SINCERETALK

Revellers around the world toasted the start of 2026 on Thursday, bidding farewell to a volatile year when temperatures soared, US President Donald Trump upended global trade, and the brutal conflict in Ukraine raged. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/byIeQp8 via sinceretalk

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) told MS NOW that Republicans are likely doomed to lose the House in 2026 thanks to President Donald Trump. [Trump] still commands a lot in the party, but I think as time goes on, as the economy doesn't recover, as we see healthcare costs increase, … I think there are Republicans who are beginning to say ‘enough,’ Kasich told NYU law professor and MS NOW legal analyst Melissa Murray. “And, remember, everybody who runs for reelection, they can't run on Trump.” Kasich said he actually thought the Democrats were going to win the House “a long time ago,” but the state of the economy was now a driving factor, as well as heartless, very visible ICE raids and arrests of people “who have broken no U.S. law.” “When you take a look at these two ladies who won the governor's races, [ in New Jersey and Virginia ] they were talking about affordability. These were not fringe issues,” Kasich added, warning Democrats that they “have a challenge … to st...

A group of South American shamans known for making bold end-of-year predictions are now issuing an ominous warning about President Donald Trump's heath. The Daily Beast reported Tuesday that during the annual ritual in which Peruvian shamans issue forecasts about world leaders, the shamans singled out the 79 year-old Trump and warned Americans that a significant health event could impact the president in the next 12 months. Shamans made their prediction about Trump while holding his portrait and wearing traditional Andean robes. They also bore portraits of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. "The United States should prepare itself because Donald Trump will fall seriously ill," said shaman Juan de Dios Garcia in the Peruvian capital city of Lima. The shamans are not always correct in their predictions, as they incorrectly predicted in 2024 that a nuclear war would break out in the Middle East as a resu...

President Donald Trump's administration recently intervened to help a disgraced far-right YouTube commentator get back into the United States — even though her channel was exposed as a Russian media front. The Bulwark's Will Sommer reported Monday that Canadian citizen Lauren Chen of Tenet Media reportedly reentered the U.S. over the Christmas holiday, even though her work visa was suspended in 2024 amid an FBI investigation into her YouTube channel. Tenet Media's funders had been linked to the Russia-funded RT network, and were accused of funneling approximately $10 million to Chen's company, which also housed prominent pro-Trump pundits like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin. Sommer noticed a post to Chen's Instagram account on Christmas Day, where she celebrated that she was able to return to Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, Liam Donovan after securing a visa from Trump's State Department. Chen specifically thanked "Joe Rittenhouse at t...

Should Democrats retake the White House in 2028 and have majorities in both chambers of Congress, one legal expert is arguing there are numerous ways the six-member conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) could be brought to heel. In a Monday essay for Slate , legal writer and attorney Mark Joseph Stern directly addressed a reader's concern that no matter what laws Democrats may try to pass under a potential new Democratic majority government, the Supreme Court could simply strike those laws down. Stern countered that there are several ways to re-establish Congress' powers and prevent SCOTUS from acting as an unelected super-legislature. First, Stern argued that Congress should immediately grant statehood to both Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. as part of a "suite of structural reforms." He argued this was a necessary step to take in order to make sure that sparsely populated conservative states like South Dakota and Wyoming aren...

President Donald Trump is now asking his supporters to donate money by implying Democrats could steal future "tariff rebate checks" and give them to undocumented immigrants. Liberal group Meidas Touch initially reported on the email , which told supporters: "Here are 3 reasons I need YOU to STOP THE BOIL NOW BEFORE MY END-OF-YEAR FUNDRAISING DEADLINE." The email went on to suggest that Trump wanted to send $2,000 checks to "workers" using revenue generated from his tariffs, though he claimed Democrats planned to "send your check to illegals if you don't respond in the next hour!" The solicitation warned that control of the House and Senate were both on the line, and that supporters' money was needed for "STOPPING COMMUNISM," using Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (D) as examples. The email made no mention of Trump's public embrace of Mamdani in the Oval Office last mont...

One of the most notable characteristics of 2025 has been the shamelessness of the billionaire class and the conspicuousness of its corruption. For many years, whenever I’ve warned that an increasing portion of the nation’s wealth is falling into the hands of an ever-smaller number of people, the moneyed interests have responded: “But that’s just the free market ,” or “the free market has decided they deserve it.” Rubbish. There’s no such thing as a “free market” to begin with. Today’s so-called “free market” is the outcome of political decisions over monopolization, labor organization, private property, finance, trade, taxes, and much more. Who’s behind these political decisions? Increasingly, the same small number of ultra-rich who have gained disproportionate influence over our politics. They’ve created five ways for themselves to accumulate a billion dollars or more. 1. First, exploit a monopoly. Does Jeff Bezos deserve his billions because he founded and built Amazon? No....

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet Donald Trump in Florida, with the US president pushing to move to the next stage of the fragile Gaza truce plan. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/tWTPQui via sinceretalk

Families of victims killed in the Bondi Beach mass shooting called for an independent national inquiry into antisemitism in Australia, and alleged failures in policing, intelligence and policy they say enabled the attack. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/CwnPj6b via sinceretalk

Veteran Republican strategist Karl Rove on Saturday delivered a stark warning for President Donald Trump and the GOP as the 2026 midterm elections loom. “The president will end this year at the lowest approval rating in modern times for a president … in the first year after his inauguration," Rove told Fox News. "He has got to get those numbers up." “I am convinced a large part of it is going to be patiently explaining what it is he has done, explaining what is he wants to do particularly with regards to health care in a way that the American people can put their hand around it,” he added. Rove urged the president to “lower the expectations, and over-deliver” in his messaging to the American public. “Under-promise and over-deliver ought to be the goal of the next year,” Rove said. “Americans are not feeling the economy is great. For him to stand up and say — as he did first in Pennsylvania, then in North Carolina — that ‘everything is great,’ it does not res...

Employees at the U.S. Department of State are hesitant “to give advice that the political appointees might not want to hear” as officials "become guarded about what they say" under President Donald Trump, multiple former State Department lawyers told HuffPost. In an article published Saturday, HuffPost reports “a severe and unusual fear of being punished for doing their jobs has spread among staff at the State Department’s legal office, bolstering concerns about how the Trump administration is crafting foreign policy.” According to the report, lawyers at the Office of the Legal Adviser at State (“L”), fear repercussions “if they suggest the administration’s plans could break domestic or international law.” The president’s “drastic” international moves — including “strikes on accused drug boats in the waters around South America” — have drawn particular concern among former State Department employees, according to the report. “It’s really difficult to imagine how a...

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who was called a “lowlife” by President Donald Trump on Christmas Day, has turned the tables on the president, the Guardian reports. Massie drew the president’s ire after he defected from Republicans earlier this year by co-authoring a law requiring the federal government to release files related to the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “Trump has endorsed a retired US navy seal, Ed Gallrein, to run against Massie in the Republican primary,” according to the Guardian. Trump, on Christmas, derided the congressional campaign for the Epstein files as a “scam” and called Massie “one lowlife ‘Republican.’" “That prompted Massie to reply on X: ‘Imagine celebrating a blessed Christmas with your family … suddenly phones alert everyone to the most powerful man in the world attacking you … for fulfilling his campaign promise to help victims!’” The Guardian reports. In a post asking for support against the president, Massie quote...

Major General Johan Booysen has slammed the Nkabinde comission of inquiry as ‘self-serving’, warning it risks reviving the withdrawn Cato Manor case and wasting millions of taxpayers’ money. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/kU1PYe9 via sinceretalk

President Donald Trump's signature trade policy is wreaking havoc on the economy of one of the reddest states in the country, according to the Wall Street Journal. In a Friday editorial , the Journal argued that the recent decision by the Jim Beam distillery to halt production at its Claremont, Kentucky facility for all of 2026 can be chalked up to Trump's tariffs. While the distillery didn't outright blame tariffs for its decision, the Journal pointed out that Canada has continued to hold off on its importing of Kentucky bourbon, which has dealt a significant blow to the Bluegrass State's signature export. "After Mr. Trump picked a tariff fight with Canada, the country responded by pulling U.S. spirits from its shelves. The bilateral relationship has recovered some, but exports didn’t," the editorial read. The Journal chronicled how Canada eventually rolled back its retaliatory tariffs on imported Kentucky bourbon after Trump softened his tariffs on t...

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has become a frequent target of President Donald Trump's ire, with the president repeatedly singling him out due to his role in advancing the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act. Now, Massie is cashing in on those attacks. Trump spent much of Christmas Day posting to his Truth Social platform , posting missives against his political opponents and rehashing debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss. But Massie was also included in Trump's posting spree, with the president at one point calling the Kentucky Republican a "lowlife," according to The Hill . "Imagine celebrating a blessed Christmas with your family… suddenly phones alert everyone to the most powerful man in the world attacking you… for fulfilling his campaign promise to help victims!" Massie wrote on his official X account after including a screenshot of Trump's attack on him. "Please support me," Massie added, with a link to his ...

Although Donald Trump's victory in the United States' 2024 presidential election was far from the "landslide" he claims it was — he defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by roughly 1.5 percent in the national popular vote — the now-president showed his political resilience. Trump was facing four criminal indictments, one of which found a jury convicting him on 34 felony counts. But he not only won the popular vote for the first time — he also made inroads with Latinos, Generation Z, independents, swing voters, and the tech industry. Trump has ran for president four times, starting with a marginal Reform Party campaign in 2000. And 2024 was his most successful thanks in part, according to polls, to his heavy emphasis on the economy and inflation. But the New York Times' Michelle Goldberg, in her December 26 column , argues that Trump is doing everything he can to sabotage his own presidency. "It has been a gruesome year for those who see Donald Trump...

The loudest question in Washington right now is whether Donald Trump is going to invade Venezuela. The quieter, and far more dangerous, reality is this: he probably won’t. Not because he cares about Venezuelan lives, but because he has found a strategy that is cheaper, less politically risky at home, and infinitely more devastating: economic warfare. Venezuela has already survived years of economic warfare. Despite two decades of sweeping US sanctions designed to strangle its economy, the country has found ways to adapt: oil has moved through alternative markets; communities have developed survival strategies; people have endured shortages and hardship with creativity and resilience. This endurance is precisely what the Trump administration is trying to break. Rather than launching a military invasion that would provoke public backlash and congressional scrutiny, Trump is doubling down on something more insidious: total economic asphyxiation. By tightening restrictions on Venezue...

Given how the Republicans who run Congress let health insurance premiums for over 24 million Americans explode by not acting last week before going on vacation, it appears former Congressman Alan Grayson was right . The GOP Healthcare Plan is simple and straightforward: “Don’t get sick.“If you do get sick, die quickly.” And it appears Trump is handily helping us all along with that “die quickly” part, promoting both cancer-causing chemicals in our environment and food supply as well as pushing for more greenhouse gasses to kill more of us with droughts, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires via climate change. The EPA requires the country’s largest industrial facilities to report their greenhouse gas emissions, which have been a major source of information for those tracking America’s progress toward mitigating climate change. Now, Trump’s proposing to gut that requirement, so we’ll no longer know how badly Big Industry is polluting our skies and wilding our weather. Additionally, h...

President Donald Trump said US forces conducted “powerful and deadly” strikes Thursday against Islamic State militants in northwestern Nigeria, weeks after he warned against any systemic assault on Christians in the country. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/8xHpdUb via sinceretalk

President Donald Trump inserted himself into the holidays while speaking with children on the phone about ‘tracking Santa’ on the “NORAD Santa Tracker Hotline.” One child announced that she was “from Pennsylvania,” which Trump took as a cue to announce his two election victories and one false election claim. “Pennsylvania is great,” Trump told the child. “We won Pennsylvania, actually three times. We won it in a landslide, so I love Pennsylvania!” Trump did not win Pennsylvania in 2020, as he claimed. Biden reclaimed the state with a 1.16 percent margin after Trump’s victory in 2016. But because of the delayed vote results with in-person ballots being counted first, it appeared early on that Trump had taken the state. Trump watched his win slip away as mail-in votes were tallied through the night. Social media users were quick to blast the president for making this and other calls from small children about himself and his politics, however. Meidas Touch Editor-in-Chief Ron Fili...

Politico reporter Aaron Pellish reported that Republicans are reaching for the Minnesota governor’s seat this year, but the quality of their ball could be a problem. “Minnesota has been the white whale for Republicans in the Trump era. And 2026 could be the year they finally break through — if President Donald Trump and one of the most prolific peddlers of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election don’t sink their chances,” Pellish wrote. Republicans hope to unseat Democratic Gov. Tim Walz next year as he seeks a third term. But Trump’s attacks on Walz and his racist assault on Minnesota’s Somali community is now getting paired with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s entrance into the race. “When the president comes in with a flamethrower and just throws that type of rhetoric, there’s no oxygen, and there’s no space for the Republican to offer suggestions and to be thoughtful in that space, because the rhetoric of the president just paints them into a corner,” said Minnesota GOP forme...

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released another tranche of files relating to the two federal investigations into convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The documents are heavily redacted, though one expert recently discovered a trick to read some of the redacted materials. In a video posted to his Bluesky account , Jake Broe — a veteran of the U.S. Air Force who worked as a nuclear and missile operations officer — discovered that certain redactions can be read by simply copying and pasting them into Microsoft Word. "The people at Trump's Justice Department are so stupid they used Adobe Acrobat to black out the documents," Broe wrote in his post. Broe's video showed him copying several paragraphs from one document in the DOJ's Epstein library from the "Court Records" section. While the paragraph Broe selected includes several redactions, all of the redactions were removed after Broe pasted the paragraph in question into a Word docume...

One longtime U.S. Navy expert is loudly denouncing President Donald Trump's plan to building new "Trump-class" Navy vessels carrying nuclear weapons. In a Monday essay for The Atlantic , Tom Nichols – a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College — scoffed at Trump's announcement, and argued that the vessels he wants to build are already considered obsolete by modern military standards. He noted that neither Trump nor Navy Secretary John Phelan (an investor who has no experience in the Navy) appeared to understand what a 21st-century Navy truly needs. According to the Wall Street Journal, the new "Trump-class" frigates are the proposed replacement for the Arleigh-Burke class destroyers , whose appearance Trump has repeatedly maligned. Nichols noted that Trump is incorrect in calling them "battleships," as destroyers and frigates are much smaller than actual battleships. "Destroyers and frigates are less r...

President Donald Trump once again repeated claims that his administration has lowered drug prices by hundreds and even thousands of percentage points — despite such price reductions not being mathematically possible . During a Monday press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said he was "bringing down drug prices, like, at a level that has not even been thought of." He then quoted figures that, if true, would mean drugmakers are paying Americans to take their products (as a price reduction of 100 percent would make the drug free). "Think of it. By 1,000 percent, by 1,200, 1,300, 1,400 percent in some cases," he said. "A drug that sells for $10 in London is costing $130 in New York. We are bringing it down to $20 ... You can do your own math. But it’s 2,000 percent, 3,000 percent. It's pretty amazing." Trump's comments prompted widespread ridicule from various experts, journalists and commentators. Tahra Hoops, who is the director of economic anal...

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the lead Republican behind the push for Epstein files disclosure, told the New York Post on Monday that he is considering a "viable backup plan" to get around the Department of Justice's (DOJ) significant redactions and publicly expose the notorious sex trafficker's accomplices. Massie co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act alongside Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) The bill, which passed in the House 427-1 and by unanimous consent in the Senate, required the DOJ to release all of its files pertaining to the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein by Friday. As the day arrived, the DOJ said that not all files would be ready in time, which violated the law's 30-day statutory deadline. Many of the files were also found to be heavily redacted , revealing seemingly no information about unknown conspirators, reinforcing suspicions that powerful individuals were being protected. A photo featuring President Donald Trump was also pulled from...