Just days before Christmas, West Virginians should be focused on family, faith and the small joys that carry us through the coldest months of the year. Instead, far too many families across our state are staring down something that should never be part of the holiday season: the real possibility of losing their health care on Jan. 1. With Congress leaving Washington for the holidays without extending the Affordable Care Act's enhanced subsidies, the reality is now set. These critical affordability measures " lifelines for roughly 67,000 West Virginians " are slated to expire. And paired with the looming threat of Capito Care " or the "Big Beautiful Bill" " which makes the largest cuts to Medicaid in history and destabilizes our coverage system even further, West Virginia families are heading into the new year with more uncertainty than comfort. read more
During Donald Trump's second presidency, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plans to redirect $3.9 billion away from Housing First " a program that got underway under President Bill Clinton during the 1990s. Trump officials are attacking Housing First as ineffective and claiming that it isn't doing enough to reduce homelessness, especially in major U.S. cities. But according to policy experts interviewed by the New York Times, the program is working much better than Trump allies appointed to HUD say it is. Times reporter Jason DeParle, in an article published on Christmas Day 2025, explains, "The administration called the policy a permissive approach that had let homelessness rise, while supporters said Housing First was backed by proven science. Housing First provides chronically homeless people long-term subsidized housing and offers, but does not require treatment for mental illness or addiction.
Lainey Landry's parents hung the stocking embroidered with her name on the mantel beside her older brothers' even though the 9-year-old is gone. She's still in the family Christmas card photo, but they added a message: "There's a brighter star in the Texas sky." And they placed two new ornaments on the tree, etched with lines from letters Lainey wrote home from Camp Mystic. "There's a lot of those firsts that are happening," Natalie Landry, 42, said as she sat in the sunroom of her Houston ranch house. Behind her, Lainey's name, scrawled in marker, was on the family chore chart, her tasks forever blank. For the Landrys, life since Lainey and 26 other girls died in the rising waters of the Guadalupe River nearly six months ago has been a succession of choices: What to preserve, what to change? What to remember? What to do with her bedroom, her siblings' grief and should they go to camp next summer?
Bodycam footage from a workplace raid shows a gang of masked male ICE agents forcibly entering a restroom and telling a woman in a stall to "pull up" her pants. read more
President Donald Trump has said the US launched a "powerful and deadly strike" against the Islamic State (IS) group in north-western Nigeria. In a post on Truth Social, the US president described IS as " terrorist scum", accusing them of "targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians". He said the US military "executed numerous perfect strikes", without giving any further details. It is unclear what exactly targets were struck and when.
How long will it take for Bugsy Patel's stooges to redact another million mentions of Doe 174?