As 2025 comes to a close, we recount the top ten stories of the year as voted on by our panelists and a special edition of Vermont This Week.

From the Vermont Public Studio in Winooski.

This is Vermont This Week, made possible in part by the Lintilhac Foundation and Milne Travel.

Here's moderator Mitch Wertlieb.

Good evening, I'm Mitch Wertlieb, and happy holidays.

Thank you for tuning in to our Year-End special and joining us on the panel today, we have Lola Duffort, a reporter with Vermont Public, Calvin Cutler, reporter at WCAX and Mark Davis, news director at Vermont Public.

Thank you all so much for being here.

These are the top ten Vermont stories.

News stories of the year is voted on by the people who reported them, and we are delighted to have our top three panelists in our hearts.

I'm joking, of course, we love all our panelists equally, but we do certainly love you guys.

And so glad you're here today to talk about these stories.

We are taping this earlier this week.

Hopefully no other big story has cracked the top ten between now and the time, that you're seeing this.

But Lola Duffort, let's start right away with some health care news that made number ten on our top ten stories.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont reporting a $62 million loss.

How does this work in, with the context of health care in Vermont?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think the first thing to note is that, this was not their first loss, right?

Over four years, they've lost $150 million.

And, yeah, our largest private insurer is, in not a great financial place.

And I think for a really long time, insurers have been saying, look, the problem here is not us.

It is the underlying cost of care.

And I think that's a hard argument to hear right?

When, you know, it's your insurance, that is saying no to care or is billing you.

But I think that argument has a lot more credibility in the public.

When the person who's saying this to you is, in fact, losing a lot of money and scaring regulators, right, like state regulators are looking at Blue Cross Blue Shield reserves and saying, this does not look good.

Yeah.

And as you say, the state's largest insurer, if they were to go under not be around anymore, that could be catastrophic for the health care system overall.

Yeah.

I mean it would be Armageddon.

We don't really quite know what that would look like.

It it's hard to fathom.

And that was only the number ten story of the year.

Let's move on to number nine now.

And this is also a very difficult story.

Calvin Cutler, you've been covering this a lot.

Hundreds of unhoused people had to exit the motel program with, winter rules ending in Vermont.

What can you tell us about that?

Yeah, these were new eligibility criteria that were passed by the state legislature setting, you know, number of rooms that the state would pay for and nights that people would be able to participate in the program.

And, like, we've seen you know, with all of this federal money that we've had that we were paying for the hotel program for years, that's all going away.

And so state budget writers have really been, you know, faced with the reality of how do we keep this program going?

And on the other side of it is a real human cost.

I mean, the, you know, the humanity and the the suffering and really challenging spot that many Vermonters are in because of the housing crisis and a number of other, confluence of factors.

You know, homelessness is really spiked in many communities.

And so the, those new rules going into effect has really been sort of a, you know, a, a tipping off point of, you know, how do we grapple and how do we solve our homelessness crisis?

And it still is.

It's pretty, pretty tough out there.

So it's definitely it's a been a pretty big story from the housing perspective and something that will continue into the new year two as the legislature reconvenes in January.

They're going to have to deal with this somehow.

Yeah, I mean, education reform is going to take all the oxygen in the room, but there will be continued discussion that the governor vetoed a bill, each 91, that dealt with this last year.

We'll see exactly what they come up with this year if they're able to, you know, have any bipartisan agreement.

But it's going to be it's going to be tough.

Okay.

Coming in at number eight, we turn back to health care and Loda, for once again, we're looking at, you know, more cuts, deep cuts made to University of Vermont Medical Center as set by regulators.

They set the Vermont hospital budgets.

But the largest hospital in Vermont is in a different sort of situation than some of these smaller hospitals we've been hearing about.

Right?

Yeah.

I mean, rural hospitals are also not doing super well.

And UPMC has lost money.

I don't think it's supposed to this year, but, you know, it has had some losses.

However, its prices are really high.

And, you know, we were just talking about how, our largest insurer is saying we simply cannot afford to pay.

And so the attention has really, in recent years been turning to, hospital prices.

Right.

And UVM, MSK in particular, as the largest and most expensive health care provider in the state, has received a lot of scrutiny that it is not quite used to.

And regulators cut very deep into its budget this year, in attempt, in an attempt to hem in, you know, prices that we all pay and also because of, you know, those concerns that we were talking about, about the, the solvency of our largest insurer.

Right.

And, you know, there were concerns, too, that they were paying attention to some of the hospitals that were in, in New York.

Right, because they were part of the network, too.

Yes.

That's right.

So, you know, the UVM Health Network, has hospitals, smaller hospitals in New York as well.

And, and, regulators don't love this arrangement, because they believe that, Vermont's health care system is, in effect, subsidized, some of those facilities in New York.

And they would rather, you know, that money stay, here.

Yeah.

UVM got blasted.

Is is what happened in both the budgetary and in the comments that were made.

They're criticized for spending too much, money on lobbying, too much money on, uploaded administration, effectively giving raises to high ranking officials while the rest of the symbol is the system is crumbling.

So you have this very intense spotlight on UVM.

And also, as you're talking about these rural hospitals, I think it has long been a topic of conversation in Vermont.

Are all those hospitals going to make it?

Can we can this state sustain that many hospitals?

I think that conversation has picked up a lot in the past year.

Yeah.

I mean, I, it's interesting because people are starting to have two different conversations about hospitals.

Right.

So we are starting, you know, there have been kind of long standing concerns about the prices at UVM, MSK but they've reached a boiling point, right?

Like I think there was a shift in the way that regulators were willing to talk publicly about UVM, MSK, the way that lawmakers are willing to talk about you.

VMC, they're feeling a lot of heat that they were not.

And at the same time, right.

There is this concern about the solvency of our insurer and also of our more rural facilities, who are also seeing some pretty significant losses and having to make some really difficult decisions about the sort of services that they can sustain.

Yeah.

And, you know, we're looking at Brattleboro.

We're looking at some other places in the coming year that are really, really in some tough shape.

So we're going to be following again these stories.

These are the top stories of 2025.

But we know we're going to be following these well into the new year.

Mark Davis, let me turn to you about another story that caught national attention, international attention right here in Vermont, a Columbia University student named Mohsen Mahdawi who, as a legal permanent resident of the US, has green card, received that in 2015.

Why did he become a name and why did his name become connected to Vermont?

Immigration enforcement is such a big story in 2025, and we're gonna have a little bit more later here.

Mohsen Mahdawi, we became sort of one of the most high profile cases, as you're mentioning.

He's lived in Vermont for a very long time.

He's in Upper Valley residents.

He was invited to come up to the immigration facility in Colchester for an interview about naturalization.

Except that's not what happened.

He was arrested.

He was incarcerated.

The Trump administration would like to see him not be in the United States anymore.

They say that Meadows pro-Palestinian activism is essentially a threat to the Trump administration's foreign policy.

This immediately sparked an outcry.

The protests, the Vermont's congressional delegation all came out, aggressively against this.

Eventually, in April, a federal judge here in Burlington, released him pending, his case, which is is still going on.

The Trump administration appealed that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, this became a real focal point case.

The Second Circuit rejected that appeal.

So it's out.

He was freed, gave a bunch of interviews after he was freed.

The case still remains.

And obviously, these bigger picture structural issues still remain.

He did give a lot of interviews and in fact, was very forceful in saying things like, President Trump, I am not afraid of you.

You know, he really became a face.

So in a way, a lot of for a lot of people who are going through what he's been going through.

No, that's absolutely right.

And, as you're saying, this is just the year in review.

You wonder about what comes next for for him and others similarly positions.

And again, just to to reiterate the point, though, the federal government is still looking to deport him, right, that his saga is not over now.

It's like it's not over.

He was released pretrial.

You know, he was held in prison.

That was seen as a big victory.

More to come.

Okay.

We saw a story again that made some national headlines here in Vermont.

This, sitting state senator named Samuel Douglas took part in a group chat that he probably wish he had not taken part in.

Lola Duffort.

What happened here?

Why was there such a firestorm over what he did?

Yeah.

So, Senator Sam Douglas was in a group chat with young Republicans across the country, and Politico got Ahold of some of these texts and published them.

And, they were really inflammatory, really racist.

I mean, some of them were borderline neo-Nazi.

Sam Douglas and his wife, were quoted in some of those texts saying, some, some pretty racist things.

I think his wife said, you know, something about expecting the Jew, to be honest.

And he made a joke about how someone was an Indian.

They just didn't bathe much.

So there was immediately a ton of pressure for him to resign.

The governor who had endorsed him, and campaigned for him and helped get him elected, called on him to resign.

You know, Northeast Kingdom Republicans called on him to resign.

The leader of the the the Senate minority Leader, Scott Beck, also called on him to resign.

He did very reluctantly.

I think this moment was, a reminder that, you know, even though Phil Scott is the standard bearer of the Republican Party in Vermont, his brand of conservatism is not necessarily what is reflected in, you know, the party base and, nationally speaking nationally, but also in Vermont.

Right.

Like, Sam Douglas is from Vermont.

You know, he's like a 17th generation Vermonter.

And, I think it's another reminder of just like how difficult it is to actually, meld these wings of the two party together in a way that is responsible.

Right?

If you are someone like Phil Scott.

Yeah.

And you know, certainly Phil Scott was very quick to ask for his resignation.

But, you know, he did campaign with him as you as you mentioned, Calvin Cutler, there was some remember, reported at first, that he didn't resign right away.

There was this interim period where it was like, will he won't he?

There was some concern there.

Yeah.

He ended up resigning as, as we know.

But there was a little bit of a delay and we weren't sure whether he was or wasn't going to.

And that's the other thing is, Mitch, you and I were talking about, you know, the state of politics today.

There is a strategy or there is a method where you can say, you know, no, I'm going to dig in and I'm just going to let all of the controversy sort of wash over me and stick with it.

And, you know, we've seen that play out nationally.

Again.

Sam Douglas did end up stepping down, but there was a period there in the middle where it was very unclear.

And one party that was not calling on him to resign initially was the party chair of the Republican Party.

Right.

Pull that up all day, he tried to say.

Actually, what he was saying wasn't that wasn't racist, wasn't bigoted.

You know, eventually the state party kind of retracted their leaders statement.

But again, I think really points to how uneasy these two wings of the party are living together.

And that was story number six.

I should have said, moving on to the fifth top story, of the year.

And, Mark Davis, this is something I know you know about.

Well, because you've made trips up to Montreal to watch the Montreal Canadiens play hockey for some reason.

We'll get into that another time.

Vermont businesses, though, saw a real sharp drop in Canadian tourism this year.

Why?

Yeah, I think 2025 is a year.

Vermont sort of relearned how important our relationship with Canada is.

This, of course, goes back to the Trump administration, tariffs and combative, negotiations with Canada.

And frankly, the rhetoric about, turning Canada into the 51st state that we heard from the president.

So we have rather predictably seen a significant drop in Canadian tourism.

Now, statewide, Canadian tourism, maybe about 5% of Vermont's tourist economy.

It's far more acute up north, for obvious reasons.

Maybe something along the lines of 30 to 35% of the tourist coming up there is from Canadians.

And so we had a lot of reporting, you know, from the kingdom, especially about restaurants, retail places really hurting.

And some of these are in towns that have always maybe struggled a little bit more in Vermont, towns that have suffered from loss of manufacturing, suffered from loss of farming, have a reliance on that cross-border activity and Canadian tourism.

The numbers have been really significant.

You know, it's also the communities that voted for Trump in the highest numbers in Vermont, and they're the ones that are being the most deeply impacted by this.

That's an excellent point.

And you know, I found it kind of astonishing.

Maybe tell me, I understand, the reaction.

But the galvanization of what this did for Canadians is, to me, phenomenal.

I mean, look at Louise Penny, one of the most popular, mystery writers.

You know, she canceled her U.S.

tour, ended up going to, Stanstead, Quebec, and having a very symbolic reading in that library there.

But it really has you you're seeing, a drop.

I think that was so precipitous.

And Canadians really angry about this.

Yeah, it was immediate.

It was significant.

And just, you know, being around Vermont, Burlington, even you heard French.

Less like it was just this very noticeable sort of cultural difference that perhaps we took a little bit for granted in years prior.

We probably not so much now, maybe.

So, I got to move on to story number four now.

And this is again, a story a little bit like motion medley, where it has more to do with the location of what happened.

Calvin Cutler, a U.S.

Border Patrol agent, was fatally shot in the Northeast Kingdom.

Again, this made national news.

Yeah.

This was the first day of the Trump administration.

David Maitland, who is a border Patrol agent, was fatally shot by, Theresa Youngblood and Felix Holt.

They were still a lot of details that were developing.

We were trying to understand who are these people, where are they from?

And the more that came out about this case, the weirder it got.

It turns out that they were part of a, national death cult based out of California with beliefs in, artificial intelligence and vegan ism.

I mean, it's just there were so many strands to this, this story.

They were also linked to alleged murders in other states as well.

So there's multiple people that are being charged as part of this.

Felix Rockhold, he was shot and killed during that exchange at the border.

But Theresa Youngblood, she is still in federal court, and the Trump administration is pursuing the death penalty against her.

So it's been a really significant case.

You know, from that perspective.

But just, you know, the decisions I should have set the decisions.

It's the name of the cult.

And, you know, they really have captured the imagination and the curiosity and the fascination of many Americans.

You might see a Netflix documentary about this or something someday, but it's been a really interesting story.

You mentioned the timing was incredible.

This happened a couple hours after Trump was sworn into office, and of course, we knew an immigration crackdown was coming.

It was part of his campaign.

And now we hear about a Border Patrol agent being shot immediately.

People wanted to start connecting those dots.

It seemed like an incredible coincidence.

That's exactly what it was.

It was this bizarre fact pattern that you couldn't make up and yeah, tragic outcome.

Yeah.

And I think you're right.

You are going to see a documentary about this someday.

It's just it's beyond the pale, really.

We move on now to a, topic I'm much more comfortable with.

Let's say, that would be sports.

Mark Davis incredible enthusiasm over Vermont Green FC, the semi-pro soccer club here in Vermont that won a national championship this year.

Yeah, it felt like the year of Vermont green a striking.

It's our apparently our third most important story.

This is a story that's been building I think for three for four years though.

This is really the culmination.

They won the championship, in August, undefeated season.

Their playoff run was filled with, sort of comebacks and drama.

The real story, aside from the wonderful achievement of winning the championship, is just the passion that has arisen around this team.

They sell out every game within minutes.

There are people who are watching, from a grassy, hill.

There are people climbing on porta potties, climbing fences to watch the Vermont green.

It has become this real cultural force in Vermont.

An incredibly passionate following already.

We just had the, MLS, the highest level of professional soccer in America.

They just had their professional draft, I believe six Vermont green players got scooped up in that draft.

At least one very, very high, highly ranked.

So this has really been a meteoric rise for for for this franchise.

The championship just caps it off.

But this is really, an institution in Vermont.

Now, one of those players drafted was Maximilian Kissel, who could not have had a better year or last couple of years.

He scored the game winner in the final against Seattle Ballard.

He also scored the game winner for UVM in 2024 to win the National Division one NCAA AA championship.

Another thing happening in Vermont soccer has just become it's sort of, a bastion here now.

It's really kind of incredible.

And he has been drafted Kissel, by the way, for with Inter Miami, which has a player on an old Lionel Messi.

I'm sure you've heard his name before.

Yeah.

You may have heard of him.

So he'll be getting the winning shot for MLS championship this time next year.

History holds.

Really good to report some some good news there.

That was story number three.

All right.

The second top story as voted on for 2025 has to do with migrant workers in Vermont who are having to navigate an atmosphere of fear amid deportation and crackdowns.

We alluded a little bit to this, with the Mohsen Mahdawi case, but Calvin Cutler, it's hard to to overstate the effect that this is having on migrant communities here in Vermont.

It's significant.

I mean, we just spent a show 2 or 3 weeks ago talking about the impact of the Trump administration's deportation and immigration crackdown.

But basically, you know, you had President Trump who campaigned on the promise of deporting violent criminals.

But the way that that has sort of, the policy has played out here in Vermont, you know, we've seen a number of of, immigration crackdowns where the people have gone on to job sites, on to farms, home health workers down in Manchester.

And so really there's been a really ramping up of people that have been detained and, you know, trying to be deported from the Trump administration.

And as you mentioned, I mean, this is really, just had a ripple effect of a culture of fear among Vermont's migrant communities.

You know, they are, of course, play a huge role in agriculture, but also in other sectors of our economy as well.

And it's had a real chilling effect, for, for a lot of migrant farm workers, for Vermonters, for their employers.

It's it's certainly been been significant.

Are Vermonters coming out in support of these migrant workers?

Marc Davis yeah, in significant ways.

In response to that significant numbers, I think it's worth remembering in in April, there was a raid on a dairy farm in Berkshire.

Eight were arrested.

That was at the time believed to be the largest immigration raid in Vermont history, surpassed in size several times, in the months after April.

The numbers, I think one estimate it's 100 arrests in the past ten months or so.

So this is on a scale unlike anything the state has seen before.

It's striking to me, too.

I think when we think about these raids, this community, we think about dairy farms, we think about up north.

And that's absolutely part of the story.

But it's it's also not just there at Burlington.

Winooski.

Has we've talked to people there recently of a city, sort of very proudly built, on immigration.

This is something that is being felt throughout Vermont, not just on the dairy farms, not just in the places that we would think about.

And, you know, as we were speaking earlier, this was, you know, year one, at least three more years to go in this administration.

So, you know, we'll see what comes next.

But this is this is different than what's been there before.

Well, it was only a week or two.

My memory fails me, on this very show where we talked about another heartbreaking story where a second grader, you know, is in detention in Texas, you know, with with her mother.

But, you know, you're talking about someone from the Winooski school district here.

These are folks whose lives have been upended.

It's been a challenging thing, especially for state lawmakers, because, you know, the Trump administration, they say they're enforcing federal immigration law.

And there's really only so much that, you know, the state legislature, officials here in Vermont can do are only so many protections that they can try to provide.

And, you know, in in that case, it's also really sort of thrust into the spotlight, you know, Vermont's fair and impartial policing policy.

You know, how, what is the role of, of local law enforcement coordinating with federal officials?

You know, there's a lot of threads to this story.

But, you know, to Mark's point, I mean, it's been certainly significant and has been felt in communities across the state.

I'll just say one more quick thing about it.

It is a little bit hard to, to accept the rationalization that the federal government has been saying about going after the worst of the worst.

We're going after the criminals.

We're going after people that are doing bad things.

When you see a second grader, being held, at a detention facility.

So, you know, we're going to see this story again, continue into the new year.

We do have to get to our top story of the year, though, from 2025, the Vermont legislature passing some landmark education reform law.

The day for how significant is this?

So if it actually comes to fruition, it will be historic.

It'll be the biggest education reform Vermont has ever done.

You know, it's act 60, it's act 46, it's all of them, but a lot more.

So I think, you know, this education reform was remarkable in its scope and ambition, but also in its vagueness.

Right.

So lawmakers passed this sweeping reform.

But I think there's, really large outstanding question as to whether or not it will become reality.

Right.

And we are already seeing evidence that, you know, they they may not be willing to actually go there.

We'll see.

So, I mean, really quickly, the reform is, would change how we pay for schools, right.

And who decides how much we pay for schools?

It would no longer be fundamentally local.

A local decision.

It would be a state decision.

We're also talking about wide scale consolidation of our, of how we govern schools, but also like the size, the physical size of our schools.

But a lot of that will not come to fruition if lawmakers don't agree to new, school district maps in the new year.

And, you know, they already gave this, they, they created this task force and told this task force, give us and propose maps.

The task force said, no, we don't think that's a good idea.

Don't do it.

And the governor was not happy about that.

The governor's not happy about that.

Legislative leaders also say they're not happy about that, and that they are committed to getting this done.

You know, we'll see if they actually have the courage of their conviction.

Come January 1st and, or not January 1st, but next year when they reconvene, when they reconvene, you know, I think it's very possible that, one of the biggest stories of next year will be, you know, about the dissolution of the biggest story of this year.

Would you both agree with that?

Well, yeah, it's it's been a remarkable lesson, I think, in how sort of spread out power is, as you were alluding to.

You know, we have the Republican governor, the Democratic heads of the Senate in the House who are effectively all saying the same thing, that directionally, this is where we need to go.

You would think it would be a done deal at that point.

If you get those powerful people across party lines saying that instead the fate of this still feels just incredibly uncertain.

Galvin uncertain is a great way to put it.

I mean, this isn't like a bypass.

This isn't like a Partizan issue.

I mean, this is playing out in many small towns communities, people scared to lose their schools.

We're hearing from educators, superintendents, parents.

But then on the flip side, what's the alternative?

You know, affordability and property values, the property tax revolt that sparked all of this.

So I just where we go from here, super unclear.

I mean, it's going to be fascinating to see.

The one thing we can tell you, we promise right here in Vermont This Week.

We'll be following these stories for you coming into 2026 with great panelists like we had today.

Lola Duffort with Vermont public, Calvin Cutler with WCAX, and Mark Davis, the news director at Vermont Public.

Thank you all so much for being here for this year.

Enter the top stories of 2025.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

Happy holidays and join us next week.

Next Friday for Vermont This Week.