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Trump marks 'a new beginning' at Israel's Knesset

admin - Latest News - October 13, 2025
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Trump marks ‘a new beginning’ at Israel’s Knesset



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Oct. 13, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Adam NoboaNew Jersey delivered some of the nation’s most dramatic coalition shifts in the 2024 presidential election. Now, those shifts are setting the table for this year’s hard-fought governor’s race — and big questions nationally about where communities like these are going in future elections.For starters, President Donald Trump’s 2024 surge among nonwhite voters in the New York City metro area caught much of the political world by surprise. But questions remain about whether Republicans can sustain this coalition long term.An analysis of municipal-level election results in New Jersey, coupled with data from the U.S. Census Bureau, provides a detailed demographic and geographic snapshot of where Democrats and Republicans have grown their support fastest in recent elections. By examining changes since 2012 — the most recent presidential election without Trump on the ballot — a clear picture of shifting party coalitions emerges.Support for Trump has exploded in densely populated, heavily nonwhite, formerly industrial cities like Paterson, Perth Amboy and Passaic in the New York City metro area. Republican growth that was slowly developing since 2012 surged dramatically in 2024.Meanwhile, Democratic candidates have found growing strength in New Jersey’s shore towns, affluent suburbs populated by college-educated professionals, and places popular with retirees.These communities will become crucial laboratories going forward, testing whether this 12-year political realignment can outlast Trump.But the picture will be far from clear, and different political characters often encourage different political results. Republican Jack Ciattarelli’s previous bid for New Jersey governor in 2021 produced a tight race — but he did it with a coalition that looked much different than the one that would emerge for Trump in 2024.The biggest question heading into future elections is whether these shifts represent a durable transformation of state (and national) politics or merely a Trump-specific phenomenon. These communities provide a testing ground for the answer.The biggest shifts toward DemocratsBiggest shifts since 2012More than half of this nearly all-residential beach town of 331 people, located 2 miles south of the final stop on NJ Transit’s Jersey Shore train line, work in finance or management jobs. The population that works from home is also well above the state average: 45% for Mantoloking, compared to 13% statewide. The mean household income was $484,326, and the average sale price of the 10 homes sold in this borough in 2024 was $4.8 million.It’s still Republican territory, but not to nearly the same extent it was pre-Trump, exemplifying shifts among wealthier and more educated voters.This location is perhaps most famous to New Jerseyans for its eponymously named shopping center, The Mall at Short Hills. Originally opened in 1961 with the tagline “5th Avenue in the Suburbs,” the mall and the area around it have grown into that aspirational billing.Today, Short Hills has a mean household income of $512,637, the second highest in the state. Among residents 25 and older, 60% hold advanced degrees, the highest share for any place of its size in the state. Asian residents make up 38% of the population, with half of them being Indian American.Biggest shifts since 2016This is another small beach town, the farthest you can get down the Jersey Shore — at the southern tip of the Jersey peninsula. Nearly all the shops and dining are in the larger Cape May city, 10 minutes to the east, but this mostly residential community has a high population of older individuals, with a median age of 70.9. Home values are $1.4 million, among the top 10 places in South Jersey.Located on the banks of the Delaware River in western New Jersey, Frenchtown is a quaint river town and popular day trip destination known for its art galleries and boutiques. The 70-mile Delaware and Raritan Canal trail, which begins just north of town, is popular with pedestrians and bikers alike. A narrow bridge connects Frenchtown to rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania — itself a perennially important county in Pennsylvania politics.One in 10 residents in Frenchtown are involved in “arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations,” the second highest concentration in the state. (In recent years, “Eat, Pray, Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert lived and owned a store in town.) Among adult residents, 41% are white with college degrees or higher, above the 27% average for New Jersey overall.Biggest shifts since 2020Avalon has long been an affluent shore town: Ed McMahon would often talk up his weekends there on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” Avalon now has the state’s fifth-oldest population, with a median age of 74.1. The average sale price of a home in Avalon last year was $2.8 million.A retirement community in South Jersey, this planned development was under active buildout from 1971 to 1986. Leisuretowne has grown to 2,255 homes, and the current median age is now 72.5.The biggest shifts toward RepublicansBiggest shifts since 2012This largely industrial neighborhood is tucked underneath the Gov. Alfred E. Driscoll Bridge, one of the widest in the world at 15 lanes. Its accessibility to the Garden State Parkway, I-95 and the Outerbridge Crossing, connecting New Jersey to New York, make this particularly attractive to large distribution-based companies. FedEx hosts a distribution center here, as does Wakefern Food Corp., best known for its ShopRite subsidiary.Once a primarily Polish and Hungarian neighborhood, it has seen the third-highest Latino population growth in the state over the past two decades, going from 38% of the population in 2000 to 71% of the population in 2020. The mean household income here is $91,696, below the statewide figure of $140,299.A brand-new, 5-acre waterfront park opened earlier this year in this compact town on the Passaic River — a major step in revitalizing this industrial area in Newark’s shadow. The Clark Thread Company, once the nation’s largest thread-maker, had a large campus here, with the property as the primary area tagged for redevelopment.Two-thirds of the population in East Newark is Hispanic/Latino. Majorities do not hold U.S. citizenship and speak Spanish at home, according to census data. It has the largest Peruvian population and fifth-largest Ecuadorian population by share in the U.S.Biggest shifts since 2016Home of the sixth-largest Latino population in the state, 73% of Passaic’s 70,000 residents are of Hispanic or Latino origin. Passaic also boasts the state’s largest Mexican population. The high-immigrant town is firmly working-class: 33% of its adult population hasn’t graduated high school, compared to 9% statewide.Heading south from downtown and toward the Passaic Park neighborhood, you will find a large Orthodox Jewish population. While official numbers about religious adherents aren’t kept at the municipal level, Passaic would likely have one of the top populations of Orthodox Jews in New Jersey. The Brook Haven Mall, which bills itself as “largest kosher shopping mall in the U.S.,” opened its doors in 2021, a testament to the size of the Jewish population in the immediate area.New Jersey’s fourth-largest city, Elizabeth is an active transit hub for the New York metropolitan area. The city hosts parts of Newark Liberty International Airport, one of the region’s three major airports, and Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, one of the world’s busiest container ports. The Goethals Bridge also links Elizabeth directly to Staten Island, making it a key connector between New Jersey and New York City.Like the population of East Newark, more than half of the population here was not born in the United States, and nearly two-thirds of the residents here are Spanish speakers.Biggest shifts since 2020The unique clay bedrock of Perth Amboy made it a capital of East Coast terra-cotta production at the turn of the 19th century. Terra-cotta-detailed facades decorate buildings around town, and the work of the Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company became a staple of the elegant skyscrapers built in Manhattan at the time, from the Woolworth Building to the Flatiron Building. The Great Depression caused a sudden evaporation of the terra-cotta industry, and the ensuing decades have reinvented Perth Amboy.The city is now 81% Latino, the third-highest share of any place in the state. Half its Latino population is of Dominican origin, among the highest concentrations anywhere in the country.New Jersey’s third-largest city is a melting pot. It has the largest Dominican population outside New York City and Lawrence, Massachusetts, and its Little Lima neighborhood represents the largest Peruvian population outside of Peru. Paterson’s mayor declared the city the U.S. “capital of Palestine” on account of its large Palestinian population, too, and its broader Muslim population probably accounts for at least a third of the city’s makeup.At the same time, Paterson is a city in transition, with a quarter of its population living in poverty, per census data, and some of the highest crime rates in the state on a per capita basis.Adam NoboaAdam Noboa is a producer at NBC News with Steve Kornacki.
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September 22, 2025
Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleSept. 22, 2025, 12:18 PM EDTBy Daniel ArkinDisney’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show represents a “dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation,” more than 400 Hollywood celebrities wrote in an open letter released by the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday.“We the people must never accept government threats to our freedom of speech,” the letter says. “Efforts by leaders to pressure artists, journalists, and companies with retaliation for their speech strike at the heart of what it means to live in a free country.” The stars who signed the letter include Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Billy Crystal, Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Selena Gomez, Tom Hanks, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Joaquin Phoenix, Ben Stiller, Meryl Streep and Kerry Washington.The ACLU released the letter five days after the Disney-owned broadcast network ABC announced it was “indefinitely” pre-empting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” amid criticism of Kimmel’s on-air remarks about the Make America Great Again movement’s response to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.Jimmy Kimmel on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC.Randy Holmes / DisneyABC pulled the show hours after Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr, who regulates the broadcast television industry, publicly blasted Kimmel and threatened to revoke licenses from ABC affiliate stations. Nexstar, an owner of ABC affiliate stations across the United States, then announced it would pre-empt Kimmel’s show “for the foreseeable future.”The firestorm has thrust Disney into a roiling debate over free speech. Democrats, First Amendment advocates and Kimmel’s defenders have since assailed Disney and ABC for appearing to cave to pressure from the Trump administration. President Donald Trump, who appointed Carr as head of the FCC at the start of his second term, hailed ABC’s move as “Great News for America.” “In an attempt to silence its critics, our government has resorted to threatening the livelihoods of journalists, talk show hosts, artists, creatives, and entertainers across the board,” the Hollywood stars wrote in the ACLU’s open letter. “This runs counter to the values our nation was built upon, and our Constitution guarantees.”“We know this moment is bigger than us and our industry,” the celebrities added. “Teachers, government employees, law firms, researchers, universities, students and so many more are also facing direct attacks on their freedom of expression.”In the wake of Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University, teachers and professors across the U.S. have been fired or disciplined over social media posts about the Turning Point USA co-founder that were deemed inappropriate. Vice President JD Vance has encouraged people to report those who celebrate Kirk’s death to their employers.“This is the moment to defend free speech across our nation,” the stars added. “We encourage all Americans to join us, along with the ACLU, in the fight to defend and preserve our constitutionally protected rights.”The letter did not make a specific demand of Disney. In response to Disney’s decision to suspend Kimmel, some in Hollywood have threatened to cut ties with the media conglomerate or urged viewers to opt out of Disney products. “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof said he would not work with the company unless Kimmel’s suspension was lifted. (“Lost” aired on ABC for six seasons.) Tatiana Maslany, star of the Disney+ series “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” called on her social media followers to “cancel your @disneyplus @hulu @espn subscriptions!” (Disney owns Hulu and ESPN.)The boycott calls appeared to be growing online Monday, with scores of Reddit users pledging to nix their Disney streaming subscriptions. “It’s the only thing they will notice,” the title of the original Reddit post said.The ACLU released the letter shortly after Disney debuted a teaser trailer for the Star Wars movie “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” which is set to premiere in theaters next year. Pedro Pascal, who portrays the Mandalorian on the big and small screens, signed the letter and publicly backed Kimmel on Instagram.“Standing with you @jimmykimmellive Defend #FreeSpeech Defend #DEMOCRACY,” Pascal wrote.The fate of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” remained unclear Monday morning. The show has been on ABC since 2003, airing more than 3,500 episodes across 23 broadcast seasons. In recent years, Kimmel has positioned himself as a vocal critic of Trump and Republican politicians. Trump has slammed Kimmel, too, referring to him a “loser” and calling on ABC to cancel his show.In a monologue last week, Kimmel expressed condolences to the Kirk family but criticized Republicans for their reaction to his killing. “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” he said. Authorities have charged the suspect, Tyler Robinson, 22, with murder. Officials said Robinson grew up in a conservative household in Utah but later became influenced by “leftist ideology.” Robinson’s mother told investigators that “over the last year or so, Robinson had become more political and had started to lean more to the left — becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented,” according to charging documents.In an interview last week with conservative commentator Benny Johnson, Carr said Kimmel’s remarks were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people.”Daniel ArkinDaniel Arkin is a national reporter at NBC News.
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Sept. 24, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Lauren Sausser and Darius Tahir | KFF Health NewsTaking a page from the private insurance industry’s playbook, the Trump administration will launch a program next year to find out how much money an artificial intelligence algorithm could save the federal government by denying care to Medicare patients.The pilot program, designed to weed out wasteful, “low-value” services, amounts to a federal expansion of an unpopular process called prior authorization, which requires patients or someone on their medical team to seek insurance approval before proceeding with certain procedures, tests, and prescriptions. It will affect Medicare patients, and the doctors and hospitals who care for them, in Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Texas, and Washington, starting Jan. 1 and running through 2031.The move has raised eyebrows among politicians and policy experts. The traditional version of Medicare, which covers adults 65 and older and some people with disabilities, has mostly eschewed prior authorization. Still, it is widely used by private insurers, especially in the Medicare Advantage market.And the timing was surprising: The pilot was announced in late June, just days after the Trump administration unveiled a voluntary effort by private health insurers to revamp and reduce their own use of prior authorization, which causes care to be “significantly delayed,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.“It erodes public trust in the health care system,” Oz told the media. “It’s something that we can’t tolerate in this administration.”But some critics, like Dr. Vinay Rathi, an Ohio State University doctor and policy researcher, have accused the Trump administration of sending mixed messages.On one hand, the federal government wants to borrow cost-cutting measures used by private insurance, he said. “On the other, it slaps them on the wrist.”Administration officials are “talking out of both sides of their mouth,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat. “It’s hugely concerning.”Patients, doctors and other lawmakers have also been critical of what they see as delay-or-deny tactics, which can slow down or block access to care, causing irreparable harm and even death.“Insurance companies have put it in their mantra that they will take patients’ money and then do their damnedest to deny giving it to the people who deliver care,” said Rep. Greg Murphy, a North Carolina Republican and a urologist. “That goes on in every insurance company boardroom.”Insurers have long argued that prior authorization reduces fraud and wasteful spending, as well as prevents potential harm. Public displeasure with insurance denials dominated the news in December, when the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO led many to anoint his alleged killer as a folk hero.And the public broadly dislikes the practice: Nearly three-quarters of respondents thought prior authorization was a “major” problem in a July poll published by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.Indeed, Oz said during his June press conference that “violence in the streets” prompted the Trump administration to take on the issue of prior authorization reform in the private insurance industry.Still, the administration is expanding the use of prior authorization in Medicare. CMS spokesperson Alexx Pons said both initiatives “serve the same goal of protecting patients and Medicare dollars.”Unanswered questionsThe pilot program, WISeR — short for “Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction” — will test the use of an AI algorithm in making prior authorization decisions for some Medicare services, including skin and tissue substitutes, electrical nerve stimulator implants, and knee arthroscopy.The federal government says such procedures are particularly vulnerable to “fraud, waste, and abuse” and could be held in check by prior authorization.Other procedures may be added to the list. But services that are inpatient-only, emergency or “would pose a substantial risk to patients if significantly delayed” would not be subject to the AI model’s assessment, according to the federal announcement.While the use of AI in health insurance isn’t new, Medicare has been slow to adopt the private-sector tools. Medicare has historically used prior authorization in a limited way, with contractors who aren’t incentivized to deny services. But experts who have studied the plan believe the federal pilot could change that.Pons told KFF Health News that no Medicare request will be denied before being reviewed by a “qualified human clinician,” and that vendors “are prohibited from compensation arrangements tied to denial rates.” While the government says vendors will be rewarded for savings, Pons said multiple safeguards will “remove any incentive to deny medically appropriate care.”“Shared savings arrangements mean that vendors financially benefit when less care is delivered,” a structure that can create a powerful incentive for companies to deny medically necessary care, said Jennifer Brackeen, senior director of government affairs for the Washington State Hospital Association.And doctors and policy experts say that’s only one concern.Rathi said the plan “is not fully fleshed out” and relies on “messy and subjective” measures. The model, he said, ultimately depends on contractors to assess their own results, a choice that makes the results potentially suspect.“I’m not sure they know, even, how they’re going to figure out whether this is helping or hurting patients,” he said.Pons said the use of AI in the Medicare pilot will be “subject to strict oversight to ensure transparency, accountability, and alignment with Medicare rules and patient protection.”“CMS remains committed to ensuring that automated tools support, not replace, clinically sound decision-making,” he said.Experts agree that AI is theoretically capable of expediting what has been a cumbersome process marked by delays and denials that can harm patients’ health. Health insurers have argued that AI eliminates human error and bias and will save the health care system money. These companies have also insisted that humans, not computers, are ultimately reviewing coverage decisions.But some scholars are doubtful that’s routinely happening. “I think that there’s also probably a little bit of ambiguity over what constitutes ‘meaningful human review,’” said Amy Killelea, an assistant research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.A 2023 report published by ProPublica found that, over a two-month period, doctors at Cigna who reviewed requests for payment spent an average of only 1.2 seconds on each case.Cigna spokesperson Justine Sessions told KFF Health News that the company does not use AI to deny care or claims. The ProPublica investigation referenced a “simple software-driven process that helped accelerate payments to clinicians for common, relatively low-cost tests and treatments, and it is not powered by AI,” Sessions said. “It was not used for prior authorizations.”And yet class-action lawsuits filed against major health insurers have alleged that flawed AI models undermine doctor recommendations and fail to take patients’ unique needs into account, forcing some people to shoulder the financial burden of their care.Meanwhile, a survey of physicians published by the American Medical Association in February found that 61% think AI is “increasing prior authorization denials, exacerbating avoidable patient harms and escalating unnecessary waste now and into the future.”Chris Bond, a spokesperson for the insurers’ trade group AHIP, told KFF Health News that the organization is “zeroed in” on implementing the commitments made to the government. Those include reducing the scope of prior authorization and making sure that communications with patients about denials and appeals are easy to understand.‘This is a pilot’The Medicare pilot program underscores ongoing concerns about prior authorization and raises new ones.While private health insurers have been opaque about how they use AI and the extent to which they use prior authorization, policy researchers believe these algorithms are often programmed to automatically deny high-cost care.“The more expensive it is, the more likely it is to be denied,” said Jennifer Oliva, a professor at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University-Bloomington, whose work focuses on AI regulation and health coverage.Oliva explained in a recent paper for the Indiana Law Journal that when a patient is expected to die within a few years, health insurers are “motivated to rely on the algorithm.” As time passes and the patient or their provider is forced to appeal a denial, the chance of the patient dying during that process increases. The longer an appeal, the less likely the health insurer is to pay the claim, Oliva said.“The No. 1 thing to do is make it very, very difficult for people to get high-cost services,” she said.As the use of AI by health insurers is poised to grow, insurance company algorithms amount to a “regulatory blind spot” and demand more scrutiny, said Carmel Shachar, a faculty director at Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation.The WISeR pilot is “an interesting step” toward using AI to ensure that Medicare dollars are purchasing high-quality health care, she said. But the lack of details makes it difficult to determine whether it will work.Politicians are grappling with some of the same questions.“How is this being tested in the first place? How are you going to make sure that it is working and not denying care or producing higher rates of care denial?” asked DelBene, who signed an August letter to Oz with other Democrats demanding answers about the AI program. But Democrats aren’t the only ones worried.Murphy, who co-chairs the House GOP Doctors Caucus, acknowledged that many physicians are concerned the WISeR pilot could overreach into their practice of medicine if the AI algorithm denies doctor-recommended care.Meanwhile, House members of both parties recently supported a measure proposed by Rep. Lois Frankel, a Florida Democrat, to block funding for the pilot in the fiscal 2026 budget of the Department of Health and Human Services.AI in health care is here to stay, Murphy said, but it remains to be seen whether the WISeR pilot will save Medicare money or contribute to the problems already posed by prior authorization.“This is a pilot, and I’m open to see what’s going to happen with this,” Murphy said, “but I will always, always err on the side that doctors know what’s best for their patients.”Lauren Sausser and Darius Tahir | KFF Health NewsLauren Sausser and Darius Tahir | KFF Health News
October 10, 2025
Speaker Johnson talks potential mass federal layoffs
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