The $1,776 payments to US troops announced by President Donald Trump will come from funds already allocated by Congress to supplement military housing allowances, officials said on Thursday.Trump announced the so-called “warrior dividend” in an address to the nation on Wednesday. He said it would be paid for with revenue from the sweeping tariffs he has imposed and presented it as a new initiative.Lawmakers from the opposition Democratic Party sharply criticized the president over the announcement, while a top Republican senator confirmed that the funding Trump is employing was aimed at offsetting housing costs for troops.The “$1,776 ‘warrior checks’ aren’t Christmas bonuses — you’re just stealing money out of a fund meant to help our troops find affordable housing,” Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), wrote on X.Democratic Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, also took aim at Trump, saying he “isn’t giving our brave service members a bonus, he’s just shuffling around money so he can claim he is.”Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said the planned payments are the result of Trump’s “unwavering commitment to our warriors and the provisions provided in the One Big Beautiful Bill” — a reference to a major legislative package that Trump signed into law in July.Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of SASC, praised the announcement by Trump, saying it would implement additional funding provided by Congress in that law “to help offset housing costs for service members.”The law provided for $2.9 billion in funding “to supplement the basic allowance for housing” for members of the military.

The US health department on Thursday announced proposed measures that would effectively ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth, a major escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back protections for trans people.The series of sweeping proposals announced by US health chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials would cut off vital federal funding from hospitals that provide pediatric gender transition services — including puberty blockers, hormone therapies and surgical interventions — even in states where they are legal.In announcing his proposals — which are not final and must go through lengthy review and public comment — Kennedy called gender-affirming care “malpractice” based on “junk science driven by ideological pursuits.” His health department this year released a report largely written by critics of gender transition that emphasized risks of gender-affirming care and urged counseling before interventions — a document that proved central to Thursday’s announcement.The proposed measures would prohibit reimbursements for minors’ gender-affirming care from Medicaid, the federal program that provides health care coverage to low-income children and adults.Even more limiting, it would revoke all funding from both Medicaid and Medicare — the health care program for elderly adults and disabled people — from any hospital that provides such care.Such a move would place extreme financial hardship on facilities if they continued to provide such health services.It puts medical providers in an “extremely precarious position,” said Michael Ulrich, a Boston University professor of public health and law.”I’m not sure there’s a provider that exists that doesn’t rely substantially on federal money,” he told AFP.- ‘Life-saving’ care -The American Civil Liberties Union vowed a legal battle, calling the proposals “cruel” as well as “unconstitutional, saying they target “a vulnerable population for political gain.”The American Academy of Pediatrics — which just abruptly lost federal funds in the millions including for initiatives to prevent infant death, according to a Washington Post report — called Thursday’s actions and rhetoric “harmful.””These rules help no one, do nothing to address health care costs, and unfairly stigmatize a population of young people,” the organization’s president said in a statement.The LGBTQ advocacy organization Human Rights Campaign said the proposals would “force providers into an impossible choice: stop providing health care to trans youth in order to protect federal funding for every other patient.”Zoe Taylor, a family doctor in the western US state of Washington, called gender-affirming health care “life-saving.”The physician, a fellow with the advocacy organization Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in her practice she’s seen “youth thrive once their gender dysphoria is treated.””Treating trans kids with gender-affirming care prevents and treats other mental health issues that come from society’s reaction to trans youth, and also to their own gender dysphoria,” she told AFP.The proposals are an intrusion on the relationship between patients, their families and physicians, she said.- ‘Extremely dangerous’ -Throughout the first year of his second term, President Donald Trump has demonized any recognition of gender diversity and placed strong focus on attacking transgender people.But the push to withhold broader federal health funding from any provider who offers transgender care scaled up Trump’s crusade dramatically.And it came one day after a split House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill that would criminalize providing gender-affirming medical care to trans minors.Transgender people are a small proportion of the population, but lawyer Ulrich said the issue is both “extremely bad for transgender youth” and could “open the door” for other controversial government health care decisions.”I don’t think that enough people recognize the extent to which this is the federal government saying, ‘We have the authority to declare to hospitals throughout the country what kind of health care they can and cannot provide,'” he said. “It’s an extremely, extremely dangerous proposition for the future.”

The White House announced Thursday that Washington’s iconic John F. Kennedy arts center is to be renamed the “Trump-Kennedy Center” after President Donald Trump.The extraordinary naming of a major cultural venue after a living president is just the latest effort by the 79-year-old Republican to stamp his identity on the US capital in his second term.He has also demolished the White House East Wing in order to install a grand ballroom, and is seeking to construct a large triumphal arch.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Kennedy Center’s board — which Trump purged of Democrats earlier this year before installing himself as chairman — had “voted unanimously” for the change.She said it was “because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building. Not only from the standpoint of its reconstruction, but also financially, and its reputation.””Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future! The building will no doubt attain new levels of success and grandeur,” she added.The towering white monument is named after president John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. The center, which sits on the banks of the Potomac River, opened in 1971.Trump has made a number of references to renaming the center in recent months.Earlier this month at the opening of a peace institute that had also been renamed after him, Trump referred to it as the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” before adding: “Whoops, excuse me.”During his first term, billionaire Trump never attended the annual fundraising gala for recipients of the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors, as many of those artists vocally opposed his policies.This time, Trump moved quickly to make the center his own, ridding the board of trustees of its Democratic appointees and ousting its president, as part of a wider assault on federally funded cultural institutions he deemed too “woke.”Trump then presented the honors this year himself, giving awards to “Rocky” actor Sylvester Stallone, disco legend Gloria Gaynor and rock band KISS.A few days earlier, at the draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup on December 5, Trump received a new peace prize from football’s governing body and made a speech on stage.