Climate Change Is Coming for Your Favorite Holiday Foods

Chocolate, vanilla, coffee, cinnamon: The ingredients for your favorite holiday foods are becoming increasingly harder to grow because of climate change.

For example, cocoa beans are grown in West Africa, which has been facing more days of extreme heat and drought, according to a recent report from the Weather Channel. “The crop doesn’t like it,” meteorologist Jennifer Gray explained.

And when cocoa production falls, consumers also feel the heat: Prices for chocolate have shot up over the last year and were four times as high at the end of 2024 as they were in 2022.

Vanilla and cinnamon, key ingredients for holiday baking that are largely grown in Southeast Asia and Indonesia, are also under threat. “Because we rely on just a handful of islands to produce basically our world’s cinnamon, it is extremely vulnerable. These are also places that are facing climate extremes,” Gray said.

And for something like coffee, climate change is drastically shrinking the land where it can grow. Suitable locations could decrease by 50 percent by 2050, according to a 2014 study. Plus, the Trump administration’s on-again-off-again tariffs have shocked the coffee market, one that’s already reeling from landslides and floods in Vietnam.

That festive mocha latte looks like it’ll be getting a lot more expensive. Luckily, we’ll have a lot more heat waves, fires, and floods to deal with to distract us.

To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, President Donald Trump is commemorating the most important person in the country’s history: himself.

Back in 2021—days after the January 6 riots—Trump signed an act to authorize the creation of new coins to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary. The act specified that one coin be focused on women’s contribution to U.S. history.

In response, a bipartisan committee came up with some recommendations: a coin featuring Frederick Douglass to represent abolition, one with a “Votes for Women” flag to honor women’s suffrage, and a coin featuring 6-year-old Ruby Bridges, who helped desegregate her school in 1960.

But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has ultimate say, did not follow these recommendations, reported The New York Times.

Instead, the new coins will feature a Pilgrim couple on the Mayflower, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Abraham Lincoln. (The Trump administration, apparently, was not satisfied with the already significant coin representation of three out of four of these historic American men.)

And then, the collection’s pièce de résistance: a Trump dollar coin, featuring the president’s likeness on both sides.

It’s worth pointing out that it is incredibly abnormal—and some would argue, anti-American—to have a sitting president on a coin. Washington refused to have his likeness on a coin while he was president, as it felt too king-like for the leader of the newly free United States, according to the Times. Trump, apparently, has no such qualms.

After a deadly shooting at Brown University which left two people dead and injured nine others, people across the country struggled Sunday to make sense of the event and the needless loss of life.

But while Americans tend to agree that mass shootings such as this one are a tragedy, much of the GOP, predictably, continues to engage in magical thinking—by pretending gun violence is not at all connected to being able to easily procure guns.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy pointed out during an interview on CNN on Sunday that the president himself was making the problem much, much worse.  

“Over the last year, President Trump has been engaged in a dizzying campaign to increase violence in this country,” Murphy said. “He is restoring gun rights to felons and people who have lost their ability to buy guns, he eliminated the White House office of gun violence protection, and he has stopped funding mental health grants and community anti–gun violence grants that Republicans and Democrats supported... He’s been engaged in a pretty deliberate campaign to try to make violence more likely in this country, and I think you’re unfortunately going to see the results of that on the streets of America.”

“That’s a pretty big statement. He’s in a campaign to make violence more likely?” the CNN anchor said.

“Of course,” Murphy said. Later, he continued: “The evidence tells you that when you stop funding mental health, you stop funding community anti–gun violence programs, when you give gun rights back to dangerous people, you’re going to have an increase in violence, that is knowable and that is foreseeable.”

While authorities have reported that a person of interest in the shooting has been detained, details about the deadly attack at Brown University are still emerging. President Trump, for his part, weighed in on the situation Saturday night, saying, “All we can do right now is pray.” 

President Donald Trump spread unconfirmed information about an active shooter at Brown University,  potentially putting students’ lives in danger as they sheltered in place during the event. 

On Saturday evening at around 4 p.m., a man entered a classroom with about 60 students and started shooting. The students were in a final exam review session for their economics class. Two people were killed in the attack, and nine were injured. 

 On Saturday night, as students barricaded themselves inside dorms and libraries, Trump posted on Truth Social that “the suspect is in custody.” 

 But this was not confirmed. 

 At 5:53 p.m., according to the The Brown Daily Herald, Brown’s student newspaper, the Department of Public Safety sent out an alert saying that the “situation remains ongoing.” 

Trump posted at 5:44 p.m., writing that he had been “briefed” on the shooting and that a suspect was in custody.

Then, at 6:03 p.m., he retracted his statement, posting again on Truth Social that the police had reversed their previous statement.

Social media users and students pushed back on Trump’s characterization. One student posted, “I am at brown university they have not confirmed a shooter in custody please do not believe trump and stay inside.”

In a press conference later that night, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley also urged caution: “There is a lot of misinformation that can spread.… If it did not come from an official channel, it is not official.” 

As of Sunday morning, the Providence police have a suspect in custody, multiple outlets report. 

President Donald Trump’s Truth Social rants may be unhinged, but they have serious consequences: His violent rhetoric has spurred threats against nearly two dozen elected officials on both sides of the aisle.

According to a new tally by NBC News, Trump’s posts over the last few weeks have led to threats on a number of Democrats—but even more Republicans, including over a dozen Indiana state lawmakers whom the president was attempting to bully into voting for his gerrymandering scheme.

Democrats who have been threatened include senators Chuck Schumer and Elissa Slotkin, as well as the other five lawmakers whom, along with Slotkin, Trump accused of sedition. On the Republican side, soon-to-be-former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has been vocal about the threats she’s received since criticizing the president’s agenda, and over a dozen Indiana state senators have also received threats after being named out by Trump on Truth Social.

Meanwhile, Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, said that Trump hasn’t done anything wrong.

“As the survivor of two assassination attempts—and recently watching his dear friend Charlie be assassinated—no one understands the dangers of political violence more than President Trump,” Jackson said in a statement to NBC.

“But President Trump, and the entire Administration, will not hesitate to speak the truth and call out Democrats for smearing their opponents as Nazis, encouraging members of the military to ignore lawful orders, and enabling violent criminals to invade our country. Sharing these facts is not inciting violence and the media would be wrong to make such an accusation,” she added.

Who’s going to tell her that the majority of the people receiving threats were Republicans?