Posts on Monday, December 22, 2025

Comedian and late-night host Conan O’Brien might or might not have cause to regret his decision. We cannot know his motives, so we will not speculate. But it seems clear that a different decision from O’Brien might have produced a different result. According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail+, multiple guests present at the comedian’s Dec. 13 Christmas party have come forward to report that an argument between 78-year-old Hollywood legend Rob Reiner and his troubled son, 32-year-old Nick Reiner, grew so heated that one guest suggested calling the police, only to have O’Brien refuse.

A federal judge in Washington ruled on Monday that the Trump administration had to either help bring back to the United States a group of Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador in March and subsequently sent back to their homeland or give them a chance to contest their expulsions in the U.S. courts. The ruling by the judge, James E. Boasberg, was the latest twist in the long-running saga of the Venezuelan men who were expelled from the country on March 15 under a proclamation by President Trump invoking the expansive powers of an 18th-century law known as the Alien Enemies Act.

When JD Vance stood before a roaring crowd and declared, “We have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation,” the reaction was immediate and electric. The crowd did not politely applaud. They erupted. That matters. In a political era where most leaders hedge, qualify, and sanitize every sentence, Vance chose clarity. He chose history. He chose conviction. And in doing so, he reminded millions of Americans of something they have been told to forget.[snip] For decades now, the political and cultural elite have worked overtime to convince the country that faith is a private hobby at best, and a public nuisance at worst.

President Donald Trump announced a new fleet of ships Monday, known as the "Golden Fleet," as he revealed he approved plans for two new "very large battleships." "As you know, we're desperately in need of ships. Our ships are some of them have gotten old and tired and obsolete," Trump said, flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan. Trump said the new ships would be "100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built," in an address from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Renderings behind the president showed the new "Trump class," including one named the USS Defiant.

NEW YORK — A coalition of 21 attorneys general from Democratic-led states sued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and its director, Russell Vought, on Monday, asserting that the White House’s argument to withhold funds from the consumer protection agency is unconstitutional. The lawsuit has to do with the Trump administration’s argument that the CFPB can only be funded by the Federal Reserve’s profits. The Federal Reserve has been running a loss since 2022, a side effect of the Fed raising interest rates sharply to combat inflation, because it holds bonds that pay low interest from the pandemic but it needs to pay out higher

House and Senate Democrats are demanding that President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) rescind a new regulation that will prevent welfare-dependent foreign nationals from resettling in the U.S. USCIS Director Joe Edlow has issued a final rule that will reinstate Trump’s “public charge” rule from his first term, which enforced Clinton-era laws from 1996 that delegated all financial responsibility to a family member or business sponsor of a foreign national seeking a green card when they had previously used welfare programs. In February 2021, then-President Joe Biden ended Trump’s public charge rule, revamping welfare-dependent immigration. House and Senate Democrats are now writing to

The United States has recalled almost 30 career diplomats from ambassadorial roles. All of the ambassadors were appointed under President Joe Biden and are senior members of the State Department’s Foreign Service, which produces career diplomats to serve in Washington and abroad. These diplomats tend to stay in their roles for a few years and usually do not leave when there is a change in administration, as they are trained to carry out the president’s agenda, no matter which party occupies the White House.

Costs are exploding for the German taxpayer, in unique ways: per a new report from Remix News, a Muslim minor who stabbed a psychiatric caregiver in the back is “so dangerous” that the German government is now building a specialized “high-security container” to house her while she receives additional “treatment” and “educational support.” From Remix: The container has not yet been built, but once completed, inside her ‘high-security container,’ the 14-year-old girl will ‘receive intensive educational support,’ according to German public news media WDR. Think Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs, except instead of a he, it’s a she,

Part One of this series discussed the rise of Western Civilization from the Greeks and Romans. Part Two concluded with the sad realization that this Western Civilization is falling. The question for this final Part Three is, what will replace it? It won’t be Russia, “a gas station masquerading as a country,” as John McCain famously put it. McCain died before he could witness Russia proving him right by flailing and failing to conquer it’s eastern neighbor for nearly four years now, a conquering that any competent conqueror could have performed in four weeks.

Dr. Seuss made it famous with his timeless story, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, but in today’s America, the story is more often, “The Leftist Who Desperately Wanted to Ruin Christmas.” We see it constantly — woke Karens who want to take down manger displays, town councils that ban nativity scenes, triggered scolds who want to rip the Christ out of Christmas. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for one, isn’t having it. After some silly leftist group demanded that she rescind her order making December 26 a day off for government employees, arguing that it violated the separation of church and state concept, Sanders effectively said…

On al-Jazeera on Friday, the Gaza imam Hussein Abu Ayada revealed the secret of the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s actually an ill-kept secret, for Palestinian leaders, and supporters of the Palestinian cause in the Islamic Republic of Iran and elsewhere, mention it frequently. But it never, ever shows up in all of the mountains of literature that Western policymakers and mainstream foreign policy analysts have produced about this intractable conflict, and about how it can be managed. We, the Palestinian people,” said Abu Ayada, “obey and submit to the orders of Allah. And we know that the war that the Jews are leading against us is for no reason.”

President Donald Trump has appointed Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry as the United States Special Envoy to Greenland. The selection of a sitting state governor for a federal diplomatic role is unusual. Trump announced the appointment on Sunday evening on Truth Social. He emphasized Greenland’s critical role in U.S. national security. “Jeff understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security, and will strongly advance our Country’s Interests for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Allies, and indeed, the World,” Trump wrote in his post. Whether Landry will step down from his gubernatorial position or attempt to balance both roles simultaneously remains unknown.

Now, failing Macron wants to hold talks with Putin. But Merz took the lead when meaningful negotiations took place days ago in Berlin – not Paris. When we look at Emmanuel Macron’s last moves, we can see that the Franch President’s new impulse to hold talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin as another desperate attempt to remain relevant. As a part of the ‘coalition of the willing’, Macron was sharing the crowded European stage with UK’s Keir Starmer and Germany’s Friedrich Merz. Together, they were working to derail the peace process.

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers working in St. Paul Sunday became involved in a use-of-force incident with shots fired after a suspect struck officers, rammed their vehicles, and proceeded to bite officers. The suspect has since been identified by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE as Cuban illegal alien Juan Carlos Rodrigues Romero in statements posted on social media. (snip) “This dangerous attempt to evade arrest comes after sanctuary politicians, like Governor Walz and other radical leftists, demeaned ICE and held events to help illegal aliens evade arrest,” said ICE.

Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, great-nephew of the dictators Fidel and Raúl Castro, has been appointed deputy to the National Assembly of People's Power in a session marked by inexplicable resignations of several parliamentarians. This appointment, which took place on December 17, 2025, is not a mere bureaucratic procedure, but a strategic step that legally enables him to run for the presidency of the Republic in the upcoming sham elections of 2028, perpetuating the legacy of communist oppression on the island.

Immigration & Sexual Violence – Nothing to See Here! Britain is now the sort of country where you can get an instant answer to ‘What is the carbon footprint of a sausage roll?’. Yet if you ask, ‘Are we importing risk to women along with importing people?’ our nation state stares at its shoes and starts muttering about ‘complexity’. Let us begin with two official lines that any half-awake citizen can see are rising at the same time. Line one, sexual violence. The ONS crime bulletin for the year ending June 2025 reports 211,225 sexual offences recorded by the police in England and Wales are up 9% from the previous year.

America has long been a beacon of freedom to the oppressed, a shining symbol of liberty with – as our leftist friends tell us – an unlimited moral obligation to provide perpetual shelter to anyone who suffers at the hands of their government. Millions of people from around the world have ignored that irritating asylum requirement that you apply at the first country you reach and have come all the way over here to America in a quest to quench their yearning for being free (as well as their yearning to turn our country into the same kind of garbage hellhole they allegedly fled from, but that’s another column).

The son of a former ambassador from Iran to Australia posted a cryptic threat on X hours before the Islamic terrorist father-and-son team attacked Jewish-Australian celebrants at an iconic beach in New South Wales, Australia. In his tweet, Ahmad Ghadiri Abyaneh, son of former ambassador Mohammad-Hassan Ghadiri Abyaneh, attacked Jews for celebrating a “satanic ritual” by honoring Chanukah. He claimed that these Jewish holiday celebrations required an active defense, quoting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who called for “societal defense.” The most recent ambassador from Iran, Ahmad Sadeghi, was expelled from Australia because of the Iranian embassy’s sponsorship of at least two violent anti-Semitic incidents in Australia.

Imagine if your 15-year-old came to my house, and I gave them a book about edgy sex positions? What if I gave your 16-year-old a book with graphic illustrations of oral or anal sex? Would you be happy with that? Or would you be mighty suspicious of me? Many parents may not know it, but there is an ongoing fight over certain books and whether they should be given to minors without their parents’ knowledge or consent. That’s what the American Library Association wants. The ALA recently launched a nationwide campaign against so-called “book bans,” with ALA President Sam Helmick (they/them) saying it is about the “freedom to read.”

There used to be a clear understanding about what the Wall Street Journal was and what it wasn’t. At one time WSJ was trusted and serious. It was a business-minded, economically grounded, and culturally restrained paper. Even readers who disagreed with its editorial stance understood that the WSJ operated in a different lane than lifestyle outlets or activist rags. It went without saying. But now, that clarity is gone. Over the past few years, the Journal’s news division has begun publishing stories that feel completely disconnected from the brand it spent decades building. The tone and the subject matter have totally shifted. And the professional instincts that once separated

When I was a kid, my middle sister’s birthday was December 10th. As part of her celebration, the family went out to buy a live Christmas tree. Not because we were virtuous. Not because of tradition. Because that’s when the tree lots opened. There were no pre-lit artificial trees waiting in plastic coffins in the attic. You didn’t unbox Christmas. You went outside and found it, standing upright in the cold, guarded by a man with twine and cold hands in a worn corduroy jacket.

Zohran Mamdani will be sworn in by his socialist idol Bernie Sanders during a public ceremony in Lower Manhattan on January 1, his transition team announced Monday. The Brooklyn native and Vermont senator will return to the Big Apple on Inauguration Day for Mayor-elect Mamdani’s “block party” near City Hall. State Attorney General Letitia James will officially swear him in as New York City’s 112th mayor in a private event at midnight.

If you have struggled to find any reason to support the Democratic Party, you are by no means alone. A new Quinnipiac poll revealed last week that 73 percent of voters disapprove of the way the Democrats in Congress are handling their job. Yet, somehow, the party’s candidates managed to overperform its 2024 margins in all five House special elections this year. How did they work this miracle? One clue can perhaps be found in the recent revelations about election “irregularities” in Fulton County, Georgia. During a recent hearing of the Georgia State Election Board (SEB), an attorney for the county admitted that 315,000 illegally certified votes were included

The Department of Justice is closing a Democrat-created bureaucratic loophole that has allowed legal and illegal migrants to get a huge quantity of taxpayer aid since 1997, despite a 1996 law limiting aid to citizens. The loophole was created by President Bill Clinton’s administration after Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), which was intended to “strengthen… the principle that [legal and illegal] immigrants come to America to work, not to collect welfare benefits.” “We now retract that [1997] opinion and offer the best reading of the phrase ‘Federal means-tested public benefit,'” President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said on December 16. The new rule means that

Staffers in the Heritage Foundation’s economic, legal, and data centers resigned over the weekend to join a conservative advocacy group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, National Review has learned, adding to the list of employees who have departed in recent weeks over disagreements with the conservative think tank’s leadership. The organization’s president, Kevin Roberts, sent an email to staff Sunday evening informing them of the departures. “We wish them well, though the manner of their departures speaks volumes,” he wrote. Roberts also told staff in the email that the organization’s chief economist, EJ Antoni, will now serve as acting director of the organization’s Center for Data Analysis

The Obama-Biden Administration prevented agents investigating Hillary Clinton from reviewing some eight thumb drives of intel based on purported concerns over executive and congressional privilege, newly released documents reveal. This reality renders last month’s revelation that the Biden Administration approved Special Counsel Jack Smith’s subpoenaing of congressional Republicans’ toll records even more appalling — and the Democrats’ weaponization of the criminal justice system even more obvious and outrageous. Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released another tranche of documents he obtained through his relentless efforts to expose the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

A post from Customs and Border Protection featuring a snarling, dried primate corpse removed from a traveler’s luggage has sparked renewed scrutiny over illegal bushmeat smuggling into major U.S. airports. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Chicago said agriculture specialists at O’Hare International Airport seized prohibited food items from a passenger arriving from the Congo, including what the agency described as nonhuman primate meat, after a post by the agency’s Chicago office drew more than one million views within 24 hours on X. “A passenger from Congo believed the food they were bringing was fine; it was not. In the passenger’s suitcase O’Hare Agriculture Specialists found

President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior (DOI) announced on Monday that it is pausing leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects off the East Coast. “Due to national security concerns identified by @DeptofWar, @interior is PAUSING leases for 5 expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms,” DOI Secretary Doug Burgum posted on X. “ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED.” President Trump “is bringing common sense back to energy policy and putting security first,” Burgum added. In a separate news release, the DOI stated that the pause was also connected with “national security risks” identified by the Department of War in “recently completed classified reports,”

Prominent anti-Trump lawyer George Conway filed to run for Congress in New York City on Monday. Conway, who lives in Bethesda, Md., an affluent Washington, D.C. suburb, will vie in a crowded Democratic primary to represent a deep-blue Manhattan district to succeed Democratic New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, who is retiring. The vocal Trump critic is likely to frame his congressional run around his top attorney credentials and willingness to serve as legal pitbull against Trump in Congress. Conway, 62, is a mainstay in left-wing media and frequently rails against Trump

Vice President JD Vance had two choice words for racist troll Nick Fuentes and others like MS NOW host Jen Psaki, who have made revolting comments about the second lady: “Eat s–t.” “Let me be clear. Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat s–t,” Vance told UnHerd in an interview published Sunday. “That’s my official policy as vice president of the United States.”

D.C. is "a federal district created by Congress, rather than a constitutionally sovereign entity," Judge Patricia Millet wrote in a Dec. 17 order. "The President's order implicates a strong and distinctive interest in the protection of federal governmental functions and property within the nation's capital." (snip) Judges Gregory Katsas and Naomi Rao went further in a concurrence asserting D.C. doesn't have standing to sue the federal government since it is a creation of the same government it is attempting to sue. (snip) [I]f the reasoning expressed in it is upheld on appeal, it could trim the powers of whoever replaces current Mayor Muriel Bowser (snip.)

Western civilization arose in Greece in the 8th century BC, when some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate, 400-year Dark Age. That chaos followed the utter collapse of the palatial culture of Mycenaean Greece. But what re-emerged were constitutional government, rationalism, liberty, freedom of expression, self-critique and free markets — what we know now as the foundation of a unique Western civilization.[snip] From the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Rhine and Danube to the Sahara were a million square miles of safety, prosperity, progress and science — until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD.

For a peek into how California Governor Gavin Newsom would rule the country if elected President, look no further than his California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force. This ambiguous agency was buried within the state budget in 2022 during Newsom's statewide Covid lockdown, when media was not allowed near the governor or Legislature. (snip) The report the Equity Task Force recently released recommending a land grab from white farmers reads like a "How To" Marxism 101 manual at UC Berkeley. (snip) This comprehensive business plan requires more illegal reparations in the form of hostile land "takings" seizures, this time for "indigenous" tribes and farm workers.

Power continues to be restored to tens of thousands of San Francisco businesses and residences following a Saturday outage that affected some 130,000 customers, according to Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E). The outage was caused by a fire at an electrical substation, according to PG&E. By Sunday evening, there remained about 14,000 customers who were still without service, PG&E said. The company said it expects to restore power to all remaining customers impacted by the outage by 2 p.m. on Monday. "PG&E crews will continue to work until all customers have been restored," the company said. While the damage to the substation was "significant and extensive," there were no injures to

he Department of War is calling for an ethics inquiry into Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., over business deals he and his brother — retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — struck in Ukraine while Eugene was simultaneously part of a State Department-funded inquiry into Russian atrocities in Ukraine. The Pentagon's General Counsel Earl Matthews sent the November letter to House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., as well as to the leaders of the House Armed Services and Oversight Committees. The letters urged an ethics-related inquiry into the efforts undertaken by Eugene — elected to Congress in 2024 — and by his brother Alexander as the brothers each worked with

CBS pulled a “60 Minutes” segment on Venezuelan migrants who were sent to El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security prison, CECOT, just hours before its scheduled Sunday broadcast time. “The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated,” the program ‌posted in an Editor’s Note on social media three hours before it was set to air. “Our report ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast,” the post said. The episode, which was scheduled to air at 7:30 ET on Sunday, was set to show correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewing recently released deportees who experienced “brutal and torturous” conditions at the hellhole prison,

The United States is now pursuing a third oil tanker linked to Venezuela, escalating a maritime enforcement campaign that intensified just one day after U.S. forces seized another vessel operating in the Caribbean. As I reported yesterday, American authorities boarded and seized a tanker earlier this month as part of a broader crackdown on sanctioned oil shipments tied to the Maduro regime. That operation now appears to be only the beginning.

There have been a couple of fascinating developments that touch upon two subjects I cover for Legal Insurrection: California and nuclear power. (snip) So, as presumptive 2028 candidate Gavin Newsom prepares for his campaign’s official launch, there is some pre-planning to avoid the embarrassment of statewide brownouts or blackouts during his run. Such an event would give Newsom’s adversaries both within and outside the Democratic Party a big target that would resonate with many Americans, who no longer believe the “climate crisis” narrative.

The Wall Street Journal reports that our administration’s pressure on Venezuela is bringing Cuba’s Communist regime to the brink of collapse. Two birds with one stone, you might say. I wonder, though: how can you collapse when you are already flat on the ground? Cubans are going hungry, suffering from spreading disease and sleeping outdoors with no electricity to power fans through the sweltering nights. A quarter of the population has fled during the island’s most prolonged economic crisis. No one, on the other hand, is moving into Cuba.