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Top 5 US news stories

December 12 2025

Greg Loving

12 Dec 2025 • 6 min read

Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, at the Capitol this week.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times

Dueling Senate Proposals Collapse, Ensuring Affordable Care Act Subsidies Expire This Month

Indiana GOP Senators Defy Trump, Reject Congressional Map in Stinging Defeat

Democrat Higgins Captures Miami Mayor's Office, Rebuking Trump in Republican Stronghold

Trump Order Threatens State AI Laws, Empowers Feds to Sue or Withhold Funding

Venezuelan Opposition Leader Confirms Dramatic Escape, Spotlighting Maduro's Crackdown on Dissent

1. Dueling Senate Proposals Collapse, Ensuring Affordable Care Act Subsidies Expire This Month

The Senate on Thursday deadlocked on competing proposals to avert rising health care premiums, blocking Democratic and Republican alternatives in an outcome that made it all but certain that expanded tax subsidies for health coverage under the Affordable Care Act will expire at the end of the month. Republicans squelched a bid by Democrats, who had demanded action on the issue during the 43-day government shutdown, to extend the insurance subsidies for three years. Democrats turned back a Republican alternative that would replace the subsidies with an expansion of tax-advantaged health savings accounts and direct payments of up to $1,500 to people who buy the most basic health insurance plans. Neither proposal could muster the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster and move ahead, a long-expected result that teed up a brutal battle over health care that is likely to shape the fight for control of Congress next year. Both plans were thwarted on separate votes of 51 to 48. Four Republicans — Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both of Alaska — joined Democrats in support of taking up the extension, while all Democrats and a single Republican, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, opposed the G.O.P. alternative. With Congress set to leave for the holidays after next week and the two sides still far apart on their approach to rising health insurance costs, time was nearly out to renew the premium subsidies that millions of Americans depend on to afford coverage on the federal health care exchange. Democrats have promised to spotlight the issue in midterm election campaigns, seeing an opening to pound Republicans for failing to head off sharp premium increases and threatening health care access at a time when many Americans are toiling to afford basic necessities.

NYT

2. Indiana GOP Senators Defy Trump, Reject Congressional Map in Stinging Defeat

Republican members of the Indiana Senate bucked President Trump on Thursday and joined Democrats in voting down a new congressional map that would have positioned Republicans to sweep the state’s U.S. House seats. The 19 to 31 vote was a highly public defeat for Mr. Trump, who has spent significant political capital pushing for redrawn maps in Republican-led states and who repeatedly threatened political consequences for Indiana Republicans who did not fall in line. The defiance of Mr. Trump comes as he faces other signs of rifts within his own party. The rejection of the map in the State Senate, where Republicans hold 40 of the 50 seats, followed months of presidential lobbying that turned increasingly pointed in recent weeks as it became clear that some holdouts were not budging. Long-simmering ideological and stylistic divides among Republicans in Indiana spilled into the open, with many long-serving or institutionalist figures who opposed the map clashing with Trump-aligned conservatives who favored the plan. Republicans would have been expected to flip the only two Democratic-held congressional seats among the state’s nine districts if the new map had passed.

NYT

3. Democrat Higgins Captures Miami Mayor's Office, Rebuking Trump in Republican Stronghold

MIAMI—The resounding victory by Democrat Eileen Higgins in the Miami mayor’s race Tuesday marked a rebuke of President Trump in the heart of a community that has become a nerve center of his movement. Voters delivered the Miami mayor’s office to a Democrat for the first time in nearly 30 years and energized a party that has struggled in South Florida in recent elections. And they rebuffed the Republican candidate, Emilio Gonzalez, whom Trump endorsed, a move that helped thrust the election into the national spotlight and position it as a referendum on the president. Higgins collected 59% of the vote and Gonzalez 41%.

WSJ

4. Trump Order Threatens State AI Laws, Empowers Feds to Sue or Withhold Funding

President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that aims to neuter state laws that limit the artificial intelligence industry, a win for tech companies that have lobbied against regulation of the booming technology. The order grants broad authority to the attorney general to sue states and overturn laws that do not support the “United States’ global A.I. dominance,” putting dozens of A.I. safety and consumer protection laws at risk. If states keep their laws in place, Mr. Trump directed federal regulators to withhold funds for broadband and other projects. Mr. Trump, who has said it is important for America to dominate A.I., has criticized the state laws for generating a confusing patchwork of regulations. He said his order would create one federal regulatory framework that would override the state laws, and added that it was critical to keep the United States ahead of China in the technology. “It’s got to be one source,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, surrounded by officials including David Sacks, the A.I. and crypto czar. “You can’t go to 50 different sources.”

NYT

5. Venezuelan Opposition Leader Confirms Dramatic Escape, Spotlighting Maduro's Crackdown on Dissent

OSLO — Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, speaking in a BBC interview in Oslo this week after a clandestine trip out of Venezuela, acknowledged a widely circulated account of her escape — including claims she wore a wig, crossed roughly 10 military checkpoints, took a fishing boat to Curaçao and then flew by private jet via Miami — and argued such measures reflect the dangers faced by government critics under President Nicolás Maduro. Machado, who has spent months in hiding amid threats from authorities and whose Nobel Peace Prize was accepted at the ceremony by her daughter, said dissent in Venezuela now carries a high risk of arrest and imprisonment.

Pressed about the escape narrative, Machado replied: “Well, it’s important to understand exactly what you’re saying. I mean, Venezuela has turned into a nation, a country in which the state applies terrorism. The regime that has control of all institutions has applied state terrorism towards innocent people and committed crimes against humanity. and everybody that dares to speak out to defend any of your basic rights takes a huge risk and probably ends in prison.” Her comments come as the Trump administration has escalated sanctions enforcement tied to Venezuelan oil exports and alleged illicit networks, including dramatically seizing an oil tanker at sea. The administration’s November 2025 National Security Strategy also says the U.S. will “assert and enforce” a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine to keep the Western Hemisphere stable and to block hostile outside powers from gaining strategically vital footholds in the region.

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