Former President Barack Obama on Monday took a victory lap over the absolute debacle that is Obamacare, the healthcare reform package he championed and signed into law in 2010. Signing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — informally dubbed Obamacare — into law was the one moment from his days in the White House that Obama said gave him goosebumps. “That was a good day,” he said of the bill signing, speaking at an event hosted by Walmart Heiress Olivia Walton on Monday. “And lo and behold, it’s still around.” Indeed, the ACA is still around, though it’s unclear for how much longer. The troubled healthcare system was at the crux of the record-long Democrat-backed government shutdown that started in October. Obamacare subsidies that were tacked on during the COVID pandemic are finally set to expire this month. According to Republicans, they are financially unsustainable, rife with fraud, and paper over massive problems that are spiking premiums for tens of millions of Americans. Democrats, on the other hand, pushed for the subsidies to be extended again, effectively arguing against the expiration date they had chosen. Ryan Long, Senior Research Fellow at the Paragon Health Institute, told The Daily Wire last month that Obamacare is making health insurance more expensive. Obamacare plan premiums have climbed a whopping 169% since 2013, for example. The increase is far steeper than that of employer-sponsored insurance, because when prices rise, the government is paying most of the cost, so insurers can keep raising them without people feeling the impact, Long explained. 50% off DailyWire+ annual memberships will not return for another year, so don’t miss this deal! Join now at DailyWire.com/cyberweek. Additionally, the expansion of Obamacare subsidies has created zero-dollar insurance plans that have sparked widespread fraud and abuse, costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. “There’s upwards of 6 million people who aren’t actually within that income category that are claiming credits as if they were in that income category,” he explained. “In certain states, there are three to four times as many people enrolled in 100 to 150% of poverty in these $0 plans than there are people actually in those income brackets.” “So these COVID credits have just produced massive amounts of fraud,” he said. “The federal government’s paying, you know, upwards of $27 billion to $30 billion in fraudulent payments.” Obama, apparently, has tuned out all of the chatter surrounding the collapse of Obamacare. During his conversation with Walton, the former president said he hasn’t watched cable news in 15 years. President Donald Trump and Republicans are reportedly working on a fix for Obamacare, or may even effectively craft an alternative system. Related: Obamacare Is A Disaster. Could Trump’s Plan Fix It?

A newly published study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that children who were given smartphones before the age of 12 were at a greater risk of developing future issues, including depression, obesity, poor sleep, and more. Researchers noted that the earlier the study participants were given the devices, the more likely they were to develop the adverse effects. Lead study author Dr. Ran Barzilay told ABC News that his motivations for conducting the study were both personal and professional. “I have a nine-year-old who wants a phone, and I think [whether to get them a smartphone] is a question that is relevant for every parent of a kid going into adolescence, even before adolescence,” he told the outlet. “We didn’t even look at what the kids did on the phone,” the child psychiatrist said, per CBS News. “We basically asked one simple question: does the mere factor of having one’s own smartphone at this age range have anything to do with health outcomes?” The study included data collected from 10,500 participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD) between 2018 and 2020. It was noted that 63.6% of the ABCD study participants owned a smartphone, and the median age at which they received the phone was 11 years old. Researchers focused on children aged 9 to 16, seeking to identify health outcomes associated with when they were given a smartphone. The team found that 12-year-olds who had a cell phone had a 1.3 times higher risk of depression, a 1.4 times higher risk of obesity, and a 1.6 times higher risk of insufficient sleep as compared to their peers who did not have phones.  The risk of developing these problems increased by 10% for each year earlier the children were given phones, with some kids being given smartphones as young as 4. Dr. Barzilay said it was “quite surprising” to find that children who had no smartphone at 12 and then got one at 13 also had worse mental health and poorer-quality sleep that year, even after the study controlled for those factors. The study’s conclusion stated, “Smartphone ownership was associated with depression, obesity, and insufficient sleep in early adolescence. Findings provide critical and timely insights that should inform caregivers regarding adolescent smartphone use and, ideally, the development of public policy that protects youth.” The researcher also concluded that his 9-year-old, who wants a phone, is “not getting a phone anytime soon. Clear decision.”

War Secretary Pete Hegseth likely violated Pentagon regulations when he shared details about an attack on Houthi terrorists in Yemen, the Defense Department Inspector General said in a report provided to members of Congress on Tuesday evening. The report, as The Wall Street Journal noted, also stated that Hegseth, as the War Secretary, can declassify any War Department information he chooses — meaning that although regulation states that Hegseth should not have shared sensitive information via the messaging app, Signal, his actions may not rise to the level of a violation of law. The Inspector General’s review began in April after the contents of the Signal chat in question were made public by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who was accidentally added to the group when his contact information was imported through a phone belonging to United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz, who, at the time, was serving as President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser. According to the report, Hegseth received classified information — from a classified message labeled SECRET/NOFORN — about the planned attack on Houthi terrorists from Gen. Erik Kurilla, the CentCom (U.S. Central Command) commander. He then sent some of that information, albeit without the classified designation, via the Signal chat. Hegseth has explained that he made a command decision to share that information in the moment with the group in question. The Inspector General confirmed that Hegseth has the authority to declassify War Department information. Any further inquiry may end there. 50% off DailyWire+ annual memberships will not return for another year, so don’t miss this deal! Join now at DailyWire.com/cyberweek. Several members of Congress who have already read the report have gone public with their reactions — including Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who made headlines in recent weeks when he took part in a video that encouraged members of the United States military to question orders in real time, insinuating that President Trump or War Secretary Hegseth either had or would give unlawful orders. “They very clearly stated he should not be using his cellphone and putting … this kind of information on an unclassified system,” Kelly said. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) pushed back, noting that Democrats had been gunning for Hegseth since before his confirmation hearings and weren’t likely to stop any time soon. “The arc of the story is that it’s just a never ending stream of efforts to undermine Pete Hegseth, right? The whole controversy. So they didn’t get him in the confirmation process? Make a big deal out of this,” he said, referring to the report as a “nothing burger before adding, “So it’s just an ongoing effort. I wouldn’t expect it to end with this, but I think again, the President has faith in Secretary Hegseth. I think he’s doing a great job, and it is what it is.” The unclassified full report, which was delayed in part due to the recent government shutdown, is set to be released to the public on Thursday.

President Trump is now activating Immigration and Customs Enforcement to go after Somali illegal immigrants in Minneapolis. This follows the reports about large-scale Somali welfare fraud, including the attempt by many members of the Somali community to defraud the federal and state governments during the pandemic. A lot of that money ended up going in remittances back to Somalia. On Tuesday, President Trump’s overall take was that the United States needs to radically limit immigration from places like Somalia. That is correct, because not all countries are going to be equally useful as sources of migrants to the United States. The people who come from many of these countries do not have any sort of cultural habits that mesh well with the United States. The president stated that he doesn’t want Somalis in the United States, saying: I hear they ripped off — Somalians — ripped off that state for billions of dollars, billions every year, billions of dollars, and they contribute nothing. The welfare is like 88%. They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you. Somebody will say, ‘that’s not politically correct,’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country’s no good for a reason. When the president says, as a general point, that he does not want Somalis in the country,  that they’re coming from a culture that does not mesh well with the United States, is he wrong about that? As a general rule, is that wrong? On Tuesday, the administration unveiled a new regulation that would prevent immigration applications from citizens of 19 countries already covered by President Trump’s travel bans. Right now, there’s a travel ban that says if you’re coming from Iran, Venezuela, or Haiti, you’re not going to get a travel visa. Now he’s extending that into a pause on all immigration applications from those 19 countries. All of this raises the question as to whether the United States ought to block immigration from third-world countries. According to the Migration Policy Institute, from 2015 to 2019, Somalis, of all sub-Saharan African immigrants, had the lowest levels of educational attainment. Only 14% held a bachelor’s degree or higher. Of all immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, Somali-headed households were the poorest immigrants who came into the United States, and had the lowest median income at $32,000. Somalis in the United States had a 37% poverty rate. Extremely poor, extremely uneducated. Somalis had the highest rates of being uninsured in terms of health insurance: 18%. Somalis had the highest naturalization rate of any of these groups. So they come here extremely poor, extremely uneducated, with a low income and wealth trajectory. And then they get naturalized at a super-high rate because they want to stay, which anyone would want. This is an amazing country. That, however, does not mean we have an obligation to take in everybody. When they do earn money, a huge percentage of that money gets sent back to Somalia. And some of that money goes to terrorist groups like al-Shabaab. This is what President Trump is railing against. You may not like his language. You may think that it’s colorful or purple or whatever, and that’s fine. Anyone can be critiqued for the language that they use. But his general point, that the United States cannot afford to take in waves of extremely poor immigrants who do not cohere with the American system, that we cannot afford to bring in hundreds of thousands of people with actual allegiances to war-torn countries like Somalia, who then take a disproportionate share of our welfare dollars, is true. So when you hear the argument that this is a country of immigrants, well, yes, it is certainly true that this was a country of settlers, and then it was also a country of immigrants. But the kinds of immigrants you take in help define your country, and the systems that they meet here help define your immigrants. The reason so many people have left their home countries over the course of centuries to come to the United States is because the United States was a place that guaranteed opportunity, but it did not guarantee a gigantic welfare system that actively prevented assimilation. We changed our own immigration system. We changed our own incentive structure. And then we were surprised when different people came. The current argument being made is as though we are welcoming people from Eastern Europe or Italy or Ireland or Germany circa 1903, when there were no robust federal welfare systems in the United States. The income tax wasn’t even constitutional at that point. There were no robust welfare systems, even at the state level. There was no real attempt by the government to get involved in propping up people who were wildly poor, to the tune of not having to assimilate or get a job. And so that drew a different kind of person. Yes, it drew people who were desperate, but the people who were desperate recognized that their path forward lay in embracing Anglo-American legal ideas, lay in embracing Biblical values , and embracing and assimilating to American rights and responsibilities, because that was the social safety net. The social safety net was that you join a community, you come here, you join a church, your friends and your family help you out. But then it is your job to learn English. It is your job to go out and get a job. It is your job to put your kids in the local public school and make sure that they get educated the way Americans ought to be educated. That is why the assimilated project in the United States was extremely successful up until the welfare era. And then the welfare era began, and everything changed. And it doesn’t mean that we didn’t have extreme conflict over immigration prior to the welfare system. There was huge controversy over the levels of Chinese and Jewish immigration in the early part of the 20th century, and before that, huge levels of ire over Irish immigration in the 1840s, 1850s. Immigration has always been a real hot point in American politics, because when new people come to a country, the question is, are they going to become part of the system or are they going to tear down the system from within? The great guarantor that people were going to assimilate was the fact that they didn’t have a choice. The incentive structure drove them toward assimilation. It drove them toward participation in the American Dream. And then came the welfare system and an incentive structure that said, “Come here and we give you free stuff; we demand nothing of you; you can do basically whatever you want in terms of employment; you can send all your money back home; you don’t have to actually try to get involved in the Anglo-American project.” And we were surprised when we drew a different type of immigrant? That’s ridiculous. It’s the same thing as saying, “I have a donut shop, and my donut shop is a prestige donut shop. You come in here, you can get the best of the best donuts. We go in the back every morning, and we handcraft our donuts. They’re amazing.” The constituency drawn to that kind of donut shop is going to be of one particular sort of clientele. But then you decide that you’re going to change your policy, and you just hang a sign in the front window that says “free donuts.” Who do you think is going to show up? It’s going to be a very, very different constituency. Pretending otherwise is silly. This is not the fault of the people attempting to come to the United States. This is the fault of our authorities. This is the fault of the elite in our society who claimed that you could change the entire incentive structure, taking people from cultures that have nothing in common with the United States, and somehow those two things could logically coexist within a similar project. It’s ridiculous. And then, of course, if you point this out, you are bigoted or racist. No, it’s not bigoted or racist to say that if people come from a place that does not have anything in common with the United States, and there is no actual incentivization toward assimilation, they’re not going to assimilate.

Gerry McGovern, the chief creative officer behind the disastrous Jaguar rebranding campaign, has reportedly been fired from the company just months after the new CEO took over, as originally reported by U.K.-based outlet Autocar. McGovern was a 20-year veteran of the company and, per the outlet, was the main force behind the failed avant-garde marketing campaign that received mostly negative reviews from consumers. The shakeup comes just months after the car manufacturer appointed Indian national PB Balaji as chief executive officer following the departure of Adrian Mardell. The ad campaign for Jaguar sparked massive criticism online following its November 2024 release. The “Copy Nothing” campaign included a colorful commercial of people dressed in vibrant, outlandish outfits. The characters could be seen grabbing sledgehammers, painting over the camera lens, and striking poses as the music played. One of the chief criticisms from viewers was that the ad did not feature any cars.  Instead, disjointed phrases such as “create exuberant,” “live vivid,” “delete ordinary,” “break molds,” and “copy nothing” appear on the screen. Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to the ad, writing, “Do you sell cars?” The social media account replied to many commenters questioning the ad, saying things like, “The story is unfolding. Stay tuned,” “We’re shifting gears, not our purpose,” and “Consider this the first brushstroke.” The ad was part of a huge brand overhaul, which was described as going in a new EV-only direction. Managing director Rawdon Glover complained about the backlash during an interview with the Financial Times, saying the campaign messaging was drowned out in “a blaze of intolerance” on social media. Glover also claimed that the colorful new ad was not meant to be “woke.” McGovern defended the campaign at the time, saying, “Jaguar has its roots in originality. Sir William Lyons, our founder, believed that ‘a Jaguar should be a copy of nothing.’ Our vision for Jaguar today is informed by this philosophy. New Jaguar is a brand built around Exuberant Modernism.” He continued, “It is imaginative, bold and artistic at every touchpoint. It is unique and fearless. We are creating Jaguar for the future, restoring its status as a brand that enriches the lives of our clients and the Jaguar community.” Jaguar sales in Europe dropped by a whopping 97.5% following the botched rebrand as the car manufacturer transitioned from gasoline-powered vehicles to all-electric.  The company did not immediately reply to The Daily Wire’s request for comment on McGovern’s termination.

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