Politics and views in the United States.

Congress debates Medicaid cuts, FBI pledges to investigate missing Indigenous people, Illinois pushes back on federal autism data plan, and deadly bombing in California is investigated as domestic terrorism.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Medicaid covers nearly half of all births in the rural parts of the state and 20 percent or one in five women rely on Medicaid for health insurance.

So that is a huge number of women in our state.

Camille Rishu with Arkansas Advocates for Children says proposed Medicaid cuts could hit rural health care hard, especially in places with spotty care.

The rural U.S. has some of the highest maternal death rates in the developed world.

And research done at Georgetown finds expanded Medicaid coverage is a crucial lifeline for women in states like Arkansas.

A second House committee has approved the GOP budget package, but several Senate Republicans, including Arkansas' Josh Hawley, say they won't support it without changes.

Congress is also looking at billions in Republican-backed cuts to Inflation Reduction Act clean energy investments.

Philip Rossetti with the conservative R Street Institute says the IRA should in fact be followed with grid upgrades.

"Princeton University does a study on this and they estimate that about 80 percent of the emission benefits in the electric power sector from the IRA subsidies are locked behind additional transmission infrastructure buildup."

The FBI is sending 60 agents to New Mexico to investigate cases of missing and murdered indigenous women.

But tribal attorney Darlene Gomez says Native families have been disappointed before.

When the Department of Justice or President Trump enact legislation or special task force, we very rarely see any of the data that comes out of what those task force were supposed to accomplish.

In 2019, homicide was the third most common cause of death for Native American teen girls and young women.

Democratic Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has blocked federal agencies from collecting autism-related data without individual consent.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants the data for a national autism database.

Jeff Chan of Northern Illinois University says Kennedy's goal of finding the cause of autism is looking at the problem the wrong way.

I don't even know if we will ever find that one single cause.

There's a variety of factors in play on the genetic side and the environmental side that are all affecting parents and mothers and children, which eventually lead to the expression of those symptoms.

The Supreme Court will allow President Donald Trump's administration to revoke temporary protected status for more than 300,000 Venezuelans, reversing a Biden-era policy and paving the way for possible deportations.

A separate federal court has ruled the Trump administration dismantling of the Institute of Peace was illegal and must be reversed.

The court says DOJ officials lack the authority.

And former President Joe Biden is thanking Americans for their support following his prostate cancer diagnosis.

Biden says we are strongest in the broken places.

I'm Farah Siddiqui for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

Find our trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.