Just about 349 days after the region was struck with horrific fires that wiped out destroyed thousands of homes and killed at least 30 people, the Los Angeles area faces the opposite type of cataclysm in the form of torrential downpours of up to 10 inches from an “atmospheric river” expected starting Tuesday into Wednesday, LAist reports with a live blog carrying the latest.

Some Angelenos will be home for Christmas if only in their dreams with mandatory evacuation orders near burn scars that can turn into mudslides – already 400 houses in the vicinity of recent wildfires are to be vacated as of 11 AM PDT and more such orders are expected in other areas.

That fucking sucks. Hearts out to our Los Angeles-area people. Stay safe, stay dry, stay off the roads. No shame in celebrating the holiday with neighbors instead of relatives on the other side of the region if it means you’re not going to get caught in a flash flood or a sudden rockslide.

Speaking to CNN’s Pamela Brown on Tuesday, Epstein survivor Haley Robson told the anchor on no uncertain terms that she’s “no longer supporting this administration. I am so disgusted with this administration. I think that Pam Bondi and Kash Patel both need to resign, and I would love to see number 47 get impeached over this.” So no, the release of the files is not being well received by at least one survivor. Robson had previously expressed cautiously hopeful, diplomatic support for Trump to do the right thing and expose his former close buddy’s crimes for the whole world to see.

“The Met has issued two new charges to Russell Brand, 50 (04.02.75), of Oxfordshire: One count of rape, One count of sexual assault. These new charges are in relation to two further women and are in addition to the charges issued to Brand in April 2025 which involved four women: Two counts of rape, One count of indecent assault, Two counts of sexual assault. Detectives began investigating in September 2023 after receiving a number of allegations, which followed reporting by Channel 4’s Dispatches and The Sunday Times. It was alleged that: In 1999 a woman was raped in the Bournemouth area. In 2001 a woman was indecently assaulted in the Westminster area of London. In 2004 a woman was orally raped and sexually assaulted in the Westminster area of London Between 2004 and 2005, a woman was sexually assaulted in the Westminster area of London.”

“Detective Chief Inspector Tariq Farooqi from the Metropolitan Police, who is leading the investigation, said: ‘The women who have made reports, including those connected to the two new charges, continue to receive support from specially trained officers. The Met’s investigation remains ongoing, and detectives urge anyone affected by this case, or anyone with information, to come forward and speak with police. A dedicated team of investigators can be reached via email at CIT@met.police.uk,'” says the London Metropolitan Police Department in a statement.

The new charges come just days after Brand took the stage at the Turning Point USA America Fest to ramble about conspiracies and shit. Guess it’s all just a hit job from a woke fascist UK regime.

Investors in video game publisher Electronic Arts on Monday approved Saudi Crown Prince and Mohammed Bonesaw’s bid to buy them out for $210 a share and handing Jared Kushner 1.1 percent of the deal for “brokering” it, Kotaku reports while adding that the publisher will also be stuck with $20 billion in debt because of said inflated share price, leaving lots of chopping and sawing to do.

Have you spoken to @MakisMedicine? Great things are happening with ivermectin fenben and medben. Peace to you and yours.

— Pikayla (@TheRealPikayla) December 23, 2025

Sincere thoughts and prayers for the former Senator. A godawful way to die and worth low-lighting the crass fucking stupidity of this reply that did not take that long to find scrolling down the responses – from an account followed by some MAGA Twitter luminaries not worth mentioning here.

Wrote one investigator to another on January 7th, 2020, when the DOJ was very much under the control of Trump and Bill Barr and prosectors were developing the sex trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell: “For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case. In particular, he is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was also present. He is listed as having traveled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric. On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers; on another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and then-20-year-old [REDACTED] On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case. We’ve just finished reviewing the full records (more than 100 pages of very small script) and didn’t want any of this to be a surprise down the road.” Not a good look.

“Dear [Larry Nasser], As you know by now, I have taken the “short route” home. Good luck! We shared one thing… our love & caring for young ladies at the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair. Yours, J Epstein,” reads a 2019 letter allegedly from Dirty Jeff to former US gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, just two weeks before Jeff was found dead in his cell at the federal lockup in Manhattan.

The Department of Justice has officially released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be…

— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) December 23, 2025

“To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already. Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims,” the tweet continued after the cutoff. This as though there weren’t fucking countless times that absolute bullshit “FD-1023” tips submitted to the FBI by random Russian and Turkish gangsters alleging that Joe Biden was running a political corruption syndicate the size of Microsoft and JP Morgan Chase combined were weaponized against him.

Among the latest batch of the Epstein files dumped late Monday night/early Tuesday is a June 2021 email between federal investigators following convicted felon Steve Bannon’s indictment in the We Build The Wall scam indicating that Bannon may have taken a previously non-public photo of future convicted felon President Trump with future convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

“I hope you’re well! I’m helping out with the responsiveness review for [We Build The Wall] and I’ve been looking through Steve Bannon’s iPhone 7 on Cellebrite. As I was going through the images from that phone, I found an image of Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell on Bannon’s phone (see screenshot from Cellebrite, attached). I discussed with Sunny and we wanted to flag this for you, in case it was of any importance to you, since you are on both cases,” someone wrote to someone, with “Cellebrite” referring to an Israeli-made law enforcement data forensics software platform.

The photo itself is completely blacked out for reasons unknown. Its timing and provenance are also unclear – as in whether Bannon himself took the pic and it was snapped on that actual phone as opposed to having been downloaded from iCloud from an earlier iPhone model he owned. If yes to both, then it would have had to have been taken after 2015 when the iPhone 7 was released.

Afghan Taliban backed-militants ambushed and shot dead five police officers on patrol in the Karak district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Pakistan on Tuesday, the AP reports.

“The Failing New York Times, and their lies and purposeful misrepresentations, is a serious threat to the National Security of our Nation. Their Radical Left, Unhinged Behavior, writing FAKE Articles and Opinions in a never ending way, must be dealt with and stopped. THEY ARE A TRUE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” posted a clearly enraged convicted felon President Trump at 12:32 AM on Tuesday.

Less clear is precisely what reporting he’s responding to as nothing from them particularly sticks out over the last day or so. There’s “Hundreds of Big Post-Election Donors Have Benefited From Trump’s Return to Office” laying out how the oligarchs who have spent on his stupid ballroom and other vanity projects have been rewarded with pardons and what not. But that basically spreadsheeting and compiling the public record of corruption that Trump never felt the need to hide. True, this is the same format of the article the last time Trump really lost his shit at the Times, but that one’s subject matter – the steady deterioration of his physical and mental health – is something he cannot hide.

Could be them quoting a retired Navy admiral mocking the new “Trump-class” fleet, saying “These ‘battleships’ will achieve none of these tactical goals,” but the guy, Mark Montgomery, a former director of operations at US Pacific Command, was named and on the record in the article. So you’d think Trump would at least scream at Montgomery AND the Times for platforming him, right?

Oh well. Maybe we’ll find out soon what the hell it was got him to throw yet another impotent tantrum at the paper he’s already suing for who the hell even remembers how many billions of dollars so now he’s gotta up the ante and declare them a threat to national security. Surely these harsh words toward the Times will get them to apologize and bow to his will once and for all.

Iran’s regime on Saturday announced they had Mike Penced yet another one of their citizens convicted of spying for Israel, the tenth so far this year since their June conflict, per Al-Jazeera, who report the latest condemned was a 27 year-old architecture student named Aghil Keshavarz who was arrested earlier this year for taking photos of a military headquarters building.

Weird that a guy interested in pursuing architecture as a career would be taking pics of a building.

They claimed they had a shit ton of other evidence against him, but international organizations say the usual MO is to just make shit up once they already have a suspect in custody.

Convicted felon President Trump and binge drinking date rapist Pete Hegseth are going to unveil the new “Trump-class battleship” to be built for the US Navy, per the Wall Street Journal.

“The Epstein Files Transparency Act imposes a clear legal duty on the US Department of Justice to produce the full and complete record the public demands and deserves. However, what the Department of Justice has released so far, and the manner in which it did so, makes one thing clear: someone or something is being protected. We do not know whom, what or why. But we do know this: We need no such protection. Accordingly, we call on President Trump to direct Attorney General Bondi to immediately release any remaining materials referring to, mentioning, or containing a photograph of Bill Clinton. This includes, without limitation, any records that may exist and are subject to disclosure under the Act, including grand jury transcripts, interview notes, photographs, and findings by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (as referenced under oath to Congress by President Trump’s first-term Attorney General).”

“Refusal to do so will confirm the widespread suspicion the Department of Justice’s actions to date are not about transparency, but about insinuation – using selective releases to imply wrongdoing about individuals who have already been repeatedly cleared by the very same Department of Justice, over many years, under Presidents and Attorneys General of both parties,” said a spokesman for former President Bill Clinton in a statement challenging them to bring it on.

In a move that could be seen as possibly counterproductive to what’s already an unpopular cause to everyone else in the state of Israel, members of the Peleg Yerushalmi sect of Ultra-Orthodox Jews on Sunday blocked traffic along Highway 4 east of the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak to protest the government’s moves towards ending the exemption from compulsory military service granted to them and other Haredi groups since the country’s founding in 1948, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Blocking traffic to draw attention to your refusal to serve two years – like the vast majority of the adults stuck in the gridlock you’re causing did – is a way to push back on the gradual end of the exemption, voided last year by the country’s Supreme Court. Might not be the best way however.

Fun fact: There had been an understandable, reasonable cause for implementing the exemption back in 1948 as after the Holocaust there were precious few religious scholars left – about 400 – to carry on Judaic tradition and there was plenty of reason to exempt them from constant wars with hostile Arab states on three sides. That was the loophole that was exploited to end with modern estimates of about 25 percent of fighting age men exempted from serving in the IDF which, it should be noted, does not necessarily mean every single soldier fights in combat every day.

This is friggin funny. Jerome Powell has Trump beat by 8 percent AND Jaydee, Marco, and Bobby Brainworms are also more popular than him in this Gallup survey? Lol. Also this is the Orange God Emperor’s second month in a row at 36 percent job approval with Gallup, hovering just above his all-time low of 34 percent he got right after the goddamned Capitol riot in January 2021.

Never one to forego an opportunity to live it up in style and on the taxpayer’s dime, FBI Director K$H Patel is being driven around in a mini fleet of custom-armored BMW X5s, MS Now reports.

“Government agencies, including the FBI, routinely evaluate, replace and update vehicle fleets based on usage, security needs or budgetary decisions,” said FBI PR agent Ben Williamson, confirming the reporting. “The specific decisions referenced in this article were evaluated partly as a way to save taxpayers millions by picking cheaper selections or making cost structures more efficient.”

MS Now dutifully notes that Williamson did not make any effort whatsoever to provide them with the relevant documentation let alone even name the prices. Also what the fuck, why BMW? If it were Cadillac Escalades then yeah that’d be an overpriced luxury model too but at least he’d be able to say they’re buying American and from a UAW shop in Michigan rather than a German brand that thrived under the Third Reich and assembled at a non-union plant somewhere in the south.

George Conway, the lawyer who in the mid-1990s while working pro bono for wealthy conservative interests quarterbacked the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit that ultimately led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment for lying under oath about a sexual relationship with then-22 year-old White House intern before he went all “RINO,” on Monday filed to run in the already pretty crowded Dem primary to replace retiring Manhattan Congressman Jerry Nadler, the New York Post reports.

Conway, who must’ve “moved” to Manhattan in the last few weeks, joins JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg, March for Our Lives organizer Cameron Kasky, and a handful of local and state pols in the field. If there’s any district where it’s not so carpet-baggy to run it’d be one south of 110th Street, so that attack line’s probably not going to work as well as it might’ve been elsewhere.

MAGA Congressman Russell Fry on Monday found Dems’ outcry over convicted felon President Trump unilaterally renaming the Kennedy Center after himself to be “incredibly rich coming from the party that spray paints monuments, desecrates memorials, tears down statues,” as though Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had personally dumped buckets of red paint on a Columbus statue.

But even they had then why’s that an argument for Trump breaking the law? Aren’t Republicans supposed to be more decorous and reverent than Dems? Is it just two “wrongs” make a right now?

A new national survey by Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio’s outfit finds Democrats leading Republicans 45 to 38 percent on the generic congressional ballot, newsworthy simply because it’s Trump’s pollster who found this. The polling itself is aimed at pitching some national AI safeguard legislation and the question is then framed with “If the Republican candidate for Congress (supported/opposed) all of the policies just discussed to create national standards to regulate Al, would you be more likely to vote for the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate?”

If yes then it’s GOP 45 to Dems 32 percent, if no it’s Dems 45 to GOP 29 percent. Yes, this is “push-polling” in the purest sense as well as industrial-scale focus grouping of some way to channel populist anger toward Big AI to try to salvage the midterms for Republicans. The only way it’s going to work is if Trump starts hanging out with his lowly servants in Congress more than he does his billionaire “friends” and that doesn’t seem all that likely. Likelier than any actual legislation happening, lol, but still it’s hard to see how this comes together as a campaign issue when (A) Dems are going to say the same thing and more convincingly so and (B) the AI companies can just buy off the Republican candidates one by one and neutralize the threat of any legitimate regulation.