Sunday, December 14, 2025
Saturday, December 13, 2025
How a Manosphere Star Accused of Rape and Trafficking Was Freed
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/us/andrew-tate-barron-trump-romania.html
Barred from leaving Romania, Andrew Tate courted powerful figures on the American right, from Tucker Carlson to Barron Trump. Then an extraordinary order let him go.
When Andrew texted in January that the Trump administration was “on top of things,” he didn’t name names.
But several of his supporters had found roles in the incoming government.
Paul Ingrassia, who was initially named White House liaison to the Justice Department, had once been part of the Tates’ legal team. Alina Habba, a counselor to the president who would later serve a brief stint as New Jersey’s top prosecutor, told Andrew on a podcast in January that “I got your back over here.”
And Mr. Grenell, a special presidential envoy, privately discussed the Tates’ case with Romanian officials, The Times found.
Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro denounced the Tates. Some Republican leaders spoke out, too.
“I certainly don’t think that we should be using any influence in our government to try to get him out of what seemed to be extremely serious charges in Romania,” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri told HuffPost, referring to Andrew.
Trump Supporter despite his supporting Drug Trader and antisemite
https://mishpacha.com/trump-flunks-the-test/
“I supported Trump with full awareness that he would frequently embarrass himself, and, by extension, me.” One such moment took place this week when the president pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, who had served only two years of a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking.
That pardon created an air of complete incoherence around American policy. At the very moment when the president has basically declared war on Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro for running drugs into the country, and has claimed the right to blast speedboats allegedly carrying those drugs out of the water, he pardons another Latin American leader-cum-drug lord.
Another of those embarrassing Trumpian moments — and one of greater consequence for the Jewish community — took place recently, when he weighed in on the controversy around Tucker Carlson’s softball interview of neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.
Can one urge rounding up and killing Jews, as Fuentes has done, and still be part of the MAGA movement? That’s one question. The other: Is Carlson complicit in those ideas when he provides them with a broad audience? And if he is complicit, is he still part of the MAGA team?
Friday, December 12, 2025
‘Mamdani Effect’ Is Seeing More People Moving to New York, Not Leaving It
https://www.newsweek.com/mamdani-effect-more-people-moving-new-york-city-not-leaving-11193747
A month after Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in New York City’s mayoral election, the mass exodus of wealthy residents that landlords and real estate agents—especially down in Florida—had predicted has so far failed to materialize.
Instead, sales of luxury homes in the Big Apple—priced above $4 million—were up by 31 percent in November compared with October to 151 properties, according to the latest data by real estate brokerage firm Olshan Realty.
Thursday, December 11, 2025
Environmental group sues Trump for replacing national park pass photo with his own image
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit Wednesday to prevent President Donald Trump's face from appearing on next year's National Parks Pass.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., argues the Trump administration violated the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act by substituting the winning picture from the National Parks Foundation's annual public lands photo contest with an image of President Trump.
"Blotting out the majesty of America’s national parks with a closeup of his own face is Trump’s crassest, most ego-driven action yet," Kierán Suckling, the center's executive director, said in a statement. "The national parks are treasured by Americans of every stripe. Their timeless power and magnificence rise above even the most bitter political differences to quietly bring all Americans together."
Suckling continued, "It’s disgusting of Trump to politicize America’s most sacred refuge by pasting his face over the national parks in the same way he slaps his corporate name on buildings, restaurants, and golf courses.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Loomer on boat strikes: ‘Fentanyl isn’t being manufactured in Venezuela’
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5638688-laura-loomer-trump-venezuela-drug-strikes/
Far-right activist Laura Loomer noted inconsistencies with the Trump administration’s justification of strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats off the coast of Venezuela.
Loomer said Monday on the social platform X that while she has “no sympathy for narcoterrorists being killed,” it is “worth noting” that the majority of drugs, including fentanyl, brought into the U.S. are trafficked through Mexico.“Fentanyl isn’t being manufactured in Venezuela,” she added.
Fact check: Trump’s absurd claim that he saved 100,000 lives by attacking alleged Venezuelan drug boats
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/08/politics/venezuela-drug-boats-trump
The total number of US overdose deaths from all drugs in 2024 was about 82,000, according to provisional federal data. (Even adding in reported Canadian opioid and stimulant deaths doesn’t bring the total to 100,000.) Trump is essentially claiming, in other words, that his decision to attack a small number of boats in the Caribbean – there have been at least four US strikes since the beginning of September – prevented more than a full year’s worth of deaths.
There are other issues with Trump’s claims. The White House and Defense Department have not presented proof that the boats were carrying either drugs in general or the “fentanyl, mostly” Trump claimed last week they were carrying, nor that the people on the boats were planning to try to get such drugs into the US. The Caribbean is not known to be a significant fentanyl-smuggling route, and Venezuela is not considered a significant source of the illicit fentanyl trafficked into the US. That fentanyl is primarily manufactured in Mexico and smuggled across the US border in vehicles – generally by US citizens.
Fact-checking Trump’s claim that each boat strike off Venezuela’s coast saves 25,000 lives
President Donald Trump said U.S. military strikes on five Venezuelan boats have saved more than 100,000 lives because the maneuvers thwarted drug smuggling.
Several aspects of Trump’s statement make it wrong.
There is no way of knowing how many lives are saved as a result of drug interception efforts, drug experts have told PolitiFact.
Additionally, if Trump’s statement were accurate, the strikes on five boats in less than two months would have saved nearly double the number of U.S. lives lost to drug overdoses in an entire year.
The administration has provided no evidence about the type or quantity of drugs it says were on the boats. This lack of information makes it impossible to know how many lethal doses of the drugs could have been destroyed.
Even if the boats were carrying 25,000 lethal drug doses each, that doesn’t mean that destroying them saved 125,000 lives. There were 73,000 U.S. drug overdose deaths from May 2024 to April 2025. That means the drugs on five boats would have been responsible for 125,000 deaths, nearly double the number of U.S. overdose deaths in one year.
The amount of drugs that are stopped from entering the U.S. doesn’t indicate how many lives were saved.
We rate Trump’s statement Pants on Fire!
Honduras issues arrest warrant for ex-president Hernández recently pardoned by Trump
Luis Santos, the director of Honduras’ Specialized Unit against Corruption Crimes, told CNN a few days ago that Hernández had “an open case in the Supreme Court of Justice for money laundering and fraud,” and that an earlier international arrest warrant had been in the possession of the Ministry of Security and Interpol since September 2023.
Trump formally pardoned Hernández on Dec. 3, telling reporters at the White House “I feel pretty good about it,” and calling the prosecution a “Biden horrible witch hunt.”
The move was criticized by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress, who questioned Trump’s decision to pardon someone with a drug trafficking conviction when his administration has been so focused on disrupting drug trafficking in Latin America, ramping up military activity and launching controversial strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.