Matthew Chapman

President Donald Trump veered off topic to endorse fossil fuel energy during a phone conversation with a small child in a Mar-a-Lago Christmas Eve event.

"How long until Santa will be here?" asked the child.

"Well, Santa's now in Sweden," said Trump. "So Santa's got quite a trip to get to your great area, your great part of the world, because you live in a terrific place. But I will say Santa will make it in record time. Probably in about five hours. Five hours from now, Santa will be coming down your chimney and will have a beautiful present for you. What would you like Santa to bring?"

"Uh... not coal?" said the child.

"Not coal, you don't want coal. Well coal is — you mean clean, beautiful coal," said Trump. "I had to do that, I'm sorry. Coal is clean and beautiful, just remember that. But you don't want clean, beautiful coal, right?"

This exchange comes as the Trump administration has declared war on renewable energy, with a move to shut down offshore wind installations underway, ostensibly for national security reasons.

The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait raked newly-installed CBS boss Bari Weiss over the coals for her controversial move to block the release of a "60 Minutes" report on horrific conditions at the foreign megaprison where President Donald Trump is shipping hundreds of migrants with no due process — and warned that her justifications for it are not credible in the slightest, given the context in which she was installed into the network in the first place.

"The year is 2029," wrote Chait. "President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, having spent years raging against Fox News as a propaganda organ whose very operation is illegal, has found a pressure point to control it. She enables its sale to owners who are friends of hers, and whose business depends on regulatory favors she has made a practice of doling out to allies. As the new editor in chief of Fox News, the owners installed Tim Miller, a skeptic of conservatism who has never previously worked in television news."

"But then AOC complains that her friends at Fox News aren’t moving fast enough, and the network is still running critical coverage of her. Days later, Miller kills a long-scheduled report showing how AOC may have flouted the Constitution in order to have people tortured," he continued. This, he argued, is exactly what happened here: the Trump administration fast-tracked a merger for CBS's parent company to put it in the hands of right-wing executives who are now interfering in their journalists' coverage.

And yet, he noted, even many Trump skeptics are giving Weiss the benefit of the doubt she does not deserve. For example, conservative commentator Noah Rothman defended the editorial decision in a lengthy write-up, without mentioning anywhere "the abuses of power — Trump’s insistence on favorable coverage from media-owning friends — that led to Weiss running the network. It focuses instead on the merits of her critique of the CECOT story."

"Weiss is following a long-standing instinct to turn every Trump abuse into a debate, a generosity she does not afford targets on the left," wrote Chait. "She herself has sometimes been a fierce and effective critic of Trump. Still, The Free Press, which she continues to edit while running CBS News, publishes obsessively and unremittingly negative coverage of New York Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani, but holds symposia on Donald Trump. In defending the administration’s actions as debatable, she has misrepresented just how heedless it has been with the Constitution."

"Even if Weiss’s objections were completely merited and followed procedure, it is impossible to take them at face value given the context in which she is operating," wrote Chait. "Weiss claims that the CECOT story fails to 'advance the ball' because many of its central facts have already been reported. This mania for insisting that every new story introduce breaking news was nowhere to be found when she was airing a town hall with Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, whose talking points have not exactly suffered from underexposure."

At the end of the day, Chait concluded, conservatives "may delight in the new editorial direction of CBS News, but they cannot defend the process that led to it. So they pretend it didn’t happen; offer narrow, pointillistic defenses of Weiss’s editorial pretext; and deftly dodge the authoritarianism that enabled it."

Neo-Nazi activist and "Groyper" leader Nick Fuentes has a new target to defeat in the political arena — and it's a MAGA Republican.

According to Fox News, "White nationalist Nick Fuentes vowed to campaign against Vivek Ramaswamy in a slur-laced rant denouncing the Republican’s Ohio governor bid," during a stream. Specifically, Fuentes said, "I think I’m going to go to Ohio, and the word that we are looking for is denial. We have to deny Vivek Ramaswamy the governorship. This is the only race I care about in ‘26. It’s the only one I care about."

Fuentes then "used a slur to describe Ramaswamy and said he does not care if a Democrat defeats him in the governor's race."

It's the latest salvo after Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur born in Cincinnati who ran for president himself on a hard-right platform last year and helped advise the second Trump administration in the early days, penned a plea in The New York Times for the Republican Party to do a better job policing the racism inside it.

"Older Republicans who may doubt the rising prevalence of the blood-and-soil view should think again. My social media feeds are littered with hundreds of slurs, most from accounts that I don’t recognize, about 'pajeets' and 'street s------s' and calls to deport me 'back to India,'" he wrote.

But many of Trump's supporters were enraged by Ramaswamy's warnings and called for his deportation.

On the other side of the governor race, Democrats are likely to nominate Dr. Amy Acton, who helped manage COVID-19 policy for the administration of incumbent Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.

The Justice Department is now all but openly manipulating the release of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files to insulate President Donald Trump from any potentially damaging information, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote on her Substack on Wednesday.

This comes after White House officials started directly controlling the social media account for the DOJ, which shortly proclaimed a letter in which Epstein appeared to incriminate Trump was "fake" and called an influencer expressing skepticism a "dope."

"No other person whose name surfaces in a criminal case gets this sort of boost on the official Justice Department account, and it’s an outrage (and another marker of authoritarianism) that this president does," wrote Vance. "The Justice Department doesn’t represent the president, or at least it isn’t supposed to. But this DOJ is led by an Attorney General who represented Trump when he was impeached and a Deputy Attorney General who was his personal criminal defense lawyer. Many of the U.S. Attorneys bear strong personal loyalty to Trump. It’s unprecedented, but that doesn’t mean we can’t label an outrage as an outrage."

Indeed, Vance continued, this only proves that Justice Department officials are convinced Trump does in fact have something to hide — particularly in light of what little the current releases have revealed about Trump.

"Trump has been calling the Epstein Files a 'Democratic hoax' in recent weeks, but what’s come so far demonstrates that is not the case," she wrote. "Many of us support believing women who come forward to report sexual abuse and violence. It’s difficult and dangerous, especially when powerful men are involved, as the Epstein saga demonstrates far too well. But for those who are unwilling to believe women, the documents and new information, like the fact that Trump flew on Epstein’s plane far more times than he has previously acknowledged, suggest this is far from a hoax."

"Not everything Jeffrey Epstein got away with can or should be laid at Trump’s door," Vance wrote. However, she continued, his DOJ is "flagrantly" violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act as written by Congress. "The cover-up, as we’ve learned, is frequently as important as and can be even worse than the crime. Here, it’s unforgivable, especially since Trump campaigned on releasing the Files. It’s time to release all of them and give survivors the comfort they are able to take from knowledge about what happened to them and who was responsible. It would also give Congress information on what went wrong, and the opportunity to enact new and better laws to prevent anything like this from happening again."

"A country that had begun to make progress in believing women is regressing," Vance warned. "In this environment, it becomes more and more difficult for victims to come forward, which means that the people committing crimes against them are going to get away with it. Again."

The Department of Justice dropped an announcement on Christmas Eve that the full disclosure of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files, which was supposed to have concluded by now under a law passed by Congress, will instead take weeks more.

"The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI have informed the Department of Justice that they have uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case," stated the official X account for the agency. "The DOJ has received these documents from SDNY and the FBI to review them for release, in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, existing statutes, and judicial orders. We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible."

"Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks," the announcement continued. "The Department will continue to fully comply with federal law and President Trump’s direction to release the files."

This news did not go over well on social media, with many commenters pointing out they already had these documents in their possession, and the reasoning for the delay doesn't add up.

"This has a dog ate my homework quality," wrote foreign policy analyst Laura Rozen.

"@RepThomasMassie & I will continue to keep the pressure on," wrote Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), one of the principal authors of the legislation compelling the Epstein files release. "After we said we are bringing contempt, the DOJ is now finding millions more documents to release. They need to release the 302 FBI statements & the emails on Epstein's computer. The Epstein class must go."

"This sounds like nothing new, except it’s delay by dilution," wrote investment banker Evaristus Odinikaeze. "Conveniently dumping 'a million more documents' at the 15th hour muddies the waters and invites conspiracy and contempt for the public, not clarity. Release everything already in your possession before today, then process 'additions' transparently on a clear timeline. Sunlight delayed is trust denied."

"They somehow missed a million documents. That’s 1,000,000+ documents that they somehow were unaware of. Sure," wrote Army veteran, podcaster, and Democratic congressional candidate Fred Wellman.

"So crazy that they say they need a few more weeks just before everyone goes home for the holidays," wrote Business Insider legal correspondent Jacob Shamsian.

President Donald Trump has boasted that Harvard University is on the brink of capitulating to a deal with the administration after months of government attacks and moves to pull funding from the storied institution. But according to The New York Times, recent email communications show the talks are going nowhere.

A huge sticking point, according to reporter Michael Schmidt, is that the administration wants to shake down Harvard for $200 million, which university officials consider to be out of the question.

Furthermore, according to the report, Harvard was well on its way to agreeing to a deal in August, but things fell apart after Trump strategist Stephen Miller took a more active involvement in the proceedings.

A message on Saturday, "from Linda McMahon, President Trump’s education secretary, conveyed an understanding of an emerging deal between Harvard and the White House that flew in the face of the terms the university had been insisting on," wrote Schmidt. Harvard President Alan Garber "felt he had made clear in recent negotiations that the university would not agree to pay the federal government to settle a monthslong battle with the Trump administration over antisemitism on campus and other matters." However, McMahon's message "thanked Dr. Garber for what she portrayed as his commitment to sending $200 million to the government as part of a deal."

The president has previously suggested Harvard will agree to invest $500 million in a giant nationwide network of AI-focused trade schools. Administration negotiators, however, want $200 million of that to be a civil fine to the government, which Harvard rejects.

When Garber pointed out Harvard hadn't agreed to the $200 million payment, per the report, Trump administration officials responded with a set of new terms that would give them greater oversight over Harvard and erode the university's academic independence, alarming school officials and causing further divides on how to get the deal resolved.

"Harvard officials, already anxious about the prospect of backlash to any settlement with a president many on campus see as autocratic, are sensitive to the details of any agreement. For months, they have viewed an accord between Brown University and the Trump administration as a model," said the report. "Under that agreement, Brown agreed to spend $50 million on state workforce development programs over a decade. The university did not have to enter into a rigorous monitoring agreement, and it secured a provision that Brown leaders viewed as safeguarding academic independence."

Trump kicked off his new term in office by demanding several legal agreements with groups that have opposed him in the past, including several law firms that agreed to spend millions of dollars on Trump-approved legal causes. A report in August revealed many of these law firms are now simply ignoring some provisions of the agreements.

CBS News' newly-appointed right-wing chief, Bari Weiss, doubled down in an email to staff on her decision to delay a "60 Minutes" investigation into the way migrants President Donald Trump has sent to the Salvadoran CECOT megaprison are being tortured, some without having any criminal record or violation of the law whatsoever.

Weiss, who founded The Free Press, was given control of CBS as part of a Trump administration-approved merger between the network's parent company, Paramount, and Skydance.

"Right now, the majority of Americans say they do not trust the press. It isn't because they're crazy," wrote Weiss in the email, obtained by Prem Thakker of Zeteo News. "To win back their trust, we have to work hard. Sometimes that means doing more legwork. Sometimes it means telling unexpected stories. Sometimes it means training our attention on topics that have been overlooked or misconstrued. And sometimes it means holding a piece about an important subject to make sure it is comprehensive and fair. In our upside-down moment, this may seem radical."

"Such editorial decisions can cause a firestorm, particularly on a slow news week," Weiss continued. "And the standards for fairness we are holding ourselves to, particularly on contentious subjects, will surely feel controversial to those used to doing things one way. But to fulfill our mission, it's necessary. No amount of outrage — whether from activist organizations or the White House — will derail us. We are not out to score points with one side of the political spectrum or to win followers on social media. We are out to inform the American public and to get the story right."

The email triggered a fresh wave of outrage on social media.

"Is that what Stephen Miller told her to say?" wrote attorney Brad Moss. "Bari has no educational background in journalism, nor has she ever done hard-hitting news beats. But ok," wrote Georgia-based constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis.

Despite Weiss's efforts to keep the "60 Minutes" story under wraps, it has been leaked and posted online, after a Canadian broadcaster aired it apparently by mistake.

When it became clear that Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) was going to drop out of the race to challenge Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, allies of President Donald Trump privately reached out begging her to change her mind, but to no avail.

Stefanik, a former moderate Republican lawmaker turned hard MAGA loyalist in the Trump era, announced her campaign to great fanfare and a few widely-mocked stumbles in early November, vowing to defeat Democrats in a staunchly liberal bastion state. But after just a few weeks, she announced she is ending her campaign and retiring from Congress to spend more time with her family.

According to political analyst Rachel Bade, this move triggered chaos behind the scenes.

"I'm told the president and his team always intended to endorse her around the state's Feb convention, viewing her as the stronger candidate. When she called to say she was bowing out, they made a soft pitch for her to stay in the race, reminding her of the Trump support to come," Bade wrote on X. However, "it was too late" to get her to change her mind.

With Stefanik out of the race, the only notable Republican candidate is Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman — and according to Bade's sources, the New York GOP is divided on just how hard to commit to him.

"In upstate New York, some party chairs are fretting that Blakeman doesn’t have the name recognition to turn out the base the way Stefanik could have," wrote Bade. Furthermore, per a GOP source, "donors are reneging on commitments to contribute millions to turnout efforts because they were set on Stefanik and have questions about Blakeman’s chances. And the bitterness about Stefanik getting a raw deal is dividing the party in a critical midterm year."

Stefanik's exit from Congress and suspension of her gubernatorial campaign come amid reports that she is resentful of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and that his leadership is silencing key voices ahead of a challenging midterm year.

As the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files continue to trickle in from the Justice Department under Congressional mandate, allies around President Donald Trump are scrambling for a narrative to reassert control of the conversation, CNN reported on Wednesday — and they can't figure out what to do.

"When the Justice Department released a first batch of Jeffrey Epstein files on Friday that included photographs of former President Bill Clinton, White House officials raced to amplify the importance of the new documents," said the report. "But days later, amid a second trove that contains several references to President Donald Trump, the White House is pushing a different view: Don’t believe everything you see."

One of the most prominent cases was the release of a purported letter from Epstein to fellow sex offender convict Larry Nassar, lamenting that Trump shared their love of young girls but hasn't faced any consequences. The DOJ proclaimed this message was determined to be fake because it was postmarked just after Epstein's death — which only raised further questions from observers why it wasn't vetted before it was released, and whether, if it is indeed fake, it was strategically released to discredit other revelations about Trump.

"The messaging shift — the latest in a largely unsuccessful effort by the administration to seize control of the story — has spawned frustration in Trump’s orbit and parts of the White House, where some saw the scrambled response over the last few days as just the latest stumble in a year of Epstein-related blunders and baffling communications mishaps," said the report.

One GOP strategist, Matthew Barlett, told CNN, “It’s just been confusing and compounding. It’s perpetuated this news cycle, continues to give the White House and administration a massive headache of their own making, and I don’t see any remedy any time soon.”

Trump, who initially tried to pressure Republicans against voting to release the Epstein files but relented as it became clear they had the votes, is reportedly enraged that the news cycle continues to dwell on the issue.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) turned up the heat in his demands for House Republicans to allow the closed-door testimony from former special counsel Jack Smith to be released in a post on Wednesday morning.

Smith was in charge of the federal prosecutions of President Donald Trump for the 2020 election conspiracy plot, and for the hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, both of which were brought to a halt by Trump's re-election to the presidency.

Goldman, addressing House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), responded to a letter from Smith's own legal team, urging that his testimony be made public so that it cannot be manipulated or ignored.

"Mr. Smith respectfully requests the prompt public release of the full videotape of his deposition," stated the letter. "Doing so will ensure that the American people can hear the facts directly from Mr. Smith, rather than through second-hand accounts. We also reiterate our request for an open and public hearing. During the investigation of President Trump, Mr. Smith steadfastly followed Justice Department policies, observed all legal requirements, and took actions based on the facts and the law. He stands by his decisions."

"I was there. There is no reason not to release the video and transcript," wrote Goldman, himself a former prosecutor who worked on the impeachment proceedings against Trump in his first term. "If @Jim_Jordan refused Jack Smith’s request for a public hearing — like every other Special Counsel — because he allegedly wanted to avoid the 5-minute rule, he got that. Now #releasethetranscript."

Senior White House adviser and speechwriter Stephen Miller blew a gasket on Fox News Tuesday, amid reporting of internal anger at CBS after newly-installed right-wing network chief Bari Weiss put a hold on a long-in-the-works "60 Minutes" investigation into the horrific conditions at the Salvadoran CECOT megaprison where President Donald Trump has shipped hundreds of migrants.

"Every one of those producers at '60 Minutes' engaged in this revolt, fire them," shouted Miller, an anti-immigrant fanatic known to crib Nazi Germany in his speeches. "Clean house, fire them. That's what I say."

Weiss, who was appointed as part of a Trump administration-approved merger deal between CBS' parent company Paramount and Skydance, claimed the story needed further review because the Trump administration had not provided comment, even though they were afforded the opportunity to, and because the story didn't give equal billing to claims by the Trump administration that the mass deportation flights were legal, even though the Supreme Court has already ruled unanimously they were not.

This decision triggered an outcry by "60 Minutes" staff, with CBS anchor Scott Pelley pointing out that Weiss had not even properly reviewed the segment before blocking it, and Sharyn Alfonsi, the reporter behind the story, calling out Weiss' logic, saying, “Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a 'kill switch'' for any reporting they find inconvenient."

Weiss has fired back, saying that "The only newsroom that I'm interested in running is one where we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest of editorial matters, and do so with respect."

Shortly after the reports that the "60 Minutes" segment had been blocked, it was actually leaked online after it accidentally was aired on a Canadian network. The segment features a number of interviews with migrants who were locked in torturous environments, including at least one person who evidently had not committed any crime or broken any U.S. law before being rounded up.

President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, reposting a long conspiracy theory screed alleging mass voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, and calling for the state's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, to be jailed, alongside Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Atlanta poll worker Ruby Freeman.

"BREAKING: The Georgia Board of Elections just dropped this BOMBSHELL revealing that HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of ballots in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election were counted twice and it was NOT by human error - but by INTENTIONAL HUMAN INTERVENTION, which was in fact MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD that STOLE the election from the actual winner of Georgia, President Donald J Trump," said the original post, made by the account @Joshua2024.

"It's official guys and the evidence is all out after 5 long, painful years: The 2020 election was STOLEN from all of us and President Trump was the lawful winner of the state of Georgia," said the post. "Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Governor Brian Kemp and other top Georgia elections officials were paid off to 'look the other way' and knowingly certify this FRAUDULENT election. So when do the arrests start? Ruby Freeman should have to pay Rudy back reparations and every single penny that she got off of him based on a BIG LIE AND A FALSE PRETENSE. And her, Raffensperger, Kemp and every single one of their fellow ELECTION RIGGERS MUST BE ARRESTED AND PROSECUTED TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW."

"This was the POLITICAL CRIME OF THE CENTURY and they should never be allowed to show their faces in the public again without being shouted down by we the people for stealing our vote and our President from us," the post concluded. "RESIGN NOW, YOU RINO TRAITORS. When President Trump was talking about the enemy from within, he was talking about people like them."

"Thank you Joshua. Total Crooks!!!" Trump replied while screenshotting the post.

The claims made in the post refer to an admission made by an attorney representing Fulton County earlier this month, that some tabulator tapes — a record of voter counts used in the verification process — were not correctly signed by poll workers in accordance with state law. These tapes represented receipts for around 315,000 early votes.

There is no evidence, however, that any of the ballots on these tapes were "counted twice" or that this oversight altered the outcome of the election. Raffensperger has clarified, “Georgia has the most secure elections in the country and all voters were verified with photo ID and lawfully cast their ballots. A clerical error at the end of the day does not erase valid, legal votes.”

"Donald Trump's 2020 election conspiracies are hogwash, and he should stop endorsing messages calling for Governor Kemp and Secretary Raffensperger's arrest," posted Georgia State constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis on X. "It's unfathomably stupid and irresponsible."

The Supreme Court dropped a bombshell on Tuesday by handing President Donald Trump a rare loss, ruling 6-3 to deny a stay on deploying the National Guard to Illinois — but the rebuke of Trump was not the only thing some legal experts noticed in the opinion.

Specifically, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who drafted a concurrence with the majority on one of the key issues in the decision, made statements in his opinion that suggest he may regret one of the most controversial court decisions in recent months.

In a ruling in September that stayed a lower court block on certain kinds of immigration raids in California, Kavanaugh authored a concurrence in which he appeared to endorse profiling by federal agents outright, while simultaneously denying that American citizens have anything to fear from this. "The Government sometimes makes brief investigative stops to check the immigration status of those who gather in locations where people are hired for day jobs; who work or appear to work in jobs such as construction, landscaping, agriculture, or car washes that often do not require paperwork and are therefore attractive to illegal immigrants; and who do not speak much if any English," he wrote.

This ruling sparked a wave of outrage, and several legal and political observers began calling immigration enforcement based on racial or ethnic profiling "Kavanaugh stops," and tallying up the growing number of alleged incidents of this type occurring under the Trump administration.

All of this may have stung the justice, because he appeared to qualify or walk back this sentiment in his concurrence in the Illinois case.

"The basic constitutional rules governing that dispute are longstanding and clear: The Fourth Amendment requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force," wrote Kavanaugh. "Moreover, the officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity."

This change of tone was not lost on New York University law professor and former Defense Department special counsel Ryan Goodman.

"Kavanaugh goes out of his way to pen a footnote not having to deal with the case at hand," Goodman wrote on X. "He appears to be trying to narrow the forces he unleashed with his prior opinion allowing for race- and ethnicity-based #KavanaughStops."