Today, in the CalculatedRisk Real Estate Newsletter: Question #9 for 2026: What will happen with house prices in 2026?

Excerpt:

Earlier I posted some questions on my blog for next year: Ten Economic Questions for 2026. Some of these questions concern real estate (inventory, house prices, housing starts, new home sales), and I’ll post thoughts on those in this newsletter (others like GDP and employment will be on my blog).

I'm adding some thoughts, and maybe some predictions for each question.

Here is a review of the Ten Economic Questions for 2025.

9) House Prices: It appears house prices - as measured by the national repeat sales index (Case-Shiller, FHFA, and Freddie Mac) - will be mostly flat in 2025. What will happen with house prices in 2026?

he following graph shows the year-over-year change through September 2025, in the seasonally adjusted Case-Shiller Composite 10, Composite 20 and National indices (the Composite 20 was started in January 2000). The Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for "September" is a 3-month average of July, August and September closing prices. September closing prices include some contracts signed in May, so there is a significant lag to this data.

The Composite 10 NSA was up 2.0% year-over-year. The Composite 20 NSA was up 1.4% year-over-year. The National index NSA was up 1.3% year-over-year.

There is much more in the article.



 

 

At the Money: The New Deregulatory SEC with Michelle Leder  (December 24, 2025)

Big changes are afoot at the Securities and Exchange Commission. More IPOs, more crypto, and less enforcement are coming as the SEC becomes smaller and much more corporate-friendly. What might this mean for investors?

Full transcript below.

~~~

About this week’s guest:

Michelle Leder is a researcher covering corporate SEC filings; she founded the research service “Footnoted,” focusing on uncovering material information hidden in corporate SEC filings. She’s the author of the book, “Financial Fine Print, Uncovering A Company’s True Value.”

For more info, see:

Footnoted *

Book: “Fine Print, Uncovering A Company’s True Value.”

LinkedIn

Twitter

~~~

 

Find all of the previous At the Money episodes here, and in the MiB feed on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, and Bloomberg. And find the entire musical playlist of all the songs I have used on At the Money on Spotify

 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

INTRO: Breakin’ rocks in the hot sun
I fought the law and’a the law won
I fought the law and’a the law won

 

What’s going on with the rules for company disclosures? Are they changing what’s happening with crypto companies, mergers and acquisitions, even executive comp. It’s now under a new regime at the SEC and some shareholder activists are crying foul.

What’s going on with the new deregulatory zeal?

To help us unpack all of this and what it might mean for your portfolio, let’s bring in Michelle Leder. She is an SEC filing specialist and founder of the research service “footnoted” focusing on material information hidden in corporate SEC filings. She’s also the author of the book, “Financial Fine Print, Uncovering A Company’s True Value.”

Let’s start out talking about the new regulatory stance, or I should, should I say deregulatory stance at the SEC? It’s a little easier. It’s a little more corporate friendly. What’s the state of regulations for public companies these days?

Michelle Leder: Obviously the basic rules haven’t changed. the 1933 act is still there, all of those rules are still there. It’s the enforcement that is, a bit up in the air.

Shutting studies are showing that the SEC is doing a lot less enforcement these days. and some of it is partly due to staffing issues, right? Like the SEC, I think a lot about 20% of the staff have left. Since the beginning, well, since January 20th, since, since, uh, Trump Term 2, people left or they took the buyout or, or what have you.

But, enforcement, either by number of cases or the size of the settlements. The SEC is justkind of sleeping – they’re just not as active as they’ve been in the past. And that’s been well documented by some academic studies and some other people who follow that part of the SEC.

There’s also been, uh, the dismissal of several big name cases. So it’s overall a deregulatory environment, much more so than, the first Trump administration.

Barry Ritholtz: You mentioned the reduction in headcount. The IRS has seen a large headcount reduction, and that legitimately shows up in both enforcement and collection actions. The, the Senate, uh, released report last year, you can actually see for every dollar they spend on the IRS, here’s how much we generate in taxes collected.

That reduction has been some attrition, some of it from Doge. It sounds like you’re saying the SEC is seeing. A very similar reduction. Did, did I hear you right, did you say it’s more than 20% of the staff? Is that enforcement staff or just across the board? I think it’s across the board.

Michelle Leder: Across the board, and presumably it would include, administrative folks?

it’s, it’s the numbers I’ve seen, it’s about 28. Percent across the board. And of course the SEC has a lot of contractors, like outside people. So I think it also includes contractors. there’s no definitive headcount that I’ve seen, but this has been reported, by multiple outlets. That’s around 20%.

Barry Ritholtz: There’s a new sheriff in town. Paul Atkins is the head of the SEC. Tell us a little bit about the philosophy. And policies of the new SEC chairman?

Michelle Leder: He is a former SEC commissioner, so, this is not his first time, at,the SEC, but it is the first time that, he’s chairman. He’s an attorney.you don’t. Have to be an attorney to be an SEC commissioner. But almost always it is an attorney who is doing it

He’s known for being a big booster of crypto in between the time, like when he left the SEC last time and, went to work, in private practice he was, representing a number of crypto firms. He is of course taking that, background with him to the SEC. I joke around like, and I’m gonna be dating myself here, but like, that, uh, episode of the Brady Bunch where it was like “Jan, Jan, Jan”. Well this is like “Crypto, crypto, crypto.”

That’s all it seems like the SEC is really focused on,and there’s normally, the other thing is that there’s normally five SEC commissioners, and there’s only been four since Atkins came on board. It’s typically, uh, the party in power. So the Republicans named three commissioners, and then the party out of power. The Democrats named two, but there hasn’t been, I’m sorry, not the president has to name the SEC commissioners. So three from,  the majority party and two from the minority party.

Needless to say, there hasn’t been a democratic, uh, commissioner that’s been named. So they’re operating with only four.

And it’s, so there’s basically only one person who is kind of like sounding the alarm on all this crypto stuff. Anytime there’s like a new regulation or like a change in regulations, it’s interesting to see what’s said there about all of these changes that are going on

Barry Ritholtz: Beyond crypto I’ve heard Atkins, uh, talk about,the initial public, uh, offerings market, and he wants to jumpstart again. I kind of laughed at make IPOs great again. What, what are your thoughts on the regulation that some people have said the burdensome reporting requirements are leading American companies to stay private longer. What are your thoughts there?

Michelle Leder: There is, some regulation that probably could be trimmed, but do you do it with like, a scalpel or do you do it with like a chainsaw? I think with anything, there’s things that can always be made better and improved, right? But this wholesale approach to like all regulation is bad. It’s costing people money is a little bit of an overkill,

You can make an argument for example, they nixed the climate rules that they had been working on forever. You could probably make an argument that, maybe the climate rules went a little bit too overboard; it was gonna be cumbersome for companies to do, you know.

But climate change is real and some companies are impacted by it more than others. And, there should be disclosures. Because there is a risk to investors about that.

Barry Ritholtz: Let’s talk about what’s probably the single biggest idea that’s been floated by President Trump, doing away with quarterly earnings reporting. You’re an SEC geek. What does this sort of thing mean from your perspective and, and what does it mean for investors?

Michelle Leder: First of all, let’s remember, I think they say like, oh, small companies. This is not like your corner store, your little bodega in Manhattan and they’re suddenly having to like, put out a 10 K or a 10 Q.

These are publicly traded companies that are asking me and thousands of other investors for our, for our money to grow their business and to, build their businesses. Now this idea that you can throw out the baby with the bath water, so to speak.

Could there be a little bit less in the quarterly earnings. Yeah, maybe we don’t have to do like the PowerPoint presentation and the detailed earnings call and like the big thing, but still report earnings, and, give people a taste of what’s going on.

Going to every six months would be really bad for investors overall. Maybe it’ll benefit the, the largest, most sophisticated investors, but other people who are invested in stocks, it’s just bad news — a lot can happen in six months to say the very least.

Barry Ritholtz: A lot happens in three months, so, yeah. So let’s, let’s talk about executive compensation. I have a lot of, a lot of questions to throw you away with this,

Obviously we have to start with Elon Musk and the trillion dollar package that the board approved. I don’t see any way how he ever gets anywhere near that amount of money, but still it seems like just crazy sky’s the limit amount of compensation.

Are, are these giant stock grants a new trend? Is this something that’s here to stay?

Michelle Leder: There’s of course always been stock grants. and you wanna reward someone, I’m all about, rewarding someone for doing a good job, right?

If a CFO, manages or a CEO manages to turn around the company, they should be rewarded. That’s what, that’s what capitalism is about. Right?

What we’re seeing in the wake of the Elon vote, where shareholders overwhelmingly approve the compensation. And, Tesla is sort of a special situation because it’s like a cult of personality – I can’t think of many other CEOs, let’s say, that have that kind of platform that kind of, personal, identification to, obviously because of X and, and all of his followers on X and the fans of Tesla, the cars and everything. So it’s this a bit of a unique situation.

But we’re seeing in the wake of that situation, we’re seeing a number of examples where executives are also being rewarded and what seems like outsized awards. It’s almost like, well, Tesla did it, so why can’t we? It’s almost like it’s created like a green light for, giving away additional equity,

I was just looking the other day ZoomInfo, which is a company that sells all our information to whoever, the highest bidder, gave its founder and its CEO.

The guy had been there, has been there 18 years. And it gave him nearly 10 million shares to incentivize him. Does this guy really need 10 million shares to be incentivized? He’s been at the company 18 years, so where’s the guy going? Also the stock is not doing so great. So why is he being rewarded again?

It comes down to the stock is doing great. Reward the CEO, reward the C-suite, you know? But if the stock isn’t doing good and you’re giving away 10 million shares to someone. You know who’s been there to incentivize them. You shouldn’t need to be incentivized to like turn the stock price around.

Barry Ritholtz: Let talk about executive compensation clawbacks. How often do we see either the company or its shareholders or perhaps the SEC saying, Hey, this compensation. Uh, was, was very,undeserved, unearned, and we’re gonna try and claw some of this back. Tell us about that…

Michelle Leder: Usually you’re seeing that on the plaintiff lawyer side, like, of course there’s a very active plaintiff’s bar here in the US where, if a company says that they’re gonna earn 25 cents a share, and suddenly they, report 20 cents a share, there’s, a whole group of lawyers + law firms that, will then sue the company and try to, do clawbacks and that type of thing. You’re not really seeing that on the SEC side so much.

Most companies, or I would say a majority of companies do have clawback policies, but usually it’s kind of rare that, uh, they claw back money. I can really only think of a couple of examples. where there’s been, a claw back of compensation. It’s not something that happens all that regularly.

Barry Ritholtz: You mentioned crypto earlier. What is the regulatory framework look like for crypto? How have the rules changed? It seems like the SEC has fully embraced this.

Michelle Leder: There’s just a general, lessez faire approach to crypto at the SEC, whereas, which is very, very different, than the prior. SEC chairman Gary Gensler. he was all about regulating crypto and, and trying to call it into account and, and, making sure that, it wasn’t, scamming people. And I would say that the current SEC is basically, a 180 degree turn from that.

And in fact, I feel like crypto in terms of some of their rules and regulations, it seems to be the only thing that they care about. they’re talking about, combining with doing, regulatory combinations to kind of make it easier to do this.

I think in general, different people have different views about crypto. I think that anything that makes it easier for people to get into crypto, especially less sophisticated investors, is, is problematic. I don’t think like someone’s grandma should be in crypto

Barry Ritholtz: What about cyber security disclosures? That, that seems to be a new requirement. It, it seems to be really important in the financial industry. How important is, is cybersecurity to any publicly traded company?  What, what are their obligations there?

Michelle Leder: A couple years ago in 2022, the SEC put in new rules – again, this was under Gary Gensler – that required a lot more disclosure about cybersecurity incidents.and they required companies to actually disclose this in an 8K using a section, a particular section, so that it could be found very easily. instead of a cyberissue, if you were looking for cybersecurity incidents, you can find them pretty quickly.

But, companies are still disclosing this in haphazard ways. Even though they’re required to disclose this in a specific section of the eight K, many companies are not doing that.

And to be fair, the problem with a lot of these cybersecurity incidents is when companies first disclose them, they don’t know if it’s gonna be like a, a five, thousand dollars fix or a 500 million dollars fix.

Oftentimes, it takes time to get in there, figure out what’s really going on. But of course, these hacks and these cybersecurity incidents have gotten a lot more, sophisticated these days. I’m sure like, I can’t count the number of text messages I get that seem alert.

I got a new one the other day, someone put an event on my calendar. And was waiting for me to accept it. And I’m like, how did you even, find this on my calendar? There’s a lot of scamming going out there, and you can imagine if you’re like a big company with a lot more money than, Michelle Leder has that, the efforts are a lot more intense to try to figure out poke holes.

Unfortunately there’s bad actors out there and cybersecurity, is, is much more important. we do everything online these days. We pay our bills online, and so there’s a lot of incidents that are going on, some of which we probably don’t even know about.

Of course, if it’s very big, we kind of remember the ones, like Home Depot had an incident a number of years ago. I feel like, the number of times I’ve gotten an email from Kroll offering to like from some company offering to like, secure my, identity for a year has grown exponentially recently.

Barry Ritholtz: To wrap up, there’s a new deregulatory regime in Washington DC. It’s very crypto friendly. It’s not particularly ESG or climate change friendly, and it’s gonna have an impact on what companies are obligated to disclose to their shareholders. We’ll find out the impact of this over the next few years.

I’m Barry Ritholtz You’ve been listening to Bloomberg’s at the Money.

 

~~~

Find our entire music playlist for At the Money on Spotify.

 

The post At the Money: The New Deregulatory SEC appeared first on The Big Picture.

The DOL reported:

In the week ending December 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 214,000, a decrease of 10,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 224,000. The 4-week moving average was 216,750, a decrease of 750 from the previous week's unrevised average of 217,500.
emphasis added

The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971.

Click on graph for larger image.

The dashed line on the graph is the current 4-week average. The four-week average of weekly unemployment claims decreased to 216,750.

The post Strong Third Quarter GDP, with Some Caveats: Is Healthcare the Key to Affordability? appeared first on CEPR.

From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest MBA Weekly Survey

ortgage applications decreased 5.0 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending December 19, 2025.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 5.0 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 6 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index decreased 6 percent from the previous week and was 110 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 4 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 6 percent compared with the previous week and was 16 percent higher than the same week one year ago.

“Overall mortgage application volume fell last week, despite the slight decline in mortgage rates,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s SVP and Chief Economist. “MBA expects the trends of a softening job market, sticky inflation, elevated home inventories, and steady mortgage rates will persist into the new year.”

Added Fratantoni, “Purchase application volume last week was 16 percent higher than a year earlier. We are forecasting continued, modest growth in terms of home sales in 2026.”
...
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($806,500 or less) decreased to 6.31 percent from 6.38 percent, with points decreasing to 0.57 from 0.62 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.

The first graph shows the MBA mortgage purchase index.

According to the MBA, purchase activity is up 16% year-over-year unadjusted. 
Red is a four-week average (blue is weekly).  
Purchase application activity is still depressed, but solidly above the lows of 2023 and above the lowest levels during the housing bust.  

The second graph shows the refinance index since 1990.

The refinance index increased from the bottom as mortgage rates declined, but is down from the recent peak in September.

My “Its Christmas Eve already?” early morning reads:

• Prediction Markets Will Make the Stock Market Obsolete. Yes or No? As prediction markets surge, Wall Street is grappling with an uncomfortable question: Is there any distinction left between investing and gambling? (Barron’s)

• Inside the Invitation-Only Stock Market for the Wealthy: The buzziest private companies are being sold to a select few as the universe of stocks everyone else can invest in shrinks rapidly. (Wall Street Journal) but see also Once Wall Street’s High Flyer, Private Equity Loses Its Luster: As funds deliver mediocre returns and sheds investors, the industry is struggling to unload 31,000 investments, an increase over this time last year. (New York Times)

• Inside America’s Costco economy: A retailer once built around broad middle-class value is now powered overwhelmingly by its most affluent, most loyal, most economically insulated members. (Quartz)

• Rivian unveils ambitious plan to take on autonomous driving: The EV maker, known for its electric trucks and SUVs, is racing to catch up to rivals with help from AI. (Washington Post)

• Mortgage Rates Are Falling but Owners Still Won’t Sell: Nearly 30 million households, or 54% of primary mortgage-holders, have mortgage rates at or below 4%. (Wall Street Journal)

• Who Finishes First in Life? Often, Late Bloomers (or the advantage of being a generalist): A new study suggests that the people who reach the pinnacle of their fields typically dabbled in multiple disciplines when they were young. (New York Times)

• A 6-year research project found a surprisingly simple route to happiness: Results of a study out of Cornell suggest a happiness hack that can lead you toward a life of purpose. (Washington Post)

• The real reason this polarizing food made its sweet San Francisco comeback: How the Bay Area helped make them cool. (SF Gate)

• More Than 50 U.S. Lawmakers Are Retiring Next Year. Why? Plus, Charlie Kirk supporters get behind JD Vance in the 2028 presidential race, and CBS News pulls a ‘60 Minutes’ segment. (Wall Street Journal)

• The 10 Best Movies of 2025: The standout films that helped cinema survive another turbulent year (The Atlantic) see also The Best Albums of 2025: This year’s most interesting artists invented their own grammar and tunneled in idiosyncratic directions. (The Atlantic)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this past weekend with Patient Capital‘s Samantha McLemore, Live from the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Previously, she co-ran the Miller Opportunity Trust with famed investor Bill Miller.

 

Residential moves enterting or leaving each state

Source: Axios

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

The post 10 Christmas Eve Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

South African Men 'Scammed' Into Fighting For Russia Become Trench Diggers

European security authorities have recently been loudly warning of Russian military or intelligence recruitment scams targeting unsuspecting citizens of the EU, by offering promises of jobs or money transfers, during which time the individuals are said to be 'recruited' by Moscow. This is apparently happening on the African continent as well, with a new Reuters investigation documenting that South Africans are being lured into the Russian armed forces under false pretenses.

People are allegedly promised high-level jobs and elite training in Russia, only to find out they've unwittingly joined the Russian military, and eventually find themselves fighting in Ukraine soon after documents are hastily signed. In these cases the implication is that these South African individuals are in desperate financial straits. 

Reuters details the story of South African father-of-three Dubandlela, who was initially thrilled when his 20-year-old son signed up last summer to receive specialized training as a VIP bodyguard in Russia.

The family had struggled financially, couldn't provide university tuition for their son, and when an opportunity for a fast-tracked and solid job in Russia presented itself, the young man jumped at it as a path to a lucrative career.

And then, "Five months later, Dubandlela is in despair. His son had fallen for an alleged recruitment scam in which he and at least 16 other SA men say they were conscripted by an unspecified mercenary group and sent to join Russian forces in Ukraine."

While the South African government's relations with Russia has remained generally warm and positive even throughout nearly four years of the Ukraine war, the scandal has created strain at the highest levels.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's office has recently stepped in - given that several young men - possibly dozens, have been 'scammed' into joining the Russian military. Presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya issued a statement saying the Dubandlela case is "receiving the highest possible attention."

In some cases the fate of the South African citizens is unknown given the fluid and dangerous nature of a battlefield environment. "The process to retrieve those young men remains a very sensitive process,” he said. "They are facing grave, grave danger to their lives and we are still in discussions with various authorities, both in Russia as well as in Ukraine, to see how we can free them from the situation they are in."

The spokesman further sought to address the reality that many South Africans have also traveled to fight for Ukrainian forces. He suggested that this is less of an issue because it was more transparent they were either volunteering or getting paid specifically to fight on behalf of Ukraine.

"In fact, the emphasis is more with the authorities in Russia and less so with the authorities in the Ukraine, because the information that we have is that they were bungled into the Russian military forces," Magwenya told a press briefing.

While it would be hard to verify, the South African recruits are reportedly thrust into extreme conditions with lacking supplies and necessities given by the Russian military command:

On Dubandlela’s phone are photos that he said his son had sent earlier this month from what he said was a location near the front line in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas.

One shows his son in combat fatigues, awkwardly holding an AK-47 assault rifle. Another shows his son trying to sleep in his underwear on the concrete floor of a cupboard-sized basement after taking cover from Ukrainian drones. He looks so thin that his ribs are visible.

They reportedly are also given low-level positions like trench-diggers or tasked with hauling ammo or high risk logistical endeavors - all while "dodging bullets" according to the report.

"They are afraid that Russian military or Russian soldiers might kill them."

Thulani Mahlangu, a representative of parents of South African mercenaries fighting for Russia, tells @SkyYaldaHakim they have no way home if they decide to leave.https://t.co/YXMcOOyMkZ pic.twitter.com/zXlvbHFbre

— Sky News (@SkyNews) December 17, 2025

Western officials have warned that social media platforms are rife with these types of deceptive recruitment campaigns. For example, Telegram is one specific platform named by European authorities as being used by Russian intelligence to recruit unwitting actors. 

In the case of the South African recruits, to many it might seem more obvious or common sense that any program advertising itself as a 'private security training course' inside Russia during an active war on its border would very likely signal that it is tied to the military and the need for extra manpower in Ukraine.

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/24/2025 - 05:45

Vance Warns European Nukes Could Fall Into Hands Of Islamist Extremists Within 15 Years

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Vice President JD Vance has issued a stark warning that unchecked mass migration from Muslim-majority countries into Europe risks placing nuclear arsenals under the influence of Islamist politicians, posing a severe danger to American interests.

In an interview with Unherd, Vance urged that open borders policies are eroding Europe’s cultural foundations, potentially leading to catastrophic national security fallout for the U.S. and its allies.

Vance emphasized America’s deep-rooted connections to Europe, stating, “We have much greater cultural, religious, and economic ties with Europe than we do with anywhere else in the world. That is just the nature of things.”

"France and Britain have nuclear weapons. If they allow themselves to be overwhelmed with destructive moral ideas, then you allow nuclear weapons to fall in the hands of people who can actually cause very, very serious harm to the US."

JD Vance to me.https://t.co/4Jz5HXLh4G

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) December 22, 2025

He directly tied moral and cultural decay to security risks, noting, “I think there are ways in which the moral conversation does absolutely bleed into America’s national-security interests.”

Highlighting the nuclear dimension, Vance pointed out, “France and the United Kingdom have nuclear weapons. If they allow themselves to be overwhelmed with very destructive moral ideas, then you allow nuclear weapons to fall in the hands of people who can actually cause very, very serious harm to the United States.”

He spotlighted existing gains by radical elements, saying, “I think there are, for example, Islamists-aligned or Islamist-adjacent people who hold office in European countries right now. Right now, maybe at an extremely low level, right? They’re winning mayoral elections, or they’re winning municipal elections.”

Vance projected a grim timeline, warning, “It’s not inconceivable to imagine a scenario where a person with Islamist-adjacent views could have very significant influence in a European nuclear power. In the next five years? No. But 15 years from now? Absolutely. And that is very much a very direct threat to the United States of America.”

Criticizing Europe’s current trajectory, he slammed their policies: “Their immigration policies have caused a significant backlash from the native population. I think that Europe doesn’t have a very good sense of itself right now, and you see that reflected in various measures of economic and cultural stagnation.”

Vance called for a revitalized Europe, declaring, “We’re not trying to destroy the European Alliance, we’re not trying to divide Europeans against one another. What we’re actually trying to do vis-à-vis Europe is to encourage them to be a little bit more self-sustaining. I think their economic policies have produced very broad-based continental stagnation.”

He added, “America sprang out of European civilization. We are fundamentally descended from a lot of European ideas. . . . That’s why we want a stronger Europe. We don’t want a weaker Europe.”

Envisioning a shared future, Vance said, “I just think that we want Europe to be strong and vibrant. I want Europe to be a place where Americans can go and visit, where there’s cultural sharing; Europeans are coming to American universities; Americans are going to European universities; where our militaries are fighting together, training together. That is impossible without some sense of a cultural foundation. The United States and Europe have that, but there’s a risk of losing it over the long term.”

This comes amid Vance’s broader push against globalist agendas undermining Western values. In the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, Europe was flagged for facing “civilizational erasure” through censorship and mass migration.

Vance has been vocal on these fronts since taking office, including a February speech at the Munich Security Conference where he blasted internal threats like free speech crackdowns in Britain and Germany.

His comments build on recent domestic wins, like dismantling DEI programs. As detailed in our previous coverage, Vance declared at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, “We have finally made it clear that in the United States, we believe in hard work and merit. Unlike the left… we don’t treat anybody different because of their race or their sex.”

He continued, “So we have relegated [DEI] to the dustbin of history, which is exactly where it belongs. In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.”

Vance added, “And if you’re an Asian, you don’t have to talk around your skin color when you’re applying for college, because we judge people based on who they are, not on ethnicity and things they can’t control.”

He stressed unity: “We don’t persecute you for being male, for being straight, for being gay, for being anything. The only thing that we demand is that you be a great American patriot. And if you’re that you’re very much on our team.”

On immigration at home, Vance echoed similar concerns in the Unherd interview, stating, “The problem with American immigration . . . over the four years of the Biden administration, [was] that we let in too many people, too quickly. And if the numbers were much smaller, and we had tried to select for people who were much better at assimilating into American culture, I don’t think that everybody would be looking around and saying, ‘What the hell is going on?’”

He warned of consequences: “If you overwhelm the country with too many new entrants, even if they believe the right things, even if they’re fundamentally good people, you do change the country in some profound way. And so, so much of the immigration debate, I think we try to create these very firm categories. And the reality is that America does pretty well assimilating people, so long as it’s a small number of people, and they’re given an amount of time to assimilate.”

Vance highlighted risks of division: “Ethnic rivalry and balkanisation is the inevitable consequence of these things. You don’t have to think it’s a good thing. I certainly don’t, but it’s a predictable consequence of what the Left has pushed for years.”

He tied it to protecting Americans: “I’m also trying to protect the wages of workers. I’m trying to protect the social cohesion of the United States of America. I’m trying to ensure that we don’t have the rise of balkanisation and ethnic hatred, which can happen when you have too much immigration too quickly.”

Vance’s warnings expose the folly of globalist open borders that prioritize ideology over security. As Europe grapples with rising Islamist influence in local politics, the Trump administration’s America First stance serves as a blueprint to safeguard civilization from self-inflicted collapse.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/24/2025 - 05:00

Ukrainian Parliament Belatedly Explores Possible Presidential Vote Under Martial Law

Earlier this month Ukraine's President Zelensky said for the first time he's ready and willing to hold national elections, after previously canceling them while citing martial law and the ongoing war by Russia.

This week he's actually taken a practical step, telling the Verkhovna Rada - the country's parliament - to establish a formal working group to study whether elections can be held safely and fairly during a state of martial law and wartime. 

Head of Zelensky's Servant of the People faction, David Arakhamia, issued the following statement on Monday: "According to a preliminary agreement, a working group is being formed in the Verkhovna Rada to quickly address the issue of holding a possible presidential election in Ukraine during martial law. The discussion will take place within the Rada's relevant committee on state governance, local self-government, regional development, and urban planning."

via Interfax

The Kremlin's position is that after Ukraine canceled the 2024 election, Zelensky became illegitimate as a head of state, given that while Article 83 of the nation's constitution allows for the extraordinary extension of the parliament's powers during martial law, there is no specific clause for extending a presidential term.

President Putin himself has questioned Zelensky's legal authority to ever sign a binding peace or ceasefire document. Interestingly, President Trump has lately ramped up pressure on Kiev to hold elections, saying that the country is backsliding in terms of the democratic process.

Ukraine is reaching "a point where it's not a democracy any more," Trump said in early December. According to more of the background of what led up to Zelensky finally conceding that elections should be considered:

• Oleksandr Korniienko, First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) and newly elected head of the Servant of the People party, said he may head a parliamentary working group on referendum and elections, the creation of which has been initiated by the head of the faction, Davyd Arakhamiia.

• On 11 December, Oleksandr Korniienko said that at present there are no "drafts" or legislative initiatives in parliament regarding holding elections under martial law.

• US President Donald Trump has said that he believes that "it's time" for Ukraine to hold a presidential election. Zelenskyy responded that he is "always ready" for elections.

• He also stated that international partners must ensure security during the elections. Zelenskyy himself is ready for changes in election legislation during martial law.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy discussed with representatives of the Verkhovna Rada the possibility of holding presidential elections in wartime Ukraine and is now waiting for MPs to "present their perspective".

But critics have said that Zelensky is more simply trying to buy time amid Washington pressure, presenting to the public that he's 'doing something' about elections while not actually planning to hold them.

"We will announce the date and time of the meeting soon. Media representatives will also be invited," Arakhamia has additionally said of the parliamentary working group. This could merely drag on as an endless bureaucratic exercise.

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/24/2025 - 04:15

The UK's Ministry Of Don't Ask, Won't Tell

Authored by Clive Pinder via DailySceptic.org,

Immigration & Sexual Violence – Nothing to See Here!

Britain is now the sort of country where you can get an instant answer to ‘What is the carbon footprint of a sausage roll?’. Yet if you ask, ‘Are we importing risk to women along with importing people?’ our nation state stares at its shoes and starts muttering about ‘complexity’.

Let us begin with two official lines that any half-awake citizen can see are rising at the same time.

Line one, sexual violence.

The ONS crime bulletin for the year ending June 2025 reports 211,225 sexual offences recorded by the police in England and Wales are up 9% from the previous year. It also reports 72,804 rape offences, up 6% year on year, with rape making up around 34% of all recorded sexual offences.

The ONS, to be fair, sticks in a big asterisk. Part of the rise is not a sudden outbreak of more predators. It is a change in the bookkeeping. That means some of what now shows up as an ‘increase’ is simply behaviour that was previously recorded differently, or not cleanly separated at all, now being captured under a new label. In short, not every uptick is more men doing worse things in dark alleys.

Fine. Caveat accepted. The numbers are still brutal.

Line two, immigration.

The ONS estimates long term immigration at 898,000 in the year ending June 2025. Of those, non-EU nationals accounted for 670,000, about 75% of the total. Net migration in that year is estimated at 204,000.

If you want proof mass migration has changed Britain, bin the pamphlets, the marches and the sermons. Just open the ONS, click twice, then stick the kettle on and watch the country redraw itself in numbers.

When you have done that, do not stop at the headline ‘flow’ figure, those who arrived this year. That is only the annual intake. The canary in the coal mine is the cumulative influx. The stock, who is here now, how large it has become, and what that does over time to social norms, policing demand, and risk. On that, the official trend is not subtle.

According to the ONS the foreign-born stock in England and Wales has risen almost 150% in 22 years. From 4.6 million residents born outside the UK in 2001, to 11.4 million in 2023.  In that time the Commons Library, citing an ONS ad hoc estimate, shows the percentage has more than doubled from 8.9% to 19% of the population. That’s almost one in five. Of those roughly 8.0 million were born outside the EU, about 13% or one in eight.

That is not a marginal tweak, it is a demographic rewiring, delivered at motorway speed.

Even if net migration dips this year, the change does not politely stop at Passport Control. This is the ministerial dodge. Wave one year’s inflow figure, declare victory, move on. But if the mechanism is cumulative, a one-year wiggle tells you almost nothing about this year’s risk.

You can see the cumulative shift even in the baby name tables. Muhammad is now the top boys’ name in England and Wales, and it has been in the top ten since 2016.

More importantly, the engine is now domestic as well as imported. In 2023, 37.3% of live births in England and Wales were to parents where one or both were born outside the UK. On the mother only measure, births to non-UK born women rose from 31.8% in 2023 to 33.9% in 2024. That is the second-generation pipeline in plain numbers, large, growing, and largely indifferent to whatever headline flow figure ministers are waving around this week.

Put those lines next to the ONS crime line and you get a chart that reads like a warning label. The foreign-born share keeps rising. Recorded rape remains staggeringly high. And what once would have meant a ministerial resignation is now treated like a routine Tuesday briefing. Another awkward graph to be managed rather than a crisis to be answered.

That is correlation. It is not proof of causation, but it is not nothing either. If government wants the public to stop drawing conclusions, government needs to do the grown-up thing and test the hypothesis properly.

Instead, we get the dueling spreadsheets.

Here is the problem. We are arguing over scraps. Campaigners like Matt Goodwin point to FOI driven figures and claim foreign nationals, around 11% of the population, account for roughly 22% of rapes and 26% of sexual assaults. They ask why Britain will not publish this routinely. Meanwhile journalists like Fraser Nelson of The Times push back, arguing the ‘migrant crimewave’ story is overcooked, noting that violent crime is at multi decade lows, and even the headline MoJ claim that foreigners are convicted of up to 23% of sex crimes is disputed.

Which rather proves the point. When a country has to rely on complex FOI requests rather than publish one clear, repeatable annual bulletin, everyone ends up fighting with partial numbers and competing narratives. We have already seen where this ends with the grooming gangs’ scandal. Years of official denial and nervous statistical silence left unprotected and disbelieved girls to pay the price. It is exactly how we end up with pub verdicts and online lynch mobs.

We get endless official output on crime and immigration volumes. Charts, dashboards, glossy bulletins, the lot. Yet the moment you ask the state to connect them like adults. Who is offending? Where they were born? What their status was? How long they have been here etc? The information that actually matters to the public argument suddenly becomes curiously unavailable.

We can almost hear the civil service machine whirring.

If ministers published a clear annual table showing serious sexual offence charges and convictions by country of birth, nationality at time of offence, immigration status at time of offence, and time resident in the UK, one of two things would happen.

If the link is small or nonexistent, it would calm the debate and allow government to say, “Look, it is not that.”

If the link is meaningful in certain cohorts or settings, it would force government to do difficult things, such as tougher enforcement, tougher integration requirements and deportation where legally possible. All without hiding behind slogans.

Either way, proper measurement creates accountability. Shamefully, accountability is the one thing our politicians and the civil service we pay for avoids like an email from a Nigerian prince! (Before anyone faints, I can write that as I was born and raised there.)

This is not a statistical oversight. It is a political tradition. Inaugurated by Blair’s machine, refined by Campbell’s spin doctrine. Then inherited by every administration since like a family heirloom. Do not measure it properly. Do not publish it clearly and you can always claim the truth is ‘complex’.

Of course, the missing breakdown is not, by itself, proof of a criminal cover up. There are real problems. Patchy data, inconsistent force recording, privacy rules, shifting definitions, and plenty of scope for sloppy analysis. Fine. But a serious state fixes those problems. Our state uses them, year after year, as camouflage.

The outcome is clear. If you do not publish the table on immigration, demography and sexual violence, you cannot expect the public to trust your assurances. You create a vacuum and that vacuum fills with suspicion, anger, and increasingly nasty generalisations.

Meanwhile the same people who refused to publish the table hold a conference about ‘community cohesion’. It is like refusing to install smoke alarms and then complaining about the smell of smoke.

What a serious state would publish.

If the UK was run like a grown-up country, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice would stop faffing about with glossy platitudes and publish one annual bulletin. One. Not twenty PDFs. Not a ministerial tweet thread. Not a seminar on ‘complexity’. A single checkable set of numbers that addresses, clearly and reproducibly:

1. For rape and serious sexual offences, charges and convictions by offender country of birth and nationality, with proper population denominators.

2. The same by immigration status at time of offence, including asylum route categories where relevant, with proper denominators.

3. Rates adjusted for age and sex structure, because young men drive most violent and sexual offending everywhere.

4. Regional breakdowns, because patterns are never uniform.

5. Clear caveats on reporting and recording, including the impact of new offence codes and counting rules, so the public is not misled.

Then, and only then, can we have the argument that politicians keep demanding we do not have. A transparent and constructive debate based on facts instead of vibes.

Until that happens, the public will continue to do what humans do. They will take the ONS crime trend, take the ONS migration trend, notice that Britain has undergone an enormous non-European inflow, notice that recorded rape remains staggeringly high, and draw their own conclusions.

The state can either measure the relationship properly, or it can keep pretending that refusing to measure it is ‘responsible’. One of those choices builds trust. The other builds resentment.

And resentment, unlike spreadsheets, does not stay missing for long.

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/24/2025 - 03:30

Italy Slaps Apple With $116 Million Fine Over Double-Consent Requirement On Apps

Italy's version of the Federal Trade Commission fined Apple, Inc. nearly $116 million over what it says were overly-restrictive privacy rules that required third-party app developers to obtain user consent for data collection and tracking when it comes to delivering targeted advertising. 

A general view of the first Italian flagship Apple store in Milan on July 26, 2018. Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty Images

Italy's watchdog authority - the AGCM, said on Monday that Apple and its subsidiaries abused its "super-dominant" market position by requiring said consumer protections. 

The fine stems from a May 2023 joint investigation by the AGCM, European Commission, Italian Data Protection Authority (GPDP in Italian), and other national competition authorities into the restrictions from Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework. 

AGCM claims that in April 2021, Apple began requiring app developers to obtain user consent in addition to previously existing consent requirements that had been granted through Apple's own consent prompt. This double-consent requirement violates article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

"Third-party app developers are required to obtain specific consent for the collection and linking of data for advertising purposes through Apple’s ATT prompt," said the AGCM. "However, such prompt does not meet privacy legislation requirements, forcing developers to double the consent request for the same purpose."

As the Epoch Times notes further, in an executive summary of the investigation’s findings, the Italian Competition Authority of Rome lauded Apple’s efforts to safeguard user privacy within its operating system.

However, the GPDP said, making developers obtain double user consent was “excessive” and “burdensome” and ultimately led to a reduction of opt-in rates by users for data tracking on third-party apps. That action, in turn, hampered app developers’ ability to compete with Apple and deliver targeted advertising, which resulted in higher commissions paid to Apple by developers, as well as additional revenue through a higher volume of targeted ads.

“Given that user data are a key input for personalized online advertising—since higher-quality and larger volumes of data improve the ability to identify users who may be genuinely interested in the advertised product, service or app—the restrictions imposed by the ATT policy on the collection, linking and use of such data are capable of harming developers whose business model relies on the sale of advertising space, as well as advertisers and advertising intermediation platforms,” the AGCM wrote.

The Epoch Times requested comment from Apple regarding the investigation’s finding and fine by the AGCM, but did not receive a response by publication time.

Earlier this year, Apple was fined 500 million euros ($588 million) by the European Union for breaching the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and not informing customers of potential alternatives outside of its App Store. Meta was also fined 200 million euros ($235 million) for breaching the DMA by failing to provide customers with options on how much of their data is used. Apple and Meta are appealing those fines, which were levied in April.

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/24/2025 - 02:45

Tulsi's Assessment That Putin Doesn't Want To Conquer All Of Ukraine Is Absolutely Correct

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.

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/24/2025 - 02:00

The Surveillance State Is Making A Naughty List - And You're On It

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.

Tyler Durden Tue, 12/23/2025 - 23:25

Colorado Faces Federal Funding Cut Over Issuance Of Commercial Driver's Licenses To Illegals

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.

Tyler Durden Tue, 12/23/2025 - 23:00

After Decades Of Dismissal, Chronic Lyme Disease Is Now Getting Recognized

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.

24K-Production/Shutterstock

“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.

Tyler Durden Tue, 12/23/2025 - 22:35

DOJ Sues DC Over 'Unconstitutional' Ban On AR-15, Other Firearms

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." 

Photo: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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.

Dick Heller, plaintiff in the Supreme Court case Heller v. District of Columbia, gestures while holding his newly approved gun permit at the District of Columbia Police Department on Aug. 18, 2008. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

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.

Tyler Durden Tue, 12/23/2025 - 22:10

Amb Huckabee: Iran "Didn't Get The Full Message"

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.

Source: Israel National News

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.

Tyler Durden Tue, 12/23/2025 - 21:45

Sexting Banned In China? Beijing Stiffens Penalties For Sharing "Obscene" Material

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.

(Pretend that's in Mandarin)

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."

Tyler Durden Tue, 12/23/2025 - 21:20

Pentagon Partners With xAI Service For Military's Growing Artificial Intelligence Toolset

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.

The xAI and Grok logos are seen in an illustration photo on Feb. 16, 2025. Dado Ruvic/Reuters

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.

Tyler Durden Tue, 12/23/2025 - 20:55

Which Countries Export The Most Christmas Decorations?

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.

Tyler Durden Tue, 12/23/2025 - 20:30