LIVE COVERAGE
A Petty, Vicious Wall Of Shame
The awful keeps spewing. The latest proof there is truly, repulsively no bottom: The most broken, powerful human being on the planet has added to his crappy, gaudy, reality-show "Presidential Walk of Fame" bronze plaques below the photos denoting a boorish, revisionist "history" of each president. Inevitably, he saves the crudest insults for his predecessors - "divisive" Obama, "crooked" Biden - while praising his own supreme reign. America on the fucking, endless, childish ugly of it: "This is so exhausting."
As always, there are of course more substantive horrors underway. Pam Bondi has told the FBI to create a list of domestic terrorist groups - the non-existent Antifa and anyone else who espouses “radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism or anti-Christianity” - and establish a "cash reward system" to encourage them to snitch on each other.
Anti-vax crackpot RFK Jr's Health and Human Services (sic) has terminated seven multi-million-dollar grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics, one of the crackpot's harshest critics, for initiatives aimed at reducing sudden infant death, improving adolescent health, preventing fetal alcohol syndrome, identifying autism early and other worthy goals. Officials said it was because the group used "identity-based language," including "racial disparities" and "pregnant people."
Pee Wee German Stephen Miller has issued a fascist mission statement in support of our upcoming war against Venezulela, arguing the U.S. has long "operated as a 'reverse empire'" that enriched foreign nations and sacrificed our wealth and security while "all we got in return were migrants." "No more," he raves. "America's might will secure America's rights...For Americans, first and always." By which, many clarified, he means, "rich white people. Everyone else to the camps." Other comments: "Sounds like Chap. 15 in Mein Kampf," "Sounds better in the original German," and, "Miller is a grotesque, shrill, squirrel of a thing."
All of these efforts, lest we forget, have been undertaken to please what Avatar director James Cameron calls "the most narcissistic asshole in history since fucking Nero," the small, sick, empty shell of a man who's now added plaques to the photos along his cheesy "Presidential Walk of Fame" outside the West Wing "as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad and somewhere in the middle." As you can tell, as Press Barbie brags, and "as a student of history" (sic), the president himself authored "many of its eloquently written descriptions." So that's what he's been doing when not playing golf. One patriot: "Well done, dumbass."
They are, of course, crude, juvenile, self-serving garbage. Reagan's plaque boasts he was "a fan" of Trump. Bill Clinton's notes "his wife Hillary" lost to Trump. The plaque for "Barack Hussein Obama" acknowledges him as our first Black President before calling him "one of the most divisive political figures in American history." He allegedly "passed the highly ineffective Unaffordable Care Act," caused the spread of ISIS (no mention of W's contributions), weaponized federal bureaucracies against opponents, spied on Trump's 2016 campaign and created "the Russia Russia Russia hoax, the worst political scandal in American history." Sigh.
Biden, already trolled with the image of an autopen - the eloquent author is 12 - gets worse. "Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History." He "took office (in) the most corrupt Election ever seen" and "oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our nation to the brink of destruction" - pot/kettle - with high inflation, weaponized law enforcement, Green New Scam, "abolishing" the Southern Border, insane asylums, "Afghanistan Disaster." His "devastating weakness" made Russia invade Ukraine and Hamas attack Israel. He issued "blanket pardons to Radical Democrat thugs" and "the Biden crime family." Sigh redux.
But "despite it all" - trumpets please - the manchild king triumphed in a landslide to "SAVE AMERICA!" Now he's "delivered" on his promise to "usher in the Golden Age of America," and "THE BEST IS YET TO COME!" Some beg to differ. They suggest his plaque should read, "Pedophile, Narcissist, Rapist, and Convicted Felon." They marvel, "Damn, his dick really is that tiny." They exclaim, "This is insane," "What the actual fuck," "God I hate this man," "This is embarrassing," and, "I am at my wit's end." In all, notes Canadian pundit Dean Blundell, "The United States of America is going through some things right now."
In Wednesday night's "prime time unraveling," there was more. His demented "nothingburger" of a speech was briefly, brutally summarized by a weary America as his "Pettysburg Address," "This is what presidential panic looks like," "Stop talking about Epstein," "the Worst Wing," proof "there is no bottom to Trump's shittiness," "screaming at Americans to like him," "This is pathetic," "Tune in next week for another 'Nazis On Drugs,'" "authoritarian fantasy at its finest" - egg prices down 82%, the first peace in the Middle East in 3,000 years - and from Newsom, 100 "Me Me Me Me Me's." From us, for God's and our sanity's sake, fucking quiet Piggy., once and for all.
'Attack on Independent Science': Trump EPA Removes All Mention of Human-Caused Climate Crisis From Public Webpages
The Trump administration has removed all references to human-caused climate change from Environmental Protection Agency webpages, as well as large amounts of data showing the dramatic warming of the climate over recent decades and the resulting risks.
According to a Tuesday report from the Washington Post, one page on the "Causes of Climate Change" stated as recently as October that "it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land," a statement that reflects the overwhelming consensus in peer-reviewed literature on climate.
That statement is now nowhere to be found, with those that remain only mentioning "natural" causes of planetary warming like volcanic activity and variations in solar activity.
"The new, near-exclusive emphasis on natural causes of climate change on the EPA's website is now completely out of sync with all available evidence demonstrating overwhelming human influence on contemporary warming trends," explained Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, who posted about the changes on social media.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which examines tens of thousands of studies from around the globe, found that virtually all warming since the dawn of the industrial era can be attributed to human carbon emissions.
This can be confirmed using the Wayback Machine's last snapshot (from Oct 8, 2025). At some point between Oct 8 & Dec 8, major changes were made to this and other EPA climate change content. Information has either been removed completely or "adjusted" to emphasize natural causes.
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— Daniel Swain (@weatherwest.bsky.social) December 8, 2025 at 12:50 PM
Pages about the catastrophic results of climate change have also been scrubbed: One of them allowed users to view several climate change indicators, like the historic decline of Arctic sea ice and glaciers and the increased rates of coastal flooding due to rising sea levels. That page has been deleted entirely.
Another page, which answered frequently asked questions about climate change, now no longer includes questions like, "Is there scientific consensus that human activities are causing today’s climate change?” "How can people reduce the risks of climate change?" and "Who is most at risk from the impacts of climate change?" The page provides no indication that climate change is a human-caused phenomenon, instead only discussing natural factors.
That page links to another that has since been deleted. It once provided extensive information about the risks climate change poses to human health, "from increasing the risk of extreme heat events and heavy storms to increasing the risk of asthma attacks and changing the spread of certain diseases carried by ticks and mosquitoes." Another deleted page discussed the impacts of climate change on children's health and low-income populations.
“This is, I think, one of the more dramatic scrubbings we’ve seen so far in the climate space,” said Swain. "This website is now completely incorrect regarding the changes in climate that we’re seeing today and their causes... It’s clearly a deliberate effort to misinform.”
During his 2024 campaign for reelection, President Donald Trump and his affiliated super political action committees received more than $96 million in direct contributions from oil and gas industry donors, according to a January report from Climate Power. Since retaking office, he has moved to dramatically expand the extraction and use of planet-heating fossil fuels while eliminating investment in clean energy and electric vehicles.
Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, "Deleting and distorting this scientific information only serves to give a free pass to fossil fuel polluters who are raking in profits even as communities reel from extreme heatwaves, record-breaking floods, intensified storms, and catastrophic wildfires."
Cleetus said that the purging of climate information from EPA sites was a prelude to "the likely overturning of the endangerment finding, a legal and scientific foundation for standards to limit the heat-trapping emissions driving climate change and threatening human health."
In July, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin unveiled a proposal to rescind the 2009 finding, which determined that climate change endangers human life and serves as the legal basis for greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act.
Undermining climate science is core to that effort, which Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M, said at the time, "could unravel virtually every US climate regulation on the books, from car emissions standards to power plant rules.”
Shortly after Zeldin announced the rule change, the Department of Energy cobbled together a “Climate Working Group” comprising five authors handpicked by Secretary Chris Wright to produce a climate report that disputes the IPCC's findings and the scientific consensus on climate change.
The report did not undergo peer review and omitted around 99% of the scientific literature the IPCC relied on for its comprehensive findings. A group of climate scientists that independently reviewed the paper found that it “exhibits pervasive problems with misrepresentation and selective citation of the scientific literature, cherry-picking of data, and faulty or absent statistics.”
Cleetus said Tuesday that “EPA is trying to bury the evidence on human-caused climate change, but it cannot change the reality of climate science or the harsh toll climate impacts are taking on people’s lives... This isn’t just about data on a website; it’s an attack on independent science and scientific integrity.”
Trump Economy 'Stalling Out' as Unemployment Rate Hits Highest Level in 4 Years
Federal data belatedly released Tuesday shows that the US unemployment rate rose to the highest level in four years last month as President Donald Trump's administration continues its assault on the government's workforce and American corporations lay off workers at a level not seen in decades.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.6% in November, up from 4.4% in September, according to the Labor Department report, whose release was delayed due to the recent government shutdown.
US employers added 64,000 jobs last month following the loss of 105,000 jobs in October, fueled by the Trump administration's large-scale layoffs of federal workers. The manufacturing sector, which Trump has promised to bolster with his tariff regime, shed 5,000 jobs in November, according to the newly published federal data.
Over the past six months, the US has averaged just 17,000 jobs added per month—a number that underscored concerns about the frailty of Trump's economy.
"Today’s long-awaited jobs report confirms what we already suspected: Trump’s economy is stalling out and American workers are paying the price," said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative. "Far from sparking a manufacturing renaissance, Trump’s reckless trade agenda is bleeding working-class jobs, forcing layoffs, and raising prices for businesses and consumers alike. Trump may give himself an A++++ on the economy, but these latest jobs numbers are failing working families.”
Another notable trend in today's payroll release is the gradual slowdown in nominal wage growth. As the unemployment rate rises, workers struggle to find jobs and have less leverage when it comes to demand higher wages. Both indicate a slowdown in affordability for workers and their families.
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— Elise Gould (@elisegould.bsky.social) Dec 16, 2025 at 10:17 AM
The new figures were released after Trump kicked off a tour of battleground states in an effort to defend his economic policies, which voters—including many of the president's own—increasingly blame for driving up prices. Trump and White House officials have insisted, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, that the US economy is stronger than it's ever been.
Julie Su, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and former acting head of the Labor Department, said Tuesday that "for months, Donald Trump and his administration have been hiding data about the economy, leaving workers and employers in the dark when trying to make critical hiring decisions."
"But you can’t hide the reality every American knows," said Su. "An economy where costs are too high for people to afford the basic necessities and also can’t find jobs is an economic crisis that requires massive change so that working people can actually come out on top."
‘Extraordinary Abuse of Power’: Mark Kelly Rebukes Hegseth Probe Over Illegal Orders Video
US Sen. Mark Kelly on Monday emphasized that comments he made in a video last month referred to principles that "every service member is taught" in the US military, when he responded to the news that the Pentagon was ramping up its investigation into the video and could take legal action against him.
The video in question was recorded with Kelly (D-Ariz.) and five other Democratic lawmakers who formerly served in the military and in national security, and the message was straightforward: As stated in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, active-duty service members must refuse to follow illegal orders.
But after eliciting threats of violence directly from President Donald Trump, that statement on Monday led the Pentagon to announce that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was "escalating" a review he previously opened into Kelly's conduct.
The probe was previously classified as a "review," but on Monday Hegseth launched an "official Command Investigation" involving the Pentagon general counsel's office.
The Washington Post called the investigation an "unprecedented use of the military justice system to investigate a political adversary."
In a video posted on social media, Kelly condemned the latest threat from the Department of Defense (DOD) as a "sham investigation."
"Now they are threatening everything I fought for and served for over 25 years in the US Navy, all because I repeated something every service member is taught," said Kelly. "It should send a shiver down the spine of every patriotic American that this president and secretary of defense would so corruptly abuse their power to come after me or anyone this way."
All six Democrats who took part in the video last month—who also included Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Reps. Chris Deluzio (Penn.), Maggie Goodlander (NH), Chrissy Houlahan (Md.), and Jason Crow (Colo.)—have been threatened by the White House since it was released. The president accused them of "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" and the FBI contacted the lawmakers for interviews.
But as the only retired military officer among them, Kelly is still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and can be recalled to active duty, making him a particular target of Hegseth and Trump.
The lawmakers said they were driven to record the video after service members asked them about the legality of some of Trump's recent actions.
It was released several weeks into a military operation that legal experts have called a campaign of "extrajudicial killings," with Hegseth directing strikes on at least 25 boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific and killing at least 95 people as of Tuesday. The White House has not publicly released evidence of its central claim that the boats are involved in drug trafficking.
Days after the video was posted online, NBC News reported that in August, a senior judge advocate general had raised concerns about the impending boat bombings, warning they could open service members up to legal liability.
Legal experts have warned that bombing boats suspected of ferrying drugs—rather than intercepting them and taking the passengers to court over this alleged crime—is illegal even if the vessels are involved in drug trafficking. Shortly after the video was released, alarm was further raised over the operation when it was reported that the military had killed survivors of an initial blast in the first boat strike on September 2.
Concerns over service members carrying out illegal orders were also raised at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, when Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) asked, "If Trump is using [terrorist designations] to use military force on any individuals he chooses—without verified evidence or legal authorization—what’s stopping him from designating anyone within our own borders in a similar fashion and conducting lethal, militarized attacks against them?”
General Gregory M. Guillot, commander of the US Northern Command, also told Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) at the hearing that he would execute an order to carry out an attack on a group the president has declared a domestic terror organization is the order was deemed "lawful."
Asked if he'd carry out an attack on a presidentially declared domestic terror org on US soil (e.g. Antifa), NORTHCOM Commander Gen. Guillot says he would - as long as it was lawful.
SENATOR REED: if the president declared an organization, a terrorist organization, or a DTO,… pic.twitter.com/vpxwq0SolK
— Ken Klippenstein (NSPM-7 Compliant) (@kenklippenstein) December 13, 2025
Legal experts have denied that Kelly and the other lawmakers who warned service members against carrying out illegal orders.
On Monday, Kelly's attorney, Paul Fishman, told the Pentagon in a letter that any legal action against the senator taken by the DOD would be "unconstitutional and an extraordinary abuse of power.”
“If the executive branch were to move forward in any forum—criminal, disciplinary, or administrative—we will take all appropriate legal action on Sen. Kelly’s behalf," said Fishman, "to halt the administration’s unprecedented and dangerous overreach."
'Depraved Response to a Depraved Act': Netanyahu Blames Attack on Australia Recognizing Palestine
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was swiftly criticized around the world on Sunday for trying to connect a deadly shooting that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney to the Australian government's decision to recognize Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu referenced a letter he sent to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in August, after Albanese and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong announced the decision, which followed similar moves from Canada, France, and the United Kingdom, amid Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip, which has been widely condemned as genocide.
As Netanyahu noted, he wrote to Albanese: "Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire. It rewards Hamas terrorists. It emboldens those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets."
The Israeli leader shared a video and transcript of his commentary on the social media platform X, where Jasper Nathaniel, who reports on the illegally occupied West Bank, called it a "depraved response to a depraved act."
"Obviously massacring unarmed men, women, and children at a Hanukkah celebration is antisemitic terror," Nathaniel added in a separate thread. "Just like massacring unarmed men, women, and children in Gaza and the West Bank is anti-Palestinian terror. There are no moral exceptions regarding the slaughter of civilians."
Electronic Intifada director Ali Abunimah said, "Basically Netanyahu is saying that Australia got what it had coming for not supporting his genocide in Gaza even more than it already does."
Avi Meyerstein, founder of the Washington, DC-based Alliance for Middle East Peace, declared: "This is absurd. Calling to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with peace, security, and self-determination for all, recognizing Israel and Palestine both, is a call to reduce the flames and put everyone on a path toward a better future."
Cameron Kasky, who survived the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and is now running for Congress as a Democrat in New York, also blasted Netanyahu over his comments, saying that "this is an atrocious downplaying of real antisemitism at a time when rampant Jew hatred is killing people."
The death toll in Australia has risen to 16, including one of at least two gunmen, and dozens more people were injured in the attack. A bystander who wrestled a gun away from one of the shooters has been identified by Australian media as Ahmed al Ahmed, a 43-year-old fruit shop owner and father. His cousin said that he was shot twice and had to get surgery.
Even Netanyahu recognized that in Australia, "we saw an action of a brave man—turns out a Muslim brave man, and I salute him—that stopped one of these terrorists from killing innocent Jews," but the Israeli leader then doubled down on what he called Albanese's "weakness."
Responding to Netanyahu, Assal Rad, a fellow at the Arab Center Washington, DC, said that "blaming Palestinian statehood, while committing genocide against them, is just another reminder that you want to erase Palestinians from existence."
"If you condemn the horrific, antisemitic attack in Bondi Beach while still defending genocide in Gaza, you're not actually outraged by the killing of innocent people," Rad also said. "It's not hard to condemn both, unless you think some lives are more valuable than others."
Rights Groups Demand Stronger Congressional Action Over Trump 'Murder' on High Seas
Human rights groups are demanding that the US Congress intervene to bring an end to President Donald Trump's boat-bombing spree.
Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday released statements condemning the Trump administration for launching more military strikes on purported drug trafficking boats, and they called on US lawmakers to assert their powers over American foreign policy to restrain the White House.
Daphne Eviatar, director of security and human rights for Amnesty International USA, argued that the administration does not seem at all deterred by potential congressional probes of its policies, and urged lawmakers to take a more aggressive approach.
"This ramping up of the bombing campaign despite increased pressure from Congress signals the administration’s total disregard for the law," said Eviatar. "Congress must do everything in its power to rein in this administration’s lawless behavior. Congress must exercise its oversight power to ask how these decisions are made, what intelligence is being used, and what the legal justification the administration is claiming and push back forcefully on these illegal actions."
Eviatar emphasized that the administration's killings "amount to extrajudicial executions, a form of murder, in clear violation of both domestic and international law," while adding that the administration has legal methods at its disposal to intercept suspected drug boats that don't involve slaughtering everyone onboard.
HRW, meanwhile, released a lengthy analysis breaking down the illegality of the Trump boat strikes, while also demanding Congress use its oversight powers to hold administration officials accountable for lawbreaking.
"Congress should intervene urgently," the group declared. "The administration’s lethal boat strikes, conducted without a clear legal basis and outside any armed conflict, demand immediate congressional scrutiny."
HRW also outlined actions that Congress should take, including forcing the White House to release its full legal justification for the bombing campaign, holding public hearings and demanding testimony from top officials, establishing a select committee with subpoena power to investigate the attacks, and setting aside funds to pay out as compensation to the families of the people killed by the strikes.
With Monday's attacks, the death toll from the administration's boat-bombing campaign, which began in September, now stands at at least 95 people.
The human rights groups' calls for great congressional intervention come as the Congressional Progressive Caucus is urging their colleagues to support resolutions aimed at blocking Trump from launching a war with Venezuela without congressional approval.
The first resolution would require Trump to "remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities with any presidentially designated terrorist organization in the Western Hemisphere, unless authorized by a declaration of war or a specific congressional authorization for use of military force."
A second resolution supported by the caucus "directs the president to remove the use of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization for use of military force."
Description of FCC as 'Independent' Scrubbed From Agency Website After Chair Says It Isn't
One critic called the removal—which came immediately after FCC Chair Brendan Carr ignored nearly a century of historical precedent by claiming the agency is not independent—"a chilling authoritarian touch.”
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr stunned many observers Wednesday by suggesting that the FCC is subordinate to President Donald Trump—an assertion followed almost immediately by the removal of the word "independent" from the agency's website.
Pressed by Democratic—and some Republican—lawmakers during a contentious Senate Commerce Committee hearing that addressed the FCC's mission of independently implementing and enforcing US communications laws and regulations, Carr said that "formally speaking, the FCC is not independent."
Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) read aloud from the FCC's website, which at the time proclaimed the agency's independence.
"Is your website lying?" asked Luján.
"Possibly," replied Carr.
Within minutes of Carr's testimony, the mission statement on the FCC's website no longer described the agency as "independent."
Addressing Carr's apparent fealty to Trump, Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) asked, "If you don’t think that the FCC is independent, then is President Trump your boss?”
Carr replied: “President Trump has designated me as chairman of the FCC. I think it comes as no surprise that I’m aligned with President Trump on policy.”
A former telecommunications attorney, Carr has been criticized for siding with corporations and against the public interest on nearly ever major issue to come before the FCC. Many of his views are laid out in the chapter on the FCC he authored for Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
As chair, Carr has been accused by critics including Democratic lawmakers—some of whom have demanded his firing or resignation—of being a Trump sycophant, especially over his role in getting ABC late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel suspended for joking about the assassination of far-right firebrand Charlie Kirk.
Asked by Kim if it would be appropriate "for the president or senior administration officials to give you direction to pressure media companies," Carr declined to directly answer the question.
“The easy answer is, ‘No.’ It’s not a hypothetical," the senator said. "Trump is not your boss. The American people are your boss."
Matt Wood, general counsel and vice president of policy at the advocacy group Free Press Action, said that "if Brendan Carr proved anything today, it’s only that he’s willing to shout down senators and contort his supposed free speech principles to protect Trump’s ego and attack Trump’s critics."
Wood lamented that Carr "proudly trashed his own agency’s historical independence."
"Right after senators pointed out the contradiction between the FCC’s online description and Carr’s claim that Donald Trump ultimately called the shots, language noting the agency’s independence disappeared from the FCC.gov website—a chilling authoritarian touch," he added.
Top Rail Unions Denounce Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern Megamerger as 'De Facto Monopoly'
"For rail customers, it will be a choice between ‘Hell or the highway,’” said Mark Wallace, the national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.
Two of America's largest railway workers unions have come out against the $85 billion merger of two major railroad conglomerates, warning that it will harm competition and worker safety.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division (BMWED) represent more than half of the employees at the Union Pacific Railroad and the Norfolk Southern Corporation, which it plans to acquire.
The US Surface Transportation Board (STB) is expected to receive a formal proposal from the two companies on Friday. President Donald Trump said in September that the deal "sounds good" to him.
If approved, it would allow the two firms to merge into the largest railroad company in US history, controlling more than 50,000 miles of track across 43 states. According to the Associated Press, such a railroad would likely control over 40% of the nation's freight.
The unions warned on Wednesday that the deal would create a "de facto monopoly" in large swaths of the country.
“We believe this transcontinental railroad will make shipping by rail less attractive as the merged carrier passes off rail lines that serve small towns, factories, and farms to short line railroads while running miles-long slow-moving trains on the main line," said BLET national president Mark Wallace. "For rail customers, it will be a choice between ‘Hell or the highway.’”
Loosened merger regulations by Congress have allowed railway companies to consolidate over the past 40 years. As the unions point out, in 1980 there were roughly 40 different Class 1 railroads in the US, whereas in 2025 they have combined into just six entities.
An October analysis by the American Economic Liberties Project, which warned against the Norfolk Southern-Union Pacific merger, noted that as a result of this consolidation, "shippers reported a deterioration in service, fewer options with higher prices... while workers lost jobs and those who didn’t face strenuous working conditions."
While the unions credited Norfolk Southern’s spending on new safety measures following 2023’s catastrophic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, they said that Union Pacific “continues to cut corners and oppose needed reforms.”
During the Biden administration, federal regulators found that Union Pacific made a concerted effort to undermine government safety assessments, including coaching employees on how to respond to questions from the Federal Railroad Administration and threatening them with discipline if they did not give the company's preferred responses.
The merger has received backing from SMART-TD, the nation's largest railroad union, which cited promises from Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena not to lay off workers as a result of the acquisition.
But BLET and BMWED say these promises are hollow and that the proposal given to unions still allows the company to have the ultimate say over which workers are protected and provides no guarantees for employees against being transferred to jobs hundreds of miles away or from having their lines sold to short line railroads that pay less.
“We don’t believe anything Vena says about how workers would be treated in the Supersized Union Pacific,” said Tony Cardwell, president of the BMWED. “The agreements reached with some other unions related to job protections post-merger have loopholes big enough to traverse freight trains through. We refuse to accept the same terms in return for our unions’ support for the merger.”
Report Urges US Government Relief for Homebuyers as Costs Spin ‘Out of Control’
"Buying a home has never been less affordable. Trump has made it worse."
With mortgage rates climbing and the median income a family needs to afford a home ballooning by nearly 50% in just the past five years, the advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative on Wednesday called on the federal government to take targeted, concrete actions to reverse the affordability crisis that President Donald Trump's policies are only making worse.
Groundwork's senior adviser for economic policy, Emily DiVito, joined former deputy director of the National Economic Council Bharat Ramamurti to release a report titled Unraveling the Mortgage Maze: How Government Can Make Homeownership More Affordable for American Families. The paper emphasizes that "at a time when American families are struggling with a severe housing affordability crisis, relief for overburdened consumers requires the federal government to reshape and strengthen its role in the mortgage financing system."
Because interest rates have been elevated since 2022, homeowners are "locked in" to their existing mortgages, with many young families feeling stuck in their "starter homes" even as they outgrow them. In addition to the impact on families, the "lock-in effect" is suppressing turnover, reducing supply, and contributing to more expensive houses.
Those consequences "ripple across generations and regions," wrote DiVito and Ramamurti in the report. "Today, younger families disproportionately confront a market in which suitable homes are scarce, mobility is costly, and the financial advantages once associated with homeownership are increasingly out of reach."
While the federal government intervened during the Great Depression and established new housing agencies and mortgage financing programs, homebuyers now have to contend with a "hybrid" system, with the government providing liquidity for financial firms and consumers relying on private loan services, lenders, and brokers to find an affordable mortgage and navigate the purchasing process.
Reducing home prices was part of the platform Trump campaigned on, but as with his tariffs' impact on grocery prices and the effect on electricity bills that his aggressive push for artificial intelligence expansion is having, the president's proposals would make the housing affordability crisis worse, DiVito and Ramamurti explained.
Trump and his Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director, Bill Pulte, "impulsively introduced a 50-year mortgage proposal in early November 2025 that would lower a family’s monthly payment on a median-priced home by less than $120, while saddling homeowners with higher interest rates and a slower path to equity," reads the report.
The administration is also working to privatize government-sponsored entities, which would raise mortgage rates and restrict credit "while generating huge windfalls for hedge funds and billionaires."
No other detailed proposals have been released by the White House for reducing costs for homebuyers, according to DiVito and Ramamurti.
The report offers four proposals that would provide families with "material relief":
- Cutting mortgage insurance premiums on millions of government-backed mortgages, which would save families hundreds of dollars per year and thousands over the life of their loans;
- Allowing families to keep their mortgage rate when they sell one home and buy another to help alleviate the lock-in effect that grinds the market to a halt, saving families more than $5,000 per year on mortgage costs;
- Offering low-rate direct federal loans so that consumers can benefit from the government’s low cost of borrowing; and
- Creating transparent pricing platforms so that consumers can better navigate these complicated markets with greater ease and efficiency.
Without congressional action, says the report, the Trump administration could lower the rate at which the mortgage insurance premium (MIP) is charged to borrowers—a step the federal government has taken before, as recently as 2023 when it saved an average of $453 annually for 1.1 million borrowers.
The government could also shorten the lifetime of MIP payments by requiring automatic termination earlier than currently required:
If a borrower puts down less than 10% on government-backed loans, the MIP will be assessed for the lifetime of the loan or until the borrower can refinance. If a borrower puts down more than 10%, MIP payments are automatically canceled after 11 years. [Private mortgage insurance] on the other hand, is supposed to be canceled automatically at 78% [loan-to-value], and borrowers can request early cancellation at 80%. However, many borrowers report that servicers fail to terminate their payments when they hit the threshold. Policymakers can amend Section 4902 of the Homeowners Protection Act (12 U.S. Code § 4902) to enable earlier cancellation of PMI, which is enforced by the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau].
Policymakers can also expand offerings for mobile mortgages, "an underutilized home loan product that could deliver thousands in cost savings to homeowners each year." Allowing buyers to assume the existing rate of a seller or bring their current rate with them to their new home would alleviate the lock-in effect, "freeing up existing housing supply and making it easier for families to move affordably and when they want—no matter the interest rate environment."
Mobilizing a mobile mortgage could save a family up to $5,078 annually, and with Baby Boomers owning 28% of the nation's largest homes, "more affordable and flexible mortgage financing could free up millions of existing homes for younger buyers or large families," wrote DiVito and Ramamurti.
Government-provided direct loans at the cost of borrowing is named in the report as "the most direct role" the Trump administration could take in the mortgage market.
"Doing so would extend the benefits of the government’s cheaper financing directly to consumers," reads the report. "To ensure that the program targets the low- and middle-income homeowners who are most likely to need and benefit from cheaper financing, awards could be pegged to the median purchase price of single-family homes in any given area. Income and credit thresholds could also be established, as they already are for government-backed mortgages, to allow for more efficient underwriting."
Policymakers could also create a centralized online platform listing all mortgage lenders' terms, fees, eligibility requirements, and customer service information, bringing "closely held industry information out of the shadows, [and] equipping consumers with the knowledge necessary to navigate the mortgage market successfully."
The CFPB found that 30% of borrowers do not comparison-shop for their mortgage and more than 75% apply for a mortgage at just one lender—costing the average homebuyer about $300 per year.
Making a centralized database available to borrowers would stop lenders from colluding on mortgage rates as Wells Fargo, Rocket Mortgage, and JPMorgan Chase have been accused of doing in a recent class action lawsuit.
"By leveraging the government’s unique financing power and regulatory authority to craft a mortgage system that is simpler, less costly, and more responsive to households’ needs," wrote DiVito and Ramamurti, "millions of families who feel buying a home is out of reach may finally be able to achieve and maintain homeownership."