During Donald Trump's second presidency, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plans to redirect $3.9 billion away from Housing First " a program that got underway under President Bill Clinton during the 1990s. Trump officials are attacking Housing First as ineffective and claiming that it isn't doing enough to reduce homelessness, especially in major U.S. cities. But according to policy experts interviewed by the New York Times, the program is working much better than Trump allies appointed to HUD say it is. Times reporter Jason DeParle, in an article published on Christmas Day 2025, explains, "The administration called the policy a permissive approach that had let homelessness rise, while supporters said Housing First was backed by proven science. Housing First provides chronically homeless people long-term subsidized housing and offers, but does not require treatment for mental illness or addiction.
Lainey Landry's parents hung the stocking embroidered with her name on the mantel beside her older brothers' even though the 9-year-old is gone. She's still in the family Christmas card photo, but they added a message: "There's a brighter star in the Texas sky." And they placed two new ornaments on the tree, etched with lines from letters Lainey wrote home from Camp Mystic. "There's a lot of those firsts that are happening," Natalie Landry, 42, said as she sat in the sunroom of her Houston ranch house. Behind her, Lainey's name, scrawled in marker, was on the family chore chart, her tasks forever blank. For the Landrys, life since Lainey and 26 other girls died in the rising waters of the Guadalupe River nearly six months ago has been a succession of choices: What to preserve, what to change? What to remember? What to do with her bedroom, her siblings' grief and should they go to camp next summer?
President Donald Trump has said the US launched a "powerful and deadly strike" against the Islamic State (IS) group in north-western Nigeria. In a post on Truth Social, the US president described IS as " terrorist scum", accusing them of "targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians". He said the US military "executed numerous perfect strikes", without giving any further details. It is unclear what exactly targets were struck and when.
Laura Loomer, the far-right activist and ally of Donald Trump, said Democrats "were right" about the presence of neo-Nazis within conservative circles, warning that the Republican Party risks future electoral losses if it fails to confront extremism within its ranks. Read more
Stanislav Orlov (AKA the "Spaniard"), the founder of the far-right Espaniola unit composed of football hooligans and neo-Nazi volunteers fighting as a paramilitary force for Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, was executed by Russian security services as a "warning to others."
More trouble in MAGAville:
Nearly the entire legal and economic policy staff of the Heritage Foundation is departing the conservative think tank, and many will be taking up posts at Advancing American Freedom (AAF), a nonprofit founded in 2021 by former Vice President Mike Pence. The mass exodus represents a dramatic rebuke of Heritage President Kevin Roberts in the wake of his refusal to retract an October video defending Tucker Carlson for conducting a friendly interview with the antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes.
Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson runs focus groups and talks to voters all the time. She has noted a peculiarity with respect to voting. What the voters say they want and how they vote are often in conflict.
A 2020 clip of a Fulton County election worker testifying under oath that she observed 100% of military absentee ballots go to Biden is now resurfacing amid the new revelation that over 300,000 ballots were illegally counted in Fulton County. Official: "I estimated that somewhere between 80 and 90 percent were going to Joe Biden. Throughout the day it kept making me sicker and sicker every time I saw another Biden, Biden, Biden, and then I'm going through batches"100 percent of the batches were Biden. I find that statistically impossible."
US Representatives Mark Pocan (WI-02) and Madeleine Dean (PA-04) wrote a letter with 47 of their colleagues to President Donald Trump expressing serious concerns regarding Israeli actions in Gaza. Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement more than 700 times since it was signed less than three months ago.
"Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly. We no longer have Open Borders, Men in Women's Sports, Transgender for Everyone, or Weak Law Enforcement. What we do have is a Record Stock Market and 401K's, Lowest Crime numbers in decades, No Inflation, and yesterday, a 4.3 GDP, two points better than expected. Tariffs have given us Trillions of Dollars in Growth and Prosperity, and the strongest National Security we have ever had. We are respected again, perhaps like never before. God Bless America!!! President DJT"
President Donald Trump's Department of Justice has sued the District of Columbia to end a ban on assault-style weapons, particularly the AR-15.
Ethan Nielson and his sister, Ryley, had smiles on their faces as they looked up to the top of the Alberta Children's Hospital on Wednesday, watching superheroes rappelling down the brightly coloured building. Five months ago, Ethan was hit by a truck in his community of Cranston and suffered severe injuries.
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Since then, the nine-year-old has defied every odd that's been thrown at him, his mother Melanie Nielson says, earning him his own superhero name: Awesome Ethan.
In the first video in our Luke-Acts series, we explore the amazing events surrounding the birth of Jesus. The humble conditions of his family and their low status in Israelite society foreshadow the upside-down nature of Jesus' Kingdom. Read more
Samsung is heading into CES 2026 with a familiar message wrapped in a slightly stranger package. ... What makes this year different is not the stainless finish or the tighter installation tolerances. It is the decision to push Google Gemini directly into the kitchen, starting with a refrigerator that can see what you eat and tell the cloud about it. Yes, really.
Suze Lopez holds her baby boy on her lap and marvels at the remarkable way he came into the world. Before little Ryu was born, he developed outside his mom's womb, hidden by a basketball-sized ovarian cyst -- a dangerous situation so rare that his doctors plan to write about the case for a medical journal. Just 1 in 30,000 pregnancies occur in the abdomen instead of the uterus, and those that make it to full term "are essentially unheard of -- far, far less than 1 in a million," said Dr. John Ozimek, medical director of labor and delivery at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, where Ryu was born. "I mean, this is really insane."
Good health news for babies, kids and adults regarding the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination kept coming in December. Pregnant people who were vaccinated before becoming infected with the coronavirus had a lower risk of severe COVID-19 -- and their infants were less likely to be born prematurely -- than pregnant people who had not gotten vaccinated before an infection.
