4 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
Skip to main content

Politics Archive

Archives for December 2025

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
The House is moving forward with kids online safety more quickly than expected.

A key committee scheduled a markup of 18 bills, including the revised Kids Online Safety Act, for Thursday. That’s just over a week since holding a hearing to first consider the package. After killing KOSA last year, the House may be trying to leave its mark before the holiday break.

Both sides of the aisle hate the AI moratorium

It’s the one of the few things Republicans and Democrats can agree on right now.

Tina Nguyen
Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
The art of the deal.

As Ted Sarandos and David Ellison play out a public spat over whose turn it is to play with Warner Bros., while trying to impress Trump and the regulators along the way, just remember that the real winners at the end will be HBO Max subscribers.

sam flynn:

It’s really fun how we all get to sit around and watch these idiots toss gold bars back and forth across Trump’s desk while waiting to see if an HBO Max subscription will be $80 or $100 a month this time next year.

Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Trump AI EO.

There’s some kind of news coming from the White House this week about AI regulations, after a post from the president to Truth Social saying, “You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something. THAT WILL NEVER WORK!”

Trump post on Truth Social: “There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI. We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS. THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT ABOUT THIS! AI WILL BE DESTROYED IN ITS INFANCY! I will be doing a ONE RULE Executive Order this week. You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something. THAT WILL NEVER WORK!”
Screenshot: Truth Social
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Nvidia may soon be able to sell its powerful H200 chips in China.

The White House is planning to give Nvidia the green light to begin exporting its H200 AI GPU chips to China, according to reports from Semafor and the WSJ. As noted by the WSJ, the H200 chip is more powerful than the scaled-down H20 GPU that China has cracked down on, but it still doesn’t rival Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
Congress includes funding to go after cybercriminals in year-end bill.

Draft text of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes funding through 2028 for the Protect Our Children Act. The 2008 bill created a nationwide task force of law enforcement agencies skilled in investigating crimes against children facilitated by the internet. Tech industry group NetChoice applauded the provision.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
SCOTUS weighs rubber stamping Trump’s firing of a consumer protection official.

The court is hearing arguments in a case where it could overturn decades of precedent over the president’s firing of a Federal Trade Commissioner. While conservative justices worry about letting Congress’ authority run wild, liberal justices like Elena Kagan warn of creating “a president with control over everything.”

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Trump isn’t sold on the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal.

Despite Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ efforts to woo the president last month, Trump said on Sunday that plans to combine the streamer with Warner Bros. “could be a problem.” Trump said that Netflix already has a “very big market share,” which will “go up by a lot” if the $83 billion buyout goes ahead.

Mia Sato
Mia Sato
Sabrina Carpenter has ratioed the White House.

After the Trump administration used Carpenter’s song “Juno” in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) propaganda video, the pop star responded, calling it “evil and disgusting.” The White House account has since deleted the post — but they’ve picked this fight with musicians before.

Sabrina Carpenter’s tweet reading: “this video is evil and disgusting. do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.” The original post from The White House has been deleted.
Elissa Welle
Elissa Welle
RFK Jr.‘s vaccine committee says hepatitis B shot can wait.

On Friday, the handpicked CDC advisory group, containing several known vaccine critics, scrapped the three-decade-old recommendation to vaccinate all babies for hepatitis B at birth, instead delaying the recommended schedule to 2 months, if at all, for babies whose mothers test negative for the disease.

That’s a bad idea, according to medical groups and public health experts, and likely to lead to a rise in hepatitis B cases.