Like Maria Said Paz: 2025-12-28

Saturday, January 03, 2026

5 from Lulu

Remember Lulu? She performed on Jools Holland's BBC show this week.

The British singer has had numerous hits over the years. "Relight My Fire" was a hit song she had with Take That which went to number one in 1993 in the UK -- Take That was the boy band that the one and only Robbie Williams hails from. I'd argue this next one may be her most well known hit.

It didn't chart in the UK or US on the pop charts. But? But it's a theme to James Bond -- THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN -- so it got airplay and continues to and any James Bond film watcher knows the song.

Another movie song, "To Sir With Love," which went all the way to number one in the US.

"Oh Me, Oh My (I'm A Fool For You)" is a great song Lulu took to number 47 in the UK and number 22 in the US.

That was 1969. In 1973, Aretha Franklin covered it on her classic album YOUNG GIFTER AND BLACK and took the song to number 9 on the US R&B chart and number 73 on the hot 100 (pop) chart.

This wasn't a hit anywhere but I always loved Lulu's performance -- "To The Other Woman (I'm) The Other Woman."

Lastly, C.I. noted Friday:

2025 end of the year pieces include Rebecca's "hottest men of 2025," Ann's "2025 in films" and Stan's "2025 in films," Mike's "Idiot of the Year," Martha & Shirley's "2025 in books (Martha & Shirley)," Kat's "Kat's Korner: 2025 in music," Ruth's "Ruth's Media Report 2025," Ava and my "Media: The best and the worst of TV showed up in December" and my "2025: The Year Of The Jig Is Up."

She notes that in the snapshot below.

"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Friday, January 2, 2026. As the new year begins, Chump continues his efforts to destroy American healthcare, though he'd like it to be The Epstein Scandal is not over and more details are emerging, Megyn Kelly drops her pretense to 'care' about sexual assault and to have been a 'victim' of it, and much more.

Starting with this press release issued by Senator Alex Padilla's office yesterday:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) issued the following statement after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted its stay on a federal judge’s order barring the Trump Administration from deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles, ending the federalization of California’s National Guard and returning authority over them to the state:

“Today’s order affirms what we’ve said from the beginning: the Trump Administration’s choice to federalize and deploy National Guard troops in Los Angeles was unlawful. This deployment is reckless, harmful, and an abuse of executive power that has put service members in an impossible position.

“The fight is not over but I look forward to the remaining service members returning to their families, their jobs, and their primary critical missions as soon as possible.”

###

Moving over to the late Jeffrey Epstein who was Donald Chump's roll dog and best buddy for years and years as Epstein sex trafficked girls and women. Meredith Kile (PEOPLE MAGAZINE) notes:

A new report from the Wall Street Journal alleges that Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago spa had teenage workers make house calls to Jeffrey Epstein's mansion.

The report, which cites unnamed former Mar-a-Lago and Epstein employees, claims that Trump's spa would send masseuses, manicurists and other spa workers to Epstein's nearby residence.

"Epstein wasn’t a dues-paying member of the club, but Trump told staff to treat him like one, the employees said," according to the report.

It also alleges that workers "warned each other about Epstein, who was known among staff for being sexually suggestive and exposing himself during the appointments."

[. . .]

Though Trump has continued to downplay his longtime friendship with Epstein since taking office for his second term, there was a disturbing mention of the president in the last drop of evidence.

One of the documents, dated Oct. 27, 2020, appeared to be an FBI intake report that featured the account of a former limo driver, who claimed to have met Trump in 1995, when he said he drove the real estate mogul to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

The document read, "[Driver] reported some of the things President Trump had spoken about during the ride while on his cell phone were very concerning. [Driver] reported he was 'a few seconds from pulling the limousine over on the median and within a few seconds of pulling him out of the car and hurting him, due to some of the things he was saying.' "

While telling the story to an unnamed woman years later, the driver alleged that the woman went "stone cold."

"[Woman] stated, 'He raped me,'" the FBI intake report read. "[Driver] said, 'What?' as [Woman] replied 'Donald J. Trump had raped her along with Jeffrey Epstein.' "

Chump supposedly banned Epstein from the resort but did he continue to send employees to do house visits? Was Chump was under the impression he wasn't aiding a crime if it didn't take place on his property? Because that's not how aiding and abetting works -- by sending his employees into a known environment for sexual assault, Donald Chump himself would be guilty as a partner to any crime. TMZ notes:

Donald Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein may be even worse than previously thought ... according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ says DT's Mar-a-Lago spa in Florida would send teenage workers to Epstein's mansion, despite it being an open secret among the staff that the billionaire would sometimes expose himself during appointments.

Shaun King (THE NORTH STAR) observes:

But the moral question isn’t simply, “Did Trump eventually kick him out?” The question is: why was the pipeline allowed to exist at all, and why was there no real accountability when staff reported misconduct?

Because here’s another key detail the Journal reported: the 18-year-old disclosed the incident to Mar-a-Lago’s HR team, but the incident was not reported to Palm Beach police, according to former employees and police. Police didn’t begin investigating Epstein until two years later, after a parent reported Epstein molested a 14-year-old girl.

Sit with that: an 18-year-old reports pressure for sex after being sent to Epstein’s home, and there’s no police report. That is not a minor administrative choice. That’s a decision that protects the institution and leaves other young women exposed.

This is what people miss when they reduce Epstein to a cartoon villain. A villain is one man. A system is what protects him.

TMZ also notes:

One of the members of the U.S. House Oversight Committee that's been releasing photos and documents from the Jeffrey Epstein estate has a New Year's resolution for the Epstein Files ... he wants to totally expose and put away the pedophile's enablers.

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a Democrat from Virginia who sits on the committee, tells TMZ ... "My New Year's Resolution for the Epstein Files is to get the files released, name names, and let the courts and the court of public opinion judge those who perpetrated, covered up, and enabled these crimes so that they never happen again."

And Subramanyam says Ghislaine Maxwell is one of their targets ... despite her currently serving a 20-year sentence in prison after being convicted of sex trafficking minors and other federal charges. He says Maxwell "should absolutely be held accountable for all the crimes she committed, including newly discovered crimes."

For those who've forgotten the ongoing release of documents taking place currently took an act of Congress. Prior to that, Chump referred to the crimes that took place as a "hoax" and refused to release documents. Also a point to remember, the law passed by Congress mandated that all documents be released by December 19th. That did not happen. Attorney General Pam da Bimbo Bondi refused to comply with the law and the bulk of the documents remain hidden from the public.

On the topic of the documents, let's note this video.

Lastly, CBS NEWS reports there are problems regarding the official story on Jeffrey Epstein's death and the actual camera recording devices.

Meanwhile, THE DAILY BEST has an interview that's getting media attention.

Pranita Chaubey (INQUISITR) reports:

Donald Trump’s name continues to pop up every time there is a mention of the Epstein Files, and now, longtime Trump biographer Michael Wolff has revealed that Donald Trump befriended Jeffrey Epstein for all the wrong reasons.

Longtime Donald Trump biographer Wolff revealed during Inside Trump’s Head Podcast that the two men allegedly shared a girlfriend. “This is [around] 1993, 1994, and Marla Maples (Trump’s former wife) is now coming into this picture, but it is also the moment in which Epstein and Trump are sharing a girlfriend,” said Wolff.

Wolff claimed that the two even had the same girlfriend once. The biographer revealed, “This is a Norwegian model and whatever the arrangement is, back and forth, I mean—again, they are playing with someone, and this is their shared, not only girlfriend, but kind of a shared joke.”

As a part of the bombshell Epstein files dump, an email link had a mention of a Norwegian cosmetics heiress, accompanied by a text from Epstein that read: “My 20-year-old girlfriend in ’93, that after two years I gave to Donald.”

It's a sad life but no one's mourning Chump. Not even with all his health problems is anyone feeling sympathetic toward the vulgarian. Hannah Demissie (ABC NEWS) reports:

For weeks, President Donald Trump has said that he received an MRI at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in October, but when asked about the procedure by the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Thursday, Trump and his doctor said that he actually got a CT scan instead.

"It wasn’t an MRI," Trump told the Journal. “It was less than that. It was a scan.”

Last month, Trump maintained that he got an MRI, telling reporters on Air Force One that he would "absolutely" release the results.

The White House has not specifically said why Trump received the scan. In November, Trump claimed the MRI was part of his yearly physical.

Trump’s physician, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella told the Journal that the president had received a CT scan -- not an MRI. Barbabella said Trump’s doctors initially told him they would perform either an MRI or a CT scan.

THE DAILY BEAST's David Gardner adds, "Donald Trump has confirmed that he wore compression socks to treat his cankles amid growing scrutiny over his health as America's oldest president."

Let's use his dementia and declining health to address his treatment of Marjorie Taylor Greene one more time. Alex Nguyen (MOTHER JONES) notes:

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that her defense of survivors of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and threat to disclose the identities of some of the men who abused them broke her relationship with President Donald Trump, who said his “friends will get hurt” if she went through with it.

Greene’s claim came in remarks from two long interviews published Monday in the New York Times Magazine. After a closed-door meeting with Epstein victims in September and a subsequent news conference where she made the threat to share the names of some of the men, Greene said Trump rebuked her.

“The Epstein files represent everything wrong with Washington,” the congresswoman told Robert Draper of New York Times Magazine, highlighting how Epstein went unpunished for decades and was allowed to continue to sexually assault girls and young women.

Greene announced in November that she would resign on January 5, 2026, a year before her term ends. “Standing up for American women who were raped at 14 years old, trafficked, and used by rich, powerful men should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the president of the United States, whom I fought for,” she stated in the video.

TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE. It's not just a John Ford play from the 1600s by John Ford, it's also Megyn Kelly's brand. Which is why you did not find me defending her when she came forward to talk about her 'victimizing' by Roger Aisles. It was known, even if outlets didn't report it, that Megyn was a party girl, a party girl who used her body to work her way to the top. She wasn't a victim. And she only came forward when others had outed Roger Aisles -- her mentor whom she was so close to in the public eye and now needed to break away from him lest people catch on that her rise at FOX "NEWS" resulted from a I'll-scratch-your-pudenda-if-you-scratch-my-testicles. If you grasp that, then you'll understand her latest nonsense which Loren Piretra reports on in the video below.

In other news of Tramp Media, Bari Weiss is in the news. Tom Boggiono (RAW STORY) reports:

A video from CBS News posted to X on New Year's Day, designed to introduce the journalistic path recently promoted CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil will be taking, was greeted with no small measure of skepticism on social media.

Since the controversial Bari Weiss was picked to run the CBS News division despite a lack of experience in television news, every move has been scrutinized and Dokoupil’s pledge reaffirmed concerns about the dismantling of journalistic standards.

Coming not long after Weiss spiked a “60 Minutes” investigation into the horrific experiences of migrants detained by ICE and transferred to El Salvador's CECOT prison facility, Dokopuil’s comment that “the press has missed the story” too often set off a wave of derision and accusations of dumbing down the news.

Ava and I noted Bari in yesterday's "Media: The best and the worst of TV showed up in December" about her censoring a 60 MINUTES news segment:

She has repeatedly insisted that her problem was news value and that the program didn't live up to it.

How did a town hall with the widow of a racist live up to it?

We may be doing another piece on racism in the near future, in terms of people trying to justify racism on the basis of a Black performer and pretending that he and a TV performer were on the same playing field when in fact the program has been notoriously racist over the years, that the power structure was racist and that the Black performer was a guest on one episode. They try to pretend this was an equal playing field when it was no such thing.

We bring that up because when Chump's right wing buddies took over CBS, this was White people and they installed White Bari Weiss. And she and the power structure chose to present the wife of a racist -- who echoes his racists opinions -- and treat her as some sort of expert who should be allowed to pontificate for one hour of prime time TV.

Mary Whitfill Roeloffs (FORBES) noted, "An hour-long interview with the widow of political commentator Charlie Kirk on CBS criticized for its editorial approach drove away big advertisers without drawing a hoped-for big audience in what could be a defining moment for Bari Weiss, the newly appointed editor in chief of CBS News." Brian Steinberg (VARIETY) noted, "Viewership was off 11% compared to the average viewership in the hour year to date, according to data from Nielsen, and the “demo” audience was down 41% compared to its year-to-date average." Justin Baragona (INDEPENDENT) makes the poor performance look even worse by bringing basic facts, "Making the low viewership for the Erika Kirk town hall even more striking is that CBS pulled in a large audience for the annual Army-Navy game that afternoon, drawing 7.3 million viewers per Nielsen’s early measurement. The post-game show, which served as a lead-in for the Kirk-Weiss chat, attracted a viewership of 3.5 million and 901,000 in the advertising demo, according to Nielsen." Even with a huge lead-in, the 'news' special flopped. THE NEW YORK POST explained it wasn't even a hit on YOUTUBE.

Maybe Bari Weiss needs to answer for that?

And maybe the new owners of CBS and PARAMOUNT need to answer to shareholders about why they paid Bari $150 million for her website -- that's about $149 million more than it was worth.

Mainly we should all be aware that Bari Weis killing that news segment on 60 MINUTES was censorship.

She had all these excuse about how it wasn't news and it wasn't ready.

But she's the one who put on an Erika Kirk special. Three months and three days after racist Charlie Kirk was shot dead, she put on an Erika Kirk special.

How did that qualify as news?

Are we supposed to pretend that Erika had anything to share? She's still working through the stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in ON DEATH AND DYING. She's not come out of the grief, she has no lessons to share, she's garnered no perspective. If anything, she's avoided dealing with her grief and loss.

This month alone, Sean Hannity interviewed her on December 8th, she took part in THE NEW YORK TIMES DealBook Summit, she showed on Megyn Kelly's show, she showed up on Glenn Beck's show, and on December 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st she was part of AMERICAFEST. That's not a full listing of her events and appearances

She's not taken time to grieve and she's overexposed.

How was she ever going to have anything worth sharing -- let alone anything news worthy worth sharing?

She wasn't. Nor will JD Vance when Bari sits down with him for another 'news special' next month. She'll baby him as well. Spend a whole hour babying him. Failing to grasp that her job as an interviewer is to push back, is to question. Bari Weis has neither the skills nor the training to be an editor-in-chief as she's made that clear. And she didn't need to wait until 2026 to share that with America.

Lastly, the new year has begun and with it? Chump's latest attempt to destroy the American people. Reed Abelson (NEW YORK TIMES) reports this morning:

Renee Rubin Ross is facing the stark reality of having to pay much more for her health insurance this year, now that Congress has ended 2025 without extending the enhanced federal tax credits that brought down the cost of her coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

“I don’t even know how to get my mind around it. It’s the opposite of affordable,” said Ms. Ross, who relies on Obamacare to cover her family of four in California. Staying on the same plan for 2026 will cost about $4,000 a month, $2,700 more than the roughly $1,300 per month she had been paying.

Since the subsidies were first expanded in 2021, allowing more people to qualify and lowering their payments, millions of Americans have benefited. A record 24 million people enrolled in Obamacare for 2025, with a vast majority receiving some tax credits. Many were self-employed or worked for small businesses that did not offer health insurance.

But without the enhanced subsidies, many people are seeing the cost of coverage more than double, increasing by hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month, because the tax credits are now in line with what they were before.

The following sites updated:

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

Zuckerberg does his part to destroy the world

We always knew he was evil. Back in 2018, Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Unfriend" noted Mark Zuckerberg was the mark of the beast.

Zuckerberg has worked hard to live up to that comic. Now Susan Elizabeth Turek (THE COOL DOWN) notes:

Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg sent his superyacht, Launchpad, to a facility in France for rejuvenation. While his $300 million vessel enjoyed time at a "superyacht spa," the rest of the planet was surely groaning underneath its massive pollution footprint.

As detailed by Luxurylaunches, Zuckerberg spent the summer cruising around Europe on Launchpad with his family before his superyacht went to La Ciotat for maintenance. In the process, it burned a staggering amount of polluting fuel.

"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Tuesday, December 29, 2025. Chump continued spreading hate and fear over the holidays because, well, that's all he's got. It's becoming less and less as Americans stand up to him more often and in greater numbers

Elderly socialite Peter Thiel's got that itch. The one that makes him look elsewhere. Jason Ma (FORTUNE) reports:

Sources told the New York Times that venture capitalist Peter Thiel has explored spending more time outside California and opening an office for his Los Angeles-based personal investment firm, Thiel Capital, in another state.

Meanwhile, Google cofounder Larry Page has discussed leaving the state by year’s end, sources told the Times, while three limited liability companies associated with him have filed documents to incorporate in Florida.

That's all it takes? To get trash like that out? Well, hell, make it a national law and the country can be so much better.

Thiel can return to his home of South Africa. Or he go to New Zeeland or Germany since he holds citizenship in those countries.

In other news, earlier this month MEDIA MATTERS wondered about the Epstein coverage? John Knefel and Sophie Lawton explain:

Out of 102 print and 194 online articles, we found that just 8% and 6%, respectively, mentioned any connection between Epstein and Bannon. For broadcast news, not a single segment out of 67 covering Epstein (amounting to just over 3 hours) mentioned his connection to Bannon at all.

No shortage of material exists for these news outlets to draw from, though. Bannon and Epstein exchanged hundreds of emails and text messages, including a text exchange on the day of Epstein’s arrest on sex trafficking charges in 2019. Just 2 articles mentioned that Bannon and Epstein had been in regular communication in the months leading up to Epstein’s detainment. Bannon also recorded 15 hours of unaired interview footage of Epstein that year, reportedly to provide Epstein with media training and to help rehabilitate his image, which only a single New York Times article mentioned. (Bannon has denied that characterization and claimed he “never media-trained anyone.”)

According to the released files, Bannon requested to film Epstein at his private island, which Epstein agreed to. Epstein also invited Bannon to his other residences, which was mentioned in just 3 articles. Epstein appears to have offered to arrange a charter flight for Bannon, leading him to joke that he was Bannon’s “travel agent.” Just 2 articles mentioned that Epstein had arranged travel for Bannon. Epstein apparently also helped connect Bannon with far-right European politicians, which was alluded to in a single Washington Post article that discussed Epstein’s advice to Bannon for engaging with foreign leaders. Additionally, Bannon told Epstein that MAGA could help shield him for a “decade” from the social movements demanding accountability for sexual harassment and assaults committed by powerful men.

In short, Bannon is all over the released Epstein files. Once a leading voice for their release, he has gone quiet on the topic since the files were made public in November.

Steve certainly fits the profile -- a man so ugly he has to resort to coercion to get close to a woman.

While the Dept of Journalism has looked the other way on Bannon, AG Pam da Bimbo Bondi and her saggy uterus have fixated on others. Joe Sommerlad (INDEPENDENT) reports this morning:

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have demanded answers from the Department of Justice after details of a flight taken by an investigative journalist well known for covering Jeffrey Epstein turned up in the pedophile’s files.

Miami Herald reporter Julie K Brown, author of the book Perversion of Justice, which was published in 2020, posted on X Sunday: “Does somebody at the DOJ want to tell me why my American Airlines booking information and flights in July 2019 are part of the Epstein files (attached to a grand jury subpoena)?

“As the flight itinerary includes my maiden name (and I did book this flight) why was the DOJ monitoring me?”

Brown also addressed the matter in a post on Substack in which she said she had “expected” to see her name in the Epstein files because of her reporting, but added: “What I didn’t expect to see was an American Airlines flight record from 2019 with my full name on them, including my maiden name, which I don’t use professionally. It’s an unusual name, so it’s clear it’s me.”

Her X message was reposted by the official Oversight Dems account with the comment: “The Department of Justice needs to explain why travel information and booking itineraries for a journalist are in the Epstein files.”

Bannon was playing footsie -- dicksie? -- with Jeffrey Epstein. The US government should have long ago demanded copies -- if not the originals of all those interviews Bannon did Epstein.

Victoria Bekiempis (THE GUARDIAN) notes:

By the mid-2000s, Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of teen girls was routine. From 2002 to 2005 alone, the late financier victimized “dozens” of underage teens by luring them into sex acts for payment under the auspices of massage work, some as young as 14, prosecutors said.

Epstein leaned on a coterie of employees and associates – including British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell – to secure a “steady supply of minor victims”. He also enlisted his victims to recruit other girls under the false pretense of providing massages, prosecutors said.

While the breadth of Epstein’s crimes is well-documented, papers in recently unveiled investigative files from the Department of Justice have put into sharper relief how he and his associates had an almost assembly line-like process for procuring victims.

These documents – released over the past week by a Trump administration under intense political pressure from both Democrats and Republicans – also make clearer how girls and young women were perceived as commodities: mere bodies meant to serve a predator’s twisted predilections – and possibly those of his associates.

One document from 2001 described how Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding Epstein’s crimes, accosted three female students on a Palm Beach, Florida, college campus.

“Maxwell said she needed young, beautiful unmarried women to answer phones and do office work at her home on Palm Beach,” a police report stated. At least one of the students went to the house on several occasions and “described the telephone calls as men call[ing] in saying when they were going to drop of[f] particular girls”.

“All three girls said Maxwell and Epstein were secretive about what was going on at the house, and at least two of the girls complained about Epstein touching them inappropriately. They said Maxwell asked for a list of other girls who she could call to work on short notice,” the report continued. Maxwell “said she needed a large pool of girls to call as she did not know how many she would need at any given time”.

Investigative notes from 2019 describe what seemed to be a crisis for Epstein: his supply of girls to abuse was running low.

THE TIMES OF LONDON's Jim Armitage coveres one of Epstein's friends that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell provided females to:

fter a summer when his stellar banking career spectacularly crashed and burned in a London courtroom, Jes Staley might have hoped for a quiet Christmas.

Instead, the former chief executive of Barclays has once again endured unwelcome headlines, along with, among others, Donald Trump, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Bill Clinton, over his close friendship with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Staley had been trying to overturn a lifetime ban from working in finance over that relationship, but it proved a disaster.

Not only did the judge rule in June that the ban should stand, declaring his evidence “lacked credibility”, but the married father, famously devoted to his two daughters, was forced to admit under questioning that he had had sex with one of Epstein’s staff in the financier’s notorious Manhattan apartment on East 66th Street.

Comprehensively defeated, Staley returned to his native United States to lick his wounds, his career destroyed.

Yet, after years of his attempts to claim he and Epstein had a “close business relationship” and nothing more, last week’s trove of evidence from the US Department of Justice hammered a final nail in his reputation.

Epstein, the documents revealed, had felt their friendship was so strong, so trusting, that he gave Staley the honoured position of executor to his will.

“It’s really significant,” a source close to the Barclays case said. “We knew that they were closer than Jes had claimed. But executor to the will? Come on.”

Staley was not the only high-profile financier Epstein had brought so close into his circle, the documents revealed.

The former Harvard University president Lawrence “Larry” Summers, a former US Treasury secretary under President Clinton, had also been named as his executor. Likewise, Jimmy Cayne, the late chief executive of one-time Wall Street giant investment bank Bear Stearns.

An interesting point is raised by LA TIMES columnist LZ Granderson (reposted at THE SEATTLE TIMES):

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Later, the two had a public falling out, and Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Great. But denial after the fact is only one side of this story. The other is harder to digest: Either the self-proclaimed “very stable genius” spent nearly two decades around Epstein without recognizing what was happening in plain sight — or he recognized it and chose silence. Neither explanation reflects on intelligence as much as it does on character. No wonder Trump’s defenders keep raising the most overused word in American politics today: hoax.

As people try to sort this out, at this point they have to utilize speculation. Ryan Mancini (THE HILL) notes:

Attorney Gloria Allred on Friday speculated on why the friendship between President Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein ended, and what the files released by the Justice Department (DOJ) could reveal about the falling out.

“Well, I‘ve heard different explanations from the White House about why he dropped him,” Allred told CNN’s Phil Mattingly. “One explanation was that he was a pervert, Jeffrey Epstein. But if he was a pervert, in the view of the president — not the president at the time — then why did he believe he was a pervert?”

“And was he — did he investigate?” Allred continued. “Did he look into what actions or misconduct he knew that perhaps Jeffrey Epstein was inflicting on underage girls, children, or adults?”

The attorney said she also heard that Epstein bid against Trump in purchasing a property in Palm Beach, Fla., which stirred “bad will” between them.

“So we don‘t know whether, what‘s the truth,” she said. “We‘ll just have to wait and see why he and Jeffrey Epstein were no longer friends. We‘ll look at the, all the files when they‘re released to see when the last communications may have existed between the two of them.”

As part of his efforts to spread hate, Chump is targeting Democrats regarding Epstein.

Now late week, a detail emerged that should have resulted in mass speculation. I let it pass assuming numerous others would grab it. If anyone did grab it, I didn't notice -- but, like most of you, I was trying to grab some holiday peace.

But since Chump wants to speculate, let's take a moment to go there, in the words of The Staple Singers, "I'll Take You There."

Many reported last week on a letter. MEIDASTOUCH NEWS did several reports on it, in fact. Here's CNN on the letter Jeffrey Epstein allegedly wrote to disgraced friend Larry Nassar:

The letter does not explicitly name Trump, but instead refers to “our president.” The message appears to have been sent in August 2019, the same month Epstein died by suicide. Trump was president at the time.

[. . .]

“Dear L.N.,” the letters reads, “As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good luck! We shared one thing … our love and caring for young ladies and the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our President also shares our love of young, nubile girls.” The letter makes another lewd reference to Trump’s treatment of women.

“Life is unfair,” the letter reads.

The Justice Dept, which released the letter, immediately began stating it wasn't real and that they were investigating it. A cruious waste of resouces since they're not verifing anything else they're releasing unless it cover Chump. Covers. Covers up for. That's our damn Justice Dept. It's not Chump's. He has personal lawyers and he can have them try to vet that letter.

Epstein's family doesn't believe he committed suicide. However he died, he died in prison while Chump was president. And Jeffrey's efforts to reach out to his former roll dog were shot down.

If you and I were in prison and were former friends of Chump, it he wasn't speaking to us, how might we try to get in touch with him?

Knowing that a letter would be read by authorities before it was released for mailing and knowing that Nasser's prison would alos read the letter before releasing it to Nasser, we could mention the sitting president in our letter and float an embarrassing claim. That would get a response.

And didn't it? Didn't Ghislaine get a meeting with Todd Blanche back in July, the Deputry Attorney General of the United States, when what she might say became a huge question mark?

So that could be why Epstein wrote the letter and it could also be why he's dead.

How did you spend your holiday? Hopefully, at peace and surrounded by love. Not everyone's so fortunate and, of course, some people make their own hell. Such was the case for our Convicted Felon Donald Chump. Katie Herchenroeder (MOTHER JONES) reports:

As the clock struck midnight on Christmas morning at one Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, at least one someone was stirring.

Starting in the early hours of December 25 and ending in the evening, President Donald Trump posted over 100 times on Truth Social.

Hours before Trump sat alongside first lady Melania Trump to answer the calls of children dialing into the North American Aerospace Defense Command, during which he told kids from Oklahoma that “we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa,” the president shared posts attacking Rep. Nancy Pelosi, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and former President Joe Biden, amongst several others.

At 12:01, Trump began the spree by sharing an over-eight-minute video by someone explaining “The DEMOCRAT FRAUD PYRAMID.”

Throughout the day, concluding around 7 o’clock, the president repeated many times that the 2020 election was stolen. He also shared a post that praised White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s handling of the “fake news,” another of someone who called Democrats a “criminal organization,” and one where Trump said, of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), “Throw her out of the U.S., Now!”

Hate was the message Chump chose to send. He's evil and he has hate on the mind. That's all he has to offer. He's probably creating hell on earth to prepare himself for being damned eternally in the pits of hell. There will be no pardon for Chump, no clemency. Just a lifetime in the pits of hell -- a sentence he deserves and a sentence he's earned. He has destroyed so many lives this year alone. There is no repentance from him, no acknowledgement of the harm he's done, no awareness. Just the desire to spread more hate.

He feeds on it and then he pukes it back up all over this still great country which will survive him. He will not survive his own presidency. All that hate churning in him? The idiots around him encourage it. They ignore the fact that he's morbidly obese. They ignore the fact that he eats garbage. They ignore the fact that golfing isn't exercise -- especially when you lean so heavily on the cart as Chump does. His already poor health is only getting worse and that will continue. Will a stroke result in a President JD Vance? That's highly likely as his health continues to deteriorate.

And, again, he invites cardiac problems with his weight, his eating habits and his inability to get off his fat ass and exercise. He can't even manage walking. All the footage of him in the last weeks, when he's trying to walk, it's a huge effort. And, yes, he's morbidly obese so that's a lot of weight to carry around but it's more than just his weight. His balance is off. His feet drag. A family that cared wouldn't have let it get this far. His family either is in denial or they're paying him back for the asshole he's always been. The monster who used to make Don Jr. cry. Don Jr. tries to play like their best friends, but there's not a woman that Don Jr.'s slept with who can't tell you the way he was damaged by his own father.

There will be no heartfelt tributes for Chump when he passes. There will be relief and there will be celebration. But no one outside of his dwindlilng cult is going to mourn him.

He's losing his hold on his cult and he's losing his hold on Republicans in Congress and on Republicans in this country. Why? Because you can't "Make America Great Again" by destroying democracy. And he hates democracy. It's a built-in for a number of trashy people who get wealthy. Look at Zuckerberg. Look at Bezos. They're garbage trash. Both know better and, during Chump's first term, did better. They weren't huge defenders of freedom (though Bezos pretended he was and cheap whores like Meryl Streep lied to make him come off like one). But they didn't join him in attacking our country. Now they have. Political conversion?

No, trashy greed. They're his partners in crime because one hand greases the other.

Chump will be out of office by January 2029.

Donald Chump made Florida his base because NYC society never welcomed him and never will. But he could find a home in all the other trash that moved from New York to Florida. Most of them, like him, that moved in disgrace. They're 'eccentrics' and 'oddballs.' They're Donald's people -- people who are so disgusting that all the money in the world can't wash the stink off him.

And history won't let Chump shake off his own stink. David Smith (GUARDIAN) explains:

Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “He promised to secure the border but the deportations have gone too far. City after city, community after community has expressed frustration and dismay at the tactics.”

Trump had also promised to fix the economy but his signature legislation, the “one big, beautiful bill” – rebranded as the Working Families Tax Cut Act – will, critics say, transfer wealth from the poor to the rich and strips healthcare from millions of people. Meanwhile the president’s disruptive policy centred on aggressive tariffs that caused market volatility and fuelled higher prices for consumers.

Schiller added: “The greatest self-inflicted wound that the president has brought on himself and the Republicans are the tariffs. In the first administration, they were primarily directed at China and you can make an argument about that.

“In this administration they are so much broader and more sweeping and it’s showing in supply chains, in consumer purchasing, in pricing, in every corner of people’s lives. Whether it’s a supermarket or it’s holiday gifting or whatever it is, they’re feeling it.”

Trump’s appointment of Robert F Kennedy Jr helped fan anti-vaccine sentiment, leading to a resurgence of preventable diseases and a politicisation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He withdrew the US from the Paris agreement and systematically dismantled climate science infrastructure.

At his political zenith, Trump’s embrace of authoritarianism appeared unstoppable. He quickly fired 17 independent inspectors general in apparent violation of federal law. He ordered the justice department to investigate perceived enemies including James Comey, the former director of the FBI, and Letitia James, the New York attorney general.

The administration targeted law firms that represented adversaries, stripping contracts and security clearances to extract multimillion-dollar settlements. Billions in federal funding were frozen for universities including Harvard and Columbia, leveraging antisemitism and DEI policies to force changes in curricula and leadership.

Trump also pursued an aggressive campaign against mainstream media, suing news organisations such as CBS/Paramount, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, pushing the Federal Communications Commission to revoke broadcast licences and restricting access for some outlets while promoting “Maga media”.

It reads like a rap sheet -- and it reads like that because he is a convicted crook and because he truly is enemy of democracy. And that's why his popularity fades just as his health does. Before our eyes, the braggart lose his hold and that's one thing we can all be grateful for as 2025 draws to a close.

Again, how did you spend your holiday because there was nothing peace & joy about how Chump spend his. He continued his attacks on immigrants and those mistaken for them. It's part of his campaign to spread hate all over the country. And his hate campaign was not put on hold for Christmas. Malcolm Ferguson (THE NEW REPUBLIC) reports:

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers in Yakima, Washington, spent Christmas Eve arresting a man in a Walmart parking lot—even taking his already purchased groceries for themselves.

Four ICE officers in masks and tactical gear can be seen in a video surrounding a man with a car full of food while he loads it into his car. A woman watching the arrest asked ICE if she could take down the phone number of the man’s wife to let her know her husband had been detained. The ICE agents refused.

“No, guess he should’ve complied,” an agent said.

The agents then start to divvy up the man’s groceries, as the bystander tells them they had previously detained and deported her husband.

Having kidnapped the man at Walmart, they then divvy up the man's groceries? Guess that's how the knuckle dragging gestapo decides who to harass -- based on who leaves the store with the most groceries. That's disgusting and a real world of justice would find those ICE agents behind bars for a long time. It's theft, don't pretend it's anything else.

And the American people are rejecting Chump's hate. Joe Kohut (ABC NEWS 16) reports from Pennsylvania:

Dozens of tiny points of light illuminated a street corner in downtown Danville.

Friends and strangers held candles in solidarity for Sergio Chavez Jimenez, a business owner detained this weekend by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Jimenez, 46, wasn't born in Danville, but they made him their own.

"What we were promised is that immigration enforcement would go after criminals...hardened criminals, murderers and rapists and drug dealers," said Trevor Finn, a Montour County commissioner who has been in contact with members of Jimenez's family. "What has happened instead is that they're picking up somebody like Sergio, (who) doesn't make this a worse place but makes this a better place for us."

"He's the type of person we really, really need to keep around here."

Jimenez is the proprietor of Amigos Pizzeria & Mexican Restaurant, a Mill Street eatery he opened around five years ago. Brought to the country from Mexico as a young boy, he's worked to try to get legal status. Now nearing 50, he's married, a father and a business owner, Finn said.

And they are rejecting it across the country. In New Haven? Richard Chumney (NEW HAVEN REGISTER) notes:

Billboards protesting Avelo Airline's contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport people who enter the U.S. illegally have returned to Interstate 95 after a legal battle.

The signs are located near Tweed New Haven Airport and urge travelers to reconsider flying with Avelo while the airline operates ICE deportation charter flights for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The signs are part of a larger nationwide campaign protesting deportation flights and the airlines that participate in the ongoing effort. On Sunday, demonstrators gathered at Tweed to protest Avelo’s contract with ICE.

The billboards were created earlier this month by Seth Miller, an aviation journalist and state lawmaker from New Hampshire. Miller said he funded the signs with his own money and through public donations.

“U.S. government agencies are snatching people off the street, moving them multiple times to evade the judicial process and putting them on planes before they can appeal,” Miller said in a statement. “Avelo is actively complicit in this process, placing detainees in dangerous environments."

People are outraged by what's happening and "people" include judges who know the law. One example there, Maxine Bernstein (THE OREGONIAN) reports:

A federal judge earlier this month ordered the immediate release of a Beaverton man who had been detained by federal officers when he was leaving his apartment to go to work.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers were targeting another man they believed was in the country illegally based on a nearly two decade-old photo and had staked out the Beaverton apartment for hours when Fernando Pichardo Medina emerged from the complex. Pichardo Medina got into his work van, went back to his apartment to grab his coffee and breakfast, returned to his truck, then realized he forgot his headphones.

“He sounds like me on most mornings,” U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane said.

Ashleigh Fields (THE HILL) notes:

Former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh (Ill.) on Friday decried the Trump administration’s immigration raids that were carried out throughout the Christmas holiday.

“I did my best yesterday to turn off the news from Christmas Eve on and not think about anything and not tweet anything,” Walsh, a frequent critic of President Trump who became a Democrat earlier this year, said on “The Social Contract” podcast.

“But I scrolled a few times and ICE, those masked federal agents, were out on Christmas Day detaining immigrants. They were out on Christmas Eve detaining immigrants. What the f—?” he added.

Exactly Jacob Crosse (WSWS) reports:

The claim that the operation targets “criminals” is a lie. ICE has shifted away from jail-based arrests to mass workplace raids at car washes, construction sites and food processing plants. Immigrants are targeted whose only “crime” is seeking work.

Political opposition is also being criminalized. Yaa’kub Vijandre, a longtime Dallas resident and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient, has been detained for nearly three months and faces deportation to a country he has not lived in since childhood. His “crime” is refusing to become an FBI informant and continuing to speak out against US imperialism and the genocide in Gaza. If this is grounds for detention, it is grounds for the persecution of anyone.

Those seized are routinely denied basic constitutional rights. The recent CBS 60 Minutes investigation, which was pulled from airing, documented the illegal rendition of nearly 300 immigrants to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison under the Alien Enemies Act. They were held for months without lawyers under conditions amounting to torture. Similar conditions have been documented at detention facilities across Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, New Jersey and Louisiana.

What is being built is a nationwide deportation machine. ICE acting director Todd Lyons has openly stated that the goal of the Trump administration is to become the “Amazon” of deportations: “Like Prime, but with human beings.”

Overcrowding and neglect have already produced a surge in detainee deaths. At least 30 immigrants have died in ICE custody this year, several under highly suspicious circumstances. Earlier this month over a 4-day span, four immigrants died in ICE for-profit prisons.

The following sites updated: