On the top of the agenda is funding the government to avert a government shutdown on Jan. 30.
Lawmakers are also expected to take up a resolution related to President Donald Trump’s military action in Venezuela over the weekend, which included the capture of the Venezuelan leader.
The Senate is expected to return Monday afternoon, with the House to follow on Tuesday.
Here is what Congress will be dealing with when it returns.
A 43-day government shutdown—the longest in U.S. history—ended in November after a Senate bill put together by a bipartisan coalition passed Congress.
The government is currently funded through Jan. 30.
The legislation included three of the 12 full-year appropriations bills and a measure to fund the rest of the government through the end of January. It also included the promise of a vote on extending the ACA’s Covid-era subsidies, a vote that ended in failure in the Senate.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has repeatedly said that the short-term funding bill was to allow appropriators to finish their work on year-long appropriations bills. With three passed, nine remain to be considered by Congress.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that Democrats are not looking to force another government shutdown.
“As of Jan. 1, that is a different time than before because the ACA [subsidies] expired,” Schumer told Punchbowl News.
“On the other hand, we’d like to get an appropriations bill done. That’s a Jan. 30 deadline … We’re trying to work with the Republicans to get it done.”
The House will vote on a bill to extend the Covid-era ACA subsidies for three years with no strings attached.
The vote is due to a handful of Republicans signing onto a discharge petition organized by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), going around House GOP leadership and forcing a vote.
The subsidies expired on Dec. 31.
The failure of an earlier draft of a bill related to ACA subsidies in the Senate suggests that this bill could struggle in the upper chamber if it were to pass the House.
Though the issue was the driving force behind the 43-day government shutdown in 2025, Democratic senators have indicated that they’re not looking to restart the shutdown over the issue.
This is lawmakers’ first time on Capitol Hill since Trump’s military action in Venezuela, and some senators are already mulling a response.
The early morning operation in and around Caracas, carried out around 2 a.m. local time on Jan. 3, resulted in the capture of both Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and included a series of airstrikes on strategic targets, including infrastructure, ports, cell towers, and others.
Specifically, the Senate is set to consider a resolution under the War Powers Act introduced by Schumer and Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
The measure would block the administration from engaging in further military action in Venezuela.
It’s privileged, meaning that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) can’t block it. To pass the Senate, it would need only a simple majority.
With Paul expected to back the resolution, three other Republicans would need to sign on to pass the bill.
Under the War Powers Act, identical language would need to be approved by both chambers to pass the bill.
Since the 116th Congress, lawmakers have long been pursuing a bill to ban stock trading by members of the body.
Now, supporters of a congressional stock trading ban seem closer than ever to achieving that goal—but multiple competing proposals and issues around the legislation remain unresolved.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a longtime proponent of the ban, is expected to pursue a discharge petition to force a vote on her own version of the bill. Currently, that push has 74 backers—well short of the 218 it needs to bypass House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
According to a post on X by the Florida Republican, House leadership has committed to a vote on “comprehensive legislation to address congressional stock trading,” but she plans to leave her discharge petition open until that promise is met.
Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed to include the president in the ban—a proposal that Republicans have pushed against.
A lesser issue hanging over the Senate will be the hundreds of executive nominees put forward by Trump who have yet to be confirmed.
Ahead of the winter recess, the Senate confirmed a tranche of 97 of these nominees.
The vote fits into a broader power dispute between Senate Democrats and the White House over nominees.
Historically, the president’s picks for lower executive branch positions have been confirmed by the upper chamber through unanimous voice votes, allowing dozens or hundreds of nominees to be quickly confirmed in minimal time.
Since Trump reclaimed the White House, however, Democrats have broken from this precedent, using a variety of Senate parliamentary measures and traditions to slow the confirmation of lower-level appointees to a crawl.
Primarily, lawmakers have withheld their support for unanimous consent confirmations, instead using the full amount of time for debate allowed under the Senate’s rules for every nominee. This means that nominations previously confirmed by the dozens can take an entire legislative day to work through.
With hundreds of lesser nominees waiting to be confirmed, the Senate is expected to continue working through the issue after returning from the break.
The data for this visualization comes from the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV). It tracks production, consumption, and imports from 2015 through 2024, measured in billions of liters.
Wine Production Hits a Decade Low
Global wine production peaked intermittently during the late 2010s, reaching nearly 30 billion liters in 2018.
Since then, output has steadily fallen, dropping to just 22.6 billion liters in 2024. That represents an almost 19% decline over the nine-year period.
Extreme weather events, including droughts, heatwaves, and late frosts, have disrupted harvests in major wine-producing regions. At the same time, rising costs and tighter environmental regulations are adding pressure to growers worldwide.
Consumption Declines More Gradually
While production has fallen sharply, global wine consumption has declined at a slower pace. Total consumption dropped from about 24.1 billion liters in 2015 to 21.4 billion liters in 2024, a decline of roughly 11%.
Health-conscious lifestyles, aging populations in traditional wine markets, and younger consumers drinking less alcohol overall are contributing factors.
Global Trade Shows Signs of Softening
Wine imports have also edged lower, falling about 6.5% over the same period.
After peaking above 11 billion liters in the early 2020s, global wine trade slipped below 10 billion liters by 2023 and 2024.
In 2025, electric cars accounted for 95.9 percent of all new cars sold in Norway, the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV) said in a statement on Jan. 2.
“This means that the goal set by politicians 10 years ago has been achieved: New car sales in Norway are now emission-free,” it said. A total of 179,550 new passenger cars were registered last year, breaking the previous annual record set in 2021.
“2025 was also the year when the number of electric cars surpassed the number of diesel cars and became the largest powertrain in the total passenger car population,” the statement said.
For December 2025 specifically, 35,188 new passenger cars were registered in the country, with electric cars accounting for 97.6 percent of these vehicles, a sign of how EVs “now dominate new car sales” in the country, OFV said.
Norway, with a population of around 5.53 million, is a high-income country, according to Harvard data. With a GDP per capita of $87,702, the nation is the third-richest per capita among 145 countries. Norway’s oil wealth helps sustain its welfare system.
Tesla consolidated its position as “Norway’s largest car brand” last year, with a record 34,285 new passenger cars registered—a 19.1 percent market share, roughly one in five new cars.
Tesla’s Model Y set an annual record last year, hitting 27,621 first-time registrations, which is the “highest number ever registered for a single car model in Norway in one year,” according to OFV.
Chinese companies also saw their share in Norway’s EV market rise last year. A total of 24,524 new passenger cars registered last year were of Chinese origin. This accounted for 13.7 percent of new car sales, up from 10.4 percent the previous year, according to the council. The biggest Chinese car brand was BYD.
“2025 has been a very special car year. We see the effect of long-term and targeted electric car policy, and how specific tax decisions have immediate effects on the market,” OFV Director Geir Inge Stokke said.
“The final sprint towards the end of the year has been historically strong, and there is no doubt that the VAT change from January 1, 2026, has contributed to a great many choosing to secure a new electric car before the year was over.”
As for the European Union overall, electric cars accounted for 16.9 percent of the EU new car registrations for the January–November 2025 period, according to a Dec. 23, 2025, statement from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.
The biggest markets for new EV registrations in the EU were Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, with registrations in Germany jumping over 41 percent year-over-year.
However, hybrid-electric cars remained the “preferred choice among EU consumers,” accounting for 34.6 percent of new registrations, more than double the share of electric cars, the association said.
While EV sales in the EU remain robust, the picture is different in the United States.
New U.S. EV sales in November 2025 are estimated to total 70,255 units, down 41.2 percent from a year ago, industry expert Cox Automotive said in a Dec. 15 statement. Compared to October 2025, November sales were down 5.2 percent.
Cox attributed the slump to the expiration of a federal tax credit.
The New Clean Vehicle Tax Credit granted buyers of new EVs up to $7,500 in incentives. The measure was included in the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022.
President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law in July 2025, ending the credits on Sept. 30 of that year.
“Market share reached multi-year lows as sales declined. Weak demand fueled a surge in inventory, with days’ supply reaching elevated levels. Pricing eased across the market, underscoring an industry struggling to find balance in the post-incentive era,” Cox said.
“As we head into 2026, the EV market will continue navigating post-incentive challenges, with inventory and pricing dynamics shaping near-term performance.”
As for the overall new-vehicle sales situation in the United States, Cox estimates the number will reach 16.3 million units in 2025, up by almost 2 percent from 2024 and the “best result since 2019,” the company said in a Dec. 17 statement.
For 2026, Cox predicts new-vehicle sales pace to decline by 2.4 percent to 15.8 million units, highlighting factors such as the lack of EV tax incentives.
While Tesla saw sales jump in Norway, its global performance has taken a hit. In 2025, the company delivered 1.64 million units, according to a Jan. 2 statement. This is down 8.3 percent from 1.79 million deliveries in 2024.
Russia Straps MANPADS Missile On Shahed Drone To Counter Attack Helicopters
Low-cost drones have transformed modern warfare forever during the nearly four-year-long Russia-Ukraine war. These commercially available systems have been used to strike cities, power grids, ports, refineries, and military bases, delivering maximum impact at minimal cost.
The evolution of these drones is notable as well. One major issue that drones on both sides of the battlefield have faced is counter-drone operations involving electronic warfare, interceptor drones, fighter jets, and attack helicopters. However, none have yet proven consistently effective at scale.
In response, both sides have increasingly deployed attack helicopters to hunt drones, using machine guns and missiles to shoot them down at close range.
To deter enemy aircraft, the Russians apparently have mounted a shoulder-fired man-portable air defense missile on top of an Iranian-designed loitering munition known as a Shahed-136.
Military blog Army Recognition states Ukrainian forces have “intercepted for the first time a Shahed drone fitted with an Igla-S MANPADS missile.”
Here’s more color on the first publicly documented case of a MANPADS missile mounted on a Shahed drone for air defense purposes:
On January 4, 2026, the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces stated that fighters from the Darknode Battalion of the 412th Nemesis Brigade intercepted a Russian Shahed-type kamikaze drone fitted with an Igla-S man-portable air defense system. This variant, observed for the first time during the war, carried a camera and a radio modem, allowing the missile to be launched remotely by an operator located on Russian territory to threaten Ukrainian helicopters and low-flying aircraft involved in counter-drone interception.
Ukraine may now have to allocate more air defense assets and counter-UAS resources to deal with such a threat, as MANPADS-armed drones could potentially serve as a decentralized air defense layer for Russia’s advancing forces. (Picture source: Ukrainian MoD)
According to Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian military and technical expert, the missile launch was not automatically but manually triggered by the Shahed operator using the onboard camera feed and radio link. This new variant was assessed as being intended to engage Ukrainian helicopters and other low-flying aircraft that had previously intercepted Russian drones at close range using machine guns or cannons. Army aviation crews were warned to avoid approaching Shahed drones on a head-on course and to be particularly cautious when encountering drones flying in circular or loitering patterns, which were interpreted as potential attempts to draw aircraft into missile engagement zones. Ukrainian units also indicated that examination of the tactics associated with this configuration was ongoing in order to adapt interception procedures.
The rapid evolution of low-cost drones is a concerning development, and it is almost certainly only a matter of time before such drones appear in the Americas. Drug cartels in Mexico are already known to have deployed smaller ones for surveillance and attacks.
Save in times of plenty, and you’ll have in times of need. An old German proverb, now proving tragically prophetic. The hardship caused by a completely derailed climate-socialist ideology is only just beginning. This socialist experiment is likely to continue ravaging the country until its economic substance is entirely consumed.
The new year begins as the old one ended: a fiscal raid on the wallets of the middle class. In Brussels and Berlin, there is satisfaction that citizens have been quietly, without spectacle, subjected to yet more tax increases—whose revenues, like a rising tide, lift all ships only slightly.
On January 1, the CO₂ price per ton of emitted gas rose from €55 to €65. This levy, applied to fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel, natural gas, and heating oil, threads like a red line through the entire value chain—even reaching private households’ bills. The green extraction mechanism is now firmly entrenched, funding Brussels’ expanding activities increasingly, and is defended tooth and nail by the ruling politicians.
The Lie of Tax Relief
When the federal government celebrates its minimal tax relief for lower- and middle-income groups, reality tells a different story. In truth, these relentless fiscal collectors are increasing the tax burden further. Only the distracting work of state-affiliated media prevents the growing hyperstate’s costs from becoming fully visible.
2026 is set to become an expensive year for Germany’s shrinking middle class, visible soon on the first paycheck of the year. That will reveal the true cost of an overextended welfare state and the one-of-a-kind experiment of transforming Germany’s social insurance system into a quasi-global insurance scheme.
Never since World War II has the German middle class faced such fiscal and economic pressure.
The Burden of State Subsidies on the Middle Class
The countless subsidies and state interventions financing the complex “green arts” sector, the Ukraine war, and now the military buildup constitute a direct attack on the German middle class. Businesses and net taxpayers pay an ever-rising “blood price” each year to sustain Berlin’s and Brussels’ ideological and power ambitions.
The still-active renewable energy subsidy program, the EEG, alone consumes over €16 billion this year for an energy grid that, since the end of nuclear power, no longer provides a secure base for industrial production, sending both industrial and household electricity costs to dizzying heights. Trittin’s “ice ball” has become a cost Himalaya no one can climb.
Germany’s seven-year industrial decline, which is now accelerating, precisely chronicles the path of the deliberate destruction of its industrial base. Nearly 300,000 industrial jobs have been lost since 2018—tragic, yet apparently of little concern to Berlin’s policymakers.
Local city treasurers, however, are feeling the pain: as corporate tax revenues collapse under industrial destruction, citizens can expect cuts in public services and steep tax hikes. Schools, kindergartens, sports facilities—all face drastic savings. A big “thank you” goes to Berlin central planning.
Industry on the Edge: Loans Fizzle
What Friedrich Merz, Ursula von der Leyen, and other central planners aim for is clear: using state loans to occupy freed-up industrial capacities. Yet no matter how much funding flows into the new social program under the banner of a special fund for green and military production—the effect has already fizzled. In December, the entire Eurozone industrial sector, measured by current Purchasing Managers’ Indices (PMI), slipped into recession. Germany has been continuously downsizing its industry for seven years.
A victory for Brussels’ central planners, whose goal appears to be the economic and geopolitical neutralization of the country. After years of deindustrialization and waves of bankruptcies, this strategy is hard to interpret otherwise. Germany’s PMI now sits at 47 points—clearly in contraction. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost this year. Last year alone, 24,000 companies went bankrupt. Exact figures for job and net direct investment outflows are not yet available; in 2024, €64.5 billion flowed out of Germany. German industry is no longer competitive.
Quick Blame Game
The culprits are quickly identified. U.S. tariffs, a favorite topic of sympathetic media, are often cited, though the crisis began long before Donald Trump. Dumping competition from China is also highlighted. While this is a factor, 99 percent of Germany’s economic problems are homegrown.
No one forced the country to keep its borders wide open for a decade, pushing its social insurance to the brink of collapse—all to create new voter bases for the united political left and to break resistance from the bourgeois right.
Shrinking Middle Class and Falling Investments
This trend is reflected in the middle class. The DATEV SME Index shows falling real revenues across all sectors, particularly trade, construction, and consumer services. Investments are nearly frozen: only 20 percent of companies plan rising investments, according to LBBW’s SME radar for the coming year.
The ideological green agenda has left its mark. High electricity costs, falling incomes, and persistent inflation are bleeding the middle class dry. Retail felt this for the first time during Christmas: nominal sales rose 1.5 percent, yet real sales fell by 1 percent in the peak month.
Economic stress will be a constant companion for Germany’s middle class in 2026. High property prices, zero real interest on savings, and rapid erosion of economic substance collide with an ever-expanding state. Bureaucracy and the state apparatus are evolving into a parasitic leviathan, funded by a shrinking number of contributors.
Consequences for Industry, Trade, and City Centers
Too much depends on Germany’s high industrial value creation: service businesses, high factor incomes, and secure municipal finances—all are now being lost, reflected in city centers.
Where once life flourished, roughly 5,000 retailers die every year, an irretrievable loss. The desolation mirrors what citizens feel in their wallets: the ebb has begun.
The middle class’s evaporating purchasing power is most visible in hospitality, where families cut costs first. Hotels lost 3.7 percent in real revenue in 2025, while restaurants and bars fell 4.1 percent year-on-year. Households are saving wherever possible. High energy costs, rising social charges, and a weakening job market leave a trail of economic decline.
Missed Lessons: The Population and the Crisis
Structural economic crises take time to penetrate public consciousness. Most households first tighten belts without complaint.
The state exploits this calm before the storm to consume citizens’ wealth faster than the private sector can compensate. With net new debt over 5.5 percent this year—including accounting tricks—this is particularly evident. The devotion of a portion of the population to ideological doctrine becomes an expensive, destructive tragedy.
Germany faces a nation unprepared to draw necessary lessons: reversing migration policy, adapting the bloated state apparatus to new economic realities, and downsizing accordingly. A turn toward a meritocratic market economy remains absent.
Until these lessons are learned and acted upon, Germany will continue to fall.
* * *
About the author: Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.
Language plays a central role in shaping global communication, culture, and economic exchange. While some languages dominate due to large native-speaking populations, others achieve global reach through widespread adoption as a second language.
The World’s Most Spoken First and Second Languages
English is the most spoken language with approximately 1.53 billion speakers worldwide.
However, just 390 million people speak English as their first language, meaning nearly 75% of English speakers use it as a second language, making it the dominant global lingua franca across industries and professions.
The table below shows native and non-native speaker counts for the world’s most spoken languages in 2025:
In total, about 18.8% of the world’s population speaks English, but only a quarter of those are native speakers.
Mandarin Chinese ranks second with roughly 1.18 billion speakers.
In contrast to English, Mandarin is primarily spoken as a first language, with more than 83% of its speakers being native.
Hindi and Spanish follow as the next most spoken languages worldwide. Hindi has around 609 million speakers, split more evenly between native and non-native usage due to India’s multilingual population.
Spanish stands out as one of the most widely spoken native languages globally, with nearly 87% of its speakers using it as their first language. Spoken Spanish is concentrated across Spain, Latin America, and parts of the United States.
Switzerland said on Jan. 5 that it has frozen all assets held in the country by deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his associates.
After Maduro’s arrest in Caracas by U.S. forces and his subsequent transfer to the United States, Swiss authorities imposed a precautionary measure designed to prevent the removal of any illegally acquired assets from the country.
The order is effective immediately and valid for four years. It is unclear how much the assets are worth.
The Swiss government said Venezuela’s situation was volatile, with a range of possible developments in the coming weeks.
Bern added that it was closely following events, urging moderation and de-escalation, and standing ready to provide its good offices to advance a peaceful outcome.
“Switzerland calls for de-escalation, restraint, and compliance with international law, including the prohibition on the use of force and the principle of respect for territorial integrity,” the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on X.
The decision is based on the Federal Act on the Freezing and the Restitution of Illicit Assets Held by Foreign Politically Exposed Persons.
It does not affect current members of the Venezuelan regime.
“Should future legal proceedings reveal that the funds were illicitly acquired, Switzerland will endeavour to ensure that they benefit the Venezuelan people,” Swiss authorities said.
This, officials say, is not an endorsement of the U.S. military operation, but a recognition of the loss of power that now allows the country to pursue legal assistance proceedings to reclaim the frozen assets.
The asset freeze is in addition to sanctions imposed against Caracas since 2018 under the Embargo Act.
Previous Actions
In December, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned several family members and associates of the Maduro-Flores family.
As a result, all properties and assets belonging to the designated individuals that are in the United States or controlled by U.S. persons were frozen.
“Treasury sanctioned individuals who are propping up Nicolás Maduro’s rogue narco-state. We will not allow Venezuela to continue flooding our nation with deadly drugs,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a news release.
“Maduro and his criminal accomplices threaten our hemisphere’s peace and stability. The Trump administration will continue targeting the networks that prop up his illegitimate dictatorship.”
Over the years, Washington has implemented broad sanctions on Venezuela’s central bank, the Maduro government’s access to U.S. financial markets, and state oil company PDVSA.
Others have also implemented asset freezes, sanctions, and embargoes on Venezuelan officials linked to the Maduro regime and other individuals, including the European Union, Canada, and Mexico.
While Switzerland has already imposed sanctions on Caracas, it is so far the only nation to announce the freezing of assets after Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were detained by the United States.
For years, Switzerland’s banking sector has been a key destination for political leaders and high-risk individuals to park their wealth.
It is an attractive location due to its strong banking foundation, immense wealth-management industry, and political stability.
Bern has also appeared in investigative journalism, leaks, and watchdog reports.
In 2022, for example, leaked client data from Credit Suisse spotlighted bank accounts connected to sanctioned individuals, corrupt officials, and clients engaged in illicit activities.
Swiss financial regulator FINMA launched an inquiry into the leak and compliance failures.
Much has been made over the past several days about a jarring line uttered by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani in his inaugural address last week.
“We will,” the city’s first “Democratic Socialist” mayor promised/threatened, “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
Understandably—and rightly—most of the criticism of this line (and its speaker) has centered on its mortifying and inarguable whitewashing of the term “collectivism.” Collectivism—at least as it has been used for the last 150 years—refers specifically to the political manifestations of mass ideologies, mostly Marxist in origin, but including fascism and Nazism as well. Hence, its historical record is one of repeated failure and continual mass murder. In just six decades—from 1917 to 1977—collectivism in its various forms produced the deaths of upwards of a quarter of a billion civilian men, women, and children, from Russia to Germany to Cambodia. Add in the casualties of various wars, and the total is even larger and more abominable.
Given all of this, Mamdani’s use and attempted rehabilitation of the term were viewed by many observers (of all political persuasions) as either the height of ignorance or an expression of solidarity with true and profound evil.
Either way, that’s not a great look for the new, democratically elected leader of the largest city in the country and the center of global finance.
But while both traditional and social media are filled with comments on and repudiations of Mamdani’s embrace of collectivism, what concerns me more, but has drawn far less rebuke, is the false dichotomy he fabricates in articulating that embrace. Worse still, some of those who profess to oppose his ideology and the perniciousness of collectivism nonetheless accept that dichotomy, conceding his definition of the competing and conflicting visions. They thereby demonstrate both their ignorance of history and the challenges that confront civil society as it fights to prevent its destruction by Mamdani and his ilk.
To start, it is vital to note that the “individualism” that Mamdani decries is largely a mythological beast, no more real than the Scylla or Charybdis. Not only are societies today neither built around nor devoted exclusively to individuals, but they never have been. “Man is by nature a social animal,” Aristotle wrote, and “an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human… Society is something that precedes the individual.” And thus has it always been. To be clear, “rugged individualists” tend not to cluster together in groups of nearly 8.5 million just so they can be told what to do and how to live by a failed rapper who has never held a real job.
More to the point, individualism, where it does exist, is not exactly the opposite of “collectivism.” If anything, radical individualism is a precursor to collectivism, one of the many steps along the proverbial road to serfdom down which collectivism treads. In truth, man—being the social animal Aristotle identified—craves belonging. As a rule, he requires companionship and interaction. When he is deprived of them, on a societal level, by the dysfunction and haphazardness of the liberal order, he grows restless, lonely, and willing to do whatever is necessary to assimilate into whatever crowd will have him. This desire—multiplied by millions of “atomized” individuals—contains the seeds of “mass man,” of mass movements, of collective action, and, in time, of totalitarianism. As Hannah Arendt noted, “What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.” Individualism breeds atomization, which breeds loneliness, which, in turn, leads to that which those of us not named Mamdani know as the horrors of collectivism. Collectivist totalitarianism, Arendt continued, “bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.”
Unsurprisingly but still unnervingly, in the wake of Mamdani’s comments on collectivism, some observers and commentators purportedly on the political right tried to use those comments as a cudgel against others on the right, those with whom they disagree about Donald Trump and the direction of conservatism.
Cathy Young, for example, a Never-Trump conservative/libertarian who writes for Bill Kristol’s Never-Trump The Dispatch, mocked the president’s supporters, writing that “What’s amusing is that much of the MAGA and MAGA-adjacent right…will nod right along to Mamdani’s broadside against ‘the frigidity of rugged individualism.’ The only difference is they’ll use some trad euphemism for left-coded ‘collectivism.’” And just what kind of euphemism would they use? Young continued, “If you replaced ‘collectivism’ with ‘community, family, and tradition,’ much of the current right would agree.”
This is a particularly peculiar criticism of “the current right,” if for no other reason than the fact that “much of the current right” absolutely should agree with that. It is, in fact, the reason the right exists.
I’ll cut Young a little slack here, in part because she later tried to correct herself by drawing a (largely imaginary?) distinction between “voluntary” and “involuntary community,” and in part because she was raised in the Soviet Union and may not be familiar with the niceties of American conservatism. Nevertheless, it is inarguable that American conservatism is more than a little preoccupied with the notions of “community, family, and tradition.” Together, these things are, as I say, American conservatism’s raison d’être. Moreover, they are its raison d’être specifically because they constitute the alternative to collectivism. They, not the strawman of “rugged individualism,” are the opposite of Zohran Mamdani’s ideology, and one need take neither my word nor that of “the current right” as proof of this.
The post–World War II conservative renaissance began in 1948, with the publication of a little book titled Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver. Russell Kirk, who is himself often described as the father of modern-day conservatism, called this book “the first gun fired by American conservatives in their intellectual rebellion against the ritualistic liberalism that had prevailed since 1933 and which still aspires to domination over this nation.”
Fast on the heels of Weaver’s ideas came Peter Viereck’s Conservatism Revisited (1949), Bill Buckley’s God and Man at Yale (1951), Whittaker Chambers’s Witness (1952), Kirk’s The Conservative Mind (1953), and Robert Nisbet’s The Quest for Community (also 1953). Each of these books was a warning cry that leftist collectivism, which had gathered a huge head of steam during the Roosevelt years and accelerated dramatically in the postwar period, represented a growing danger to American society. Weaver said this most directly in the opening sentence of the introduction to Ideas, where he announced quite simply, “This is another book about the dissolution of the West.”
Given this, each of these books was also “another book about the dissolution” of community, family, and tradition, as well as a plea to save what was left of these institutions as (ironically) a bulwark against collectivism.
George Nash, the author of the authoritative book The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, described the thesis of the last of the books noted above, Robert Nisbet’s fittingly titled The Quest for Community, as follows:
The history of the West since the end of the Middle Ages was a story of the decline of intermediate associations between the individual and the state. The weakening and dissolution of such ties as family, church, guild, and neighborhood had not, as many had hoped, liberated men. Instead, it had produced alienation, isolation, spiritual desolation, and the growth of mass man. But men cannot live in Hobbesian isolation, and so, to satisfy his longings, he seeks out ersatz community—eventually finding it in the totalitarian state.
In many ways, this is the broad thesis of American conservatism. It is also the broad thesis offered by other anti-collectivists, who would undoubtedly bristle at being labeled “conservatives,” including Hannah Arendt, noted above, and the inimitable former Communist Alastair MacIntyre.
Collectivism is truly and inarguably evil. Community, in turn, stands as its rival—albeit a deteriorating rival. One needn’t be a “post-liberal” Trumper to recognize this. One need only be aware of man’s nature and his history.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
Catherine Herridge Reveals How CBS Stonewalled Hunter Biden Laptop Story, Seized Her Files
Veteran investigative journalist Catherine Herridge has spilled the tea over her departure from CBS in 2004 – including the controversy over the Hunter Biden laptop scandal – in which she says she authenticated multiple records as early as October 2000, only to encounter internal resistance which prevented the story from being fully pursued or aired when it was ready.
Transcript:
This week on “Straight to the Point,” a personal message. In 2025, our team bet big on independent journalism. We believe that you were tired of talking points TV, you were tired of the stale predictable formats on Sunday, and that you were open to something new.
A recent Gallup poll reinforced our reporting. It found less than 30 percent of Americans are confident the media covers the news fully, accurately, and fairly. I experienced this myself as a CBS News Senior Investigative Correspondent assigned to the Hunter Biden probe.
After I left, I wanted to be transparent about the blocks I faced at CBS News. At that time, CBS News was under different management and did not comment. I think one of the obvious questions is why am I sitting here talking about my time at CBS News?
I’ve always had deep respect for my former employers, but in this case, I’ve had so many questions about my time at CBS. I’m taking a pause and a moment here to try and answer those questions. I think it’s better to hear it from me than to hear it from someone else.
I’d wanted to work at CBS News as long as I can remember. The first time I thought about CBS News was when I was an intern at ABC News in London and I was surrounded by so many experienced foreign correspondents. Some of them had been in Vietnam.
Some of them had worked at CBS News. It just seemed that CBS was a place for independent enterprise reporting. I never imagined that I’d be working at 60.
Getting a job at CBS at 55, to me, was an acknowledgment that the industry was really changing and that it was recognizing women who were deeply sourced and deeply experienced in national security. I was let go in February of 2024. We knew layoffs were coming.
I was not expecting to be laid off. I don’t think it was a function of my performance at CBS News. I’d been part of an Emmy-winning team.
I’d had multiple Emmy nominations. We’d won a top environmental prize for our reporting. I’m very proud of that reporting still.
It impacted a million veterans and expanded their benefits. That morning, there was an email, a company-wide saying, there are going to be layoffs. Literally, within maybe six or seven minutes, I had a text message, text message or email from my bureau chief, Mark Lima, saying, I need you to hop on a Zoom call.
My husband said to me, what are you doing today? I said, I think I’m getting laid off. And I got on the Zoom call, the human resources person was there, and they told me that my job was being terminated and that I was locked out of the office, locked out of my emails, and they would get my personal effects to me sometime down the road.
I felt a little numb when it happened. What was more surprising to me is that CBS News seized my reporting files. In October of 2020, I was asked by a senior CBS News executive, Ingrid Cyprian-Matthews, to get confirmed reporting about the Hunter Biden story.
So I brought to her several records where I had done due diligence. I’d done a lot of research. I was highly confident that this was confirmed reporting from the laptop.
What I can tell you is that it would have been standard practice for the investigative unit to be tasked with digging deeper into that story to develop our own reporting, and that didn’t happen. And that was disappointing to me. It was disappointing because I felt this was an opportunity for CBS News to really lead, to separate itself from the other networks.
But we missed that opportunity. That was not my call. It was frustrating for me.
I did my part. I got the records like I was asked, but a decision was made somewhere higher up within CBS just not to pursue it at that time. When I saw the 60 Minutes report with Lesley Stahl and she says to President Trump, we can’t verify it, I just felt a little sick because I knew that I had been able to authenticate, confirm a handful of documents.
And it told me there was a lot more there. And if you put a lot of reporting muscle behind it, you could verify a lot of those records. I don’t know if it was a case of the left hand in the news division not knowing what the right hand at 60 Minutes was doing.
I can’t answer that question. When Nora O’Donnell was asking then-candidate Biden about it, about the laptop and whether it was a Russian information operation, this senior executive, Ingrid Cyprian-Matthews, she writes, Nora, looking for all confirmed reporting. Do you have all your confirmed reporting on Hunter’s story in a note?
And I respond, yes. I tell her what it is. Nora, looking for all confirmed reporting.
Is there a Hunter connection to these documents? Yes, all of them in your inbox. And then I texted the documents and it was the million dollar retainer.
And it looks like some additional text messages from Hunter Biden to a family member. So when Nora O’Donnell had that question, I thought, did this information never reach her? I was asked to get confirmed reporting for her.
I don’t know what happened there. I never asked her. I didn’t feel that it was a welcome question.
There was no evidence that I had come across in October of 2020 that indicated that this was a Russian information operation. The former intelligence officials, several dozen, said in their statement that it had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation. They kind of hedged their words, but there didn’t seem to be any evidence of that.
All of the records that I was working with, that I was validating, that I was doing due diligence, I didn’t see that. Everything was lining up, in fact. And what bothered me about the letter from the 50 plus former intelligence officials is it just seemed to be this very dangerous intersection between the intelligence community and the political cycle.
Because I felt that it was sort of stepping over a line and that their actions had diminished the stature of their old jobs as CIA director or as the top intelligence official, the director of national intelligence. I’d never seen anything like this before, and I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it since. I was assigned the Hunter Biden story by the very top of CBS.
George Cheeks said to me on multiple occasions that this was a story of the highest priority for the network and that it was a high priority for his boss, Shari Redstone. So I took on that assignment and I did it to the best of my ability. Cheeks said to me, we want to have accountability, speak truth to power on both sides of the aisle, and that really sit well with me.
So I went after it the way I would go after any of these investigations. It was a very hard assignment. There were corners of support in the company for it, and there were corners of support who understood the value of investigating the Hunter Biden story.
But there were some elements within CBS News that were just resistant to it. It didn’t matter what the facts of the case really were. And this bothered me as a journalist a lot.
And I wrestled with it a lot. And people might say, well, then why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you quit?
And the answer is, I felt I had an obligation to the senior executives at CBS to carry out their directive, to do my very best to run down that story, even if there were internal blocks that I faced. We eventually broadcast a story about the Hunter Biden laptop after the midterm elections in 2022. We commissioned a forensic review.
I got a copy of the laptop data. I have it here still. I went to a lot of effort to get the cleanest copy of the laptop data, the same data that was provided to the FBI, because I didn’t want to have any professional journalistic risk for CBS News.
I wanted this to be totally locked down. When we did the story, we did it after the midterms. I argued against that because it was ready before the midterms.
And my training is that you should always do the story when it’s ready to go. You should not be dictated by the political cycle. Once we got the laptop story on the morning news, I felt that there was so much there that we could still do.
For example, in the text messages, there’s unfortunately the use of the N-word, the liberal use of the N-word. I thought this was worthy of a story, but I was told that it was not something that interested CBS News. Then I asked for a forensic review of the laptop, and we found that there were more than half a dozen emails that were likely used by Joe Biden.
I thought that was a story. But the answer that came back was, well, we need to know what the content is of the emails. But that was going to be a years-long process.
So there were a lot of reasons I was told not to do it, not to pursue it. I spent a lot of my time at CBS following the Hunter Biden story. And one of the things that really struck me is this kind of disconnect.
I didn’t understand how a senior executive like George Cheeks could tell me that this was a high priority for the network and for his boss, and yet the executives at CBS News, show producers, anchors, could refuse that. I came to the conclusion that they must have felt that they were more powerful than George Cheeks, which was astonishing to me. I’d never worked at a place where a directive from the top would be so defied.
I had conversations with some of the reporters connected to the Twitter files, and I was, in my head, thinking that there might be an opportunity to tell that story on CBS News. We had a number of topics under discussion. They didn’t go as far as we had hoped.
But at the end of the day, this opportunity to interview Elon Musk was developing. So I went to the CBS executives, and I said, this is the opportunity that we have. He’s saying, I want to do it live and on my platform.
He’s one of the most influential human beings on the planet. And the reaction from the executives was, well, we can’t do it live. And I was like, what do you mean we can’t do it live?
He’s like, well, we don’t know what he’s going to say. I was like, well, I’m thinking, isn’t that the point of journalism? You don’t know what the person’s going to say?
Well, you know, it has to be taped. We have to have the ability to edit it. It has to be on our platform.
We have to control the platform. We talked at one point about whether we could do it sort of like a simulcast between the streaming network and maybe X. But everything just got shut down.
It’s one of the biggest interviews you could ever have. I felt so ashamed, frankly, that I never went back to Elon Musk and said, listen, they want to do it, but they’ve set all these conditions on it. I couldn’t do that.
This is someone whose DNA is free speech. And how do you tell someone who’s committed to free speech that your network can only do it taped and only if they edit it and it can only be on their platform? I just I couldn’t go back to him with that.
Well, if you’re an investigator, you always look at things through an investigative lens. And when my job was terminated at CBS, I took a look into the one sheet. This is a document they give you that outlines the terms of your separation.
And I went into the the metadata. And what I saw in the metadata is that my one sheet was created on February 9th at 515 p.m. And that is a Friday. And it is one day after I covered special counsel Robert Herr’s investigation and final report into President Biden.
I reported the facts of that investigation, that it was highly critical of the president, that it described him as sort of a nice old man with a bad memory, and that he couldn’t be prosecuted for that reason, among others. So I found the timing of that pretty significant. On top of the fact that I was given an assignment that was very difficult internally, but I was fully committed to.
And I did everything I could to put CBS first on a story that was not popular among a lot of people in that network. The day my job was terminated, I sent an email to George Cheeks, who’s the head of CBS, and Wendy McMahon, she’s head of sort of CBS News and Stations. I had a relationship with both of them.
And I said, I would rather work for the months that are left on my contract for a handful of reasons. First and foremost, we had just done a story on veterans who had been denied benefits due to their toxic exposure after 9-11. And we were so close to getting benefits for these veterans.
A whistleblower had come forward. It was really finally within reach for 15,000 veterans. And the answer that came back was, if you can get that story done, Catherine, in two days, then you can do it.
Otherwise, we’re just dropping it. And I felt this was such a disservice to America’s veterans, 15,000 and their families. We had worked for four or five years on this investigation.
We’d been able to move forward legislation. And we were this close to getting benefits for them. And then the curtain was pulled down by the CBS News executives.
I was so determined not to let go of that story, that a general I know connected me with Jon Stewart. And Jon Stewart is a great human being. And he picked up the baton, and he said he would help me get it over the finish line.
And recently, we saw an expansion of the benefits for these veterans. And I feel a little choked up saying it, because it was such a victory for them. And the fact that CBS really abandoned these veterans was a tremendous disappointment to me.
When I look at the situation at CBS News and 60 Minutes and the Kamala Harris interview, to me, it just begs for transparency. My training has always been that when you sit down with a major newsmaker, you have a special responsibility. You need to be asking questions over a broad range of topics.
And then you need to release the transcript, because you hope that other news organizations pick up the headlines and run with it beyond what you put on your network broadcast. I was also taught that releasing the transcript is about accountability and transparency, and the correspondent, the producers, the editors, the crews, standing by the integrity of the final product. I think this is especially so when you have a candidate who is running to be president of the United States.
And for all of those reasons, I’ve said it’s an imperative, I’ve been very open about this, that releasing the transcript is about accountability and transparency. And there’s a precedent for doing this at CBS News. When I interviewed then President Trump at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I advocated for, and they agreed to post the entire transcript on their website.
Same treatment for then Attorney General Bill Barr. And more recently, 60 Minutes posted the full unedited interview of their sit-down interview with Jerome Powell, the Fed chair. So there’s plenty of precedent for CBS News to release the full unedited transcripts.
And I think that given the questions about the internal edits in the Kamala Harris interview, it just makes sense to me to release them and to clear the air and to stand behind the integrity of your report. I took some time after I lost my job to educate myself about the marketplace. And I was really surprised at how much the marketplace had changed in the last five years.
There’s just been a tremendous erosion of the audience with the network newscasts, also with cable news. And there’s just been this explosion of smaller independent newsrooms on the platforms like X, like Instagram, like YouTube. And I made a decision that I would work independently, that I would tell the stories that I couldn’t tell before.
And there’s something very freeing about that. I feel that this chapter in my career, there are a lot of stories that I want to get finished before I retire. And so I’ve made those a primary focus.
It’s a whole new way of doing business. But I come back to the idea that content is king, and that the journalism matters. And that’s my focus now, that the facts have a power all their own.
And we are taking these investigations on X, we’re doing a newsletter, the writing skills, these are muscles I haven’t used in this way for a long time. So it’s kind of exciting to do that again. And then to have that kind of direct feedback, almost like the direct consumer feedback from your audience, which I didn’t feel I had at a big corporate entity.
I grew up in corporate media. Corporate media will always have an important place at the table. There’s no question in my mind.
But what’s exciting now is that we have a diversity of voices through independent journalists like myself, and then these smaller digital newsrooms. There’s no question that X is the platform with the greatest reach. And when I say the greatest reach, it’s not just the numbers, but it’s the individuals that you can have this contact with, whether it’s people who are very senior in politics, major business leaders.
We were super thrilled when Elon Musk subscribed to our account. That was a huge compliment. So it’s not just the size of the audience, it’s the diversity of the audience, and it’s being able to reach out to a lot of different types of people, the powerful, the decision makers, but then also the everyday consumers of information.
I feel like on X, the people who are following the account are a lot more engaged in the news. They’re super consumers of information. You can’t argue with the numbers.
I had a conversation with our bureau chief in Washington, Mark Lima, and we were talking about interviews on X. And there was one in particular, I think it was like 35 or 40 million views. And he said to me, that’s not a real number.
And I said, well, neither is 4.5 on the evening news. But if I had to choose, I would take the 40 million views on X over the 4.5 million views on the evening news, because that’s where the growth is. That’s where sort of the diverse audience is.
And I feel like this is the next chapter for media. After I lost my job, and I had my file seized, I was then held in contempt of court. And I tell people that the crisis has really been transformative in many, many ways.
And free speech, the protection of confidential sources, they really are my North Star now. It was all over the media, the fact that CBS News seized my records. That is not a standard practice in this business.
Everywhere else I have left, the custom is for the reporter to take their records with them, not for the corporation to seize them. My position has always been that I was grateful for the work at CBS News. If they don’t want me to work there anymore, that is their call.
But taking my reporting records crossed a red line that should never be crossed again in the future. These files, I had calls from sources I had worked with for years, who wanted to know whether the seizure of my records by CBS News was going to put their identities in jeopardy. I wanted to tell them it was not possible, but I could no longer offer that assurance.
Nothing is more sacred than the pledge of confidentiality to your sources. I’m fighting in the courts right now for that. And I’m not here to litigate this, but I can tell you that source protection, the First Amendment, a free press, these are my North Star.
One of my concerns is that when a corporation takes your reporting records, it makes it harder for you to work in the future. And that shuts down journalism. And if you believe journalism is at the foundation of our democracy, that is a position that just cannot stand.
This may look very glossy and highly produced, but I’ve got to emphasize, this is a small ragtag team that really makes it possible every week. So thank you to everyone behind the cameras and thank you to everyone who’s handling these edits. In 2026, you can expect more of Straight to the Point with Newsmaker Interviews.
We have total respect for people who sit down with us because we take on tough topics with direct questions. Not everyone can handle it. Second, more investigations.
That’s about real people, real problems, and real accountability. Actually demanding the government institutions keep their end of the deal and that they have the back of our service members, our spies and our diplomats. And then finally, more whistleblower investigations.
Whistleblowers, they’re so special. I feel like this is the part of my work that I’m so grateful for, because they are coming forward for something bigger than themselves. And we are so grateful that they trust us here at Straight to the Point.
And we are so grateful that you have trusted us in 2025. And here’s to more in 2026. We’ll see you soon on Straight to the Point.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin claims Ethereum has “solved” one of the biggest challenges in crypto: the blockchain trilemma.
In a X post on Saturday, Buterin emphasized the potential of peer data availability sampling (PeerDAS) and Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zkEVMs), noting that these two upgrades are making Ethereum “a fundamentally new and more powerful kind of decentralized network.”
“Now, Ethereum with PeerDAS (2025) and ZK-EVMs (expect small portions of the network using it in 2026), we get: decentralized, consensus and high bandwidth,” he said, adding:
“The trilemma has been solved — not on paper, but with live running code, of which one half (data availability sampling) is *on mainnet today*, and the other half (ZK-EVMs) is *production-quality on performance today* — safety is what remains.”
PeerDAS is a scalability enhancement introduced in the Fusaka upgrade in December that enables Ethereum to handle significantly more data.
Meanwhile, zkEVMs, which have been around for a while, are virtual machines compatible with both ZK proofs and the existing Ethereum virtual machine.
The Ethereum co-founder said that zkEVMs are still in their “alpha stage,” as they are performance-ready but require additional security improvements. He has given a four-year timeline for zkEVMs to be fully utilized within Ethereum.
Buterin said that once these upgrades are fully rolled out, Ethereum’s long-running effort to balance decentralization, security and scalability will be complete
“Over the next ~4 years, expect to see the full extent of this vision roll out: * In 2026, large non-ZKEVM-dependent gas limit increases due to BALs and ePBS, and we’ll see the first opportunities to run a ZKEVM node*,” he said.
“In 2026-28, gas repricings, changes to state structure, exec payload going into blobs, and other adjustments to make higher gas limits safe * In 2027-30, large further gas limit increases, as ZKEVM becomes the primary way to validate blocks on the network,” he added.
Ethereum took 10 years to solve the trilemma
Buterin said that it has taken 10 years of solid work to get Ethereum to the level of being able to solve the trilemma, pointing to his first post on solving data-availability problems back in April 2017.
“This was a 10-year journey […] but it’s finally here,” he said.
The blockchain trilemma refers to the complexity of building a blockchain network that sufficiently achieves decentralization, security and scalability simultaneously without any one pillar hampering the other.
Generally, most blockchains are forced to prioritize one or two of these pillars, such as speed and security, in their early stages while they gradually work to balance all three.
In his post, Buterin pointed to Bitcoin as an example, noting that the network was designed to be “highly decentralized” and secure, but suffers from scalability issues.
