Tulsi Gabbard’s political journey has been anything but straightforward.
As a teenager, she worked for her father, a prominent anti-gay activist, and his political organization, which opposed same-sex marriage. In 2002, she was elected to Hawaii’s House of Representatives, becoming — at age 21 — the youngest person to serve in the Legislature.
Gabbard was a Democrat and remained so for two decades, as she cycled from the statehouse to Honolulu’s City Council to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Despite no obvious qualifications — save for her fawning appearances on Fox News — Trump selected her to be the director of national intelligence, the nation’s spymaster-in-chief. Despite no earthly reason, Gabbard was present last week when the FBI conducted a heavy-handed raid at the Fulton County elections office in Georgia, pursuing a harebrained theory the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
Instead of, say, poring over the latest intelligence gleanings from Ukraine or Gaza, Gabbard stood watch as a team of flak-jacketed agents carted off hundreds of boxes of ballots and other election materials.
That’ll keep the homeland safe.
But as bizarre and unaccountable as it was, Gabbard’s presence outside Atlanta did make a certain amount of sense. She’s a longtime dabbler in crackpot conspiracies. And she’ll bend, like a swaying palm, whichever way the prevailing winds blow.
Some refer to her as the “Manchurian candidate,” said John Hart, a communication professor at Hawaii Pacific University, referring to the malleable cipher in the famous political thriller. In a different world, he suggested, Gabbard might have been Sanders’ running mate.
“It does take a certain amount of flexibility to think that someone who could have been the Democratic VP is now in Trump’s cabinet,” Hart observed.
The job of the nation’s director of national intelligence — a position created to address some of the failings that led to the 9/11 attacks — is to act as the president’s top intelligence adviser, synthesizing voluminous amounts of foreign, military and domestic information to help defend the country and protect its interests abroad.
She blamed NATO and the Biden administration for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She claimed the U.S. was funding dangerous biological laboratories in the country — “parroting fake Russian propaganda,” in the words of then-Utah Sen. Mitt Romney.
She defended Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who were indicted for masterminding two of the biggest leaks of intelligence secrets in U.S. history.
Still, Gabbard was narrowly confirmed by the Senate, 52 to 48. The vote, almost entirely along party lines, was an inauspicious start and nothing since had dispelled lawmakers’ well-placed lack of confidence.
Her bizarre presence in Georgia — where Gabbard reportedly arranged for FBI agents to make a post-raid call to the president — looks like nothing more than a way to worm her way back into his good graces.
(Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that a U.S. intelligence official has filed a whistleblower complaint against Gabbard, which is caught up in wrangling over sharing details with Congress.)
California Sen. Adam Schiff said it’s “patently obvious to everyone Gabbard lacks the capability and credibility” to lead the country’s intelligence community.
“She has been sidelined by the White House, ignored by the agencies, and has zero credibility with Congress,” the Democrat wrote in an email. She’s responded by parroting Trump’s Big Lie “complete with cosplaying [a] secret agent in Fulton County and violating all norms and rules by connecting the President of the United States with line law enforcement officers executing a warrant. The only contribution that Tulsi Gabbard can make now would be to resign.”
Back in Hawaii, the former congresswoman has been in bad odor for years.
“It started with the criticism of President Obama” — a revered Hawaii native — over foreign policy “and a sense in Hawaii that she was more interested in appearing on the national media than working for the state,” said Colin Moore, a University of Hawaii political science professor and another longtime Gabbard watcher.
“Hawaii politicians have, with a few exceptions, tended to be kind of low-drama dealmakers, not the sort who attract national attention,” Moore said. “The goal is to rise in seniority and bring benefits back to the state. And that was never the model Tulsi followed.”
In recent years, as she sidled into Trump’s orbit, Hawaiian sightings of Gabbard have been few and far between, according to Honolulu Civil Beat, a statewide nonprofit news organization. Not that she’s been terribly missed in the deeply Democratic state.
“I’ve heard some less-charitable people say, ‘Don’t let the door hit your [rear end] on the way out,” said Hart.
But it’s not as though Gabbard’s ascension to director of intelligence was Hawaii’s loss and America’s gain. It’s been America’s loss, too.
Late last year, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill that would have required two-person operating crews on New York City subways, despite heavy pressure from transit unions. While the veto looked like a win for fiscal sanity, two-person train crews—and needlessly expensive transit systems—are likely here for the foreseeable future.
The bill, which would have mandated both a driver and a conductor on each train, cleared the state Legislature somewhat unexpectedly last year. It was pushed by the Transport Workers Union (TWU) to permanently codify more union jobs into state law.
Most NYC subway lines already operate with two-person crews under the current labor contract between the TWU and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Hochul’s veto stopped two-person crews from spreading systemwide, and it theoretically left the door open for the topic to be renegotiated in future labor talks, rather than being cemented into state law.
NYC’s two-person system is a global outlier. An analysis from New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management found that just 6 percentof the world’s commuter rail lines use two-person crews, with most operating safely with a single driver for decades.
Although unions insist two-person crews are essential for safety, evidence suggests otherwise. The Manhattan Institute’s Adam Lehodey has documented that London, which uses one-person crews, operates one of the safest rail networks in the world. Research from the Association of American Railroads, which compared one-person trains in Europe to America’s multiperson freight train system, similarly found no evidence of a safety impact.
But, as TWU President John Samuelsen told The New York Times, “It doesn’t really matter to us what the data shows,” adding that a driver and a conductor make trips “visibly safer.”
The fight over crew size extends beyond New York. Under President Joe Biden, the Federal Railroad Administration enacted a rule mandating two-person crews for freight trains nationwide. While one might expect this rule to be repealed in a Republican administration, the GOP’s continued bear hug with organized labor has muddied the waters.
President Donald Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FRA Administrator David Fink both voiced support for the Biden-era two-person crew rule during their confirmation hearings. During his time in the Senate, Vice President J.D. Vance co-sponsored—along with numerous other Republicans, including Sen. John Hawley (R–Mo.) and then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.)—the Railway Safety Act, which would have legislatively mandated two-person freight crews.
The contradiction is especially stark in rail policy, as Trump recently fired numerous Surface Transportation Board members, presumably in an effort to greenlight railroad mergers—the type of pro-railroad stance that collides with the administration’s pro-union crew-size priors.
Beyond failing to improve safety, two-person crews are substantially more expensive. Switching to one-person crews would save the MTA $442 million a year. That money could fund real safety improvements, such as the installation of platform doors, which provide a physical barrier between passengers and the train until the train has come to a complete stop. After platform doors were installed in Seoul, South Korea, annual subway deaths dropped from 70 to two.
If anything, Hochul’s veto merely gives new NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani more flexibility in future labor negotiations between the TWU and the MTA. Based on the mayor’s track record, it’s unlikely he’ll be a voice for one-person crews.
Given likely political support from both City Hall and the White House, two-person crews appear entrenched—and riders will keep paying for them.
The 2020s, so far, have been one long and often painful lesson in what happens when policymakers tell economists to shut up and go away.
From the COVID-19 pandemic through Bidenflation and onto the Trump 2.0 trade wars, each successive administration to occupy the White House during this decade has made a critical error by assuming it could ignore economic principles—or simply substitute them for a different set of underlying assumptions. Those errors have been made in different ways and for different reasons, yes, but they share this common characteristic: a belief that economics is optional, and that tradeoffs can be eliminated if your motives are in the right place.
But that is simply not true, as circumstances have shown again and again.
Start with COVID, which is undeniably the defining story of the first half-plus-one-year of the 2020s. When the Trump administration and myriad state and local officials implemented lockdowns under the “15 days to slow the spread” promise in March 2020, it was largely at the behest of public health advisers.
The dominant attitude driving lockdown policies that closed schools, businesses, churches, playgrounds, and more was well articulated by Jon Allsop in the Columbia Journalism Review‘s newsletter. There is “no choice to be made between public health and a healthy economy—because public health is an essential prerequisite of a healthy economy,” he wrote in April 2020 as debate over “reopening” was ongoing.
That all-or-nothing approach reveals how little the economists were involved in the early decisions over COVID. “There are no solutions; only tradeoffs,” is how Thomas Sowell once put it, but during the early months of the pandemic, solutions were overly promised and tradeoffs were routinely ignored. That was a tremendous error.
“At its most basic, economics is about analyzing choices made under constraints. Politicians and government agencies made a vast range of public health decisions this past year that violated principles that good economists take for granted,” wrote Ryan Bourne, an economist with the Cato Institute, in a 2021 review of early COVID policies. “These decisions made the public health and economic welfare impacts of the pandemic worse than they needed to be. In that sense, the poor response to COVID-19 represents a failure to think economically.”
As the pandemic waned, the Biden administration repeated that mistake.
Soon after taking office, President Joe Biden’s team pushed for a “run it hot” approach to economic policy and openly dismissed fears of rising inflation. That came to fruition with the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion spending package that included $1,400 stimulus checks to households earning as much as $160,000 in joint income.
Larry Summers, a Harvard economist and veteran of the Biden administration, warned in a Washington Postop-ed that the American Rescue Plan would “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.” Other top economists, including a former chairman of the International Monetary Fund, offered similar warnings.
Biden and Democrats in Congress did not listen. The result? Inflation of a kind America had not seen in a generation. The annualized inflation rate hit 9.1 percent in June 2022 and still has not returned to the 2 percent annualized rate that the Federal Reserve regards as its target.
Indeed, inflation has in some ways supplanted COVID as the dominant political narrative of the 2020s. Even though the current inflation level (2.7 percent annualized) is well below that 2022 peak, it is significantly higher than anything Americans experienced during the first two decades of the 21st century. No wonder everyone seems to be mad about how much things cost.
There were consequences to the Biden administration’s “run it hot” economic policy, and ignoring the economists did not make those tradeoffs go away.
The same can now be said for President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which his administration implemented over the objections of many economists. Vice President J.D. Vance took to X in July to declare that “the economics profession doesn’t fully understand tariffs.”
Trump and his allies promised that tariffs would usher in a “golden age” for American manufacturing. On the contrary, economists warned that tariffs would harm rather than help American manufacturing firms because the majority of all imports are raw materials and intermediate goods that go into making other products.
The proof is in the pudding. Higher taxes on those inputs caused the manufacturing sector to fall into a recession during 2025, and the sector has been shedding jobs. The trade deficit continues to grow. Meanwhile, tariffs have also pushed prices higher.
Economists can be frustrating to advisers in the policymaking process. The impulse to point out the inevitable tradeoffs in any policy can make it seem like their only purpose is to blow holes in the high-minded plans of the nation’s elected officials. But throwing them out of the room does not make foolish ideas more perfect. Six years of dismissing economic reality have not brought us utopia.
If our elected officials are looking for a handy New Year’s resolution for 2026, here’s an idea: Start listening to the economists again.
The Trump administration said on Tuesday that it will begin garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers who are in default early next year.The department said it will send notices to approximately 1,000 borrowers the week of Jan. 7, with more notices to come at an increasing scale each month.Millions of borrowers are considered in default, meaning they are 270 days past due on their payments. The department must give borrowers 30 days notice before their wages can be garnished.The department said it will begin collection activities, “only after student and parent borrowers have been provided sufficient notice and opportunity to repay their loans.”In May, the Trump administration ended the pandemic-era pause on student loan payments, beginning to collect on defaulted debt through withholding tax refunds and other federal payments to borrowers.The move ended a period of leniency for student loan borrowers. Payments restarted in October of 2023, but the Biden administration extended a grace period of one year. Since March 2020, no federal student loans had been referred for collection, including those in default, until the Trump administration’s changes earlier this year.The Biden administration tried multiple times to give broad forgiveness to student loans, but those efforts were eventually stopped by courts.Persis Yu, deputy executive director for the Student Borrower Protection Center, criticized the decision to begin garnishing wages, and said the department had failed to sufficiently help borrowers find affordable payment options.”At a time when families across the country are struggling with stagnant wages and an affordability crisis, this administration’s decision to garnish wages from defaulted student loan borrowers is cruel, unnecessary, and irresponsible,” Yu said in a statement. “As millions of borrowers sit on the precipice of default, this Administration is using its self-inflicted limited resources to seize borrowers’ wages instead of defending borrowers’ right to affordable payments.”
WASHINGTON —
The Trump administration said on Tuesday that it will begin garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers who are in default early next year.
The department said it will send notices to approximately 1,000 borrowers the week of Jan. 7, with more notices to come at an increasing scale each month.
Millions of borrowers are considered in default, meaning they are 270 days past due on their payments. The department must give borrowers 30 days notice before their wages can be garnished.
The department said it will begin collection activities, “only after student and parent borrowers have been provided sufficient notice and opportunity to repay their loans.”
In May, the Trump administration ended the pandemic-era pause on student loan payments, beginning to collect on defaulted debt through withholding tax refunds and other federal payments to borrowers.
The move ended a period of leniency for student loan borrowers. Payments restarted in October of 2023, but the Biden administration extended a grace period of one year. Since March 2020, no federal student loans had been referred for collection, including those in default, until the Trump administration’s changes earlier this year.
The Biden administration tried multiple times to give broad forgiveness to student loans, but those efforts were eventually stopped by courts.
Persis Yu, deputy executive director for the Student Borrower Protection Center, criticized the decision to begin garnishing wages, and said the department had failed to sufficiently help borrowers find affordable payment options.
“At a time when families across the country are struggling with stagnant wages and an affordability crisis, this administration’s decision to garnish wages from defaulted student loan borrowers is cruel, unnecessary, and irresponsible,” Yu said in a statement. “As millions of borrowers sit on the precipice of default, this Administration is using its self-inflicted limited resources to seize borrowers’ wages instead of defending borrowers’ right to affordable payments.”
President Trump announced a series of immigration actions after the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. Those actions include pausing all current asylum decisions and reviewing all green card holders from 19 “countries of concern.”
He’s loud, he’s obnoxious and, in a very short time, he’s broken unprecedented ground with his smash-face, turn-it-to-11 approach to the vice presidency. Unlike most White House understudies, who effectively disappear like a protected witness, Vance has become the highest-profile, most pugnacious politician in America who is not named Donald J. Trump.
It’s quite the contrast with his predecessor.
Kamala Harris made her own kind of history, as the first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to serve as vice president. As such, she entered office bearing great — and vastly unrealistic — expectations about her prominence and the public role she would play in the Biden administration. When Harris acted the way that vice presidents normally do — subservient, self-effacing, careful never to poach the spotlight from the chief executive — it was seen as a failing.
Why is that? Because that’s how President Trump wants it.
“Rule No.1 about the vice presidency is that vice presidents are only as active as their presidents want them to be,” said Jody Baumgartner, an East Carolina University expert on the office. “They themselves are irrelevant.”
Consider Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, who had the presence and pizzazz of day-old mashed potatoes.
“He was not a very powerful vice president, but that’s because Donald Trump didn’t want him to be,” said Christopher Devine, a University of Dayton professor who’s published four books on the vice presidency. “He wanted him to have very little influence and to be more of a background figure, to kind of reassure quietly the conservatives of the party that Trump was on the right track. With JD Vance, I think he wants him to be a very active, visible figure.”
There were other circumstances that kept Harris under wraps, particularly in the early part of Biden’s presidency.
One was the COVID-19 lockdown. “It meant she wasn’t traveling. She wasn’t doing public events,” said Joel K. Goldstein, another author and expert on the vice presidency. “A lot of stuff was being done virtually and so that tended to be constraining.”
The Democrats’ narrow control of the Senate also required Harris to stick close to Washington so she could cast a number of tie-breaking votes. (Under the Constitution, the vice president provides the deciding vote when the Senate is equally divided. Harris set a record in the third year of her vice presidency for casting the most tie-breakers in history.)
The personality of their bosses also explains why Harris and Vance approached the vice presidency in different ways.
Biden had spent nearly half a century in Washington, as a senator and vice president under Barack Obama. He was, foremost, a creature of the legislative process and saw Harris, who’d served nearly two decades in elected office, as a (junior) partner in governing.
Ohio’s senator had served barely 18 months in his one and only political position when Trump chose Vance as his running mate. He’d “really made his mark as a media and cultural figure,” Devine noted, with Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” regarded as a kind of Rosetta Stone for the anger and resentment that fueled the MAGA movement.
Trump “wanted someone who was going to be aggressive in advancing the MAGA narrative,” Devine said, “being very present in media, including in some newer media spaces, on podcasts, social media. Vance was someone who could hammer home Trump’s message every day.”
The contrast continued once Harris and Vance took office.
Trump has treated Vance as a sort of heat-seeking rhetorical missile, turning him loose against his critics and acting as though the presidential campaign never ended.
Vance seems gladly submissive. Harris, who was her own boss for nearly two decades, had a hard time adjusting as Biden’s No. 2.
“Vance is very effective at playing the role of backup singer who gets to have a solo from time to time,” said Jamal Simmons, who spent a year as Harris’ vice presidential communications chief. “I don’t think Kamala Harris was ever as comfortable in the role as Vance has proven himself to be.”
Will Vance’s pugilistic approach pay off in 2028? It’s way too soon to say. Turning the conventions of the vice presidency to a shambles, the way Trump did with the presidency, has delighted many in the Republican base. But polls show Vance, like Trump, is deeply unpopular with a great number of voters.
As for Harris, all she can do is look on from her exile in Brentwood, pondering what might have been.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and nonbinary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.The decision by the high court’s conservative majority is Trump’s latest win on the high court’s emergency docket, and it means his administration can enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out. It halts a lower-court order requiring the government to keep letting people choose male, female or X on their passport to line up with their gender identity on new or renewed passports.The State Department changed its passport rules after Trump, a Republican, handed down an executive order in January declaring the United States would “recognize two sexes, male and female,” based on birth certificates and “biological classification.”Transgender actor Hunter Schafer, for example, said in February that her new passport had been issued with a male gender marker, even though she’s marked female on her driver’s license and passport for years.The plaintiffs argue that passports limited to the sex listed on a birth certificate can spark harassment or even violence for transgender people.”By classifying people based on sex assigned at birth and exclusively issuing sex markers on passports based on that sex classification, the State Department deprives plaintiffs of a usable identification document and the ability to travel safely,” attorneys wrote in court documents.Sex markers began appearing on passports in the mid-1970s and the federal government started allowing them to be changed with medical documentation in the early 1990s, the plaintiffs said in court documents. A 2021 change under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, removed documentation requirements and allowed nonbinary people to choose an X gender marker after years of litigation.A judge blocked the Trump administration policy in June after a lawsuit from nonbinary and transgender people, some of whom said they were afraid to submit applications. An appeals court left the judge’s order in place.Solicitor General D. John Sauer then turned to the Supreme Court, pointing to its recent ruling upholding a ban on transition-related health care for transgender minors. He also argued Congress gave the president control over passports, which overlap with his authority over foreign affairs.”It is hard to imagine a system less conducive to accurate identification than one in which anyone can refuse to identify his or her sex and withhold relevant identifying information for any reason, or can rely on a mutable sense of self-identification,” Sauer wrote in court documents.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and nonbinary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.
The decision by the high court’s conservative majority is Trump’s latest win on the high court’s emergency docket, and it means his administration can enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out. It halts a lower-court order requiring the government to keep letting people choose male, female or X on their passport to line up with their gender identity on new or renewed passports.
The State Department changed its passport rules after Trump, a Republican, handed down an executive order in January declaring the United States would “recognize two sexes, male and female,” based on birth certificates and “biological classification.”
Transgender actor Hunter Schafer, for example, said in February that her new passport had been issued with a male gender marker, even though she’s marked female on her driver’s license and passport for years.
The plaintiffs argue that passports limited to the sex listed on a birth certificate can spark harassment or even violence for transgender people.
“By classifying people based on sex assigned at birth and exclusively issuing sex markers on passports based on that sex classification, the State Department deprives plaintiffs of a usable identification document and the ability to travel safely,” attorneys wrote in court documents.
Sex markers began appearing on passports in the mid-1970s and the federal government started allowing them to be changed with medical documentation in the early 1990s, the plaintiffs said in court documents. A 2021 change under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, removed documentation requirements and allowed nonbinary people to choose an X gender marker after years of litigation.
A judge blocked the Trump administration policy in June after a lawsuit from nonbinary and transgender people, some of whom said they were afraid to submit applications. An appeals court left the judge’s order in place.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer then turned to the Supreme Court, pointing to its recent ruling upholding a ban on transition-related health care for transgender minors. He also argued Congress gave the president control over passports, which overlap with his authority over foreign affairs.
“It is hard to imagine a system less conducive to accurate identification than one in which anyone can refuse to identify his or her sex and withhold relevant identifying information for any reason, or can rely on a mutable sense of self-identification,” Sauer wrote in court documents.
CONCERNING HER FIRING. THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCED IT’S PLANNING TO BUILD NEW SECTIONS OF THE SOUTHERN BORDER WALL. THE NEW BARRIERS WOULD EXTEND NEARLY TEN MILES ALONG THE SAN DIEGO MEXICO BORDER. KCRA 3’S ANDREA FLORES HAS BEEN COVERING THE SOUTHERN BORDER FOR MORE THAN THREE YEARS. UNDER THE BIDEN AND TRUMP ADMINISTRATION. SHE JOINS US WITH WHAT THIS MEANS FOR BORDER SAFETY AND HOW IT’S GETTING FUNDED. SO THE NEW WALL SYSTEM IS BEING FUNDED BY THE SO-CALLED BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL ACT, AND IT GIVES CBP MORE THAN $46 BILLION THROUGH 2029 FOR CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE COSTS. SO THIS IS VIDEO FROM KCRA 3’S TIME AT THE BORDER. THIS WAS BACK IN APRIL OF THIS YEAR WHEN THOUSANDS OF MILITARY TROOPS WERE SENT TO THE AREA TO ASSIST CBP WITH SURVEILLANCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE. NOW, THE PROPOSED BARRIERS WOULD BE BUILT NEAR THE TECATE AND OTAY MESA PORTS OF ENTRY. CBP SAYS IT PLANS TO BUILD AND MAINTAIN NEARLY TEN MILES OF BORDER WALL. IT ALSO PLANS TO ADD NEARLY 52 MILES OF IMPROVED INFRASTRUCTURE ALONG EXISTING BARRIERS, INCLUDING SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS, ACCESS PATROL ROADS AND ARTIFICIAL LIGHTS. BUT IMMIGRATION ADVOCATES LIKE AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE, WHO WE SPOKE WITH BACK IN APRIL, OPPOSES THE PLAN, SAYING THIS WOULD DIVERT MIGRATION FLOWS INTO MORE DANGEROUS AREAS WITH POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS CONSEQUENCES. U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION SAYS APPREHENSIONS ARE DOWN IN THE SAN DIEGO SECTOR. LAST MONTH, THEY RECORDED 715 ENCOUNTERS. THAT’S A 95% DECREASE FROM AUGUST OF 2024. WE DID REACH OUT TO CBP FOR AN INTERVIEW ON WHEN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THIS NEW AREA OF THE BORDER WALL WOULD BEGIN
Nearly $1.1B to be spent on ‘Smart Wall’ at California border under ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’
The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection have awarded $4.5 billion in new contracts under the “One Big Beautiful Bill” for Smart Wall construction along the southwest border.At least 10 new construction contracts will add 230 miles of barriers and nearly 400 miles of technology, delivering on the Trump Administration’s promise to secure the border.(Video Above: Trump administration announces plans to build new sections of southern border wall)“For years, Washington talked about border security but failed to deliver. This president changed that,” said CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott. “The Smart Wall means more miles of barriers, more technology, and more capability for our agents on the ground. This is how you take control of the border.”The Smart Wall is a border security system that combines steel barriers, waterborne barriers, patrol roads, lights, cameras, and advanced detection technology to give Border Patrol agents the best tools in the world to stop illegal traffic. The technology additions will further secure the existing wall in areas where the Biden administration’s policies canceled contracts to do so, according to a joint statement by DHS and CBP.The 10 contracts, awarded between Sept. 15 and 30, are the very first to be funded by President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. They also include minimal prior year funding from fiscal year 2021 wall appropriations. That funding was on hold during the Biden administration, according to the release.To expedite the construction of the Smart Wall, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem also issued two new waivers for approximately nine miles of Smart Wall in CBP’s San Diego sector and approximately 30 miles of new Smart Wall in New Mexico within the El Paso sector.Contracts in California include:San Diego 1 Project – Awarded to BCCG Joint Venture for $483,486,600 for the construction of approximately nine miles of new Smart Wall and approximately 52 miles of system attributes in USBP’s San Diego Sector in California.El Centro 1 Project – Awarded to Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. for $574,000,000 for the construction of approximately eight miles of new primary Smart Wall and the installation of approximately 63 miles of system attributes in USBP’s El Centro and San Diego Sectors in California.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection have awarded $4.5 billion in new contracts under the “One Big Beautiful Bill” for Smart Wall construction along the southwest border.
At least 10 new construction contracts will add 230 miles of barriers and nearly 400 miles of technology, delivering on the Trump Administration’s promise to secure the border.
“For years, Washington talked about border security but failed to deliver. This president changed that,” said CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott. “The Smart Wall means more miles of barriers, more technology, and more capability for our agents on the ground. This is how you take control of the border.”
The Smart Wall is a border security system that combines steel barriers, waterborne barriers, patrol roads, lights, cameras, and advanced detection technology to give Border Patrol agents the best tools in the world to stop illegal traffic. The technology additions will further secure the existing wall in areas where the Biden administration’s policies canceled contracts to do so, according to a joint statement by DHS and CBP.
The 10 contracts, awarded between Sept. 15 and 30, are the very first to be funded by President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. They also include minimal prior year funding from fiscal year 2021 wall appropriations. That funding was on hold during the Biden administration, according to the release.
To expedite the construction of the Smart Wall, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem also issued two new waivers for approximately nine miles of Smart Wall in CBP’s San Diego sector and approximately 30 miles of new Smart Wall in New Mexico within the El Paso sector.
Contracts in California include:
San Diego 1 Project – Awarded to BCCG Joint Venture for $483,486,600 for the construction of approximately nine miles of new Smart Wall and approximately 52 miles of system attributes in USBP’s San Diego Sector in California.
El Centro 1 Project – Awarded to Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. for $574,000,000 for the construction of approximately eight miles of new primary Smart Wall and the installation of approximately 63 miles of system attributes in USBP’s El Centro and San Diego Sectors in California.
Former President Joe Biden is undergoing radiation therapy and hormone treatment as part of a treatment plan for prostate cancer, a spokesperson told CBS News.
At a tense political moment in the wake of conservative lightning rod Charlie Kirk’s killing, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum focusing federal law enforcement on disrupting “domestic terrorism.”
The memo appeared to focus on political violence. But during a White House signing Thursday, the president and his top advisors repeatedly hinted at a much broader campaign of suppression against the American left, referencing as problematic both the simple printing of protest signs and the prominent racial justice movement Black Lives Matter.
“We’re looking at the funders of a lot of these groups. You know, when you see the signs and they’re all beautiful signs made professionally, these aren’t your protesters that make the sign in their basement late in the evening because they really believe it. These are anarchists and agitators,” Trump said.
“Whether it be going back to the riots that started with Black Lives Matter and all the way through to the antifa riots, the attacks on ICE officers, the doxxing campaigns and now the political assassinations — these are not lone, isolated events,” said Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff. “This is part of an organized campaign of radical left terrorism.”
Neither Trump nor Miller nor the other top administration officials flanking them — including Vice President JD Vance, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel — offered any evidence of such a widespread left-wing terror campaign, or many details about how the memo would be put into action.
Law enforcement officials have said Kirk’s alleged shooter appears to have acted alone, and data on domestic extremism more broadly — including some recently scrubbed from the Justice Department’s website — suggest right-wing extremists represent the larger threat.
Many on the right cheered Trump’s memo — just as many on the left cheered calls by Democrats for a clampdown on right-wing extremism during the Biden administration, particularly in light of the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. In that incident, more than 1,500 were criminally charged, many convicted of assaulting police officers and some for sedition, before Trump pardoned them or commuted their sentences.
Many critics of the administration slammed the memo as a “chilling” threat that called to mind some of the most notorious periods of political suppression in the nation’s history — a claim the White House dismissed as wildly off base and steeped in liberal hypocrisy.
That includes the Red Scare and the often less acknowledged Lavender Scare of the Cold War and beyond, they said, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy and other federal officials cast a pall over the nation, its social justice movements and its arts scene by promising to purge from government anyone who professed a belief in certain political ideas — such as communism — or was gay or lesbian or otherwise queer.
Douglas M. Charles, a history professor at Penn State Greater Allegheny and author of “Hoover’s War on Gays: Exposing the FBI’s ‘Sex Deviates’ Program,” said Trump’s memo strongly paralleled past government efforts at political repression — including in its claim that “extremism on migration, race and gender” and “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” are all causing violence in the country.
“What is this, McCarthyism redux?” Charles asked.
Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles, said the Trump administration is putting “targets on the backs of organizers” like her.
Abdullah, speaking Friday from Washington, D.C., where she is attending the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual legislative conference, said Trump’s efforts to cast left-leaning advocacy groups as a threat to democracy was “the definition of gaslighting” because the president “and his entire regime are violent.”
“They are anti-Black. They are anti-people. They are anti-free speech,” Abdullah said. “What we are is indeed an organized body of people who want freedom for our people — and that is a demand for the kind of sustainable peace that only comes with justice.”
Others, including prominent California Democrats, framed Trump’s memo and other recent administration acts — including Thursday’s indictment of former FBI Director James Comey over the objections of career prosecutors — as a worrying blueprint for much wider vengeance on Trump’s behalf, which must be resisted.
“Trump is waging a crusade of retribution — abusing the federal government as a weapon of personal revenge,” Gov. Gavin Newsom posted to X. “Today it’s his enemies. Tomorrow it may be you. Speak out. Use your voice.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, left, FBI Director Kash Patel and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi listen to President Trump Thursday in the Oval Office.
(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta noted that the memo listed various incidents of violence against Republicans while “deliberately ignoring” violence against Democrats, and said that while it is unclear what may come of the order, “the chilling effect is real and cannot be ignored.”
Bonta also sent Bondi a letter Friday expressing his “grave concern” with the Comey indictment and asking her to “reassert the long-standing independence of the U.S. Department of Justice from political interference by declining to continue these politically-motivated investigations and prosecutions.”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said the Trump administration is twisting Kirk’s tragic killing “into a pretext to weaponize the federal government against opponents Trump says he ‘hates.’”
“In recent days, they’ve branded entire groups — including the Democratic Party itself — as threats, directed [the Justice Department] to go after his perceived enemies, and coerced companies to stifle any criticism of the Administration or its allies. This is pure personal grievance and retribution,” Padilla said. “If this abuse of power is normalized, no dissenting voice will be safe.”
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said it was “the highest form of hypocrisy for Democrats to falsely claim accountability is ‘political retribution’ when Joe Biden is the one who spent years weaponizing his entire Administration against President Trump and millions of patriotic Americans.”
Jackson accused the Biden administration of censoring average Americans for their posts about COVID-19 on social media and of prosecuting “peaceful pro-life protestors,” among other things, and said the Trump administration “will continue to deliver the truth to the American people, restore integrity to our justice system, and take action to stop radical left-wing violence that is plaguing American communities.”
A month ago, Miller said, “The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization” — a quote raising new concerns in light of Trump’s memo.
On Sept. 16, Bondi said on X that “the radical left” has for too long normalized threats and cheered on political violence, and that she would be ending that by somehow prosecuting them for “hate speech.”
Constitutional scholars — and some prominent conservative pundits — ridiculed Bondi’s claims as contrary to the 1st Amendment.
On Sept. 18, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported that unnamed national security officials had told him that the FBI was considering treating transgender suspects as a “subset” of a new threat category known as “Nihilistic Violent Extremists” — a concept LGBTQ+ organizations scrambled to denounce as a threat to everyone’s civil liberties.
“Everyone should be repulsed by the attempts to use the power of the federal government against their neighbors, their friends, and our families,” Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said Wednesday. “It creates a dangerous precedent that could one day be used against other Americans, progressive or conservative or anywhere in between.”
In recent days, Trump has unabashedly attacked his critics — including late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, whose show was briefly suspended. On Sept. 20, he demanded on his Truth Social platform that Bondi move to prosecute several of his most prominent political opponents, including Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James.
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” wrote Trump, the only felon to ever occupy the White House. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
Comey’s indictment — on charges of lying to Congress — was reported shortly after the White House event where Trump signed the memo. Trump declined to discuss Comey at the event, and was vague about who else might be targeted under the memo. But he did say he had heard “a lot of different names,” including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and George Soros, two prominent Democratic donors.
“If they are funding these things, they’re gonna have some problems,” Trump said, without providing any evidence of wrongdoing by either man.
The Open Society Foundations, which have disbursed billions from Soros’ fortune to an array of progressive groups globally, said in response that they “unequivocally condemn terrorism and do not fund terrorism” and that their activities “are peaceful and lawful.” Accusations suggesting otherwise were “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with,” the group said.
John Day, president-elect of the American College of Trial Lawyers, said his organization has not taken a position on Trump’s memo, but had grave concerns about the process by which Comey was indicted — namely, after Trump called for such legal action publicly.
“That, quite frankly, is very disturbing and concerning to us,” Day said. “This is not the way the legal system was designed to work, and it’s not the way it has worked for 250 years, and we are just very concerned that this happened at all,” Day said. “We’re praying that it is an outlier, as opposed to a predictor of what’s to come.”
James Kirchick, author of “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington,” which covers the Lavender Scare and its effects on the LGBTQ+ community in detail, said the “strongest similarity” he sees between then and now is the administration “taking the actions of an individual or a small number of people” — such as Kirk’s shooter — “and extrapolating that onto an entire class of people.”
Kirchick said language on the left labeling the president a dictator isn’t helpful in such a political moment, but that he has found some of the administration’s language more alarming — especially, in light of the new memo, Miller’s suggestion that the Democratic Party is an extremist organization.
“Does that mean the Democratic Party is going to be subject to FBI raids and extremist surveillance?” he asked.
In last week’s newsletter, I focused on the Trump administration’s obvious jawboning hypocrisy when it comes to Jimmy Kimmel: Trump folks railed against the Biden administration for pressuring social media companies to censor conservatives, yet are now engaged in a variation of the exact same thing.
You are reading Free Media from Robby Soave and Reason. Get more of Robby’s on-the-media, disinformation, and free speech coverage.
There’s plenty of hypocrisy to go around, however. Indeed, in their responses to this whole kerfuffle, Democrats have revealed that their solution is not a solution at all, but a threat to up the ante the second they regain power.
To recap, Kimmel’s removal from the airwaves has alarmed many defenders of free speech—not because Kimmel has the right to a stage, a show, and an audience, but because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) involved itself in a decision that should be made by private entities. By threatening to take regulatory action against media companies that platform Kimmel, FCC chair Brendan Carr earned a rare rebuke from several members of his own party, including Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.), and Dave McCormick (Pa.).
When a government actor tries to extort a private actor into taking some action, it’s called jawboning. In this case, the desired action was the silencing of Kimmel, who used his show’s opening monologue last week to imply that the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson, was part of the “MAGA gang,” i.e., that the shooter was identified with the right. This was neither funny nor true. Kimmel can and should suffer the market consequences of his claims: His viewers can desert him, his bosses can punish him, and companies that broadcast him can find something else to air in the 11 p.m. hour. The government shouldn’t force him off television, however, and the FCC shouldn’t imply that it will makes things very difficult for his corporate masters unless they muzzle him.
Like I said last week, there’s absolutely nothing unprecedented about what’s going on here. Carr’s directly threatening language—address the Kimmel situation “the easy way or the hard way”—was perhaps a less subtle example of jawboning, but it’s well in keeping with the previous administration’s actions on disfavored speech. Biden White House Digital Strategy Director Rob Flaherty, for instance, repeatedly pressed social media companies to take down content that was contrary to Biden’s interest.
So perhaps it should come as no surprise that Democrats are not responding to the Kimmel situation by demanding some new limit on the FCC’s ability to regulate speech. They are not vowing that a future Democratic administration would respect the sacrosanct First Amendment rights of private speech. On the contrary, they are promising to punish the victims of the jawboning—the private companies.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D–Conn.) made this explicit during a recent interview on MSNBC.
Murphy: “The second remedy is for the Democratic Party to make clear that if you give us power, we’re gonna break up these corporate monopolies, and in particular these media monopolies … if we want to be credible as a critic of Trump’s slide to totalitarianism, then we have to… pic.twitter.com/cjIHBcF0IP
Murphy said that if the Democrats regained control of the presidency and Congress, they would move swiftly to regulate and break up large media companies—and presumably, Big Tech companies—that kowtowed to Trump. If you think about it, what he’s basically saying is kowtow to us, not the GOP, or else!
One can’t help but feel a little sympathetic to the owners of the companies, who really just want to be left alone, make profit-maximizing decisions, and avoid punitive regulation. But they’re damned if they do—MAGA will hurt them—and damned if they don’t—Democrats will hurt them.
As long as Democrats remain the party that is more inclined to favor sweeping regulatory action aimed at breaking up the largest and most successful tech and media companies in the U.S.—in other words, the party of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders—the Republican Party might seem like the more welcoming team, even if Trump is as bad a jawboner (heh) as anyone else.
YouTube has announced that everyone kicked off the platform for violating pandemic-era content rules is now welcome back, following an investigation by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R–Ohio) into the Biden administration’s jawboning of parent company Alphabet. Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown had an excellent write-up of this decision in her own newsletter, so I won’t dwell on it in too much detail.
I am particularly satisfied by this outcome, however, since my show, Rising, was unjustly suppressed by YouTube in 2022. The platform suspended us for a week, ostensibly because we violated an election integrity policy: denying the validity of the 2020 election. But of course, no one on the show made any such claim—rather, we played a news clip of Trump making the claim. In any case, it’s always nice to get some recognition that the moderation policies of that era were heavy-handed and motivated by government malfeasance.
Here was my commentary on Thursday’s episode of Rising, discussing YouTube’s change of heart.
I’m joined by Amber Duke to discuss Kamala Harris’s revenge tour, and much else. Also, I’m currently recording an episode with Andrew Heaton, which will debut later this week!
I just finished two things I’ve been working on: The second season of Netflix’s Wednesday, and the Cormac McCarthy novel Blood Meridian. One is a timeless meditation on man’s inherent capacity for violence and the savage roots of the American experiment, and the other is about cowboys.
WASHINGTON, DC – Google is offering YouTube account holders who were permanently banned for political speech an ability to be reinstated. The tech giant detailed its shift in a document provided to the House Judiciary Committee, and company officials admitted that Google once faced pressure from the Biden administration to remove content about COVID-19.
According to Google, YouTube “values conservative voices on its platform” and the company noted that creators “have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse.”
The U.S. Air Force will provide military funeral honors for Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and pro-Donald Trump rioter who was shot and killed on January 6, 2021 after breaching a sensitive area of the U.S. Capitol, where members of Congress were evacuating.A letter shared on social media, from Aug. 15, showed Under Secretary of the Air Force Matthew Lohmeier writing to the family of Babbitt, telling them that while their initial request for military honors was denied, “I am persuaded that the previous determination was incorrect.”“fter reviewing the circumstances of Ashli’s death, and considering the information that has come forward since then, I am persuaded that the previous determination was incorrect,” Lohmeier said. “Additionally, I would like to invite you and your family to meet me at the Pentagon to personally offer my condolences.”A Department of the Air Force spokesperson confirmed the veracity of the letter.“After reviewing the circumstances of Babbitt’s death, the Air Force has offered Military Funeral Honors to Babbitt’s family,” the spokesperson said on Thursday. While the specific details of what will be provided to Babbit’s family are unclear, military honors typically include a uniformed detail at the funeral, the playing of Taps, and the folding and presentation of a U.S. flag.The honors had been previously denied under the Biden administration.Babbitt was shot by a Capitol Police officer while she was attempting to climb through a broken window inside the Capitol leading to the Speaker’s Lobby. The officer involved was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing related to the shooting.In May, the Trump administration agreed to pay nearly $5 million to Babbitt’s family in a wrongful death settlement.Babbitt spent four years on active duty from 2004 to 2008 and then served in the Air Force Reserves from 2008 to 2010, and the Air National Guard from 2010 to 2016. She deployed to Afghanistan in 2005, Iraq in 2006, and the United Arab Emirates in 2012 and 2014. She was a member of the 113th Security Forces Squadron, 113th Wing, DC Air National Guard. The 113th Wing is charged with defending the National Capitol Region and is nicknamed the “Capital Guardians.”
WASHINGTON —
The U.S. Air Force will provide military funeral honors for Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and pro-Donald Trump rioter who was shot and killed on January 6, 2021 after breaching a sensitive area of the U.S. Capitol, where members of Congress were evacuating.
A letter shared on social media, from Aug. 15, showed Under Secretary of the Air Force Matthew Lohmeier writing to the family of Babbitt, telling them that while their initial request for military honors was denied, “I am persuaded that the previous determination was incorrect.”
“[A]fter reviewing the circumstances of Ashli’s death, and considering the information that has come forward since then, I am persuaded that the previous determination was incorrect,” Lohmeier said. “Additionally, I would like to invite you and your family to meet me at the Pentagon to personally offer my condolences.”
A Department of the Air Force spokesperson confirmed the veracity of the letter.
“After reviewing the circumstances of [Senior Airman] Babbitt’s death, the Air Force has offered Military Funeral Honors to [Senior Airman] Babbitt’s family,” the spokesperson said on Thursday. While the specific details of what will be provided to Babbit’s family are unclear, military honors typically include a uniformed detail at the funeral, the playing of Taps, and the folding and presentation of a U.S. flag.
The honors had been previously denied under the Biden administration.
Babbitt was shot by a Capitol Police officer while she was attempting to climb through a broken window inside the Capitol leading to the Speaker’s Lobby. The officer involved was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing related to the shooting.
In May, the Trump administration agreed to pay nearly $5 million to Babbitt’s family in a wrongful death settlement.
Babbitt spent four years on active duty from 2004 to 2008 and then served in the Air Force Reserves from 2008 to 2010, and the Air National Guard from 2010 to 2016. She deployed to Afghanistan in 2005, Iraq in 2006, and the United Arab Emirates in 2012 and 2014. She was a member of the 113th Security Forces Squadron, 113th Wing, DC Air National Guard. The 113th Wing is charged with defending the National Capitol Region and is nicknamed the “Capital Guardians.”
In 2024, President Joe Biden’s Energy Department awarded $1.7 billion in grants to increase domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles (E.V.s), including$89 million to Harley-Davidson to expand its manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania for electric motorcycle production. At the time, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm claimed the funding would “ensure that our automotive industry stays competitive.” Then-Sen. Bob Casey (D–Pa.) championed the grant, with his office declaring that it would “help Harley Davidson make investments necessary to hit its goal of producing more zero-emission motorcycles.”
More than a year later, it appears that this funding plan is failing.
Despite the $89 million in government subsidies provided to LiveWire, which was initially launched as part of Harley-Davidson but has since spun off, the company has sold only 55 electric motorcycles in the second quarter of 2025, a 65 percent decline compared to the same quarter in 2024. In the second quarter of 2025, LiveWire’s electric motorcycle business yielded $800,000 in revenue. Overall, in the second quarter of 2025, the company generated $5.9 million in consolidated revenue from its electric motorcycles and electric bikes.
LiveWire has operated at a loss since its founding in 2021. After peaking at $46.83 million in 2022, annual revenue has declined for two consecutive years, dropping 43 percent from the company’s peak year in 2022. The company has never had a profitable quarter, a trend that is expected to continue through 2025.
While it’s projected salesof up to 3,000 electric motorcycles over the past two years, LiveWire has sold only 2,418 electric motorcycles since its inception in 2021. Last year, the company sold just 612 motorcycles, falling short of its 2023 sales of 660 machines and well below its initial 2024 projection of 1,000 to 1,500 bikes. Despite a history of missing sales targets, LiveWire again projected sales of 1,000 to 1,500 electric motorcycles for 2025.
A significant appeal of gas-powered motorcycles lies in the owner’s ability to customize their bike. By design, electric motorcycles are quiet and difficult to modify.
Although the upfront cost of LiveWire electric motorcycles is significantly lower than most new Harley-Davidson gasoline models, LiveWire’s financials suggest that the market has clearly expressed its preference. The $89 million grant to Harley-Davidson is only one in a long list of failed, costly green energy projects funded by the Biden administration, which also includes a $9.63 billion loan to Ford to build three manufacturing plants for the company’s E.V. batteries in Tennessee and Kentucky. Only one of these factories has been built—and has yet to roll out batteries—while the other two have no set opening date.
In May, amid a continued decline in sales, Harley-Davidson suspended its full-year financial forecast due to the imposition of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. If the company’s second-quarter financial outlook is any indication of future performance, there will be little relief to come. In the second quarter of 2025, Harley-Davidson’s revenue dropped 19 percent year-over-year, with global motorcycle shipments down 28 percent. To date, tariffs have cost the company $17 million in 2025.
Like many other projects before it, government funding has not helped LiveWire turn a profit. It has instead artificially prolonged its financial runway and potentially discouraged disruptive thinking and entrepreneurial spirit.
The millions of Americans with student loans, who have already experienced whiplash in federal policy since the pandemic, must again brace for change.
The “big, beautiful bill” that President Trump signed into law on July 4 overhauls the federal student loan system by reducing the number of repayment plan options down to two from seven and capping the amount individuals can borrow for higher education.
Here’s how the new budget law will affect people with federal student loans.
Repayment plan options
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act phases out a number of existing federal student loan repayment plans, including the SAVE, PAYE, IBR and ICR.
Current borrowers enrolled in programs to be eliminated will have until July 1, 2028, to switch to a new plan. For the 7.7 million Americans enrolled in the Biden-era SAVE plan, interest collection will resume on Aug. 1, the Department of Education announced Wednesday.
Beginning on July 1, 2026, new student loan borrowers will choose between one of two plans: a standard repayment plan or an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan called the Repayment Assistance Plan. The standard repayment plan will allow student loan borrowers to make fixed payments over the course of 10 to 25 years.
That approach “condenses a maze of loan options into two,” simplifying the repayment process, according to the White House.
The Repayment Assistance Plan will allow borrowers to pay 1% to 10% of their income on a monthly basis, for up to 30 years, Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at advocacy group Student Borrower Protection Center, told CBS MoneyWatch. That’s a longer timeline than current IDR plans, which are currently either 20 or 25 years.
After the 30-year mark, the borrower’s remaining loan balance will be canceled, as is currently the case after an individual’s repayment window ends.
The five-year payment extension on income-based payments concerns Bañez, who said “borrowers are going to be forced to be in repayment for even longer,” she said.
However, Sarah Reber, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, thinks the binary repayment options a “huge improvement” from a policy design perspective. The current system is confusing for borrowers given all the options from which they have to choose, she told CBS MoneyWatch.
“The One Big Beautiful Bill gives families the freedom to choose the best education for their children while reforming a broken federal loan system to promote responsibility, affordability and opportunity,” the White House said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.
Pell Grants
The new law tightens eligibility rules for the Pell Grant program, the largest source of federal aid for low-income students. From 2021-2022, an estimated 92% of Pell Grant recipients had a total family income at or below $60,000, according to Congress.gov.
Under the law, students who receive a full scholarship from a college or university will no longer be eligible for additional funding through the Pell Grant program.
By contrast, the law expands Pell Grant eligibility for students in workforce training programs. Previously, Pell Grants could only be used to pay for workforce training courses of less than 600 hours and 15 weeks, shutting out many short-term programs.
That will enable “Pell Grants to be used for short-term, high-quality workforce training programs to support Americans who choose a career or technical education path for career advancement,” the White House said.
The budget law also increases scrutiny of the Student Aid Index, which is used to determine the size of an individual’s federal aid eligibility. As a result, higher-income families will have a harder time getting Pell Grant funding, according to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP).
Borrowing caps
The new law sets borrowing caps on certain loans beginning July 1, 2026.
Parent PLUS loans — federal loans available for parents of dependent undergraduate students — will now be restricted to $20,000 a year and a total cap of $65,000. That’s a change from the current limit, which amounts to the total cost of attendance minus any student aid an individual receives.
The new law also does away with Grad PLUS loans, which help people finance higher education degrees. Starting July 1, 2026, new students will no longer be able to apply for the loans. However, current borrowers will be grandfathered and still allowed to access the loans, according to EdSource.
With the elimination of Grad PLUS loans, graduate students in need of federal tuition assistance will have to take out Direct Unsubsidized Loans. Those seeking unsubsidized federal loans for professional degrees, such as law or medicine, will be restricted to $50,000 per year and a $200,000 lifetime cap. Those seeking advanced degrees in nonprofessional areas, such as history or philosophy, will be subject to an annual borrowing cap of $20,500 and a lifetime limit of $100,000.
Economic hardship, unemployment deferment
Currently, student loan borrowers can apply for up to three years of deferment based on economic hardship or unemployment, according to the Federal Student Aid website.
Starting July 1, 2026, the new law eliminates deferment provisions for borrowers facing economic hardship. For example, someone who falls behind on the bills because of job loss would no longer qualify to defer student loan payments, Bañez said.
According to the White House, the changes to the deferment rules will streamline the process while also better protecting students and taxpayers.
Mary Cunningham is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch. Before joining the business and finance vertical, she worked at “60 Minutes,” CBSNews.com and CBS News 24/7 as part of the CBS News Associate Program.
Five presidents in U.S. history have won the presidency without winning the popular vote, and the most recent to do so was Donald Trump in 2016. His opponent that year, Hillary Clinton, won over 2.8 million more votes than Trump nationwide, but she lost enough key states to be defeated in the Electoral College, 306 to 232.
Trump lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College to Joe Biden in 2020. (Once again the electoral vote was 306 to 232, but this time in the Democrat’s favor.) Trump is the GOP nominee again in the 2024 presidential election, in what’s shaped up to be a tight race against Vice President Kamala Harris.
Since its founding, the nation has used the Electoral College to elect the president. Read on to learn more about how it works, its history and what role individual voters play in the outcome of the presidential election.
What is the Electoral College and how does it work?
The Electoral College is the process by which Americans elect their president and vice president indirectly through their state’s electors. Candidates must secure 270 electoral votes, a majority of the 538 at stake, in order to win the White House.
Before the general election, states select slates of electors. After voters cast their ballots in November, the candidate who wins the popular vote determines which slate of electors — Republican, Democrat or a third party — will cast electoral votes in the Electoral College for the president.
In most states, it’s winner-take-all — whoever gets the most votes in the state wins all of its electoral votes.
In Maine and Nebraska, the rules are slightly different. They have a proportional representation system in which the winner of each congressional district is awarded one electoral vote, and the winner of the statewide vote is awarded each state’s remaining two electoral votes. Some Republicans were hoping to change Nebraska’s rules to a winner-take-all model, since one of its electoral votes often goes to the Democrat, but the effort fell short.
There is no Constitutional provision or federal law that requires electors to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged, though they almost always do. “Faithless electors” are rare, since the electors are selected by the parties.
How many electors are in the Electoral College?
There are 538 electors in total across the 50 states and Washington, D.C.
What determines how many electoral votes a state gets?
Each state is allocated electors based on the size of its congressional delegation. Several states with the smallest populations — Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming — have three electors each, since they have one representative in the House and two senators, while California, the largest, has 54 electoral votes. Washington, D.C., is also allocated three electors.
States may gain or lose electors as the population shifts, and there have been a number of changes since the 2020 presidential election.
In the redistricting that followed the 2020 Census, Texas gained two electoral votes and five states gained one each, while seven states lost one electoral vote.
Who chooses the electors?
The electors are chosen before the general election by their respective political party. Their sole purpose is to meet in their state following the November election and cast two votes — one for the president and one for the vice president.
Who are the electors?
Each party’s slate of electors may include state and local elected officials, party leaders, community activists and others affiliated with the party. They are typically chosen “to recognize their service and dedication to that political party,” the National Archives explains.
There are no major qualifications, but members of Congress and certain other office-holders are barred from participating, along with anyone who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion.
What happens if there’s a tie in the Electoral College?
In the rare event that there’s a tie in the Electoral College — which in the modern era would mean each candidate wins 269 electoral votes — members of the newly elected House of Representatives would decide the outcome of the presidential election, while the Senate would select the vice president.
This type of contingent election would also take place if neither candidate wins a majority. This could occur if a third-party candidate wins some of the electoral votes or if there are a number of “faithless electors” who break their pledge and vote for a candidate other than the one who won the state’s popular vote.
If it went to the House, each state would get a single vote, regardless of the size of its congressional delegation, and the 50 House delegations (the District of Columbia would not participate) would select one of the top three presidential candidates.
The vice president would be selected by a simple majority in the Senate, and all senators would have a vote. As a result, it’s possible that the president and vice president could be from different parties.
Since the 12th Amendment was ratified in 1804, there have been contingent elections twice.
In 1824, four presidential candidates split the vote, and no candidate won an electoral majority. John Quincy Adams won the election in the House, even though Andrew Jackson had won a plurality of the popular and electoral votes.
And in 1837, Martin Van Buren won a majority of electoral votes, but Virginia’s 23 electors refused to support his vice presidential candidate, Richard Johnson, and became faithless electors. That left Johnson one vote short, leading to a contingent election in the Senate, which he won easily.
Why do we vote if the Electoral College picks the president?
Five presidents in U.S. history have lost the popular vote and still managed to win the election, leading some to wonder why the nation continues to keep the Electoral College in place. The Electoral College was established in Article II of the Constitution and could be repealed by constitutional amendment. But that’s a difficult road. Amendments require a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states, or 38 of the current 50.
In a 2023 Pew Research poll, 65% of Americans said the president should be elected through the popular vote, not the Electoral College. Hundreds of proposals have been introduced in Congress to change the process over the years. There’s also a multi-state effort called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which has been adopted by 17 states and Washington, D,C. That proposal would ensure that the winner of the popular vote gets all of the electoral votes in the states that signed the compact — but it would only go into effect if enough states agree.
So why keep the Electoral College in place if there’s so much frustration from Americans? According to the National Archives, the Founding Fathers saw the Electoral College as a middle ground between giving the decision to Congress or to a direct vote by citizens. Proponents say it keeps less populous states from being underrepresented by discouraging candidates from campaigning disproportionately in urban centers that are more heavily populated.
What’s the history of the Electoral College?
The Founding Fathers established the Electoral College in the Constitution in 1787. The term “Electoral College” does not appear in the nation’s historic document, but the word “electors” does, the National Archives noted.
The ratification of the 12th Amendment in 1804 changed some of the rules for the Electoral College. For example, it required separate electoral votes be cast for the president and vice president. With the ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961, the District of Columbia received three electors.
Mary Cunningham is a news associate at CBS News, based in New York. She has worked on both the broadcast side, with CBS News 24/7 streaming, and the digital side, writing stories for CBSNews.com. Her next assignment is working with the “60 Minutes” team.
A defense official told CBS News that the U.S. was given a heads-up in advance of Israel’s retaliatory attack against Iran. The U.S. is not involved in the strikes, but President Biden has been briefed on the situation. Ed O’Keefe, CBS News senior White House and political correspondent, and Sam Vinograd, CBS News national security contributor, have more.
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At a Harley-Davidson dealership in Appalachia, one expects to encounter the occasional roar of some serious horsepower.
Less expected is the sight that has accompanied that sound in Swannanoa, North Carolina, for the past three weeks: Helicopters, many of them privately owned and operated, launching and landing from a makeshift helipad in the backyard of the local hog shop. According to the men who organized this private relief effort in the wake of devastating floods unleashed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene, more than a million pounds of goods—food, heavy equipment to clear roads, medical gear, blankets, heaters, tents, you name it—have been flown from here to dots all over the map of western North Carolina.
“We’re not the government, and we’re here to help,” says one of the two men standing by the makeshift gate—a pair of orange traffic drums—that controls access to and from the Harley-Davidson dealership’s parking lot and the piles of donated items neatly organized within it. “We can do it quicker, we can do it efficiently, and we genuinely just want to help our neighbors.” He identifies himself only by his first name and later asks that I don’t use even that. It’s an understandable request, as what he’s doing is probably not, strictly speaking, totally legal.
There are a lot of those blurry lines in western North Carolina right now, and thankfully the police are either too busy or too grateful for the help to care much about it. An ethos of do-it-yourself-ism, plenty of cooperation, and a healthy amount of “ask forgiveness rather than permission” is on display everywhere in Asheville and its surroundings.
Every bit of it is needed. The flooding caused by Helene is catastrophic, as I witnessed firsthand during a two-day trip to the area last week. Pictures and videos on social media and in the news do not fully capture the scope of this disaster—and the digging out, picking up, and rebuilding is a process far too large and too important to be left to the government.
The Harley-Davidson dealership in Swannanoa, North Carolina, has become an official relief center in the weeks since Hurricane Helene hit. (Photo by Eric Boehm)Piles of bottled water, clothes, gasoline, propane, and more donated goods in Swannanoa, where an ad hoc helicopter landing pad has been set up. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
“It’s been miraculous.”
The man largely responsible for organizing the Harley-Davidson airlift is a burly, bearded former Green Beret who goes by Adam Smith—yes, really.
Smith was on a work trip to Texas on September 27, when the remnants of Helene stormed into the southern Appalachians and dumped over 20 inches of rain onto the mountains. After losing contact with his ex-wife and 3-year-old daughter, Smith drove through the night to get back to the Asheville area. What greeted him was a nightmare: Roads to the mountain hamlet where the two lived were completely impassable thanks to downed trees and power lines, mudslides, and collapsed bridges. After two days of trying to get to them, and still no contact, Smith feared the worst.
“They’re about eight miles that way,” he gestures toward the mountain ridge that runs south of Swannanoa, an area where some of the worst flooding in the area occurred. “I just assumed they were dead at that point.”
Former Green Berets don’t give up easily. Through a series of connections, Smith got in touch with someone who owned a small recreational helicopter. On the morning of September 29, he hitched a ride on his last hope.
He found them, alive and well. Tears well up in his eyes when I ask him about that moment. “We landed the helicopter and I was getting out of the door and I saw them walk from the tree line,” he says. “And they were perfect.”
They weren’t the only ones who needed help. Smith’s day job these days is running Savage Freedoms Defense, a training and consulting firm, where he draws on his military experience to help prepare people to take care of themselves and their loved ones under difficult circumstances. Through that business and via connections with other retired special operations veterans in the area, Smith launched what’s been called a redneck air force to get supplies to flooded mountain towns. Smith owns motorcycles and knows people who work at the Harley-Davidson dealership. He also knew it would be a perfect spot for the group’s ad hoc operations: a big parking lot with a single entrance, and a large field out back where the helicopters have been landing.
By the end of the first week, they had three civilian helicopters running missions, and it has only grown from there. In addition to food and supplies, the group has carried Starlink devices into places where internet and cell connections were down.
Bringing together veterans and others with experience in emergency response meant that the group had people who knew “the different systems and procedures and process, and understand the red tape and also understanding the people on the ground,” says Austin Holmes, who is handling communications for Savage Freedoms.
The bootstrapped operation has gained notoriety in the region—and a visit from former President Donald Trump on Monday of this week—as well as the respect of the National Guard, which has started piggybacking on some of Savage Freedom’s supply runs. When I visited on Friday, a truckload of National Guardsmen were picking up a free lunch—smoked turkey, with peas and carrots—being distributed by volunteers in the parking lot.
Even the bureaucrats at the Federal Aviation Administration have had to get out of the way: The field behind the Harley-Davidson dealership was granted an emergency designation as a legitimate landing zone.
Smith says this is meant to be a “collaborative” operation, rather than a fully private one. But there are no uniformed cops controlling access, just Travis and his buddy, who declines to speak with me. The National Guardsmen who are here seem to be waiting for orders rather than giving them. What’s happening here resembles a militia operation, in the best and truest sense of the term.
“Now that we’re three weeks into it, we’ve had no less than 60 people here. At the height, we had 130 people here every day,” Smith says. “It just, it’s been miraculous.”
(Photo by Eric Boehm)
Who will build the roads…and the hot showers?
Any doubts about the necessity of those helicopters disappear as I wind my way into the mountains southeast of Asheville. It’s been three weeks, but U.S. Route 74—the only main road in this area—is passable only in the strictest sense of the word. Trees have been cut and the mudslides partially cleared, but power lines are down everywhere. In some places, it looks like every third tree was felled by the storm. In others, whole mountainsides came loose and tumbled down.
Where the road wasn’t blocked with debris from above, it was washed out from below. After crossing the top of Strawberry Gap, Route 74 follows Hickory Creek as it spills down the side of the eastern continental divide toward the Broad River. In places where floodwaters from the storm came into conflict with anything man-made, the creek won. The road is open now thanks to piles of gravel and steel plates filling some of the washed-out sections. Hastily constructed culverts have replaced destroyed bridges in so many places that I lost count.
“I’ve never dealt with anything like this, and I hope I never do again,” says Jay Alley, who has been the chief at the volunteer fire department in Gerton since 1994. “We had pretty much no roads, no bridges, no power poles, nothing. Had a lot of homes destroyed.”
Despite the damage, he’s proud to report that the town didn’t lose a single life in the flooding. “We actually gained one,” he says. “We had a baby born in the middle of all this, so that was really great.” The stories that kid will be told.
Other places have not been so lucky. As of October 23, there have been 96 deaths attributed to Helene’s impact on North Carolina—seven of them in Henderson County, where the town of Bat Cave (just down the road from Gerton) was nearly wiped out.
Flooding washed out sections of U.S. Route 74, slowing relief efforts. (Photo by Eric Boehm)A message of defiance in Bat Cave, North Carolina. (Photo by Eric Boehm)Debris from homes line the roads of western North Carolina. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
Donations and supplies that poured into Gerton overflow onto the driveway outside the firehouse: propane heaters, sleeping bags, warm clothes, and more. A trailer with a massive propane-fueled rotisserie oven—one that’s normally used to cook turkeys for church dinners, says Debbie, who offers me a chili dog while I wait to chat with Alley—has been churning out hundreds of hot meals every day for first responders and residents alike.
“It speaks to the generosity of the people who have come to help us,” says Alley. “We had lots of faith-based organizations and volunteers who came in and they rebuilt roads and they rebuilt things for everyone in the community.”
Wait, even the roads?
“We’ve had private organizations from Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama, just all over the country have been here rebuilding our roads,” Alley says. “I don’t know how they got here, but we said ‘hey, go fix this problem,’ and they went and fixed it.”
Groups with names like God’s Pit Crew have poured into North Carolina in the weeks since Helene, armed with the power of prayer, chain saws, and front-end loaders. In a church parking lot near Mills River, I meet a group of volunteers from Pennsylvania as they’re packing up a trailer to head home after a week of cutting tree limbs and clearing debris. In two days of driving around, I see more “Texas Strong” decals on trucks and trailers than Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) logos.
The Cajun Navy, a Louisiana-based disaster response team that made headlines in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is here too. At an outpost the group established in the parking lot of a Dollar General in Black Mountain, Chris Woodard is serving corn bread and chili. He’ll be here for a week, and then other volunteers will arrive to take his place. World Central Kitchen, the relief group founded by Chef José Andrés, has set up a massive outdoor kitchen in downtown Asheville, where the public water supply was only partially restored this past Friday: For the first time since the storm, toilets could be flushed and residents could take showers, but the water was not yet safe for drinking or cooking.
Outside of the more well-established relief efforts, local networks of volunteers have sprung up around churches, firehouses, and other gathering points. Many rely on the ingenuity of the people running them, or at least a willingness to think outside the box. At BattleCat Coffee in East Asheville, staff are hauling tanks of water from a nearby World Central Kitchen distribution point, and using a jury-rigged pump system to feed it into the expresso machine.
The community pool in Black Mountain has become another of the many ad hoc relief centers in the region: Piles of donated clothes fill the locker rooms, hot food is being grilled on a trailer in the parking lot, and volunteers who traveled from Maryland and Indiana are crashing in the swim team’s clubhouse. This one has something that many other do not: hot showers.
“We had an idea and we just went with it,” says Heather Hensley, who works as the pool’s assistant manager during the summer months. A few days after the flood took out Black Mountain’s power and water supply, Hensley and her colleagues realized that the pool could be used to filter the available water—which was unsanitary due to broken pipes—to make it usable. A generator got the filter up and running. Then, another problem: the October sun wasn’t warm enough to heat the solar shower bags someone provided. So, she called a friend who owns a propane-powered turkey fryer.
Like so many of these off-the-cuff setups, it’s the sort of thing that almost certainly violates at least a few of the town’s ordinances. Hensley says she’s found it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission when attending to flood victims’ needs.
That approach has turned Hensley into something of a field marshal. Our conversation is interrupted at one point by a volunteer who is in contact with some members of the 101st Airborne Division, which has been deployed to the region. The other woman asks Hensley to decide what task the airmen should be given: Are they needed here to unload a truck of donations scheduled to arrive shortly, or focus on clean-up efforts down the road?
“Did you ever think you’d be giving orders to the 101st Airborne?” I ask her after the volunteer steps away to deliver the message (the airmen get clean-up duty, as Hensley has enough volunteers here).
“I’m not,” she laughs, “I’m not giving orders.”
But, yeah, she is.
Makeshift hot showers in Black Mountain, thanks to a community pool and a turkey fryer. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
The road from Black Mountain back to Swannanoa is lined with piles of debris—the guts of homes that were swamped when the Swannanoa River overflowed its banks. The football bleachers from the Asheville Christian Academy have been dragged across the field and crushed like an empty beer can. Mud-logged cars and trucks have been strewn in fields and flushed down the riverbank.
Amid the destruction, the Valley Hope Church has become a hub of activity. Inside, Amy Berry oversees the stockpiles of donated clothes, bedding, furniture, and food that have poured in from as far away as Canada and Connecticut, and now fill the church’s rec center.
“It just has been amazing to see the best of humanity,” Berry says. “We can always talk about the worst of it, but I have seen the best of it, I really have.”
On the church’s front lawn, Taylor and Frances Montgomery are serving a full hot dinner of roasted chicken, Tex-Mex soup, parmesan pasta, and vegetables to dozens of families from the area. Kids are playing tag in the playground. The buzz of generators and an approaching autumn chill hang in the air.
“We’ve seen tears over salad,” says Taylor, who has been a chef for more than two decades. “My whole career, I concentrate on learning the next culinary discipline or new trend or how to develop flavor. And not one of those plates has been more important or impactful than the plate I’m handing to a person on the other side of this slide.”
In more normal times, Taylor and Frances run the Montgomery Sky Farm and an associated animal rescue center in Leicester, about 10 miles northwest of Asheville. If Smith and his brand of redneck mountain tough guy represent one-half of the western North Carolina cliché, then the Montgomeries are the yin to that yang: crunchy, flannel-wearing folks who talk about “scratch” cooking and run a carefully curated Instagram page. They’re also the type who depend on the area’s agritourism, which usually peaks in the autumn.
Not this year. With their farm partially flooded by the storm and the tourists staying away, Taylor and Frances hit the road with a mobile kitchen trailer and food that’s been provided by fundraising on social media. For two weeks, they’ve been feeding desperate people in stricken communities across the Black Mountains. They’re hoping to keep this up through Thanksgiving, and maybe longer if the donations keep flowing.
“We figured we could sit and cry,” says Frances, “or we could be proactive.”
Scenes of destruction along the banks of the Swannanoa River. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
“We’re the ones seeing our friends float away”
The question that will be asked in the wake of Helene is whether FEMA’s response was sufficient. For what it’s worth, President Joe Biden has already delivered his verdict—”you’re doing a heckuva job,” Biden told FEMA Director Deanne Criswell on October 9 (an irony-free callback to then-President George W. Bush’s questionable praise for then-FEMA chief Michael Brown after Hurricane Katrina).
Many in western North Carolina will have a different view, no doubt. Threats of violence against FEMA personnel earlier this month caused a brief suspension of federal relief efforts in Rutherford County, where the town of Chimney Rock was wiped off the map by the same floodwaters that devastated Gerton and Bat Cave. The man responsible for those threats was quickly arrested, and the recovery efforts resumed.
Threats like that are not helping anyone, obviously, and the people engaged in the actual work on the ground—from first responders like Alley to the redneck airforce leaders like Smith—are quick to dismiss that incident as an outlier. It’s no secret that FEMA’s efforts are often slow, incompetent, and ineffective, but the aid is accepted for what it is. (And it hasn’t been completely insignificant: FEMA says it has shippedover 9.3 million meals, more than 11.2 million liters of water, 150 generators, and more than 260,000 tarps to western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.)
But the people here also know that FEMA can’t be trusted with the really important tasks.
“If we weren’t here, there wouldn’t be people getting warm clothes, because FEMA doesn’t give out clothes,” says Bob Wright, who is running another of these roadside donation distribution centers, this one in a shopping center parking lot in Swannonoa. Wright works for a local nonprofit, Hearts and Hands, that is distributing heaters, canned food, blankets, and other items alongside plastic bins containing sweaters and jeans in various sizes.
“They give you $750 to go buy some,” he adds, gesturing at the nearby Ingles grocery store that’s been closed due to damage from the flood as if to underline his point.
In any disaster, a federal response is bound to be insufficient. There will always be the need for people in the affected communities—first responders and other public officials, yes, but also ad hoc volunteer efforts and charity.
Not everyone involved in the recovery is a former Green Beret. Not everyone knows how to fly a helicopter or operate a front-end loader. That’s fine. Surviving the first three weeks after Helene required the assistance of farmers and pool managers, of breweries and barbeques, of chefs and fishmongers from the next state—and untold contributions from the wallets of ordinary Americans and the corporate accounts of some of the country’s biggest businesses. The overflowing donations, the pallets of bottled water, the fresh food, and the helicopters, too. They all represent the wealth of America, and not in some metaphorical sense but in a very literal one.
“I do not have time to defend what the government is doing. They are doing a lot of hard, dangerous work,” says Berry. But grassroots organizations like her church have a vital role to play. “We can respond a lot faster. We’re a lot smaller, but they are our neighbors. It is our home. We are going to respond faster because we are the ones standing in the water, in the mud. We are the ones seeing our friends float away.”
Down the road, at the Harley-Davidson dealership, Smith and his collaborators are working on a planto ferry huge tanks of clean water into the mountain hollows that might not have regular service restored for months.
“This is a long-term effort. And we’ve given our word to the community that we will stay and support them as long as it takes for them to get back on their feet,” says Smith. “The mission is to get the local economy up and running again, make sure the community and residents of western North Carolina are taken care of, and to remind them on a regular basis that they haven’t been forgotten.”
The federal government says it has been dealing with an unprecedented number of rumors surrounding the recent hurricanes, Helene and Milton. CBS News immigration and politics reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez speaks with the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection about one of those false claims. Then, CBS News national security contributor Sam Vinograd joins with further analysis.
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