Tuesday, December 17, 2024

December 17, 2024

Good morning,

Welcome to the news for independent thinkers

Leading the News . . .

Shooter at school in Wisconsin ID'd as 15-year-old girl . . . The teen girl who fatally shot a student and teacher and left two more pupils clinging to life at a private Christian school in Madison, Wis., on Monday has been identified. Police said Natalie "Samantha" Rupnow, a 15-year-old student at the K-12 Abundant Life Christian School, brought a handgun to campus and opened fire around 11 a.m. inside a classroom during study hall. The teenage student and teacher were pronounced dead at the scene while another teacher and five more students were wounded. Two of the students are in critical condition with life-threatening injuries. New York Post

Politics

Judge rejects Trump's bid to toss conviction . . . A judge Monday refused to throw out President-elect Donald Trump's hush money conviction because of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling on presidential immunity. But the overall future of the historic case remains unclear. Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan's decision blocks one potential off-ramp from the case ahead of the former and future president's return to office next month. His lawyers have raised other arguments for dismissal, however. It's unclear when — or whether — a sentencing date might be set. Associated Press

Trump threatens to fire federal employees working from home . . . President-elect Donald Trump blasted federal "work from home" policies Monday, calling them "ridiculous" and stirring up pushback from federal employee unions. "If people don't come back to work, come back into the office, they're going to be dismissed," Trump told reporters during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago. Just the News

From big tech to the media, the rush to kiss Trump's ring is on . . . Tech titans are pouring millions of dollars into his inauguration and parading through West Palm Beach for meetings with the president-elect. Foreign leaders are seeking to curry his favor through phone calls and photo-ops. Liberal newscasters are rushing to Mar-a-Lago to mend fences with the man who painted them as "enemies of the people." Time Magazine just named him "Person of the Year" — and dozens of business executives came out to watch him ring the New York Stock Exchange bell to celebrate. Politico

Trump has received a clear mandate, so the tone in Washington and among the business elite toward trump has changed from "I'll get you" to "What can I get you?"

Overwhelming Majority of Americans Support RFK Jr.'s Food Industry Reforms . . . almost 8 in 10 American adults said they support requiring nutrition education in federally funded medical schools, while 74 percent support banning certain additives, including dyes, from the nation's food supply, according to a YouGov poll. Banning food additives has widespread support across the political spectrum, the poll finds, with 74 percent of Democrats and 81 percent of Republicans supporting such a plan. Breitbart

Culture

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Sings on Broadway in Reimagined Queer 'Romeo and Juliet' . . . Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared on stage Saturday in her one-time-only debut in Broadway's & Juliet, a reimagined queer musical production of Romeo and Juliet. Jackson strutted her stuff, dancing, singing, and acting in the production on December 14 at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, becoming the first sitting Supreme Court Justice to appear in a Broadway play. Of her one-night role, Jackson says, "I think that it means that anything is possible." Breitbart

Apparently, yes, anything is possible.

The Latest Woke Triumph: Feminist Spelling for Third Graders . . . The team behind the Scripps National Spelling Bee whacked a hornet's nest when it identified specific words for potential competitors to ponder. Its list of "50 challenging third grade words" includes giraffe, groceries, and jigsaw. So far, so good. But beneath the "preferred spelling" of women, a permitted option appears: "womyn." Daily Signal

Biden administration spent tens of millions helping people with HIV overcome 'racism' . . . The grants' descriptions range from claiming that structural racism makes it more difficult for minorities to access healthcare, thereby exacerbating the harm caused by HIV, to arguing that the stress allegedly caused by existing as a minority in the United States is enough to adversely affect the health of black and Latino people. Washington Examiner

DEI backlash: Half of elite professors reject mandatory campus pledges . . . The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression conducted a three-month survey of 6,269 faculty members at 55 universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Ohio State and Texas A&M. Fifty percent of respondents said requiring academics to sign a written commitment to racial diversity as a condition of hiring was "never/rarely justifiable," and 52% said the same for promotion and tenure. Washington Times

National Security

Former Google CEO: A time will come to consider 'unplugging' AI system . . . Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the power of artificial intelligence (AI) can reach a "dangerous" point in the future and that humanity should be ready to step away from it should the time come. "When the system can self-improve, we need to seriously think about unplugging it," he said Sunday on ABC News. Schmidt looked ahead at what AI can be capable of, believing that computers will eventually be able to define their own objectives. The Hill

The question needs to be asked, now, whether we are creating a new species that will evolve from servant to master.

International

Biden tries to take credit for Israel's success . . . Biden administration officials have claimed credit this week for the ongoing collapse of the Iranian axis, seeking to recast their role in a series of Israeli victories that they worked to thwart. Hours after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria on Sunday, President Joe Biden touted "the unflagging support of the United States" for Israel's war against "Iran and its proxies," Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Biden noted that Israel had weakened the coalition of tyrants and terrorists in the region to a point where it became "impossible ... for them to prop up the Assad regime." Washington Free Beacon

A bomb killed a Russian general in Moscow. A Ukrainian official says secret service was behind it . . . A senior Russian general was killed Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow. A Ukrainian official said the service carried out the attack. Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military's nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed as he left for his office. Kirillov's assistant also died in the attack. On Monday, Ukraine's Security Service, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons. Associated Press

Bashar Assad, drug lord . . . The fall of Syria's Bashar al-Assad overturned the most profitable drug-smuggling network in the Middle East, exposing the former regime's role in manufacturing and trafficking pills that fueled war and social crises across the region. Captagon, a methamphetamine-like drug that has been produced for years in Syrian labs, helped the Assad regime amass huge wealth and offset the impact of punishing international sanctions, while also allowing allies such as Lebanon's Hezbollah militia to profit from its trade. Wall Street Journal

Money

Standing beside Trump, Japanese billionaire pledges major US investment . . . With President-elect Donald Trump pitching the US as a great place for business, firms around the world are figuring out how to answer his call. Japanese tech billionaire Masayoshi Son, a colourful character known as much for his major flops as his big accomplishments, presented one path on Monday, appearing with Trump at a press conference and pledging to invest $100bn over four years and create 100,000 jobs. BBC

You should also know

Feds say New Jersey drones are mix of police, hobbyists and commercial UAVs . . . Federal authorities on Monday delivered their most thorough verdict yet about the drone sightings in New Jersey in recent weeks, saying some are law enforcement, some are commercial flights, some are hobbyists and many are actually airplanes, helicopters or even stars mistaken for drones. The statement came after the feds said they had deployed drone-detecting technology and "trained visual observers" to get to the bottom of the mysterious flights. Washington Times

CNN Suggests Clarissa Ward Got Duped By Alleged War Criminal . . . CNN suggested on Monday that a segment that was produced by correspondent Clarissa Ward in Syria last week — where her team helped free a man who was locked inside of a jail cell — was false because Ward had been duped. The man "was a former intelligence officer with the deposed Syrian regime, according to local residents, and not an ordinary citizen who had been imprisoned, as he had claimed," CNN said. Daily Wire

Tucker Carlson launches nicotine pouch line . . . Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson was joined by friends and supporters Thursday evening outside of Nashville, Tennessee at the launch of his new nicotine pouch line, ALP, where he explained how Zyn's attack on him led to the creation of his rival product. Carlson announced the launch of his joint project with Turning Point Brands in September, stating that no nicotine consumer should be "forced to buy nicotine pouches from soulless, pronoun-loving, politicized conglomerates that despise them and their culture." Daily Caller

Global warming creates Scandanavian wine industry . . . Hundreds of commercial vineyards are now dotted across Denmark, Sweden, and even Norway, as a first generation of professional winemakers transform what was once a niche hobby into a small but flourishing industry. "People have found out that it is actually possible to grow wine in Denmark, so newcomers are coming, year after year," says Nina Fink, as she shows the BBC her three-hectare winery, Vejrhøj Vingård. BBC

Guilty Pleasures

Trump adviser who collapsed at gala jokes he 'took' his 'Biden impression too far' . . . A campaign adviser to President-elect Donald Trump jokingly compared his fainting episode at a recent Republican gala to an "impression" of President Joe Biden. While giving a speech at the 112th Annual New York Young Republican Club Gala on Sunday night, Alex Bruesewitz began to slur his words and mumble incoherently before collapsing to the floor. Washington Examiner

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