US civic health rating downgraded after year of ‘restrictive‘ Trump actions | First Thing

2025-12-09 12:59

Good morning.

A coalition of global civil society organizations has downgraded the civic health rating of the US from “narrowed” to “obstructed”.

In a report released today, Civicus, a nonprofit that monitors civic freedoms in 198 countries, placed the US in its “obstructed” category. The group cited a “sharp deterioration of fundamental freedoms in the country … following a year of sweeping executive actions, restrictive laws and aggressive crackdowns on free speech and dissent”.

The shift comes just months after Civicus’s July assessment, which rated the US as “narrowed” – one step above “obstructed”. Civicus assigns each country a score based on civic space conditions, using five classifications: “open”, “narrowed”, “obstructed”, “repressed” and “closed”.

European leaders rallied behind Volodymyr Zelenskyy last night amid hopes they could finally achieve a breakthrough to allow Ukraine access to billions of pounds of frozen Russian assets.

Despite vociferous support for the Ukrainian president, who has come under heavy pressure from Donald Trump to cede territory in order to bring the war to a speedy end, there was still no agreement on the thorny question of turning immobilised assets into a loan for Kyiv.

But Downing Street said “positive progress” was made on the issue during crisis talks hosted in Downing Street with Zelenskyy, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz.

The “yellow line” that divides Gaza under Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan is a “new border” for Israel, the country’s military chief told soldiers deployed in the territory.

The chief of the general staff, Eyal Zamir, said Israel would hold on to its current military positions. These give Israel control of more than half of Gaza, including most agricultural land and the border crossing with Egypt.

“The ‘yellow line’ is a new border line, serving as a forward defensive line for our communities and a line of operational activity,” Zamir said during a visit to meet Israeli reservists in northern Gaza, where he also visited the ruins of the Palestinian towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya.

Roughly 600 survivors of the clergy molestation scandal that drove the New Orleans Catholic archdiocese into bankruptcy have secured the opportunity to collectively be paid $305m after attorneys for the victims and the church’s largest insurer struck a deal yesterday, according to some of the lawyers.

Perhaps it’s the feeling of end times in the air: after years of inactivity, spoofs are making a comeback. The latest of these goofy parodies is Fackham Hall, a Downton Abbey spoof which has some decent and often smart gags and benefits from a game cast including Damian Lewis and Thomasin McKenzie. Fackham Hall is out in US cinemas now.

When Hurricane Irma exposed deep dysfunction in the British Virgin Islands in 2017, tensions grew between the then governor, Gus Jaspert, and new premier Andrew Fahie, whose push for armed security hinted at darker forces at play. Years later, Fahie’s arrest in a US DEA sting for cocaine trafficking confirmed how far drug traffickers had penetrated the territory’s politics.

The unsustainable production of food and fossil fuels causes $5bn of environmental damage an hour, according to a major UN report. The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report, which is produced by 200 researchers for the UN environment programme, said the climate crisis, destruction of nature and pollution could no longer be seen as simply environmental crises.

Though researchers have found that as many as 8% of male sheep are “male-oriented”, homosexuality is viewed disfavorably by most farmers, who expect rams to perform a breeding function. Rams who refuse to breed are often slaughtered for meat. When farmer Michael Stücke discussed this harsh reality with his friend and business partner Nadia Leytes, the idea for Rainbow Wool was born. The wool was used for designer Michael Schmidt’s recent 36-piece collection, which took over a New York catwalk last month.

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