Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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Jan. 9

The Washington Post on national nutrition guidelines

The Trump administration has flipped the national food pyramid as part of its campaign to “Make America Healthy Again,” and once again the new dietary guidelines recommend Americans change their food habits.

The main takeaway: don’t get takeaway. Eat more protein and fats. Scale back on breads and pastas.

“We are ending the war on saturated fats,” said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The villains of the new food pyramid are “highly processed foods laden with refined carbohydrates, added sugars, excess sodium, unhealthy fats, and chemical additives.” The upside-down pyramid looks like the inverse of the 1992 guidelines that recommended bread, pasta and cereals make up the largest serving sizes to be consumed per day.

Congress requires HHS and USDA to jointly update dietary guidelines every five years. The major shift this time is carbohydrate consumption. RFK Jr.’s guidance recommends two to four servings a day of “whole grains,” compared to the six to 11 servings of the “Bread, Cereal, Rice and Pasta Group” recommended in the 1990s. Protein recommendations have been adjusted to reflect body weight, and fruit and vegetable servings have stayed roughly the same.

Government has been issuing food guidelines for decades, and sometimes the conversation feels more political than scientific. Any government decree about what is “healthy” will give politicians nannying ideas about what to tax, restrict or wrap red tape around. The reality is that taste and cost affect how people eat much more than what bureaucrats tell them. It is especially odd for the Republican Party to get into the habit of telling citizens what to eat, considering their history of touting the merits of personal freedom.

At the same time, there is a nutritional knowledge gap. Over 80 percent of Americans claim to have at least a “somewhat healthy” diet, and 49 percent say they’re “very” or “extremely confident” they know what foods are healthy for them. Yet almost 75 percent are estimated to be “overweight.” In fact, the obesity rate climbed from 12 percent in 1990, when the law requiring updated guidelines passed, to 37 percent now.

National guidelines for food and nutrition can only be effective when they are nonpartisan and nonbinding, and they would have more credibility if they didn’t change so frequently. In a truly free society, adults should be free to eat and drink whatever they please.

But given that this government intervention won’t go away anytime soon, it’s still worth celebrating sensible changes. The most pleasant update is the removal of advice for men to limit their daily alcohol consumption to two drinks and women to one drink.

“Alcohol is a social lubricant that brings people together,” said Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “I don’t think you should drink alcohol,” he noted, but he sensibly acknowledged the health benefits to socializing with friends. He added that it is best to avoid alcohol at breakfast, following up the next day to make an exception for brunch.

Cheers to that sensible, balanced public policy.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/01/09/dietary-guidelines-nutrition-education-rfk-alcohol/

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Jan. 9

The New York Times says Trump's cruelty to refugees makes Americans everywhere less safe

Many of the Afghan refugees who have entered the United States in recent years are heroic allies of this country. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when American forces went to war in Afghanistan to crush Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban, they joined the fight. They took extraordinary risks during the long conflict that followed, working as soldiers, intelligence agents, interpreters, medics and more.

Since the Taliban won that war in 2021, more than 190,000 refugees have come to the United States under two programs, Operation Allies Welcome and Operation Enduring Welcome, that were designed to protect these heroes and their families from retaliation. Those programs are part of the most honorable tradition of American immigration policy, in which this country welcomes people who have reason to fear imprisonment or death for political reasons. Refugees from Cuba, Iran, Vietnam, the former Soviet Union and other countries have arrived via similar programs over the past several decades. Most of them end up becoming proud and productive Americans.

Yet President Trump has betrayed the loyalty of Afghan refugees by conducting a mass crackdown against them. Shortly after taking office, he called into question the legal right for many of them to be in the United States. Now, in response to the Nov. 26 shooting of two National Guard members, Mr. Trump has gone even further. His administration has prevented the admission of Afghans still trying to find safety here. It has cut off support services for Afghan immigrants who have made it here and has detained some people for more than a month without charges. Stephen Miller, a top Trump official, has threatened to deport refugees who came here legally.

Those affected include Afghans who protected U.S. forces and who, with their families, may face retribution from the Taliban. They also include human-rights advocates who worked with American officials, journalists who helped U.S. news organizations report on Taliban atrocities and tens of thousands of others who face credible fears of persecution. Mr. Trump is threatening to return them to a country where punishment for the most basic expression of dissent includes maiming or death. Afghan women forced to return home face a particularly brutal future, given the Taliban’s violent, state-enforced misogyny.

To be clear, there are legitimate questions to ask about the Afghan resettlement program after the horrific shooting in Washington. It killed Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and seriously wounded Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, both members of the West Virginia National Guard. Authorities have charged Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan refugee who was reportedly a member of a C.I.A.-directed Zero Unit in Afghanistan. The federal government should take every reasonable step to avoid any similar cases. More than a year before the shooting, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security found flaws with the vetting and monitoring of some Afghan refugees and made five sensible recommendations about how agencies can better flag risks.

The Trump administration, however, has threatened to turn that process into an excuse for hunting down and deporting refugees who have done nothing wrong and who have every reason to fear that a return to Afghanistan could threaten them and their families. If any group of people deserves to qualify as refugees, it is the brave Afghan men and women who worked alongside Americans. The Trump administration’s betrayal of them is inhumane and contrary to America’s national interest.

It is inhumane because fair-minded countries do not punish all members of a group for the actions of a single person. Over the past decade, members of a wide variety of demographic groups, with varying ideologies, have committed political violence. Each act is abhorrent. The answer is not to punish all people of the same race, religion or nationality. Refugees are among the most scrutinized migrants, and immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S.-born citizens. There is no evidence that refugees from war-torn countries are more prone to violence when given shelter here.

The Trump policies are contrary to America’s national interests because of the message they send to the world. The United States relies on local allies to accomplish its goals — be it in Venezuela, Ukraine, the Middle East or in any other hot spot. In peace and war, the United States asks foreign nationals to take risks to help us. The C.I.A. goes to great lengths to protect its sources not just for their safety but also to show others that Americans can be trusted. Mr. Trump’s moves against Afghans send the opposite message, suggesting that the United States will turn on those who risk their lives for us once we no longer need them. As a former Marine and intelligence officer, Elliot Ackerman, has said, “Breaking faith with former allies projects weakness to current and future partners.”

Mr. Trump should confirm the legal status of all the Afghan refugees who came to the United States under the resettlement programs and reopen their pathways to permanent lawful residence here. He should instruct the U.S. immigration services not to use investigations triggered by the November shooting to deport refugees without proving they are an imminent threat. He should reopen asylum consideration for Afghans abroad.

America owes a debt to those who risked their lives to fight alongside this country against Osama bin Laden’s militants and their Taliban allies. Mr. Trump’s dishonorable treatment of those refugees is morally wrong and makes Americans everywhere less safe.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/opinion/trump-afghan-refugees-crackdown.html

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Jan. 11

The Wall Street Journal says the U.S. middle class is shrinking because more are rising upward

We’re pleased to report the American middle class is indeed “hollowing out”—because ever more Americans are earning their way into higher income brackets. That runs counter to today’s populist gloom on the left and right, so thanks to economists at the American Enterprise Institute for setting the record straight.

The hollowing out of the middle class has become a bipartisan trope. President Trump’s supporters use this fear of household economic decline to justify his tariffs and industrial policies. Liberals treat it as an excuse for raising taxes, redistributing income, and adding cradle-to-grave entitlements.

Yet this pessimism is hard to square with the data showing America’s economy is larger than it has ever been—and ample anecdotal evidence that Americans across the board enjoy a higher standard of living than any society in history. Now Stephen J. Rose and Scott Winship at AEI are shedding light on the reality.

Most studies purporting to find a shrinking middle class are prone to a variety of measurement and analytical problems. The biggest is the difficulty of defining “middle class.” Economists often default to methods that calculate income brackets relative to the median income in a given year. But such analyses purport to find a shrinking middle class even as incomes across the board rise significantly, which should give readers pause.

Messrs. Rose and Winship instead set an absolute marker for different income groups, based on multiples of the federal poverty level in 2024. For instance, for families of three, this defines “poor” as a household income below $40,000; the core middle class as incomes from $67,000-$133,000 and upper-middle-class as incomes up to $400,000, and so on. They then use inflation data to calibrate these thresholds for previous years going back to 1979, when the necessary data series start.

Measured in this way, the story of the past 50 years is steady progress out of the core middle class and into the upper middle class. The share of families in the “core” middle class has declined to 30.8% in 2024 from 35.5% in 1979, but so have the proportions in the poor and lower-middle-class cohorts.

The upper middle class, meanwhile, has exploded. That bracket now accounts for 31.1% of families, up from 10.4% in 1979. “For the first time in American history,” Messrs. Rose and Winship write, “more families in 2024 were above the core middle class threshold (35 percent) than below it (34 percent).”

Americans worried about their family budgets aren’t imagining things. They face stresses that their forebears didn’t, such as badly distorted markets that raise costs for housing, healthcare and higher education (for a start). Americans rightly complain about costs in all three, but the irony is that these are the U.S. industries that have the greatest degree of federal subsidy and regulation, other than perhaps defense. Too bad few in politics or the media understand the role government plays in reducing competition in these industries.

Yet the larger story of American growth and opportunity is a good one. America’s still-mostly free market and traditional political focus on economic growth are delivering unprecedented prosperity for more households. Inequality is in part a result of rising incomes at the top and especially in the growing cadres of the affluent middle class.

Government policies that raise costs and limit choices are the real barriers to greater prosperity for everyone.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/about-that-disappearing-middle-class-54948a18?mod=editorials_article_pos2

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Jan. 12

The Boston Globe says Congress must draw a red line of use of military force

Could it really be that congressional Republicans have finally awakened from their MAGA-induced slumber and resumed their proper role in determining when and how this nation’s military is used?

Five Senate Republicans voted with Democrats on Thursday to advance a war powers resolution on Venezuela, which is expected to come to a final vote this week. The 52-47 vote represented the first glimmer of resistance by the president’s party to his adventurous foreign military forays.

The measure, which would require President Trump to seek congressional authorization to continue military operations in Venezuela, is given little chance of final passage. A similar resolution, proposed by Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, failed to pass the House last week on a narrow (211-213) vote with three Republicans voting for it.

And while the US invasion and the extraction of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro totally blindsided Congress, it admittedly removed a certifiable bad guy from the scene.

There is, however, no possible moral high ground around talk of invading Greenland — which has been a part of Denmark for 300 years.

Trump has refused to rule out military action to acquire the strategically important and mineral-rich territory and has also mused about buying the island from Denmark, which has repeatedly said it’s not for sale.

“Ownership is very important,” Trump told The New York Times in an interview this week.

“I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty,” he added.

But simply seizing part of another country by force would be a brazen betrayal of an ally and of the democratic values that generations of Americans have fought for.

Surely congressional Republicans can see the value in finally drawing their red line at the notion of invading Greenland and find the courage to draft a war powers resolution that would make that unlikely.

When White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Jan. 5, “obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States,” adding “Nobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” it caused more than a few waves on the GOP side of the aisle.

“This is really dumb,” Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska posted on X. “Greenland and Denmark are our allies. There is no up side to demeaning our friends. But, it is causing wounds that will take time to heal.”

He followed with, “Greenland wants to work with us. So does Denmark. There’s no reason for these threats … it’s very amateurish. Feels like we’ve got high school kids playing Risk.”

He is more than just one voice in the GOP wilderness. Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and Republican Thom Tillis of North Carolina issued a joint statement defending Denmark’s territorial integrity, adding, “When Denmark and Greenland make it clear that Greenland is not for sale, the United States must honor its treaty obligations and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark. Any suggestion that our nation would subject a fellow NATO ally to coercion or external pressure undermines the very principles of self-determination that our Alliance exists to defend.”

The two were part of a bipartisan group meeting Thursday with the Danish ambassador.

While the idea of invading or purchasing Greenland once seemed laughable, the invasion of Venezuela has emboldened not just Trump but also neocolonialists like Miller, making the threat real and damaging to the relationship with long-time ally Denmark. As the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has noted, it would mean the end of the NATO alliance. European leaders issued a joint statement Tuesday agreeing that “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”

Of course, if Trump insists on playing the strategic necessity card, there is the matter of the US military base already existing on the island and a 1951 agreement, amended in 2004, that provides a perfectly legal means for resolving any disputes relative to security and for consulting on issues. It also recognizes Greenland’s status as “an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark under the Constitution.”

If it’s Greenland’s rare earth minerals Trump is after, well, the desire for another country’s resources is not a legitimate reason to invade it.

Venezuela was ruled by a despot, now sitting in a New York jail. No one is shedding tears over that. And if the economic basket case that is Cuba today managed to, as Trump predicted, overthrow its government, few would mourn.

But Greenland is indeed a very different case. Denmark is a democracy and an ally. Congress — especially its Republican members — must take Trump’s bluster seriously and pass another war powers resolution that will restore a modicum of sanity to the where, when, and how this nation uses its military. And it must not be to attack, threaten, or invade our friends.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/01/12/opinion/greenland-trump-threats/

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Jan. 9

The Dallas Morning News says Trump excused the inexcusable

The killing of a 37-year-old mother by a federal agent in Minneapolis is a shocking and inexcusable act of violence. And just as chilling, it’s another episode of the Trump administration telling the American public not to believe our own eyes.

From President Donald Trump to White House officials down the ladder, their story has been the same: The woman was trying to mow down Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers with her vehicle, and an agent’s decision to shoot was justifiable self-defense.

But video footage captured by witnesses contradicts that account. The woman’s SUV was blocking a one-way street. An ICE agent screamed at the woman, Renee Nicole Good, to “get out of the car,” using an expletive. Another agent crosses the woman’s path and, as she appears to attempt to leave, fires into the vehicle three times.

Trump has pointed to a grainy video from afar that shows the SUV driving forward before crashing into a parked car. It’s unclear from that video whether Good hits the ICE agent, as White House officials have alleged.

But in frame-by-frame analyses of footage from closer to the scene, The New York Times and The Washington Post show that Good was veering past the ICE agent when he shot her, once from the front and two more times from the side of the vehicle.

The agent, who according to Trump officials was hit and had to go to the hospital, can be seen in the video walking away, seemingly unharmed. Video from the scene shows Good slumped in her seat, bloody and unresponsive.

As The Associated Press recently reported, law enforcement agencies generally bar officers from shooting at moving vehicles unless the driver poses an imminent threat of deadly force beyond the car itself. The risks are great: An officer could accidentally shoot an innocent person or cause the driver to lose control and injure or kill bystanders.

In the Minneapolis case, Good’s vehicle crashed against a parked car after the ICE agent fatally shot her. Thankfully, no one else was injured.

It’s unclear why Good was partially blocking the street, or what her motivations were. Reasonable people can debate her actions, but no one in good faith can argue persuasively that she deserved to be killed. The video shows she wasn’t running over ICE agents; her front wheels were pointed away from them as she began to drive slowly forward.

White House officials should have held their tongues and promised an investigation. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said there will be an inquiry, but how can we trust its conclusions, when Trump, Noem and others have already made up their minds that this was self-defense?

Trump and his coterie of yes-men and -women have poured gasoline on fire, inflaming an already tense situation. We suspect their reckless comments will ratchet up anger against ICE, endangering its agents, and further erode Americans’ sense of safety and trust in their government.

Who will defend us against the notion that federal agents can shoot first and ask questions later? Not this president.

ONLINE: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2026/01/09/after-ice-killing-of-woman-in-minneapolis-trump-excuses-the-inexcusable/

News from © The Associated Press, 2026