Days after FIFA awarded Trump a fake peace prize, DOJ moves to drop charges in FIFA corruption case www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/n...

Trump orders DOJ to drop criminal cases at the core of the Fifa corruption scandal. In exchange he got the "Fifa Peace Prize," a lot of gold tchotchkas and other things we likely won't learn for years to come.

We now learn that Fifa had a very specific "ask" in exchange for its "Peace Award" to Trump, with loads of gold trinkets, and that was dismissal of a criminal corruption case against senior Fifa officials. And Trump granted it. Another corrupt bargain, barely noticed (and ignored by US media).

PRC MSS head Chen Yixin on the US under Trump: "The unipolar hegemony of a major power is becoming increasingly unsustainable. At home, its democracy is mutating, its economy decaying, and its society fracturing at an accelerated pace; abroad, its credibility is rapidly going bankrupt."

NEW: Pentagon lawyers asked State Dept. if US could send survivors of Trump's boat strikes to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Then Pentagon pushed to have survivors sent anywhere but the US — to prevent any US court cases. Gift link to our @nytimes.com story: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/u...

@markhertling.bsky.social on the double-tap strike "Trump specifically said he would release [the video] as soon as possible, and today he's saying he never said that. It's like a little child lying about stealing cookies."

In an appearance on Kremlin TV, Sergei Karaganov makes Russia's intentions very clear. "We’re at war with Europe, not Ukraine — and the war won’t end until Europe is defeated."

Detainees, often with no criminal record, were subjected to what is unambiguously torture at Ron DeSantis' so-called "Alligator Alcatraz" in Florida. There need to be criminal prosecutions

Trump is letting NVIDIA export cutting-edge AI chips that his own DOJ revealed are being illegally smuggled into China. His own DOJ called these chips "building blocks of AI superiority." Trump and Lutnick need to answer to Congress on why they are selling out US security.

When it comes to intelligence sharing, European allies are shifting from assuming U.S. reliability to managing it, writes Brian O'Neill. www.justsecurity.org/126220/quiet...

"It's a cult of personality surrounded by a bunch of very child-like grifters," The Atlantic staff writer @radiofreetom.bsky.social says of the scandal-plagued Trump admin. "They're there to get clicks" and make "propaganda style clips," adds @bradmossesq.bsky.social. #Velshi

Learn the truth about Alex Karp, Peter Thiel, and Palantir which is helping fascists around the workd build a surveillance state. youtu.be/oveJRR7a4ss?...

A lawyer for a key witness against Ghislaine Maxwell urged federal judges not to let the DOJ use a renewed bid to unseal grand jury records as "a backdoor avenue to continue to cover up" the Epstein files. My latest at All Rise News www.allrisenews.com/p/epstein-an...

"My poll numbers have never been better."

FINAL WEEKEND: 50% price reduction ends December 1st (Monday). Don't pass up this chance to hear one of the greatest narrators in the audiobook biz, John Keating.

The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande.

wow

7am a report is produced and distributed around the Danish government. The move comes after Danish intelligence documented a large-scale operation based in the White House and headed by JD Vance, whose objective is to facilitate the invasion, occupation and annexation of Greenland by the US.

Not the first case of ICE or CBP refusing to accept tribal ID or threatening to deport [sic] native americans 🤬🤬🤬

FINAL WEEK: Half-price sale ends December 1sr. I've never had such a brilliant reader as for this audio book. John Keating is a marvel.

This is often how personalist regimes work -- dozens of guys close to the leader compete for power and influence, backstabbing and out-maneuvering each other for the leader's attention/ignorance.

This is my kind of good trouble.

FWIW, a court reporter's account, submitted *by the govt* on 11/19 in the Comey case--before it switched positions on 11/20—shows that the full grand jury could not possibly have approved the operational 2-count indictment. The jury was "released" when deliberations ended.

Going LIVE on @meidastouch.com in 15 minutes 💙 youtube.com/live/d5-PROg...

We should get serious about sanctions. Russian missiles that kill Ukrainian civilians contain parts made in the West. And this repeated mass murder of civilians by Moscow should bring total boycotts on Russian gas and oil. And the Ukrainians should get everything they need to defend themselves

That time again: The audiobook for The Truth Against the World is now available at half-price. Narrated by the inimitable John Keating, whose other credits include Leon Uris's TRINITY, Ian McGuire's THE NORTH WATER, Benjamin Black's Quirke Series, and many more.) Buy link in comments.

This entire administration is a national security risk

It's that time of the month ... By which, of course, I mean it's the second Friday, the day my monthly post at Writer Unboxed goes live. This time around, I take on the looming utopia/apocalypse brought to us by A.I. #ArtificialIntelligence #Fiction @writerunboxed.bsky.social

Raskin on Ghislaine Maxwell: "The fact she was able to be transferred to a prison camp where no sex offenders had ever been allowed to enter before, much less live there, is an indication they've got some kind of meeting of the minds about what Trump can provide to her & what she can provide to him"

That time again: The audiobook for The Truth Against the World is now available at half-price. Narrated by the inimitable John Keating, whose other credits include Leon Uris's TRINITY, Ian McGuire's THE NORTH WATER, Benjamin Black's Quirke Series, and many more.) Buy link in comments.

This was just posted by a CBS News producer on their Instagram stories.

A former Cook county prosecutor describes how Trump's secret police lobbed a tear gas canister on his front lawn for no apparent reason. Elsewhere they appeared to be targeting principally children going to Halloween parties.

We all need to fight Trump's plan for voter suppression and election subversion. We need to recognize that it has multiple dimensions. We need to educate ourselves and our communities and then take action.

They can’t handle the truth.

Sticky fingers Trump

Trump adds a trillion to the national debt in just 60 days.... and this is not counting the $40 bn he flushed down the toilet buying Argentine pesos to help Milei.

Pritzker on Fox: "He's challenging the integrity of the next election by sending troops into our cities. It isn't about fighting crime. He said he's going after the worst of the worst. That's not what they're doing. They are literally after black and brown people because of the color of their skin."

More corruption! Federal prosecutor Elizabeth Yusi and her deputy were fired after she resisted Trump’s demand to charge New York Attorney General Letitia James. Thank you, Federal Prosecutor Yusi, for standing firm on principle and honoring your oath to justice.

A plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions in shipping supported by much of the maritime industry was shelved Friday following threats from President Trump that he would punish countries backing the measure.

For the terminally curious, may I offer a few crumbs for thought: this month's contribution to Writer Unboxed. It's titled, "The Elusive 'I' in Identity (link in comments), in which I describe recent research that establishes you are not who you think you are, and neither am I.

Those who know him best warn the rest.

The scenes out of Chicago should outrage us all. These federal agents are out of control, committing senseless acts of violence & putting everyone at risk.   American citizens are being detained & brutalized.   This kind of immigration "enforcement" shouldn't be acceptable to anyone.

2027 SuperBowl to feature a puppy-shooting contest at halftime?

One more reason time travel novels seldom feel convincing.

Arkansas police pulled over an Indian GrubHub driver wh ois married to a U.S. citizen. They found a bottle of Opium-brand perfume, arrested him for narcotics possession, and turned him over to ICE, where he was held for 30 days. He has now been stripped of his immigration status.

Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Adolf Hitler's lead legal advisor Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since as he seeks to topple modern democracy and replace it with something very authoritarian.

Lindsey Halligan, the attorney selected by Donald Trump to bring criminal charges against James Comey, has never prosecuted a case. But, like Trump, she did get her start in reality TV — with a brief cameo on South Beach Tow. Here is Halligan’s newly resurfaced TV moment:

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans forced a government shutdown tonight. Rather than address the health care crisis that they created just earlier this year, they refuse to come to the table and do their jobs. What happened to the art of the deal?

When you do your holiday catalogue shopping, you'll find prices are sharply higher. That's because of Trump's tariffs. But vendors are working hard to disguise this fact, for instance by more than doubling the shipping costs to make up for it.