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Germany has again flown in Afghan migrants from Pakistan, with a charter flight bringing 160 individuals to Berlin on Tuesday, December 16th.

According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, 154 of the arrivals were approved under the federal reception program, while six were local staff and their relatives.

Many of those transported had been waiting months to leave Pakistan. The government intends to bring in a total of 541 Afghans under these programs by the end of the year.

Afghan citizens who renounce entry despite prior approval may receive a one-time payment of between €2,500 and €10,000 in “start-up aid”—intended to facilitate their return to Afghanistan.

Despite the government indicating a stop to family reunification, new figures from the Federal Foreign Office show continued high levels of admissions via this route. Around 105,000 national visas have been issued so far in 2025 for family reunification. A large portion of the individuals arriving come from Syria, Turkey, India, Kosovo, Albania, and Iran.

Last year, 123,675 people entered Germany under family reunification, showing little change compared to previous years. Since 2020, approximately 657,000 people have entered Germany through the visa system for family reunification.

The suspension announced this summer applies specifically to persons entitled to subsidiary protection, set to last for two years. However, broader family reunification continues unabated, with tens of thousands of people entering the country.

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The following video shows a distinguished Islamic cleric named Imam Mohammed Jalali issuing one of the many death fatwas against Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands. This is not a current video — it was recorded sometime in 2023. Geert Wilders posted the Dutch version of it on Facebook.

As a result of the fatwa, in 2024 Imam Jalali was tried, convicted, and sentenced in absentia to fourteen years in prison by a Dutch court. Unfortunately, he lives in Pakistan, so it’s doubtful whether he can ever be made to serve his sentence.

The Foundry.

The Pentagon is plowing ahead in its investigation of Arizona Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly, who told service members they “can refuse illegal orders.”

“The Office of the Secretary of War, in conjunction with the Department of War’s Office of the General Counsel, is escalating the preliminary review of Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.), to an official Command Investigation,” a Department of War official told reporters in a statement Monday.

“Retired Captain Kelly is currently under investigation for serious allegations of misconduct,” it adds.

Kelly retired from the Navy in 2011, having served since the 1980s. He served as a naval aviator during the Gulf War.

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The Southern Poverty Law Center was deeply involved in setting federal policy during the Biden administration, as well as law enforcement and even school policies across the country, despite labeling mainstream right-of-center organizations as “hate groups,” experts told a House panel Tuesday.

The SPLC previously claimed it was not anti-Christian, citing how it did not label Focus on the Family on its “hate map.” However, earlier this year, the group did add Focus on the Family to the list–and removed the defense of being anti-Christian from the website, said Tyler O’Neil, senior editor of The Daily Signal and author of “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

The “hate map,” is intended to chill speech, O’Neil told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government on Tuesday.

“This contributes to the hostile climate in which conservatives keep their mouths shut in order to avoid being accused of racism, Islamophobia, or hate,” O’Neil said. “It is no accident that activists use this hate map to deplatform conservatives, or that activist groups have tried to pressure donor advised funds to blacklist the SPLC’s targets.”

The American Mind.

he Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) provides a rare official statement on the main threats facing the United States, as well as lays out strategies to address them. Typically released once per presidential term, this administration’s NSS focuses on how the U.S. can reestablish its military and economic might in a world that’s clearly moved well beyond the post-Cold War era. As stated in its introduction, the document aims to be a “roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth.”

Part of advocating a foreign policy of “principled realism” is pointing out how Europe, an important U.S. partner going back centuries, has been actively rejecting its historic ways of life.

The Trump NSS details several serious challenges the continent faces, including economic stagnation. However, that issue is overshadowed by the impact of mass immigration, which is transforming Europe by “creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.” The NSS forecasts that if current trends persist, Europe may become unrecognizable within two decades, as it is at risk of “civilizational erasure.”

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By omitting the long trail of failed UN climate pronouncements, ignoring the dramatic decline in climate-related deaths, and treating speculative model outputs as inevitable futures, PBS and the Associated Press badly mislead their audience concerning the true state of the Earth. A truly public-minded broadcaster would carefully scrutinize the UN’s record and available data rather than uncritically regurgitate its latest false alarm report.

hoe_math: “Universal Basic Income is like leaving food out around your house. It eventually attracts vermin. It is bad social hygiene.”

Underground Legal Clinics Offer a Lifeline to Migrants Facing Mass Deportation (Hunter Walker/Talking Points Memo)

Trump Pushes Back on Criticism of Reiner Comments  And rightly so. TDS and the sort of dysfunctional family life that lead to Reiner’s murder proceed from the same Woke roots. Rich liberals and celebrities have a hard time creating a normal family life for their children (when they even have them), and the combination (rich liberal celebrities) is overwhelmingly a predictor of bad outcomes. Nothing is more common than reports of celebrity ‘nepo babies’ struggling with various addictions and generally making a hash of their lives. That the Narrative Media take is supremely intellectually shallow is unfortunate, but not unexpected.

‘The More I’m Around Young People, the More Panicked I Am’ (Yair Rosenberg/The Atlantic)  Yeah, young people are no longer buying what the Wokerati are selling, and they can’t cope.

Pulitzer Prize Board members dump broad discovery demands on Trump for tax returns, psych records, and ‘any’ prescription meds history (Matt Naham/Law & Crime)

Trump Admin Intensifies Military Probe Against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, Launches Command Investigation (Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket)

BREAKING: Trump Dances on Rob Reiner’s Grave (Asawin Suebsaeng/Zeteo)

Pentagon says it’s “escalating” Kelly review to “official” investigation (Axios)

Eager for Center Stage, Patel Casts Aside Caution in Statements as F.B.I. Leader (New York Times)

Trump attack on Rob Reiner tests the limits, even for his MAGA base (Washington Post)

Republicans rebuff Trump’s post on Rob Reiner (Cheyanne M. Daniels/Politico)

CEOs Are Learning to Live With Trump’s Turn to State Capitalism (Greg Ip/Wall Street Journal)  “State capitalism” is, of course, a meaningless term, crafted only as a stick with which to beat Trump.

Trump Widens the Breach (John Dickerson/The Atlantic)

Trump’s Top Aide Acknowledges ‘Score Settling’ Behind Prosecutions (Peter Baker/New York Times)  Who doesn’t know that?

Trump has signed more executive orders in 2025 than in his entire first term (Washington Post)  Having ceased to be Mr Nice Guy.

Call them ‘Nuzzi Pox’ (Jason Sattler/THE FARCE)

The tech industry will come to regret its embrace of Trump (Paul Waldman/Public Notice)

Raskin to introduce bill to require review of White House renovation plans (Arden Farhi/CBS News)

Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the “Junkyard Dogs”: The White House Chief of Staff On Trump’s Second Term (Part 1 of 2) (Vanity Fair)

Words & Phrases That Have Lost All Meaning (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian)  Jennifer Rubin loses her shit, as she so frequently does.

Four Supertankers Reverse Course As Trump’s Gunboat Diplomacy Against Venezuela Accelerates

Trump’s war on democracy is failing (Zack Beauchamp/Vox) There is, of course, no ‘Trump war on democracy’, merely a Trump war on Democrats.

“Quite a buffet”: U.S. ready to seize more tankers with Venezuelan oil (Marc Caputo/Axios)

California Sues Trump Admin Over $33 Million Withheld Due To Trucker English-Proficiency Rules  Imagine the absurdity of requiring truckers to understand English!

The Psych-Ward Presidency ??? Another tranche of sour economic data came down from the Bureau of Labor Statistics today. (Andrew Egger/The Bulwark)

Susie Wiles Calls Explosive Vanity Fair Story A ‘Disingenuously Framed Hit Piece’ (Paige Lavender/HuffPost)  Why was she so stupid as to consent to an interview?

Former Trump Adviser Eviscerates President’s Shocking Response to Rob Reiner Murder (Will Neal/The Daily Beast)

The Trump Mind-Set Is Not Complex (Thomas B. Edsall/New York Times)

The Administration’s Drug Boat Strikes Are Crimes Against Humanity (Charlie Trumbull/Lawfare)  If humanity consisted of drug-users.

The Situation: Why Can’t Kash Patel Shut Up? (Lawfare)

FBI doubted probable cause for Mar-a-Lago raid but pushed forward amid pressure from Biden DOJ, emails reveal (Brooke Singman/Fox News)

Judges Are Getting Fired as Trump Pursues Immigration ‘Purge’ (Bloomberg)

‘We’re Doing Pirate Now’: SNL’s Trump Brags About Seizing Tanker, Shooting Santa

The Longest Suicide Note in American History (Anne Applebaum/The Atlantic)  No, not the DNC platform.

DHS Rebuts Rep. Omar Claim ICE Stopped Son: ‘No Record’

Trump’s Vile Rob Reiner Comments Show How Much He Has Debased His Office (Sasha Abramsky/The Nation)

Sen. Mark Kelly calls Pentagon investigation into his remarks a move to chill military dissent (Associated Press)

Babylon Bee.

What a concept.

Newsbusters.

On Monday afternoon, MS NOW host Katy Tur provided a forum for an anti-gun leftist journalist to call for changes in the law so that gun makers can be sued over shootings.

Near the beginning of the show, Tur recalled the increase in mass killings in schools since the Columbine attack in 1999, and played a prerecorded clip of Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN) from 2023 predicting that an answer to school shooting would not originate in Congress. The MS NOW host then responded to the soundbite:

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During an October swing through Southeast Asia, US President Donald Trump struck same-day agreements with Malaysia and Thailand to deepen cooperation on critical minerals and rare earths, underscoring Washington’s push to diversify supply chains away from China, according to SCMP.

According to the White House, Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim agreed to expand collaboration on building and securing critical mineral and rare earth supply chains. Using similar language, Washington said it would also “strengthen cooperation [with Thailand] on critical minerals supply chains development and expansion,” including exploration, extraction and processing.

The back-to-back deals reflect how resource-rich economies have become central battlegrounds in the US-China rivalry over rare earths. Analysts say Beijing currently holds the advantage, having spent decades engaging countries across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. These nations often view China as a “partner that actually builds,” with investment that comes with fewer political conditions than US funding.

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The fight over California’s new congressional map designed to help Democrats flip congressional House seats will go to court Monday as a panel of federal judges considers whether the district boundaries approved by voters last month can be used in elections.

The hearing in Los Angeles sets the stage for a high-stakes legal and political fight between the Trump administration and Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s been eyeing a 2028 presidential run.

The lawsuit asks a three-judge panel to grant a temporary restraining order by Dec. 19 — the date candidates can take the first official steps to run in the 2026 election.

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From banning masks for law enforcement officers and requiring gender-neutral restrooms in schools, to enhancing artificial intelligence regulations and completely banning plastic bags in stores, here is an overview of some major laws Californians can expect next year or late this year.

Time to leave.

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Indian police said on Tuesday, December 16th, that one of the two gunmen behind the mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach was an Indian citizen who left the country nearly three decades ago.

Sajid Akram, originally from Hyderabad, migrated to Australia in November 1998 in search of work, according to police in the southern state of Telangana.

Akram and his son, Naveed—listed as an Australian citizen in immigration records—opened fire on people celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on Sunday, December 14th, killing at least 15. Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the attackers were driven by Islamic State ideology and that the assault was intended to spread fear within the Jewish community.

Indian authorities said Akram had maintained only limited contact with his family in Hyderabad since leaving the country and had no criminal or adverse record in India. His relatives in India told police they were unaware of any signs of radicalisation, adding that the factors behind the attack appeared to have no connection to India or local influences in Telangana.

As long as Islam exists, ‘jihadis’ will be a problem. It’s been that way for 1400 years, and there is no indication that it will change. Whether our Ruling Class will continue prating how ‘peaceful’ Muslims are while ignoring the mass murder, or whether they will wake up and decide to do something about it, is an exercise left for the reader. 

UPDATE: Bondi Beach shooting gunman Naveed Akram was follower of pro-Islamic State preacher Wisam Haddad (ABC)

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Hold the front page! A new report from Amnesty International has documented “abuses by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups during the attacks of 7 October 2023 on southern Israel and the treatment of those seized and held captive in the occupied Gaza Strip.”

This marks a step up from the civil rights group’s previous low-key recognition that Hamas and others committed war crimes, as legally defined, during their October 7th pogrom.

Critics have noticed the glacial pace with which Amnesty trundled into action, especially in comparison to its prompt condemnations of Israel culminating, for now at least, in tech-savvy sounding allegations of “livestreamed genocide.”

Despite both its news coverage and its late delivery, the report still manages to pull its punches. Charles Lane, nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, claims

A planned report on the terrorist group’s crimes turned into a moral muddle, including a long critique of Israel.

The delay and equivocation are reportedly the product of internal divisions within Amnesty itself, sections of which appear more sympathetic to Hamas terrorists than others.

Doubters of the righteousness of Amnesty International can now look forward to the timely publication of its report into Boer War-era human rights violations.

Unfortunately, Amnesty International (as its name implies) has been a core Woke NGO since it’s inception. They will report abuses by Their Side of an issue only when it can’t be avoided.

The Foundry.

Jupiter Christian School, located 22 miles north of Palm Beach, Florida, has 700 students on their waiting list. The head of Grandview Prep, also near Palm Beach, reports that the number of applications to private schools in the area increased by almost 50% between 2017-2018 and 2022-2023. A charter school that serves students in grades K-8 near the heart of Orlando reports just three open seats and only across the 6th-8th grades.

In sum: There is high demand for private schools and public charter schools in Florida.

Meanwhile, at least two traditional school districts in Florida are reporting thousands of open seats, and taxpayers are paying for school buildings with declining enrollment.

Last week, Orange County Public School officials announced that so many students are leaving the district that administrators could close seven buildings—paving the way for private and charter school operators to gain access to the facilities. One Orange County middle school on the list of underused buildings has more than 900 open seats.

However, around the country, public school districts have been notorious for holding on to underused or even vacant facilities so private schools and charter schools cannot use the buildings. Heritage Foundation research has documented examples from Detroit, where the city’s public school district blocked charter school operators from accessing a building the school district did not even own.

Between 2010 and 2017, the Tucson Unified School District was maintaining at least a half-dozen closed district school buildings, even as the district had some 13,000 empty seats.

Unfortunately. government employees soon become convinced that government action is in every case and in every way preferable to private action, however stupid and inefficient that might appear to people who don’t live on a government paycheck.

The American Mind.

Northwestern University recently struck a deal with the United States Department of Education (ED). The university will pay a $75 million fine and guarantee there will be no more Jew-hating on the quad and no race discrimination in the admissions office or on faculty hiring committees. Then, federal money will start to flow again. But can Northwestern be trusted to honor its end of the bargain?

The Trump Education Department seems to have settled on a case resolution strategy to reform America’s ivory-tower malefactors. The trial balloons suggesting direct federal oversight of higher education appear to have been a negotiating tactic. ED will settle for using its longstanding (and frequently abused) practice of imposing policy by means of a “voluntary” agreement with an individual university—an agreement that administrators at every other institution of higher education (IHE) in the country will take as a hint as to how to behave if they want to avoid a federal lawsuit. After all, the Trump Department of Education has reached six anti-discrimination case resolutions with universities: the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, the University of Virginia, Cornell University, Columbia University, and now Northwestern.

The case resolution strategy has generally followed the same pattern: the university pays a sizable fine and then commits to cease tolerating anti-Jewish intimidation, sex discrimination by way of “transgenderism,” and race and sex discrimination in admissions, hiring, and staffing. It also commits to reviewing its dependence on foreign students and international branch campuses. Finally, it agrees to join with the Department of Education in selecting an independent monitor who will make sure the university lives up to its commitments. Or the university president can certify compliance under penalty of perjury. The university is free to run its own affairs. Yet if it breaks its promises, the independent monitor will alert ED, which will then impose new sanctions.

The tools that enabled the Marxist Long March Through the Institutions can also be used to deconstruct what they have built. But that didn’t happen in a day, and its disassembly won’t happen in a day, either. Right-thinking people need to buckle down for a long haul.

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A man, described in the German national press only as a 21-year-old Central Asian, was arrested in Magdeburg on Friday to prevent him from carrying out attacks against large crowds.

The timing and location are significant. Just a year ago, a Saudi psychiatrist and refugee who was known to German police drove a car into a crowded Magdeburg Christmas market during the city’s festivities, killing six people. It is for this reason that this year’s market quietly opened under tight security.

So too are the few details that have been made public about the Central Asian suspect. Welt reports that he came to Germany last summer and completed nursing training. Security sources claim that he has military experience (!) and that there are indications he planned to carry out an attack using a vehicle.

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An Italian appeal court has ordered the release of a Turin-based imam who had praised the October 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel, ruling that his remarks did not pose an immediate threat to public security.

Mohamed Shahin, a 46-year-old Egyptian national who has been resident in Italy for 21 years, was arrested by counter-terrorism police on November 24th, after the Interior Ministry issued an expulsion order and revoked his residence permit. Shahin has been detained in the Caltanissetta repatriation centre since November 24th, awaiting deportation.

His defence lawyers appealed the order, and the appeal court found that Shahin’s remarks did not constitute “a concrete and present danger” to public security. So the imam is now free to go, despite an existing deportation order issued against him.

Quillette.

The antisemitic Bondi Beach terrorist attacks have brought the global intifada to one of the farther-flung corners of the English-speaking world. Sydney is famed for its beauty, glistening with waterways—and proud of its multicultural populace. I myself am a Muslim psychiatrist here who regularly treats Jewish patients.

The beach is the one of the key symbols of our rugged Australian egalitarianism. As the sand tickles our soles, we are reminded that we all stand on an equal footing. Bondi is the pre-eminent such landmark, a snapshot of our world, full of bronzed people strutting about in board shorts and swimmers. Now it will also be remembered as a blood-soaked place of terror, hatred, and mass murder. At least fifteen people are dead, with many more in a critical condition. And the death toll is likely to grow.

The attacks by father-and-son pair Sajid and Naveed Akram seem increasingly likely to have been connected to Islamic State. Police have found ISIS flags in the perpetrators’ cars. The two men visited the Philippines for an unknown purpose, unaccompanied by any other family members, just weeks before the attacks. In 2019, Naveed was investigated by authorities under suspicion of links with a Sydney ISIS cell. While he was not deemed a threat, he has a history of ISIS adjacency.

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Christmas is just around the corner, which means it’s time for large trucks to go barreling through Germany’s Christmas markets, tearing up vendors’ booths and squashing unsuspecting shoppers under their wheels — much as they did nine years ago this week at the Breitscheidplatz in Berlin.

Police in Lower Bavaria were able to thwart a plot to launch a vehicular jihad attack against a Christmas market in Dingolfing. The vehicles were thought to have an “Islamist” motive — or perhaps their would-be drivers did; in any case, the ideology was “Islamism”, and not true Islam, which as we all know is a peaceful religion that would never consider perpetrating such vile and murderous deeds.

Victor Davis Hanson.

Recently, the Trump administration, as most administrations do at the beginning of their four-year term, issued a National Security Strategy—I guess we would call it a white paper—outlining the approach of the administration to foreign affairs and the protection of the security in the United States.

It’s written in a different style than past reports, different than the first term. And it has a lot of emphasis, as most do, on sections of the world. But what has caused the most controversy are two things.

Abroad, the report tells Europe that it’s experiencing “civilizational erasure,” and gives advice to the Europeans about what they must do to correct that, but in a manner of brotherly love or help, which the Europeans, of course, will see as condescending and interference into their internal affairs, except they want us to do it in the NATO part of the equation, but not the EU part. And that’s caused a lot of controversy.

Bill McKibben: “Trump … assault on environmental norms is more shrill than confident”

EXCLUSIVE: How Trump’s ‘Convicted Felon’ Label Could Soon Vanish

Why Won’t Senators Stand Up to Trump? We Asked 3 Who Called It Quits. (Lulu Garcia-Navarro/New York Times)

Tiniest Trump Scandal of All Time? New State Department FONT Policy!

CNN’s Collins Plays Dems Game On Epstein Photos, Jennings Points Out ‘Smear’ On Trump

Trump’s library plan: An ‘iconic building’ in Miami and a ‘fake news wing’ (Washington Post)

Murphy: Trump on ‘deliberate campaign to make violence more likely’ (Cheyanne M. Daniels/Politico)

Poll: Trump’s MAGA base is still behind him — but cracks are showing ahead of 2026 (NBC News)

Poll shows the (unlikely) way Trump could win over Dems (Anna Wiederkehr/Politico)

Trump administration races to finalize tariff payments — and hamstring possible refunds (Politico)  Hamstring!

Stop criticizing Trump’s bad economy. You’re making him sad. (Rex Huppke/USA Today)  Bias? What bias?

Nobel Prize Winner Machado: Trump Is ‘Champion of Freedom’ for Hemisphere

Trump-Deranged Margaret Brennan Plays Maduro Advocate for Machado Interview

CNN’s Dana Bash Lets Democrat Senator Say Trump’s Deliberately Increasing Violence

FAITHLESS: NBC’s Welker Assents as Warnock Calls Trumpism ‘A Plague’

National Trust Sues Trump Admin Over White House Ballroom Project

Trump is weaponizing fear against me and other immigrants (Rep. Ilhan Omar/MS NOW)

Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera. (ProPublica)  Because, as everybody knows, preventing deaths from cholera in foreign countries is TOTALLY the responsibility of the U.S. government—and the U.S. taxpayer.

MAGA leaders warn Trump the base is checking out. Will he listen? (Washington Post)

Trump served McDonald’s to connect with voters. Now, many feel they can’t afford it. (Peter Nicholas/NBC News)

‘I Didn’t Vote for This’: A Revolt Against DOGE Cuts, Deep in Trump Country (Cassidy Randall/Politico)

The Erika Kirk and Candace Owens feud is tearing MAGA apart (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)

Wisconsin Judge Faces Trial for Stopping Courtroom Arrest of Migrant in Trump Crackdown

Inside Stephen Miller’s Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State (Greg Sargent/New Republic)  Greg Sargent loses his shit, as he so often does.

One big difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 (Washington Post)  As if the Washington Poop would know the difference.

The Indiana GOP’s defiance shows how Trump is losing juice (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)

Trump’s Promised Big Tax Cuts Are Expected to Disappoint the Average Worker (Caitlin Reilly/Bloomberg)  Expected by the Narrative Media, that is.

Here’s How Markets Have Performed Since The Start Of America’s MAGA Experiment

Trump’s Diversity Rollback Ends Crucial Aid for Deafblind Children Like Annie Garner (New York Times)  Becuase, as everybody knows, aid for deafblind (is that really a word?) children is TOTALY the responsibility of the Fedeeral government—and the Federal taxpayer.

MAGA, the Broligarchs and the Media (Paul Krugman)  The vacuum speaks.

Trump is Losing it — Donald Trump is losing it. He is losing more court cases (e.g. … (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian)  Jennifer Rubin loses her shit, as she so often does.

Trump=Hitler Scarborough Now Says America’s ‘Doing Better Than Ever’!

MAGA Turns on Trump Over Deranged Rob Reiner Post (Laura Esposito/The Daily Beast)

MAGA breaks with Trump on mocking Rob Reiner’s killing (Tal Axelrod/Axios)

White House Rages at MAGA Senator Over Anti-JD Vance Plot (Will Neal/The Daily Beast)

Republican lawmakers slam Trump’s “inappropriate” posts on Rob Reiner (Axios)

Look in a Mirror: The View Wonders Where All the Hate Comes From, Lie About Trump

Greene criticizes Trump over Rob Reiner Trump derangement post (Sarah Fortinsky/The Hill)

Trump’s Post Attacking Rob Reiner After Stabbing Death Draws Immediate Outrage (Luke Broadwater/New York Times)  Attacking? It told the bare truth.

Trump bashes late director Rob Reiner, drawing immediate backlash (Amy B Wang/Washington Post)

Republicans Condemn Donald Trump Over Vile Remarks About Rob and Michele Reiner (Aaron Parnas/MeidasTouch News)

“Very bad for our country”: Trump doubles down on Rob Reiner attacks (Julianna Bragg/Axios)

Media Wield Lefty Anti-Trump Group Agitprop, Claim Holiday Gift Prices Are Up 26%

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One person is dead after a U-Haul exploded in a parking lot in Lewiston, Idaho, according to local reports.

The explosion, which happened early Saturday morning, shook buildings and sent debris flying.

Lewiston Fire Marshal Julian Sorrell told the Idaho News there was “no indication the incident is criminal in nature.”

A photo of the scene posted on X showed remnants of the U-Haul and debris surrounding it.

Lewiston is home to less than 35,000 people.

“We’re looking at all avenues, as far as what may have caused this,” said Lewiston Police Captain Chris Reese, “but at this point in time we don’t have any information that would lead us to believe this was any type of criminal or intentional (incident).”

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No one spends a dollar better than the person who earned it. That adage reveals the crux of massive fraud and improper payments that plague federal health insurance programs and drive up costs for taxpayers.

According to a report from the Government Accountability Office, more than 95% of the fictitious applications the GAO created and attempted to enroll in Obamacare were approved and enrolled, with insurance companies receiving thousands of taxpayers’ dollars per month on behalf of those fake enrollees.

The details of the GAO report reveal the utter negligence and perverse incentives that result when the federal government puts taxpayers’ money up for grabs to people who didn’t earn it.

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A left-wing protest against “police rule” in the small town of Schwarzenberg quickly turned violent on Saturday, December 13th.

Hundreds of demonstrators, including Antifa activists from major cities such as Dresden and Leipzig, travelled to the town (pop. around 15,000) to protest against what they described as “state repression and right-wing forces.”

Police broke off routine Advent season duties and were forced to halt the march several times, after smoke bombs and other pyrotechnic devices were set off and bottles were thrown at officers—despite an official ban on such items.

A right-wing group known as “Freie Sachsen” also appeared at the scene, accusing left-wing protesters of attempting to break into a nearby Christmas market—an allegation an Antifa spokesperson dismissed as “right-wing incitement.” Several people were arrested during the clashes, and police reported injuries on both sides.

The events in Schwarzenberg echo other recent violent protests in Germany, where tensions between police, political activists, and local residents have escalated into confrontations.

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After a 28-day hiatus, hundreds of migrants attempted to cross the Channel from France to the United Kingdom, taking advantage of favourable weather conditions.

The overcrowded and dangerous boats—each averaging a reported 64 passengers—were spotted and escorted through British waters by Border Force and coastguard units, according to the authorities.

Officials say the resumption of crossings points to increased activity by human trafficking networks, sparking further scrutiny of British border control and migration policy.

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German authorities have arrested five men suspected of planning an Islamist-motivated attack on a Christmas market in southern Germany, the Munich public prosecutor’s office announced.

The suspected target was a Christmas market in the Dingolfing area of Bavaria, though officials have not named the exact location. Four of the men are under formal arrest warrants, while a fifth has been placed in preventative custody.

Investigators believe the Islamist-inspired attack involved using a car. The suspects include an Egyptian, a Syrian and three Moroccan nationals.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said fast cooperation between security services helped prevent a possible atrocity.

On Friday, December 12th a knife attack occurred at a Christmas market in Herford, which left a 16-year-old boy fighting for his life. Security at Christmas markets remains high across Germany following several deadly incidents.

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“Somali Immigrants Are Revitalizing Main Street America,” NBC News claimed. A barrage of similar stories hailed Somalis and other Muslim migrants for ‘transforming’ Middle America.

After President Trump’s criticism of Somali abuse, triggered by reporting of massive $1B plus frauds conducted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center and other conservative media outlets, the media has rushed out more of these same stories about Somali accomplishments.

But let’s look at some of the facts.

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This month’s newsletter brings us the usual litany of Islamic oppression of women in places under sway of sharia (Islamic Law). But increasingly troubling are the incidences of such behavior towards women in places once considered part of Western Civilization — in Europe and even in the U.S. as well. Unless countered, the plight of Women Under Sharia will only expand.

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What little they have left.

Left-wing Canadian lawmakers are working to introduce a new bill that would end existing protections for people of faith against prosecution under national “hate speech” laws.

Canada’s Criminal Code, which bans what the government deems “hatred against any identifiable group,” contains a so-called religious exemption that protects Canadians who “in good faith” cite religious texts or beliefs. But the left-wing Liberal and Bloc Québécois parties are currently negotiating new legislation, Bill C-9, with an amendment that would remove this exemption.

The bill’s sponsors say it is necessary to combat hate crimes, but conservatives warn that it could be used to suppress Canadians’ most basic civil rights.

Time to leave.

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The number of asylum seekers in the UK found to have falsely claimed to be children has quadrupled over the past decade, according to Home Office figures published this week, intensifying scrutiny of Britain’s age-assessment system amid a series of high-profile violent crimes.

Official data show that 224 asylum seekers were identified as adults posing as minors in 2014. That figure has now risen to more than 1,000 a year, with authorities warning that the true number may be higher as many arrivals lack identity documents or destroy them en route to the UK.

The issue has returned to the spotlight following the conviction this week of two Afghan asylum seekers, Jan Jahanzeb and Israr Niazal, who were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for raping a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa. Both entered Britain illegally by small boat and were treated as unaccompanied minors.

If there is a system, people will try to game it. The system ought to be set up to make that as difficult as possible. Government employees don’t care to do that, because it’s work, and they’re not there to work—they’re there to pick up a paycheck in return for as little work as possible.

The Foundry.

For years, pharmaceutical executives have insisted that drug prices are out of their hands. Government red tape, research costs, and reimbursement rules are all offered as explanations for why Americans pay more at the pharmacy counter than anyone else in the developed world.

It’s a tidy narrative. It’s also only half-true—pharma could easily drop its prices. But government has ensured that it has little reason to do so.

In a functioning market, companies charge what the market will bear. Those prices typically lower over time due to innovation, competition, and other factors. In only a few industries has the opposite happened—housing, higher education, and health care—all industries where incentives are skewed by government policies.

David Harsanyi.

During oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor threatened America with a good time, warning that the administration is “asking us to destroy the structure of government.”

Great. It’s about time an unaccountable fourth branch of the state was decimated. Trump v. Slaughter revolves around the president’s ability to fire executive branch officials without cause at “independent” agencies. For one thing, nowhere does the Constitution empower Congress to create “independent” anything. The notion is a concoction of our worst former president, Woodrow Wilson, and it was codified nearly a century ago in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, when the court ruled that the Federal Trade Commission was a quasilegislative, executive and judicial agency.

Google AI still informs me that the Federal Trade Commission is an “independent agency” that is “technically within the executive branch structure,” which is not a real thing. Moreover, even if it were one, the scope of “independent” agencies has expanded significantly since 1934. In some ways, they now have more power over Americans than any branch. There is no conception of the founding that included a sprawling autonomous administrative state empowered to create its own rules, investigate citizens, adjudicate guilt, impose fines and destroy lives. The Supreme Court already overturned the Chevron deference, which granted agencies nearly unfettered powers to create regulatory regimes without Congress. Humphrey’s Executor deserves the same fate.

Watch it.

My wife pointed this out to me.

I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a latke, but that’s an error I intend to correct.

Rory Sutherland:

The Democrats fundamentally, I think, are in this bizarre hall of mirrors where effectively their own opinions and thoughts have now become subordinated to a kind of  artificial world-view where you have to buy the entire album, as it were—there’s a Times journalist who talks about this, which is sort of ‘album politics’—in other words, it’s not just that you have left-wing politics, you have to buy into every single opinions that is believed to be from the Left, and you have to buy the whole package deal. And consequently you wind up with this very, very strange group of people thinking they’re normal.

Watch it.

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

The Telegraph (UK).

Director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele have been found dead in their Los Angeles home, according to local media and police.

Investigators believe they suffered stab wounds. A family member is being questioned.

The Los Angeles Fire Department said it responded to a medical aid request shortly after 3:30pm on Sunday and found a 78-year-old man and 68-year-old woman dead inside. Reiner turned 78 in March.

Detectives were investigating an “apparent homicide” at Reiner’s home, said police.

Rob Reiner was also one of the most dependable Woke whiners in the U.S. When the police ask “Did he have any enemies?’, the pool includes millions.

Danish intelligence accuses US of using economic power to ‘assert its will’ over allies (Miranda Bryant/The Guardian)  Well, yeah—what’s your point? Denmark is smaller than Rhode Island, the smallest U.S. state. What do they expect?

Immigrants Once Avoided Some Regions of America. That’s a Big Reason We’re So Divided. (Colin Woodard/Politico)  SCRAAAAPE that barrel….

PBS Accuses Trump Of ‘Overtly Racist Rhetoric’  As it does EVERY. FUCKING. DAY.

Seized Tanker Reveals Cuba’s Secret Oil Lifeline As Trump Turns To Gunboat Diplomacy

Kevin Kruse on Trump making Nixon look like a choir boy (Public Notice)

Trump tech adviser David Sacks under fire over vast AI investments (Bobby Allyn/NPR)

Greg Bovino’s the star of Trump’s deportation show. We trace his roots. (Lauren FitzPatrick/Chicago Sun Times)  Rake that muck! Rake that muck!

The lawyer behind Vought’s bureaucracy crackdown (Sophia Cai/Politico)

Trump Is Losing the Reasonable Majority (E. J. Dionne Jr/New York Times)  E. J. Dionne wouldn’t know ‘reasonable’ if it bit him on the ass.

Frum Dons Tin Foil Hat, Says Trump May Arrest People To Stop Them From Voting

If He Builds It, Tear It Down

Trump leans into isolation as challenges mount at home (Naftali Bendavid/Washington Post)

Trump takes first step in possible bid to control D.C.’s public golf courses (Rick Maese/Washington Post)

What Kind Of Caesar Will Trump Be?  One without croutons, hopefully.

Watch it.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Texas ought to cut back on cattle and start raising more bison.

Newsbusters.

Americans were barely done polishing off the Thanksgiving turkey left-overs when various media outlets began targeting, of all things, Christmas. Apparently, this is clickbait.

Read it.

President Joe Biden’s decision to limit his Supreme Court nominees to black women was widely criticized as a product of DEI-mania, but the ensuing racial controversy was a red herring, a political sleight of hand, designed to distract Americans from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s true purpose on the bench: to protect, preserve, and defend the deep state from the constraints of the Constitution.

The fallout from the nomination was familiar; CNN’s opinion pages called Republican Senators, including Tom Cotton (R-AR), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Ted Cruz (R-TX), “racist and sexist” for opposing Jackson; Georgetown Law Professor Ilya Shapiro was suspended for stating that the most qualified candidate was an Indian man, not a black woman; Al Sharpton threw his support behind President Biden.

But Justice Jackson’s position was never intended to be a statement of racial representation or judicial excellence; it was the Biden administration’s anointment of a praetorian guard for the unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy that seeks to prevent President Trump from gaining control of the nation.

Like Michelle Obama, Justic Jackson’s career has been one long exercise in Grievance Studies. She is the very model of a modern Democrat Supreme Court Justice.

Read it.

After years of market swings, regulatory uncertainty, and deep staffing cuts, America’s energy workforce is overdue for a stabilizing signal. December 10th provides exactly that: the first federal Gulf of America lease sale in nearly two years, offering long-awaited certainty for the companies and workers that power America’s offshore energy engine.

In 2024, Gulf of America oil and gas activity supported approximately 428,000 jobs across all 50 states, contributed $35.9 billion in spending, and generated $7 billion in federal revenues. Few industries deliver that scale of widespread economic impact.

Mandated by President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, this sale is the first of 30 over the next 15 years, with additional sales offshore Alaska. After an unprecedented 24-month leasing gap, the door to America’s offshore future, anchored by Texan expertise, is reopening.

Read it.

The Israeli military struck a car in Gaza City on Saturday carrying senior Hamas commander Raed Saad, one of the architects of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, according to an Israeli defense official and Israeli media.

The strike killed four people, according to Gaza health authorities. While there was no immediate confirmation from Hamas or medics whether Saad was among the dead, later an IDF spokesman confirmed Saad had been killed via a social media post.

The post read: “Every place where we identify that Hamas is trying to regroup, we act. Earlier today, the IDF eliminated Raad Saad, whose elimination constitutes a blow to Hamas’s attempts at regrouping and strengthening. We will not allow our enemies to regroup and rebuild their strength. We will continue to be committed to continuing the ceasefire agreement.”

The Telegraph (UK).

Two people were killed and 10 others were wounded during a mass shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island.

The shooter is still at large and the injured people are in a critical condition in hospital according to Brett Smiley, the Providence mayor.

The Ivy League university issued an active shooter alert and urged students and staff to take shelter on Saturday evening after a gunman fired multiple gunshots, police said.

Footage of the scene shows a large police presence with armed officers and ambulances arriving at the Rhode Island university.

The university confirmed multiple victims had been transported to local hospitals but did not have information about their condition.

Tim O’Hara, a commander with Providence Police, said they were still looking for a suspect dressed in black.

The Telegraph (UK).

At least 12 people were killed after gunmen opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration on Australia’s Bondi Beach.

More than 50 gunshots were heard as hundreds of people fled the scene in Sydney at around 6:40pm local time on Sunday.

Videos show two men dressed in black firing rifles toward the beach from a bridge above a nearby car park as sirens sound in the distance. One of the gunmen is tackled by a bystander before retreating to retrieve another weapon.

Police said one of the alleged shooters was killed, a second remains in critical condition, and searches are ongoing amid reports of a possible third offender.

The shooting, which has left at least 29 people injured, targeted Sydney’s Jewish community and is being treated as a terrorist incident, New South Wales premier Chris Minns said.

One of the alleged gunmen has been named as Naveed Akram.

The 24-year-old is said to have been killed by police while another alleged attacker is in custody.

His driver’s licence says he was lives in Bonnyrigg, a suburb of Sydney.