Your First Look at Today's Top Stories

Having trouble viewing this email? View the web version.

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Southern California New Year’s Eve Terror Plot Thwarted by FBI

The announcement came from Attorney General Pam Bondi: After an intense investigation, the Department of Justice, working with our @FBI, prevented what would have been a massive and horrific terror plot in the Central District of California (Orange County and Los Angeles). The Turtle Island Liberation Front—a far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-government, and anti-capitalist group—was preparing to conduct a series of bombings against multiple targets in California beginning on New Year’s Eve. The group also planned to target ICE agents and vehicles (Bondi). CBS News: Bill Essayli, who leads the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, said at a press conference that the four individuals were arrested Friday in San Bernardino County, where they gathered to construct and detonate test explosive devices in the Mojave Desert. He said the suspects allegedly crafted a “detailed, coordinated plot” to bomb two U.S. companies on New Year’s Eve, with the devices simultaneously exploding at midnight. Essayli did not name the companies but said they were “logistics centers” (CBS).

Trump Declares Fentanyl Weapon of Mass Destruction

Via an Executive Order from Monday evening: Illicit fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic. Two milligrams, an almost undetectable trace amount equivalent to 10 to 15 grains of table salt, constitutes a lethal dose. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from fentanyl overdoses…. As President of the United States, my highest duty is the defense of the country and its citizens. Accordingly, I hereby designate illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) (White House). Trump: No bomb does what this is doing—200,000 to 300,000 people die every year, that we know of. So we’re formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction (White House).

Initial Statement on Bondi Attack From Australian Prime Minister Failed to Mention the Jews

Moral cowardice and unhelpful sentiment in what was clearly Jew targeting. Adam Kredo: Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese released a statement after Sunday’s terror attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney in which he made no mention of Jews or anti-Semitism. Albanese wrote shortly after the shooting that “the scenes in Bondi are shocking and distressing” and that his “thoughts are with every person affected” …. After the torrent of criticism, Albanese eventually gave remarks in which he described the shooting as “a targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukkah.” When asked about his response to the wave of anti-Semitism in his country, Albanese said “we have taken it very seriously, and we’ve continued to act” (Free Beacon).

Western Leaders Express Sorrow Without Consequence

Or, more accurately: liberal and progressive Western leaders express “sorrow without consequence.” Nicely stated here from Jonathan Sacerdoti of Spectator (UK): Our political leaders are experienced now at expressing sorrow without consequence, mistaking symbolism for statecraft. After the Bondi massacre, Keir Starmer posted a photo of himself and his wife lighting a Hanukkah candle. ‘Light will always win over darkness,’ he wrote, hours after the attack. The delay was telling, the content, worse. Starmer, who permitted months of hate marches through British cities, who has yet to articulate any clear red line on anti-Semitic incitement, who made a point of ‘recognising’ a fantasy Palestinian state, offered candles instead of action. Just a few weeks ago two people were killed in an Islamic terror attack in a Manchester synagogue. Yet nothing much has changed…. The persecution aimed at us and the danger we face is thanks to a convergence of several forces. Islamists provide the theological engine. The far left supplies the ideological cover. Anarchists and foreign regimes exploit the cracks. Mainstream left-wingers might wring their hands when it all goes wrong, but nod along silently regardless. The result is an unholy alliance, diffuse but coordinated, whose shared aim is to destabilise the West from within. Their targets are not only Jews but the norms that sustain western civilisation: public safety, legal equality, freedom of expression, civic trust (Spectator).

Naming the Problem

Kevin McCullough asks why there is such a hesitation to mention clearly the Islamic faith motivating the slaughter: Because naming Islam—plainly and without modifiers—forces a reckoning many would rather avoid. It means admitting that this problem is not limited to “extremists” who misread the faith, but to interpretations of Islam that are widely taught, funded, and defended. It means confronting the uncomfortable reality that religious ideas, not just socioeconomic grievances, drive this violence…. Bondi Beach should end the pretending. People are being radicalized. Jews are being targeted. And unless we are willing to speak honestly about why, this will not be the last time we say it. It was Islam. Again (Townhall). Ayaan Hirsi Ali: One truth must be spoken without hesitation. Islamist extremism isn’t merely another grievance-driven movement. It is an existential threat to Western society and to the values that sustain it. It rejects pluralism, despises freedom of conscience, and targets Jews and Christians precisely because those traditions stand for limits on power and the dignity of the individual. History shows this pattern clearly. Where such extremism is tolerated, minorities suffer first, and the wider society follows (Free Press).

Trump Files $10 Billion Lawsuit Against BBC

For the deliberately deceptive edit of his speech on January 6, 2021. New York Times: In a 46-page lawsuit filed in federal court in Miami, Mr. Trump accused the BBC of defaming him and violating Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. He demanded $5 billion for each offense. In a statement, the president’s legal team said that the lawsuit was designed to hold the British network accountable for what it described as wrongdoing. “The formerly respected and now disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 presidential election,” the statement said (New York Times). CBS on the hurdles the lawsuit faces: First, [U.K.-based attorney Mark Stephens] said, was that the program which included the clip was not shown on television in the U.S. “You can’t be lowered in the estimation of right-thinking people by a program that wasn’t seen by an American audience. So you can’t sue, there’s no jurisdiction to sue, in America,” he said. He also said that because Mr. Trump is “the president, the ultimate public figure,” criticism of him would likely be protected under the First Amendment (CBS).

Chile Moving Rightward: Landslide Win for Conservative Presidential Candidate

Jose Antonio Kast will be the next president of Chile—and the most conservative in decades. Key issues motivating the electorate were the border, national security and the economy. He won by over 58 percent of the vote. The Hill: “Chile needs order — order in the streets, in the state, in the priorities that have been lost,” Kast bellowed in a lengthy victory speech that included his tough-on-crime talking points but lacked his usual vitriol. When his supporters interrupted him to boo Jara, he cut them off and snapped, “Respect!” — an about-face from his persona on the campaign trail. Kast hailed his decisive margin of victory on Sunday, saying it provided him with a “broad mandate” that was also “a tremendous responsibility” (The Hill). First Post: A devout Catholic, Kast is the father of nine children and has been married for more than 30 years to Maria Pia Adriasola, a lawyer who frequently appeared alongside him during the campaign. His opposition to abortion is absolute, extending even to cases of rape. He is also against emergency contraception, divorce, same-sex marriage and euthanasia. In earlier years, he said he would repeal Chile’s existing abortion laws and ban the morning-after pill, although he placed less emphasis on these issues in his most recent campaign, aware that public opinion overwhelmingly supports maintaining current reproductive rights (First Post).

Conservative Groups Press Back on Trump and Potential Downgrading of Marijuana

Currently, federal law has marijuana scheduled as a Schedule I narcotic. Trump is considering downgrading pot to a Schedule III drug. Washington Times: Conservatives are calling on President Trump to reconsider possibly signing an executive order that would downgrade marijuana from a Schedule I narcotic to a Schedule III drug…. Political activists at Eagle Forum say it would “reward the Big Marijuana industry with tax breaks while causing incalculable risks to public health and safety.” “After decades of disastrous effects from legalized pot that have led Americans to reconsider their support for the drug, families across the nation are devastated by this action,” said the Eagle Forum, which has long advocated against the rescheduling of marijuana. The group warned that moving marijuana to the Schedule III list would eliminate mandatory safety drug testing for federal workers, including ’safety-sensitive’ jobs such as airline pilots and commercial drivers for cannabis, under HHS guidelines (Washington Times).

Trump Administration’s Bet: Economy Will Soar in 2026

Axios presents it somewhat derisively, calling it an “almost messianic belief the economy will take of in the first quarter next year.” But—there’s no question—the administration is genuinely waiting on and betting that the engine of our massive economy will start to roar. Axios: Trump’s bullish belief is key to understanding why he’s so reluctant to say there’s an “affordability crisis.” He calls that talk a “hoax” and a “con job,” advisers say, because the problem didn’t start under him and the economy is growing steadily. “It’s a conundrum,” said one Trump adviser who has discussed messaging with the president. “He doesn’t want to say ‘affordability.’ That’s different than not wanting to talk about it.” Both inside and outside the White House, Trump advisers are pinning their hopes on projections by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that Americans’ finances and outlook will improve markedly during tax season: The “refund boom”: Working Americans could see as much as $2,000 in returns from the IRS during tax filing season because of the tax-and-spending bill. It extended Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and gives new write-offs to some tip earners, Social Security recipients, overtime workers and parents, Bessent said last week (Axios).

10.

A War of Ideas We Must Win

The bleak weekend behind us was central to Hugh Hewitt’s discussion with Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute. Salam on Monday: I think that this kind of romantic antinomian set of ideas just is a set of ideas that is serving as an acid in our societies. And one of the ironies is that the partisans of these ideas of these anti-Western ideas present themselves as the champions of tolerance and having kind of an open, creative civilization when, in fact, what they’re doing is they’re destroying those sinews of the societies that have come closest to being genuinely open, dynamic creative societies that have really in practice actually fostered immense upward mobility, wealth creation, you name it…. This is a massive, massive struggle and for me and my colleagues, this really feels like battle number one, it’s a war of ideas that we have to win…. I really believe that America needs an American conservatism that is disciplined, smart, thoughtful in meeting the challenge of this third-world-ist anti-Western ideology. We need to renew the foundations of a kind of dynamic market economy. We need an economy that young people can believe in. And I think that on both of those different fronts, we’re really very much at the center of the debate and our talent has been very much at the center of those debates too (Hughniverse).

SUBSCRIPTION INFO: This newsletter is never sent unsolicited. It is only sent to people who signed up from one of the Salem Media Group network of websites. We respect and value your time and privacy.
Unsubscribe from The Daybreak Insider
6400 N. Belt Line Rd., Suite 200, Irving, TX 75063
Copyright © 2025 Salem Media Group and its Content Providers. All rights reserved.