LONDON — The British government says it will consider banning young teenagers from social media as it tightens laws designed to protect children from harmful content and excessive screen time.
The government said it would consult with parents, young people and other interested parties about the safe use of technology amid growing concern that children are being harmed by exposure to unregulated social media content.
“As I have been clear, no option is off the table, including looking at what age children should be able to access social media and whether we need restrictions on things such as addictive features like infinite scrolling or streaks in apps,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote on Substack.
As part of their investigation, government ministers will travel to Australia to learn about the country’s recent move that requires major social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X to bar children under 16 from their platforms.
More than 60 lawmakers from Starmer’s center-left Labour Party earlier this week wrote to the prime minister calling on the government to introduce an Australia-style ban in Britain.
“Successive governments have done far too little to protect young people from the consequences of unregulated, addictive social media platforms,” they wrote. “We urge the government to show leadership on this issue by introducing a minimum age for social media access of 16 years old.”
The government said Tuesday that it planned to respond to the public consultation on online safety by this summer.
Gov. Jared Polis unilaterally stalled a specialized prison program aimed at rehabilitating and releasing people who have served decades behind bars for crimes they committed as juveniles and young adults, The Denver Post found.
Polis has not approved any of the program’s graduates for early release since 2023 — an about-face from the prior three years, during which the governor approved releases for all 17 such prisoners, according to records kept by the Colorado Department of Corrections.
The governor’s inaction has created a backlog of 11 prisoners who have completed the three-year program and have gone before the Colorado State Parole Board but are nevertheless still incarcerated, waiting for Polis to sign off on their freedom.
“The uncertainty of the situation is one of the scariest things I have ever gone through, because it pertains to the emotion of hope,” said prisoner Rory Atkins, 55, who was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole for a murder he committed in 1988, when he was 18. “Many of us with long sentences in prison kind of accept that hope is painful. You learn to be fearful of having high hopes.”
Colorado lawmakers created the Juveniles and Young Adults Convicted as Adults Program, or JYACAP, in 2016 after the U.S. Supreme Court found that children are constitutionally different from adults and should not be automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Lawmakers that year also changed Colorado law to prohibit such punishment.
Initially limited to juveniles, the program was expanded in 2021 to include prisoners who committed a crime when they were 20 or younger and who have served at least 20 years of their sentence. The prisoners must also meet a variety of other conditions to enter the three-year program, which focuses on building life skills and preparing for life outside of prison.
After prisoners finish the program, the governor — after receiving a recommendation from the parole board — must give the final approval for them to be released on early parole.
“For whatever reason, there was this dollop of mercy that was required (in the law),” said Ann Roan, a retired attorney who represented a program participant. “And for years it has worked well. … So to have the brakes put on it so suddenly, with no explanation whatsoever, has really upended everyone’s justified expectations.”
Shelby Wieman, a spokeswoman for Polis, said in a statement that the prisoners’ applications are still under review, that the governor “takes these decisions very seriously” and that the serious nature of prisoners’ crimes requires “careful deliberation.”
“The governor’s office has also previously expressed discomfort with the governor’s role in the process, and proposed legislative changes to this program in the past, which the legislature declined to address,” Wieman said, apparently referring to a failed 2024 bill that would have cut the governor out of the process and shifted full authority for early releases to the parole board.
“We look forward to continuing to explore potential improvements with legislators and stakeholders,” Wieman said.
She did not answer questions about what changed from the program’s first few years, when Polis routinely approved graduates’ releases.
“We feel like we are being just dropped,” said Rose Martinez, who is waiting for the release of her cousin, Daniel Reyes, 56. He is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole for a 1987 homicide he committed during a robbery when he was 18.
Martinez has, over the last decade, watched her cousin yearn for release as his 2027 parole eligibility date has drawn closer.
“I’ll never forget the day he told me, ‘I can’t wait until I can be outside of these walls and I can actually lean up against a tree,’” she said. “That was probably five years ago.”
Reyes has been waiting for the governor’s sign-off since April, he said. Atkins’ wait began in July, when the parole board recommended his release, he said. Others in the program, like Raymond Gone, who killed a Denver police officer in 1995 when he was 16, have been waiting on the governor for more than a year, he said.
“What would I say to the critics who say the crime I was convicted of was so serious that I should finish my entire sentence? Honestly, I would agree with them, if all I knew was that I was convicted of such a horrible crime,” said Gone, now 47. “…I know I am responsible, I am the cause, for an unfathomable amount of trauma in so many people’s lives. There isn’t any amount of time I could spend in this place to make up for what I did.
“But the opportunity I have been given through JYACAP was only made available to me because of a Supreme Court ruling… someone way above me decided that my life was worth saving and should be given a second chance.”
Since 2017, 112 prisoners have applied to participate in the JYACAP program; 44 were accepted, according to the Department of Corrections. Prisoners were denied for poor behavior in prison, the nature of the crimes they committed, and for not meeting the program’s basic eligibility requirements.
Last year, 40-year-old Raul Gomez-Garcia, who killed a Denver police officer in 2005 when he was 19, was denied entry to the program after his application stirred outrage within the slain officer’s family and the police department.
None of the 17 people released after completing the program have had their parole revoked, said Alondra Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections. One participant had “subsequent involvement with the criminal justice system,” she said, but it did not prompt parole revocation. She did not answer follow-up questions about that participant.
“Nobody reoffends, because they’ve grown up,” said Roan, who previously represented Gone. “…Every one of us at some point has been 16, and a lot of us who have children have watched what it is to be 16 from that perspective, and I don’t think anyone would say that is who you are for the rest of your life.”
‘A program that he signed into law’
Phillip “Mike” Montoya went into the JYACAP program after he’d spent 26 years behind bars. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison after he participated in a 1993 gang shooting as a 16-year-old, although he did not actually fire the fatal shot.
He found the program to be too basic at times, with tedious instruction on very basic tasks like how to brush your teeth or how to use a spatula. The curriculum wasn’t tailored to each individual, he noted.
“If you go inside the prison at 16 years old and maybe you never done anything in your life prior, like cook for yourself, do your own laundry, go to a grocery store and buy your own food, then maybe you are going to need a lot more assistance,” he said. “But for someone like me, I pretty much had to raise myself. I had to raise my brother and sisters. So going into prison, even though I went in at such a young age, I had a lot of knowledge of the world.”
Still, he is quick to praise the program’s pathway to release and the second chance it gives people who have been imprisoned since they were teenagers. Montoya has been working as a barber since he got out in August 2023, about three years before his parole eligibility date. He ultimately served 30 years and two days.
He’s tried to advocate for the program’s other participants, he said, seeking out meetings with officials and stakeholders.
“The response has always been the same, that (Polis) doesn’t want to deal with it for political reasons,” he said. “…We’re talking about a program that he signed into law that he doesn’t believe in now.”
Gone, Atkins and Reyes will each become eligible for parole in the coming years, prison records show. Reyes will be eligible in 2027, while Gone and Atkins will be eligible in 2030. Once they hit that mark, the parole board can release them without the governor’s sign-off.
Already, the parole board released two prisoners in 2024 and 2025 who completed the JYACAP program and reached their regular parole eligibility dates while waiting for Polis’ approval for early release, Gonzalez said.
For T’Naus Nieto, whose father is about to finish the program and join the small number of prisoners waiting for Polis’ final approval, the difference between an early release through JYACAP and a regular release when his father reaches parole eligibility in 2032 is significant.
Nieto wants his own children to grow up with their grandfather.
“My youngest is 5 and I have my daughter who is 8,” Nieto said. “So you are talking about a difference of six years. Six years to an 8-year-old. Do the math, and you miss out on their entire childhood. So just the fact that he could be in their lives for just a few short years makes a huge difference for a child.”
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Social media companies have revoked access to about 4.7 million accounts identified as belonging to children in Australia since the country banned use of the platforms by those under 16, officials said.
“We stared down everybody who said it couldn’t be done, some of the most powerful and rich companies in the world and their supporters,” communications minister Anika Wells told reporters on Friday. “Now Australian parents can be confident that their kids can have their childhoods back.”
The figures, reported to Australia’s government by 10 social media platforms, were the first to show the scale of the landmark ban since it was enacted in December over fears about the effects of harmful online environments on young people. The law provoked fraught debates in Australia about technology use, privacy, child safety and mental health and has prompted other countries to consider similar measures.
Under Australian law, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($33.2 million) if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts of Australian children younger than 16. Messaging services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are exempt.
To verify age, platforms can either request copies of identification documents, use a third party to apply age estimation technology to an account holder’s face, or make inferences from data already available such has how long an account has been held.
About 2.5 million Australians are aged between 8 and 15, said the country’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, and past estimates suggested 84% of 8- to 12-year-olds held social media accounts. It was not known how many accounts were held across the 10 platforms but Inman Grant said the figure of 4.7 million “deactivated or restricted” was encouraging.
“We’re preventing predatory social media companies from accessing our children,” Inman Grant said.
The 10 biggest companies covered by the ban were compliant with it and had reported removal figures to Australia’s regulator on time, the commissioner said. She added that social media companies were expected to shift their efforts from enforcing the ban to preventing children from creating new accounts or otherwise circumventing the prohibition.
Australian officials didn’t break the figures down by platform. But Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, said this week that by the day after the ban came into effect it had removed nearly 550,000 accounts belonging to users understood to be under 16.
In the blog post divulging the figures, Meta criticized the ban and said smaller platforms where the ban doesn’t apply might not prioritize safety. The company also noted browsing platforms would still present content to children based on algorithms — a concern that led to the ban’s enactment.
The law was widely popular among parents and child safety campaigners. Online privacy advocates and some groups representing teenagers opposed it, with the latter citing the support found in online spaces by vulnerable young people or those geographically isolated in Australia’s sprawling rural areas.
Some said they had managed to fool age assessing technologies or were helped by parents or older siblings to circumvent the ban.
Since Australia began debating the measures in 2024, other countries have considered following suit. Denmark’s government is among them, saying in November that it had planned to implement a social media ban for children under 15.
“The fact that in spite of some skepticism out there, it’s working and being replicated now around the world, is something that is a source of Australian pride,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday.
Opposition lawmakers have suggested that young people have circumvented the ban easily or are migrating to other apps that are less scrutinized than the largest platforms. Inman Grant said Friday that data seen by her office showed a spike in downloads of alternative apps when the ban was enacted but not a spike in usage.
“There is no real long-term trends yet that we can say but we’re engaging,” she said.
Meanwhile, she said, the regulator she heads planned to introduce “world-leading AI companion and chatbot restrictions in March.” She didn’t disclose further details.
Ever since Grace Kennedy met Quinn in May, the teenager’s goal has been to fatten the Hereford calf up — but not too much, not if she wants to auction it off at this month’s National Western Stock Show in Denver.
Quinn, who is about a year-and-a-half old, weighed 460 pounds when Grace won the animal from the Stock Show’s Catch-A-Calf program. The calf weighed about 1,250 pounds as of early December.
“They just want a good-looking carcass,” Grace, who lives just outside of Morrison, said of the judges who will determine how well she did in raising Quinn for beef.
The 17-year-old is just one of Colorado’s 4-H youth members who will attend the Stock Show in hopes of making a sale. Teenagers from across the state will come to Denver to auction off cattle, goats and other livestock, with the goal of earning money for college, first cars or to reinvest in their farming endeavors.
4-H student Grace Kennedy, 17, tries to convince her one-year-old steer, Quinn, to continue his walk around the property on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Morrison, Colo. (Photo by Timothy Hurst/The Denver Post)
The Stock Show began Saturday and will run through Jan. 25.
“Being from Colorado, I feel like it would be really cool making a sale in a national show in your state,” 15-year-old Ty Weathers said.
Ty, who lives on a cattle ranch outside of Yuma in northeastern Colorado, has been showing cows since he was about 7 years old. He will show a steer named Theodore at the Stock Show this year, and he hopes to sell the animal to earn money for a car.
Unlike Grace, who received Quinn through the Catch-A-Calf program, which requires participants to sell their calves during the Stock Show, there’s no guarantee Ty will make a sale.
“I like winning,” Ty said, referring to his hope he’ll be able to auction Theodore off for the highest price. “I’ve grown up in it, so it’s just a part of life.”
Zemery Weber, who lives in Gill in Weld County, started showing goats when she was 8 years old to earn money, but this is her first time doing so at the Stock Show.
“I got a goat this year that seems to be pretty good,” the 14-year-old said. “I’m excited, but I’m also nervous because it’s my first time.”
Zemery will show a goat named Nemo. She plans to save part of the money she earns from selling the goat for meat for her first car and college.
Zemery Weber, 14, leads her goat, Nemo, outside of a barn at her mother’s home near Gill, Colo., on Dec. 15, 2025. Weber plans to show the goats at the National Western Stock Show. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
“It has helped me become the person that I am,” Zemery said of showing goats. “It is a very good experience for students to have and kids to have to learn responsibility and reliability.”
Showing animals is just one way students can participate in the Stock Show.
In the Front Range, county 4-H programs — which have youth participate in agricultural, STEM and other projects — also put on a field trip for elementary school students to visit the show so they can learn about animals and where their food comes from, said Josey Pukrop, a 4-H youth development specialist with the Colorado State University Extension in Jefferson County.
Last year, about 12,000 children participated in the field trip, she said.
4-H has been operating nationally for more than 120 years, through it, children participate in programs that include showing livestock, gardening and building robots. The youth program is largely funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, according to the agency’s website.
More than 100,000 Colorado students participate in 4-H via community clubs and other programming, said Michael Compton, the state 4-H program director at the CSU Extension.
Like Ty, Grace’s family is in the cattle business, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that she began to take an interest and dream of owning her own ranch someday.
Grace’s foray into cows began when the dance studio she attended closed because of COVID-19 in 2020. Grace, in search of a new hobby, got into horses and trail riding with her father.
4-H student Grace Kennedy, 17, leads her one-year-old steer, Quinn, around the property as training for being shown at the National Western Stock Show next month, on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Morrison, Colo. (Photo by Timothy Hurst/The Denver Post)
Soon after, she took an interest in cows and worked on her grandfather’s cattle ranch in South Dakota during the summer. Grace’s parents have their own herd near Morrison, and the teenager has started breeding and raising her own cattle.
“Animals are the coolest things,” Grace said. “They are here to teach us something, to teach us life qualities. They’re peaceful.”
Grace has been a member of 4-H for six years, showing cattle for four.
She is participating in the Stock Show’s Catch-A-Calf program, which loaned her a calf so she can learn cattle management.
The Catch-A-Calf program started in 1935 and is open to teens ages 14 to 18 who live in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming, according to the Stock Show’s website.
“Sometimes it’s kids that haven’t raised these animals before,” Pukrop said.
Zemery Weber, 14, cleans the pens for her goats, Theo, left, and Nemo, in a barn at her mother’s home near Gill, Colo., on Dec. 15, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Teens participating in the program have to rope a calf, feed it and return the cow to the next Stock Show to be judged on showmanship and carcass quality. The program’s Grand and Reserve Grand Champions get to sell their steers at an auction held on the final Friday of the Stock Show, according to the website.
The program is about “taking accountability and staying on track with your animal and really learning what goes behind their feed and all the math,” said Miranda Leatherman, a 15-year-old participant from Arvada.
By participating in the Catch-A-Calf program, Grace and Miranda had to send monthly reports to sponsors on their steers’ progress and track their weight and how much they are fed.
Grace doesn’t know how much Quinn will sell for, but if she doesn’t win and make it to auction, the calf will still be sold — just for a lower price.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a choice,” she said.
Grace plans to use any earnings from Quinn’s sale to cover expenses of his upkeep, such as grain and veterinary bills. Anything left over is profit, she said.
“It was a cool opportunity,” she said. “It was a way to get more involved. It was a great way to strengthen this project I have been doing.”
Dr. Molly O’Shea has noticed growing skepticism about vaccines at both of her Michigan pediatric offices and says this week’s unprecedented and confusing changes to federal vaccine guidance will only make things worse.
One of her offices is in a Democratic area, where more of the parents she sees are opting for alternative schedules that spread out shots. The other is in a Republican area, where some parents have stopped immunizing their children altogether.
She and other doctors fear the new recommendations and the terminology around them will stoke vaccine hesitancy even more, pose challenges for pediatricians and parents that make it harder for kids to get shots, and ultimately lead to more illness and death.
The biggest change was to stop blanket recommendations for protection against six diseases and recommend those vaccines only for at-risk children or through something called “shared clinical decision-making” with a health care provider.
The phrase, experts say, is confusing and dangerous: “It sends a message to a parent that actually there’s only a rarefied group of people who really need the vaccine,” O’Shea said. “It’s creating an environment that puts a sense of uncertainty about the value and necessity or importance of the vaccines in that category.”
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who helped lead the anti-vaccine movement for years, said in announcing the changes that they better align the U.S. with peer nations “while strengthening transparency and informed consent.”
But doctors say they are sowing doubt — the vaccines have been extensively studied and proven to be safe and effective at shielding kids from nasty diseases — at a time when childhood vaccination rates are already falling and some of those infectious diseases are spreading.
On Friday, the American Academy of Pediatrics and more than 200 medical, public health and patient advocacy groups sent a letter to Congress about the new childhood immunization schedule.
“We urge you to investigate why the schedule was changed, why credible scientific evidence was ignored, and why the committee charged with advising the HHS Secretary on immunizations did not discuss the schedule changes as a part of their public meeting process,” they wrote.
O’Shea said she and other pediatricians discuss vaccines with parents at every visit where they are given. But that’s not necessarily “shared clinical decision-making,” which has a particular definition.
On its website, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices says: “Unlike routine, catch-up, and risk-based recommendations, shared clinical decision-making vaccinations are not recommended for everyone in a particular age group or everyone in an identifiable risk group. Rather, shared clinical decision-making recommendations are individually based and informed by a decision process between the health care provider and the patient or parent/guardian.”
In this context, health care providers include primary care physicians, specialists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, registered nurses and pharmacists.
A pair of surveys conducted last year by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania suggested that many people don’t fully understand the concept, which came up last year when the federal government changed recommendations around COVID-19 vaccinations.
Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults knew that one meaning behind shared decision-making is that “taking the vaccine may not be a good idea for everyone but would benefit some.” And only about one-third realized pharmacists count as health care providers to talk with during the process, even though they frequently administer vaccines.
As of this week, vaccines that protect against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, RSV, flu and meningococcal disease are no longer universally recommended for kids. RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and meningococcal vaccines are recommended for certain high-risk populations; flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and meningococcal vaccines are recommended through shared decision-making — as is the COVID-19 vaccine, although that change was made last year.
Shortly after the federal announcement Monday, Dr. Steven Abelowitz heard from half a dozen parents. “It’s causing concern for us, but more importantly, concern for parents with kids, especially young kids, and confusion,” said Abelowitz, founder of Ocean Pediatrics in Orange County, California.
Though federal recommendations are not mandates — states have the authority to require vaccinations for schoolchildren — they can affect how easy it is for kids to get shots if doctors choose to follow them.
Under the new guidelines, O’Shea said, parents seeking shots in the shared decision-making category might no longer bring their kids in for a quick, vaccine-only appointment with staff. They’d sit down with a health care provider and discuss the vaccine. And it could be tougher to have a flu clinic, where parents drive up and kids get shots without seeing a doctor.
Still, doctors say they won’t let the changes stop them from helping children get the vaccines they need. Leading medical groups are sticking with prior vaccine recommendations. Many parents are, too.
Megan Landry, whose 4-year-old son Zackary is one of O’Shea’s patients, is among them.
“It’s my responsibility as a parent to protect my child’s health and well-being,” she said. “Vaccines are a really effective and well-studied way to do that.”
She plans to keep having the same conversations she’s always had with O’Shea before getting vaccines for Zackary.
“Relying on evidence and trusted medical guidance really helps me to make those decisions,” she said. “And for me, it’s not just a personal choice for my own son but a way to contribute to the health of everybody.”
But for other families, confidence about vaccines is waning as trust in science erodes. O’Shea lamented that parents are getting the message that they can’t trust medical experts.
“If I take my car to the mechanic, I don’t go do my own research ahead of time,” she said. “I go to a person I trust and I trust them to tell me what’s going on.”
Abelowitz, the California doctor, likened the latest federal move to pouring gasoline on a fire of mistrust that was already burning.
“We’re worried the fire’s out of control,” he said. “Already we’ve seen that with measles and pertussis, there are increased hospitalizations and even increasing deaths. So the way that I look at it — and my colleagues look at it — we’re basically regressing decades.”
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
The federal government has drastically scaled back the number of recommended childhood immunizations, sidelining six routine vaccines that have safeguarded millions from serious diseases, long-term disability, and death.
Just three of the six immunizations the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it will no longer routinely recommend — against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and rotavirus — have prevented nearly 2 million hospitalizations and more than 90,000 deaths in the past 30 years, according to the CDC’s own publications.
Vaccines against the three diseases, as well as those against respiratory syncytial virus, meningococcal disease, flu, and COVID, are now recommended only for children at high risk of serious illness or after “shared clinical decision-making,” or consultation between doctors and parents.
The CDC maintained its recommendations for 11 childhood vaccines: measles, mumps, and rubella; whooping cough, tetanus, and diphtheria; the bacterial disease known as Hib; pneumonia; polio; chickenpox; and human papillomavirus, or HPV.
Federal and private insurance will still cover vaccines for the diseases the CDC no longer recommends universally, according to a Department of Health and Human Services fact sheet; parents who want to vaccinate their children against those diseases will not have to pay out-of-pocket.
Experts on childhood disease were baffled by the change in guidance. HHS said the changes followed “a scientific review of the underlying science” and were in line with vaccination programs in other developed nations.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist, pointed to Denmark as a model. But the schedules of most European countries are closer to the U.S. standard upended by the new guidance.
For example, Denmark, which does not vaccinate against rotavirus, registers around 1,200 infant and toddler rotavirus hospitalizations a year. That rate, in a country of 6 million, is about the same as it was in the United States before vaccination.
“They’re OK with having 1,200 or 1,300 hospitalized kids, which is the tip of the iceberg in terms of childhood suffering,” said Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a co-inventor of a licensed rotavirus vaccine. “We weren’t. They should be trying to emulate us, not the other way around.”
Public health officials say the new guidance puts the onus on parents to research and understand each childhood vaccine and why it is important.
Here’s a rundown of the diseases the sidelined vaccines prevent:
RSV. Respiratory syncytial virus is the most common cause of hospitalization for infants in the U.S.
The respiratory virus usually spreads in fall and winter and produces cold-like symptoms, though it can be deadly for young children, causing tens of thousands of hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths a year. According to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, roughly 80% of children younger than 2 who are hospitalized with RSV have no identifiable risk factors. Long-awaited vaccines against the disease were introduced in 2023.
Hepatitis A. Hepatitis A vaccination, which was phased in beginning in the late 1990s and recommended for all toddlers starting in 2006, has led to a more than 90% drop in the disease since 1996. The foodborne virus, which causes a wretched illness, continues to plague adults, particularly people who are homeless or who abuse drugs or alcohol, with a total of 1,648 cases and 85 deaths reported in 2023.
Hepatitis B. The disease causes liver cancer, cirrhosis, and other serious illnesses and is particularly dangerous when contracted by babies and young children. The hepatitis B virus is transmitted through blood and other bodily fluids, even in microscopic amounts, and can survive on surfaces for a week. From 1990 to 2019, vaccination resulted in a 99% decline in reported cases of acute hepatitis B among children and teens. Liver cancer among American children has also plummeted as a result of universal childhood vaccination. But the hepatitis B virus is still around, with 2,000-3,000 acute cases reported annually among unvaccinated adults. More than 17,000 chronic hepatitis B diagnoses were reported in 2023. The CDC estimates about half of people infected don’t know they have it.
Rotavirus. Before routine administration of the current rotavirus vaccines began in 2006, about 70,000 young children were hospitalized and 50 died every year from the virus. It was known as “winter vomiting syndrome,” said Sean O’Leary, a pediatrician at the University of Colorado. “It was a miserable disease that we hardly see anymore.”
The virus is still common on surfaces that babies touch, however, and “if you lower immunization rates it will once again hospitalize children,” Offit said.
Meningococcal vaccines. These have been required mainly for teenagers and college students, who are notably vulnerable to critical illness caused by the bacteria. About 600 to 1,000 cases of meningococcal disease are reported in the U.S. each year, but it kills more than 10% of those it sickens, and 1 in 5 survivors have permanent disabilities.
Flu and COVID. The two respiratory viruses have each killed hundreds of children in recent years — though both tend to be much more severe in older adults. Flu is currently on the upswing in the United States, and last flu season the virus killed 289 children.
What is shared clinical decision-making?
Under the changes, decisions about vaccinating children against influenza, COVID, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, and hepatitis A and B will now rely on what officials call “shared clinical decision-making,” meaning families will have to consult with a health care provider to determine whether a vaccine is appropriate.
“It means a provider should have a conversation with the patient to lay out the risks and the benefits and make a decision for that individual person,” said Lori Handy, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
In the past, the CDC used that term only in reference to narrow circumstances, like whether a person in a monogamous relationship needed the HPV vaccine, which prevents a sexually transmitted infection and certain cancers.
The CDC’s new approach doesn’t line up with the science because of the proven protective benefit the vaccines have for the vast majority of the population, Handy said.
In their report justifying the changes, HHS officials Tracy Beth Høeg and Martin Kulldorff said the U.S. vaccination system requires more safety research and more parental choice. Eroding trust in public health caused in part by an overly large vaccine schedule had led more parents to shun vaccination against major threats like measles, they said.
The vaccines on the schedule that the CDC has altered were backed up by extensive safety research when they were evaluated and approved by the FDA.
“They’re held to a safety standard higher than any other medical intervention that we have,” Handy said. “The value of routine recommendations is that it really helps the public understand that this has been vetted upside down and backwards in every which way.”
Eric Ball, a pediatrician in Orange County, California, said the change in guidance will cause more confusion among parents who think it means a vaccine’s safety is in question.
“It is critical for public health that recommendations for vaccines are very clear and concise,” Ball said. “Anything to muddy the water is just going to lead to more children getting sick.”
Ball said that instead of focusing on a child’s individual health needs, he often has to spend limited clinic time reassuring parents that vaccines are safe. A “shared clinical decision-making” status for a vaccine has no relationship to safety concerns, but parents may think it does.
HHS’ changes do not affect state vaccination laws and therefore should allow prudent medical practitioners to carry on as before, said Richard Hughes IV, an attorney and a George Washington University lecturer who is leading litigation against Kennedy over vaccine changes.
“You could expect that any pediatrician is going to follow sound evidence and recommend that their patients be vaccinated,” he said. The law protects providers who follow professional care guidelines, he said, and “RSV, meningococcal, and hepatitis remain serious health threats for children in this country.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban are divorced and legally single, ending the 19-year marriage of one of entertainment’s most prominent power couples
A Nashville, Tennessee, judge issued an order at a hearing Tuesday dissolving the marriage of the Oscar-winning actor and the Grammy-winning country singer.
Judge Stephanie J. Williams said in a court filing that the couple’s settlements on splitting assets and child custody are sufficient, and granted them the divorce.
Williams wrote that “there exist such irreconcilable difference between the parties that would render continuation of the marriage impractical and impossible.”
Both Kidman and Urban waived their right to appear at the hearing.
Messages to their representatives seeking comment were not immediately answered.
Kidman filed for divorce in September. The superstar split was a surprise to most of the public, but it had clearly been in the works for a while. All the legal issues involving assets and custody had been settled and signed the day of her filing.
Tennessee requires a 90-day waiting period for couples with minor children before a divorce can take effect.
Kidman and Urban, both 58, have two teenage daughters together. Their divorce filing said they had “marital difficulties and irreconcilable differences.”
The plan they signed states that Kidman would be the primary residential parent to the children. It suggested they would remain living in Nashville as they have all their lives. The filing states that neither parent would need child or spousal support, and lays out a roughly equal division of their joint assets.
Two of the biggest stars to come out of Australia in recent decades, Kidman and Urban met in Los Angeles in 2005 and were married in Sydney the following year. They were red carpet fixtures throughout their two-decade relationship, with Urban joining his wife at the Oscars and Kidman attending music events like the Academy of Country Music Awards. The couple had publicly but lovingly described some marital difficulties, yet there were still few outward signs the divorce was coming.
The marriage was the first for Urban and the second for Kidman, who was married to Tom Cruise from 1990 to 2001. Kidman also has two older children with Cruise.
Minnesota officials have until next week to hand over information on providers and parents who receive federal child care funds that the Trump administration contends have been used fraudulently or risk losing federal funding. State officials said Friday recent inspections showed several childcare centers accused of fraud by a right-wing influencer were “operating as expected.”
In an email sent Friday to child care providers and shared with The Associated Press by multiple providers, Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families said it has until Jan. 9 to provide information about recipients of the funds.
The announcement earlier this week by the Trump administration that it would freeze child care funds to Minnesota and the rest of the states comes after a series of fraud cases involving government programs in which many defendants were Somali, as were many of those running spotlighted childcare centers.
Allegations of fraud at the child care centers went viral recently when a right-wing influencer posted a video claiming there was fraud taking place, putting Minnesota and some other states in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.
State officials said investigators did spot checks and reviews of nine centers this week in response to the influencer’s video posted last week, and found no operational issues. One center was not yet open at the time, and there are ongoing investigations at four of them.
The email sent Friday instructed providers and families who rely on the frozen federal child care program to continue the program’s “licensing and certification requirements and practices as usual.” It does not say that recipients themselves need to take any action or provide any information.
“We recognize the alarm and questions this has raised,” the email said. “We found out about the freezing of funds at the same time everyone else did on social media.”
The state agency added that it “did not receive a formal communication from the federal government until late Tuesday night,” which was after Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill posted about the freeze on X. All 50 states will have to provide additional levels of verification and administrative data before they receive more funding from the Child Care and Development Fund, which is designed to make child care affordable for low-income families.
The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing Wednesday to discuss the allegations of fraudulent use of federal funds in Minnesota. An HHS spokesperson said that the child care fraud hotline put up by the federal agency earlier this week has received more than 200 tips.
Minnesota has drawn ire from Republicans and the Trump administration over other fraud accusations.
Administration for Children and Families Assistant Secretary Alex Adams told Fox News on Friday that his agency sent Minnesota a letter last month asking for information on the child care program and other welfare programs by Dec. 26, but didn’t get a response. The state did not immediately respond to a request for comment. President Donald Trump has also targeted the state’s large Somali community with immigration enforcement actions and called them “garbage.”
Minnesota Democrats say the Trump administration is playing politics and hurting families and children as a result. Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families said in a press release Friday that inspectors conduct regular oversight activities for the child care program, noting that there are 55 related open investigations involving providers.
“DCYF remains committed to fact-based reviews that stop fraud, protect children, support families, and minimize disruption to communities that rely on these essential services,” the department said. “Distribution of unvetted or deceptive claims and misuse of tip lines can interfere with investigations, create safety risks for families, providers, and employers, and has contributed to harmful discourse about Minnesota’s immigrant communities.”
Maria Snider, director of a child care center in St. Paul and vice president of advocacy group Minnesota Child Care Association, said providers currently get paid at least three weeks after services are provided. Some 23,000 children and 12,000 families receive funding from the targeted child care program each month on average, according to the state.
“For a lot of centers, we’re already running on a thin margin,” she said. “Even centers where 10 to 15% of their kids are on childcare assistance, that’s a dip in your income.”
Any child who attends a child care center with attendees who receive federal funding could be impacted, Snider said.
The Administration for Children and Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides $185 million in child care funds annually to Minnesota, federal officials have said.
According to the Friday email from Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families, HHS sent a letter to Minnesota asking for data from 2022 to 2025, including identifying information of all recipients of the child care funds, a list of all providers who receive the funds, how much they receive and “information related to alleged fraud networks and oversight failures.” It’s unclear whether Minnesota already has the data the administration is asking for.
HHS said five child care centers that receive funds from the child care program or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families would have to provide “specific documentation” such as attendance, inspections and assessments, according to the email.
HHS said it would provide Minnesota with more information by Jan. 5, but the state agency wrote that it’s unclear what kinds of funding restrictions it faces.
“Our teams are working hard to analyze the legal, fiscal, and other aspects of this federal action,” the email says. “We do not know the full impact.”
The ACFB was introduced in July 2020, consolidating the Alberta Child Benefit and the Alberta Family Employment Tax Credit into a single program. The ACFB aims to improve the quality of life for children and support their well-being. (See similar programs in other provinces and territories.)
The ACFB is indexed to inflation, so the amounts increase every year. The ACFB benefit period runs from July of one year to June of the following year.
What are the Alberta child benefit payment dates for 2026?
The CRA issues ACFB payments quarterly, by direct deposit or cheque. The payment dates this year are:
February 27, 2026
May 27, 2026
August 27, 2026
November 27, 2026
You can also check CRA’s My Account for personalized benefit payment dates.
Who is eligible to receive the ACFB?
To qualify for the ACFB, you must meet all of the following criteria:
Be a parent of one or more children under 18
Be a resident of Alberta
File a tax return
Meet the income criteria
The best credit cards for families
Do I have to apply for the ACFB?
No, you do not need to apply for the ACFB. According to the Alberta government, “You are automatically considered for the ACFB when you file your annual tax return and qualify for the federal government’s Canada Child Benefit.” (Learn more about the Canada Child Benefit (CCB), including eligibility requirements and payment dates.)
The CRA will regularly reassess your family’s eligibility for the ACFB (for example, if you have another child, your benefit amount could increase). If you and your family have just moved to Alberta, you’ll be eligible for the ACFB the month after you become a resident.
How much is the Alberta child benefit?
Your adjusted family net income (from your previous year’s tax return) and the number of kids in your family determine your total benefit amount per year. The ACFB includes a base component and a working component.
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Base component of the ACFB
The ACFB’s base component is available to lower-income families with children. You do not have to earn any income to receive the base component. Depending on the number of children in your family, you may be entitled to the following amounts as your base component for the period from July 2025 to June 2026:
$1,499 for the first child
$749 for the second child
$749 for the third child
$749 for the fourth child (and each additional
If your adjusted family net income exceeded $27,565 in 2025, this base component is reduced.
Working component of the ACFB
In addition to the base component, families with adjusted net income exceeding $2,760 are eligible for the working component. The benefit amount for the working component increases by 15% for every additional dollar of income (up to the maximum benefit), encouraging families to join or stay in the workforce. You may be entitled to these amounts for the period from July 2025 to June 2026:
$767 ($63.91 per month) for the first child
$698 ($58.16 per month) for the second child
$418 ($34.83 per month) for the third child
$138 ($11.50 per month) for the fourth child
Once the adjusted family net income exceeds $46,191, the working component of the benefit is also reduced.
You can also use the Government of Canada’s child and family benefits calculator to get an estimate of the annual federal and provincial or territorial benefits you might be entitled to.
What counts as adjusted family net income?
Adjusted family net income is the amount the CRA uses to calculate your ACFB entitlement and determine when benefits begin to phase out. It’s based on line 23600 (net income) of your tax return.
If you have a spouse or common-law partner, the CRA adds both partners’ net incomes together to determine your family’s adjusted net income. This combined amount is then used to calculate your ACFB payment amount and assess whether reductions apply.
Adjusted family net income is reassessed every year after you file your tax return.
Sometimes you can tell a bill will be really bad just from its title. So it goes with The Republic Unifying Meritocratic Performance Advancing Machine Intelligence by Eliminating Regulatory Interstate Chaos Across American Industry Act, from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R–Tenn.). And, boy, does it deliver on that disaster of a name, managing to combine nearly every bad tech policy idea of the past half-decade—including gutting Section 230 and creating new requirements around the suppression of sexuality online—into one massive piece of Trump-branded legislation.
You are reading Sex & Tech, from Elizabeth Nolan Brown. Get more of Elizabeth’s sex, tech, bodily autonomy, law, and online culture coverage.
The bill’s title alone is asinine, even if we put the North Korea-ness meets word-salad nature of it aside. Following the normal rules of making acronyms, it would be the TRUMP AMIERICA (or perhaps AMIBERICA) AI act, though Blackburn is throwing rules to the wind and referring to it as the TRUMP AMERICA AI act.
If only the problems stopped there!
Alas, Blackburn is serving up a cornucopia of proposals that could throttle free speech and free markets online. An anti-tech omnibus, if you will, sold as a simple AI regulatory scheme.
Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick calls it a “massively destructive internet policy overhaul masquerading as AI legislation.” It “would change nearly every US government policy regarding how the internet works, tackling AI, Section 230, copyright, and a bunch of other nonsense all in one bill.”
Masnick has a nice rundown of the bill’s myriad flaws, which include instituting a “duty of care” for AI developers to “prevent and mitigate foreseeable harm to users” (per Blackburn’s summary of the bill). This duty would be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
“This is one of those things that I’m sure sounds good to folks, but as we’ve explained over and over again this kind of ‘duty of care’ is basically an anti-230 that would do real damage,” writes Masnick.
It’s basically just an invitation for lawyers to sue any time anything bad happens and someone involved in the bad thing that happened somehow used an AI tool at some point.
And then you have to go through a big expensive legal process to explain “no, this thing was not because of AI” or whatever. It’s just a massive invitation to sue everyone, meaning that in the end you have just a few giant companies providing AI because they’ll be the only ones who can afford the lawsuits.
And just in case that didn’t allow for enough ways to attack AI companies, another section of the bill would enable “the U.S. Attorney General, state attorneys general, and private actors to file suit to hold AI system developers liable for harms caused by the AI system for defective design, failure to warn, express warranty, and unreasonably dangerous or defective product claims.”
Blackburn—who was once a proponent of light-touch regulation when it came to the internet—has also worked elements of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) into the TRUMP AMERICA AI Act.
It will require certain social media platforms, video games, stream services, and messaging applications “to implement tools and safeguards to protect users and visitors under the age of 17 to protect children from sex trafficking, suicide, and other abuses,” per Blackburn’s summary. As with KOSA, this requirement is promoted in a way that sounds unobjectionable—admirable, even—but would, in effect, require companies to suppress massive amounts of content, weaken privacy protections, and more.
“This section generally requires covered platforms to exercise reasonable care in the design and use of features that increase minors’ online activity to prevent and mitigate harm to minors (e.g., mental health disorders and severe harassment),” the summary says.
Enterprising lawyers can easily argue that all sorts of things contribute to mental health issues in their young clients, enabling lawsuits over generally unobjectionable (or, at the very least, totally legal) speech and neutral platform features. The biggest tech companies may be able to fight these, but all but the behemoths would be forced to preemptively ban a bunch of speech in order to avoid potential lawsuits.
Section 11 of Blackburn’s bill is promoted as combating “the consistent pattern of bias against conservative figures demonstrated by Big Tech and AI systems.” But, in practice, it could require AI systems to have a pro-conservative slant—at least as long as President Donald Trump or other Republicans are in power.
The bill would set up “audits of high-risk AI systems to undergo regular bias evaluations to prevent discrimination based on protected characteristics, including political affiliation.”
Presumably, federal agencies would be tasked with conducting these audits, which could leave it up to political appointees—not exactly a notoriously unbiased bunch—to judge what does and doesn’t count as bias against a particular political group. How long before AI developers have to tailor their systems to spitting out politically favorable results?
The effect of this section could be somewhat blunted by the fact that it only applies to “high-risk” systems, which Blackburn’s summary describes as “those that could pose significant risks to health, safety, rights, or economic security, including those in education, employment, law enforcement, or critical infrastructure.” But without a more precise definition, it’s hard to say how this would shake out or what it would mean for the sorts of general AI systems used by consumers.
During the heyday of federal antitrust hearings about Big Tech, the idea of ending “self-preferencing” got a lot of play. Self-preferencing refers to tech companies using their services to promote or favor their other services, and for some reason, lawmakers are convinced that it’s a scourge.
But self-preferencing comes with a lot of perks for tech users, not just for the companies involved. It means that when you Google a particular place or business, Google will automatically place a map of this location near the top of the search results. It means that Amazon will perhaps show you more products eligible for free shipping with a Prime membership—something Prime members want!—than products where shipping costs extra. And so on.
The TRUMP AMERICA AI act would stop “systemically important platforms”—defined as including, but perhaps not limited to, “platforms with subscribers or monthly active users in the United States not less than 34% of the population of the United States”—from engaging in “self-preferencing or steering users to products or services offered by the platform operator,” per Blackburn’s summary.
In effect, it would make Big Tech less user-friendly in the name of protecting us from Big Tech.
A line tucked near the bottom of Blackburn’s summary says that the bill would prevent “systemically important platforms from disseminating sexual material harmful to minors.”
It’s cloaked in euphemistic language: “sexual material harmful to minors” sure sounds like something very bad, like it might be referring to child pornography or other forms of illegal imagery.
But we’ve seen, in myriad state laws targeting material harmful to minors, that this term can be used very broadly, encompassing not just any and all pornographic photos and videos but also written erotica, literature that describes sexual relationships, stories centered on gay and transgender characters, and so on.
A requirement that big tech platforms ban “sexual material harmful to minors” would almost certainly mean that they must filter out anything that could be considered porn and perhaps much more.
One of the most worrying bits of the bill concerns Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Blackburn’s bill would “establish a ‘Bad Samaritan’ carve-out that would deny immunity from civil liability to platforms that purposefully facilitate or solicit third-party content that violates federal criminal law.”
Of course, Section 230 is already inapplicable to violations of federal criminal law. A company can’t break federal law and claim that Section 230 lets them do it.
So what’s the true aim here? I think Masnick frames the issue pretty well:
Right now, 230 lets platforms get frivolous lawsuits dismissed quickly at the motion to dismiss stage. This change would force every platform to go through lengthy, expensive litigation to prove they weren’t “facilitating” (an incredibly vague term) or “soliciting” third-party content that violates federal criminal law.
That’s gutting the main reason Section 230 exists. Instead of quick dismissals, you get discovery, depositions, and trials, all while someone argues that because your algorithm showed someone a post, you were “facilitating” whatever criminal content they claim to find.
Slippery words like “facilitate” and “solicit” give authorities a lot of leeway to punish tech companies for activities we generally think of as non-criminal, free-market, or speech-facilitating activities.
The bill would put into policy Trump’s desire to ban states from passing their own AI regulation. Earlier this month, the president issued an executive order seeking to stop states from passing certain sorts of AI regulation so the country could have, instead, a “national framework”—though the order can’t actually create said framework or outright ban states from passing their own laws. Congress can, however. And Blackburn’s bill would preempt state AI laws in several arenas.
Blackburn’s summary also lists a huge array of other changes the TRUMP AMERICA AI Act would enact. Some of these summaries are relatively vague—for instance, Section 8 is merely described as “establish[ing] requirements for companies providing AI chatbot and companion services to protect kids.”
One section would require “interoperability for systemically important platforms, which include platforms with subscribers or monthly active users in the United States not less than 34% of the population of the United States.” Interoperability is one of those ideas that may sound nice in theory but presents huge technical challenges and security risks.
Several sections seem designed to upend copyright laws, by ignoring concepts like fair use, satire, and parody. There’s a bit that would create “a federal right for individuals to sue companies for using their data (personal, copyrighted) for AI training without explicit consent” and another that would “hold individuals or companies liable if they produce an unauthorized digital replica of an individual in a performance.” Yet another section would deem “derivative works generated, synthesized, or produced by an AI system without authorization as infringing works, which would be ineligible for copyright protection.”
The bill hasn’t even been formally introduced yet, let alone attracted official cosponsors, so it’s hard to say how Blackburn’s colleagues will treat the bill. But it seems clear that the measure’s title has been calculated to attract Trump’s endorsement, which could translate to a lot of Republican lawmakers falling in line, too.
“I look forward to introducing the TRUMP AMERICA AI Act in the new year to create one federal rulebook for AI to protect children, creators, conservatives, and communities across the country and ensure America triumphs over foreign adversaries in the global race for AI dominance,” said Blackburn.
New post!
There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I’ve tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.
Patient “states he has a foreign body in his rectum that is vibrating. He states he was with a girl last night and doesn’t remember much.” Using data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s emergency room visits database, Defectorhas compiled a list of things people got stuck in their rectums and genitals in 2025.
New York passes an immunity bill. The bill “provides immunity from prosecution for certain individuals engaged in prostitution who are victims of or witnesses to a crime and who report such crime or assist in the investigation or prosecution,” per the legislative summary. “This law recognizes that safety must be prioritized over punishment,” said Decriminalize Sex Work Legal Director Melissa Broudo. “It is a vital and common sense public safety measure that strengthens law enforcement’s ability to identify, investigate, and convict perpetrators of violence and trafficking.”
Did China just ban sexting? “The Chinese government has banned the sharing of ‘obscene’ content in private online messages and increased the penalties for spreading pornographic material,” reportsThe Washington Post. “While the revision will target the dissemination of pornography and exploitative images,” the new regulation “may also mean that consensual sexting could also be dragged into China’s legal system.”
Lol: The URLs trumpkennedycenter.org and trumpkennedycenter.com are owned by comedy writer Toby Morton, who predicted the renaming of the D.C. performing arts institution (it will become the “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts”) and snapped up the web domains in advance.
There is a squeaky old merry-go-round in my neighborhood that my own children play on from time to time. Years of kids riding on it have loosened its joints so it spins more freely and quickly. The last time they played on the merry-go-round, my children learned the important lesson that the closer to the center they sit the more stable and in control they feel.
While being a school leader has always felt like being on a spinning piece of playground equipment, leading since the inauguration of President Donald Trump has made me feel as if I moved from the center to the edges in this merry-go-round metaphor. Immigration raids and attacks on civil liberties have made the work feel blindingly fast.
The school I serve has a large population of immigrant students. Teens who just weeks ago felt like our school was a safe and secure place now carry a new level of concern into our classrooms and hallways. My school has seen a significant drop in attendance since January with parents and guardians citing the desire to keep their children home instead of sending them to school and putting them in harm’s way as ICE raids happen across the city.
Our staff feels the impact of the rhetoric and policy shifts out of Washington as well. They fear for the physical and emotional safety of our students when they leave the school.
For my part, I wonder if my decisions that prioritize equity and inclusion will make me the target of criticism–or worse, an investigation. This year, we have had ongoing professional development opportunities to teach staff how they can better support our queer students and employees. Each time we engage in these discussions, I find myself worrying about the repercussions.
But I am determined that the programs and people in place to support and protect our most vulnerable students will not go away. Rather, they will be reinforced. My role as a school leader is to create an environment so safe and accepting that students and staff never feel like they must look over their shoulder while they are at school. We want them to breathe easily knowing that, at least during the school day, they can be seen, safe, and successful.
To be sure, this job has always been a juggle, which includes instructional leadership, behavioral support, budgeting, staffing, and–in my case–fighting the stigma of historically being identified as a low-performing school by the Colorado Department of Education. But the changes out of Washington have taken things to the next level. As I navigate it all, I do my best to be energetic, optimistic, and reliable. Each day is an exercise in finding joy in my interactions with students and staff.
I find joy in seeing students cheer on their peers at basketball games. I find joy in watching a teacher sit with a student until they grasp a challenging concept. I find joy when I see staff members step in to teach a class for a colleague who is sick or just needs a break. I find joy and hope in my daily interactions with students and staff; they are the core of my work and are the bravest people I have worked with in my career.
When I push my children on the merry-go-round, I tell them to get to the center because the spinning seems to slow down and the noise decreases. This is the same advice I would give to school leaders right now. Get right to the center of your work by being with students and staff as much as possible. Even at the center, the spinning does not stop. The raids, political attacks, and fear tactics do not decrease, but the challenge of facing them becomes a little more manageable. While every force out there may be pushing leaders away from the center of their work, prioritizing that values-based work reminds us exactly why we do what we do.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Dr. Chris DeRemer is the principal of Manual High School in Denver. He has been teaching and leading schools in the Denver metro area for the past 15 years. When he is not working in or thinking about schools, he can be found running or playing outside with his wife and three kids.
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At first, Everly Green’s parents didn’t understand why her doctors wanted genetic testing. Their daughter was behind on her milestones at 18 months, but was gradually making progress, and they expected that to continue.
Then, when she turned 2, the seizures started. She suddenly began to lose skills. Three months later, Everly needed a feeding tube. Now, at 8, she can only move her eyes, allowing her to communicate via a screen.
Everly, whose family lives in Fort Collins, has a rare mutation in a gene called FRRS1L, pronounced “frizzle,” which affects how cells in her brain communicate. Her parents, and other members of the tiny community of children with the condition, have worked with researchers and small-scale manufacturers to develop a treatment that could restore some of her ability to move — but only if they can raise $4 million to develop and test it.
Everly clearly understands what happens around her and loves school, where she learns in a mainstream classroom with support and has several best friends, said Chrissy Green, Everly’s mother. Still, she wants to do things she can’t, such as holding toys on her own or going on the occasional family trip with her brothers, Green said.
“These kids are in there, they want to play like other kids, they just can’t move,” she said.
Green is co-president of the foundation Finding Hope for FRRS1L, which is collecting funds for the next stage of drug development. Children with FRRS1L gene disorder, the foundation’s website says, “are trapped in a body they can’t move, however still retain high cognitive function, understanding, communication and awareness.”
Worldwide, only a few dozen children currently have a diagnosis of the same mutation in FRRS1L, meaning there’s little interest from drug companies. Families are on their own to fund research and, if all goes well, convince the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that the treatment is safe and effective enough to go on the market.
And, even if they succeed with the FDA, they’ll still face a battle with insurance companies that may not want to pay the steep price for a drug to correct a faulty gene. (Even though the families aren’t looking to make a profit, these types of treatments are expensive, and the company under contract to do the manufacturing isn’t doing it for free.)
Chrissy Green sits with her daughter Everly, 8, as her two boys Colton, 9, left, and Ryle, 4, play at their home in Fort Collins on Dec. 18, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Normally, drug companies take on the financial risk of turning basic research that’s often publicly funded into treatments, with the hope of eventually making a profit. For gene therapies, that model can break down because of the small number of patients. Green’s FRRS1L foundation knows of about three dozen patients worldwide, though other children with unexplained seizures could have the mutation.
A drug that treats so few patients will never be profitable, so parents are largely on their own in trying to fund research and development, said Neil Hackett, a researcher who has worked with families on gene therapies and advised the FRRS1L foundation. Usually, they can’t do it unless they happen to have one or more business-savvy parents with the time and resources to run a foundation while caring for a child with complex needs, he said.
“They need specific expertise, which is not easy to find, and they need massive amounts of money,” he said.
Steve Green supports his daughter Everly’s head as the family plays with toys together at their home in Fort Collins on Dec. 18, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
When they first received Everly’s diagnosis, her doctor told the family to make the most of the time they had left, because medicine couldn’t offer anything to extend her life or reduce her symptoms, Green said. She didn’t initially question that, but focused on loving her daughter and trading tips for daily life with other families via Facebook.
Green connected with a mother in London who had a child the same age as Everly. Viviana Rodriguez was exploring whether researchers had found any evidence to suggest they could repurpose existing drugs to reduce FRRS1L symptoms.
Everly Green, 8, lies next to her mother, Chrissy Green, as she reads to her at their home in Fort Collins on Dec. 18, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Through a “providential” series of events, one of Rodriguez’s contacts knew a doctor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center who worked on gene therapies. That doctor had read a paper from a German researcher who bred mice with the FRSS1L mutation so he could study it. The German scientist had given the mice a gene therapy as part of his experiments, but his work wasn’t focused on the clinical applications, Green said.
Green and Rodriguez, along with a small group of other parents, formed the foundation to raise $400,000 for the UT Southwestern researchers to breed their own group of FRSS1L mice and give them a gene therapy in a study that was set up to show results. The mice that received the gene therapy had near-normal movement after it took effect, she said.
“We saw major recovery in the animals, so we’re really hopeful for our kids,” she said.
The next step was testing for toxic side effects, then finding a manufacturer who could do the complicated work of inserting the corrected gene into a harmless virus, Green said. If they can raise the necessary money and all goes as expected, children could receive their doses through a clinical trial starting in September, she said.
Colton Green, 9, pushes his sister Everly, 8, into the family’s living room at their home in Fort Collins on Dec. 18, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Many treatments that look promising in mice don’t pan out in humans. Even if they do, foundations must navigate the complex process of getting permission from the FDA to sell the treatment, Hackett said. Then they face the separate battle of convincing insurance companies, or national health systems serving patients in other countries, that they should pay for it, he said.
Theoretically, a foundation could keep a treatment in reserve for patients diagnosed with the FRSS1L mutation in the future, but that likely isn’t feasible, Hackett said.
“At the end, I think you have to turn it over to a commercial entity, and I don’t think anyone knows what that looks like,” he said.
Green is hopeful, however, that the treatment she’s trying to fund will not only help children like Everly, but also ease the path for future gene therapies.
“All the diseases can kind of help each other move forward,” she said.
Chrissy Green lifts her daughter Everly, 8, out of bed at their home in Fort Collins on Dec. 18, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Pronatalists push all manner of big-government schemes aimed at raising fertility rates. But could a more modest—and more market-oriented—policy prove better at boosting births? Research suggests that more remote work leads to larger families.
People who worked from home at least one day per week “had more biological children from 2021 to early 2025, and plan to have more children in the future, compared to observationally similar persons who do not” work from home, according to the August 2025 working paper, “Work from Home and Fertility.” A team of researchers from Stanford University, Princeton University, and international institutes surveyed working arrangements, recent births, and future fertility intentions in 39 countries, including the United States, finding that women who worked from home at least once a week had an average of 0.039 more children than nonteleworking peers did since 2021.
“A similar result holds for American men,” they found, though the association was not statistically significant for men in the multicountry sample. But in both the U.S. and other countries, male fertility was positively correlated with a spouse or partner’s work-from-home status. And “when both partners [work from home] at least one day per week….total lifetime fertility is greater by 0.2 children” in the global sample, compared with couples where neither partner works from home.
Researchers say working from home may make it easier to balance work and family, but note that “it’s also plausible that parents with young children at home may select” work-from-home arrangements more often.
Self-selection seems less of a confounding factor when it comes to future fertility intentions. In both the U.S. and multicountry samples, and for both men and women, working from home at least one day per week increased their preferred number of kids. For women, having a partner who occasionally worked from home was also associated with a desire for more children.
In the United States, average total planned fertility—a combination of the number of children already born or gestating and how many future children are desired—went from 2.26 to 2.43 for women and 2.01 to 2.36 for men who personally worked from home at least one day per week, and 2.43 for women and 2.52 for men when both they and their partner did. In the multicountry sample, the average total planned fertility increased from 1.9 for women and 1.86 for men when neither partner worked from home to 2.27 and 2.46, respectively, when both partners did.
The coronavirus pandemic provided a natural test of whether working from home could lead to more births. In 2021, the U.S. fertility rate rose 1 percent, following a near-steady decline since the late 2000s and contradicting crisis-era birth trends. The U.S. fertility rate dropped steeply in 2020; it’s hard to say whether the 2021 bump was due to working from home (or something else about pandemic arrangements) or was a natural rebound. But the fact that the bump was largest among college-educated women, who are more likely to have jobs that would have allowed working from home during the pandemic, lends credence to the theory that remote work played a role.
A study out of Norway published in the December 2025 edition of Labour Economics found the country saw “a significant and persistent” 10 percent increase in births beginning nine months after the first COVID-19 lockdowns started. These “fertility increases were concentrated among women in ‘greedy jobs’ with lower flexibility prior to lockdown,” according to the paper. “The overall birth response was driven by women who retained their job during the lockdown period, consistent with changes in the nature of work (flexibility) being a key mechanism,” rather than increased time due to job loss.
Researchers Bernt Bratsberg and Selma Walther say this is “evidence that [workplace] flexibility directly impacts fertility.”
Post-COVID fertility rates continue to decline globally, despite cash incentives, mandatory maternity leave policies, and state-subsidized child care. “Until now, discussion of declining fertility has focused on policies such as maternity leave and childcare provision,” note Bratsberg and Walther. “Flexibility at work,” they say, “has the power to drive fertility decisions.”
This aligns with previous research suggesting that typical government enticements to boost birth rates fail because decisions about family size are complex, personal, and extend beyond purely financial factors. It also calls into question the wisdom of a professedly pronatalist presidential administration ordering all federal employees to return to the office, as President Donald Trump did in early 2025. Simplifying remote work for both public and private sector employees could be a quicker, cheaper path to more children.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline “Work From Home, Have More Kids.”
For more than a century, young kids have awakened on Christmas morning to find a teddy bear waiting for them under the tree. That gave one child an idea: getting teddy bears and the comfort they bring to the children who need them most. Tom Hanson has the story.
What seems most likely: the law will not be rigidly enforced, as teen-agers and social-media companies figure out ways to circumvent the ban, but the social norm established by the law and its robust popularity among politicians and voters will lead to a significant downturn in social-media use by minors nonetheless. Not every fourteen-year-old is going to draw a moustache on their photograph or get a fake I.D.—and the law should be easier to enforce among younger kids, which may mean that in five or so years it will be rare to find a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old in Australia who has ever posted anything on social media.
This seems like a pretty good result—if you believe, as I do, that social media is obviously bad for children and adults alike. But it returns us to the question I posed at the start of this column, which has a particular relevance for Americans, who live in a country founded on the principle of free speech. The civil-libertarian argument against laws like the one that Australia has passed will probably win out in this country, if only because it happens to be aligned, in this case, with powerful domestic tech companies. That argument is simple, but bears repeating: we shouldn’t place arbitrary age limits on who gets to express themselves in the digital town square, and we shouldn’t require everyone who wants to express their opinions online to submit to an I.D. check. As a journalist, I’m also aware that, for many people, social media is a source of news. It may be a toxic and wildly imperfect alternative to legacy media, but I don’t think we should use government force to effectively reroute children to more traditional sources of information.
In my column on this subject two years ago, I compared the attempt to restrict social-media use to adults to earlier efforts to do something similar with tobacco. The remarkably successful fight against youth smoking did rely, in part, on a shift in social norms; it also depended on a variety of legal restrictions, and heavy taxation—and I did not, at the time, see what equivalent measures might be taken with social media. Ultimately, I thought it might just come down to parents holding the line.
I’m less pessimistic now. One of the recurring themes I discuss on “Time to Say Goodbye,” the podcast I host with the Atlantic’s Tyler Austin Harper, is what a good life looks like today. When politicians, especially liberal ones, discuss the society that they want to help bring into reality, what are the shared values that they imagine will hold people together? I’m not talking about kitchen-table issues, as important as they are, or even about tolerance and equality. What I have in mind is a vision of how Americans should live on a daily basis in a time when technology runs our lives. The Times columnist Ezra Klein addressed this recently in a piece about the “politics of attention” and the question of “human flourishing.” He concluded, “I don’t believe it will be possible for society to remain neutral on what it means to live our digital lives well.”
I ultimately agree with Klein that we will not be neutral forever, even if our courts make an Australia-like ban nearly impossible. But I have come to believe that, in the not too distant future, the concerns of crusty civil libertarians such as myself will be pushed aside, and a new set of social norms will emerge, especially in the middle and upper classes. The signs of this quiet revolution waged on behalf of internet-addicted children are already all around us. School districts around the country are banning phones from the classroom. “The Anxious Generation,” by Jonathan Haidt, which directly informed the new law in Australia, has been on the Times best-seller list for eighty-five weeks, and has inspired little acts of tech rebellion by parents around the country.
The nascent anti-smartphones movement in America is decidedly nonpartisan, for the most part, and this contributes to its potential and also to the vagueness of its outlines. It also has taken place almost entirely at the local and state level. More than thirty states in the country now have some form of cellphone ban in their schools, which should be applauded. I believe that teen-agers should have the right to post their opinions on social media, but I don’t think they need to do that in the middle of geometry class. If this means that First Amendment rights are further restricted in schools, that may be a compromise that free-speech absolutists have to accept.
Immigrant activist Jeanette Vizguerra is on the precipice of being released from an immigration detention facility after an immigration judge ruled Sunday that she can post bail.
Denver immigration judge Brea Burgie set Vizguerra’s bail at $5,000, but she included no other restrictions, like an ankle monitor. Her family intends to immediately post the bond, her legal team said in a statement. She likely won’t be released for at least 24 to 48 hours, said Jenn Piper, the program co-director for the American Friends Service Committee of Denver. Still, Burgie’s ruling means Vizguerra, a mother of four children, will be home by Christmas.
The order comes two days after Vizguerra’s legal team argued that the activist, who was born in Mexico and has spent most of the last 28 years in the United States, posed no flight risk and was not a danger to the community. She has been detained in the Aurora detention center since March, when she was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at her work.
Vizguerra’s legal team said Sunday that Burgie found that Vizguerra “does not pose a danger to the community,” nor did she pose a flight risk, given her “strong family and community ties” and her previous compliance with court proceedings.
Vizguerra’s bail hearing took place Friday because of the order of a separate federal judge last week. When her family posts bail, Vizguerra will be released while her broader legal efforts to stay in the country — and fight her deportation — play out in both immigartion and federal court.
An activist who received national attention when she sheltered in a Denver church for years during President Donald Trump’s first term, Vizguerra was named one of TIME’s most influential people in 2017. Earlier this year and while in detention, she won a humanitarian award from the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization.
Vizguerra’s supporters have held regular vigils for her outside of the detention center for months.
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (WPVI) — To ensure kids with illness can celebrate the holidays, a toy store setup has appeared at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children.
It’s known as “Candy Cane Corner.”
Comprised of donated toys and gifts, parents will be able to select items at no cost.
“They can pick anywhere from 5 to 10 items and they can be for the patient that they have here. Oftentimes, our families have other children at home…because they’ve been here at the hospital, they haven’t had time to go shopping for them,” said Hillary Israel of St. Children’s Hospital for Children.
“This gives them a little bit of normalcy back…it may look a little bit different, but we can at least help them try and still enjoy the holiday season,” she continued.
During Thanksgiving dinner in 2024 — just months after her long-term boyfriend died by suicide — Amanda Killam broke down sobbing, remembering how much he enjoyed the traditional feast and mourning that he wasn’t there to share it.
This year, she cried the night before Thanksgiving, but was able to get a bit of enjoyment over dinner with family and friends. Instead of overwhelmingly painful, it was bittersweet, sharing a good meal and company while still wishing her partner were by her side.
“It doesn’t get easier, but it gets softer. The pain gets softer,” said Killam, of Commerce City.
While grieving a loved one is hard regardless of how they died, people who lost someone to suicide face unique challenges, dealing not only with sadness, but also with anger, feelings of abandonment, the sense of being blamed by others, or guilt that they didn’t know the deceased was suffering.
Professional help and support from people who’ve been through the same thing can help work through those feelings and rebuild a life, survivors said.
Killam’s partner, Rob Nickels, died by suicide at 42. She knew about his history of health problems, including a stroke in his 20s and two kidney transplants, but he never talked about the extent of his mental suffering.
Nickels had texted about his intent to die while Killam was getting ready to fly home from Dallas. She called and attempted to talk him down, then notified friends and family in Denver to call 911 after hearing sounds suggesting he’d begun an attempt. She also called businesses near their apartment in the hope someone could get there fast enough to intervene.
First responders attempted to resuscitate Nickels, but he died shortly before Killam’s plane landed in Denver. In the aftermath, functioning was nearly impossible. Sometimes she’d skip meals because the idea of choosing what to shop for and cook was overwhelming.
“It was hard not to feel like a failure,” she said.
Killam was skeptical of therapy in general, but said she started it shortly after Nickels’ death to work through the sadness, guilt and feeling of abandonment from losing her partner. It helped to have an outside perspective, because her family and friends, while supportive, didn’t know how to challenge her to change thought patterns that weren’t helping her, she said.
Any loss can be devastating, but when someone dies by suicide, the survivors may become hypervigilant, for fear that they miss a sign that someone else they love is struggling, she said.
People can’t go back to the way life was before a major loss, so they have to think about what it would mean to rebuild, Doria said. Often, that involves doing something to remember and give meaning to the life the deceased led, such as continuing to make their favorite recipe or volunteering for a cause they cared about, she said.
“When you lose someone to suicide, it can really shake your worldview and understanding of life,” she said. “Resilience is believing that it’s possible to bounce back and committing yourself every day to doing that.”
Her son left behind five children, four of whom she and her husband are now raising. They had to process their own grief while helping their grandchildren through the mental health struggles that come from losing a parent early in life.
“It was nonstop therapy for three years,” she said.
Even seven years after the loss, it still can come up in unexpected ways, such as when she saw a friend’s daughter holding her sister’s baby — an experience her oldest son never got to have with his younger brother’s children.
Her youngest grandson has been having a hard time coping with her recent breast cancer diagnosis because of the fear of losing another central figure in his life.
“I’m the only parent, mom figure he’s had,” she said.
People who are grieving also experience the secondary losses of people they thought would be with them through the worst times, who ultimately don’t always come through, Rouse said. And it can be hard to connect with people when your world is reeling, but they seem essentially fine, she said.
“My circle got a lot smaller, that’s for sure,” she said.
Amanda Killam and Rob Nickels. Nickels died by suicide in 2024 at age 42, and Killam struggled to make sense of the loss and move forward. (Photo courtesy of Amanda Killam)
Some people withdraw or don’t talk about the person who died because they don’t want to remind their grieving friend of their loss, but they aren’t going to be able to forget the loss, regardless, Killam said. People who are grieving need space to talk about their loved one, she said.
“It’s important to show up for your people because it’s not just sadness, it’s confusion, it’s trauma,” she said. “The ultimate reality is that we are going to be sad because we miss them, but we still want to talk about them.”
For the first year, Killam said she was in “survival mode,” but she’s gradually started to focus more on how she wants to honor Nickels’ life.
She scattered his ashes at places that meant something to him, wears his Broncos shirt to football games and started a mental-health-themed line of workout clothes to encourage people to reach out if they need help. He loved to exercise and would have wanted to spare others the pain he felt, she said.
“It just makes me feel like I’m keeping him alive,” she said.
Tips for supporting a grieving friend
Offer concrete help, such as preparing a meal or running errands. People don’t always know what they need if you give an open-ended offer.
Give the person space to talk about their loved ones. Avoid platitudes such as that the deceased is “in a better place” or that “it gets easier.”
Try to be understanding if the person is distracted or cancels plans.
Consider the closeness of your relationship and what you can sustain before making commitments, so the person doesn’t feel abandoned.
Continue to check in, even when months or years have passed.
Tips for handling your own grief
Important people in your life may not grieve the same way. Consider looking for others to talk with, such as members of a support group.
Decide which traditions you want to carry forward. You don’t have to do everything you used to, but preparing a favorite recipe or making a memorial ornament could help you feel close to the person you lost.
Avoid the impulse to isolate yourself.
Take small actions to care for yourself, such as sitting in the sun with your coffee.
Seek professional help if grief is interfering with your ability to function.
MELBOURNE, Australia — Global online forum Reddit on Friday filed a court challenge to Australia’s world-first law that bans Australian children younger than 16 from holding accounts on the world’s most popular social media platforms.
California-based Reddit Inc.’s suit filed in the High Court follows a case filed last month by Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project.
Both suits claim the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on Australia’s implied freedom of political communication.
“We believe there are more effective ways for the Australian government to accomplish our shared goal of protecting youth, and the SMMA (Social Media Minimum Age) law carries some serious privacy and political expression issues for everyone on the internet,” Reddit said in a statement.
“While we agree with the importance of protecting people under 16, this law has the unfortunate effect of forcing intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors, isolating teens from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community experiences (including political discussions), and creating an illogical patchwork of which platforms are included and which aren’t,” Reddit added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government declined to comment on the merits of Reddit’s challenge.
“The Albanese government is on the side of Australian parents and kids, not platforms,” a government statement said.
“We will stand firm to protect young Australians from experiencing harm on social media. The matter is before the courts so it is not appropriate to comment further,” the statement added.
Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9 million) from Wednesday if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts of Australian children younger than 16.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, the law’s enforcer, sent compulsory information notices to the 10 age-restricted platforms on Thursday demanding data on how many accounts of young children they had deactivated since the law took effect on Wednesday.
Inman Grant had predicted that some platforms might have been waiting to receive their first notice or their first fine for noncompliance before mounting a legal challenge.
ESafety will send six monthly notices to gauge how effectively the platforms are complying.
Despite the court challenge, Reddit said it would comply with the law and would continue to engage with eSafety.
The platforms’ age-verification options were to ask for copies of identification documents, use a third party to apply age-estimation technology to analyze an account holder’s face, or make inferences from data already available, such has how long an account has been held.
The government hasn’t told the platforms how to check ages, but has said requesting all account holders verify their ages would be unnecessarily intrusive, given the tech giants already have sufficient personal data on most people to perform that task.
For privacy reasons, the platforms also cannot compel users to provide government-issued identification.
Documents filed with the court registry show Reddit will ask the seven High Court judges to rule the law is invalid.
Alternatively, the company wants the court to prevent the government from listing Reddit among the age-restricted platforms.
The High Court will hold a preliminary hearing in late February to set a date for Digital Freedom Project’s challenge on behalf of two 15-year-olds. It is not yet clear whether the two challenges would be heard together.
