Trump’s Combative Prime Time Speech, and the Growing Right-to-Die Movement

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, December 18th. Here's what we're covering.

0:14Good evening, America. Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess, and I'm fixing it. President Trump delivered a primetime speech last night to try and calm many Americans growing unease about the economy. The White House has been on the defensive on that topic recently, with Democrats hammering the issue of affordability. I am bringing those high prices down and bringing them down very fast. In the 18-minute speech, Trump both repeatedly blamed President Biden for the state of the economy and said it was improving. Wages are going up much faster than inflation. How big is that? Very importantly, there are more people working today than at any time in American history.

1:00His message stood in contrast to this week's jobs report, which showed that unemployment rose in November to its highest level since four years ago, when the economy was emerging from the pandemic. Trump promised the new year will bring relief, saying mortgage rates will come down and prices on, quote, electricity and everything else will fall dramatically. Recently, the National Energy Assistance Directors Association urged Americans to brace for the opposite, with heating costs expected to surge almost 10 percent this winter. Trump also tucked a surprise announcement into his speech. In honor of our nation's founding in 1776, we are sending every soldier$1 ,776.

1:49Think of that. He promised bonus checks are already on the way for 1.4 million members of the military. He said the cost will be covered by tariff revenue, though spending that revenue is Congress's purview, not the White House's.

2:11Now, three more updates from Washington. In Congress. I have not lost control. House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing a revolt from a handful of members of his own party who don't want to let the Affordable Care Act subsidies go quietly. Four House Republicans, who all come from competitive districts, making them politically vulnerable, joined Democrats in their push to force a vote on the issue after Johnson tried to shut down that possibility. The splinter group's maneuver is expected to lead to an early January vote on reviving the subsidy. Though right now they're on track to expire at the end of this year, and health care premiums are set to soar for millions of Americans.

2:56Also, at the FBI, Dan Bongino, the second in command, is stepping down next month after a brief and rocky tenure. The podcast host was always a surprising choice for the job, since it had never been held by someone who wasn't a veteran agent. Bongino had no experience at the bureau. Before Trump appointed him, he was known for pushing conspiracy theories, which then put him at odds with agents who led investigations that debunked them. He was also accused by one FBI official, who was fired this year, of spending more time creating social media content than on the Bureau's work. Dan did a great job.

3:33I think he wants to go back to his show. President Trump confirmed Bongino's departure in brief remarks yesterday. Bongino has suggested he'll go back to being a podcaster and social media personality. And the Times has learned the Trump administration is ramping up efforts to strip more foreign-born Americans of their citizenship. In internal guidance sent to Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices, they were told to pass along 100 to 200 denaturalization cases per month in the next year. By comparison, between 2017 and now, there were just over 120 of those cases total. Under federal law, people can only be denaturalized if they lied while applying for citizenship or in a few other narrow circumstances.

4:21Proponents of stricter immigration laws say the new push is needed to more aggressively root out people who shouldn't have gotten through. But some immigration experts are concerned that the quota could lead to sweeping up people who made honest mistakes on their paperwork. One former USCIS official told The Times it, quote, turns a serious and rare tool into a blunt instrument and fuels unnecessary fear and uncertainty.

4:51New York will always continue to be a bastion of freedom, to worship, to speak your mind, freedom of choice. It's time we finally extend those freedoms to the terminally ill and their families. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul announced yesterday that her state will be the latest to enact a right-to-die law, allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives. Who am I to deny you or your loved one what they're begging for at the end of their life? New York will join a dozen other states and the District of Columbia, which have passed similar laws. The governor of Illinois signed a right-to-die bill just last week.

5:30The bill in New York applies to adults with incurable, irreversible diseases who have less than half a year to live. Patients will need sign-offs from three doctors. It had faced strong opposition from religious groups like the New York State Catholic Conference, which called it egregious and said the state was abandoning its most vulnerable people. Hochul, who is Catholic herself, wrote in an op-ed that deciding to sign the bill was one of the hardest choices she'd made as governor. But she said she found her own personal reasons to support it as she watched her mother die of ALS, losing her ability to walk, eat, and speak.

6:09The bill has had backing from several medical and professional groups like the New York State Psychiatric Association. Now that it's moving forward, one terminally ill doctor, who lives in the state and turned to activism after his own diagnosis, said a cloud of fear had been lifted, giving him, quote,

6:36And finally, on sidewalks in many cities around the world, it is not uncommon these days to see a stroller passing by, and when you get a glimpse inside, it's not a baby, but a dog or a very chill cat. Over the years, these pampered pets have become a scapegoat to some to explain falling birth rates. In South Korea, the labor minister once called out young people for loving their dogs and not having children. Pope Francis tried to scold people for choosing pets instead of kids. But a new working paper suggests the whole logic baked into those criticisms is wrong. Rather than replacing children, pets are actually more likely to be a stepping stone to having them.

7:21The study looked only at Taiwan, but the researchers drew on government data for pet and birth registrations from millions of households there. It showed that people with animals, particularly dogs, were more likely than non-pet owners to go on to have children. My colleague Amanda Taub, who talked with the researchers, said the takeaway here is not that handing out puppies would lead to a whole bunch more babies. Instead, it underscores the fact that falling birth rates have multiple causes, many of them economic and societal, and not the fault of a dog in a sweater.

8:00Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, a look at who will be affected most when Obamacare subsidies expire at the end of the year. You can listen to that in The New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the last Friday news quiz of the year.