"'It no longer represents the apolitical place for free artistic expression it was founded to be,' Mr. Schwartz said of the Kennedy Center in an email sent by his assistant to Newsday. 'There’s no way I would set foot in it now.'" 🎭⚖️🇺🇸

(gift article)

On the second day of the first month of the new year, Bill Kristol, let's aim high: "1. Very good news: We turn the corner."

Trump Is the Jan. 6 President www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/o... "It fit with Mr. Trump’s character, as both a businessman and a politician who has long pursued his self-interest without legal or ethical restraint." "He learned that he could get away with more than he dared to try in his first term."

"Behind the closed doors of the courthouse, he set aside decades of institutional precedent by not gathering the court’s seven justices to debate the legislature’s request in person, as chief justices had historically done for important matters."

youtube.com/watch?v=G1Qj... Remember George Benson released Breezin 1976. It played on AM radio in Seattle & Vancouver

Good Riddance to 2025❕

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1... "The comic aspect of the Kennedy Center threat is that Trump has little leverage over artists. He can fire a general who refuses to organize a parade for him, but he can’t make Lin-Manuel Miranda put Hamilton in the Kennedy Center." 🎭 - Jonathan Chait

"'There is no bottom for Trump,' wrote Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and the author of The Kennedy Half Century, on Tuesday."

This is not hard. Artists are not responsible for ensuring the Kennedy Center remains relevant and successful. The center’s board is responsible for that, in a fiduciary way. All of this energy being directed at artists should be re-directed at the board.

(gift article) 🎷🎶 🎭 💃🏽 🎺 ♥️ ⚖️

New Year’s Eve Concerts at Kennedy Center Are Canceled www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/a... "Mr. Varone, the head of the company, said it would lose $40,000 by pulling out. "'It is financially devastating but morally exhilarating,' he said in an email." Bravo❕ 🎭 🎶

Trump admin doles out billions for rural health www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

Grim Evidence of Trump’s Airstrikes Washes Ashore on a Colombian Peninsula www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/w... (gift article) 🎁

"Trump’s first year has been defined less by what he has done than by what he has been stopped from doing." - Daniel Barkhuff

"He has driven illegal crossings at the border to record lows and has made clear that the United States has shut the door to most nonwhite refugees." "He has also abandoned core tenets of the Civil Rights Act of 1964." (gift article) www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/u...

"In 1964, Congress designated the center as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated a year earlier. It opened in 1971 with the premiere performance of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass,” which was commissioned by Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis." - NYT

Martin Scorsese: ‘Rob Reiner Was My Friend’ www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/o... "Right away, I loved hanging out with Rob. We had a natural affinity for each other. He was hilarious and sometimes bitingly funny, but he was never the kind of guy who would take over the room." 🎁

CBS filed a copyright claim against my YouTube channel for posting Canada's version of the CECOT story that Bari Weiss killed—SO—I downloaded & read the transcript verbatim. Posting the video of that soon on YouTube again & it'll be available at youtube.com/qasimrashid shortly Subscribe & share!

"It would also take a few years to convince me that we were already enjoying an A.I.-fueled productivity boom and not just a volatile, temporary blip." - Jason Furman NYT

Wipe that smile off your face, KEVIN HASSET❕ No one believes you.

"Heritage was a supporter of the originalist judicial revolution and the rule of law; now it defends Mr. Trump’s expansion of executive power whether or not it has a constitutional basis." - WSJ Editorial Board

Former US President Bill Clinton has entered the chat.

CBS paid the president of the United States millions in bribe money and now they censor news reports so it does not annoy him. I don’t know how much plainer we can put this.

Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

Need a large and organized movement pledging to cancel any HBOMax account if bought by Paramount/CBS Make it economically suicidal for HBOMax to agree to a merger, whatever pressure Trump puts on them. Make them default to staying independent if can't merge with anyone else. I so pledge.

All of these links went to promotion of this story earlier today. All these links are dead now — that's how thoroughly they've scrubbed this.

"...f'ing nailed it!"

"Clearly, what they are attempting to do is give themselves the power to define any political dissent as terrorism or provide material support to terrorism which, if you were to apply the same laws that govern foreign terrorism, would lead to prosecution and imprisonment." - Heather Digby Parton

"'The public is being desensitized' to Mr. Trump’s omnipresence, argued Mr. Brinkley, the historian. 'It starts becoming blather. The enemy for Trump isn’t Democrats; it’s the public being bored with the show.'" - NYT

Have you ever heard someone go off, and their words are so perfectly chosen, so well said in that moment, that you’re in awe? You think, “There’s nothing to add here,” and you applaud in your head. That’s exactly this. Pure perfection. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

I’m no expert, but this is spot on and mirrors what we’ve been saying. Trump has dementia and is visibly declining. The rambling, the speed, the confusion, the fixation, the sundowning. It’s happening before our eyes. Watch this breakdown.

"'Even Nixon was a guy who got that there were limits that he had to tread carefully around even as he was trying to push them,' Mr. Schlesinger added. 'Whereas Trump, he’s not interested in limits.'" (🎁) Trump Takes America’s ‘Imperial Presidency’ to a New Level www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/u...

"The force of the cultural correction gave MAGA a momentum that the election results never justified. That created the conditions for overreach." - Ezra Klein

🎄♥️ 🎤 Cher ❕🎶♥️🎄

When House Democrats are largely useless in stopping Republicans from committing crimes and breaking the law every day of the week, at least there are brave women who tell Trump's scoundrels to their faces how disgusting they are.

BREAKING: At least 16 files from the Epstein release disappeared from DOJ's webpage, including a photo of Trump, with no explanation.

"But Kennedy nonetheless deserves to be the sole name on the façade of the performing-arts center; he recognized the value of artistic liberty in a way that no one with Trump’s authoritarian reflexes ever can." - David Remnick

"Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public." - Margaret Sullivan

What's more obvious than this? "Bill Clinton, for instance, is one of Trump’s political enemies. Trump, who reportedly knew and spent time in social circles with Epstein for years, and whose name appeared in previously released Epstein material from the House Oversight Committee, hardly shows up."

"If Trump had simply alerted the police when Epstein introduced him in 1994 to his 14-year-old victim, think of all the lives that would have changed for the better? How many children and women would have been saved from Epstein’s evil?!" - Dean Obeidallah

🚨BREAKING: The Department of Justice (DOJ) appears to have pulled a photo containing images of President Donald Trump from the thousands of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein it released Friday. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

"There was just one thing: Witkoff would be expected to come alone, without any CIA handlers, diplomats or even an interpreter, a person familiar with the outreach said." - WSJ

"Putting his name on the Kennedy Center and parks passes are acts of vandalism of public property, in the most original sense of the word." - David A. Graham (gift article)

In light of the Epstein Blackout, shouldn’t Khanna and Massie demand Johnson call the House back into session? (If he won’t, can they somehow hijack the pro forma session scheduled for Tuesday Dec. 23?) And Senators should make a similar demand of Thune.

"'How this treasured landmark is governed and how decisions are being reached — especially ones as consequential and abrupt as decimating its purpose and legacy — must be transparent, accountable, and open to public scrutiny' said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward."

It's worth reading through the whole thing, not just these horrific excerpts. Most important: not a single person -- with the exception of a guy who says he'll turn on CNN if he's out of other options -- gets their news from actual journalists. It's all RW podcasts, YouTubers and TikTok.