“CBS’s new controversial editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pulled a 60 Minutes story that was set to air last night about the torture and other horrid conditions at CECOT, the El Salvador megaprison to which the Trump administration has send hundreds of deportees over the last year. Weiss’s reason for spiking the piece — that Trump administration officials refused to comment on it — raises questions about how CBS will be covering high profile stories going forward, particularly ones related to controversial U.S. national security policies like war with Venezuela, and the Trump administration’s relationship with Israel. … On Monday, Weiss confirmed that in order for the story to air, she wants Trump administration officials on the record. … If administration officials can effectively kill a story by simply refusing to talk about it on record, that’s basically allowing the government to censor your news coverage.” (12/22/25)
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies
“The United States has now intercepted multiple Venezuelan oil tankers as part of its escalating aggression against Venezuela, while also destroying dozens of small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific under the banner of ‘drug enforcement’, killing over 100 people whose identities the U.S. has obscured. At the same time, the Trump administration has threatened a naval blockade of Venezuela – a sovereign country with which the United States is not at war. How can Washington claim the right to seize or blow up vessels, disrupt maritime trade, and kill civilian boaters – while bombing Yemen and condemning its de facto Houthi government for intercepting ships in the Red Sea to counter Israel’s genocide in Gaza? This contrast exposes a stark double standard in U.S. policy.” (12/22/25)
“The U.S. blockade on Venezuela’s sanctioned oil tankers is illegal. It is an act of war that is based on false charges. Though it is hoped to bring about a coup that will usher in a pro-American government that opens Venezuela’s resources to the United States, the more likely outcome is mayhem and instability. Trump’s order of a blockade caught senior officials at the Pentagon by surprise, and they are unsure of what role the U.S. military is expected to play. But on the day after the order, three ships left Venezuela carrying oil-based products. This time, they were escorted by Venezuelan naval ships.” (12/22/25)
“New York poet David Lehman has overseen publication of Scribner’s annual Best American Poetry anthology for almost four decades now. But this summer, the 77-year-old Lehman announced that the series’[s] 2025 installment will be the last. Although he says his decision was sparked only by a desire for ‘new adventures,’ it’s hard to see it as anything but the falling of another tree in the artistic forest. True, the purported ‘best’ often included lousy work … but it also included samples from some of America’s best living poets, including A.E. Stallings, Amit Majmudar, and Stephen Kampa, and offered curious readers a chance to dip their toes into an art form that, more than any other, has been torn by the competing forces of our divided and divisive culture. Where can they look now?” (12/22/25)
Source: Property and Environment Research Center
by staff
“A half-century after the ESA’s enactment, regulations have generated endless conflict but little species recovery, precisely because they infringe property rights, ignore the role of states, and prioritize red tape over voluntary recovery efforts. To date, the Service has recovered only 3 percent of listed species (and far fewer species than it expected). A new approach is necessary to change that.” (12/22/25)
“State regulation of AI is not, by itself, an ideal situation. We are indeed seeing 50 variations of concern, from the merely paternalistic to the openly fearful. Some states worry about algorithmic bias, others about deepfakes, still others about data privacy or labor displacement. Several are experimenting with rules requiring disclosure of training data, transparency of model decision-making, or permission requirements for models above certain compute thresholds. This is confusing. It is also federalism working as intended. The states are laboratories of democracy, not subordinate offices waiting for federal consolidation. The administration’s answer — federal preemption followed by federal regulation — is not a remedy. It is a cure worse than the disease.” (12/22/25)
“[W]hile Trump’s gaslighting on prices is a natural and appropriate target for critics, we shouldn’t forget that the main goal of his policy agenda wasn’t lower prices, it was job creation. Specifically, Trump and his economic advisers claimed — and may even have believed — that they would create lots of manly jobs for manly men. They would revive American manufacturing, they claimed, by unilaterally imposing huge tariffs and thereby breaking all our international agreements (and, whatever the Supreme Court may say, U.S. law). They would create mining and construction jobs, they claimed, by killing renewable energy and gutting environmental protection in order to promote fossil fuels. They would deport millions of undocumented workers which would result, they claimed, in a job boom for native-born workers. … even on its own absurd terms, the MAGA jobs strategy has been an abject failure — as abject as Trump’s failure to bring down prices.” (12/22/25)
“Burdensome food labeling mandates were once the province of Democrats, who pushed for calorie count requirements on restaurant menus and insisted packaged food must feature warnings about genetically modified ingredients and trans fats. Now it’s Republicans leading the charge — with equally foolish results. … Seed oils have become a major target of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, whose figurehead is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘Seed oils are one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic,’ according to Kennedy, who has accused fast-food restaurants that use seed oils of poisoning Americans. But among nutrition experts, opinions about seed oils and health are much more mixed, with plenty suggesting they’re fine in moderation, are better than alternatives, or are unwisely treated as a unit despite the fact that different seed oils have different properties and effects on health.” (12/22/25)
“Attention high-school seniors: Deadlines are coming up! Polish your dream-college applications, hit send, and hope the admissions game isn’t rigged with ‘race proxies’! To stay ahead of the curve, consider including your ‘subjective social status’ — what’s good enough for the governor of California should be good enough for admissions officers. Education gatekeepers are always hunting for fresh metrics to cherry-pick students, especially after the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ruling banned racial preferences in college admissions. Some elite schools produced expected racial shifts post-SFFA, others amazingly kept racial proportions similar to pre-SFFA. Was this by feigning compliance using stealthier ‘socioeconomic status’ preferences? ‘Socioeconomic’ is deceptive. It sneaks in the term ‘economic’ to win over generous Americans who support helping those with genuine financial need. Then ‘socio’ takes over, shunting aside tax returns and bank statements apparently to favor racial outcomes.” (12/22/25)
“Recently, the New York Times relayed Tucker Carlson’s view that, ‘The most depressing thing about the United States in 2025 is that we’re led not just by bad people, but by unimpressive, dumb, totally noncreative people.’ This is unarguable — and the Times made no attempt to counter the point. Indeed, this judgement applies doubly to the team of grifters and double-digit IQ Machiavellians who staff upper echelons of the Trump administration. Yet, a fascinating new book by the scholars (and brothers) William and Philip Taubman shows that even smart and impressive peopple can, if they lack vision, character and empathy, lead the country to disaster.” (12/22/25)
