https://www.euractiv.com/opinion/europes-quiet-debt-revolution/
For decades, Brussels prided itself on fiscal restraint. Today, it sits among Europe’s biggest debtors – a position that will be worsened by last week’s EU decision to grant Ukraine €90 billion in financial support over the next two years.
Since the pandemic, the European Commission has transformed itself from a marginal issuer into one of the continent’s largest sovereign and supranational borrowers. Its outstanding debt has ballooned from roughly €50 billion in 2019 to an estimated €700 billion by 2025 – a shift that has received surprisingly little scrutiny given its long-term implications for markets, budgets, and EU politics.
This change did not happen overnight. Before Covid-19, common EU borrowing was largely theoretical. The first meaningful issuances came during the euro-area sovereign-debt crisis of 2011–13, when outstanding EU debt rose to about €55 billion. For the next decade, issuance remained a footnote in European capital markets.

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Bankruptcies aren't just rising — they're suddenly everywhere.

From billion-dollar giants to mom-and-pop shops to everyday individuals, bankruptcies are piling up across the US this year, with large corporate bankruptcies already hitting their highest level in 15 years.

The surge in bankruptcies highlights the growing financial pressures facing consumers and companies as costs climb amid a tougher borrowing environment.

"Rising costs, tighter credit conditions, and ongoing geopolitical volatility continue to exert pressure on households and businesses already facing financial strain."

Unlike past downturns, this wave of bankruptcies appears to be hitting nearly every corner of the economy. It's sweeping across a range of sectors in what one veteran bankruptcy attorney described as a strikingly "unusual" pattern.

Even without December figures, 2025 has already logged the highest annual count for large corporate bankruptcies since 2010, when filings totaled 828, according to S&P Global.

In November alone, Subchapter V bankruptcy filings totaled 223 — a 23% bump from the previous year, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute, which cited data from Epiq.

Individual bankruptcy filings saw an 8% jump to 40,973 in November 2025, up from the 37,814 filings in November 2024, the data cited by ABI shows.

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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-calls-for-release-epstein-files-naming-democrats/
As prosecutors contend with a massive trove of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, President Trump suggested Friday the Justice Department is spending too much time on the issue — but said prominent Democrats linked to Epstein should be named.

The Justice Department has released scores of records on Epstein over the last week, responding to a law requiring it to publish its files on Epstein by Dec. 19. The files cover more than 20 years worth of investigations into the disgraced financier, and highlighted the relationships he cultivated over the years with well-known people like Mr. Trump and former President Bill Clinton — neither of whom have been accused of any wrongdoing.

And on Wednesday, the department announced that the federal prosecutor's office in Manhattan had discovered upwards of 1 million more records "potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case." It said that combing through the newly discovered documents and making necessary redactions could take "a few more weeks."

Mr. Trump addressed the discovery on Truth Social late Friday, writing: "Now 1,000,000 more pages on Epstein are found. DOJ is being forced to spend all of its time on this Democrat inspired Hoax. When do they say NO MORE, and work on Election Fraud etc."

The president went on to allege that Democrats, not Republicans, are "the ones who worked with Epstein."

"Release all of their names, embarrass them, and get back to helping our Country," he wrote.

Mr. Trump has long been wary of the Epstein issue, periodically calling it a "hoax" and arguing that Republican lawmakers who supported the release of more records on Epstein had fallen for a diversion tactic spearheaded by Democrats.


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https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2025/12/27/senate-filibuster/8511766875059/

Dec. 27 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump and Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent urged an end to the Senate filibuster rule ahead of an anticipated budget battle in January.

Bessent submitted an op-ed that The Washington Post published on Saturday and blames Senate Democrats and the filibuster for blocking passage of a resolution to keep the federal government open while negotiating the 2026 fiscal year budget and causing a record 43-day shutdown of the federal government.

"The American people are just now emerging from the longest and most devastating government shutdown in U.S. history," Bessent said.

"While the blame lies squarely with Senate Democrats, we cannot ignore the weapon they used to hold the country hostage: the legislative filibuster," Bessent wrote.

With the continuing resolution expiring on Jan. 30, Bessent said there is a strong likelihood that Senate Democrats again will use the filibuster to block passage of a budget and force the government to close again.

"Democrats inflicted tremendous harm on the nation, including $11 billion in permanent economic damage" as the federal government was "held for ransom by the left's demands," Bessent said.

He said the shutdown caused the nation to lose 1.5 percentage points in gross domestic product growth during the fourth quarter, triggered 9,500 canceled flights and caused 1.4 million federal workers to miss their paychecks.

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https://www.reuters.com/world/judge-grants-injunction-blocking-us-detaining-british-anti-disinformation-2025-12-25/

WASHINGTON, Dec 25 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from detaining British anti-disinformation campaigner Imran Ahmed, after the U.S. permanent resident sued officials over an entry ban for his role in what Washington argues is online censorship.

Washington imposed visa bans on Tuesday on Ahmed and four Europeans, including French former EU commissioner Thierry Breton. It accuses them of working to censor freedom of speech or unfairly target U.S. tech giants with burdensome regulation. Ahmed lives in New York and is believed to be the only of the five currently in the country.

The move sparked an outcry from European governments who argue regulations and the work of monitoring groups made the internet safer by highlighting false information and compelling tech giants to do more to tackle illegal content, including hate speech and child sexual abuse material.

For Ahmed, the 47-year-old CEO of the U.S.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, it also sparked fears of imminent deportation that would separate him from his wife and child, both U.S. citizens, according to a lawsuit he filed on Wednesday in the Southern District of New York.

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https://www.npr.org/2025/12/25/g-s1-103704/nigeria-isis-islamic-state

President Trump announced late Thursday that the U.S. had launched a "deadly strike" against Islamic State fighters in northwest Nigeria, who he said had been killing Christians in the area.

In a Christmas night post on Truth Social, Trump said the strike was directed at "ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not see for many years, and even Centuries!"

"I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was," he said, adding that U.S. forces had "executed numerous perfect strikes."

"Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper," the president wrote. "May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues."

The announcement follows multiple U.S. strikes last week against ISIS targets in Syria in response to what the U.S. Central Command described as a targeted killing of two U.S. soldiers and an interpreter by an ISIS gunman there.

Trump has accused Nigeria of failing to stop the persecution of Christians in the country and last month he said he ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for possible military action against Nigeria and warned the U.S. would suspend aid to the West African country.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj69j8l918do
President Donald Trump has said the US launched a "powerful and deadly strike" against the Islamic State (IS) group in north-western Nigeria.

In a post on Truth Social, the US president described IS as " terrorist scum", accusing them of "targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians".

He said the US military "executed numerous perfect strikes", without giving any further details. It is unclear what exactly targets were struck and when.

In November, Trump ordered the US military to prepare for action in Nigeria to tackle Islamist militant groups.

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https://www.npr.org/2025/12/25/g-s1-103685/doj-says-few-more-weeks-epstein-files

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Wednesday that it may need a "few more weeks" to release all of its records on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after suddenly discovering more than a million potentially relevant documents, further delaying compliance with last Friday's congressionally mandated deadline.
U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on December 15, 2025 in Washington, DC.

The Christmas Eve announcement came hours after a dozen U.S. senators called on the Justice Department's watchdog to examine its failure to meet the deadline. The group, 11 Democrats and a Republican, told Acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume in a letter that victims "deserve full disclosure" and the "peace of mind" of an independent audit.

The Justice Department said in a social media post that federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the FBI "have uncovered over a million more documents" that could be related to the Epstein case — a stunning 11th hour development after department officials suggested months ago that they had undertaken a comprehensive review that accounted for the vast universe of Epstein-related materials.

In March, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that a "truckload of evidence" had been produced after she ordered the FBI to "deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office." She issued the directive after saying she learned from an unidentified source that the FBI in New York was "in possession of thousands of pages of documents."

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Demoshits seethe as the party of law and order successfully keep their liberal criminal tendencies in check.

Donald Trump is responsible for dropping murder rates quicker over one year than at other any point in American history.
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/24/us-trump-murder-data-killing-crime-national-guard
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/24/us-trump-murder-data-killing-crime-national-guard
U.S. murders on pace for largest one-year drop on record

The U.S. is on pace for the largest one-year drop in murders the nation has ever recorded, according to an analysis by crime stats expert Jeff Asher.

The big picture: The decline in killings is part of a broader decrease in violent crime following the COVID-era spike. Mass killings in the U.S. also fell in 2025, reaching their lowest level since 2006.

The Real-Time Crime Index, which compiles data from 570 law enforcement agencies, shows a nearly a 20% decline in murders this year compared with the same period in 2024.
The database, which Asher used in his analysis, does not consider manslaughter, self-defense, negligence, or "accidental killings" for the statistics, according to its online glossary.

The database's statistics are currently available through October. The FBI will not release official 2025 violent crime data until sometime next year, though RTCI estimates have historically tracked closely with federal figures.

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https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkey-detains-115-suspected-islamic-state-members-believed-planning-attacks-2025-12-25/
ANKARA, Dec 25 (Reuters) - Turkish authorities have detained 115 suspected Islamic State members they said were planning to carry out attacks on Christmas and New Year celebrations in the country, the Istanbul chief prosecutor's office said on Thursday.
Istanbul Police obtained information that Islamic State members had planned attacks in Turkey, against non-Muslims in particular, during Christmas and New Year celebrations, the prosecutor's office posted on X.

The police raided 124 places in Istanbul, capturing 115 of the 137 suspects they were seeking, the statement said. Several pistols and ammunition were seized, it said.

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Trump’s economy since he imposed tariffs has created one-tenth of the jobs per month as Biden’s economy, while manufacturing has lost jobs each month.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/trumps-liberation-day-tariffs-worked-130017281.html

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s vaunted “Liberation Day” tariffs have worked — if liberating Americans from their jobs was the actual goal.

The nation’s manufacturing sector, the very one Trump purportedly wanted to help with his import taxes, has instead been losing jobs every single month since he announced them in April. In all, there are now 67,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than when he imposed tariffs on most imports.

That result is exactly the opposite of what Trump promised and predicted when he announced them on April 2.

“We created 10,000, already in a few weeks, new manufacturing jobs and that took place in one month, numbers that they haven’t seen in a long time,” Trump said, lying, to cheering supporters in what was still the Rose Garden, prior to his having paved it over. “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country and you see it happening already.”

His overall jobs numbers are just as grim, according to statistics compiled by his own Department of Labor, particularly compared to predecessor Joe Biden’s robust record on that front. Over four years, Biden’s economy added more than 4 million jobs per year, or 336,225 per month.

“It’s not just tariffs,” said University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers. “It’s also uncertainty, chaos, incompetence, and a radical and idiosyncratic approach to economic policy.”

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The U.S. economy grew at a 4.3% annual rate in the third quarter, President Donald Trump and his team wasted no time celebrating.

Well, slow down, those dour economists replied. There’s something missing in this boom: the jobs. Hiring this year, at best, has stalled, and at worst has collapsed: unemployment has climbed to 4.6%, and even Fed Chair Jerome Powell has warned recent data may be overstating job gains.

In a typical recovery, strong GDP growth shows up first in hiring, then in paychecks, and finally in consumer spending. But in this quarter, it’s reversed: spending is here without jobs. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” KPMG’s chief economist Diane Swonk told Fortune. “To have this stagflation in the inflation and unemployment rate, and to not have it in growth is highly unusual, and something’s got to give.”

Real disposable income was essentially flat in the third quarter—literally 0% growth. Americans did not gain purchasing power. Yet, they made up the difference through savings drawdowns, credit, or by absorbing costs they cannot avoid. The GDP report itself points to where that pressure is concentrated: mostly in services, and within services, healthcare was a leading driver.

Americans spent the most on healthcare last quarter since the Omicron wave of 2022, Swonk said. This was not a classic discretionary splurge, It was spending families had little ability to defer. That distinction matters, spending driven by necessity behaves very differently from spending driven by rising paychecks.

The second part of the story is that this economy is no longer moving as a single system. It is splitting into a “K-shape,” and what looks like resilience at the top increasingly masks fragility underneath. “When you divorce growth from employment gains, you’ve got a problem,” Swonk said. “And this is before the real effects of AI have even set in.”

https://fortune.com/2025/12/24/k-shaped-economy-2026-stagflation-diane-swonk/

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A judge struck down California's law which kept grooming a secret from a child's parents.

https://nypost.com/2025/12/23/us-news/judge-rules-california-trans-child-secrecy-law-unconstitutional/

Federal judge slaps down California’s trans child secrecy law

A federal judge in San Diego ruled that California’s policies allowing schools to hide students’ gender transitions from their parents is unconstitutional, issuing a permanent injunction on the controversial practice.

Teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori West, both Christians, brought the lawsuit in response to California Department of Education policies that required them to conceal children’s gender transitions — including adopting a new name and pronouns — from their families, absent explicit permission from the child.

Mirabelli and West were placed in the “impossible” position, attorneys argued, of lying in violation of their Christian faith and personal ethics.

US District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez agreed, writing in a decision issued Monday that California parents are “left in the dark” about something as significant as their child’s gender identity.

“Even if the State Defendants could demonstrate that excluding parents was good policy on some level, such a policy cannot be implemented at the expense of parents’ constitutional rights,” Benitez wrote.

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> Thread theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdqBmeg4XmY

> https://www.npr.org/2025/12/23/nx-s1-5653312/student-loans-default-education-department

The Trump administration will resume garnishing wages from student loan borrowers in default in early 2026, the U.S. Education Department confirmed to NPR.

The move comes after a years-long pause in wage garnishment due to the pandemic.

"We expect the first notices to be sent to approximately 1,000 defaulted borrowers the week of January 7," a department spokesperson told NPR. The spokesperson said wage garnishment notices are expected to increase on a monthly basis throughout the year.

A borrower is in default when they have not made loan payments in more than 270 days. Once that happens, the federal government can try to collect on the debt by seizing tax refunds and Social Security benefits, and also by ordering an employer to withhold up to 15% of a borrower's pay. Borrowers should receive a 30-day notice from the Education Department before this wage garnishment begins.

Betsy Mayotte, the president and founder of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, says even though borrowers have expected this, the timing is unfortunate.

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The Supreme Court has rebuffed President Donald Trump’s attempt to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois to protect federal officials carrying out his mass-deportation policy.

In their ruling Tuesday, the justices noted that federal law generally bars use of the military for law enforcement, and they declared that the law Trump used to activate the Guard is likely to only apply when regular armed forces — the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines — are insufficient to maintain order.

“At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the high court said in an unsigned order released more than two months after the administration asked the justices to weigh in.

Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — dissented, while another conservative, Brett Kavanaugh, declined to join the majority’s explanation of the ruling.

The Supreme Court’s decision turned down the administration’s bid to lift lower court orders that halted the president’s plan to use 500 National Guard soldiers from Illinois and Texas to respond to protests and unrest at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Chicago.

The ruling is a rare loss for the president following a string of wins he has racked up on the high court’s emergency docket in the first year of his second term. The justices cleared the way for him to fire leaders of federal agencies, dismiss tens of thousands of government employees and halt thousands of federal grants and contracts.

>https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/23/supreme-court-national-guard-ruling-00704962