Posts on Friday, December 19, 2025

The Trump administration released some of the federal government’s trove of documents about deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein on the deadline set by Congress. The Justice Department released thousands of Epstein-related documents on Friday in an attempt to comply with the congressionally imposed deadline to publicize all the documents within 30 days. Photos and call logs are among the batch of Epstein files, which feature redactions meant to protect victims’ identities and other sensitive information. Epstein’s friends, associates, victims, possessions, and estate can be seen in the voluminous trove of photos the Trump administration disclosed Friday

The U.S. military struck more than 70 targets at multiple locations across central Syria against Islamic State on Friday, retaliating a week after two U.S. service members and one civilian were killed by a gunman tied to ISIS in an ambush attack. U.S. forces, as part of “Operation Hawkeye Strike,” eliminated ISIS fighters, weapons sites and infrastructure in response to the attack on U.S. service members in Palmyra, Syria, on Dec. 13, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday. The U.S. military utilized fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery against ISIS targets, U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said. Jordan’s Armed Forces supported\

Several of the largest U.S. and European-based drugmakers inked deals with President Donald Trump on Friday to voluntarily sell their medications for less, as his administration pushes to link the nation's drug prices to cheaper ones abroad. (snip) Among the most notable pledges is that Bristol Myers Squibb will offer Eliquis, its blockbuster blood-thinner and top-prescribed product, for free to Medicaid. The companies make up a majority of the 17 drugmakers Trump sent letters to in July, calling on them to lower prices as part of his "most favored nation" policy.

Elon Musk’s 2018 pay package from Tesla, once worth $56 billion, was restored by the Delaware Supreme Court on Friday, two years after a lower court struck down the compensation deal as “unfathomable.” The ruling overturns a decision that had prompted a furious backlash from Musk and damaged Delaware’s business-friendly reputation. The pay package was by far the largest ever until Tesla shareholders approved a new, even larger pay plan in November. The ruling means that Musk can finally get paid for his work since 2018, when he transformed

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has struck most-favored-nation (MFN) deals with nine more major drug companies to radically lower prescription drug costs, bringing the total to 14 agreements since late September. Trump announced agreements with Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis, and Sanofi during a press conference in the Roosevelt Room. The deals follow those he has already reached with Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, AstraZeneca, and EMD Serono, the first of which came with Pfizer several months ago. “This represents the greatest victory for patient affordability in the history of American health care, by far, and every single American will benefit,”

Writing this in December as I am you might be tempted to think I’m something of a money-grubbing Scrooge, but let me assure you in this first sentence I’m nothing of the sort. In fact, when it comes to tipping good service, I’m renowned for being generous, and was going twenty percent years before it was standard. My formula for a tip is this. When I enter an establishment, the wait staff is at twenty percent, perhaps even a little more. The tip is built into my tipping psyche. At that point, it’s up to the wait staff to begin working their way down.

GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik unexpectedly dropped her bid to become New York’s next governor Friday. “While spending precious time with my family this Christmas season, I have made the decision to suspend my campaign for Governor and will not seek re-election to Congress. I did not come to this decision lightly for our family,” she posted on X. “While we would have overwhelmingly won this primary, it is not an effective use of our time or your generous resources to spend the first half of next year in an unnecessary and protracted Republican primary, especially in a challenging state like New York.”

Kamala Harris appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s alleged comedy show and waxed moronic about how “abnormal” Trump and his administration and followers are. She sneered, curled her lips around her disdain, and told the hyper fancritters in the live audience that “Nothing about this is normal and should not be normalized.” (Pick it up at 04:33.) “Wrong, corrupt, and cowardly” were some words she used to describe the Trump administration and its leader, Donald J. Trump.

Public Press Release – HERE / Affidavit Available – HERE Rhode Island – […] “On December 18, 2025, a Rhode Island state court, based on an affidavit from a Providence Police Detective, issued a state arrest warrant for Neves Valente charging him with two counts of murder and 23 felony counts of assault and felony firearms offenses. Earlier this evening, law enforcement tracked Neves Valente to a Salem, New Hampshire storage unit. After obtaining a federal search warrant for the unit, authorities entered and found Neves Valente deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Minnesota has "developed a fraud tourism industry" that entices scammers to travel to the North Star State to exploit "easy money" taxpayer-funded programs, Joe Thompson, the federal prosecutor behind the Somali fraud convictions, said Thursday. He unveiled charges against six new defendants, including two who were based in Philadelphia. Federal prosecutors accused Anthony Waddell Jefferson and Lester Brown of traveling to Minneapolis to enroll sham companies in Minnesota’s federally funded Housing Stabilization Services program after hearing it was "a good opportunity to make money." The pair then returned to Philadelphia where they allegedly submitted up to $3.5 million in "fake and inflated"

The grand plans of the EU Leadership failed to generate their desired result. Initially, Ursula von der Leyen, Frederich Merz, Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer intended to permanently confiscate the Russian sovereign wealth fund and use it to fund their interests in Ukraine. However, the EU coalition didn’t agree.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday evening approved a tranche of 97 of President Donald Trump’s nominees for the executive branch as hundreds more await confirmation. In a 53–43 vote, the Senate gave the green light to the resolution authorizing the confirmation of these nominees together as a group, marking the third slate of nominees approved through such a measure. The vote was party line, with Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) not voting.

Investigators have revealed that the gunman responsible for killing two students at Brown University also killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor two days later. The motives of 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Neves Valente for both attacks remains unclear, but federal prosecutors on Thursday disclosed an interesting detail about the relationship of the killer to one of his victims. Nuno F.G. Loureiro, the 47-year-old MIT professor, was fatally shot at his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline by his former classmate.

The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for access to the state's voter rolls. The Justice Department said information provided by Raffensperger's office did not include all of the information requested, including the voter's full name, date of birth, residential address, state driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.

In political PR, the real story is the story behind the story. Take, for instance, President Trump’s primetime address. It aired Wednesday night; here’s a link if you missed it. Millions of Americans watched it live. But the real story was what happened behind the scenes. The TV networks don’t like forfeiting ad revenue — especially during the season finale of (gasp) Survivor, for goodness sake — and they expect a presidential address to feature breaking news. If you’re gonna preempt their precious marquee programming, you better deliver something salacious! Like war, pestilence, famine, and death. (You know, the good stuff.) The TV networks were expecting a galloping quartet of fast-breaking news.

Contrary to conventional economic wisdom and warnings from critics on the left and many economists that cutting interest rates while imposing broad tariffs would inevitably stoke inflation, the Trump administration is achieving all three simultaneously -- with the Federal Reserve lowering rates, significant tariffs in place and inflation cooling to 2.7% as of late 2025. (snip) The Consumer Price Index report for November 2025, released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed headline inflation cooling to 2.7% (snip.) Core inflation, excluding volatile food and energy prices, came in even lower at 2.6% -- the slowest pace since early 2021 (snip.)

In recent years, the Democrat party has steadily shifted left, embracing ideas once considered fringe, including open borders, transgenderism, and the Green New Deal. In abandoning the political center to Trump and his MAGA base, Democrats effectively cost themselves the House in 2022 — and the presidency and Senate in 2024. [snip] That Democrat party no longer exists. Rather than recalibrating in anticipation of the looming 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential race, today’s Democrats have accelerated their embrace of far-left ideology, blending with socialist movements — particularly the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani—whose reluctance to fully condemn the antisemitic slogan 'globalize the intifada' has already drawn fierce criticism—saw a top appointee resign after just one day when decade-old social media posts laced with anti-Jewish tropes resurfaced. Mamdani's ability to weed out Israel haters from his list of appointees is going to be difficult, given his close associations with individuals who share the same belief. Enter Catherine Almonte Da Costa. Da Costa resigned from her newly appointed role overseeing appointments and talent recruitment in Mamdani's administration, just one day after the position was announced.

The most important thing to learn from the December 2025 Bondi Beach attack is how to better anticipate and mitigate the next attack. There is probably going to be another attack, somewhere, sometime. The auguries are plain. As Australian authorities try to retrace the steps and understand the motivations of the Bondi Beach gunmen who killed 15 people on Sunday, one key focus has emerged: their travel to the Philippines last month, shortly before the attack. What’s in the Philippines? The Islamic State of East Asia. The Australian government says, “ISEA is one of Islamic State’s wilayat-bayat (“peripheric provinces”) … ISEA is affiliated with Islamic State. In September 2017, the

Arizona Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh has introduced legislation that would add a question about dual citizenship to the decennial U.S. Census. The bill, Make Allegiances Clear Again Act (MACA Act), aims to shed light on what Hamadeh describes as a hidden national security risk: divided loyalties among U.S. citizens who also hold citizenship in foreign countries. (snip) The Arizona congressman, who began his term in January 2025, argues that the census currently lumps together "illegal aliens, guest workers, dual nationals and loyal American citizens into the same generic population buckets." This, he contends, distorts representation and funding decisions.

For much of the past week it appeared that something rare -- and overdue -- might finally happen at the Food and Drug Administration. Reports circulated that the agency was preparing to place a black-box warning on Covid-19 vaccines , the strongest safety warning FDA can issue. (snip) Then it didn't happen. What followed was not a denial that harms existed. That much is now conceded. Instead FDA Commissioner Marty Makary publicly acknowledged that an internal safety committee had recommended a boxed warning -- and that the agency had declined to act on it.

The unspeakable tragedy that has been visited upon the family of Rob Reiner has likely left all parents in shock. Given what has been available to read about Nick Reiner these past several days, since the murder of his parents, it has shed a little light on what that family has endured since their son Nick was eight years old, maybe even before that. He was apparently a difficult child long before he became a drug user. His parents tried to help him way back then after he disrupted their yoga sessions. They hired their trainer to work specifically with Nick, thinking yoga would help him

Remember the bratty but fabulously worshipped Greta Thunberg thundering “How dare you” in front of the United Nations, in a screeching speech in which she claimed “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction”? The adults swooned at her feet, not just at the U.N. but at every stop she has made on her never-ending, neurotic speaking tour. But did anyone fact-check her? They should have. She was wrong. Then 16, several years before she caught the next trend and became a Palestinian justice warrior, Thunberg told the General Assembly in 2019 that “People are suffering. People are dying.

Hyundai and Kia will overhaul security features in millions of vehicles as part of a sweeping multistate settlement accusing the companies of failing to install industry-standard anti-theft technology in many of their models. Under the agreement, the automakers must provide free zinc-reinforced ignition cylinder protectors to current eligible owners, add engine immobilizers to all future U.S. vehicles and pay up to $9 million in restitution to consumers and participating states, Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced Tuesday. Nearly 4 million Hyundai vehicles and 3.1 million Kia vehicles in the U.S. will be eligible for the upgrade, and installation costs could exceed $500 million,

The man suspected of carrying out two murderous attacks — one at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine more, and another that killed the MIT professor in his Brookline home — was found dead in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire last night. The murderer apparently took the coward’s way out. Listening to the Providence press conference last night — it was followed by one featuring United States Attorney Leah Foley speaking about the murder of MIT Professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro — we learned that a witness who had confronted the murderer on the Brown campus provided the key to the breaking of the case

The Oversight Project is calling for the Justice Department to keep incarcerated prisoners whose Biden autopen clemencies were voided by President Donald Trump. The watchdog group shared a video with The Daily Signal that focused on two individuals whose sentences former President Joe Biden had commuted. The Oversight Project was the first to call attention to the mass number of presidential actions taken via autopen. Biden's own words during a New York Times interview published in July reveal that he was aware of “categories” of people with clemency, but not individuals.

Kamala Harris is still doing her best to hawk her book. She had two interviews that got attention on Wednesday, one with former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Jaime Harrison and one with Jimmy Kimmel on his ABC late night show. Both interviews were just another window into why Harris would be a terrible candidate for 2028, given the comments that she made. Harrison asked Harris about 2028, and she left the door wide open. Meanwhile, the interviewer cried when asked by his wife when the time would come for black women [to be president]. Um, guys? She didn't lose because she was black, any more than Hillary Clinton

It's been nearly a year since a U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter collided with a passenger jet on approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, which resulted in both aircraft plummeting into the icy Potomac River below. The January 29, 2025, crash killed 67 people – 64 on the American Airlines flight and three Army personnel on the Black Hawk – and the first lawsuit related to the disaster is making its way through the courts. Rachel Crafton, the widow of American Airlines flight 5342 (AE5342) passenger Casey Crafton, is suing the airline and the U.S. government over her husband's "senseless and tragic" death. In a Wednesday filing, the government

There’s nothing ‘right-wing’ about defending the Bill of Rights. Being called “right-wing” or “fascist” is detestable. The label implies a preference for dictatorship, authoritarianism, and government supremacy over personal freedom. The exact opposite is true. I would describe myself as a supporter of autarchism in the sense that we should rule ourselves and not be ruled by others. As someone who believes strongly in individual liberty, self-reliance, and self-government, I distrust all repositories of power -- whether such power resides in government, corporations, or social institutions. As Lord Acton advised: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In my estimation, nothing in this physical world can be trusted with power

There is a question floating around conservative circles that makes polite society squirm, which is usually how you know it is worth asking. It went viral again as it was posed on X in November. (X) Why do so many modern liberal women speak with open hostility toward Christianity while extending sympathy, or at least silence, toward Islam? Not cultural Muslims living quietly in America. Not neighbors or coworkers. The ideology itself, especially its fundamentalist expressions that are openly hostile to women’s rights, autonomy, and safety. That question is not hateful. It is not ignorant. It is observant. Anyone who has bothered to read basic reporting from Iran, Afghanistan, or parts of

Today Secretary Robert Kennedy announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will propose rules that will bar hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding—i.e., all of them— from performing “sex-rejecting procedures on children that expose young people to irreversible harm.” Banned procedures will include chemical treatments as well as surgery. While the proposed rules do not appear to be public yet, Kennedy’s Declaration in support of the rules is here. And this process implements President Trump’s Executive Order directing HHS to take such actions, among other things.

Untold pixels have been spilled on the subject of illegal immigration, in the legacy media, the alternative media, and the blogosphere. President Trump was re-elected, in no small part, due to his promise to address the wide-open borders policy of the Biden years, and despite opposition at every step from the legacy media and Democrats (but I repeat myself) he's been doing that. But what about legal immigration? Some recent polling has revealed that a plurality of responders would like to see legal immigration reduced, or even halted altogether. Two-thirds of Republicans want legalized migration to be decreased or ended, says a new poll by YouGov. In contrast,

Democrats are sinking like a stone, and the new Quinnipiac poll makes it official: their congressional approval rating has hit a historic low of just 18%, with a brutal 73% disapproving. That's the worst number Quinnipiac has recorded since they started asking the question back in 2009. Even CNN's chief data analyst, Harry Enten, couldn't hide his shock, declaring that "Democrats, in the minds of the American public, are lower than the Dead Sea." The real kicker? Democrats are turning on their own party. Only 42% of Democratic voters approve of how their representatives in Congress are performing, while 48% disapprove.

A Wisconsin judge accused of concealing an undocumented man to prevent his arrest by immigration authorities was found guilty of felony obstruction, according to ABC Milwaukee affiliate WISN, which was in the courtroom for the trial. Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was charged in a two-count federal indictment that alleges she obstructed official Department of Homeland Security removal proceedings and knowingly concealed the man from immigration authorities at a courthouse in April. Dugan was found guilty of obstructing federal agents and not guilty of concealing an undocumented immigrant from arrest during an April courthouse incident.