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“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful. Again, Somalia is a clear example here. You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.” That’s Stephen Miller, the chief architect of Trump’s immigration policy, citing the children of immigrants as a problem. The data doesn’t support his argument, but even as a child of immigrants, I understand today’s America well enough to know we shouldn’t let ourselves be distracted by facts. This contempt for immigrants (especially black and brown ones), long viewed as a core strength of our nation, is viewed by Miller and his ilk as our greatest threat. And they’re acting on the belief. Miller’s contempt certainly extends to people like Luis Martinez. Like thousands of other undocumented Americans, Martinez has spent decades literally killing himself fighting wildfires for the US government. “Now he’s facing down cancer, debt and the threat of separation from his 11-year-old.” NYT (Gift Article): ‘It’s Just Us’: The Firefighter, His Son and a Treacherous Choice. “In their small, secluded town, nearly everyone was connected to the private companies that the government hired to fight fires. Smoke-related sicknesses were a shared fact of life. So were periodic immigration crackdowns. Lately, the road to Seattle was becoming a corridor for ICE enforcement.” Read both of their stories and decide for yourself, who’s more American? Who has actually done more for this country? Stephen Miller or Luis Martinez.
+ The White House is so certain Americans will love the immigrant round-ups that they’ve turned them into a reality show. WaPo (Gift Article): Inside ICE’s media machine.
+ Of course, the administration doesn’t want you to see all the deportation stories, only the ones where they control the narrative. Hence, Bari Weiss’s state media-esque, last-second decision to pull a 60 Minutes piece about the Venezuelans sent to the CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador. I covered that decision in detail yesterday: On Our Watch: “The iconic opening to 60 Minutes has long represented the countdown to an investigative news story. Now it feels more like a countdown to the demise of TV journalism. Tick … tick … tick…” It turns out that CBS forgot to cancel the broadcast of the piece in the Canadian market. So it’s basically all over the internet at this point. Trump and his enablers can delete a file here or a news segment there, but they can’t delete all of reality, which is what it would take for history to forgive their toxic stain saturating America. Maybe it’s fitting that we close out the NextDraft year in news coverage with an investigative report that we had to bootleg from another country’s broadcast because it was barred it from our own airwaves. That sounds familiar. It just doesn’t sound like America.
+ I’ll be off for the holidays and back in 2026. Of course, I may come back sooner if there’s any really shocking news. But, er, what are the chances of that? Have a great holiday season and new year.
2
The Vance Dance
“On Sunday, J. D. Vance was presented with the simplest moral test: denounce commentators who traffic in medieval blood libels, who deny the Holocaust, and who endlessly harp on evil Jewish cabals ... Vance failed. ‘We have far more important work to do than canceling each other,’ he said, as if anti-Semitism were just one more woke fixation.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The vice president welcomes anti-Semites into the Republican coalition.
+ How can an administration that portrays itself as defending the Jews be so welcoming of antisemites? Michael Roth explained last April in the NYT (Gift Article): “As the first Jewish president of a formerly Methodist university, I find no comfort in the Trump administration’s embrace of my people, on college campuses or elsewhere. Jew hatred is real, but today’s anti-antisemitism isn’t a legitimate effort to fight it. It’s a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people. All of these agendas — from dismantling basic government functions to crushing the independence of cultural and educational organizations to criminalizing political speech to legitimating petty presidential vendettas — endanger the principles and institutions that have actually made this country great. For Jews, a number of these agendas do something more: They pose a direct threat to the very people they purport to help. Jews who applaud the administration’s crackdown will soon find that they do so at their peril.” Trump Is Selling Jews a Dangerous Lie. “[This] tension — between championing Jews and ridiculing, reviling or in some cases even threatening them — has been visible on the right for some time. Consider first the president: On the one hand, his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren are Jewish ... On the other hand, when neo-Nazis, Klansmen and others marched through Charlottesville, Va., carrying torches and shouting ‘Jews will not replace us,’ Mr. Trump condemned the most extreme elements of the rally but observed that there were ‘some very fine people on both sides.’” (There’s only one side he cares about. His.)
3
The Price is Wrong
“The group did not do what Mr. Musk said it would: reduce federal spending by $1 trillion before October. On DOGE’s watch, federal spending did not go down at all. It went up. How is that possible?” NYT (Gift Article): How Did DOGE Disrupt So Much While Saving So Little?
+ DOGE didn’t save America money, but they cost plenty of people around the world. What I Saw at a Maternity Ward in Kenya After the U.S. Cut Off Food and Foreign Aid.
4
Weight For It...
“Millions of people use injectable drugs like Wegovy to reach a healthier weight. But the weekly injections aren’t for everybody — or every wallet. That’s why pills that could achieve similar results are drawing so much attention. And now the Food and Drug Administration has approved an oral version of Wegovy made by Novo Nordisk.” 5 things to know about the new obesity pill.
+ Today’s weight loss drugs are a complete game changer. They’re also probably just the beginning. More powerful products are coming down the pike. And not everyone is willing to wait. You’re not supposed to be able to buy the world’s most powerful weight-loss drug, but some people have found a way. (Where there’s a weigh, there’s a will...)
+ SciAm: 10 Discoveries That Transformed How We Thought about Health in 2025.
5
Extra, Extra
The SS Bone Spurs: “[Trump] announced that a new class of ship named after one Donald J. Trump would be added to the ‘Golden Fleet,’ his name for a renewed U.S. Navy. (You might wonder about the propriety of a sitting president naming naval vessels, among other things, after himself. Pardon the expression, but that ship has sailed.)” Trump’s Vanity Fleet.
+ K Pop: “The U.S. economy grew faster than expected in the third quarter, driven by robust consumer spending, but momentum appears to have faded amid the rising cost of living and recent government shutdown.” And from FT: Happy K-shaped Christmas.
+ Tis the Season: We’ve got more Epstein files. Here’s the latest from the NYT (Gift Article) on what’s in them. Trump Referenced in Some Newly Released Documents.
+ ‘Koff Medicine: “The emergence of Witkoff as envoy to the Kremlin is partly a story of Putin maneuvering to nudge aside America’s diplomats and clasp hands with its billionaires. It wasn’t a hard sell.” WSJ (Gift Article):