ERIK DURNEIKA: The Myth of an American Retreat From the Indo-Pacific Debunked.

A Financial Times article alleges, based on anonymous sources, that the Japanese government feels abandoned by Washington amid an escalating row with Beijing. The same Financial Times published a now-debunked piece claiming that the Trump administration had blocked the Taiwanese president’s planned transit through the U.S.

None of these stories and talking points align with reality, though. The Trump administration isn’t turning away from the Indo-Pacific region and doesn’t plan to do so in the foreseeable future. In fact, quite the opposite is happening.

The NSS’s main priority is the Western Hemisphere, in line with the administration’s focus on protecting the homeland. Much of this focus is due to China’s and other adversaries’ expanding influence on America’s doorstep. China, for example, weaponizes migration and drug trafficking to the detriment of the U.S. and the rest of the free world.

At the same time, the Trump administration remains committed to the Western Pacific. The NSS covers a range of topics relating to the region, from China’s economic warfare and coercion to Taiwan, the South China Sea (SCS), the First Island Chain, and defense burden-sharing.

Contrary to attempts to paint the NSS as a dark, isolationist, “far-right” document, there is an emphasis on strengthening Indo-Pacific alliances and partnerships, including with Japan and India — another country Democrat elected officials claim President Trump has left behind.

A quibble or two aside, this is the best set of foreign policies and national defense priorities since Reagan.

ICYMI: Wait, Nancy Pelosi Just Said WHAT?

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Oh look, yet another Starship clone has popped up in China.

The trend began with the Chinese government. In November 2024 the government announced a significant shift in the design of its super-heavy lift rocket, the Long March 9. Instead of the previous design, a fully expendable rocket with three stages and solid rocket boosters strapped to the sides, the country’s state-owned rocket maker revealed a vehicle that mimicked SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship.

Around the same time, a Chinese launch firm named Cosmoleap announced plans to develop a fully reusable “Leap” rocket within the next few years. An animated video that accompanied the funding announcement indicated that the company seeks to emulate the tower catch-with-chopsticks methodology that SpaceX has successfully employed.

But wait, there’s more. In June a company called Astronstone said it too was developing a stainless steel, methane-fueled rocket that would also use a chopstick-style system for first stage recovery. Astronstone didn’t even pretend to not copy SpaceX, saying it was “fully aligning its technical approach with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.”

And then, on Friday, the state-aligned China.com reported that a company called “Beijing Leading Rocket Technology” took things a step further. It has named its vehicle “Starship-1,” adding that the new rocket will have enhancements from AI and is billed as a “fully reusable AI rocket.”

Presentations and buzzwords are easy. Space is… you know.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Ding-Dong! The Obamacare Subsidies Are Dead!

SPACE: ULA Atlas 5 launch puts Amazon’s 180th broadband satellite in low Earth orbit.

United Launch Alliance aced its final launch of 2025, a predawn flight of an Atlas 5 rocket carrying 27 satellites for Amazon’s recently re-branded Leo broadband internet service.

The on time liftoff from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 3:28 a.m. EST (0828 UTC), as the RD-180 engine on the booster roared to lift alongside five solid rocket boosters. The rocket flew on a north-easterly trajectory upon leaving the launch pad.

The mission, referred to by ULA as Amazon Leo 4 and dubbed Leo Atlas 4 (LA-04) by Amazon, was ULA’s fourth launch for the venture, previously known as Project Kuiper.

That’s almost it for the Atlas V, facing retirement after the existing inventory of 10 or 12 rockets runs out. It’s had a nearly perfect record so far, with 106 launches and only one partial failure.

Impressive.

But it’s also a bit of a relic. The total number of launches for Atlas V, going back to 2002, barely matches the last eight or nine months of launches for Falcon 9.

ICYMI: The Long Knives Come Out for Candace Owens.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! US Homicide Rates Fell as Much As Australia’s, But Without the Radical Gun Confiscation.

There are four critical pieces of evidence missing from the discussion which either significantly weaken or outright defeat the claims that gun control is responsible for Australia’s success on mass shootings and homicide:

1. International mass shooting comparisons usually fail to take population differences into account;
2. Australia has always had a low homicide rate and very few mass shootings, including before its gun law changes following Port Arthur;
3. The United States and Australia have very different demographics;
4. Australia omits assisted suicides from its overall suicide data.

This article will take each point in turn. While the focus here is on Australia, a very similar analysis could be done for European countries and Canada.

Read the whole thing.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG:

Brown University wiped its Mustapha Kharbouch page within the past hour or so…https://t.co/dJWBHpoFBV

— Jonathan Bowen (@BostonByBirth) December 16, 2025

This one is new but already nearly obligatory status:

They/Them pronouns meets Free Palestine. pic.twitter.com/vzbt3p1EfU

— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) December 16, 2025

Developing…

CONSTITUENT SERVICE: Newsom Brags About Giving Illegals Healthcare.

TALK ABOUT LONG-RANGE FIRES: US’ new hypersonic missile can hit targets 2,175-mile away in just 20 minutes.

CORN, POPPED: Oh, This Is Gonna Be Great: Trump Soon to File Massive Lawsuit Against BBC.

LANGUAGE: ‘Slop’ crowned Merriam-Webster word of the year, defining era of AI-generated content.

Merriam-Webster said that the word slop originated in the 1700s to mean “soft mud” before the meaning evolved to “food waste” in the 1800s and, eventually, “rubbish” and “a product of little or no value” in colloquial terminology.

“The flood of slop in 2025 included absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books, ‘workslop’ reports that waste coworkers’ time… and lots of talking cats,” Merriam-Webster said in their announcement. “People found it annoying, and people ate it up.”

I liked the talking cats.

“EXPEDIENCY” REMAINS HER WORD OF THE DAY: Wait, Nancy Pelosi Just Said WHAT? “What’s it mean when an impeachment-happy former House Speaker suddenly announces that impeachment is off the table?”

THEY CERTAINLY DON’T WANT THEM TO: The Left thinks poor kids can’t learn.

“Progressives” seem hostile to the idea that schools can teach low-income students, writes Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. Once moderate Democrats like Barack Obama backed reforms they hoped would improve achievement and provide upward mobility. Now, critics from the left “tend to dismiss any plan to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students.” They “support public schools as community centers and providers of child care and secure middle-class jobs,” but not as places to educate children.

Mississippi implemented “a set of educational reforms including teacher training, testing, retention (i.e., whether kids move forward or are held back), and a mostly phonics-based reading instruction,” and moved from 49th in the nation to the top 20 in a 10-year-period, Chait writes. “Adjusted for race and income, Mississippi now does a far better job of teaching literacy than do many northern states seen as leaders in public education.”

But left-wing critics of education reform aren’t cheering.

How will they keep them ignorant, dependent, and voting Democrat if they’re educated and upwardly mobile?

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Texas Charges TV Makers With Consumer Surveillance.

“When families buy a television, they don’t expect it to spy on them. They don’t expect their viewing habits packaged and auctioned to advertisers.”

That allegation, taken directly from Texas’ lawsuit against Hisense, sits at the center of Attorney General Ken Paxton’s legal action against five major television manufacturers accused of secretly monitoring consumers inside their homes.

Paxton has sued Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL Technology Group Corporation, alleging the companies unlawfully collected and sold consumer viewing data from Texans through Automated Content Recognition technology, known as ACR.

I hate this stuff.

SAD:

Most people don’t truly understand how difficult it is for conservative students on campuses like Brown (and Cornell). It takes great inner strength to stand up to the social and social media pressures to conform, and those pressures come not only from other students, but from…

— William A. Jacobson (@wajacobson) December 15, 2025

THERE SHE GOES AGAIN: JK Rowling Strikes Again, Rips LGBT Crowd After Rapist Targets Girls in Mixed Gender Changing Rooms.

GREAT PACIFIC WAR PREVIEW: Ukraine Hits Russian Sub in First Underwater Drone Attack.

The strike carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) with its “Sub Sea Baby” drones hit the submarine in the port of Novorossiysk where Russia has rebased many naval vessels to put them out of reach of Ukrainian strikes.

Footage published by the SBU showed a powerful explosion erupting from the water at a pier near where a submarine and other vessels were docked. Reuters confirmed the location of the video using the port’s layout and piers.

Alexander Kamyshin, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on X that it was the first time in history that an underwater drone had neutralized a submarine.

I don’t know which will be the first nation to destroy or disable an enemy sub at sea, rather than at port, but it will happen.

I QUESTION THE TIMING:

It can now be said! https://t.co/IMBRuwSKD6

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) December 16, 2025

OOF: The Long Knives Come Out for Candace Owens.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: More than 60% of security clearance data was ‘not reliable,’ GAO reveals as it urges intel changes.

A newly released U.S. Government Accountability Office report highlights problems with the reliability of data used to oversee the federal government’s personnel security clearance process, raising concerns about oversight of how quickly and effectively clearances are granted.

The report last week found that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence lacks accurate and complete clearance data from dozens of federal agencies, limiting its ability to monitor performance and identify problems in the vetting of employees who must access classified information for their positions.

According to the GAO, over 60% of the clearance data it reviewed was “not reliable” across eight reporting requirements and seven agencies.

Good lord.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Let’s Globalize the End of the Leftist Fetish for Murderers. “Evidence abounds that the Democrats are delighted to be in bed with criminals, both of the domestic and illegal alien variety. They’re practically writing campaign ads for Republican candidates. During the last couple of elections, I wanted the Republicans to hammer the Dems on illegal immigration. The economy was easy pickings, too, but I was as close to being a single-issue voter as I ever had been. Now I want them to shout, ‘DEMOCRATS LOVE MURDERERS AND RAPISTS!’ from the hilltops.”

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS IN COMPLETE REMISSION: FBI to give Congress bombshell memos warning Biden DOJ didn’t have probable cause to raid Trump home.

The memos show the FBI’s Washington field office “does not believe they established probable cause” prior to raiding Trump’s Florida home, according to one source with direct knowledge of the memos about to be turned over to Congress.

It has long been rumored that some FBI agents disagreed with the decision to raid Trump’s home to look for classified documents at the request of the National Archives.

But the soon-to-be released emails will chronicle the specific concerns that DOJ under President Joe Biden had not met the standard for a search warrant, but proceeded anyway, officials said.

Of course they did — that’s how witch hunts work.

ICYMI: Ignoring Islamic Threat, Aussie PM Vows Tougher Gun Laws After Bondi Beach.

Related (from Glenn):

How does a 24-year old Muslim male who is known to the government for being affiliated with ISIS get to possess not one, but SIX firearms, in a country where guns are essentially banned?

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) December 15, 2025

Australia 🇦🇺…
When you don’t wear a mask VS when you shoot a bunch of Jews. pic.twitter.com/NINJFAJ23Y

— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) December 15, 2025

AGREED: ‘Financialization of All the Things’ is Parasitism, not Capitalism.

Friend-of-the-blog Alexandria Brown offered up a recent X/tweet addressing the financialization of, well, everything in business and commerce, and how it should be viewed in relation to the ideal of capitalism. Specifically, Alex wrote: ”Here’s a fun question to which I have not made up my mind even a little bit: is the financialization of All The Things a form of capitalism which is at least tolerable or is it so reductive of human life and endeavors as to be past a limitation on acceptable commercial behavior?”

Those of us who advocate for free markets understand that capitalism also presents an opportunity for bad actors to misbehave within the system. Be it 20th century snake oil salesmen peddling patent medicines, or 21st century Wall Street investment bankers selling pools of subprime mortgages as high-quality securities, there have always been bad actors exploiting the opportunities within a free market.

But just because we conservatives endorse capitalism doesn’t mean we must endorse – or even tolerate – the worst practices that occur therein.

In my opinion, the “financialization-of-all-the-things” is a form of parasitism that does not create wealth, rather it serves to extract the accumulated wealth from entities where wealth has previously been created.

Read the whole thing.