Quiet quitting. Silent space-out. Faux focus. Call it what you want, a lot of todays workers are going through the motions on the surface while quietly powering down beneath it. Nearly half of Gen Z employees say theyre coasting, and overall U.S. employee engagement sits at a decade low.
When engagement fades, performance becomes performative. But disengagement isnt just a problem to solve, its a signal to heed. Employees arent turning off. Theyre trying to tell us something.
As CEO of SurveyMonkey, Ive witnessed how curiosity can be the cure to the workplace phenomenon resenteeisma state of resentment combined with absenteeismwhich is often fueled by the current economic uncertainty, high-profile layoffs, and the always looming threat of a recession that compels employees to stay in difficult jobs. Here are a few best practices:
When you ask better questions, you reveal truer truths
By asking better questions, you can get to the heart of what employees really need. A few small shifts in your approach to asking can make a big difference.
Ask about feelings and solutions separately. Instead of asking, What do you think about manager-employee communications? Ask, How do you feel about manager-employee communications? Then, separately, What do you think would make it better? Dividing feelings and solutions into two distinct categories enhances understanding of each, providing a better roadmap to real change.
Keep it simple. Avoid double-barreled questions that blur answers. Instead of asking, How satisfied are you with your managers communication and support? Ask two clear questions: one about communication and one about support.
Be receptive to harsh truths. When you ask questions with a genuine interest in the answers, employees will be more likely to open up, share ideas, and re-engage. Asking harder questions often reveals truer answers that get to the heart of the matter faster. Youll hear frustrations, confusion, and even criticism. But discomfort is often where innovation starts. Plan to be uncomfortable, and you wont be disappointed.
Be clear about anonymity. Anonymity can surface more honest feedback, but its not always the best route. Sometimes youll want to follow up on a great idea or recognize the person who shared it. Either way, be transparent about whether feedback is anonymous. People will keep sharing when the ground rules are clear.
Make every day listening second nature
Too often, conventional check-ins like annual reviews and quarterly surveys feel like impersonal boxes to check. Approached clinically, managers are more likely to miss early signs of disengagement. When people feel like their feedback is lost in a dashboard, they stop providing it.
Employees know when feedback requests are performative, and they respond as such. Sincere listening needs to be lighter, faster, and less formal. You can normalize curiosity in small, consistent ways, including:
Ask a simple question at the end of a team meeting: Whats standing in your way today? or What can we improve this week?
Run short, focused pulse surveys that take 60 seconds or less to answer.
Follow up verbally when something needs clarification, rather than using email or Slack.
Share one piece of feedback youve acted on recently.
My team has seen that a five-minute feedback loop can reveal what a 50-question survey misses. Its less about frequency and more about follow-through. When employees see their input lead to action, trust grows, and engagement follows.
Take every comment seriously
Even the tiniest morsel of feedback can spark outsized change. A lone remark can connect teams, bridge silos, and turn passive frustration into active progress.
One of the best examples Ive seen came from a deceptively simple comment in a benefits survey from our Chief People Officers team.
While the overall feedback was positive, one person asked: What about the janitorial staff?
This simple yet powerful question led her team to re-evaluate benefits for the vendor partners who keep our offices running every day. Within months, she expanded health insurance, paid time off, and transportation benefits to all contract employees.
The ripple effect of this change was immediate. Our contractors said they felt more motivated, and regular employees were proud to work for a company that took care of everyone under its roof. That motivation and pride translated into stronger engagement, higher productivity, and a more unified culture.
All of it started with a single comment, taken seriously.
Start small, stay curious
Resenteeism isnt just a blip. Its a signal. If we know how to listen, we can turn that signal into strategy. The key is to start small and stay consistently curious.
Ask one question. If you dont get specific feedback, such as a vague All good! or Its fine!, reframe it: What part of this experience didnt land for you? If its a 9 out of 10, what would make it a 10 out of 10?
You cant reverse disengagement overnight, but you can make incremental progressand progress compounds. Its a philosophy my team and I try to live by: better is better.
What question will you ask today?
Another year, another fresh start. And if you’re like me, that fresh start often comes with the best intentions of getting into shape.
But then reality hits: It’s January, it’s cold, and the idea of leaving the house to brave the gym (and all the other resolution people) is wholly unappealing.
Fear not, fellow homebody. This year, we’re going to conquer those fitness goals from the comfort of our own living rooms. No gym fees, no icy commutes, no waiting in line for a treadmill.
Seven (iOS/Android)
For better or worse, if you have a phone and seven minutes, you no longer have an excuse.
Seven is the heavy hitter in the “micro-workout” space. It focuses on high-intensity interval training (HIIT) circuits that require no equipment other than a chair and a wall.
While the app has a subscription Club for extra variety, the classic Full Body circuit is free and stays true to the original scientific study that started the craze. Its gamified, too, so you earn achievements and lose “lives” if you skip a day.
Down Dog (iOS/Android/Web)
For those looking to find their zen while building strength and flexibility, Down Dog is a revelation.
While it offers premium subscriptions, the free version still provides a fantastic yoga experience. What sets it apart is its dynamic sequencing. Each time you start a practice, it generates a new flow, so you never get bored.
You can customize the length, focus (like hip openers or sun salutations), and even the instructor’s voice. It’s like having a personal yoga teacher on demand.
Nike Training Club (iOS/Android)
If you get bored with the same workouts time and time again, then Nike Training Club is for you.
This free (as in truly free) app is packed with hundreds of workouts, ranging from strength and endurance to yoga and mobility. You can filter by workout type, muscle group, equipment (or lack thereof), and even duration.
Many of the workouts are led by Nike master trainers, providing excellent guidance and motivation. It puts a massive, high-quality fitness library at your fingertips.
Darebee (Web)
My personal favorite, Darebee is a non-profit, completely free resource chock full of thousands of visual workouts that you can print out or follow on your phone.
It offers everything from ever-changing daily exercises to structured 30-day programs. Its a community-run project that proves you dont need a fancy subscription to get results.
If youre looking for a straightforward, easy to follow, self-paced workout hub, this should be your first stop.
If youve already given up on your 2026 rebrand because you couldnt stick to your six gym sessions a week and no-sweet-treats resolutions, adopting a vegan plus bacon mindset may be the answer to all your problems.
TikTok creator @addietheoptimist broke the idea down in a recent video: Someone on here went viral because they said if you think you cant go vegan because you love bacon too much, just become vegan plus bacon, she explained in the now-viral clip.
Im here to tell you you can just apply that mentality to so many things in your life.
While the original creator was referencing harm reduction in relation to veganism (that if you only eat bacon sometimes but are 100% vegan otherwise, its still making a difference), the potential applications of the general concept behind vegan plus bacon are limitless. Dont feel like going to the gym? Rather than not going at all, go and give 10%… eve if that looks like 10 minutes walking on the treadmill, scrolling TikTok.
You dont have to be imprisoned by your own rules, the creator concluded.
The video currently has over two million views, with the comments full of examples of instances where others have unknowingly adopted the vegan plus bacon mentality.
One person quit smoking, but still permits the occasional cigarette while among friends. Another is pescatarian, but allows themselves steak once or twice a year. Others are California sober, when a person gives up on alcohol and hard drugs, but continues to smoke weed.
Perfect is the enemy of done, as one comment read. Anything worth doing 100% is still worth doing at 10%, another suggested.
Perfectionism allows no room for mistakes or occasional slipups. Something has to be perfect, or its not good enough. Whats more, researchers found rates of perfectionism have surged in recent decades, having been a core part of Western culture since the 80s. There could be a number of causes for this, including pressure from school or parentsand today, social media also creates an additional pressure to portray a perfect image online.
But perfectionistic tendencies have been linked to an alarming number of clinical issues, including depression and anxiety, even in children, as well as early mortality and suicide. Meanwhile, one of the most effective protections against anxiety and depression is showing compassion to oneself.
Here, the vegan plus bacon mindset acts as the perfect counter-narrative to a culture unhealthily obsessed with self-improvement. Sometimes good enough is good enough.
And, as I recently read somewhere (i.e., saw on TikTok): such a mindset shift only has to make sense to me, and I dont feel like explaining it to anyone else.
A few weeks ago, my iPhone woke me up at 3:30am.
In a way, it was my fault. Id technically set the alarm for three thirty. In another way, it was Siris fault. Apples AI assistant never thought to question if I was asking for AM or PM. And it simply assumed the most painful option for me.
Its just one of countless tiny examples of how Siri, 16 years since Apple acquired the technology, has been a disappointing product. Siri was already looking dusty before modern LLMs, and with the launch of ChatGPT, it has been completely left behind. Which is why in June 2024, with fans and investors growing impatient, Apple promised a new era of AIApple Intelligence.
But that new intelligence never arrived. Reports of infighting at Apple abound, talent left the company last year as Tim Cook held an emergency all-hands in August promising a bigger focus on AI.
This week we learned the results of that renewed focus. Instead of building a new Siri itself, Apple will license AI from Google, and stick Gemini inside its assistant. Siri will get this more personalized, capable upgrade later this year.
This is a significant announcement. Apple had toyed with third party AI before, most recently via an agreement with OpenAI where users could opt in to have Siri ask ChatGPT a question. But this approach was always a silly stopgap. No one wants a go-between between an incapable chatbot and an all-knowing AI. People remove friction from their workflows. They want to just talk to the AI that knows the stuff.
The agreement with Google eliminates middle men. Specifically, it doesnt just mean Siri might send a question over to Gemini to get an answer. It means that Siri is Gemini. Siris foundational architecture is Googles AI tech.
Apple is Google now.
[Illustration: FC]
Is this a failure for Apple? (No)
Its easy to look at this moment as cementing Apples own failure, as the company underinvested in artificial intelligence for years. But while Im hardly an Apple apologist, Id argue exactly the opposite.
Apple doesnt need to make every part of its products to make those products successful.
Yes, Apple has been designing its own mobile processors, for instance, since 2010. These processors have allowed Apple to push the boundaries of performance while cutting back power consumption. They are a big reason that Apple phones and laptops are so appealing to creative professionals.
But Apple doesnt use manufacturing partners build its own screens, which it buys from LG, Samsung, and BOE Technology. It doesnt make its own RAM, either, which is why so many Apple execs are currently holed up in South Korea, hoping to secure the vital hardware from Samsung as its recently ballooned in price.
Even in this challenging supply chain, Apple simply doesnt need to build anything that it cant build best. Screens and RAM are commodities that Apple can acquire, integrate into their products, and no one will know the difference.
Increasingly, AI is a commodity, too.
Thats one reason that, for Apple, this deal with Google is a steal. While headlines focus on the shocking nature of Google powering Siri, its a fact that, I suspect, most iOS users will forget about in day-to-day use as they encounter more and more touchpoints of Apple Intelligence.
Consider that Google pays Apple more than $20 billion a year to be the default search engine on Safari. Cleary, thats considered a worthwhile investment for Google, to get its search engine front and center on Americas most popular phone brand. But all Apple has to do for those dollars is set up a URL. Theres no significant technological investment on Apples part.
If Apple was training an advanced LLM on its own, it would cost a lot of money now, and even more into the future.
Thats because, on one hand, yes, AI models are increasingly commoditized, and the core science driving them is more widely understood than it was a few years ago. On the other, developing those modelsand specifically, staying on the cutting edge in an industry that feels new every three monthsis still a costly practice thats growing costlier by the day.
According to Bloomberg, Apple is paying Google $1 billion a year for AI. Thats a figure remarkably close to the increasing cost of developing AI. Whereas the ChatGPT 3 of 2020 cost a mere $2 to 4 million to train, the latest generations of LLMs built upon vastly more data (like ChatGPT 4 and the latest Gemini) have cost over $100 million to train apiece, with the vast majority of cost going to computing power. And some rumors point to OpenAIs ChatGPT 5 costing another jump more than what weve seen spent thus farbetween $500 million and $2.5 billion according to analysts.
Meanwhile, Apple is getting the worlds top AI model for a mere 1% of its annual profits. $1 billion is barely a line item for a company with a company boasting approximately $400 billion in annual revenue.
If Apple has done nothing else than lock in a $1 billion rate for the near future, to have a top tier AI service from a proven competitor thats paying 20x that to you for a search referralthen thats a considerable business win. Let the engineers focus on tuning an AI to Apples specifications. Then Apple can focus less on building a competent AI and more on how that AI appears across its products.
Indeed, if we should question anything, its how much Apple can lead the industry, not through AI models, but through the design and manifestation of the AI experience.
What does the Apple mean in Apple Intelligence? Now that its sitting on a solid technological foundation, thats the question Cupertino finally gets to answer in 2026.
Get ready with me as an absolute piece-of-shit ICE agent, one such video begins, posted by comedian Adam Macias. These videos are comedic skits, rather than from the social media accounts of actual ICE agents, but have quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views as the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency faces intense backlash after the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis.
I wake up screaming and shooting. Not because Im scared but because my sleep paralysis demon looks like someones tía, the skit begins (tia is Spanish for aunt). I start the day off with a shower but no matter how hard I try I just cant seem to get clean, it continues.
After doing laundry and eating breakfast, the ICE agent proceeds to have his second shower of the day. Time for some vocal warm ups, he then says. Self defense, self defense, he yells repeatedly whilst staring himself down in the mirror.
Time to go to work, he continues. My commute isnt far because Im literally about to go deport my neighbor.
On Wednesday, January 7, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Good in her car as she was protesting against the agency’s operations in the Twin Cities. The killing sparked widespread backlash and protests, both on and offline, with thousands in attendance at the ICE out of Minnesota rally and march over the weekend.
Wow what a lovely, beautiful day to harass people who are at work, another TikTok creator quips, in a video titled How ICE agents wake up in the morning, viewed almost 3 million times.
I hope I get to beat up a pregnant woman, he says, referencing a recent incident where ICE agents detained a woman who was allegedly pregnant, kneeling on her and dragging her through the snow.
Maybe today Ill get a DUI with my children in the backseat, he added, again referencing a real incident where an ICE agent was arrested for allegedly driving drunk while he had two young children in his vehicle.
Nobody cared who I was until I put on the mask, he concluded the video (a reference from The Dark Knight Rises). Now they just hate me.
Since July, there have been 13 recorded instances of ICE agents firing at or into civilian vehicles, a recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal found. In eight of those instances, civilians were shot, and two confirmed dead. At least five were U.S. citizens.
Whether its in-person demonstrations or posting skits online, Americans arent afraid to make their feelings known. As one comment read: This is actually an official ICE training video.
A political showdown over Greenland, and possibly a military one, is looking increasingly possible as President Donald Trump doubles down on his long-standing threat to take over Denmark’s semiautonomous territory “one way or the other.”
In the wake of the U.S. invasion of Venezuela, Europe’s major military powers are taking Trump’s ramped-up rhetoric with renewed seriousness. And in what appeared to be unthinkable just months ago, the escalating geopolitical conflict could pit the United States against its longtime NATO partnersa troubling sign of the U.S.’s eroding relationships with its closest allies.
Here’s what to know about the situation.
Denmark, Greenland, and U.S. to meet at White House
The U.S. and Denmark, both members of the NATO military alliance, are scheduled, along with Greenland’s foreign minister, to meet on Wednesday at the White House. Both Greenland and Denmark have made it clear that Greenland is not for sale, and their people do not want to be a part of the United States.
Europe, NATO respond to U.S. threat
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen made their position known in a joint press conference on Tuesday: If we have to choose between the USA and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark. We choose NATO . . . and the EU, Nielsen said, according to Danish public broadcaster DR.
A day earlier, Andrius Kubilius, the European commissioner for defense and space, said that if Denmark requested help in the event of U.S. military action, the European Union could provide security for Greenland, which he said would, in effect, end the NATO alliance, per Reuters.
Also on Monday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, “When it comes to the Arctic region . . . collectively as an alliance, the collective defense [of Greenland] is crucial . . . and we do everything to protect that territory.”
Why does Trump want Greenland, anyway?
Trump, for his part, has said taking over Greenland would prevent Russia and China from grabbing the strategically located mineral-rich region in the Arcticwhich has a wealth of natural resources and sits on the shortest route between the U.S. and Europe.
Beijing, however, has argued this explanation is merely “an excuse” for Trump to justify more territorial expansion of the U.S.
Remind me, how did we get here?
Back in March, the Trump administration sent an uninvited delegation to the autonomous Danish territory, which, at the time, Greenlands Prime Minister Mute Egede called highly aggressive and a provocation. That trip included second lady Usha Vance, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
Back in November, Fast Company and Johns Hopkins partnered for the first-ever World Changing Ideas Summit in Washington, DC, an event that convened leaders across business and academia to engage with the ideas and innovations reshaping the future.
Knowing we were heading into a new year that undoubtedly is bringing new challenges to every industry, we asked some of our speakers working in space, healthcare, AI, and the intersections therein, what would be top of mind for them in 2026:
Were in a race against resistance.
Akhila Kosaraju, founder and CEO of Pharebio, is using predictive and generative AI to power drug discovery. The startup plans to develop 15 new antibiotics by 2030 that will outpace microbial resistance and cure common but difficult to treat illnesses such as E. coli and C. diff. For Kosaraju, the biggest challenge is time.
Were in a race against resistance, she says, noting it can take fewer than six years for bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics. Meanwhile, it can take 13 yearsmore than double that timeto develop new medicine.
Phare Bio President and CEO Akhila Kosaraju [Photo: Sardari Group for Johns Hopkins University]
The biggest challenge for us is getting these antibiotics into preclinical and then ultimately clinical development, and FDA approved. I think you’ll hear this across AI for drug discoverythere is an impatience to make sure that these AI models are actually working and that patients actually start seeing those results,” she says. “So our team is laser focused on not just building the best model for its own sake, but really ensuring that we are truly accelerating timelines to get these drugs developed, that these drugs are more novel, less toxic, and more efficacious than what currently exists.
If we don’t have a solution, America’s presence in space will stop.
Saleem Miyan, CEO of Max Space, a company developing new space stations in partnership with the U.S. government and NASA, believes its essential for both American innovation and security to expand the nations presence in spaceespecially given that the International Space Station will be decommissioned in 2030.
That will mean, if we don’t have a solution, America’s presence in space will stopand we don’t want that to happen, Miyan says. As a result of that, we’re putting an awful lot of time, energy, effort, [and] investors capital, to make sure that people understand quite how important being in space is, remaining in space is.
Max Space CEO Saleem Miyan [Photo: Sardari Group for Johns Hopkins University]
And theres no shortage of opportunities for Max Space to capitalize on, Miyan says.
We’re seeing so much attention right now from all governments around the world to get the next space race won, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure that America maintains that position,” he says. “I think in order to do that, we have to make sure that we are continuing to evolve these incredible ideas that companies like ours have developed from the concept all the way through to productization, so that we as a nation maintain this strength and dominance that we’ve always hadnot just in exploration but also in defense.
space is open for innovation.
Were trying to get the message out that space is open for innovation, says Molly Mulligan, Chief Operating Officer of SpaceMD, a subsidiary of Redwire Space. The company, which formed in August 2025, is focused on accelerating drug creation by removing gravity from the growth process of antibody crystals.
“At Space MD, that’s really the goal: to take the science of making better drugs in space and apply that here on Earth to actually make drugs that are commercially available for people, Mulligan says.
SpaceMD Chief Operating Officer Molly Mulligan [Photo: Sardari Group for Johns Hopkins University]
SpaceMDs mission takes inspiration from the success of Keytruda, an immunotherapy drug created by pharmaceutical company Merck whose crystals were grown on the International Space Stationa process they are hoping to replicate in the coming years.
We want to be the company that takes that next drug through the whole process. And we’re working on that today, trying to take a drug from growing the crystals in space all the way through the preclinical process to an investigational new drug form for the FDA,” she says. “So that’s really top of mind for us is being the company that does that with the second drug and the third drug and a fourth drug to help people every day here on earth.”
“patients are waiting for new medicines today.”
Isomorphic Labs, the AI-powered drug company spun out of Google DeepMind, has an audacious goal of solving all diseases using AI. The key to doing so largely rets with its AlphaFold AI system which can predict the complex structure of proteins and model how they might internet with, say, DNA or drugs. The discovery earned Google DeepMind the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry. And this past July, the company announced it’s “very close” to human trials.
“As we move to the new year, we all know that patients are waiting for new medicines today,” says Ben Wolf, chief medical officer at Isomorphic Labs. Wolf joined the company in June and says his focus is advancing Isomorphic Labs into “an industry leading clinical pipeline.” Wolf says their initial focus is oncology and immunology.
Isomorphic Labs Chief Medical Officer Ben Wolf [Photo: Sardari Group for Johns Hopkins University]
“One of the challenges is just the heterogeneic [and] intractable nature of many diseases like cancer. So they’re very challenging to crack,” Wolf says.
What will be imperative for Isomorphic Labs is coupling AI-based approaches to drug development with precision medicine paradigms, i.e. tailoring treatment to specific patients instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.
“Ultimately that will give us the capacity to quickly make safer and more effective medicines for all patients,” Wolf says.
Chris Cuomo is returning to SiriusXM, putting him on the air with morning and evening talk shows.
He will host a two-hour weekday show centered on listener calls on the satellite radio company’s P.O.T.U.S. channel, starting Jan. 20 at 7 a.m. Eastern. Guests on his first few shows include Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, sportscaster Bob Costas, and political consultant James Carville, the company said Tuesday.
Cuomo previously hosted a show at the network but quit in 2021, shortly after he was fired from CNN when it was revealed that he assisted his brother, former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in fighting accusations of sexual harassment.
A former prime-time host at CNN and a reporter at ABC News earlier in his career, Cuomo has reemerged at the cable network NewsNation, where he hosts an evening talk show.
Too much of our politics is about teams instead of truth, said Cuomo, also son of the late Democratic New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. ’Cuomo Mornings’ is going to be about breaking through those barriers, asking better questions and bringing people into the conversation instead of talking past them.
Associated Press
During the pandemic, over two million women left the workforce, many of whom were forced to leave their jobs in the absence of reliable childcare. It took years for female workers to recover from those losses, but eventually the share of working women had surpassed pre-pandemic numbersthough their participation in the labor force still remained lower relative to that of male workers.
In 2025, however, it appears that the gains that women had made in recent years started to slip away.
In the first half of the year, about 212,000 women exited the workforce, and there was a marked dip in employment among working mothers: An analysis by the Washington Post found that the share of working mothers between the ages of 25 and 44 dropped steadily from January to June, resulting in an overall decrease of nearly three percentage points.
The most recent jobs report showed that in December, a total of 81,000 workers left the labor force (which means they are no longer employed or looking for a new job). All of those workers were women, according to a new analysis by the National Womens Law Center (NWLC), which drew on the jobs report data. The overall losses were even higher: 91,000 women left the labor force last month, but that figure was offset by 10,000 men entering the labor force.
Across 2025, there was an increase in the number of women entering the labor forcebut at a much slower clip than in past years. The rate of increase among female workers also pales when compared with that of male workers: The pool of women in the labor force expanded by just 184,000, while the share of men grew by 572,000.
This decline in employment also seems to be having an outsize impact on women of color, according to the NWLC. Unemployment among Black workers has been on the rise in recent months, but particularly for Black women; the unemployment rate for Black women inched up to 7.3% in December, up from 7.1% in November. Latinas also saw a marginal increase in unemployment, from 4.4% the month prior to 4.5% in December. (The overall rate of unemployment, by comparison, has hovered around 4.4%, with an even lower rate for white workers at 3.8%.)
These fluctuations in employment come amid a growing number of hurdles for working mothers. Remote work policies had made it easier for many parents to remain in the workforce, particularly among mothers of young children. Over the last two years, many companies have forced their employees to return to the office, reversing the flexible work arrangements that had enabled parents to juggle their personal and professional obligations. In 2025, leading companies like Amazon and JPMorgan Chase started requiring that workers come into the office five days a week; a report from real estate company Jones Lang LaSalle found that the majority of employees at the hundred largest U.S. companies by revenue were required to come into the office.
The Trump administrations policies and executive actions have also taken a toll on women, and especially working mothers. Trump imposed own return-to-office requirements on federal workers, hundreds of thousands of whom were working remotely. Many of the federal layoffs targeted agencies where women and people of color were overrepresented, and they also disproportionately impacted probationary workersthose in their first year of service or people who have recently been promotedwho are more likely to be women.
Now, working mothers may face new challenges, as Trump takes aim at the childcare programs that make it possible for countless parents to work.
The childcare industry has long struggled with inadequate funding and high labor costs, making it difficult for many providers to keep their doors open. The current administration has exacerbated some of those issues: When he took office, Trump threatened funding for Head Start, which helps subsidize childcare costs for low-income families, and the federal layoffs also compromised the program by cutting staff and making it even harder for underresourced childcare providers to stay afloat. Just days into the new year, Trump has sought to withhold $10 billion in federal funding earmarked for childcare subsidies and social services in Democratic states, due to concerns over alleged fraud. A federal judge has blocked the funding freeze for nowbut theres no telling how Trump may continue to target childcare and caregiving programs, to the detriment of working mothers.
Fewer Americans are signing up for Affordable Care Act health insurance plans this year, new federal data shows, as expiring subsidies and other factors push health expenses too high for many to manage.
Nationally, around 800,000 fewer people have selected plans compared to a similar time last year, marking a 3.5% drop in total enrollment so far. That includes a decrease in both new consumers signing up for ACA plans and existing enrollees re-upping them.
The new data released Monday evening by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is only a snapshot of a continuously changing pool of enrollees. It includes sign-ups through Jan. 3 in states that use Healthcare.gov for ACA plans and through Dec. 27 for states that have their own ACA marketplaces. In most states, the period for shopping for plans continues through Jan. 15 for plans that start in February.
But even though its early, the data builds on fears that expiring enhanced tax credits could cause a dip in enrollment and force many Americans to make tough decisions to delay buying health insurance, look for alternatives, or forgo it entirely.
Experts warn that the number of people who have signed up for plans may still drop even further, as enrollees get their first bill in January and some choose to cancel.
Health care costs at the center of a fight in Congress
The declining enrollment comes as Congress has been locked in a partisan battle over what to do about the subsidies that expired at the start of the new year. For months, Democrats have fought for a straight extension of the tax credits, while Republicans have insisted larger reforms are a better way to root out fraud and abuse and keep costs down overall. Last week, in a remarkable rebuke of Republican leadership, the House passed legislation to extend the subsidies for three years. The bill now sits in the Senate, where pressure is building for a bipartisan compromise.
Up until this year, President Barack Obama‘s landmark health insurance program had been an increasingly popular option for Americans who don’t get health coverage through their jobs, including small business owners, gig workers, farmers, ranchers, and others.
For the 2021 plan year, about 12 million people selected an Affordable Care Act plan. Enhanced tax credits were introduced the following year, and four years later, enrollment had doubled to over 24 million.
This years sinking sign-ups sitting at about 22.8 million so far mark the first time in the past four years that enrollment has been down from the previous year at this point in the shopping window.
The loss of enhanced subsidies means annual premium costs will more than double for the average ACA enrollee who had them, according to the health care research nonprofit KFF. But extending the subsidies would also be expensive for the country. Ahead of last week’s House vote, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that extending the subsidies for three years would increase the nation’s deficit by about $80.6 billion over the decade.
Americans begin looking for other options
Robert Kaestner, a health economist at the University of Chicago, said some of those who abandon ACA plans may have other options, such as going on a partner’s employer health plan or changing their income to qualify for Medicaid. Others will go without insurance at least temporarily while they look for alternatives.
My prediction is 2 million more people will lack health insurance for a while,” Kaestner said. “That’s a serious issue, but Republicans would argue we’re using government money more efficiently, we’re targeting people who really need it and we’re saving $35 billion a year.
Several Americans interviewed by The Associated Press have said they’re dropping coverage altogether for 2026 and will pay out of pocket for needed appointments. Many said they are crossing their fingers that they aren’t affected by a costly injury or diagnosis.
I’m pretty much going to be going without health insurance unless they do something, said 52-year-old Felicia Persaud, a Florida entrepreneur who dropped coverage when she saw her monthly ACA costs were set to increase by about $200 per month. It’s sort of like playing poker and hoping the chips fall and try the best that you can.”
Ali Swenson and Nicky Forster, Associated Press
