Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“Via the USDA, President Trump has announced a fresh $12 billion aid package for farmers, with $11 billion earmarked specifically for crop producers of corn, soybeans, and wheat. The administration says this is a ‘bridge’ to help farmers survive low prices and trade disputes. The money, they claim, comes directly from tariff revenues. Payments are set to arrive early next year, provided farmers file their respective paperwork by December 19. Supporters are cheering this as ‘putting American agriculture first.’ But let’s get real. In plain English: the government is breaking farmers’ legs with tariffs and then handing them crutches paid for by you, the consumer. … Who actually gets this money? You might picture a struggling family with a small red barn. The actual data says otherwise. According to the Cato Institute, farm subsidies overwhelmingly benefit large, wealthy agribusinesses.” (12/09/25)
https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/the-real-cost-of-trumps-12-billion
Source: Associated Press
“Conservative Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared to back a Republican-led drive, supported by President Donald Trump’s administration, to overturn a quarter-century-old decision and erase limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates for Congress and president. … The limits stem from a desire to prevent large donors from skirting caps on individual contributions to a candidate by directing unlimited sums to the party, with the understanding that the money will be spent on behalf of the candidate. The Federal Election Commission and the GOP argue that the court should cast a skeptical eye on the limits, in line with recent high court decisions.” (12/09/25)
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-campaign-finance-republican-spending-limits-0381e78b1e8a8da0e49f5b55b543894e
Hey, everyone …
It’s a “Web-Only Wednesday” at the freedom movement’s daily newspaper. We’ve got about 95 news stories, opinion pieces, and audio/video links (too many for a regular email edition) lined up for you at:
https://news.rationalreview.com/
THANK YOU to long-time supporters BW, P&KAW, and JR! Their contributions yesterday, totaling $250, bring our year-end fundraiser total to $1,683.84!
We’re now $1,066.66 short of our $5,501 goal (once we’ve raised the first $2,750.50, supporter GL will “match funds” for the other half).
Today’s “mini-goal” is to get within $1,000 by raising at least $66.66 — and your contribution, reflecting the value you find in our work, is NOT too small. Thanks in advance for making that contribution today.
Have a great day!
Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Joel Salatin
“Failing to bear the costs and consequences of bad decisions is as perverse as failing to incentivize the costs and consequences of good decisions. This seems elementary enough to not even mention, but we often create public policy that seems to deny this fundamental axiom. A case in point is federal government safety nets. Often begun with every good intention, they frequently break down after years of implementation. Government programs tend to grow more bureaucratic, becoming more interested in expanding power and budgets than in solving the problem they were chartered to solve.” (12/09/25)
https://brownstone.org/articles/ditch-the-subsidies-grow-what-actually-works/
Source: TomDispatch
by Tom Engelhardt
“Only recently, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, met in Brazil for two weeks. While 194 countries were represented there, the historically greatest fossil-fuelizer on the planet, Donald Trump’s United States, was, of course, missing in action (for the first time in 30 years). Worse yet, while the conference was underway, the Trump administration announced a new plan to open 1.3 billion acres (no, that is not a misprint!) of coastal waters to new oil and gas drilling. As for the conference itself, after floundering and almost foundering, its member nations barely agreed on a way more or less forward, what were termed ‘baby steps’ toward a better (or at least less utterly disastrous) future. And yet, can you believe this? The final agreement didn’t even include the words ‘fossil fuels’ or reaffirm in blunt language that they should be phased out! (President Trump must have been pleased!)” (12/09/25)
https://tomdispatch.com/climate-change-summer-or-nuclear-winter-2/
Source: US News & World Report
“The Justice Department can publicly release investigative materials from a sex trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime confidant of Jeffrey Epstein, a federal judge said on Tuesday. Judge Paul A. Engelmayer ruled after the Justice Department in November asked two judges in New York to unseal grand jury transcripts and exhibits from Maxwell and Epstein’s cases, along with investigative materials that could amount to hundreds or thousands of previously unreleased documents. The ruling, in the wake of the passage last month of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, means the records could be made public within 10 days. The law requires the Justice Department provide Epstein-related records to the public in a searchable format by Dec. 19.” (12/09/25)
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/new-york/articles/2025-12-09/judge-grants-justice-department-request-to-unseal-ghislaine-maxwell-records-in-sex-trafficking-case
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Another TRILLION Dollar NDAA Military Spending Bill!” (12/09/25)
https://rumble.com/v72sy3u-another-trillion-dollar-ndaa-military-spending-bill.html
Source: CNN
“The Justice Department said in court documents on Tuesday that it plans to continue its efforts to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey. The department’s stance was revealed in a lawsuit brought by the former FBI’s director’s friend and former lawyer Dan Richman. It comes two weeks after Comey’s previous indictment was dismissed and after a judge put temporary limits on the evidence prosecutors can use in future grand jury proceedings. In the documents filed Tuesday — in a fast-moving court battle over evidence used to investigate Comey over his statements to Congress five years ago — the Justice Department refers to the situation as both a ‘pending criminal investigation’ and ‘a potential federal criminal prosecution.’ … Comey pleaded not guilty to lying to Congress before the case against him was dismissed just before Thanksgiving by a judge who found the interim US attorney, Lindsey Halligan, was serving in the role unlawfully.” (12/09/25)
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/09/politics/james-comey-dan-richman-justice-department-prosecuting
Source: Law & Liberty
by Helen Dale
“If you’re as old as I am (and live in the UK), you’ve likely read Our Island Story and its affectionate parody, 1066 and All That. You’ll know that Cavaliers were Wrong but Wromantic while Roundheads were Right but Repulsive. Oliver Cromwell had Charles I’s head chopped off, you see, and regicide is bad. Cromwell was, however, a great parliamentarian, and for that reason, memorable. Historian George Owers — without naming either earlier work — takes the substance of these amusing observations and runs with them in The Rage of Party: How Whig Versus Tory Made Modern Britain, an account of the emergence of modern party politics during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. His personal sympathies are with the Tories (wrong but wromantic), but he is a fair and scrupulous scholar.” (12/09/25)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/whig-tory-and-the-modern-world/
Source: New York Sun
by Larry Kudlow
“It may well be that there’s an affordability crisis and consumers have no confidence in America or President Trump. Yet sometimes facts speak louder than political conjectures or biased polls. Black Friday spending surged this year to new highs, fueled by record breaking online spending that reached $11.8 billion on Black Friday alone, according to Market Data. Online sales on Black Friday made up about 10 percent of total sales for the entire month of November. The number was just above $111 billion, according to an Adobe Analytics report. Adobe tracks over $1 trillion U.S. retail site visits. And they are predicting that the 2025 holiday season will be the biggest online spending in American history.” (12/09/25)
https://www.nysun.com/article/affordability-bidens-disaster-and-trumps-cleanup
