Source: US News & World Report
“Luigi Mangione’s pretrial hearing wrapped up Thursday with a judge saying he plans to rule in May on what evidence prosecutors will be able to use in his New York trial for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Prosecutors rested their case after calling nearly 20 witnesses over three weeks, many of them police officers involved in Mangione’s December 2024 arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Mangione’s lawyers opted not to call any witnesses. … Mangione, 27, is seeking to exclude items including a gun and notebook found in his backpack that prosecutors say tie him to Thompson’s Dec. 4, 2024, shooting in Manhattan. … Mangione’s lawyers contend that anything found in Mangione’s backpack should be excluded from his trial because police didn’t have a search warrant and lacked the grounds to justify a warrantless search.” (12/18/25)
https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2025-12-18/judge-says-hell-rule-in-may-on-luigi-mangiones-fight-to-exclude-evidence-from-ny-murder-trial
Source: Persuasion
“A recording from Francis Fukuyama and Yascha Mounk’s live video.” (12/18/25)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/francis-fukuyama-on-2025-in-review
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“‘The Fairness Doctrine was controversial and led to lawsuits throughout the 1960s and ’70s that argued it infringed upon the freedom of the press,’ explained FCC commissioner Ajit Pai for the Wall Street Journal, in an op-ed I quoted yesterday. ‘The FCC finally stopped enforcing the policy in 1987, acknowledging that it did not serve the public interest.’ … Thankfully, this is old news. The former FCC commissioner’s piece was actually published nearly twelve years ago. Mr. Pai has since moved on to the private sector, in April becoming President and CEO of CTIA, the wireless industry trade association. We can breathe a sigh of relief. The FCC is not planning on regulating the news for biased content. Well, supposedly, anyway.” (12/18/25)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/12/17/governing-the-news/
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Alan Mosley
“In the closing days of 2025, the White House turned an opioid crisis into a national security drama. Standing in the Oval Office during a Mexican Border Defense Medal ceremony on December 15, President Donald Trump declared that he would sign an executive order to classify fentanyl as a ‘weapon of mass destruction,’ calling the announcement ‘historic.’ Treating a synthetic painkiller like a nuclear bomb says more about Washington’s mindset than about the drug. Though drug overdose deaths declined in 2024, 80,391 people still died and 54,743 of those deaths were from opioids. Those numbers mark a public‑health emergency. Rather than tackle fentanyl abuse as a medical or social problem, the administration reframed it as an existential threat requiring military tools. Labeling a narcotic a WMD creates a pretext for war and sidesteps due process.” (12/18/25)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/wmds-for-a-mic-in-need/
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“As many as 20,000 Saudi-backed forces are gathering on the border of Yemen as the separatist Southern Transitional Council comes under pressure to withdraw from the huge territorial gains it has made in the last month in the vast, oil-rich governorate on Hadramaut in eastern Yemen. The STC is using its advance to raise its demand for Yemen to revert to two states, north and south, as it had been until 1990. The STC, which is backed by the United Arab Emirates, has been warned there is a possibility of direct airstrikes by Saudi forces, a development that would threaten key STC positions. Well-paid troops, mainly drawn from a Saudi-funded militia called the National Shield, have been gathering in the al-Wadeeah and al-Abr areas close to the Saudi border. The STC has been reassured it retains the support of the UAE, raising the prospect of future clashes between troops loyal either to Saudi Arabia or the UAE.” (12/18/25)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/18/saudi-backed-forces-yemen-border-separatists-stc
Source: The Dispatch
“Political Distortions.” (12/18/25)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/political-distortions/
Source: EconLog
by Joy Buchanan
“Shoppers are filling their carts, both literally and digitally, with last-minute gifts. One tempting purchase, whether for gifting or for showing up in style at a holiday sweater party, is ultra-cheap clothing from Shein. Like many around the world, the French hunt for deals in December. During a recent interview with journalist Thomas Mahler, I learned that fast fashion has become a political flashpoint in France, the country known for haute couture. French lawmakers are considering measures aimed at threatening the economic viability of Shein, the Chinese company that dominates ultra-cheap clothing globally. Millions of French consumers shop through Shein regularly. Mahler asked me: Can politicians persuade consumers to buy domestically-made clothes instead, in a country with a proud tradition in domestic fashion? My reply was that this dilemma extends beyond France.” (12/18/25)
https://www.econlib.org/econlog/the-fast-fashion-dilemma
Source: Antiwar.com
by Andrew P Napolitano
“Last week, Sen. Charles Schumer, the leader of the Democrats in the United States Senate, introduced a resolution on behalf of himself and 40 other Senate Democrats that, if passed, would record the sense of the Senate as condemning the media superstar Tucker Carlson because of the political, historical and cultural opinions of a guest on Carlson’s podcast. You read that correctly: The U.S. Senate is being asked to condemn Carlson because of what someone else said. Here is the back story.” (12/18/25)
https://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2025/12/17/tucker-carlson-and-the-freedom-of-speech
Source: Common Dreams
“The Chinese government on Thursday condemned the Trump administration’s announcement of a proposed $11 billion weapons package for Taiwan, a move that Beijing said violates both the ‘One China principle’ and an agreement in which the US pledged to reduce arms sales to Taipei. The US State Department said the record $11.154 billion package contains a broad range of weaponry and other military equipment, including Lockheed Martin High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Lockheed Martin Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) long-range missiles, BAE Systems M109A7 self-propelled howitzers, drones and tactical software, Javelin and TOW missiles, and M2A1 machine guns and other armaments.” (12/18/25)
https://www.commondreams.org/news/china-us-arms-sale-taiwan
Source: mint [India]
“Ghislaine Maxwell asked a judge to throw out her sex-trafficking conviction and 20-year prison sentence on the eve of a deadline for the Justice Department to turn over a trove of documents relating to her ex-boyfriend, the disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell filed a long-shot petition for a judge to upend the guilty verdict based on what she claims is ‘substantial new evidence’ that has emerged since her 2021 trial. The 63-year-old filed the request pro se, or without a lawyer, from the Bryan, Texas, federal prison where she is serving her sentence. The new evidence ‘shows that exculpatory information was withheld, false testimony presented, and material facts misrepresented to the jury and the court,’ she wrote in the 51-page filing, the upshot of which is ‘a complete miscarriage of justice, rendering petitioner’s conviction invalid, unsafe and infirm.'” (12/18/25)
https://www.livemint.com/news/world/maxwell-seeks-to-reverse-conviction-as-epstein-deadline-looms-11766008835974.html
