Adam Kinzinger Says 1 Trump Nominee Is The Most Concerning: ‘A Huge Problem’
Marco Margaritoff – January 7, 2025
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) shared some unvarnished thoughts Monday on the people President-elect Donald Trump has announced he plans to nominate to key positions in his upcoming administration — and said one of them in particular is most concerning for U.S. democracy.
Trump’s picks include MAGA loyalist Kash Patel to run the FBI, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as his secretary of defense and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) — a former Democrat who joined the Republican Party in 2024 — as leader of national intelligence.
When asked on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” whom he has the strongest opinion on, Kinzinger stated bluntly: “I mean, for the country, Kash Patel, because I think once you weaponize Justice or the FBI, that’s a huge problem. … There’s really no oversight.”
Patel served in the first Trump administration and, in his 2023 book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” ominously ranked Trump’s “deep state” enemies — and vowed at the time to “come after” them.
Kinzinger told Colbert that Hegseth is the second-most-troubling pick, as the Defense Department “is the largest corporation in the world.” Hegseth, a military veteran turned television pundit, defended the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol on Fox News at the time.
“There’s people that put their lives on the line,” Kinzinger said Monday about the Defense Department, “and Pete served honorably in the military, but by the way, anywhere in D.C. there’s probably 50,000 people as or better qualified than Pete Hegseth to run the DOD.”
Kinzinger, a frequent Trump critic and one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him over his role in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, shared similar thoughts on Gabbard — who previously criticized Trump as “corrupt” but has since joined the fold.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger named (from left) Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard as his biggest concerns among President-elect Donald Trump’s administration picks. Left: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images; Center: J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press; Right: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
“I knew her,” Kinzinger told Colbert. “And I was friends with her up until the day she visited [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad who, thank God, is out of power now, and did his dirty work.”
Forces for the recently deposed president were accused of using sarin gas to kill 1,400 people in 2013. Gabbard — who shared “Russian talking points” in support of Assad, Kinzinger noted — previously urged Congress not to endorse potential U.S. regime change operations in the country, alleging the U.S. was covertly “supporting” as much.
Kinzinger had only one word to share about former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), whom Trump had announced as his attorney general pick despite a federal investigation and a congressional ethics probe into allegations he had sexual relations with a minor. Gaetz immediately resigned from his congressional seat in anticipation of the role but later withdrew himself from consideration for the position when it appeared he would not have the support needed for confirmation.
When Colbert noted there was applause in the House chamber Friday as the acting House clerk announced Gaetz wouldn’t be taking his seat in the new Congress, Kinzinger said simply: “Fantastic.”
Democrats dial up pressure on Hegseth as confirmation battle nears
Missy Ryan and Abigail Hauslohner – January 7, 2025
The record of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon, should disqualify him for such a pivotal national security role, a Democratic senator told the former Fox News personality in an expansive letter that illustrates the party’s breadth of concern with one of the president-elect’s most controversial Cabinet picks ahead of his confirmation hearing next week.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, outlined 10 areas of concern in her letter, posing more than 70 questions for Hegseth in what appears to be a preview of Democrats’ approach when they interrogate his qualifications, past conduct and beliefs. The letter highlights allegations of heavy drinking and sexual misconduct, remarks suggesting female military personnel should play a more limited role, his past skepticism about the need for U.S. troops to comply with laws of war, and accusations of financial mismanagement arising from the veterans’ organizations he once led.
Hegseth has vehemently denied claims of wrongdoing.
“I am deeply concerned by the many ways in which your behavior and rhetoric indicates that you are unfit to lead the Department of Defense,” Warren said in the letter. “Your confirmation as Secretary of Defense would be detrimental to our national security and disrespect a diverse array of service members who are willing to sacrifice for our country.”
The Trump transition team declined to comment on Warren’s letter. Hegseth is due to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 14.
Spanning 33 pages, the missive resurfaces statements and alleged incidents reported by the news media in the weeks following Trump’s selection of the 44-year-old – a former Army National Guard member, Princeton University graduate and longtime Fox News host – to lead the Pentagon. Several news outlets have published reports scrutinizing Hegseth’s background, including revelations that he made derisive comments about Muslims and current military leaders, and an incident in which he was investigated, but not charged, in an alleged sexual assault.
Warren’s letter also coincides with growing concern among Democrats about the incoming Trump administration’s decision to spurn steps traditionally involved in the selection, vetting and approval process for high-level government officials.
Hegseth’s confirmation hearing will provide an early test of how congressional Republicans, in particular, intend to size up their preferences against those of their president. While Hegseth’s record has stirred doubts among some in the GOP, Trump has lobbied forcefully for his confirmation.
And while some Republicans have praised Hegseth – who wasn’t widely seen as a contender for high office until Trump announced his pick days after the election – others, including Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) and Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), have not publicly declared how they will vote, though both said they had productive meetings with Hegseth last month. Ernst is a member of the Armed Services Committee and a sexual assault survivor. Collins is a prominent moderate within the GOP.
To proceed for a vote on the Senate floor, Hegseth must secure the support of a majority of the Republican-led Armed Services Committee. Committee Democrats are widely expected to oppose him.
If confirmed, Hegseth, who as a Fox News host successfully lobbied Trump for lenient treatment of service members convicted of war crimes, is expected to focus on cultural and personnel issues at the Pentagon, which he has said is insufficiently focused on combat and is dominated by “woke” generals.
In her letter, Warren told Hegseth to be ready to respond to questions, and she asked that he first reply in writing by Jan. 10. Separately, a group of Democratic senators, including Warren, Tim Kaine (Virginia), Tammy Duckworth (Illinois) and Kirsten Gillibrand (New York), sent a letter to Trump’s designated chief of staff last month focused on Hegseth’s record on women.
Critics have assailed Trump for tapping Hegseth before he completed key aspects of the vetting process, which for Senate-confirmed positions usually includes an FBI background check. While the FBI typically delivers the results of a nominee’s classified background check to the relevant oversight committee about a week ahead of a confirmation hearing, that hadn’t happened in Hegseth’s case as of Tuesday, said a Senate aide familiar with the process, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the vetting process.
Upon receiving the results of an FBI background check, the committee chair and ranking minority-party member – in this case, Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) and Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) – have the discretion to share it with other lawmakers, aides said. Senators in both parties, including some like Collins who do not sit on the committee, have expressed interest in seeing the FBI’s findings. It is unclear if Wicker and Reed will make the FBI report more widely available.
Senate aides also said Hegseth had declined to hold meetings with committee Democrats in the lead-up to next week’s hearing, a development they called a disturbing break with tradition. Reed, the committee’s top Democrat, is expected to meet with Hegseth later this week.
The aides said Hegseth, through intermediaries, offered Democrats opportunities to meet with him only after his confirmation hearing.
“It’s obviously really concerning, and very unusual to not be taking those meetings,” one Senate aide said. “It’s disrespectful to the process.”
A Trump transition official disputed that claim, saying Hegseth and his team reached out to nearly all Democratic committee members well before the end-of-year holidays but received no agreements to meet in December. The aide identified one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), who had met with Hegseth but is not a member of the Armed Services Committee.
“Despite a poor response rate and multiple communications attacking the nominee before these Senators have even met with him (and going outside standard hearing procedures to make these requests), Mr. Hegseth is doing his level best to meet with as many Democrat Senators as he can before and after his hearing,” the Trump transition official said via email.
So you can imagine my delight when my hero, President-elect Trump, gave a news conference Tuesday and strongly addressed those crucial subjects, along with other things that matter deeply to REAL AMERICANS like me, including shower water pressure and making Canada part of the United States.
I voted for Trump for 1 reason: American invasion of Greenland
President-elect Donald Trump makes remarks at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 7, 2025.
Refusing to rule out using the military to take control of Greenland, Trump, who I voted for because I knew he would keep us out of wars, said: “Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes. … People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it. But if they do, they should give it up.”
YES! I was predominantly a one-issue voter, and that issue was the exorbitant cost of seal meat. By threatening our ally Denmark and using military force if necessary, the Trump administration can proudly claim Greenland as a U.S. territory, dramatically lowering the cost of seal meat for American consumers like myself. That will allow me and my fellow MAGA supporters to affordably make Suaasat, a Greenlandic soup, AS IS OUR RIGHT AS AMERICANS!
Some voters were concerned about egg prices. TRUE PATRIOTS were concerned about seal-meat prices.
And Trump is on the case.
I am very worried about the name ‘Gulf of Mexico’
The soon-to-be president also announced a change that has been talked about for years in the rural diners I frequent with my fellow forgotten American men and women.
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump said. “Gulf of America – what a beautiful name.”
President-elect Donald Trump announces the Gulf of Mexico will get a new name: the Gulf of America.
SO BEAUTIFUL! And also, so directly impactful on the quality of my day-to-day life.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to miss work because I was feeling down about having to give Mexico credit for that 218,0000-square-mile, semienclosed oceanic basin that I know was BUILT BY AMERICANS.
America for sure owns the Gulf of AMERICA, people!
As Trump said Tuesday: “We’re going to change, because we do most of the work there, and it’s ours.”
Finally, a president who hates windmills as much as I do
The greatest president in history, speaking from his Mar-a-Lago resort, went on to bless us with this: “We’re going to try and have a policy where no windmills are being built.”
Praise the Lord! I know some in the MAGA community are more concerned about the economy, immigration and making life terrible for transgender people, but many of us picked Trump again because we abso-freakin’-lutely despise windmills.
See Don Quixote’s La Mancha
They are distracting and can easily be mistaken for giants, leading innocent Americans to tilt at them like the late, great Don Quixote used to do. (Hopefully, Trump will also soon announce that Don Quixote will be renamed “Don America.”)
MAGA voters wanted a president unafraid of Big Shower
Trump also addressed America’s shower-water-pressure crisis, saying: “When you buy a faucet, no water comes out because they want to preserve, even in areas that have so much water you don’t know what to do, it’s called rain, it comes down from heaven. … No water comes out of the shower. It goes drip, drip, drip.”
Finally, we will have a president with the meteorological knowledge to identify that rain correctly comes from heaven. This is clearly the man best suited to handle America’s nuclear codes.
Sure, Canadians will welcome us taking control of their country
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Trump says he’s going to imprison and then deport millions of brown-skinned immigrants. He’s going after the wrong people.
It seems that ever time a Republican goes on one of the national political TV shows, they make sure to get in the lie that “Joe Biden opened the southern border wide open,” or toss in a reference to “Biden’s open borders.”
It is, of course, a viscious lie — but one that’s almost never called out by the hosts because it’s peripheral or tangential to the topic being discussed. And, as is so often the case, this all started with Reagan (more on that in a moment).
While it’s true that two factors have driven a lot of migration over the past few decades (climate change wiping out farmland, and political dysfunction and gangs caused by the Reagan administration devastating the governments of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala) the latest main driver of would-be immigrants and refugees is the Republican Party itself.
Lacking any actual, substantive economic issues to run on, the GOP decided after Biden’s election in 2021 to fall back on a familiar ploy: scare white people that brown people are coming for them and/or their jobs. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, I remember well how the GOP pitch to white people was that Black people wanted “our” jobs; now it’s brown people from south of the border.
Trump did this in the most crude, vulgar and racist way possible from his first entrance into the Republican primary through the end of his presidency. It frightened enough white voters that it got him into office once, and the GOP repeated that trick last November.
In doing so, they’re playing with fire. Their daily lies about American policies for the past four years are causing people to put their lives in danger.
The truth is that Joe Biden never “opened” our southern border.
“Open borders” have never been his policy or the Democratic Party’s policy or, indeed, the policy of any elected Democrat or Democratic strategist in modern American history.
Everybody understands and agrees that for a country to function it must regulate immigration, and it’s borders must have a reasonable level of integrity.
Republicans are playing a very dangerous game here. By loudly proclaiming their lie that Biden had “opened” the southern border and was “welcoming” immigrants and refugees “with open arms,” they created the very problem they’re pointing to.
Republican lies like this don’t stay in the United States.
As they get repeated through our media, even when most Americans realize they’re simply wild exaggerations (at the most charitable), the media of other countries are happy to pick up the story and spread it across Mexico and Central America.
This, in turn, encourages the desperate, the poor, and the ambitious to head north or send their teenage children northward in hopes for a better life. Meanwhile, criminal cartels have jumped into the human trafficking business in a big way, exploiting and aggressively repeating the GOP rhetoric to recruit new “customers.”
I lived and worked in Germany for a year, and it took me months to get a work-permit from that government to do so. I worked in Australia, and the process of getting that work-permit took a couple of months.
In both cases, it was my employers who were most worried about my successfully getting the work permits and did most of the work to make it happen. There’s an important reason for that.
The way that most countries prevent undocumented immigrants from disrupting their economies and causing cheap labor competition with their citizens is by putting employers in jail when they hire people who don’t have the right to work in that country.
We used to do this in the United States.
In the 1920s, the US began regulating immigration and similarly put into place laws regulating who could legally work in this country and who couldn’t.
Because there was so much demand for low-wage immigrant labor in the food belt of California during harvest season, President Dwight Eisenhower experimented with a program in the 1950s that granted season-long passes to workers from Mexico. Millions took him up on it, but his Bracero program failed because employers controlled the permits, and far too many used that control to threaten people who objected to having their wages stolen or refused to tolerate physical or sexual abuse.
A similar dynamic is at work today. Employers and even neighbors extract free labor or other favors of all sorts from undocumented immigrants in the United States, using the threat of deportation and the violence of ICE as a cudgel. Undocumented immigrants working here end up afraid to call the police when they’re the victims of, or witnesses to crimes.
Everybody loses except the employers, who have a cheap, pliable, easily-threatened source of labor that is afraid to talk back or report abuses.
It got this way in 1986, when Ronald Reagan decided to stop enforcing the laws against wealthy white employers hiring undocumented people, and directed the government’s enforcement activities instead toward the least powerful and able to defend themselves: brown-skinned immigrants.
The result has been a labor market in the US that’s been distorted by undocumented workers creating a black-market for low-wage labor that many of America’s largest corporations enthusiastically support.
For example, prior to the Reagan administration two of the most heavily unionized industries in America were construction and meatpacking. These were tough jobs, but in both cases provided people who just had a high school education with a solid entry card into the American Dream. They were well-paid jobs that allowed construction and meatpacking workers to buy a home, take vacations, raise their kids and live a good, middle-class life with a pension for retirement.
Reagan and his Republican allies, with healthy campaign donations from both industries, wrote the 1986 Immigration Reform Act to make it harder to prosecute employers who invited undocumented workers into their workplaces.
“[T]he bill’s sponsors ended up watering down the sanctions on employers to attract support from the business community, explains Wayne Cornelius of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at U.C. San Diego. ‘The end result was that they essentially gutted the employer sanctions,’ he says.”
So Reagan stopped enforcing our labor and immigration laws with respect to wealthy white employers, and the next 20 years saw a collapse of American citizens working in both the meatpacking and construction industries, among others.
Forty-dollar-an-hour American-citizen unionized workers were replaced with seven-dollar-an-hour undocumented workers desperate for a chance at a life in America for themselves and their children.
From the Republican point of view, an added bonus was that levels of unionization in both industries utterly collapsed. Reagan succeeded in transforming the American workplace, and set up decades of potential anti-Latino hysteria that Republicans could use as a political wedge.
Without acknowledging that it was Reagan himself who set up the “crisis,” Republicans today hold serious-sounding conferences and press availabilities about how “illegals” are “trying to steal Americans jobs!” They’re all over rightwing hate radio and in the conservative media on a near-daily basis.
But it’s not poor people coming here in search of safety or a better life who are impacting our labor markets (and, frankly, it’s a small impact): it’s the companies that hire them.
And those same companies then funded Republican politicians who pushed under-the-radar social media ads at African Americans in 2016 and the last election saying that Democrats wanted Hispanic “illegals” to come in to take their jobs.
America, it turns out, doesn’t have an “illegal immigrant” problem: we have an “illegal employer” problem.
“Black lawmakers accused Republicans on Tuesday of trying to ‘manufacture tension’ between African-Americans and immigrants as GOP House members argued in a hearing that more minorities would be working were it not for illegal immigration.”
Tossing even more gasoline on the flame they, themselves, lit, Republicans are now amplifying the warnings and “danger” of undocumented immigrants by pulling out the Bush/Cheney “terrorist” card along with Trump’s “diseased rapist criminals” and “they want to take your job” tropes.
Because the GOP has been playing these kinds of racist, xenophobic games with immigration since the Reagan era, our immigration and refugee systems are a total mess. Trump additionally did everything he could to take an axe to anything that wasn’t a jail or a cage…and turned those jail cells into sweet little profit centers for his private-prison donor corporations.
America needs comprehensive immigration reform and a rational immigration policy that’s grounded in both compassion and enlightened economic self-interest. We need an honest debate around it, stripped of the GOP’s racial dog-whistles. And our media needs to stop taking GOP lies about immigration and the southern border at face value.
Americans — and people who want to become Americans out of hope or desperation — deserve better. And throwing some of these rich white employers in jail instead of terrified immigrants would be a good start.
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Washington Post Cartoonist Ann Telnaes Quits After Bezos-Owned Paper Kills Trump Satire Piece
Tess Patton – January 3, 2025
Washington Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit after a satirical cartoon, which poked fun at the paper’s owner Jeff Bezos and other media and tech giants bending the knee to President-elect Donald Trump, was killed.
The Pulitzer Prize winner shared her decision in a Substack post Friday.
“I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now,” she said.
Telnaes had worked at the Washington Post since 2008. She described the political cartoon that did not get published, saying it “criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.”
The Washington Post did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
The cartoon included Facebook and Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong, the “Walt Disney Company/ABC News” depicted as Mickey Mouse and Washington Post owner Bezos. A rough draft of the scrapped cartoon can be seen below.
A rough draft of Ann Telnaes’ scrapped cartoon (Credit: Ann Telnaes/Substack)
Telnaes criticized Bezos for his handling of the Washington Post in the months leading up to Trump’s election and those to follow. The paper did not endorse a presidential candidate in 2024 for the first time in decades, leading to three editorial board member resignations and widespread canceled subscriptions.
“Owners of such press organizations are responsible for safeguarding that free press— and trying to get in the good graces of an autocrat-in-waiting will only result in undermining that free press,” the cartoonist said of her former boss.
“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post,” she said. “I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’”
Here are the top 10 California employers who hired H-1B visa workers in 2024
Jason Hidalgo and James Ward – January 3, 2025
The H-1B visa program for skilled foreign workers is in the spotlight nationwide after causing a split among President-elect Donald Trump’s supporters.
The visa program is fueling a debate within the conservative MAGA faction even before Trump takes office for a second time, pitting H-1B supporters such as Elon Musk on one side against H-1B critics like Steve Bannon on the opposing side.
At the crux of the issue is immigration.
Immigration is one of the key cornerstones of Trump’s agenda — which includes pushing for a border wall between the United States and Mexico — and remains a focus for the Republican leader as he gets ready for another term as U.S. president.
That leads to a question: How many H-1B workers were hired in California last year?
Here’s what you need to know about the H-1B program both nationwide and in California.
Who were the top California employers for new H-1B visa workers in 2024?
In California, the H-1B program was used to hire just more than 78,000 workers in 2024, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency.
https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/21015878/embed
Most 2024 H-1B recipients were in the tech industry, with Silicon Valley powerhouses Google, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), and Apple leading the hires.
Since 2009, California has had the highest number H-1B recipients of any state, with just over 1 million workers, driven by the tech industry.
https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/21016359/embed
Since 2009, India-based IT services company HCL has led all California employers with just over 41,000 H-1B recipients, followed by Google with just over 40,000. The other leading H-1B-hiring companies include Silicon Valley-based companies Google, Apple and Meta.
Tesla’s Deadly Trump Tower Cybertruck Explosion in Vegas Mocked as ‘Perfect Metaphor’ for 2025
Benjamin Lindsay – January 1, 2025
Chaos erupted outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday after a Cybertruck, Tesla’s popular-but-maligned electric pickup truck model, exploded into flames. The New Year’s Day event killed one and injured an additional seven, according to authorities.
CEO Elon Musk responded Wednesday on X, writing that after the “whole Tesla senior team” investigated the matter, they’d “confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself.”
“All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion,” he said.
And while there’s apparent reason for concern over the event, the tragedy also garnered a fair amount of ridicule and mockery on X, the social media platform Musk owns.
Many users expressed that it’s a “perfect metaphor” for what’s in store for 2025 under President-elect Donald Trump and Musk leading his DOGE advisory board.
“A real photo and perfect metaphor heading into 2025,” MeidasTouch News editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski wrote.
“Have you seen the footage? Looks like it deliberately blown up,” responded another. “If it was, you’re probably spot on, just not in the way you thought.”
In a Wednesday morning press conference, Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shared that the police were informed of an apparent explosion at 8:40 a.m. local time, detailing that at the time of the event, a 2024 Tesla Cybertruck “pulled up to the last entrance doors of the hotel” before exploding, killing one person inside.
“We saw that smoke started showing from the vehicle, and then a large explosion from the truck occurs,” McMahill said.
McMahill additionally drew comparison’s to Wednesday morning’s vehicular terrorist attack in New Orleans, saying that investigators are “very well aware of what has happened” there.
“As you can imagine, with an explosion here on an iconic Las Vegas Boulevard, we are taking all of the precautions that we need to take to keep our community safe,” he said. Police had also determined at that time that there did not appear to be any additional public safety threats.
“Earlier today, a reported electric vehicle fire occurred in the porte cochère of Trump Las Vegas,” Eric Trump, a Trump Organization leader and the President-elect’s son, wrote on X, a message later echoed by the hotel’s official account. “The safety and well-being of our guests and staff remain our top priority.”
And while the news circulated into Wednesday afternoon as more detail emerged of the cause and nature of the explosion — along with surveillance video that appears to the vehicle exploding (watch that below) — many took to social media to confess that no matter the cause, the optics of Trump- and Musk-world literally burning didn’t bode well for the upcoming presidency.
A Tesla Cybertruck in flames in front of Trump Tower Vegas?
Melanie D’Arrigo: If you were going to choose a metaphor for our current state of politics, a Tesla Cybertruck exploding and burning in front of a Trump Tower in a city where millions of Americans go each year to lose their money, is pretty spot on.
You couldn’t script a better metaphor.
A fire-prone status symbol of excess parked outside the shrine to grift and failed promises—it’s almost poetic.
Why brain rot and bed rotting aren’t all bad — and the reasons why Gen Z and millennials are so drawn to this form of escape
Elena Sheppard – December 30, 2024
Why people – particularly Gen Z-ers and millennials — are so drawn to “rotting.” (Getty Creative)
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways
Oxford University Press’s word of 2024 was “brain rot.” The year also gave us a flurry of TikToks documenting “bed rotting.” What’s with all this rotting — and is it a trend we should be taking into 2025?
But first: What do these terms, generally used by Gen Z-ers and millennials, even mean?
“‘Brain rotting’ typically refers to the idea of engaging in mindless content consumption, like scrolling social media or binge-watching TV shows, which over time, feels like numbing or dulling your brain,” explains mental health therapist Brittany Cilento Kopycienski, who owns Glow Counseling Solutions. “‘Bed rotting’ involves spending excessive time lying in bed, contributing to physical and mental stagnation.”
Both activities, it seems, are about checking out of whatever your reality is at the moment — and checking into the often good feeling of doing nothing. Is that good for our mental health? Here’s what experts say.
Why are we so drawn to ‘rotting’?
“Let’s face it—bed rotting or brain rotting is not a style of lazy living. It’s about escape,” psychologist Caitlin Slavens tells Yahoo Life. “The world is noisy, chaotic and often overwhelming. ‘Rotting’ is like pressing a giant snooze button on life. When you’re inundated with expectations (of work, family or even yourself), shutting down might seem your only option.”
She adds, “These trends are a response to a world that’s made us feel like we must be performing in every moment of our lives — for work, for social media, for each other’s expectations. The rise of rotting says we’re burnt out, together.”
That may be especially true for younger adults. “Our brains are experiencing unprecedented levels of stimulation through constant notifications, social media and digital engagement,” Sophia Spencer, a social psychology and mental health therapist, tells Yahoo Life. “For Gen Z and millennials in particular, they are the first generations to live like this from a young age and for this to be their norm. Essentially, their brains are subject to a level of information that was once unthinkable, and not what our brains are designed for.”
But others argue that this urge to disassociate from life isn’t new, but rather something past generations have also felt as they settle into adulthood.
“Do you remember the ‘adulting’ movement?” Slavens points out. “People began to celebrate even the most basic life tasks, like doing laundry or paying bills, as if they were a win in a world so large it felt overwhelming. Or hygge — the Scandinavian midcentury concept of warm living — where we all collectively agreed that it was candles and blankets we needed to feel better when burned out. “All of these trends speak to the same need: to ease up, to take a breath, to feel fine about not doing it all.”
Is rotting a bad thing?
It really depends on the intention behind it — and how much time is being spent staring at screens in lieu of actually resting. Many people see bed rotting as a particular form of self-care: a day spent in bed, with a sole focus on recharging. “Our brains are not meant to be on overdrive all the time. Intentional breaks, time away from screens and the permission to veg out can be restorative,” says Slavens. “The issue is when rotting turns into avoidance, when we’re evading responsibilities or feelings we’re afraid to confront. So yes, a little rotting? Great. Full-blown decay? Probably not ideal.”
As for “brain rot,” who among us hasn’t mindlessly scrolled on our phone? “‘Rotting’ in moderation can be seen as a chance to mentally reset,” says Kopycienski. “It can allow for a break from constant stimulation where emotional recovery can occur.”
How do we move forward?
Thinking all this rotting through, the long and short of it seems to be that it’s about burnout. And burnout isn’t best handled by festering, or rotting; it’s best handled via intentional rest, experts say.
“The best thing we can do is redefine what rest looks like in a digital age,” says Spencer. “Rather than reactively rotting, [we should be] having a system of proactive healthy habits.” That might involve proactively setting better work-life boundaries, scaling back our commitments or being less online to minimize burnout in the first place. Spencer doesn’t rule out more radical change.
“When our ancestors went through significant social change, such as during the Industrial Revolution, people moved from agricultural rhythms that followed daylight to the factory 9–5 schedule,” she notes. “I think we need to take the digital age as a significant change to our life … and adapt our lives ourselves as appropriate.”
Ex-GOP Lawmaker Predicts What Trump’s Going To Start Doing On Day 1
Former Rep. David Jolly said it may start happening as early on as during the president-elect’s inauguration speech.
By Josephine Harvey – Dec 30, 2024
Donald Trump is going to start revising history to suit himself as soon as he takes office, former Rep. David Jolly (Fla.) predicted over the weekend.
“I think one of the things Donald Trump wants to do this term, starting on day one, is rewrite history,” Jolly, who served as a Republican in Congress but later renounced his affiliation with the GOP, told MSNBC’s Alex Witt. “We’re going to see it on COVID, having RFK Jr. there. We’re going to see it on Russia, having Tulsi Gabbard there. We’re going to see it with a lot of the prosecutions by having Kash Patel there, should these people get confirmed.”
Jolly was referring to Trump’s picks for health secretary, national intelligence director and FBI director respectively. Critics have sounded the alarm over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine skepticism, Gabbard’s sympathetic views toward Russia, and Patel’s fondness for dangerous conspiracy theories and his fixation on Trump’s supposed enemies.
“I think we’re also going to see a retelling of January 6,” Jolly went on. “And the question is, does that start with his inauguration speech? Or is it something that happens by way of pardons? Or is it a prosecution — an attempted prosecution — of Liz Cheney?”
“I do think Donald Trump wants to rewrite history,” he concluded. “And to do that, he’s going to force upon the American people a narrative that largely is untrue, but that he hopes, with conservative media’s influence, he can win out with.”
Trump has vowed to pardon people convicted for participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Trump’s favor.
Even though the majority of those serving substantial prison time committed violent crimes, including assaulting law enforcement officers, the president-elect has referred to them as “peaceful January 6 protesters” and “hostages” who were unfairly prosecuted.
He’s also made threatening comments about former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), warning that she “could be in a lot of trouble” for serving on the House panel that investigated the attack. He’s said that he believes members of the panel “should go to jail.”
Trump has a penchant for revisionist history, with a pattern of walking back promises, deflecting blame for his failures and dubiously taking credit for successes. He pledged during his 2024 campaign to reduce the prices of “everything,” but has already admitted since his victory that it’s “hard to bring things down once they’re up.”
If we’re being honest, no year has been a great year for human decency since whatever it is that evolved into us emerged from the primordial ooze. Humans aren’t great at basic decency, and I assume it didn’t take long for the earliest iteration of a human being to do something obnoxious.
Still, 2024 was suboptimal.
2024 marked by Trump, hateful rhetoric, loony conspiracy theories
A nutball who thinks vaccines, one of the greatest achievements in medical history, are bad and we should all fight diseases by drinking bacteria-laden raw milk got hoisted up as a person who should oversee the nation’s health.
President-elect Donald Trump addresses the conservative AmericaFest conference on Dec. 22, 2024, in Phoenix.
School shootings continue unabated ‒ and don’t forget the wars
School shootings kept happening and politicians continued to do quite literally nothing to stop them. Wars continued war-ing, with little global regard for the loss of innocents, a fact that should shock the collective human conscience, assuming it has one.
I’m not so sure it does. As already stated above, decency isn’t really our thing.
But here at home, you’ll note, much of the indecency stemmed from one particularly indecent character. A man who has managed to melt brains preheated by reality television and, for the past decade, make himself the center of our political universe.
Trump is irredeemable, and he brings out the worst Americans have to offer
Protesters against former President Donald Trump rally on the National Mall on Oct. 2, 2024, in Washington, D.C.
Trump is a golden calf and an amalgam of the worst in all of us. His prevalence in American life and his pending return to the presidency have normalized those worst tendencies. He has given comfort to white nationalists and insurrectionists and antisemites, and embraced cruel dictators. The basic things any parent would teach their child not to do ‒ lie, bully, brag ‒ are Trump’s calling cards.
I don’t want or need to hear another argument about him being a tough leader or the best choice for president or someone who appeals to “regular Americans,” whatever that means. Nothing justifies him. Nothing.
He is now and will forever be a stain on American history, a man whose narcissism and lust for power and money led him to sacrifice American decency at an altar he built to honor himself.
How the country does under his upcoming leadership is irrelevant. The moral cost of getting there has already been too steep.
If you thought 2024 was bad for American decency, just wait
Trump is certainly not to blame for all the ills in America ‒ not even close. We’ve been a flawed nation, replete with scoundrels, for some time.
But Trump has, singlehandedly and without question, made this country more cruel, more dishonest and more willing to believe immoral behavior can take you places.
He erodes our decency by example.
2024 was a bad year for America’s sense of right and wrong.
