I still hear Hillary Clinton's ghoulish giggles, "We came. We saw. He died." The empire's atrocities continue unabated.

Mamdani calls Trump on Venezuela to oppose ‘pursuit of regime change’
The new mayor of New York City didn’t talk much about the president in his first couple days in office. That changed Saturday.
By Sahalie Donaldson

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he called President Donald Trump to voice his opposition to the U.S military’s strike on Caracas and subsequent capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro – a move the new mayor described earlier as "an act of war and a violation of federal and international law."

“I called the president and spoke with him directly to register my opposition to this act,” Mamdani said at an unrelated press conference Saturday. “And to make clear it was an opposition based on being opposed to a pursuit of regime change, to the violation of federal, international law and a desire to see that be consistent each and every day.”

The call, which a City Hall spokesperson said lasted a few minutes, took place early in the afternoon – a few hours after Trump held his first news conference in wake of the early Saturday strike. Neither Mamdani nor a spokesperson for the mayor provided insight into how Trump responded.

Mamdani’s condemnation of the Republican president on Saturday marked a sharp departure from his public statements in the past few days. Prior to news of the military operation breaking, Mamdani had only mentioned Trump once since taking office on Thursday. And that had been a glancing comment during his inaugural address about how some Trump supporters voted for him – words intended to be unifying, not condemning.

https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2026/01/mamdani-calls-trump-venezuela-oppose-pursuit-regime-change/410441/

It’s not about drugs. If it was, Trump wouldn’t have pardoned one of the largest narco traffickers in the world last month.

It’s about oil and regime change.

And they need a trial now to pretend that it isn’t. Especially to distract from Epstein + skyrocketing healthcare costs.

Viewers Slam Fox News Host for Attacking Biden’s Holiday Vacation

Martin Holmes

Viewers have called out Fox News for “grasping at straws” on Tuesday night (December 30), as OutKick host Tomi Lahren mocked former President Joe Biden for taking a holiday vacation.

“You’ll never guess where Joe Biden was spotted… spoiler alert, he’s on vacation!” Lahren said on Tuesday’s edition of Hannity, in which she was filling in for regular host Sean Hannity, who himself was on vacation.

Hannity and his fiancée, Ainsley Earhardt, spent the Christmas holidays in Paris with both of their kids. Earhardt shared photos from the vacation on Instagram on Sunday (December 28), showing the blended family posing for snaps in front of various landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower.

Lahren seemingly didn’t pick up on this irony as she blasted the 83-year-old Biden for taking a Caribbean holiday trip.

https://www.tvinsider.com/1236508/fox-news-tomi-lahren-attacks-biden-holiday-vacation-sean-hannity/

The MetroCard Never Got Its Due
A symbol of New York is gone.

By Matteo Wong

On a chilly December morning, I descended a flight of stairs and entered the New York Transit Museum. Housed in a decommissioned subway station in downtown Brooklyn, the museum was packed with elementary-school children on a field trip. All around me, tour guides shepherded groups of them through the various exhibits. Later on, I heard one guide ask if any of the students knew how to pay for the subway. “You tap a phone,” a child volunteered.

For decades, the default answer has been something else: You swipe a MetroCard. Something like a flimsy yellow credit card, the MetroCard has bound together nearly everyone in the city—real-estate moguls and tenants, Mets and Yankees fans, lifelong New Yorkers like myself and new arrivals from Ohio. Any tourist who visited New York inevitably got one. But now the MetroCard era is about to end. Today is the last day you can purchase a card.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the organization that operates the city’s public-transit system, has for years been phasing out the MetroCard in favor of contactless payment—tapping your phone or a credit card, much as you would at any store. The new system, known as OMNY (“One Metro New York”), will bring together the benefits of technological progress: tens of millions of dollars in savings for both riders and the MTA each year, shorter lines, less plastic waste. Many other large metro systems have already fully transitioned to tap-and-go; in this sense, New York is behind the times.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/12/metrocard-farewell-new-york-subway/685276/

Hey Jon Stewart, Jokes About Wearing Masks Aren’t Funny
Critics of the host say he’s a hypocrite.
Julia Métraux

Over the weekend, Covid-cautious individuals shared clips on social media of Jon Stewart punching down on people who are masking, who are presumably doing so to protect themselves from Covid, the flu, and other infectious diseases that are spreading across the United States.

On the December 11 episode of the podcast The Weekly Show With Jon Stewart, guest Tim Miller of The Bulwark said there have to be at least two people at fellow guest Jon Favreau’s workplace wearing masks because it’s a progressive organization. Stewart responded, “There’s always two, and you always say, ‘Oh, are you sick?’ And they go, ‘Uh, I don’t want to talk about it.'”

Disappointed to see Jon Stewart & co joke about masking in public. I do it for my medically fragile daughter (Batten Disease). People not masking properly led to her getting pneumonia, which led to her being on life support, which led to me getting price quotes on her cremation just in case.

— Philip Palermo (@palermo.bsky.social) 2025-12-29T03:31:53.258Z

First of all, asking people why they are masking is invasive behavior. No one randomly owes you information about their health, their loved one’s health, or, understandably, just wanting to avoid Covid, which is the only way to prevent Long Covid. As I’ve also previously reported, disabled people in New York’s Nassau County have reported being harassed after the county passed a mask ban. Cancer patients have also told their stories of being questioned about why they’re masking. Even before the start of the Covid pandemic, populations including cancer patients and organ transplant recipients have been encouraged to mask by healthcare professionals.

“Sad that Jon Stewart and friends have become just more white liberals who enjoy punching down at marginalized people who are just doing our best to survive,” Karistina Lafae, a disabled author and essayist, told me. “Those of us who have Long COVID, who have watched family and friends die of COVID, we are being mocked for taking common-sense precautions against illness and further disability.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/hey-jon-stewart-jokes-about-wearing-masks-arent-funny/