Politics and views in the United States.

Gun violence advocates call for changes after the latest mass shootings. President Trump declares fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction and the House debates healthcare plans.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to 2025 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

Gun violence does not pause for anniversaries.

It does not respect campuses, classrooms, or places of reflection.

It follows survivors wherever they go.

Gun control advocates like Paul Murray of the Newtown Action Alliance are again calling on Congress to legislate in the wake of a shooting at Brown University and other attacks.

A gunman killed two and injured nine at the Rhode Island College one day after the anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting where 26 died.

There have been more than 150 shootings at US schools and colleges this year, and several Brown students say they've survived previous attacks.

President Donald Trump is declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.

Although Venezuela doesn't produce or ship much of the narcotic, the executive order is the latest escalation with the South American nation.

Trump claims the drug is sent to America to kill people, not to make profits, and calls it worse than any bomb.

If this were a war, that would be one of the worst wars I believe they killed over the last five or six years.

Per year, 200 to 300,000 people.

You hear about 100,000, which is a lot of people, but the number's much higher than that.

CDC says as many as 350,000 total people have died of fentanyl overdoses in five years, and the number declined recently due in part to tighter Chinese export controls and more stringent policing during Trump and Joe Biden's terms.

New polls show most Americans oppose military action against Venezuela.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continues to defend a series of attacks on alleged drug boats, including the strike that killed two survivors clinging to burning wreckage.

Michigan Democratic Representative Shri Tandar is introducing legislation calling for his impeachment.

From issuing orders to kill everybody, on board a small boat with no evidence of wrongdoing, to launching a follow-up strike to finish off survivors barely clinging to their life, his actions are not just reprehensible, but illegal as well.

Congress is debating healthcare this week in the hope of preventing affordable CARAC subsidies from expiring.

Democrats and Republicans introduced separate bills in the Senate, but both failed.

A House GOP leadership plan calls for expanding the availability of low-cost, low-coverage insurance, new transparency requirements on pharmacy benefit managers and funding for certain kinds of cost-sharing reductions to premiums.

Minority leader, Hakim Jeffries dismisses those proposals as entirely inadequate.

Mike Johnson hasn't reached out to us as Democrats to have a conversation about finding a path forward, which suggests to me that Mike Johnson is not serious about protecting the health care of the American people.

Several long shot efforts in the House, some with bipartisan support, would extend the subsidies.

Experts say without them, ACA plan premiums will more than double, forcing millions to go without coverage.

Farmers nationwide will receive federal aid after being hit by higher costs, many the result of Trump administration tariffs.

The money to fund what's being called bridge payments is coming from the revenue collected via the import taxes, but Ben Lilliston with the Nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy calls this a bandaid on a bullet wound.

When you don't have export markets, then you can start to have a glut of commodity crops primarily, but it could also be meat and poultry, and those prices start to go down for farmers.

And so it's sort of a perfect storm of issues that farmers are facing.

I'm Edwin J. Viera for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

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