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New economic warning signs surface despite record holiday shopping

admin - Latest News - December 9, 2025
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The 2025 holiday shopping season is already breaking records, but consumers are pulling back their spending at the same time, highlighting a greater divide in who’s spending record amounts of money this year. NBC News’ Vicky Nguyen has more.



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Dec. 9, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Mahalia DobsonCan children and teenagers be forced off social media en masse? Australia is about to find out.More than 1 million social media accounts held by users under 16 are set to be deactivated in Australia on Wednesday in a divisive world-first ban that has inflamed a culture war and is being closely watched in the United States and elsewhere.Social media companies will have to take “reasonable steps” to ensure that under-16s in Australia cannot set up accounts on their platforms and that existing accounts are deactivated or removed.Australian officials say the landmark ban, which lawmakers swiftly approved late last year, is meant to protect children from addictive social media platforms that experts say can be disastrous for their mental health. “With one law, we can protect Generation Alpha from being sucked into purgatory by predatory algorithms described by the man who created the feature as ‘behavioral cocaine,’” Communications Minister Anika Wells told the National Press Club in Canberra last week.While many parents and even their children have welcomed the ban, others say it will hinder young people’s ability to express themselves and connect with others, as well as access online support that is crucial for those from marginalized groups or living in isolated parts of rural Australia. Two 15-year-olds have brought a legal challenge against it to the nation’s highest court. Supporters say the rest of the world will soon follow the example set by the Australian ban, which faced fierce resistance from social media companies.“I’ve always referred to this as the first domino, which is why they pushed back,” Julie Inman Grant, who regulates online safety as Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, said at an event in Sydney last week.Schoolboys use their mobile phones in Melbourne, Australia, in November 2024.William West / AFP via Getty ImagesSocial media companies will be responsible for enforcing the ban, paying fines of up to 49.5 Australian dollars (about $32 million) for serious or repeated breaches. Children and parents will not be punished for any infringements. Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, X, Snapchat and Reddit are all set to be age-restricted under the law, according to a list shared by the eSafety Commissioner. All of the platforms have said they will comply, and some have taken action before the ban even takes effect, with Meta saying last month that it would start closing Instagram, Threads and Facebook accounts on Dec. 4.The ban has broad support in Australia, where a YouGov poll last year found that 77% of respondents were in favor of it. Supporters say it will encourage children to prioritize in-person interactions, boosting their social skills.“Social media is a misnomer,” said Jen Hummelshoj, 45, mother of 12-year-old Nina. “The apps want kids to be focused on their phone and not their friends.”Nina does not have a phone or any social media accounts. She supports the ban’s intent, arguing that social media is an overpowering distraction for young people.“When I’m trying to chat to someone, they might say, ‘Just a minute,’ and they’re doing something on social media,” she said in a phone interview from Canberra.According to a national study the Australian government commissioned this year, 96% of children ages 10 to 15 use social media. Seven out of 10 of them have been exposed to harmful content and behavior, including misogynistic material, fight videos and content promoting eating disorders and suicide.One in 7 also reported having experienced grooming-type behavior from adults or older children, and more than half said they had been the victims of cyberbullying.William Young, 14, said most social media platforms, in their current form, were unsafe for children, citing Snapchat as an example.“You can friend anyone without knowing who they are. It deletes messages after they’ve sent. … It’s just not a good platform,” he said in a phone interview from Perth.He implored the affected platforms to “do right” by young people and prioritize making their platforms safer.The platforms say they share that goal and insist that the ban will actually make young users less safe.“Disconnecting teens from their friends and family doesn’t make them safer — it may push them to less safe, less private messaging apps,” Snap said in a statement last month.New study shows taking a smartphone break improves overall health04:39The platforms also argue that young users may turn to new, unregulated apps that push them into darker corners of the internet or may try to circumvent the ban by using virtual private networks, or VPNs, which Australian teenagers do not dispute.“Young people are going to find another way around it,” Chloe Song, 14, said in a Zoom interview from Melbourne. “Strict parents create, like, sneaky kids.”She said she and her peers would benefit more from better digital literacy programs in their schools.“The next generation is in our hands,” said Chloe, who is a member of Project Rockit, a youth-driven Australian movement against bullying, hate and prejudice. If young people are blocked from social media, “we just don’t learn the life skills and we don’t learn the experience of going through and knowing what’s safe and what’s not,” she said.Susan Grantham, a social media researcher at Griffith University in Brisbane, described the ban as a “step in the right direction” but not a solution on its own.“Social media is not going away. Instead, we need to create well-balanced digital citizens,” she said.What rankles many young Australians about the ban is what Noah Jones described as a lack of consultation on “legislation that specifically affects us.”Noah, 15, one of two teenagers suing the Australian government over the ban, said he and his peers have “solutions to all the negatives of social media.” “If we just got asked, we all could’ve worked it out,” he said in emailed comments.Noah argues the ban will deny young people freedom of political communication, an implied right in Australia’s constitution, and deprive them of an essential educational tool.“Do you want 15-year-old boys to have no clue about consent? Do you want teenagers who don’t know about the dangers of vaping? Both topics I’ve learned about on social media,” he said.Wells, the communications minister, said that the center-left government would not be intimidated by legal challenges and that it “remains steadfastly on the side of parents.”Others are relieved by the ban, including Aalia Elachi and her father, Dany.Dany Elachi said Aalia’s behavior changed within days of her receiving a smartphone at age 10.“We found that she retreated into her room, into her own private world, her own private space, and we didn’t think that was, in the long run, going to be healthy for her,” he said in a phone interview from Sydney.When the phone malfunctioned after a couple of months, Aalia’s parents never replaced it.Now 16, Aalia will be able to legally use social media, but she has never had any accounts and said that is not about to change.“I’m still as tech literate as the next 16-year-old. I just don’t have TikTok or Instagram eating up hours of my childhood every day,” Aalia told lawmakers in the state of New South Wales last month.“Having firm boundaries around social media hasn’t made my life smaller,” she said. “My hope is over the next few years, I won’t be the exception, but the norm.”Mahalia Dobson
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Dec. 9, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Ben KamisarWelcome to Miami, where the two major parties are watching the latest Republican-held office that Democrats are making a last-minute push to flip this year — the city’s mayoralty. The city hasn’t had a Democratic mayor since the late 1990s, and dramatic shifts among Hispanic voters, particularly in South Florida, have melted away Democrats’ edge in recent elections.But unlike in other recent special elections for Republican-controlled seats, Vice President Kamala Harris narrowly carried the city of Miami last year while losing Miami-Dade County. That means a Democratic flip is well within reach for former County Commissioner Eileen Higgins, who is running against Republican Emilio T. González, a businessman and former city manager endorsed by President Donald Trump.Both have pitched themselves as clean breaks from past city politics and promise to address affordability issues, which looms especially large in South Florida, as it has done across the country.While the candidates’ solutions to those problems may be local, the race has been swept up into a national fight, as both parties jockey for political momentum ahead of next year’s midterm elections. In Miami, that means a technically nonpartisan election with clear partisan trappings. Higgins and González advanced to Tuesday’s runoff after a blanket primary on Election Day last month. Since no candidate won the majority of the vote, the two candidates with the most votes moved on to the December runoff. Higgins finished atop the 13-candidate field with 36% of the vote to González’s 19%, and the top two Democratic-affiliated candidates in the nonpartisan race combined for a majority of the vote. Democrats come into Tuesday’s election energized by their relative overperformance in high-profile special elections this year and believe a victory could add to the political winds blowing their way ahead of next year’s midterm elections. That’s why the national party is jumping in to lend a hand, alongside a parade of Democratic politicians from across the country, including Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. But Republicans are fighting to keep their grip on the mayorship, which they’ve held since 2009 (an independent was mayor from 2001 to 2009). Trump has weighed in on the race, hoping to rally Republicans to González’s side, and prominent Florida Republicans like Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. María Elvira Salazar have sought to boost their party’s candidate, too. In an interview, Higgins pitched herself as tightly focused on quality-of-life issues like building more affordable housing, fixing permitting reform and upgrading city infrastructure, pointing to her tenure on the Miami-Dade County Commission and past work as the Peace Corps director in Belize. She argued that those kinds of changes are commonsense, achievable solutions that can cut costs for the city and help mitigate issues related to hurricanes and flooding, all directly affecting residents’ bottom lines.“There are many approaches to affordability that local governments have in their own hands even though we aren’t in control of tariffs — which, by the way, is creating a huge affordability crisis,” she said. Higgins also contrasted herself with the national GOP, and González, over the issue of immigration and the Trump administration’s widespread deportations. González was the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in President George W. Bush’s administration and served on Trump’s homeland security transition team. “This year in the Hispanic and Haitian communities, I’m hearing something different. They are afraid. It’s the first time in any of my elections people are telling me they’re afraid of their government,” she said, adding that she has met people on the campaign trail who said they knew people who had been sent to the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center. The two candidates discussed the issue at a debate CBS Miami hosted in November, when González said that he supports “rounding up people who commit crimes” but that immigration enforcement is “a federal issue.” González is a known commodity in the city, too. After his stint in the Bush administration, he worked as a businessman, as CEO of Miami International Airport and as Miami’s city manager. González has pitched that on-the-job experience as city manager as one reason he could hit the ground running as mayor, but he has distanced himself from the city’s politicians by highlighting how he fought an effort to delay the election a year.In media appearances and on the campaign trail, González has talked about fighting overdevelopment and backing DeSantis’ push to end homestead property taxes as a way to address affordability issues. “We want people to own their homes, to stay in their homes. Right now, our affordability crisis is to the point that people are being property-taxed out of their homes,” he told Fox News over the weekend. Tuesday’s runoff comes with Democrats still enjoying their gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia last month, as well as other important election wins in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia. Results in the two governor’s races show the Democratic nominees made especially big gains compared with 2024 in heavily Latino municipalities, raising questions about whether Trump’s success in making inroads with those voters is durable for other Republicans.Florida Democrats have had little to boast about in recent years, with the longtime swing state turning noncompetitive at the presidential level in 2024, two years after DeSantis won re-election by a historic margin. But Tuesday’s election provides them with the possibility of something to hang their hat on, particularly as DeSantis and other Republicans have raised warnings about whether their party’s base will still turn out without Trump on the ballot. González argued on Fox News that turning the city over to Democrats for the first time in decades is a bad idea. “People understand what’s at stake here. This isn’t just some ho-hum municipal election; this is big. [The] Democratic Party, progressives, have tried and succeeded in going after a lot of big cities throughout the United States,” he said. “They can’t win at the national level. They can only win at the state level, in some areas, and now they’re going for cities, and we’re not going to allow that here in Miami.”Higgins told NBC News she welcomed the nationalization of the race, because it drives attention she hopes will ultimately lead to stronger turnout. “I’m excited to have the national parties talking about Miami,” she said. “The more the national media and these parties on both sides tell people to vote, the higher voter participation will be. Sure, I hope they vote for me. But nothing makes me happier than high voter turnout.”Ben KamisarBen Kamisar is a national political reporter for NBC NewsHatzel Vela, NBC South Florida and Steve Litz, NBC South Florida contributed.
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September 23, 2025
Sept. 23, 2025, 5:16 PM EDTBy Curtis Bunn and Tyler KingkadeIn 2016, Charlie Kirk wasn’t yet a household name. The young activist had co-founded Turning Point USA four years earlier to help spread conservative ideas on college campuses. But shortly after President Donald Trump’s first election, the group launched an ambitious new project — the Professor Watchlist — aimed at highlighting what it saw as left-leaning bias in higher education. The list, easily available online, now has more than 300 professor names, listed under categories like “Terror Supporter,” “LGBTQ,” “Antifa” and “Socialism.” Once dismissed by critics as a fringe culture war stunt, education experts say the list helped kick off a movement that continues today to monitor and expose perceived ideological opponents. Since Kirk’s assassination earlier this month, that movement has accelerated, with conservative activists systematically outing people in what critics have decried as a right-wing version of “cancel culture.” The backlash has led to the removal or resignation of dozens of teachers and professors who allegedly disparaged Kirk or celebrated his death online.“If you make statements that right-wing politicians don’t like, then you can lose your job. Period. That is chilling,” said Isaac Kamola, director of the American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, who runs a project called Faculty First Responders that helps professors who have been targeted by Turning Point or other groups. “The Professor Watchlist planted that seed.”NBC News interviewed six professors on the watchlist, added between 2016 and 2023. Some are on it for work they published and others for outspoken social media posts. Once added, they received negative messages and comments; two said it escalated to death threats.This atmosphere, which intensified as social media culture evolved, changed how students and professors interact, said Peter Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University College of Law. The watchlist was part of a shift that made “what had been a semi-private space — the classroom — into a place where statements or discussions could get national attention,” Lake said. Knowing a stray comment could go viral stifles free speech, he added.“When you step in the classroom, you might as well be in the studio,” he said. “People are going to record what you’re saying, they may publish it, they may take it out of context, they may share it with your enemies — anything can happen now and it frequently does.”Charlie Kirk near the campus of Georgia State University in Atlanta in 2024.Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP via Getty Images fileThose forces were at work earlier this month, for instance, when conservatives circulated a video of a Texas A&M student confronting a senior lecturer in the English department for teaching about gender identity, citing Trump’s executive order recognizing only two genders. The lecturer, who was not on the Professor Watchlist, was fired and two administrators were removed from their posts. Last week, university president Mark Welsh also resigned amid the controversy.Some conservatives argue the watchlist was a necessary antidote to left-wing bias on campus and helped counter-balance the criticism of right-wing professors. It was “part of changing the way the right engaged with higher ed,” said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “The problem is not with the list,” he said. “The problem is that the list was ever necessary.”Turning Point USA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Charlie Kirk himself defended the project as “an awareness tool” in a 2018 interview with “The Opposition,” a Comedy Central TV show.“It’s not ‘Professor Blacklist’ and it’s not ‘Professor Hitlist,’” Kirk said at the time. “We’re not calling for the termination of these professors — let the schools make their own decisions.”Some professors targeted by the watchlist said it sparked a campaign of harassment against them.Shawn Schwaller, an assistant history professor at California State University, Chico, was added to the list in 2021. His profile includes a long list of allegations, including that he had disparaged conservatives. In one article Schwaller wrote, he offered a defense of protesters at a right-wing Christian event who used flash bombs and bear spray, arguing that they were responding to the “intensely violent rhetoric of a white Christian supremacist.”Schwaller said he was surprised by the response he received online once his name went public. “I hope the professor gets some lead,” one post read. Another said, “He better get a third eye behind his head because its gonna get serious for him.”Preston Mitchum, a former Georgetown Law adjunct professor, found himself on the list after writing on X, formerly Twitter, in 2017, “All white people are racists. All men are sexist. Yes, ALL cis people are transphobic. We have to unpack that. That’s the work!” Mitchum had also appeared on a Fox News panel alongside Charlie Kirk to discuss issues around race after President Trump met with Kanye West in 2018. He said he had been receiving backlash from his tweets but the vitriol increased after the segment aired.He received unwanted calls and emails, Mitchum said, including death threats. “I’m a Black, queer man. I don’t scare often,” he said. He said he finds it hypocritical that Kirk is hailed as a champion of free speech yet created a tool he believes has been used to silence people. “The entire goal is censorship, like fundamentally, the goal is to get you to stop talking,” he said.Preston Mitchum said he received death threats after appearing on the Professor Watchlist and on a panel with Charlie Kirk.Kollin BensonFor some professors, being put on the list was a badge of honor. Charles Roseman, an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was added after co-authoring an article on sex and gender in Scientific American in 2023. “I’m quite glad to draw their ire,” he said. “I’m glad that they disapprove of me. That’s quite the compliment.”Kirk, in a 2016 interview with Time magazine, said the list was not meant to intimidate or “make these professors feel any less secure.” “The inspiration was just to shine a light on what we feel has been an unfair balance toward left-leaning ideas and biases in our universities,” he said.In the years since its inception, the watchlist seems to have inspired other groups. Right-wing influencers like Libs of TikTok now regularly spotlight individual faculty they believe want to indoctrinate students, while conservative parent groups like Moms for Liberty have advocated for state laws limiting what can be discussed in classrooms or shared in libraries. These activists are close allies of the MAGA movement.Republican governors, such as Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas, have also made fights over “wokeness” in colleges a core component of their legislative agendas. Death of Charlie Kirk raises questions about future of free speech in America02:00John Wesley Lowery, an expert in higher education law who advises universities on compliance with federal regulations, said it’s simpler to share details about professors today than when the watchlist was first launched. “It is so much easier to crowdsource information now,” he said. And that’s not the only change, he said, noting that past activism targeted individuals. “What we’ve seen over the last week instead is far more concerted efforts to immediately place pressure on institutions to take action.”Lake, of Stetson University, said the watchlist was a catalyst in changing the way professors work. Among professors writ large, he said, there is an “air of fatalism — do the job long enough, and you could step on a land mine and that could be it.” It’s not only professors who limit what they say in class now, he said. The same is true among students. Lake brought up Kirk’s assassination a couple times in class recently, and there was “no reaction,” he said. “They don’t want to get caught up in a whirlwind.”Curtis BunnCurtis Bunn is a reporter for NBC BLK.Tyler KingkadeTyler Kingkade is a national reporter for NBC News, based in Los Angeles.Melissa Chan and Jo Yurcaba contributed.
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