Author: rpnadmin

Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day. Today’s top stories President Trump insisted that the U.S. is poised for an economic boom during a prime-time address to the nation yesterday. He said that high prices are decreasing and attributed many of the country’s problems to his predecessors and immigrants. This message comes as Trump’s rating on the economy is historically low, and high prices remain a top concern, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. President Trump…

Politics / December 18, 2025 In an exclusive interview with The Nation, the mayor-elect goes behind the scenes of his meeting with the president and talks about some of his political heroes. Ad Policy Zohran Mamdani speaks to members of the media on December 17, 2025.(Spencer Platt / Getty Images) Zohran Mamdani won’t become New York City’s mayor until January 1, but there is already immense pressure on him to achieve great things. Yet the 34-year-old democratic socialist, who will be the city’s youngest mayor since Hugh John Grant served in the late 19th century, shows few signs of being…

Liz Goggin (left), a licensed clinical social worker, and Mahri Stainnak both served in the federal government for more than a decade. In 2025, Goggin quit her job, while Stainnak was fired. Maansi Srivastava and Tristan Spinski for NPR hide caption toggle caption Maansi Srivastava and Tristan Spinski for NPR Liz Goggin recently had an encounter that reminded her of why she once cherished being a federal employee. She had taken her kids out for ice cream and stopped to chat with a man who was blowing balloons and selling them for a couple of bucks. She quickly learned he…

Over the past year you’ve read Nation writers like Elie Mystal, Kaveh Akbar, John Nichols, Joan Walsh, Bryce Covert, Dave Zirin, Jeet Heer, Michael T. Klare, Katha Pollitt, Amy Littlefield, Gregg Gonsalves, and Sasha Abramsky take on the Trump family’s corruption, set the record straight about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s catastrophic Make America Healthy Again movement, survey the fallout and human cost of the DOGE wrecking ball, anticipate the Supreme Court’s dangerous antidemocratic rulings, and amplify successful tactics of resistance on the streets and in Congress. We publish these stories because when members of our communities are being abducted, household…

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino speaks during a news conference on an arrest of a suspect in the January 6th pipe bomb case at the Department of Justice on Dec. 4, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Andrew Harnik/Getty Images FBI deputy director Dan Bongino said Wednesday he plans to step down from the bureau in January. In a statement posted on X, Bongino thanked President Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel “for the opportunity to serve with purpose.” Bongino was an unusual pick for the No. 2 post at the FBI, a critical…

Politics / Obituary / December 17, 2025 With the death of Norman Podhoretz at 95, the transition from New York’s intellectual golden age to the age of grievance and provocation is complete. Ad Policy Norman Podhoretz.(Jon Naso / NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images) Postwar Manhattan hosted a tight-knit, disputatious intellectual culture shaped heavily by the sons (and occasionally the daughters) of shtetl-born immigrants. Applying talmudic rigor to secular debates about literature and foreign affairs, they published little magazines whose ideas spread directly from their pages to the highest political offices. While traces of that culture remain—The New York…

Members of the National Guard patrol along Constitution Ave. on December 01, 2025 in Washington, DC. Heather Diehl/Getty Images North America hide caption toggle caption Heather Diehl/Getty Images North America National Guard troops can remain in Washington, D.C. while a panel of judges examines whether the deployment ordered by President Trump is legal, according to a Federal Appeals Court for Washington, D.C. ruling. More than 2,000 troops have been deployed in the city since August, both from the District and at least 11 Republican-led states. Hundreds more were added after a targeted attack on National Guard troops killed one and…

Politics / December 17, 2025 Trump’s chief of staff admits he’s lying about Venezuela—and a lot of other things. Ad Policy Susie Wiles and Donald Trump in the Oval Office on February 4, 2025.(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images) Since September 2, the Trump administration has been bombing boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans on the pretext of combating drug trafficking. This was always a flimsy justification, but we can now confidently say that it was a flat lie. That’s thanks to the testimony of one of Trump’s top aides, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, which has been…

The U.S. Capitol is seen during a procedural vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July in Washington, DC. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images More than a tenth of the current Congress has now indicated they will not return to their seats after the 2026 midterms, driven by redistricting, retirements and lawmakers running for different offices. According to NPR’s Congressional retirement tracker, as of Dec. 17, 2025, there are 54 current representatives and Senators who are retiring or running for a different office — 10 senators and 44 House members. They include the…

Books & the Arts / December 17, 2025 How can unions adapt to a new landscape of work? Ad Policy Seattle, Washington, 2022.(Jason Redmond / Getty) This article appears in the January 2026 issue. If you’re looking for a bright spot in today’s political and social gloom, the union idea seems to be it. Organized labor has rarely been more popular: Gallup reports that 68 percent of Americans “approve” of labor unions, while another poll found that almost 90 percent of people under the age of 30 view unions favorably. Just two years ago, the power of these statistics was…