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Biggest NYE Celebrations, New Laws in 2026 & Betty Boop Goes Public - Wednesday, December 31, 2025
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Today is Wednesday, December 31st. We're talking all about New Year's Eve celebrations from where the biggest events are happening, what authorities are doing to ramp up security, and how the weather is expected to impact all of it. Also, which state is losing all of its childcare funding from the federal government and how healthcare is getting more expensive for some Americans, but maybe cheaper for others. Plus, a rundown of significant new laws taking effect tomorrow, a preview of the most iconic college football bowl games and a new future for several classic characters from Betty Boop to Nancy Drew. Those stories and even more news to know coming up. Welcome to the Newsworthy all the days news in less than 15 minutes. I'm Erica Mandy. Thanks so much for being here. Let's do this. This New Year's Eve, cities across the country are preparing for crowds and celebrations Late into the night. New York City will once again host America's most famous mass party, with millions of people expected to pack into Times Squ to watch the iconic ball drop. And a reminder, for the first time ever, the Times Square ball will be dropped a second time around 12:04am with a patriotic design meant to kick off celebrations for America's upcoming 250th birthday. As usual, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin Eve will be broadcast from Times Square, but will include performances from big names all around the country. Think Diana Ross, 50 Cent Chapel Roan, Demi Lovato, Post Malone, Mariah Carey, Pitbull and many more. They'll be performing across New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas and beyond. Meanwhile, Nashville is hosting a big bash full of country stars like Jason Aldean, Lainey Wilson, Keith Urban and so on. But the celebrations don't stop there. WalletHub says other top New Year's Eve destinations include Orlando, Seattle and Los Angeles. Of course, with so many people cramming into major cities, security will be tight. New York City police say uniformed and plainclothes officers will be on patrol and they'll get help from dogs, drones, helicopters, boats and more. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, a new National Guard deployment started this week as a precaution, a year after a deadly New Year's attack on Bourbon Street. To be clear, law enforcement have not reported any specific credible threats to any of tonight's celebrations. In the middle of a wild weather week, most of the US Will actually have some clear dry weather for New Year's Eve celebrations, but it could be especially cold from the upper Midwest to the Northeast to as far south as the Tampa, Florida area. Big cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia could see some snow, and feet of snow could be possible in the Great Lakes region to the west. Several southwestern states could get rain over the next couple of days. The Trump administration is now freezing all childcare funding for Minnesota. That amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars. It's in response to a fraud investigation we told you about earlier this week. Remember, an independent journalist reported he found daycare centers committing fraud. So investigators are now officially looking into it. Other schemes have also already been busted. So the Trump administration has called for an audit in Minnesota while also cutting off funding. Well, now Democratic Governor Tim Walz accuses President Trump of politicizing the issue to defund government programs that help people in his state. Beyond Minnesota, the U.S. health Department is also tightening the requirements for all states to get payments from the administration for children and families. Those payments typically help fund everything from foster care, adoption assistance, child welfare services, childcare, and more. States will have to provide justification and a receipt or photo evidence before any money is sent. Starting tomorrow, health care costs are changing for a lot of Americans. While some will start to get a break, others will end up paying more. So we'll start with those who are about to pay less for certain medications, at least for people on Medicare. The first newly negotiated drug prices go into effect tomorrow. Now, these are prices the Biden administration negotiated starting back in 2022. They will apply to the 10 costliest drugs in the program. And out of pocket costs are estimated to fall by more than 50% on average. Also starting tomorrow, things get more expensive for millions of Americans getting coverage through the Affordable Care Act. That's because the subsidies that help to bring down the cost of premiums are expiring. And because of that, some people could pay up to 113% more on average when combined with insurers rate increases. Still, Congress could still decide to extend subsidies when lawmakers return to Capitol Hill. And some states are considering their own temporary measures to help people afford coverage. Another thing we want to mention, 10 states decided not to expand Medicaid. And reports say that's causing what's known as a coverage gap for a lot of people who make too little to pay for the Affordable Care act coverage but are not eligible now for Medicaid. More sweeping Medicaid changes like work requirements are scheduled to go into effect in 2020. New state laws go into effect all around the country tomorrow, covering everything from AI to immigration to transgender care and more on artificial intelligence. A new Illinois law will keep employers from using AI for hiring. A new California law establishes new protocols for how chatbots should deal with people expressing suicidal thoughts. And a new Texas law establishes a new state AI Ethics council. There are also states adding new regulations for kids and teens using social media, like Virginia, where a new law says social media companies will have to make sure all users under 16 are limited to one hour a day or less on their platforms. Meanwhile, several states are responding to President Trump's immigration crackdown with new laws. For example, in Texas, sheriffs operating county jails will be required to cooperate with federal officials enforcing immigration law, whereas in California, a new law looks to ban all law enforcement officers, including federal immigration agents, from covering their faces while on duty. Separately, three states, New York, Illinois and Delaware, have new laws expected to take effect to let terminally ill patients end their lives with medical assistance. And New Hampshire will ban hormone treatments and puberty blockers prescribed to change a child's gender. Also, more than 20 states are set to increase their minimum hourly wage for workers. In fact, Washington State is becoming the first to have a minimum wage higher than $17 an hour. And in Utah, people who get caught driving drunk will start having their driver's licenses striped red with the label no Alcohol Sal. Of course, those are just a few examples out of hundreds of new state laws going into effect this week. Tonight, the new mayor elect of America's most populous city is being sworn into office. Marking the moment Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani will take the helm in New York City. Roughly 13 hours later, Mamdani will hold a public ceremony featuring other progressive stars like Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Then it's on to turning his platform into a reality. Remember, during his campaign, Mamdani spoke a lot about affordability with ideas like universal childcare, free public buses and a rent freeze. Critics say New York City is about to be less friendly to businesses, but Mamdani insists he'll be leading New Yorkers into a new era of opportunity. Stay tuned. A granddaughter of the late President John F. Kennedy has died at only 35 years old. Environmental journalist Tatiana Schlossberg died yesterday, just about a month after revealing she had a rare and aggressive blood cancer. Schlossberg's essay about the battle against her illness was published in the New Yorker and drew worldwide praise for her courage and honesty. Besides getting into her own personal story, she also criticized policies by her mother's cousin, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Saying policies he's enacted could hurt patients like her. Schlossberg first found out she had cancer after giving birth to her daughter last year when she had a new baby and a two year old son. She previously worked as a reporter covering climate change and the environment for the New York Times. Now her family is remembering her as a woman who loved her life and fought like hell to try to save it. NFL star Stefan Diggs is now facing felony criminal charges. The New England Patriots player is accused of slapping his live in private chef and choking her until she had trouble breathing, all in the heat of an argument about pay. Diggs says none of that is true and that the claims are all over money. He's set to be arraigned on January 23, two days ahead of the championship game. For now, the Patriots say they're supporting Diggs and plan to cooperate with authorities if necessary. So far, no word on whether he'll play in this Sunday's game against the Miami Dolphins. By the way, Diggs girlfriend, rapper Cardi B asked fans to calm down about her relationship as the allegations surfaced, but she didn't specifically comment on the charges. He's facing the quarterfinal round of the college football playoffs starts today. Miami and Ohio State are facing off at the Cotton Bowl. Then tomorrow it's Oregon and Texas Tech at the Orange Bowl, Alabama and Indiana at the Rose bowl, and Ole Miss and Georgia at the Sugar Bowl. Tickets are still available for all four of the quarterfinal games, and some of them are actually going for less than first round home games at the school's campuses. The winners of the quarterfinals go on to play in either the Fiesta bowl or the Peach Bowl. Then it's the national championship on January 19th. Oh, and for hockey fans, the NHL is set to play its annual outdoor game, the NHL Winter Classic, on Friday night. The Florida Panthers and New York Rangers are facing off in Miami. The rink is built, the ice is already down, and the NHL says fans can expect at least a few flakes of snow. Yep, that means it will snow in Miami for the first time since 1977. But this time it will be manufactured. Since actual temperatures are forecast to be in the upper 50s. Some classic characters could start showing up in more places soon, even places their original creators would have never dreamed of. Under US law, the copyright on thousands of creations from 1930 will expire at midnight. That includes movies, books, musical compositions and more. They're entering the public domain, meaning they'll be free to use, share and adapt. This year's new character additions include the original Betty Boop and the original version of Disney's Pluto. There are also movies like All Quiet on the Western Front, books like the Little Engine that could, and the first four Nancy Drew mysteries and musical compositions like Georgia on My Mind and Dream a Little Dream. Of course, we've seen new adaptations of some of those works already, for example, a Nancy Drew movie and a Betty Boop musical, but those productions had to get permission and pay money to adapt the characters. This change opens it up for adaptations to be used by anyone, even schools with limited budgets, and they'll be able to create all different types of things with them. In fact, a Betty Boop horror movie is already in the works. There are also plans to digitize old films and sound recordings, allowing them to be preserved for generations to come. That's it for the main news today. So now it's time for Work Wednesday when we break down one interesting career or work related news story every Wednesday. And today we're talking about how much it pays to work for one of the fastest growing tech startups in the world. As the Wall street journal reports, OpenAI gives stock based compensation that adds up to about $1.5 million per employee on average. That's more than seven times higher than the stock based pay Google offered before it went public in 2004. In fact, it's more than any other tech startup in recent history. It makes OpenAI's top researchers and engineers some of the richest employees in Silicon Valley, and their pay is only expected to go up from here. But OpenAI is already in direct competition with big public companies like Meta. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, recently offered pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars and in some rare cases, a billion dollars to top executives and researchers at rival companies, including OpenAI. So this year, more than 20 OpenAI personnel left for Meta. OpenAI has also offered bonuses, hoping to keep talent around. But company leaders say it's not just about money, but mission. They believe OpenAI has the best chance of building more advanced systems that will make a real difference in the future. But of course, Meta, Google, Anthropic and others say they're also positioned for big growth in 2026 and beyond. Thank you so much for joining us today and throughout 2025. We are so grateful you've continued to make us part of your daily routine and we look forward to bringing you the news again every weekday in 2026. If you haven't already, be sure you're following the Newsworthy in your podcast app so you can more easily find our new daily episodes and and consider becoming a newsworthy insider to further support our work and get ad free episodes. As always, we'll continue working hard to keep you in the know in less than 15 minutes a day in our signature, fast, fair and fun way. Our team is taking the next couple of days off to ring in the New Year, but we will be back with our special edition Saturday episode about planning for more joy and less stress in 2026. Then we'll be back again on Monday with the latest news roundup. Until then, have a great day and Happy New Year.