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By Hailey Gibbs & Casey Peeks


The Trump administration has relentlessly undercut the stability of the early care and education system—terrorizing immigrants who are essential to the national child care infrastructure and a crucial part of communities across the country putting basic needs further out of reach for families, particularly those with low incomes and undermining the needs of children. Federal actions such as freezing resources, imposing new administrative rules on Head Start and state agencies, and mass federal layoffs have further destabilized the already underfunded child care system for families and providers nationwide.

As the second year of President Donald Trump’s second administration approaches, the administration is increasingly taking actions that undermine the child care system and terrorize its already vulnerable workforce. At the end of December, a YouTube video posted by a right-wing influencer depicted his attempts to gain unauthorized access to a number of Minnesota child care centers in an effort to prove allegations of fraud. On the basis of this video, and without further independent investigation, the administration froze Minnesota’s federal child care funding. A week later, the administration froze more than $10 billion in child care and family assistance funding for four additional states—California, Colorado, Illinois, and New York—affecting programs that are not the subject of fraud allegations. A “defend the spend” mandate for the remaining 45 states has further stoked fear among providers amid stricter measures for accessing critical child care funding. -- READ MORE

By Jasia Smith, Kalina Gibson, & Margaret Cooney

Introduction and summary

Fossil fuels are costly for Americans on multiple fronts: They saddle communities with billions of dollars in health care costs, increase U.S. household energy bills, and fuel billion-dollar extreme weather events at home and abroad. Less obvious, however, is the close relationship between food prices, fossil fuels, and the extreme weather, which has grown more apparent as climate change grows more severe. Though other pressures, including inflation and labor shortages, are at play, many Americans—including 53 percent of those surveyed that said they are under high stress from spiking grocery prices—may not be aware that the fossil fuel industry and the politicians who protect its interests are partly to blame for high food prices. Fossil fuel-induced climate change is destabilizing agriculture and food supply chains around the world and increasing grocery prices for Americans.

Increases in fossil fuel prices move down the global food supply chain and into U.S. grocery stores

Americans’ grocery costs have spiked almost 30 percent over the past five years, and the use of fossil fuels within the nation’s food supply can push them even higher. When fossil fuel prices swing, so do the costs of food production, inputs, and products in the United States. The International Energy Agency finds that direct and indirect energy costs, including from the use of oil and natural gas, can account for up to 50 percent of total variable costs for food production in advanced economies such as that of the United States, consequently leading to higher food prices. -- READ MORE

By Damian Murphy & Allison McManus


Days after abducting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration is taking a victory lap, claiming a successful military action that toppled a dictator with, as the administration would tell it, little cost to the American people. In reality, it represents yet another reckless use of the U.S. military, this time with no clear end game for Venezuela or its people, who are left with another illegitimate leader. Far from cost-free, this brazen show of force placed American troops directly in harm’s way and continues to come at a cost to the American taxpayer. These actions provide no tangible benefit to the American people—at the gas pump or elsewhere—and the only clear objectives seem to be to benefit President Donald Trump’s corporate donors.


It’s estimated that the current extended deployments for the campaign, dubbed Operation Southern Spear, involve up to 15,000 troops and cost more than $600 million. The January 3 operation, which involved approximately 150 military aircraft, several naval vessels, and 200 elite special operations forces, drove up those costs further. At least 80 people were killed in Venezuela, including civilians. Yet despite the scale of the operation, the political reality inside Venezuela remains largely unchanged. Maduro’s removal did not dismantle the brutal regime he built it merely shifted power to his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who continues to oversee the same repressive apparatus responsible for the political persecution and economic mismanagement that defined the Maduro government—only now at the behest of the Trump administration. -- READ MORE

From CAP National Security and International Policy Department

Since January 20, 2025, the second Trump administration’s foreign policy has driven global chaos and corruption, while undermining American allies, costing American taxpayers, and strengthening America’s adversaries. The Center for American Progress’ Trump Global Weakness Watch tracker is more than a catalog of concerning decisions—it is a strategic initiative to expose how Donald Trump’s second-term agenda is accelerating the breakdown of American power. The tracker shows a clear pattern: The Trump administration’s decisions about security, economy, and global influence make America weak, and Americans bear the consequences.

The Trump Global Weakness Watch tracker is a tool for accountability, but also for transformation. At a time when the Trump administration is engaged in a concerted effort to revise history at every turn, the tracker creates a documentary record that exposes the cracks in the “America First” foreign policy.

The Trump administration is weakening America’s military and security

The Trump administration’s politicization of the military—firing experienced leaders, deploying troops to American cities, and attacking those who serve—turns America’s national defense into spectacle. These moves do not make Americans safer. They distract from real threats and hurt those who protect Americans.

The Trump administration is weakening America’s economic power

The Trump administration’s manipulation of economic institutions and its trade wars worsen an economy that already disproportionately benefits the ultrawealthy. -- READ MORE

By Christian E. Weller

The labor market remains weak, according to the the Employment Situation report for December 2025 from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In December 2025, employers added 50,000 new jobs, the unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent, in part because people left the labor force, and the prior two months of new jobs were revised down by a total of 76,000 jobs. Amid Trump administration policies such as widespread tariffs, the overall economic picture is that of a soft labor market with fewer economic opportunities and more financial risks for workers.

The labor market was weaker than in 2024 by several measures, and this weakness shifted the burden of bad economic outcomes onto workers. The average unemployment rate was 4.2 percent in 2025 compared with 4 percent in 2024—5 percent higher in 2025 than in the previous year. Moreover, it took unemployed workers longer to find a new job: In 2025, the average length of unemployment was 23.1 weeks compared with 21.7 weeks in 2024—an increase of 6.4 percent. In December 2025 alone, the average length of unemployment was 24.4 weeks, the longest duration since August 2025.

Other BLS data through November 2025 further underscore the downside risks for workers. The average share of job openings relative to existing jobs was 4.4 percent for the first 11 months of 2025, down by 5.6 percent from the same period in 2024.

Workers have lost bargaining power and were thus in a weaker position to negotiate for higher wages or switch jobs in search of higher pay. Wages grew on average by 0.3 percent in December 2025 and were 3.8 percent higher than a year ago. This growth rate has slowed slightly throughout 2025, while inflation grew throughout the year. As a result, inflation-adjusted average wages for production nonsupervisory workers—the overwhelming majority of workers—in November 2025, the last month for which data are available, were only 1.1 percent higher than a year earlier, down from a peak 12-month growth rate of 1.9 percent in April 2025. The loss of worker bargaining power means less money in people’s wallets.-- READ MORE

By Adam Conner

On December 18, 2025, the news organization Axios published exclusive reporting that paperwork had been signed that would divest the popular short-form video application TikTok’s U.S. entity from ByteDance—its existing Chinese owner—and to a new TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, or “TikTok U.S.,” that includes Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, among other new and existing investors. This is the first significant development in the TikTok deal that President Donald Trump announced in September 2025, and the transaction will reportedly be complete on January 22, 2026, more than a year after the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACAA), or “TikTok ban,” went into effect. That law should have functionally banned TikTok in America, yet President Trump refused to enforce it in an extraordinary and seemingly illegal manner. Now, as a deal heads toward the finish line, the public may have no idea if the TikTok divestment complies with the very law that required it, unless Congress acts immediately to demand the necessary information.

All of the details about this upcoming deal come from an internal TikTok memo that has not been released to the public but has been shown to news organizations. At the time of this article’s publication, there has been no official statement on TikTok’s corporate website, no publicly posted comments from the White House, and nothing shared from the newsrooms of Oracle, Silverlake, or MGX. Moreover, Oracle—a publicly traded company—has not filed any updated paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) related to this signing. This follows a similar pattern to how previous information about the September deal was presented to the public via unnamed administration sources, with the only public documents appearing to be the president’s September executive order (EO) “Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security” and an accompanying White House fact sheet. ​-- READ MORE