person faces a serious health risk—to go into effect. Rights groups said that the law, one of the most extreme bans in the US, had been passed by the state's Republican legislature as part of an effort to force the court to reconsider Roe.
Robin Marty, executive director of WAWC Healthcare in the state, told the Alabama Reflector in 2024 that "when it comes to, especially, OB-GYN residencies, nobody wants to come out here because we can’t fulfill all of the requirements, which include being able to do abortions and manage miscarriage."
There had also been a 13.1% drop in applicants for OB-GYN programs in 2019-20 after the approval of the state's Sanctity of Life Act, which recognized “the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life."
“Legislative interference that imposes restrictions on full-scope reproductive healthcare, including abortion care, discourages medical students from pursuing residency training in states with restrictions, directly hurting patients by reducing the physician workforce in the communities that often need clinicians the most,” AnnaMarie Connolly, chief of education and academic affairs of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), told the Alabama Reflector.
In addition to the state's abortion ban, the worsening lack of prenatal care in rural Alabama has also driven the state's decision to turn to robotics to provide some aspects of healthcare.
Since 2020, more than 100 rural hospitals across the nation have stopped delivering babies; at least three of them have been in Alabama, where just 30% of rural health centers have labor and delivery units. Hospitals have cited staffing shortages and low Medicaid reimbursement payments—which were worsened by the Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act—as reasons for closing obstetric care units. Closures have left many families traveling an hour or more to receive prenatal care, and can worsen maternal mortality rates.
Regarding the robotic ultrasounds heralded by Oz, political analyst Drew Savicki said: "That is interesting but it represents a very small fraction of what an OB-GYN does. What is an ultrasound robot going to do for a woman who is coming in for her post-childbirth examination?"
In his comments, Oz unwittingly described the crisis the Trump administration has helped to make worse: "We have the best healthcare, if you can get to it."
One observer suggested Trump's healthcare officials "explain why no OB-GYNs want to work in Alabama, rather than bragging about robots."
"People across Pennsylvania did not put time, money, and energy into supporting his campaign just to elect a Democrat who votes against our interests time and time again," said a campaigner for the Working Families Party.
The Pennsylvania Working Families Party rolled out an online "hub" on Friday to support a primary challenger to the state's US senator, John Fetterman.
The WFP, an independent party that often supports Democrats with a populist economic agenda, backed Fetterman's 2022 Senate bid when he ran in the general election as a champion of many progressive causes. But the group now says he "sold out working Pennsylvanians" after pivoting hard to the right on key issues.
It launched the campaign to oust him in November after he voted with Republicans to reopen the government without an extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, which is expected to spike health insurance premiums for over 22 million Americans this year.
“While Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is supporting Trump’s use of American tax dollars to ‘run’ Venezuela or buy Greenland, 500,000 Pennsylvanians are about to see their healthcare premiums rise because of the Republican budget bill he supported,” said Nick Gavio, mid-Atlantic communications director for the Working Families Party and a former Fetterman staffer. “People across Pennsylvania did not put time, money, and energy into supporting his campaign just to elect a Democrat who votes against our interests time and time again. We need new leadership.”
The website provides past Fetterman donors who feel betrayed by the senator with a form letter to "request a refund" of past contributions from the campaign. It also contains a "Sell-out Tracker," which seeks to "track every bad position" he has taken.
In addition to his vote to reopen the government, the group notes that Fetterman has voted to confirm 50% of Trump's Cabinet picks. He was the only Democrat who voted to confirm Attorney General Pam Bondi and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and one of the very few to vote in favor of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
It also accuses him of "betraying vulnerable people" by supporting Republican legislation that eliminates due process for undocumented immigrants, cheering US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amid its mass deportation crusade, and giving full-throated support to Israel's genocidal war in Gaza and Trump's strikes on Iran.
The site also highlights Fetterman's tendency to neglect the basic duties of his job as a senator, which he has admitted he skips to spend more time with his family and because he finds them “overwhelmingly procedural.”
Fetterman has one of the worst attendance records in the Senate, having missed over 100 votes since April 2024 and skipped 44 out of 45 meetings for committees he was assigned to between January and May 2025.
He has also said he hosts very few town halls in order to avoid protesters, who have shown up to voice their discontent with his support for Israel, among other controversial positions.
As the site points out, while some other Democrats fought tooth and nail in a losing effort to stop Republicans from passing massive safety-net cuts in this summer's budget reconciliation package, Fetterman told Politico, "I just want to go home" and complained that he'd missed his family's trip to the beach.
So far, no prominent Pennsylvania Democrats have offered themselves up as potential primary challengers for Fetterman, who comes up for reelection in 2028.
Top names, including former Rep. Conor Lamb, who ran against Fetterman in the 2022 Democratic primary, and Philadelphia area Rep. Madeleine Dean have said they would not challenge Fetterman if he ran for another term.
Meanwhile, Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), who called Fetterman "Trump's favorite Democrat" last year, told NOTUS he'd be open to running against him.
The Pennsylvania Working Families Party said it is collecting donations that it will use to help "identify, recruit, and elect a real working class champion to replace Fetterman in the US Senate."
The group told NBC News that it has already amassed more than 425 people interested in either running against Fetterman themselves or volunteering their time or donating to help the effort to unseat him.
Advocates warned wage garnishment "would have risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulted borrowers even further into debt."
Billionaire US Education Secretary Linda McMahon has temporarily suspended the Trump administration's plan to resume garnishing the wages of defaulted student loan borrowers, a reversal that came after advocates warned the pay seizures would have had devastating economic consequences for people across the country amid a worsening cost-of-living crisis.
McMahon, who is actively working to dismantle her department from within, told reporters earlier this week that wage garnishment efforts have "been put on pause for a bit," without providing specifics. The Trump administration, which last summer ended a pause on student loan repayments that had been in place since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, was reportedly set to begin notifying defaulted borrowers of plans to withhold a portion of their wages last week.
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement Friday that "after months of pressure and countless horror stories from borrowers, the Trump administration says it has abandoned plans to snatch working people’s hard-earned money directly from their paychecks simply for falling behind on their student loans."
"Amidst the growing affordability crisis, the administration’s plans would have been economically reckless and would have risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulted borrowers even further into debt," Canchola Bañez added. "Earlier this month, a coalition of partners sent an urgent letter to ED urging them to do just this. We are pleased to see they have heeded our calls.”
That letter—sent on January 7 by Protect Borrowers, the American Federation of Teachers, Debt Collective, and other groups—called the administration's earlier decision to resume wage garnishment "calloused and unnecessary," warning that it came at a time when "struggling borrowers have been forced to wait amidst a nearly 1 million application backlog to enroll in an Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan, and as mass layoffs at the department have made it even harder for borrowers to get help with their student loans or if they are experiencing issues with their student loan servicer."
According to an analysis by Protect Borrowers, 3.6 million new student loan borrowers fell into default during the first year of President Donald Trump's second term in the White House. That's one new default every nine seconds.
"Nearly two-thirds of the borrowers who defaulted during the Trump administration—more than 2.6 million people—live in states that President Trump won in the 2024 election," the analysis found.
Under federal law, the Education Department can withhold up to 15% of a borrower's after-tax income to pay down defaulted debt. The Trump administration has already begun seizing income tax refunds from student borrowers in default.
The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) noted in a Thursday blog post that "if you have received a notice of proposed garnishment, there are steps you can take to object to the garnishment notice and request a hearing, which is typically conducted through a written review of your objections."
"You must act quickly to avoid a potential garnishment order from being sent to your employer," the group stressed.