Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Scientists have reversed Alzheimer’s disease in mice, potentially showing a pathway to treat the illness among humans, according to a Dec. 22 peer-reviewed study published in the Cell Reports Medicine journal.

Alzheimer’s is traditionally considered irreversible. In the study, researchers treated two groups of mice with P7C3-A20, a pharmacologic agent. One group carried human mutations related to amyloid processing, while the other carried a tau protein mutation. Both amyloid and tau pathologies are two major early events of Alzheimer’s.

Researchers say that as mice develop brain pathologies resembling Alzheimer’s, they are ideal subjects to test how P7C3-A20 affects Alzheimer’s in humans.

Among the amyloid mice, treatment with P7C3-A20 was found to have resulted in restoring the proper balance of Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which is a cellular energy molecule and a major driver of Alzheimer’s disease. As people age, NAD+ levels decline in their bodies, including the brain. Without proper NAD+ balance, the cells are unable to execute critical processes necessary for proper functioning.

The treatment was found to have reversed blood-brain barrier deterioration, DNA damage, oxidative stress, and neuroinflammation, researchers wrote. The blood-brain barrier maintains nutrient and hormone levels in the brain while protecting the organ from toxins and pathogens.

The treatment enhanced synaptic plasticity and hippocampal neurogenesis, a process in which new functional neurons are generated.

These changes resulted in “full cognitive recovery and reduction of plasma levels” of p-tau217 among the amyloid mice, researchers said. P-tau217 is the clinical biomarker of Alzheimer’s that helps predict cognitive decline.

In fact, when P7C3-A20 was initiated for 6-month-old mice as they manifested advanced Alzheimer’s pathology and cognitive deficits, the treatment “comprehensively restored brain health and function by 12 months,” researchers wrote in the study.

P7C3-A20 reversed advanced Alzheimer’s in mice with tau mutation and was found to help protect the human brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMEC) from oxidative stress. BMEC is the major component of the blood-brain barrier.

“Our results challenge the long-held view that [Alzheimer’s disease] is intrinsically irreversible,” the researchers wrote.

They said that restoring the proper balance of NAD+ levels may be “a potentially transformative therapeutic approach.”

Multiple study authors declared competing interests for holding patents related to subjects covered under the study.

In a Dec. 22 statement, Ohio-based University Hospitals, whose researchers took part in the study, said the findings should spark new research into complementary approaches and clinical testing in Alzheimer’s patients.

Andrew A. Pieper, senior author of the study, said that they were “very excited and encouraged” by the results.

“The key takeaway is a message of hope—the effects of Alzheimer’s disease may not be inevitably permanent,” he said. “The damaged brain can, under some conditions, repair itself and regain function.”

Alzheimer’s is a progressive illness that starts with mild memory loss and eventually leads to a situation where the person is unable to carry on conversations or conduct daily activities.

Alzheimer’s typically affects people aged 60 and older. While the exact causes of the illness remain unknown, Alzheimer’s is likely the result of various factors such as genes, environment, family history, and lifestyle behaviors, according to an August 2024 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An October 2024 study identified that a silent phase of Alzheimer’s begins up to 20 years before symptoms appear.

This silent phase is marked by subtle changes in brain cells. For instance, the inhibitory neurons could become vulnerable, thus disrupting communication between brain cells. In this phase, there is a gradual buildup of beta-amyloid plaques and tangles, which are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s.

According to data from the nonprofit Alzheimer’s Association, more than 7 million Americans currently live with the illness, a number projected to jump to almost 13 million by 2050.

About one in nine individuals aged 65 and older has Alzheimer’s. Almost 12 million Americans are estimated to provide unpaid care for people with Alzheimer’s or other types of dementia, valued at more than $413 billion last year.

A video that surfaced late last week from an unnamed Chinese lab has captivated the internet, capturing a teleoperation session gone comically awry with Unitree Robotics’ G1 humanoid, Interesting Engineering reports. An engineer, clad in a motion-capture suit and positioned alongside the robot, performs martial arts moves. As both face the same direction, his attempted low kick sends his own leg swinging upward in a painful self-inflicted strike to the groin. Collapsing in agony, he doubles over—prompting the G1 to mirror the posture precisely, to the audible amusement of onlookers.

Using a mocap suit to kick yourself in the balls with a robot is a great metaphor to close out 2025. pic.twitter.com/G1hY5Fd6YF

— CIX 🦾 (@cixliv) December 27, 2025

The clip, shared on shared on Bilibili and X, swiftly racked up millions of views across platforms, even eliciting a laughing emoji from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Unitree clarified that the synchronized “combat” routine was enabled by a customer’s custom software, not its factory programming.

This hilarious incident comes as Chinese companies like Unitree accelerate ahead of the United States in affordable humanoid platforms.

The G1, available for $13,000 to $21,500 depending on configuration, serves primarily as a research and education tool, yet its demonstrations of fluid Kung Fu sequences—high kicks, spins, and acrobatic flips—highlight remarkable progress in agility and balance. In contrast, Tesla’s Optimus program has encountered setbacks, with reports indicating production delays stemming from redesigns, particularly in dexterous hands and overheating components, pushing meaningful scaling beyond 2025 targets. While Musk envisions rapid expansion in the coming years, supply-chain sources suggest ongoing refinements have tempered near-term ambitions.

Yet, don’t let recent setbacks plaguing the robotic sector fool you.

Analysts see vast potential in humanoid robots, with Morgan Stanley forecasting the humanoid sector could reach $5 trillion by 2050, including supply chains and services, with over one billion units deployed—90% in industrial and commercial roles. Adoption may accelerate in the late 2030s as costs decline and capabilities improve, according to the bank.

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, an early OpenAI investor, has predicted a “ChatGPT-like” breakthrough in robotics within two to three years, leading to adaptable humanoids performing household tasks affordably by the 2030s.

Authored by Matt Schlapp via The Epoch Times,

As the freest nation in the world, America has long understood the value of free speech—not as an abstract ideal, but as a fundamental right.

The Conservative Political Action Conference’s (CPAC) newly released 2025 “Freedom of Speech Around the World Ratings” cut through the noise with a simple question: Does a country imprison or execute citizens for speech protected by the U.S. First Amendment? The purpose is not to deny America’s internal struggles, but to draw a clear line between nations that debate speech and those that punish it with prison or death.

President Donald J. Trump underscored the stakes during his most recent Cabinet meeting, warning that America is nearing a consequential turning point, one in which the nation must decide whether to restore trust and order in its institutions, or follow other countries down a path where breakdown is met not with reform but with censorship.

This debate is real. But a volatile argument is not the same as criminalization. Having different political views should not result in violence or jail.

We have already seen alarming flashes of how volatile debates over speech and ideology have become in America. The assassination of Charlie Kirk underscored those dangers in stark terms. Universities should be places where young people learn to engage ideas, challenge arguments, and think for themselves, and not be arenas where disagreement turns hostile or deadly.

The results of CPAC’s ratings should sober every American.

The worst offenders, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Syria, score zero. These regimes openly imprison or execute people for words and ideas. More troubling, however, are developed democracies that still describe themselves as free. Several now jail citizens for speech that would be constitutionally protected in the United States.

In Switzerland, a man was sentenced to jail for insulting a journalist. In the United Kingdom, a citizen spent months behind bars for posting stickers labeled “hate speech,” many criticizing illegal immigration and public-safety failures. British authorities later acknowledged ideology played a role in the punishment.

France, Germany, and Canada all score just 20 percent in CPAC’s index. In Canada, the consequences are especially stark. A father, Robert Hoogland, served prison time for refusing to use compelled language regarding his daughter’s gender identity. His crime was not violence or harassment, it was speech, and a refusal to surrender parental conscience to the state.

Australia, often assumed to be a free-speech peer of the United States, also scores poorly. After a religiously motivated stabbing incident, authorities responded not by reinforcing public order but by expanding speech restrictions and online censorship. Using tragedy to justify silencing dissent has become an increasingly common pattern abroad.

This is how free societies slide.

Governments do not begin by banning obvious truths. They start by criminalizing offense, tone, or dissenting ideology. Over time, disagreement itself becomes punishable, debate gives way to intimidation, and silence replaces persuasion.

The United States still stands apart.

America received a perfect score in CPAC’s ratings—not because we are flawless, but because we remain the only nation on Earth with both a constitutional guarantee of free speech and a judicial system that still enforces it.

Even amid fierce internal debate, speech in America remains a right, not a privilege.

That makes the United States not just an outlier, but a model that other nations should be moving toward, not away from.

But a strong score today is not a permanent guarantee.

America’s free-speech culture depends not only on laws, but on restraint. Political movements across the spectrum are free to argue their case in the marketplace of ideas. What must be resisted is the temptation to silence opponents through state power, mob intimidation, or violence.

There have been close calls. The prosecution of Douglass Mackey for a political meme tested the limits of speech protection. His conviction was later overturned on appeal, and he never spent a day in prison. That outcome matters. When free speech survives the close cases, the culture remains free. When it fails, conformity follows.

The lesson for Americans is not complacency, it is vigilance. Around the world, prison cells reveal what happens when nations choose control over debate. The United States still has time to choose wisely, but only if freedom is defended before it is rationed.

To view the full CPAC Freedom of Speech Ratings and country scorecards, click HERE.

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

Last month, the Las Vegas police department became the first in the US to deploy a fleet of Tesla Cybertrucks for patrol, according to The Guardian.

The 10 black-and-white vehicles, equipped with sirens and emergency lights, were donated — costing taxpayers nothing, according to Sheriff Kevin McMahill.

“They represent something far bigger than just a police car,” McMahill said. “They represent innovation.”

News of the trucks first emerged in February when McMahill posted renderings on X, writing “These are badass.”

The department later said the fleet “was entirely donated by an anonymous supporter.” That donor was soon revealed as Silicon Valley investor Ben Horowitz and his wife Felicia, who live in Las Vegas and have long supported the police department. Their donation — worth about $2.7m — included 10 patrol vehicles and one Swat “sting protector” and was finalized in January 2025 through a law-enforcement charity called Behind the Blue.

“As we’ve discussed, the use of these vehicles would represent a groundbreaking approach to modern policing,” wrote police chief of staff Mike Gennaro in a December 2024 email. “The morale of the cops will be through the roof when these show up at their substations… And we will use them as a tool to keep morale high and cops productive.”

The trucks were retrofitted by California firm UpFit with tactical gear, barrier shields, radios and ladders. One Swat vehicle will be used in situations involving “barricaded suspects and hostage incidents.” Tesla’s high-speed “beast mode” was removed from all vehicles.

Reaction has been mixed. Athar Haseebullah of the ACLU of Nevada said the vehicles appear to endorse Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “I recognize that LVMPD sees value in having cool-looking vehicles around… But the reality is that for communities, that’s not what they’re asking for,” he said. “They’re asking to feel safer. I don’t know that a Tesla Cybertruck makes anybody feel any safer.”

The Guardian writes that other US cities have faced backlash over Tesla fleet purchases, while several California police departments testing Tesla sedans have said the vehicles are ill-suited to modern policing.

The donation also comes as Cybertruck sales slump and the model faces repeated recalls — including defects involving side panels, accelerator pedals and light bars. Despite Musk’s claims that the truck is “apocalypse-proof” and “really tough, not fake tough,” the vehicle has struggled in the market and is banned in Europe for pedestrian safety concerns.

“Why didn’t they pick any other type of vehicle?” Haseebullah asked. “Why would a Tesla be more efficient for police to utilize than a Ford?”

McMahill remains enthusiastic. For him, the trucks are about building “the most technologically advanced police department on the planet.”

“These trucks are high performance and they’re built tough,” he said. “Cops are going to look kinda cool in them too.”

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

If you are having a really difficult time keeping up with the rapidly rising cost of living, you are certainly not alone.  This year, “affordability” was a buzzword that was constantly on the lips of politicians, economists and talking heads on television.  As you will see below, Americans are being slammed by rising prices from a multitude of directions.  Meanwhile, “layoffs” has been another buzzword that has been widely used in 2025.  Thanks to the rise of AI and our steadily deteriorating economy, we have seen far more mass layoffs this year than we did last year.  Unfortunately, one survey has found that executives are gearing up for an even larger round in 2026.

This is what happens when you flood the system with money and you go into unprecedented amounts of debt.

Eventually a day of reckoning arrives.

Ever since the Great Recession, our leaders have been pursuing highly inflationary policies, and now the American people “are yelling about affordability”…

Affordability has been a source of household frustration and a key focus of political discourse in recent months, as prices for everyday goods and services continue to rise.

“People are yelling about affordability,” said Martha Gimbel, executive director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale University. “I think it’s very obviously become a political flash point,” she said.

It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that things would turn out this way.

If we had made different choices, we would have gotten different results.

But we can’t go back and change the past now.  At this point, things are so bad that “affordability” has become the number one concern for U.S. voters…

A University of Michigan poll published in December shows that high prices remain a pain point for consumers. About 46% blame high prices for poor personal finances — among the highest shares since the series started in the late 1970s.

Consumers’ views of their current financial situation in December “collapsed” into negative territory for the first time since July 2022, the month after pandemic-era inflation had peaked, according to a poll published Tuesday by the Conference Board.

Overall, 65% of U.S. households say the cost of living has gotten worse or much worse in the past year, according to a recent Politico poll.

Healthcare costs have risen particularly rapidly.

One 62-year-old man that was recently interviewed by Business Insider openly admitted that he cannot afford to get sick, but he can’t afford to be healthy either…

David Deal’s 2026 outlook is what he describes as a “whack-a-mole of worry.” While he’s 62 and presumably approaching retirement, 65 is “just a number” for him, not a milestone marker for throwing in the towel on his career like his parents’ generation. The thing that really has him wound up, though, is healthcare, which he calls a “DEFCON 1” situation. Deal, a marketing consultant who lives in the Chicago suburbs, and his wife pay for their own insurance, and their premiums are going up by 25% next year. He’s worried one slip on the ice this winter could mean financial disaster. A family member’s recent two-hour trip to the ER cost them thousands of dollars, even with insurance, and the episode has him spooked.

“For me, it’s the double-whammy of skyrocketing premiums and also the skyrocketing costs of actually getting care,” he says. “We are literally at a point where we can’t afford to be sick, and we can’t afford to be healthy.”

He emphasizes that he means a collective “we” — he knows he’s far from alone in his predicament.

Health insurance premiums are set to rise even higher in 2026, and many Americans are cancelling their policies as a result.

When you don’t have health insurance, you just pray that you don’t get sick.

If you do get sick, it can be a financial disaster.

Meanwhile, one recent survey discovered that 75 percent of Americans have “reduced spending in other areas” just so that they can afford to pay for their groceries…

But whatever their preferences, many shoppers still fretted about how to pay for their groceries. More than 2 in 3 respondents (67.6%) said that they’re struggling to pay grocery bills because of inflation and rising food prices, according to a survey by Swiftly, which provides digital and media solutions for brick-and-mortar supermarkets.

More than 3 out of 4 (75.2%) responded that they’ve reduced spending in other areas to afford groceries, and in a follow-up question selected what areas they’ve cut spending in the most to pay grocery bills, with entertainment spending the most likely to be cut, followed by spending on travel, clothing, and going out to eat or drink.

Government bureaucrats keep telling us that food prices are not going up very quickly.

But everyone can see that they are wrong.

And going out to eat has become a luxury that most of the population simply cannot afford on a regular basis.  As a result, restaurants are closing down at a staggering pace…

New data shows that 2025 was a record year for restaurant closures in the District.

The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) reports 92 restaurants closed their doors this year, compared to 73 closures in 2024 and 48 in 2022.

Purchasing a new vehicle has also become a luxury that most of the population simply cannot afford any longer.

Since the early days of the pandemic, the average price of a new vehicle has gone from less than $38,000 to more than $50,000…

Americans are shelling out record car payments — and now some are signing up for loans stretching nearly a decade to get a new set of wheels.

The average monthly payment for a new car hit about $760 in November, according to industry-research firm J.D. Power, after the typical new-vehicle price surged past the $50,000 mark this fall — up from less than $38,000 in early 2020.

With sticker shock everywhere, buyers are leaning hard on longer financing to keep payments from exploding — even if that means paying far more interest over time.

Some dealers are now stretching out vehicle payments for 100 months so that people can actually afford them.

To me, that is absolutely insane.

But this is the economic system that we live in now.

It is designed to get us into as much debt as possible, and at this stage U.S. households are a whopping 18.6 trillion dollars in debt…

The Federal Reserve signaled a higher bar for 2026 interest rate cuts at its December meeting, potentially snatching away a much-needed reprieve for millions of Americans saddled with debt.

Household debt ballooned to a record $18.6 trillion during the third quarter of 2025, and the central bank is expected to lower its benchmark rate just once or twice next year to soften borrowing costs.

Americans have never been more overextended than they are right now.

It was another record year for credit card debt during the holiday season, but vast numbers of our fellow citizens are still paying off credit card debt from Christmas 2024.

Getting deep into debt in this very challenging economic environment is very foolish, because most people do not have jobs that are secure.

In fact, job security is now the number two concern for U.S. voters…

Job security rose to workers’ second-most pressing concern this year, after covering their monthly expenses, according to a new survey by Mercer.

While “covering monthly expenses” had been the leading concern for the past three annual surveys, fears around job loss jumped from seventh place in 2023 to second place in 2025, where it was tied with being able to retire and work-life balance. Mercer did not conduct this survey in 2024.

Throughout this year, I have documented so many of the mass layoffs that have been occurring all over the nation.

For example, Tyson Foods has announced that a beef processing facility in Lexington, Nebraska will be shut down permanently next month, and that means that approximately 3,200 workers will be losing their jobs.

A reporter that visited Lexington discovered that fear of what those layoffs would mean had gripped the entire area…

On a frigid day after Mass at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in rural Nebraska, worshipers shuffled into the basement and sat on folding chairs, their faces barely masking the fear gripping their town.

There are only about 11,000 people living in Lexington, and so these layoffs have the potential to turn it into a ghost town…

“Suddenly they tell us that there’s no more work. Your world closes in on you,” Alejandra Gutierrez said

She and the others work at Tyson Foods’ beef plant and are among the 3,200 people who will lose their jobs when Lexington’s biggest employer closes the plant next month after more than two decades of operation.

Hundreds of families may be forced to pack up and leave the town of 11,000, heading east to Omaha or Iowa, or south to the meatpacking towns of Kansas or beyond, causing spinoff layoffs in Lexington’s restaurants, barbershops, grocers, convenience stores and taco trucks.

There are so many other examples that I could share with you.

In Michigan, the closure of a facility in Detroit will mean that more than a thousand General Motors employees will be out of work starting on January 5th…

According to WARN Act notices filed in November, 1,140 General Motors employees will be let go from the company’s Factory Zero site in Detroit, Michigan on January 5.

In a filing with the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, General Motors said the cuts would be permanent, affect several roles, and stemmed from adjustments related to the slower-than-expected adoption of electric vehicles.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

According to one recent survey, over one-third of all large companies intend to slash their payrolls during the months ahead…

In November, executive search firm Spencer Stuart asked 90 chief marketing officers how aggressively they plan to use AI to shrink payrolls, the Wall Street Journal reported.

More than one in three executives said that they expect to hand out pink slips in the next 12 to 24 months as they deploy more computer agents.

The trend is even worse among bigger companies.

Nearly half the executives at firms worth more than $20 billion said they’re planning significant job cuts.

If this survey is accurate, we could see millions of layoffs over the next couple of years.

Just think about that.

We were warned that this was going to happen.

Now it is playing out right in front of our eyes.

And survey after survey is indicating that the American people are quite gloomy about where economic conditions are heading next…

Americans are ending 2025 significantly more pessimistic about the direction of their financial situations than they were at the start of the year, according to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment gauge from early December. Its reading on personal finance expectations is 12% below where it was at the beginning of the year. A November consumer survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York similarly found that people are increasingly gloomy about their current and future finances, and their expectations for increased medical care costs are at their highest levels since January 2014.

If you understand what is happening, that will help you to make better decisions.

When conditions get tough, those that are wise tighten things up.

Sadly, most of the population continues to party as if tomorrow will never come, but no matter how hard one may try it is impossible to stop the inexorable march of time.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Starbucks is quietly shrinking its physical footprint in some of the nation’s largest cities, signaling a major shift for a brand that spent decades in near-constant expansion, according to WSMV. The company intends to eliminate about 400 US locations, with the heaviest impact in major metro areas. Closures are already underway — New York City alone has lost 42 stores.

Company leaders say the move reflects changing consumer patterns and a tougher business environment. Urban markets are saturated with competitors, foot traffic has not fully recovered as remote work remains common, and operating costs continue to climb. Going forward, Starbucks plans to concentrate on a smaller number of higher-performing locations and introduce new store formats beginning in 2026.

A Starbucks spokesperson confirmed the strategy to WSMV in an emailed statement: “Starbucks regularly evaluates our portfolio of coffeehouses to make sure that we are meeting the needs of our customers. Opening and closing stores is a standard part of our business, and we don’t have additional news in the US or elsewhere to share.”

The company has not released a full list of affected locations.

The retrenchment follows earlier staffing reductions. Over the past two years, Starbucks has trimmed corporate and support roles as part of ongoing cost controls, while also restructuring some operations teams tied to store management. Those job cuts marked a shift away from the rapid hiring of the post-pandemic boom.

More broadly, workforce reductions have become a defining feature of the 2025 economy. Companies across technology, retail, finance and media have announced layoffs amid slowing growth, persistent inflation pressures, automation investments and evolving workplace models.

The trend underscores how many major employers are recalibrating after years of aggressive expansion.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the White House cannot lapse its funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a watchdog that has long drawn the ire of congressional Republicans.

In a ruling, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote that the CFPB should continue to receive its funding from the Federal Reserve despite the central bank operating at a loss. The Trump administration has argued that the CFPB should be dissolved because how it gets its funds is invalid.

The CFPB has largely been inoperable since President Donald Trump was sworn into office nearly a year ago. Its employees are mostly forbidden from doing any work, and most of the bureau’s operations this year have been to unwind the work it did under President Joe Biden and even under Trump’s first term.

The head of the White House’s budget office, Russell Vought, is currently the acting head of the CFPB. The White House earlier this year issued a “reduction in force” for the CFPB, which would have furloughed or laid off much of the bureau.

In November, the Trump administration’s attorneys said in a court filing that a Department of Justice (DOJ) memo had concluded there were no legally available funds at the Federal Reserve for the CFPB to request.

The memo, which was issued by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, stated that “if the Federal Reserve has no profits, it cannot transfer money to the CFPB.”

“Because the only lawful source of funding from the Federal Reserve has dried up,” the memo added, “the proper method for obtaining additional funds is to request them from Congress pursuant to the Appropriations Clause, not to draw funds from the Federal Reserve without a congressional appropriation.”

The White House has also said that the CFPB cannot lawfully draw funds to fund its operations from the Fed if the Fed does not have “combined earnings” to allocate to the bureau. Without additional funds, the CFPB is expected to deplete its operating funds completely in January.

But in her order, Jackson wrote that the government “manufactured” arguments to allow for a lapse in funding for the CFPB.

“Neither the statute, the injunction, nor the Fed’s willingness to pay has changed; the only new circumstance is the administration’s determination to eliminate an agency created by Congress with the stroke of pen, even while the matter is before the Court of Appeals,” she wrote in her order.

Jackson wrote that “it appears that defendants’ new understanding of ‘combined earnings’ is an unsupported and transparent attempt to starve the CPFB of funding and yet another attempt to achieve the very end the Court’s injunction was put in place to prevent.”

Earlier this year, Jackson ruled the Trump administration could not dismantle the agency, which had been an early target of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a task force that was established under Trump to root out fraud and waste in the federal government.

This month, around two dozen Democrat-led states filed a lawsuit against the White House and Vought in a bid to prevent the administration from withholding funds to the agency. They argued that the move would reduce financial protections for ordinary Americans.

Republicans have long criticized the CPFB for what they say are the agency’s decisions to pursue politicized and radical tactics to target financial institutions.

One significant theme which emerged over the course of the last year of the Russia-Ukraine war is greater Ukrainian effectiveness in striking Russian territory, sometimes even distant targets many hundreds of miles away.

On a regular basis at this point, oil and gas infrastructure and refineries are blown up, export terminals damaged, and even military bases and government buildings come under attack. President Vladimir Putin is taking fresh action, on Tuesday having signed a decree granting the military authority to call up members of Russia’s mobilization reserve next year.

The new injections in troops expected for 2026 will feature “special” training assemblies focused on securing and guarding critical infrastructure.

This as Gazprom’s gas exports are falling to decades-lows, also amid far-reaching Western sanctions:

Russia’s Gazprom cut gas supplies to Europe by a further 44% in 2025, reducing flows to 18 billion cubic meters (bcm), Reuters reported Tuesday. Reuters’ calculations were based on data from the TurkStream pipeline, now the only remaining route for Russian gas deliveries to Europe.

The volumes mark the lowest level of Russian gas exports to Europe since 1973, when the Soviet Union delivered 6.8 bcm under its first supply contracts with Austria and Italy. Exports then rose to 19.3 bcm by 1975 following the launch of the “gas-for-pipes” deal with Germany, climbed to 54.8 bcm by 1980 and reached around 110 bcm by the early 1990s.

As part of the new order, the Kremlin will compile a list of facilities that require protection, while the Defense Ministry will determine which military units will be responsible for carrying out the new protection of assets and training.

At times, Moscow has even come under threat, grounding commercial planes, and this week the government has alleged a major Ukrainian drone attack which targeted one of Putin’s official residences – though all drones were intercepted by air defenses.

Ukraine has vehemently denied that it targeted Putin’s residence, but this still hasn’t stopped Putin from getting sympathetic statements from world leaders, such as President Trump and Indian leader Narendra Modi.

Russia’s mobilization reserve is made up of volunteers who have signed contracts agreeing to periodic service, but the Kremlin has been slow to tap these manpower sources, also given Putin has still not declared a legal ‘state of war’ in Ukraine. 

Instead, it remains at the level of ‘special military operation’ – but in November Putin approved legislation broadening the conditions under which reservists can be used.

Now they can be called up even in peacetime, but only for ‘special assemblies’ and other security-related concerns, such as protecting the homeland from sabotage or drones.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Yale has finally achieved liberal nirvana.

According to a recent report from the Buckley Institute, there is now not a single Republican found across 27 of 43 departments at Yale University. In a nation roughly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats (with a slight advantage to the GOP), only 3 percent are Republicans across all Yale departments.

In comparison, roughly 83% of faculty are registered Democrats or primarily support Democratic candidates.

The Buckley Institute’s report looked at Yale’s undergraduate departments, as well as its School of Management and Law School.

The report is hardly surprising. In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss these arguments to justify the current levels of intolerance and orthodoxy in higher education.

As we have discussed for years, universities have been effectively cleansing their ranks of Republicans and conservatives.

Many departments no longer have a single Republican faculty member in this academic echochamber.

A Georgetown study found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools — almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll.

There is little evidence that faculty members are interested in changing this culture or creating greater diversity at schools.  In places like North Carolina State University, a study found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans 20 to 1.

Not long ago, I had a debate at Harvard Law School with Professor Randall Kennedy on whether Harvard protects free speech and intellectual diversity.

Kennedy rejected the notion that the elite school should strive to “look more like America.”

It is not just that schools like Harvard “do not look like America,” it does not even look like liberal Massachusetts, which is almost 30 percent Republican.

The Harvard Crimson has documented how the school’s departments have virtually eliminated Republicans. In one study of multiple departments last year, they found that more than 75 percent of the faculty self-identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.”

Only 5 percent identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”

Consider that, according to Gallup, the U.S. population is roughly equally divided among conservatives (36%), moderates (35%), and liberals (26%).

So Harvard has three times the number of liberals as the nation at large, and less than 3% identify as “conservative” rather than 35% nationally.

Among law school faculty who have donated more than $200 to a political party, a breathtaking 91 percent of the Harvard faculty gave to democrats.

The student body exhibits the same biased selection. Harvard Crimson previously found that only 7 percent of incoming students identified as conservative. For the vast majority of liberal faculty and students, Harvard amplifies rather than stifles their viewpoints.

This does not happen randomly. Indeed, if a business reduced the number of women or minorities to less than 5 percent, a court would likely find de facto discrimination.

Again, universities have shown no serious commitment to ideological diversity. Faculty members have little incentive to add dissenting voices to their ranks. Moreover, faculty are now arguing against such ideological diversity. 

Likewise, some sites, such as Above the Law, have supported the exclusion of conservative faculty.  Senior Editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” by arguing that hiring a conservative law professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach at a university.

Nothing is likely to change so long as donors continue to blindly fund these programs and ignore the obvious intolerance for opposing views.

For now, most Yale departments have succeeded in creating a safe space for the ideologically intolerant.

Meteorologist Mike Masco has identified what he says could be a very active storm pattern for the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic from around New Year’s Day into mid-January.

“I’ve been deconstructing the pattern this morning, and there are three key features that support an active stretch across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, including the potential for at least two sizable snow events, plus several smaller ones,” Masco wrote on X.

Masco is a meteorologist for New York City-based PIX11 News and focuses on the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

He explained what the active post-New Year pattern could bring on a region-by-region basis:

• West-based negative NAO (Greenland block), shown by the black circle, slows the pattern and reorients the jet stream from southwest to northeast, and at times south to north. This keeps shortwaves and lows closer to the coast. It is not a guaranteed blockbuster, but it keeps inverted troughs and sneaky coastal setups in play, with one possible around New Year’s Day.

• Rockies ridge (critical), shown by the purple box, forces storm energy south of New York City and Philadelphia. Without it, storms track north and turn weaker and wetter. With it, colder tracks and better snow potential are more likely.

• Western Atlantic ridge (underrated), shown by the blue box, helps keep systems near the coast and supports Miller B-type setups, favoring more traditional snowstorms rather than just clippers.

Timing: The pattern sets up around New Year’s Day and lasts into mid-January. There is no locked-in timeline for a major storm yet. A New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day clipper is likely to bring light snow across the region, with redevelopment potential toward Boston.

Here is Masco’s forecast map:

Peak winter is still several weeks away.

Washington, DC’s Heating Degree Days, a weather-based metric used to estimate how much energy is needed to heat buildings, will be above 30-year averages. 

This implies higher NatGas demand, thus higher prices. 

NatGas prices jumped in November and December on cold weather patterns across the US East.