Politics and views in the United States.

Experts warn of white nationalist Active Clubs in 25 states. Budget cuts end SNAP-Ed nutrition classes nationwide. Indiana Lawmakers back AI regulation. A Senate report accuses the administration of corrupting science and Ohio readies for redistricting.

TRANSCRIPT

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

You add to that the willingness to engage in violence against people of color, LGBTQ people.

There's a clear potential for violence here.

University of Dayton criminology professor Art Gipson warned so-called active clubs are white nationalist groups disguised as fitness groups.

He says they're now in half of the states and have grown by a quarter in two years because their decentralized structure lets chapters spread quickly, recruiting on social media and at Christian gyms.

A Senate subcommittee minority Democratic report accuses the Trump administration of corrupting science on nearly 60 instances.

Investigators say public health research has been censored and vaccine officials fired, putting lives at risk.

Supporters of President Donald Trump are denying the validity of a hoax check to dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The check jokingly shows Trump paying $22,000 for a woman in her 20s both men dated.

The 1990s document created for Epstein's birthday was made public by House Oversight.

States including Texas, Missouri and California are taking up redistricting to gain advantage in the nearly divided House.

But Ohio is the only state required to redraw maps this year as the result of a court ruling.

Brea Bennett with the Equal Districts Coalition says district maps could impact the balance of power for years and warns legislators against distorting the process to dilute the power of marginalized communities.

We're watching.

We want you to respect our constitution, respect our voters.

Ohioans are sick of being cheated out of fair representation.

We're calling for transparency.

We're calling for community integrity.

We're calling for balanced representation.

The League of Women Voters is condemning a new immigration agency policy that bars volunteers from registering voters at naturalization ceremonies, calling it an attack on immigrant rights.

A Biden-era pause on spyware contracts has been lifted, giving immigration officials access to the powerful phone hacking tool, Graphite, which can infiltrate encrypted text programs like WhatsApp and Signal.

Indiana lawmakers are preparing to regulate artificial intelligence.

Republican State Representative Matt Lehman of Burns says the state needs to quickly establish a standing committee just to keep pace.

There will be more and more AI type bills moving forward into the future.

And I think eventually at some point get around some sort of a technology committee that has some guidance.

I think we're going to be playing catch up.

Federally funded nutrition classes for low income families are ending.

The SNAP-Ed program taught affordable recipes and healthy eating to more than two million people from preschoolers to seniors, a third of them in rural areas.

Tanner Cooper-Risser spent eight years as a SNAP-Ed educator.

I had one senior who came to a series of classes and talked about how she loved one of the soups that we made.

She had never really cooked with lentils before and now she's been making that specific lentil soup once a week.

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

Find our trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.