News From Around the Web
#1 Trump Declares ‘Venezuelan Regime’ a Foreign Terrorist Organization, Orders Oil Tanker Blockade - Greg Wehner for Fox News, Marco Rubio, Ian Jaeger, The White House (community note), Eric Daugherty, and Defense Index on X
President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered a total blockade of oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela, declaring the Nicolás Maduro regime a foreign terrorist organization and accusing it of using stolen U.S. assets to finance terrorism, trafficking, and other criminal activity. "Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America," Trump said on Truth Social. "It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before – Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us...
#2 Susie Wiles Slams Vanity Fair's 'Disingenuously Framed Hit Piece' - Charlie McCarthy for Newsmax, The Washington Times, Mr. Sausage, SassySandy, El Goyo,
#DD214BROTHERHOOD, and Collin Rugg on X
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles used social media to call a Vanity Fair feature story about her and President Donald Trump's administration a "disingenuously framed hit piece." "The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history," Wiles wrote on X, accusing the magazine of discarding "significant context" and omitting comments she and others made about the administration and the president. Wiles said she assumed the missing context was intentional, meant to "paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team."
#3 Trump Expands Travel Ban and Restrictions to Include an Additional 20 Countries - The Associated Press/npr, Election Wizard, Mario Nawfal, Gunther Eagleman™, End Wokeness, and Plutus IAS on X
The Trump administration announced Tuesday it was expanding travel restrictions to an additional 20 countries and the Palestinian Authority, doubling the number of nations affected by sweeping limits announced earlier this year on who can travel and emigrate to the U.S. The Trump administration included five more countries as well as people traveling on documents issued by the Palestinian Authority to the list of countries facing a full ban on travel to the U.S. and imposed new limits on 15 other countries...#4 New York is Another Challenge to Vax-Mandate Carve-Outs - Lauren Gardner and David Lim for Politico, Children's Health Defense, NTD News, George, and Teachers for Choice on X
An anti-vaccine group with ties to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sued New York on Monday over its 2019 law prohibiting religious exemptions from vaccine requirements for school attendance. Children’s Health Defense, which Kennedy led until his nomination last year, claims the state’s law repealing such exemptions violates constitutional rights to free religious exercise and equal protection. The lawsuit cites old and new Supreme Court decisions — from Brown v. Board of Education to Mahmoud v. Taylor — to argue that New York has created a “caste system” that isolates students from their peers and interferes with parents’ rights to steer their children’s religious practice...
#5 Judge Rejects Emergency Bid to Block Trump’s White House Ballroom After Secret Service Cites Security - Ryan King for New York Post, Core (SatoshiPlus) #BTC, #ETH & #BNB Believers, Rep. Jamie Raskin/Eddy B, Mike Sington/Spil, The Daily Beast, and Dr._RC on X
A federal judge rejected an emergency bid Tuesday by preservationists to halt construction of the White House ballroom, but warned that the Trump administration may eventually have to remove its prep work. US District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, concluded that the preservationists failed to show they faced irreparable harm and stressed that the underground work for the ballroom can’t dictate its eventual shape and size. The decision comes a day after the Secret Service warned that halting construction on President Trump’s vaunted White House ballroom could pose “substantial” national security concerns...
#6 CBP Says It Has Collected Over $200 Billion in Trump Admin Tariff Revenue So Far - Misty Severi for Just the News, Hawkmoon, A Man of Memes/John, Jeff Robinson, CEO and Chairman of $MRES and $RLAB, KGNS+ News, and Farm Policy on X
Customs and Border Protection announced Tuesday that it has collected more than $200 billion in tariff revenue since President Donald Trump took office in January, crediting over 40 Trump executive orders for the record-breaking success. The agency said it uses the latest data analytics tools to uncover tariff evasion schemes, including undervaluation, misclassification, antidumping and countervailing duty violations, and “double-dipping," which claims multiple tariff exemptions as a means to avoid paying revenue owed to the government...
#7 Your Body Is a Semiconductor – Start Acting Like It - Tracy Beanz and Michelle Edwards for The HighWire, UncoverDC, T. J. Daniel, Madam Butterfly., Natural Living Insider, and Analyze and Optimize on X
In today’s hectic and hurried world, it is not unusual to see humans walking around in synthetic platform shoes as expressive armor while they stare at blue screens as if real meaning might be downloaded, all while pouring hydrogen-enriched water into plastic bottles as they walk around on toxic vinyl floors. The discombobulation is quite comical if it weren’t so discordantly sad. Somewhere between high tech and trending fashion, many of us have forgotten something astonishingly basic: that the Earth is not just the planet we call home, and actually touching it—making physical contact with it—really does matter. In fact, a 2015 study plainly stated...#8 Mark Zuckerberg’s Losing Metaverse Bet Cost Meta $77B - Zach Laidlaw for Blaze Media, Harish/Time, Morton Visuals, Matt Dagley, and Nate on X
Which bad idea will the company rebrand itself around next? Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, changed its name back in 2021 as CEO Mark Zuckerberg planted his flag into the “metaverse,” denoting it as the future of his company. Several short years later, all Meta gained from the brash move is an empty digital wasteland, a drop in hardware sales, and substantial losses that could fund the GDP of a small country. With debt mounting, Meta would be in serious trouble if not for the help of an unwitting ally – OpenAI...
#9 New Trump Approval Rating Poll Finds Worsening Support Among MAGA Base - Kathryn Palmer for USA TODAY, Marjorie Taylor Greene/Owen Shroyer, Skeptically Speaking, Commentary Donald J. Trump/Kym G, Ankit Bharosh, and Hippo Politics on X
As he nears the end of the first year back in the White House, President Donald Trump is losing support from two groups that catapulted him to victory in 2024, according to a new poll. In the latest NBC News Decision Desk poll, enthusiasm for the president among Republicans and those who identify as members of the MAGA movement has dropped since April. Overall approval of the president has also dropped in that time frame. The latest poll, released Dec. 14, places Trump’s approval rating at 42% and disapproval at 58%. It marks a 3-point drop over the course of four approval rating polls from NBC News since April, the first time the survey was conducted...
#10 Labor Department Sends Strike Team to Investigate Minnesota Unemployment Insurance Fraud - Olivia Rondeau for Breitbart, David F, Kim Bridges, Mike, P3 Driver DEPORT/ Zaynab Mohamed, Deborah Green, and Generic Trade on X
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is conducting a review of Minnesota’s Unemployment Insurance (UI) program in the wake of the recently-discovered fraud ring targeting the state’s welfare system, with Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer saying she is “appalled” at the abuse. Last month, City Journal’s Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo traced millions of dollars in Medicaid funding being defrauded from Minnesota taxpayers and going to the al-Qaeda-linked Somali terror group, Al-Shabaab. Breitbart News has extensively covered the widespread fraud and corruption issue in the state’s Somali migrant community, including reports on 70 people being indicted in July for stealing over $250 million from hungry children during the COVID-19 pandemic and the DOL’s Small Business Administration (SBA) uncovering that several of the suspects also allegedly defrauded its Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)...
And Now for Something Special
Rewritten Christmas Songs... Good, Bad, and Ugly!
