"In the early months of 2025, Donald Trump sensibly began to roll back burdensome regulations that had targeted modern conveniences. Now the House has codified a Trump executive order so that the next Democratic president can't, with the stroke of an autopen, unwind the progress. Now it's up to the Senate to match the House's work and make the deregulatory directive law.

"Still fresh into his second term in the White House, the Trump administration, in the words of Marc Oestreich that are so enjoyable to read that we have to repeat them here, 'turned its chainsaws on the Department of Energy (DOE), cutting, canceling, or pausing a handful of onerous regulations set to hobble household and commercial appliances.'

"'Gone were efficiency mandates that have made dishwashers weaker, A.C. units feebler, and appliances more expensive,' Oestreich wrote in Reason. 'A new rollback offers a rare win for function over dogma.'"

Read the entire article here.

"NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned the European Union Monday that the alliance would not be able to defend itself without the United States' 'nuclear umbrella' and military assistance, amid heightened tensions over Greenland.

"Tensions in Europe escalated in recent weeks over President Donald Trump's threat to annex Greenland, which is a territory of NATO ally Denmark, but Trump has since backed off the threat of military force after creating the framework of an agreement to acquire Greenland last week.

"Rutte, who spoke with Trump at the World Economic Forum last week, told European lawmakers in Brussels that they would need to double their expected economic spending on defense if they hoped to defend themselves without the U.S."

Read the entire article here.

"This year, there has been a race to the bottom as Democratic politicians fuel the rage in our streets against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. That continued this last week when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz again rushed to judgment after a shooting, adding that the public should not treat Border Patrol or ICE officers as real 'law enforcement' officers. However, rock bottom was finally reached by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), who not only said that she does not consider ICE officers to be 'real law enforcement,' but raised the possibility of citizens shooting them under state law.

"First, the obvious. Mayes said, 'I put ["officers"] in air quotes because I don't think they are real law enforcement.' These are real law enforcement officers under federal law, enforcing federal law. Period. The effort by Walz, Mayes, and others to question their status or treat them as impostors is clearly designed to inflame citizens and encourage greater confrontations. It is a dangerous form of demagoguery. It is sending citizens into harm's way, encouraging them to impede federal operations involving the arrest of criminal suspects.

"Mayes's comments could justify many putting 'attorney general' in air quotes since she is not only misleading citizens about the status of these officers but also enabling the very rage that is causing the injury and death of individuals."

Read the entire article here.

"The United States officially withdrew from the World Health Organization on Thursday, slightly over a year after President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the WHO via an executive order on the first day of his second term. The decision was primarily due to the WHO's response during the COVID-19 pandemic, an occurrence Trump noted in his 2025 directive.

"'The United States noticed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2020 due to the organization's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states,' read the executive order.

"A one-year waiting period was required for the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO to be finalized."

Read the entire article here.

"In the run-up to the 2016 Democratic Party convention, FBI Director James Comey gained access to at least eight thumb drives containing large volumes of former Secretary Hillary Clinton's sensitive State Department emails -- as well as some from President Obama -- that appeared to have been compromised by foreign hackers.

Instead of investigating the explosive new batch of evidence revealed in recently declassified documents, Comey rushed ahead to close an investigation into whether Clinton improperly transmitted and received classified material from a private, unsecured server she kept in her basement. Comey also took the extraordinary step of bypassing the attorney general and personally exonerating Clinton of wrongdoing during an unusual press conference on July 5, 2016.

Just hours later, Obama invited Clinton -- who would be formally nominated as the Democrats' standard bearer three weeks later -- aboard Air Force One to help launch her multicity campaign tour, during which he officially endorsed Clinton as his preferred White House successor. 'I'm ready to pass the baton,' Obama declared, as he stumped for her for the first time.

Comey's decision to remove the cloud of scandal over Clinton's campaign, allowing the president to get on with the business of campaigning for her, is just one avenue of investigation the Justice Department is pursuing in wide-ranging probes whose targets include a figure largely unscathed by his era's scandals: former President Barack Obama."

Read the entire article here.

"Assuming his intention was to mark the first anniversary of his return to the White House, President Trump couldn't have picked a more suitable time or event to launch the Board of Peace for Gaza.

His decision to hold the launch Thursday at a Davos gathering of world leaders highlights Trump's role in trying to stop the war between Israel and Hamas and start the massive rebuilding of Gaza.

It also reflects his unprecedented global footprint and illustrates once again that he is an American president like no other.

As such, the event is something of a coming-out party that shows how his America First concept is now doing double duty on the international stage."

Read the entire article here.

"In exchange for gift cards, millions of Americans were unwittingly signed up for Obamacare by brokers who scalped their vital information and enrolled them in plans where premiums were paid by the American people, a research group says.

"'The government was sending massive checks to insurance companies who were making windfall profits on behalf of people who didn't use any health care,' Brian Blase, president of Paragon Health Institute, a healthcare policy group told Just The News.

"A 2021-2022 expansion of Affordable Care Act subsidies, passed through budget reconciliation, made coverage fully subsidized for individuals claiming incomes in a specific range. Paragon Health Institute investigated and estimated that by 2025, at least 6.4 million more people were enrolled in these zero-premium plans than were actually eligible.

"Zero premium means the enrollee did not pay for the plan -- it was paid via subsidies funded by taxpayers."

Read the entire article here.

"The protests in Iran, which ignited at the end of last year, continue to gain momentum despite the government's crackdown and growing death toll. Among the most remarkable protesters are young Iranian women, who epitomize the struggle against one of the world's most oppressive regimes.

"When we think of 'Iranian women,' images of those cloaked in hijabs and burqas may come to mind. Yet, it's important to remember that prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women in Iran enjoyed considerable personal freedom. They wore fashionable Western attire, proudly revealed their faces, arms, and legs in public, and had access to abundant educational opportunities. Many women earned college degrees, held professional jobs, started businesses, and socialized freely with men."

Read the entire article here.

"The Supreme Court on Wednesday revived an Illinois Congress member's lawsuit over a state mail-in ballot law, paving the way for political candidates nationwide to challenge election laws more easily in their states.

"The justices ruled 7-2 that Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.) has the legal right to sue Illinois over its ability to count mail-in ballots received after Election Day, a practice targeted by President Trump and his allies.

"Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion over the dissents of two of the court's liberals: Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

"'Candidates, in short, are not "mere bystanders" in their own elections,' Roberts wrote. 'They have an obvious personal stake in how the result is determined and regarded.'"

Read the entire article here.

"As a former California state assemblyman who spent four years on the Budget Committee, I had a front-row seat to Sacramento's obsession with 'pulling down' federal dollars, turning welfare programs into a free-for-all.

"Then-state Auditor Elaine Howle ran a lean operation, issuing spot-on reports about waste and vulnerabilities -- and getting ignored time and again. California maximized payments for SNAP, Medi-Cal, and unemployment insurance with little regard for fraud controls.

"That same reckless mindset has fueled scandals across blue states, with Minnesota serving as the appetizer to California's main course of fiscal disaster.

"Minnesota's Feeding Our Future fraud -- where crooks were convicted last March of pocketing $250-300 million in federal child nutrition funds by claiming phantom meals for kids -- was a mere fraction of what was to come.

"Today, Minnesota's likely fraud toll has ballooned, with nearly $9 billion in suspected Medicaid scams since 2018, involving fake providers, ghost services, and out-of-state hustlers. Despite 80 charged, 50-plus guilty pleas, and assets like luxury cars forfeited in the Feeding Our Future scam, recoveries are a drop in the bucket. State agencies have ignored red flags, paralyzed by fears of discrimination lawsuits -- or even just being labeled 'racists.' And that allowed fraudsters to run wild.

"But if Minnesota's the starter, California's the feast."

Read the entire article here.