Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Treasury Department has announced a wide-scale enforcement operation targeting more than 100 money services businesses operating along the U.S.–Mexico border, as part of the Trump administration’s campaign to disrupt cartel money laundering through America’s financial system.

The operation, announced on Dec. 22 by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), focuses on examining money services businesses, or MSBs, operating along the southwest border for potential noncompliance with rules meant to detect money laundering and disrupt illicit finance.

It’s part of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to combat cartels and other transnational criminal networks whose actions harm U.S. communities and threaten national security.

“At President Trump’s direction, the Treasury Department is utilizing all tools to stop terrorist cartels, drug traffickers, and human smugglers,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“This sweeping operation will help root out potential cartel-related money laundering from the U.S. financial system.”

Money services businesses include non-bank financial providers such as currency exchanges, check-cashing firms, and money transmitters.

Treasury officials say those businesses face heightened exposure to illicit finance in border regions, where drug traffickers and smuggling networks seek to move proceeds in small, structured transactions designed to avoid detection.

The new data-driven operation—described by FinCEN as the “first-of-its kind”—was made possible by Treasury’s modernization efforts, including the use of advanced technology to transform fragmented financial information into investigative leads to fight financial crimes more effectively.

The agency said the operation is based on the analysis of more than 1 million currency transaction reports and roughly 87,000 suspicious activity reports submitted by financial institutions.

Using high-performance data processing, the agency is identifying potential compliance failures under the Bank Secrecy Act that could warrant civil penalties, injunctive actions, warning letters, or criminal referrals, it said.

The operation has already produced six notices of investigation, dozens of examination referrals to the IRS, and more than 50 compliance outreach letters, according to the agency.

The move marks an escalation in targeted enforcement of rules meant to combat financial crime, with FinCEN saying that advanced analytics are able generate “reliable decision-grade leads at scale” for regulators and law enforcement to act on.

The Trump administration has increasingly tied financial enforcement to national security, following President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to designate several major Mexico-based drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. That designation expanded the government’s authority to freeze assets and pursue sanctions linked to cartel financing.

Enforcement Follows Contested Border Reporting Rules

The latest enforcement sweep builds on a series of geographic targeting orders (GTO) issued earlier this year that lowered cash-transaction reporting thresholds for money service businesses in certain border areas.

In March, FinCEN imposed a temporary order requiring money service businesses in 30 ZIP codes in California and Texas to report cash transactions as small as $200, down from the long-standing $10,000 threshold under the Bank Secrecy Act. That move triggered lawsuits from border-area businesses, which argued the requirement was arbitrary, burdensome, and harmful to legitimate commerce.

In June, a federal judge in Texas granted a temporary restraining order shielding two El Paso-area businesses from enforcement, citing the rule’s geographic design and disproportionate compliance burden.

“The administrative record reflects that the government either failed to consider or offered an unsubstantiated conclusion on at least two important aspects of the problem: (1) there are simple measures that cartel members can take to render the Border GTO completely toothless, and (2) innocent businesses can be profoundly disadvantaged if they are located on the ‘wrong’ side of an El Paso street,” U.S. District Judge Leon Schydlower wrote in a June 24 ruling granting an injunction, which applied only to the plaintiffs and did not halt the policy nationwide.

The Trump administration later allowed the $200 threshold order to expire and replaced it with a modified GTO that raised the reporting floor to $1,000, expanded coverage to parts of Arizona, and extended filing deadlines to ease compliance pressures. That revised order remains in effect through March 2026.

“FinCEN is now issuing a new GTO to target illicit transactions, while mitigating burden on legitimate businesses,” the agency said on Sept. 8, adding that the reissued GTO “will continue to ensure law enforcement can deny individuals and entities associated with these groups access to the U.S. financial system.”

Some civil-liberties advocates and free-market groups have taken a dim view of what they describe as expanded warrantless financial surveillance introduced by the new rules.

“This takes a financial surveillance system that is already enormous and intrusive and burdensome, and it expands that system enormously,” Rob Johnson, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview.

Nicholas Anthony, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, said in a note that the $10,000 threshold for currency transaction reports is long overdue for reform. But he argued that it should be raised—not lowered—to account for inflation.

“Yet, instead, we are seeing a drastic increase in financial surveillance, making the problem even worse,” Anthony wrote.

“Whether it’s the mob or the cartel, organized crime is not an easy thing to deal with.

“However, this challenge does not mean Americans should have their rights stripped away in the pursuit of justice.”

The Treasury did not respond to an earlier request for comment on criticism of the GTO and its lowered reporting threshold. However, in response to one of the lawsuits, government attorneys argued that business-compliance-burden claims were “exaggerated” and that the rule is justified because money service businesses along the southwest border are “particularly vulnerable” to cartel-linked money-laundering abuses.

Kevin Stocklin contributed to this report.

Every year-end, there are heated debates about what is the “best …. of Christmas”, especially among those who work in finance. 

Last year, Home Alone, Die Hard, and Love Actually topped the Christmas movie rankings as polled by the 2025 Deutsche Bank Global Markets Survey. This year, the bank returned to the even more contentious topic of favorite Christmas songs.

At a global level, the bank’s 2026 Year Ahead Global Markets Survey found that Wham! won again, while regionally, Mariah Carey took the crown in the US, Asia, and the Rest of the World with All I Want For Christmas is You. The full list is in the report.

For the record, Jim Reid – who compiled and published the survey – writes that his top three would have been Wham!, The Pogues, and Joni Mitchell’s River, a smooth progression from the tacky to the tasteful.

In his last note of the year, Reid also listed his favorite TV series, film, and album of 2025: we except it below (full report here)

• 1. Slow Horses – The best TV series in the world at the moment. Well, until Rivals comes back! I try to model my management technique on Jackson Lamb, if not my personal hygiene.
• 2. Dept Q – A bit like Slow Horses in that it involves a grumpy, rude police boss with a complicated past. He is of course a tortured genius and the show is gripping.
• 3. Blue Lights – A brilliant Northern Ireland police drama on its third series with no drop off in quality and heart.
• 4. Mobland – Helen Mirren and Piers Brosnan do terrible Irish accents in this trashy but fun mob drama. It proved a little light relief when we watched it as Liberation Day rolled through!
• 5. SAS Rogue Heroes – Dramatised true story about an incredible bunch of elite soldiers who seemingly played a big part in the outcome of WW
• 6. The White Lotus – I disliked series 1. Series 2 and now series 3 were great. Not at all like my holidays! Apart from the arguments.
• 7. Karen Pirie – A Scottish police heroine who doesn’t play by the rules but gets results.
• 8. The Newsreader – A homage to the 1980s. Clever Australian program that follows actual global news stories from the period with a fictitious news studio narrative in a period where TV hosts were the anchors of our lives.
• 9. The Studio – Comedies tend not to be very good but this is an exception. Self-deprecating look at the life of a Hollywood studio boss. Seth Rogan plays the character you’d expect him to play. Cringeworthily funny.
• 10. The Beast in Me – Clare Danes gives her usual tour de force and provides all the usual facial expressions to go along with it. A very tense psychological drama. I was a bit scared.
• 11. All Her Fault – Sarah Snook is the magnetic force in this drama about a missing 6 year old boy.
• 12. Black Doves – my wife is not a huge fan of Keira Knightley! So I watched while travelling. Enjoyable nonsense.
• 13. The Diplomat – more enjoyable nonsense I watched while travelling as my wife believed the first series was too absurd to continue with.

Reid’s favorite film of the year was “The Ballad of Wallis Island” which was “a life affirming, quirky movie, about a washed up folk pop star who gets booked to do a private gig on a small island at a house of a recluse who won the lottery and bought a place there. It’s very good.”

His favorite album was Florence and the Machine – Everybody Scream. A dramatic, orchestral, melodic, and confessional mini masterpiece

Finally, for those looking for some light Christmas reading (while escaping from kids or maybe in-laws), DB published its Ultimate Guide to Long-Term Investing (Available to pro subs) which is designed to help everyone put their long-term finances on the firmest footing, which should be a good New Year’s resolution.

More in the full  2026 Year Ahead Global Markets Survey

Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

Topline: A Long Island school district must pay its superintendent over $907,500 after he resigned without a public explanation this September, according to records obtained by Newsday through a Freedom of Information Law request.

Key facts: The Plainedge Union Free School District paid Edward Salina a $662,352 lump sum for 184 unused sick and personal days and 286.5 unused vacation days.

The district will also pay the remaining $245,185 of Salina’s salary for the 2025-26 school year. The salary is paid in bi-weekly installments, which will end if Salina takes a job at another school, Newsday reported.

Salina’s contract gave him 35 vacation days, 14 sick days and three personal days per year. Unused days were carried over to the next year with no limit.

He resigned abruptly on Sept. 12, two weeks into the current school year. The reason remains unknown. He had been superintendent since 2011, and his contract was set to expire in 2029.

“What is paid is basically contractual,” school board president Joseph Beyrouty told Newsday. “There’s nothing more to it than that.”

The school district is paying District Wise Search Consultants to lead the search for a new superintendent, according to Newsday. The dollar cost is unknown, but District Wise received $261,000 from several Long Island districts since 2020, including $23,000 each from four other Long Island school districts in 2023 for their superintendent searches, according to Open the Books’ data.

Interim Superintendent Carol Muscarella is earning $1,200 per day but will not hold the job permanently, according to Newsday.

“It’s just to basically keep the lights on and the employees paid. And I think she’s done a phenomenal job with that,” Beyrouty said. “As a matter of fact, I think she’s even gone above and beyond that and really helped tackle some issues that have come up along the way.”

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Background: The Plainedge school district had a $50.6 million payroll in 2024, according to Open the Books’ database. Seven employees, including Salina, made more than $200,000. An additional 292 people made $100,000 or more. 

Summary: It’s questionable whether any public employee should receive nearly $1 million in a single year, but paying one who is no longer working and gave no explanation for their departure is especially alarming.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

It’s almost as much a Christmas tradition as eggnog and Rankin/Bass – The political left’s propaganda disparaging Noel appears like clockwork every December.  The season inevitably triggers progressives into rantings and ravings about the “white supremacist” evils of western culture, Christianity and the need for a more “secular” or “multicultural” form of celebration.  In other words, Christians aren’t allowed to have their own holidays. 

Protected holidays are only reserved for cultures with spicy foods and child marriage.

And, if you went to a public school in the west in the past few decades you probably dealt with multiple liberal teachers who regaled you with their “profound insights” on the “true history” of western holiday traditions.  The problem is, most of what these teachers tell their students is a lie based on generations of carefully crafted political narratives.

The disinformation campaigns against Christmas have been so effective in the past that there are even groups of Christians that actually believe the same nonsense and repeat it as if they have discovered some fantastic conspiratorial secrets that only “true Christians” know.

Let’s examine some of these lies and why they are historically inaccurate…

Lie #1: Christmas Is A Pagan Holiday?

Utterly false in every way, but many western students have heard this claim thousands of times over and AI chatbots continue to spread the fallacy today.  The idea comes from the incorrect claim that Christmas is an artificial amalgamation of traditions stolen from pagan events like Saturnalia and the Roman Solis Festival as a way to convert the heathens centuries ago.

Saturnalia was held on Dec 17, not Dec 25, and focused on animal sacrifices and a loosening of moral rules. Christmas was started as a completely separate tradition with separate beliefs and a Christian message. 

The Roman Solis Festival was created a century after Christians began celebrating December 25th as the birth of Christ.  Surviving Roman records from Hyppolytus mention Christmas as early as 200AD.  Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170–235 AD) is widely regarded by modern scholars as the earliest known Christian writer to effectively calculate the birth of Jesus as December 25th.  

The earliest calendar record of the pagan Solis Festival was 354AD, over 150 years later.  It was created by Roman Emperor Aurelian, who was a pagan hostile to the spread of Christianity.  He sought to co-opt or compete with Christian celebrations, rather than Christians trying to co-opt paganism.

Lie #2:  The Birth Date Of December 25th For Jesus Is Completely Made Up?     

The date of December 25th for the birth of Jesus was a deduction from scripture, analyzed in conjunction with historical knowledge about those who worked in the temple.

St. Luke related the announcement of the birth of St. John the Baptist to his elderly parents, St. Zechariah and St. Elizabeth.  St. Zechariah was a priest of the class of Abijah (Lk 1:5), the eighth class of 24 priestly classes (Neh 12:17).  Each class served one week in the temple, twice a year.  Josef Heinrich Friedlieb has established that the priestly class of Abijah would have been on duty during the second week of the Jewish month Tishri, the week of the Day of Atonement or in our calendar, between Sept. 22 and 30.

While on duty, the Archangel Gabriel informed Zechariah that he and Elizabeth would have a son (Lk 1:5-24). Thereupon, they conceived John, who after presumably 40 weeks in the womb would have been born at the end of June.  For this reason, Christians celebrate the Nativity of St. John the Baptist June 24. 

St. Luke also recorded how the Archangel Gabriel told Mary that Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John (Lk 1:36), which means the Annunciation occurred March 25. Nine months from March 25, or six months from June 24, renders the birth of Christ at Dec. 25 – Christmas.

Modern scholars support Hippolytus in his calculations of December 25th.  Whether someone believes in the bible or not, the point remains that the date for Christmas was not pulled from thin air or adapted over time to “co-opt pagan traditions.”

Lie #3:  Mary And Joseph Were “Illegal Immigrants”?

This false claim has resurfaced recently in the wake of mass deportations of illegals in the US, and it comes from people who apparently have no knowledge of biblical history.

Mary and Joseph fled Judea for Egypt at a time when both were controlled regions of the Roman Empire.  Therefore, they did not immigrate, let alone immigrate illegally.  They were both considered subjects of Rome and remained within the Roman Empire as they traveled.     

Lie #4:  St. Nicholas Was A Third Worlder? 

In the process of woke activists trying to make everything black and brown, Santa Claus seems to be one of their favorite targets for race swapping.  Leftists argue that St. Nicholas was born in Turkey, and thus, he must have been heavily melanated. 

St. Nicholas was born in Turkey, but he was born to wealthy Greek parents in 270 AD in a Greek colony at a time when the Levant was controlled by the Roman Empire.  The creation of Islam and the Muslim invasions did not happen for another 350 years, meaning, most of the region was fair skinned or “olive skinned”.  By today’s woke diversity totem pole standards, St. Nicholas would be considered a white guy with a tan. 

All records of Nicholas of Myra’s life show widespread reverence for his charity, which led to his eventual sainthood (granted 100 years after his death) and the celebration of his achievements for centuries.   

Lie #5:  Jesus Was Not A Real Historic Person?

Historic accounts say otherwise, including records from the Romans who saw Jesus as a reactionary enemy.  Roman historian Tacitus (c. 116 AD) mentions “Christus” executed under Pilate, and Jewish historian Josephus (c. 93 AD) also refers to Jesus, both confirming Jesus’s existence and execution by Romans for followers who called him Messiah, thus supporting the record of events described in the Bible.

Lie #6:  There Is No Leftist War On Christmas?

The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people that he doesn’t exist.  Yes, there absolutely is a war on Christmas.  One of the root foundations of Marxism/Communism is the crusade to erase religion as a competing ideological fount, and woke leftists are indeed communists.  Karl Marx particularly despised Christianity and argued that:

“The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille (lower class people).”

Of course, Christianity doesn’t preach any of these things in the way Marx claimed, but communists see Christianity as an obstacle to their collectivist revolution because it preaches reverence to God above government and asserts that rights are inherent rather than being privileges granted by government.  In other words, erasing Christianity is an important step in building a communist empire where the state becomes god. 

The political left will argue that their incessant demands for more “secular” holiday celebrations are designed to make immigrants feel more included, but they don’t make similar demands for any other religious traditions.  It is interesting that Christianity is the only religion that is consistently targeted and Christmas is the only religious celebration consistently forced to accommodate other belief systems. 

Liberal teachers have been training children for decades to hate Christianity and to view Christmas as a sham.  This is not the behavior of a political group at peace.  It is the behavior of a psy-op, a war campaign to demoralize their enemies.            

Authored by Dean George via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Candy canes have been associated with Christmas for centuries, but their origins and early history are shrouded in legend, folklore and fantasy.

The sweet and sticky candy first became associated with Christmas in Germany in the 17th century, though the name, color and flavor were markedly different from contemporary candy canes. Originally, they were called sugar sticks. They were pure white in color, had no peppermint flavor, and weren’t “J” shaped. 

The popularity of sugar sticks eventually spread to other European countries like France and England. Because sugar was often unavailable, sugar sticks were often flavored with sweet essences from plants. Sugar sticks were handmade in small batches and given as seasonal gifts to children, family, and friends. 

European immigrants coming to America in the 19th century brought their old-world recipes with them. Eventually, sugar sticks became part of this country’s Christmas celebrations.

European Folklore and Religious Symbolism

A common but unsubstantiated legend says that around 1670, a German choirmaster in Cologne gave children performing in Nativity reenactments sugar sticks to keep them quiet and attentive. A similar tale says that when some church members objected to children eating candy in church, the choirmaster commissioned a confectioner to shape the sugar sticks like shepherd’s crooks to symbolize the Biblical shepherds tending their flocks near Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. 

Modern day legends attributed more to religious symbolism. Some tales say that when turned upside down, the candy crook is shaped like a “J” and stands for Jesus. Another tale implies the candied crook represents a shepherd’s crook and is symbolic of Jesus, the Good Shepherd.

One popular myth is that an Indiana candymaker crafted the Christmas candy cane to symbolize the birth, ministry, and death of Jesus Christ. The white color represents the purity of the Virgin Mary and Christ’s perfection. The thin red stripes denote Jesus’ scourging before he was crucified, and the large red stripe symbolizes the blood Christ shed on the cross. These anecdotes are intriguing but lack any historical documentation to prove their veracity. 

More likely is the idea that German families used the hook in the original candy stick to facilitate using it as a Christmas ornament alongside fruit, nuts, candies, cookies, and paper decorations.

When Sugar Sticks Became Candy Canes

German-Swedish immigrant August Imgard is the first documented case in North America of using the sweet treat as a tree ornament. On Christmas Day, 1847 he introduced this interesting “twist” on sugar sticks when he decorated a blue spruce tree in Wooster, Ohio as part of his family’s Christmas celebration. 

By the 1860s, the term “candy canes” was appearing in publications like Ballou’s Monthly Magazine. They were described as being hung up next to stockings. In 1871, German immigrant Claus Doscher founded Doscher’s Candies, America’s oldest candy cane maker, which was featured in American Essence magazine. Remarkably, the Doscher’s candy canes are still handmade. 

The candy cane’s famous red stripes and peppermint flavoring were believed to be added sometime around the turn of the 20th century, according to the National Confectioners Association. 

In 1919, entrepreneur Bob McCormack founded the Famous Candy Company in Albany, Georgia. Within a few years, the company was producing thousands of handmade candy canes annually under the name Bob’s Candy Company (later changed to Bobs Candies). Later, in the 1950s, the Georgia company became the largest maker of candy canes and the first to wrap their candies in cellophane and mass distribute them.

In the 1950s, Gregory Keller, a Roman Catholic priest and McCormack’s brother-in-law, invented a machine that automated candy cane production, greatly reducing production time and labor costs. A patent request for the “Keller Machine” was submitted in 1957 and approved in 1960; it allowed Bobs Candies to produce millions of candy canes annually. Bobs candy canes are still made today, though the McCormack family sold the company to larger candy conglomerates in 2005.

Contemporary Candy Cane Options

The traditional red and white peppermint-flavored candy canes still dominate the market, but novel options in recent years have included fruit-based flavors and odder flavor choices for candies, like bacon, pickle and jalapeño. New textural options include chewy and liquid-filled canes with a juice-infused center.

Candy canes are now seen at other holidays also. There areheart-shaped candy canes for Valentine’s Day and orange and black candy canes at Halloween.

Traditionalists need not worry, though. The National Confectioners Association notes that 90 percent of candy canes are sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas; the second week of December is the biggest single week for candy cane sales annually; 1.76 billion candy canes are sold annually in the United States; candy canes are the number one-selling non-chocolate candy in December, and December 26th is National Candy Cane Day. 

A 20-year-old U.S.-based content creator and streamer, whose real name is Braden Peters, was reportedly banned overnight from the creator-focused livestreaming platform Kick following an incident that appears to involve running over a person described as a “stalker.”

On Christmas Eve night, X user KickChamp posted a video showing Claviclar running over a “stalker” with a Tesla Cybertruck who jumped onto his windshield.

Clavicular RAN OVER a stalker that tried hopping on his windshield 😳 pic.twitter.com/w4ikrAeUp9

— KickChamp👑 (@Kick_Champ) December 25, 2025

“The stalker Clavicular ran over is unresponsive at the scene,” KickChamp said.

The stalker Clavicular ran over is unresponsive on the scene 😳 pic.twitter.com/ckGGgqaVil

— KickChamp👑 (@Kick_Champ) December 25, 2025

KickChamp posted another video …

Security confirmed that the stalker Clavicular ran over didn’t get up 😳 pic.twitter.com/QbMcpL2Gsd

— KickChamp👑 (@Kick_Champ) December 25, 2025

Following the incident, Clavicular’s Kick page has been deleted. It appears he has been banned from the platform.

Yet another documented instance of dangerous and harmful behavior associated with some livestreamers on Kick…

Via Middle East Eye

Youssef Tarazi, a Palestinian Christian in Gaza, says the giant Christmas tree that once stood as a symbol of communal celebration will not be lit this year. For a third consecutive year, Gaza’s Christian community says they will be observing Christmas without public celebrations, as Israel’s alleged repeated ceasefire violations and restrictions on humanitarian aid entering the enclave continue to cast a shadow over the holiday.

“Churches have suspended all celebrations outside their walls because of the conditions Gaza is going through,” Tarazi, 31, told Middle East Eye. “We are marking the birth of Jesus Christ through prayer inside the church only, but our joy remains incomplete”.

Before the war, churches across Gaza transformed their courtyards into gathering spaces, decorated streets with festive lights and hosted carols that brought families together. 

Muslims often joined Christian neighbors to mark the occasion, including the annual lighting of a large Christmas tree in Gaza City. “This year, we cannot celebrate while we are still grieving for those killed, including during attacks on churches,” Tarazi said.

“Nothing feels the same anymore. Many members of our community will not be with us this Christmas”.

George Anton, the director of operations at the Latin patriarchate in Gaza and head of its emergency committee, echoed those sentiments. “We cannot celebrate while Christians and Muslims alike are mourning devastating losses caused by the war,” Anton told MEE. “For us, the war has not ended”.

Anton said churches are limiting observances to prayers and a nativity scene inside church buildings. “In the past, we decorated our homes. Now, many homes are gone. We decorated the streets. Even the streets are gone,” he said. “There is nothing to celebrate”.

Since October 2023, Gaza’s Christian homes, schools and churches have been damaged or destroyed during Israeli military operations. Three historic churches – Church of Saint Porphyrius, the Holy Family Church and the Gaza Baptist Church – have suffered severe damage.

Anton said at least 53 Christians have been killed directly or indirectly during the war, with many others injured. “Some were killed in air strikes, while others died because we could not reach hospitals or provide medicine, especially elderly people with chronic illnesses,” he said.

Determined to stay

This Christmas comes amid what church leaders describe as the smallest Christian population Gaza has seen in decades.

More than 400 Christians have left Gaza during the war, fearing for their lives after relatives and friends were killed. Today, an estimated 220 Christian families – around 580 people – remain in the strip. “Those of us who remain are determined to stay,” Anton said, while acknowledging that worsening humanitarian conditions may force more families to leave in search of medical care and stability.

For the last two years, Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus Christ, has not been able to properly celebrate Christmas. Due to the war in Gaza, there has not been a tree in the village square, and the Christmas market has not been open.https://t.co/KVVHKLfgbr

— Crux (@Crux) December 22, 2025

Around 70 percent of Gaza’s Christians belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, with the remainder Latin Catholics. “The situation affects everyone – Christians and Muslims alike,” Anton said. “We are part of this society, and what happens to Gaza happens to us”.

On October 20 2023, less than two weeks into the war, Israeli strikes hit the Church of Saint Porphyrius complex, killing at least 16 people who had sought refuge there. The church is one of the oldest in the world, built on a site used for Christian worship since the fifth century.

In another attack on 17 July, Israeli fire struck Gaza’s only Catholic church, killing two women and injuring several others, including the parish priest. “All Palestinians, including the Christian community, are still living with the consequences of the war,” Anton said. “We are grieving, frustrated and unstable. We cannot celebrate as if nothing has happened”.

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics,

The FBI recently raided the home of a Secret Service agent on Vice President JD Vance’s detail in an alleged tax and wire fraud case involving millions of dollars in donations and grants.

In the alleged scheme, the agent accepted donations to a charity that purports to help inner-city youth and victims of domestic violence but didn’t provide the services it reported to the IRS, according to several knowledgeable sources in the Secret Service community.

The raid, which took place on or around Dec. 8, was the culmination of more than a year of work by a joint FBI-IRS investigation that the Secret Service joined in recent months, the sources said. Federal investigators have interviewed more than a dozen Secret Service agents, some of whom contributed to the nonprofit at the center of the probe, which is run by an agent on Vance’s detail.

The Secret Service has placed the agent on unpaid administrative leave and suspended his security clearance, signs that the agency considers the potential crimes and misconduct extremely serious, even though the individual has not been arrested, according to sources familiar with the matter.

RealClearPolitics has reached out to the USSS and has been told a statement is forthcoming.

The alleged fraud could further bruise the Secret Service, which is facing retention problems as it struggles to regain its once elite reputation after two Trump assassination attempts last year. In addition to potential criminal prosecution, the Secret Service agent could face internal insider threat allegations for demonstrating poor judgment and possible criminal intent.

“This is bigger than the 2012 prostitution scandal because agents are trained to investigate tax and bank wire fraud – anyone involved knew what they were doing was illegal,” one source remarked.

In 2012, more than a dozen Secret Service agents and other personnel were placed on administrative leave, and several were eventually fired after their superiors discovered they had hired prostitutes during a trip to Colombia to prepare for then-President Obama’s visit to the Summit of the Americas.

The agent whose home was raided is listed as the founder and chairman of the charity’s board of directors on tax documents filed with the IRS.

The charity in question purports to provide laptops to young inner-city youth in its “Laptops for Hope Program” – at least some of which are laptops donated by the Secret Service because they are beyond their warranties, according to knowledgeable sources. Investigators, however, are looking into whether laptops discovered in the basement of the agent’s home were ever donated to the youth or whether there were plans to do so.  

In tax documents, the charity states that its mission is to provide “emergency assistance to survivors of domestic violence, financial literacy, preventing childhood obesity, & [stet] supporting families affected by HIV/AIDS in VA, MD, DC, & GA.”

The alleged tax and wire fraud schemes could implicate numerous Secret Service agents and employees, some of whom allegedly donated to the charity and then received part of their donation back in a payment. Investigators are looking into whether the donations allowed the Secret Service agents to file deductions and write off numerous work-related expenses, the sources said.

The charity has been operating since 2022, receiving $351,329 in contributions and grants in its first year while paying just $23,000 in salaries, tax documents show. In 2023, contributions and grants shot up to $806,409, and the nonprofit paid its officers a total of $154,590. Those numbers increased to $979,053 in contributions and grants in 2024, the latest tax document available. That year, the charity reported paying $267,221 in salaries.  

Yes, it’s been five years.

Yes, it’s the season of joy and forgiveness, blah blah blah.

But, fuck that!

In 2020, while the sheeple huddled in fear-porn isolation, a cabal of power-hungry bureaucrats and pharma-shilling “experts” pulled off the greatest heist in modern history: they stole Christmas.

Not with guns or tanks, but with “emergency decrees,” arbitrary lockdowns, and endless streams of hysterical propaganda about a virus with a 99.7% survival rate for most.

Across the West, authoritarian governors and health czars like California’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Andrew Cuomo played Grinch-in-Chief.

Family gatherings? Banned.

Churches closed on the holiest night of the year, while big-box retailers like Walmart raked in billions—essential, you see.

Travel restrictions grounded flights, borders slammed shut, and millions faced solitary holidays, Zoom “celebrations” replacing real human connection.

In the UK, Boris Johnson’s last-minute Tier 4 lockdown crushed plans for millions, proving politicians love nothing more than moving goalposts.

And to ensure we don’t forget (or forgive) those that imposed such a farce upon so many, Martin Armstrong dug up some images as a reminder…

The economic carnage was deliberate: small businesses gutted, restaurants shuttered, while Amazon’s Jeff Bezos laughed all the way to his yacht.

Fauci the Flip-Flopper pontificated from his ivory tower, warning against singing carols or hugging grandma, as if seasonal joy itself was a superspreader event.

This wasn’t public health – it was social engineering on steroids.

Fear was the weapon, compliance the goal.

The tyrants wrapped their theft in “science” bows, but the data later exposed the scam: excess deaths from despair, suicides, delayed treatments far outweighed their “saved” lives narrative.

Five years on, the damage lingers: fractured families, eroded trust, and a precedent for endless control.

Christmas 2020 wasn’t just stolen – it was sacrificed on the altar of technocratic tyranny.

Never forget: they hated the Whos down in Whoville, and they’ll do it again given half a chance.

Never Again!