Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

There are logical military and strategic reasons why he’s not interested in this whatsoever at all…

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard responded to a report from Reuters alleging that “Putin has not abandoned his aims of capturing all of Ukraine and reclaiming parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire”.

Tulsi condemned that as a “lie” to undermine Trump’s peace efforts and thus risk a possible hot Russian-US war.

She also claimed that “Russia’s battlefield performance indicates it does not currently have the capability to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine, let alone Europe.”

Her assessment is absolutely correct for the reasons that’ll now be explained.

For starters, Putin authorized the special operation after diplomacy failed to neutralize Ukrainian-emanating threats from NATO, ergo why Russia was compelled to resort to force.

Unlike what many “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” nowadays claim on social media, “The ‘War Of Attrition’ Was Improvised & Not Russia’s Plan All Along”, occurring only because the UK and Poland unexpectedly sabotaged spring 2022’s peace deal.

Unprecedented support from NATO led to the aforesaid “war of attrition” and resultant stalemate along large parts of the front for protracted periods of time.

As was assessed as early as that summer in July 2022, “All Sides Of The Ukrainian Conflict Underestimated Each Other”, which is why this support caught Russian planners off guard but also why it failed to inflict a strategic defeat upon Russia too. These 20 constructive critiques of Russia’s special operation from November 2022 are also relevant to this day too.

Even if Russia achieves a long-awaited breakthrough across the front, whatever territory it steamrolls into beyond that of the four disputed regions would likely only be for leverage for coercing Ukraine into complying with more of Putin’s demands for peace in exchange for withdrawing from there. Expanding Russia’s territorial claims through the holding of referenda in new regions would require controlling a significant amount of their land with an equally significant amount of people still there to participate.

Neither can be taken for granted, especially that locals won’t flee as refugees either deeper into Ukraine or across the front lines into Russia, hence the unreliability of this scenario. The strategic consequences could also be disproportionately severe if this ever unfolds since Trump could be provoked into escalating US involvement in the conflict after feeling like Putin disrespected him by doing this amidst their peace talks or possibly even manipulated him by supposedly only participating in them to buy time.

Trump has slammed Biden for the US’ complete loss of Afghanistan so he’s unlikely to let Putin conquer all of Ukraine in the political fantasy that this one day becomes possible. An escalation of US involvement in response could see it approve NATO allies’ entrance into Ukraine for drawing a “red line” as far east as possible and threaten direct “retaliation” against Russia if those forces are attacked en route. Putin has done his utmost to avoid World War III up until this point so he’s unlikely to suddenly risk it in that event.

There’s also the threat of a terrorist insurgency all across Western Ukraine if Russian forces ever reach that far, which could be costly for the Kremlin in terms of lives, treasure, and opportunities, something that Putin would likely seek to avoid as well. Bearing all this in mind, from the military difficulties to the disproportionately severe strategic consequences of claiming territory beyond the disputed regions, Tulsi is therefore absolutely correct in assessing that Putin doesn’t want to conquer all of Ukraine.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“He sees you when you’re sleeping.
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows if you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness’ sake.”
   — “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”

For generations, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” has been treated as a playful reminder to children to be good because someone, somewhere, is watching.

Today, it reads less like a joke and more like a warning.

The Surveillance State is making a naughty list, and we’re all on it.

Long before Santa’s elves start loading his sleigh with toys for good girls and boys, the government’s surveillance apparatus is already at work—logging your movements, monitoring your messages, tracking your purchases, scanning your face, recording your license plate, and feeding it all into algorithmic systems designed to determine whether you belong on a government watchlist.

Unlike Santa’s naughty list, however, the consequences of landing on the government’s “naughty list” are far more severe than a stocking full of coal. They can include heightened surveillance, loss of privacy, travel restrictions, financial scrutiny, police encounters, or being flagged as a potential threat—often without notice, explanation, or recourse.

This is not fiction. This is not paranoia.

This is the modern surveillance state operating exactly as designed.

Santa Claus has long been the benign symbol of omniscient surveillance, a figure who watches, judges, and rewards. His oversight is fleeting, imaginary, and ultimately harmless.

The government’s surveillance is none of those things—and never was.

What was once dismissed as a joke—“Santa is watching”—has morphed into a chilling reality. Instead of elves, the watchers are data brokers, intelligence agencies, predictive algorithms, and fusion centers. Instead of a naughty-or-nice list, Americans are sorted into databases, risk profiles, and threat assessments—lists that never disappear.

The shift is subtle but profound.

Innocence is no longer presumed.

Everyone is watched. Everyone is scored. Everyone is a potential suspect.

This is the surveillance state in action.

Today’s surveillance state doesn’t require suspicion, a warrant, or probable cause. It is omnipresent, omniscient, and inescapable.

Your smartphone tracks your location. Your car records your movements. License plate readers log when and where you drive. Retail purchases create detailed consumer profiles. Smart speakers listen to everything you say. Home security cameras observe not just your property, but your neighbors, delivery drivers, and anyone who passes by.

The government’s appetite for data is insatiable.

In a dramatic expansion of surveillance reach, the Transportation Security Administration now shares airline passenger lists with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, enabling ICE to identify and arrest travelers at airports based on immigration status.

In one incident, ICE arrested and immediately deported a college student with no criminal record who was flying home to spend Thanksgiving with her family.

What was once routine aviation security data has been transformed into an enforcement tool—merging civilian travel records with the machinery of deportation and demonstrating how ordinary movements can be weaponized by the state.

Even the most personal acts—like Christmas shopping—are now tracked in real time. Every item you buy, where you buy it, how you pay, and who you buy it for becomes part of a permanent digital record. That data does not stay confined to retailers. It is shared, sold, aggregated, and folded into sprawling surveillance ecosystems that blur the line between corporate data collection and government intelligence.

Companies like Palantir specialize in fusing these data streams into comprehensive behavioral profiles, linking financial activity, social media behavior, geolocation data, and government records into a single, searchable identity map.

The result is not merely a government that watches what you’ve done but one that claims the power to predict what you will do next.

It is a short step from surveillance to pre-crime.

While predictive policing and AI-driven risk assessments are marketed as tools of efficiency and public safety, in reality, they represent a dangerous shift from punishing criminal acts to policing potential behavior.

Algorithms—trained on historical data already shaped by over-policing, bias, and inequality—are now used to predict who might commit a crime, who might protest, or who might pose a “risk.” Even the way you drive—where you came from, where you were going and which route you took—is being analyzed by predictive intelligence programs for suspicious patterns that could get you flagged and pulled over.

Once flagged by an algorithm, individuals often have no meaningful way to challenge the designation. The criteria are secret. The data sources opaque. The decisions automated.

Accountability disappears.

This isn’t law enforcement as envisioned by the Founders. This is pre-crime enforcement—punishing people not for what they’ve done, but for what an AI machine predicts they might do.

At the same time, President Trump has openly threatened states that attempt to regulate artificial intelligence in order to protect citizens from its discriminatory and intrusive uses—seeking to clear the way for unchecked, nationwide deployment of these systems.

No government initiative has done more to normalize, expand, and entrench mass surveillance than the Trump administration’s war on immigration.

The Trump administration’s war on immigration has become the laboratory for the modern surveillance state.

Under the guise of border security, vast stretches of the country have been transformed into Constitution-free zones—places where the Fourth Amendment is treated as optional and entire communities are subjected to constant monitoring.

The federal government has transformed immigration policy into a proving ground for authoritarian surveillance tactics—testing tools, technologies, and legal shortcuts could be deployed with minimal public resistance and quietly repurposed for use against the broader population. As journalist Todd Miller warned, these areas have been transformed into “a ripe place to experiment with tearing apart the Constitution, a place where not just undocumented border-crossers, but millions of borderland residents have become the targets of continual surveillance.”

Through ICE and DHS, the government fused immigration enforcement with corporate surveillance technologies—facial recognition, license-plate readers, cellphone tracking, and massive data-sharing agreements—creating a sprawling digital dragnet that now extends far beyond immigrants.

What began as a policy aimed at undocumented immigrants has now become a model for nationwide surveillance policing.

“What’s new,” reports the Brennan Center for Justice, “is that the federal government now openly says it will use its supercharged spy capabilities to target people who oppose ICE’s actions. Labeled as ‘domestic terrorists’ by the administration, these targets include anti-ICE protesters and anyone who allegedly funds them—all of them part of a supposed left-wing conspiracy to violently oppose the president’s agenda.”

The critical point is this: the surveillance infrastructure developed to track immigrants is now used to monitor everyone. Immigration enforcement served as the justification, the infrastructure, and the legal gray zone needed to create a permanent surveillance apparatus that treats all Americans as potential suspects.

All of this adds up to an algorithmic naughty list.

Government watchlists have exploded in size and scope.

Terrorist watchlists, no-fly lists, gang databases, protester tracking systems, and “suspicious activity” registries operate with little oversight and even less transparency.

People can be added to these lists without notification and can remain there indefinitely. Errors are common. Corrections are rare.

Social media posts are mined. Associations are mapped. Speech is scrutinized. Peaceful dissent is increasingly treated as a precursor to extremism.

The government’s watchlists aren’t just opaque databases hidden from public view. They are becoming public-facing instruments of political classification. Internal Justice Department memoranda now direct the FBI to compile lists of groups and networks it categorizes as possible domestic extremists, broadening counter-terror tools to sweep in ideological opponents and organizations without clear statutory definitions.

At the same time, the White House has launched an official “Offender Hall of Shame”—a public naughty list of journalists and media outlets it accuses of bias—even briefly circulating a video styled like Santa putting together a naughty list of offenders before deleting it amid backlash.

In this system, being “good” no longer means obeying the law. It means staying under the radar, avoiding attention, and never questioning authority.

The chilling effect is the point.

Once upon a time, privacy was recognized as a fundamental liberty—an essential buffer between the individual and the state. Today, it’s a conditional privilege, granted temporarily and revoked when it suits the police state’s purposes.

Under the banner of national security, public health, and law and order, surveillance powers continue to expand. Biometric identification—facial recognition, gait analysis, voice prints—are normalized.

What was once unthinkable has become routine.

Americans are being conditioned to accept constant monitoring as the price of safety. That resistance is suspicious. That anonymity is dangerous.

Yet history teaches us the opposite: societies that normalize surveillance do not become safer—they become more authoritarian.

A government that sees everything, everywhere, all the time, will eventually control everything.

The Founders understood this. That is why they enshrined protections against unreasonable searches and unchecked power. They knew liberty couldn’t survive under constant surveillance.

When the government knows where you go, what you buy, what you say, who you associate with, and what you believe, freedom becomes conditional.

This Christmas, we might joke about Santa watching from the North Pole, but we should be far more concerned about the watchers much closer to home.

The surveillance state doesn’t take a holiday. It doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t forget. And it doesn’t forgive easily.

So you see, the question is not whether we are being watched. We are.

The question, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, is whether we will continue to accept a system that treats every citizen as a suspect—and whether we will reclaim the constitutional limits that once stood between liberty and the all-seeing state.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

The state of Colorado could lose up to $24 million in federal highway funding due to the state’s slow response to violations involving the issuance of commercial driver’s licenses (CDL) to noncitizens, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on Monday.

The warning stems from an October federal audit demonstrating that approximately 22 percent of Colorado’s CDLs given to non-citizens, including Mexican nationals, violated federal prohibitions.

“Every day that goes by is another day unqualified, unvetted foreign truckers are jeopardizing the safety of you and your family,” Duffy said in a statement.

Duffy accused the state of delaying an in-depth internal review, full driver accounting and revocations, despite federal compliance alerts.

However, as Kimberley Hayek reports below for The Epoch Times, beyond the funding freeze, Duffy also warned the department could decertify Colorado’s full CDL program if the state does not meet requirements.

Colorado’s Division of Motor Vehicles paused new issuances and renewals of limited-term non-domiciled CDLs and learner permits last week, saying it will continue to do so until an audit confirms that U.S. standards are being met.

Duffy has moved nationwide to enforce CDL qualifications for hauling heavy loads or passengers. A summer audit expanded after an unauthorized foreign driver in Florida made an illegal U-turn and crashed, killing three.

Federal rules mandate an immigration status check before licensing. Audits uncovered lapses in such verifications across states.

New York received a 30-day ultimatum Dec. 12 to align with nondomiciled CDL rules or lose funding, with Duffy saying that 53 percent of its such licenses were improperly issued. The state’s DMV disputed the figures as fabricated.

In California, Duffy froze $160 million in October for widespread noncitizen licensing, and threatened to rescind issuance authority if Gov. Gavin Newsom defies emergency directives to halt and audit them. Since then, California has revoked approximately 21,000 CDLs.

Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Texas, and South Dakota have faced similar scrutiny. A June FMCSA investigation found noncompliance in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, and Washington, prompting tightened non-domiciled CDL eligibility.

Almost 3,000 CDL providers were delisted from the federal registry Dec. 2 for illegal practices, with 4,500 more receiving warnings. Per reviews, approximately half of U.S. truck schools fail federal standards.

Recent incidents highlight the issue, including a deadly crash in Tennessee that was allegedly caused by an illegal immigrant from China who was allowed to illegally obtain a CDL.

The administration revoked the privileges of 9,500 drivers Dec. 11 for failing in their English proficiency, including cases from Washington and California.

American truckers have applauded the crackdown on noncitizen CDL licensing.

“My response is absolutely we can handle it because [unqualified foreign drivers] shouldn’t be on the road to begin with,” John Esparza, president and CEO of the Texas Trucking Association, told The Epoch Times last week.

Authored by Cara Michelle Miller via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

“Like a human hockey puck”—that’s how Nikki Schultek describes a year spent ricocheting between specialists in Connecticut, each focused on one piece of her deteriorating health—bladder pain, neurological symptoms, joint pain—while missing the whole picture.

“I really don’t fault the clinicians,” she told The Epoch Times. “The training hones them to be experts in a domain.”

After her odyssey of misdiagnoses, Schultek finally received a correct diagnosis of Lyme disease. However, her experience navigating a fragmented health care system brought her to Washington on Dec. 15, where Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. convened a rare federal roundtable addressing what he called long-standing failures in how the disease is diagnosed, studied, and treated.

“Lyme disease is an example of a chronic disease that has long been dismissed, with patients receiving inadequate care,” Kennedy said at the event. “I want to announce that the gaslighting of Lyme patients is over.”

The Medical Divide

Schultek’s story echoes those of many patients whose months—or years—of fatigue, pain, neurological symptoms, and cognitive problems, after undergoing a battery of tests, are eventually traced back to that one tick bite that infected them with Lyme disease.

Persistent symptoms from Lyme disease are both difficult to diagnose and treat, in part because health agencies, mainstream medicine, researchers, and patients disagree about what is causing the debilitating constellation of symptoms.

The roundtable brought together patients, clinicians, researchers, and advocates to discuss what many describe as long-standing failures in how Lyme disease is diagnosed, studied, and treated. At stake is not just terminology, but access to care.

Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and is spread through deer tick bites, most commonly in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and upper Midwest. Early symptoms can include fever, headache, and a characteristic rash, and around 90 percent of cases are successfully treated with a few weeks of antibiotics.

However, for about 10 percent of patients, like Schultek, symptoms such as fatigue, joint and muscle pain, and cognitive difficulties persist after antibiotic therapy.

“The cause of this is poorly understood,” Durland Fish, a professor emeritus of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health who attended the roundtable, told The Epoch Times in an email. “But similar phenomena occur with other conditions, such as long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome.”

The medical divide occurs here: Mainstream medicine, including federal health agencies, refers to persistent symptoms after treatment as post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, or PTLDS, believing the symptoms are caused by lasting damage or an immune reaction to the initial infection.

For this reason, these institutions discourage the use of the term “chronic Lyme disease,” which implies that Borrelia bugdorferi bacteria remain in the body. They also discourage long-term antibiotic treatment for these patients, citing the risk of serious side effects.

“Chronic Lyme disease usually presumes that infection persists after therapy,” Fish said.

However, patients with persistent symptoms often prefer the term “chronic Lyme,” as they believe it better captures the ongoing nature of their illness. Many also developed symptoms without ever being treated for acute Lyme infection, making the PTLDS label less applicable to their experience.

Some are also open to the possibility of a persistent Lyme infection, noting that their symptoms improve temporarily with antibiotics.

“The central misunderstanding is the false assumption that persistent symptoms reflect a single, uniform condition with a single explanation,” said Dr. Amy Offutt, a physician who treats patients with complex Lyme disease and serves on the board of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, in an email to The Epoch Times.

Complexity on the Front Lines

Disagreement over whether persistent symptoms are caused by chronic Lyme disease or PTLDS makes it difficult for patients to get the treatment they need.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the American Academy of Neurology discourage antibiotic treatment beyond 28 days after initial infection, the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, which specializes in treating Lyme disease, encourages a more flexible approach depending on patient needs.

“Chronic Lyme disease and related conditions require highly individualized, patient-centered care due to their variable, multisystem nature,” Offutt said.

Complicating matters further, Lyme disease is notoriously difficult to diagnose. Many patients spend years seeking answers and are sometimes referred for psychiatric evaluation when laboratory tests appear normal.

Standard tests do not directly detect Lyme bacteria. Instead, they measure whether the patient has developed antibodies to the infection. This approach can miss early cases, and some patients initially test negative only to receive a positive result years later.

Better Diagnosis

As scientific debate continues over the causes and treatment of persistent Lyme symptoms, roundtable participants found common ground on one point.

“The most meaningful outcome of the roundtable was a strong consensus on the importance of diagnosis,” Fish said.

Schultek, now a Board Member with the ILADEF (ILADS Education Foundation), was at one point evaluated for multiple sclerosis—an experience that underscored how difficult Lyme-related illness can be to diagnose when symptoms span multiple body systems.

Better diagnostic tools, researchers said, could prevent patients from falling into prolonged medical gray zones and may help clarify why symptoms persist in some cases but not others.

For Schultek and other patients who attended the roundtable, the meeting carried emotional weight beyond policy debates.

Hearing persistent Lyme symptoms discussed seriously by researchers and clinicians—and knowing that rigorous studies are underway to measure cognitive, neurological, and other multisystem effects—offered a rare sense of recognition.

“Hearing those words, I had goosebumps,” said Schultek, who founded the Intracell Research Group to explore how infections contribute to complex chronic conditions such as Lyme disease. “It felt unbelievably validating. I feel more hope than I have in a decade.”

Offutt said that hope matters—even without immediate changes to treatment guidelines.

“Federal engagement signals a willingness to acknowledge uncertainty and complexity,” she said. “That’s an essential first step toward improving outcomes.”

The roundtable did not resolve the science. However, for patients long caught between disputed definitions and unanswered questions, it marked something that has often been missing: recognition that uncertainty itself can be harmful—and that listening may be the beginning of better care.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is suing the District of Columbia over its ban on the popular AR-15 and “many other firearms protected under the Second Amendment.” 

In announcing the lawsuit, the DOJ called DC’s move an “unconstitutional incursion into the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens seeking to own protected firearms for lawful purposes.” 

The lawsuit cites District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen (2022), which protects the right of law-abiding citizens to possess firearms “in common use today” for lawful purposes, especially self-defense in the home, and claims that DC has established a “pattern and practice” of ignoring Heller.

DC law criminalizes possession of any unregistered firearm and categorically prohibits registration of many semi-automatic rifles (including the AR-15 platform), pistols, and shotguns defined as “assault weapons” based primarily on cosmetic features (e.g., threaded barrels, pistol grips) rather than function or firing mechanism.

“D.C. Defendants have engaged, and continue to engage, in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers that deprives people of rights secured and protected by the Constitution,”

Attorney Generl Pam Bondi said in a statement that geography doesn’t determine which constitutional rights are protected. 

“Washington, D.C.’s ban on some of America’s most popular firearms is an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment—living in our nation’s capital should not preclude law-abiding citizens from exercising their fundamental constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” she stated. 

As the Epoch Times notes further, according to the Metropolitan Police Department website, banned firearms include sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, short-barreled rifles, .50 caliber BMG rifles, “assault weapons” as defined by D.C. Code, and guns deemed unsafe by the Firearms Regulation Act of 2008.

The District also draws on lists of guns allowed in California, Massachusetts, and Maryland to determine which guns are considered safe in the nation’s capital.

DOJ officials say the lawsuit is part of the department refocusing on the Second Amendment as a civil right.

“The newly established Second Amendment Section filed this lawsuit to ensure that the very rights D.C. resident Mr. Heller secured 17 years ago are enforced today—and that all law-abiding citizens seeking to own protected firearms for lawful purposes may do so,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon stated in the online announcement.

Second Amendment activists hailed the lawsuit as another turning point in the public gun debate.

Different Administrations

“This lawsuit shows the night and day difference between this administration and the previous one that attacked the right to keep and Bear arms at every turn,” Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

An official with the National Rifle Association (NRA) agreed.

“For far too long, progressive politicians have been allowed to flout settled case-law and directives from the Supreme Court. It is high time these unconstitutional laws are challenged, and the rights of lawful citizens are returned,” John Commerford, NRA Institute for Legislative Action executive director, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

Gun control organizations did not respond to requests for comment for this story by publication time. However, they have been highly critical of the Trump administration’s reversal of several of the Biden administration’s policies.

The DOJ sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department last September for allegedly denying residents’ Second Amendment rights through an inordinately long concealed weapons permit application process.

Bondi said the establishment of the Second Amendment Section and the subsequent legal actions are all part of the Trump Administration’s “ironclad commitment to protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.”

On Feb. 7, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing Bondi to “examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies … to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens.”

Trump also ordered Bondi to address any issues she found.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on Monday that Iran “didn’t get the full message” following the US airstrikes that targeted Iranian nuclear facilities in June, comments that came as Israel is pushing for the US to support another attack on the country.

“Iran, I don’t know if they ever took [President Trump] seriously until the night that the B-2 bombers went to Fordow,” Huckabee said in an interview with Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, referring to one of the underground Iranian nuclear facilities bombed by the US.

“I hope they got the message, but apparently they didn’t get the full message because … they appear to be trying to reconstitute and find a new way to dig the hole deeper, secure it more,” Huckabee added, referring to reports that say there’s been activity at the bombed nuclear sites.

Huckabee made the comments when asked if the US would support another attack on Iran if Israel determined “further military action was necessary” based on Iran’s work on its civilian nuclear program and ballistic missile program.

According to a report from NBC News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ask President Trump to back another attack on Iran over Israeli concerns about Iran’s ballistic missiles, which were effective at striking Israeli territory during the 12-Day War.

“It’s hard for me to tell you what the US would do because that’s a policy decision that’ll be made at the White House,” Huckabee said. “All I can do is point to you what the president has said repeatedly, and he consistently has said Iran is never going to enrich uranium.”

Since the ceasefire that ended the US-Israeli war on Iran, President Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran again if it resumes enriching uranium. Earlier this month, he also suggested that he could “obliterate” Iran’s ballistic missiles. “We can knock out their missiles very quickly. We have great power,” Trump said.

For its part, Iran has said its uranium enrichment has been halted by the US bombing campaign, but it has vowed to restart the program, framing it as a matter of national pride, while maintaining its policy that it will never pursue a nuclear weapon.

Iran has also rejected the idea of entering a deal with the US that requires limits on its ballistic missile program since its missiles are its only way to deter Israel and the US.

China is tightening its grip on digital content with a new rule banning the sharing of “obscene” material in private online messages, a move that could capture consensual adult exchanges like sexting and further blur the lines between public morality and personal privacy.

Effective January 1, the revised regulations also stiffen penalties for disseminating pornographic content, allowing authorities to impose 10- to 15-day detentions and fines of up to roughly $700 – up from a prior ceiling of about $420.

Washington Post reports:

While the revision will target the dissemination of pornography and exploitative images — which are also strictly regulated in countries including the United States — it may also mean that consensual sexting could also be dragged into China’s legal system. It will cover messages sent on WeChat, the ubiquitous Chinese social media app, and will particularly target cases involving minors, state media reported Tuesday.

The announcement comes after a controversy this summer about explicit content circulating online. Chinese state media reported in July that a chat group on Telegram called “MaskPark” was distributing sexually explicit photos of women taken without their consent — with hidden cameras or in intimate settings. The exposé of the group, which reportedly had more than 100,000 members comprised mostly of Chinese men, prompted uproar online — with discussions focusing on deeply entrenched issues of sexism in Chinese society.

Rose Luqiu, a Chinese internet expert at Hong Kong Baptist University, described the changes to the Post as a “positive development” for shielding minors, though she noted the rules’ scope may prove “very broad” and open to “excessive interpretations” by enforcers. “This raises concerns about whether it could lead to public power intruding into individuals’ private lives,” Luqiu said.

The measures fit into a wider push to sanitize China’s internet landscape.

In September, the Cyberspace Administration of China kicked off a two-month sweep targeting posts that stir “violent or hostile sentiment,””hostility and conflict,” or “world-weariness”—explicitly encompassing gloomy economic commentary, the BBC reported at the time. That effort carried into December, with Shanghai regulators deleting over 40,000 posts and sanctioning more than 70,000 real estate-linked accounts and livestreams for alleged doom-mongering in the struggling housing market, according to Reuters. Authorities cast these actions as vital for social stability and countering misinformation, even as analysts see them as part of an accelerating drive to mute frank debate on China’s economic slowdown and property woes.

Some experts argue that China’s ever-tightening restrictions on free speech represent a flawed strategy—one that amounts to wishful thinking by attempting to suppress discussion of the country’s deep-seated economic and social challenges rather than addressing them directly.

“If anything, contemporary Chinese history has repeatedly demonstrated that top-down ideological campaigns can hardly eradicate the social roots of problems,” Simon Sihang Luo, an assistant professor of social sciences at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told the BBC. “Even with a powerful government like the Chinese one, it is hard to arrest pessimist sentiments when the economy looks bleak, the job market is cruelly competitive, and birth rate hits rock bottom.”

Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. military is set to expand its artificial intelligence (AI) toolset in a new partnership with Elon Musk’s xAI service.

Musk’s xAI service owns the Grok family of generative AI chatbots, which are available on the X social media platform. Those Grok-based models are now set to join the military’s GenAI.mil platform of artificial intelligence tools, which the Pentagon launched earlier this month.

The xAI models will integrate with GenAI.mil in early 2026, according to a Dec. 22 Pentagon press statement.

The Pentagon said xAI’s models will allow both uniformed and civilian personnel within the Department of War to securely handle so-called controlled unclassified information in their daily workflows. The term “controlled unclassified information” describes materials that are not considered classified, but which are not marked for public release.

“Users will also gain access to real‑time global insights from the X platform, providing War Department personnel with a decisive information advantage,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

On Dec. 9, the Pentagon announced the launch of GenAI.mil as the central platform for onboarding different artificial intelligence models and capabilities into the military’s various workflows. This artificial intelligence platform launched with Google’s Gemini for Government AI service, but the Pentagon said from the start that it planned for “several frontier AI capabilities to be housed on GenAI.mil.”

At launch, GenAI.mil was made available for desktops used at the Pentagon and across military installations around the world.

“The War Department will continue scaling an AI ecosystem built for speed, security, and decision superiority,” the Pentagon said Monday.

Artificial intelligence was one of six critical technologies identified by the Pentagon last month, alongside quantum computing, biomanufacturing, directed energy weapons, hypersonic weapons, and innovations for conducting logistical operations in contested spaces.

“We are pushing all of our chips in on artificial intelligence as a fighting force. The Department is tapping into America’s commercial genius, and we’re embedding generative AI into our daily battle rhythm,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said earlier this month.

In a company statement on Monday, xAI described its venture with the Pentagon as a long-term partnership.

“In addition to Enterprise use cases, xAI is bringing the power of Frontier AI and real-time insights directly to the warfighter,” the company said. “Through an ongoing, long-term partnership with the DoW and other mission partners, xAI will make available a family of government-optimized foundation models to support classified operational workloads.”

This summer, the Pentagon awarded contracts to xAI, Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI to develop artificial intelligence capabilities for the military. Those contracts each came with a $200 million ceiling.

Christmas decorations are a global business, with supply chains that stretch across continents well before the holiday season begins. From ornaments and lights to artificial trees and festive displays, most of these products are manufactured and shipped months in advance.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, highlights the world’s largest exporters of Christmas decorations in 2024.

The data for this visualization comes from UN Comtrade via Statista.

China’s Overwhelming Lead

China is by far the world’s largest exporter of Christmas decorations. In 2024, it shipped $5.97 billion worth of festive goods globally. This figure is more than 20 times larger than that of the second-ranked exporter.

China’s dominance reflects its massive manufacturing base, cost efficiencies, and deep integration into global retail supply chains. For many countries, Christmas decorations are almost synonymous with Chinese production.

Europe’s Specialized Exporters

The Netherlands ranks second, exporting roughly $249 million in Christmas decorations. While small compared to China, the country acts as a key logistics and re-export hub within Europe.

Germany, Poland, France, and Denmark also appear among the top exporters. These countries often focus on higher-quality or niche products, including premium ornaments, lighting, and traditional designs that cater to European and North American markets.

Rising Asian and Regional Suppliers

Beyond China, several Asian countries play growing roles in this market. India exported $117 million worth of Christmas decorations in 2024, while Cambodia shipped about $103 million. These countries are increasingly attractive to manufacturers looking to diversify supply chains.

Mexico and the U.S. also appear in the top 10, reflecting regional production aimed at serving nearby markets more efficiently and reducing shipping times.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The World’s Biggest Importers in 2024 on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

So many people these days are reluctant ever to throw a house party. The house is too messy. Cannot cook. It costs too much money. Not enough friends. No real dining table. I’m too busy. No one will show up anyway. And so on.

Millions this holiday season will sit at home wishing they had some party to attend. They will think their lives lack meaning and adventure, as they scroll through their social feeds that reveal people they know living their best lives. This is a perfect prescription for depression and substance abuse.

There is something you can do about it. Throw a party yourself. Invite everyone you know. Pack them all in. Even if they sit on the floor. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is the human connection you have enabled and the lives you will make better, including your own.

It just takes a bit of bravery.

To be sure, it is more expensive to entertain now than it ever has been. That said, there are cheaper options out there, including making all the food yourself. This is where people get confused and attempt too much. The best way is the familiar, even if it is cheese, crackers, and store-bought pizzas or burgers. In this case, it really is the effort that counts.

Another major preventive here is the fear of being judged: the decor, the food, the not-entirely-clean house, and so on. This is entirely understandable. Opening up your home is an act of vulnerability. You are inviting people into your private space at a time when we are all concerned about our privacy. We also live in a culture of distrust of everything and everyone. That encourages a tendency toward not letting anyone into our lives.

But there is another side to this. It is precisely because inviting people in is so rare that it is so enormously valued. Just the invitation alone is enough to send a signal: you are valued, trusted, and part of what I consider my community of friendship. That’s a beautiful thing. What happens after that concerning food and drink is really not nearly as important as it seems.

That said, there are ways to gussy this up. If you have 4–8 people over, the sitdown dinner is the highest and best option, daring to attempt simply because most people never have. Under the ideal conditions, you have your best china, crystal, and silverware. You have the candles, flowers, and cotton/linen napkins, with a tablecloth on a gorgeous table.

If you do not have all that—nothing wrong with the aspiration—there are other methods.

Then there is the ever-useful excuse: I have no time. It’s nearly always incorrect. We are surrounded by technologies designed to save us time and yet we claim to have less time than ever. The claim to have no time is what it was when we were 10—an excuse not to do what we should do.

Here’s a quick story. I was once friends with a new immigrant from Russia who came over before the Soviet Union fell. Arriving in America, he felt he had landed in Schlaraffenland. He would buy everything not nailed down and stuff it in his apartment. He also had a tendency to make friends with everyone, and thrill to invite them to dinner and drinks. All he had was a few card tables that he would link together, and folding chairs for the guests.

His meal consisted of a huge pot of chicken with every random vegetable and rice, which he would always announce with a fancy Russian name, even when it was not true. He would spread a big cotton sheet over the tables as a tablecloth and use big bowls he found at a yard sale and serve up the food, alongside tall glasses of vodka which everyone would drink. There was also cheese and sausages.

Who was invited? He was something of a celebrity given the times, so there were ambassadors, senators, friends like me, and also some random people he met here and there, including someone I think was homeless. Perhaps there were 12 to 14 people in total. The evening was always just a wild blast, filled with hilarity and adventure.

From these events at his house, I took away the central point. It’s the hospitality that matters more than anything. It’s the human connection, not even the quality of the meal. Another feature that made his evening salons and dinners work was his utter confidence and joy. If the host is happy, everyone else is happy too. If the host is squeamish and embarrassed about the food and place setting, guests feel that too.

If you have more than 8 to 12, and perhaps you should, there are options. You can invite 50 people for a come-and-go from 6–8pm. Guaranteed that some people will stay to 10pm or later, and that’s great. In this case, there might be a time when people are standing shoulder-to-shoulder or crowded in the kitchen, making their own drinks and so on. But this seeming chaos is also enormous fun, even more fun.

Here comes an issue that is absolutely essential to any such evening, whether it is a dinner party or a come-and-go cocktail party with dips and chips. As the host, you absolutely must quiet everyone down at some point and make a toast. Some people are absolutely terrified of such a thing. I don’t know what to say but you have to get over your fears.

Just clink your glasses and start talking. You will be happy to know that the number one problem with all toasts is that they are too long. You can reduce it to a few sentences. And here’s a tip that always helps me. Try not to offer a toast to a person present, who is then not entitled by the rules of etiquette to join in, but rather to something bigger, some big idea.

It could be to community, faith, the holidays, courage, compassion, the power of love, the season, family, friendship, anything. Before you begin the toast, come up with the one chosen word. That gives you a stopping point.

Start with a clinked glass. Say a few words about the moment and the times. It can be commonplace or profound, silly or serious, or it can be a verse or sentence from a book. Then it ends with a toast to fill in the blank. That’s the whole thing. Very likely, someone will be inspired by your gesture and pick it up. Ideally, everyone will join in.

I can promise you that this will be the main memory of the evening. That’s good and that’s the point. Every such gathering needs some central moment. Otherwise, people have a sense of come and gone and not much happened. That is especially true with a cocktail party. You never want this to happen. There has to be a theme or a point and it is up to you to provide it.

That’s the entire thing, the whole of your responsibility: invite, feed, offer drinks, and make a toast. Your party is done.

Another crucial tip is in order. Do not plan to serve anything that requires you to rush around, spend lots of time in the kitchen, or otherwise neglect your guests. You must always look and act like this is all effortless. That puts your guests at ease. If you are rushing around, cursing at the food, making a racket in the kitchen, or otherwise stressed about anything, your guests will feel every bit of it. You have to be as relaxed and joyful as they are, and that requires some planning.

Ease of preparation is as crucial as anything else for this very reason. A good host must look calm and fully in control of the situation, oozing confidence and conviviality at all times.

What about music? I choose classical or interwar jazz or something vaguely unfamiliar just to give a sense that the guests are somewhere special. Another option: blessed peace with no music at all. That might even be the best choice, and if the talking becomes loud enough, it does not matter in any case.

When the guests offer to help clean up, always say a polite no. That is not why they are there.

Friends, can we make an effort here? We all desperately need community back. In our homes: that’s the best place for it to form. It is the ultimate act of kindness. Yes, it does open you up to criticism but that’s the whole point: to push out of your comfort zone in order to be kind to others. And perhaps your efforts here will become a tradition and inspire others.

This is the way we rebuild the culture: with one household party at a time.