Source: Common Dreams

“Funerals were held Saturday in northern Gaza for six people, including children, massacred the previous day by Israeli tank fire during a wedding celebration at a school sheltering displaced people, as the number of Palestinians killed during the tenuous 10-week ceasefire rose to over 400. On Friday, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank blasted the second floor of the Gaza Martyrs School, which was housing Palestinians displaced by the two-year war on Gaza in the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City. Al Jazeera and other news outlets reported that the attack occurred while people were celebrating a wedding. Al-Shifa Hospital director Mohammed Abou Salmiya said those slain included a 4-month-old infant, a 14-year-old girl, and two women. At least five others were injured in the attack.” (12/20/25)

https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-school-shelter-massacre

SourceS: Responsible Statecraft
by Stavroula Pabst

“By leveraging the dual-use nature of many of their products, where defense technologies can be integrated into the commercial sector and vice versa, Pentagon contractors like Palantir, Skydio, and General Atomics have gained ground at home for surveillance technologies — especially drones — proliferating war-tested military tech within the domestic sphere.” (12/19/25)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/domestic-war-tech/

Source: Drop Site
by Ryan Grim & Murtaza Hussain

“Since Jeffrey Epstein’s second arrest in 2019, the Clintons have spent considerable effort distancing themselves from the enigmatic financier, and they are currently fending off House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, who threatened contempt proceedings after the political power couple refused to testify this week regarding their relationship to Epstein. … Yet as Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign ramped up, it was Epstein looking to duck the Clintons. Epstein was facing increasingly dire legal consequences in South Florida, stemming from his years-long sexual exploitation of young women and girls. The glare of a presidential campaign risked unraveling what Epstein and his friend and ally Ghislaine Maxwell had so effectively constructed over the years, as they were increasingly associated with the spectacle of ‘Clintonworld.'” (12/19/25)

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-hillary-bill-clinton-ghislaine-maxwell

Source: Persuasion
by Sam Kahn

“On the decline of America’s premier magazine.” (12/19/25)

https://www.persuasion.community/p/how-the-new-yorker-lost-its-soul

Source: Washington Post
by Keith B Richburg

“Signing a ceasefire deal before the cameras is usually just the beginning. Changing the realities on the ground — and getting combatants to lay down their weapons — requires a more sustained level of follow-through and commitment. It’s a lesson to keep in mind as Trump aims for what would be the grandest peace deal of all: an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the war about to enter its fourth bloody year. The Ukraine war is itself the product of entering into flimsy peace agreements and not following through.” (12/19/25)

https://archive.is/UJcfQ

Source: Common Dreams
by Angel Gomez

“On 16 December, 2025, President Donald Trump announced what he called ‘a total and complete blockade’ of oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela. Delivered via his personal media platform, the statement was sweeping in its implications. Trump declared that Venezuela was ‘completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America’, and he made clear this would not end until all Venezuelan ‘oil, land, and other assets’ were returned to the United States. But beneath the dramatic language lies a far more dangerous truth: this action marks a breach of US constitutional limits, a perilous expansion of executive authority, and a break with both legal precedent and historical norms of dispute resolution. At its core, this naval blockade (undeclared, unauthorized, and now operational) poses a direct challenge to the War Powers Resolution, a congressional statute designed specifically to prevent precisely this kind of unilateral military escalation.” (12/20/25)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/unchecked-waters-the-constitutional-crisis-of-trumps-venezuela-oil-blockade