December 14, 2025

Victoria Edel of People: "Rob Reiner has died at the age of 78. He and his wife, Michele, were found dead by apparent homicide inside their Brentwood, Calif., home on Dec. 14, TMZ reports. The outlet reports that the two suffered wounds consistent with a knife attack. Authorities are currently investigating. The Reiners had been married since 1989." At 11:30 pm ET, major news media are reporting that "two people were found dead at a home owned by Rob Reiner," but the stories all give the ages of the two as the ages of Rob & Michele Reiner.

Australia. Kristen Gelineau, et al., of the AP: “An attack at a famous Australian beach killed 16 people, including a child, officials said Monday, after two gunmen opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it an act of antisemitic terrorism. Hundreds of people had gathered Sunday at the beach for an event to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah, when gunmen opened fire. At least 38 others were injured in the attack.” Related NYT report linked below. ~~~

     ~~~ AP: “A bystander seen in a widely circulated video disarming a gunman during a deadly shooting rampage at a popular Australian beach is being heralded as a hero who saved lives. Video footage posted to social media shows a passerby dressed in a white T-shirt and dark pants crouching behind a parked car before sneaking up behind a gunman, grabbing him and wrestling away his firearm. The bystander then points the weapon at the gunman, who falls to the ground. The intervention drew wide praise, including from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns called it the 'most unbelievable scene.' The bystander was identified as 43-year-old Ahmed Al Ahmed by 7NEWS Australia, which interviewed his cousin.” ~~~

It Will Be a White Man's 250th. Dan Barry of the New York Times: “The Treasury Department unveiled new coins celebrating America’s 250th anniversary. They failed to include planned designs featuring abolition, women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement.... The Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, is authorized by law to make final decisions about coin designs, including these 250th anniversary coins — a dime, a half-dollar and five quarters — which are both collectible and legal tender. But his choices ignored the more diverse recommendations for the quarters by the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, a bipartisan group mandated by Congress to review the U.S. Mint’s proposed designs for American coins.” Read on. The link is a gift link. Symbols matter. 

Michael Hirschorn in a New York Times op-ed: “The ruling in the 2010 Citizens United case, among others, invited the super rich to exert all the influence on policy and politics that their money could buy — and then enjoy all the wealth that influence secured for them in return. Thanks to ever-more-obliging tax policies, the billionaire class grew absurdly rich over the years that followed.... The billionaires could have kept on like that forever. All they had to do was keep their mouths closed.... But they won’t stop yapping about it.... It’s as if the sheer scale of this wealth, which beggars even the riches of the Gilded Age, has induced a kind of class sociopathy.” Hirschorn goes on to liken what's happening in today's society to what happened to in the era before the French Revolution: “That story did not end well. This one may not either.” Thanks to akaWendy for this gift link. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I have understood since I was a child poring over the society pages of the New York Times that the rich "are different from you and me": that I wasn't going to have a coming-out party, and my engagement would not be announced on the pages I perused with childish wonder. Fitzgerald -- and the Times -- were writing about those who had inherited wealth, and -- as ever -- today's billionaire bros are not the sons of billionaires. Also as always, that means these self-made men have more to prove than do those to the manor born. The nouveaux riches are not only more gauche; they're more greedy. Despite their bravado and their bullying, they're as uncomfortable as a 7th-grader at a sock hop (okay, I'm seriously dating myself!). But it is not the billionaires who are the root of the problem. They are billionaires only because the Congress and the Supreme Court allow them to be so. Sure, Johnny & the Dwarfs are getting their cuts, and so are the MOCs. But their slices are paper-thin by comparison. 

The job for the rest of us is to elect people to Congress (and to the presidency) who have the fortitude to stand up to billionaires. It seems impossible, but it is not. As Hirschorn writes, “At a moment when income inequality, the looming threat of A.I. and the rise of authoritarianism seem to be straining American societal cohesion, a revolt against self-dealing elites may be the only cause compelling enough to bring us together.” 

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Jack Healy of the New York Times: Donald “Trump’s pledge to pardon Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines, touched off a new battle on Friday over the fate of perhaps the last high-profile 2020 election denier still behind bars. Democratic leaders in Colorado dismissed the pardon as an empty attempt to bully a Democratic state into freeing one of the president’s political allies.... But a lawyer for Ms. Peters said he was planning to make a legal argument that Mr. Trump did have the power to pardon Ms. Peters. 'For all I know, the president may send a marshal to the prison to have her released,' Peter Ticktin, a lawyer for Ms. Peters and longtime friend of Mr. Trump, said in an interview.... [Notice] was posted on Justice Department’s list of clemency grants late on Friday.... Legal scholars and Colorado officials ... said the notion that the president could intervene in state courts clashed with the plain language of the Constitution, as well as its fundamental principles of federalism and states’ rights.” See also Patrick's commentary Friday and Saturday regarding Trump's so-called clemency grant. (Also linked yesterday.) 

We Have a New Friend! Valerie Hopkins & Tomas Dapkus of the New York Times: “In the latest step in a growing thaw with the United States, Belarus on Saturday freed more than 100 prisoners, including two opposition leaders and a Nobel laureate, as the Trump administration announced it would lift sanctions on potash fertilizer, one of Belarus’s largest sources of cash. The deal with the Belarusian strongman Aleksandr G. Lukashenko bears the hallmarks of ... [Donald] Trump’s transactional diplomacy: a focus on trade and a willingness to do business with autocrats in spite of a history of human rights abuses. While limited, the easing of sanctions represents another in a series of moves toward ending the isolation of Mr. Lukashenko, a tyrant who brutally suppressed a 2020 uprising against a rigged election, manufactured an immigration crisis in Europe in 2021 and allowed Russia to use his country to launch its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It follows a monthslong rapprochement between Washington and Minsk that has seen hundreds of political prisoners freed and the slow restoration of economic ties.” Politico's story is here.

We all know that the Trump administration's interest in stamping out campus antisemitism is fake. Here's evidence of how fake it is: ~~~   

~~~ Peter Elkind of ProPublica & Katherine Mangan of the Chronicle of Higher Education: “The Trump administration [froze] hundreds of millions of dollars of research funding at the University of California, Los Angeles, UC’s biggest campus.... Over ... four months, the Justice Department targeted UCLA with its full playbook for bringing colleges to heel, threatening it with multiple discrimination lawsuits, demanding more than $1 billion in fines and pressing for a raft of changes on the conservative wish list for overhauling higher education.... An investigation by ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education ... reveals the extent to which the government violated legal and procedural norms to gin up its case against the school. It also surfaced ... how the UC system’s deep dependence on federal money inhibited its willingness to resist the legally shaky onslaught.... According to former DOJ insiders, agency political appointees dispatched teams of career civil rights lawyers to California in March, pressuring them to rapidly 'find' evidence backing a preordained conclusion: that the UC system and four of its campuses had illegally tolerated antisemitism, which would violate federal civil rights statutes.” Read on.

The Contrarian Picks Trump's Ten Worst Profiteering Scandals: "No president in American history has profited off the presidency the way Donald Trump has — and it’s not close. In his first term, he benefited to the tune of millions of dollars in shady schemes, such as foreign governments using his properties for their events. But his second term has been orders of magnitude worse, as we document in this second installment of our series on Trump’s Top 10 Worst. From the Qatari plane scandal to selling access to purchasers of his meme coin to his family members raking in riches, Trump and co. are openly dangling special treatment for those who are willing to pay.... The president has reportedly increased his net worth by over $3 billion so far during the first year of his second term."

Shawn Hubler of the New York Times: “The Trump administration must remove California National Guard troops from Los Angeles by Monday, a federal appellate court ruled. The decision upheld a lower court order that halted the mobilization that had roiled the nation’s second-largest city for six months. The ruling late Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit substantially upheld a district court decision from earlier this week that found the federal government had illegally prolonged the military presence in Los Angeles months after intense protests over immigration enforcement had died down.... But the appellate judges temporarily blocked a key part of the order by District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer that would have forced the Trump administration to return control of the troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who ordinarily commands them.”

All the Best People, Ctd. Madeleine Fening of (Cincinnati) CityBeat: "A Cincinnati-based Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) supervisor is being held in Hamilton County Jail on $400,000 bond after allegedly strangling his partner. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations official Samuel Saxon, 47, was arrested on Dec. 5 after police say he attacked a woman he lives with in their Corryville apartment. In court Monday, an officer testified that police have been called to the apartment roughly two dozen times in the last year and a half.... Court records state Saxon’s arrest followed observations of bruising on the woman’s neck and accounts from witnesses who said he put her in a chokehold in the apartment’s hallway. Prosecutors noted the woman has reported serious injuries in past incidents linked to Saxon, including a broken nose in 2018 and a broken pelvis in April. He pleaded not guilty Monday and was indicted Wednesday on [numerous] charges.... In court, Saxon’s attorney said he has spent more than two decades in his current role [at ICE] and was recently notified while in custody that he has been placed on suspension." (Also linked yesterday.)

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Florida. Lawrence Mower, et al., of the Miami Herald: “Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration diverted more than $35 million in taxpayer funds — an amount far greater than previously known — as part of a brazen agenda last year to defeat two ballot amendments he staunchly opposed, a Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times investigation has found. Much of the state money was intended to assist needy Floridians, including children. Instead, it paid for political consultants, lawyers and thousands of advertisements that helped DeSantis and his supporters win at the ballot box.... The most visible cog in his campaign — the use of the state’s Hope Florida charity — is the subject of a grand jury investigation. In that case, nearly $10 million from a Medicaid settlement was steered to a political committee controlled by the governor’s chief of staff.” Thanks to RAS for the link. (The Herald is subscriber-firewalled, but apparently I haven't used up my freebies this month.)

It's a Mad, Mad World: ~~~

~~~Rhode Island. New York Times liveblog: “Two people were killed and eight were injured in a shooting at Brown University on Saturday, officials said. Three hours after it began, students continued to hide in their dorms and classrooms on the campus in Providence, R.I., as police officers searched for a man dressed in black. The injured people were in critical but stable condition at local hospitals, officials said during an evening news conference. It was unclear how many of them were students. Rodney Chatman, Brown’s police chief, described the shooting investigation as 'a very fluid situation.'” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update: “Law enforcement officers were searching Sunday for the gunman suspected of opening fire at Brown University the previous day, killing two students and injuring nine more. Officials indicated that they had not identified the attacker, who escaped the Ivy League school onto the streets of Providence, Rhode Island’s capital. They released a video that showed a person leaving the scene of the attack, though their face was not visible, and appealed for information.” ~~~

     ~~~ Update 2: “A person of interest was in custody early Sunday in connection with a shooting at Brown University that killed two students and injured nine more the previous day, Mayor Brett Smiley of Providence, R.I., said.” ~~~

     ~~~ Here are live updates from the Brown Daily Herald. (Also linked yesterday.)  

~~~ MEANWHILE ~~~

~~~ Ukraine/Russia. Kim Barker of the New York Times: “Russian drones and missiles pummeled Odesa, Ukraine, overnight on Friday into Saturday in one of the biggest attacks of the war on the southern port, causing major power outages that plunged parts of the city into darkness. The attack targeted energy, industrial and other infrastructure in several regions of southern Ukraine, leaving much of Odesa, the country’s largest Black Sea port, without power, heat and water, Ukrainian officials said. Hospitals and public drinking water stations were switched onto generators. Officials did not report any deaths.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Syria. Abdi Dahir, et al., of the New York Times: Donald “Trump vowed on Saturday to retaliate against the Islamic State after an attack in central Syria killed two U.S. Army soldiers and a civilian U.S. interpreter, the first American casualties in the country since the fall of the dictator Bashar al-Assad last year. 'This was an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria,' Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. 'There will be very serious retaliation.' The soldiers were supporting counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State group in Palmyra, a city in central Syria, when they came under fire from a lone gunman, according to American officials. Syrian security forces subsequently killed the gunman, American and Syrian officials said.” An AP story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)  ~~~ 

~~~ Israel/Palestine. Aaron Boxerman & Adam Rasgon of the New York Times: “The Israeli military said it killed one of Hamas’s top commanders in Gaza in a targeted strike on a car on Saturday, in what would be the most high-profile assassination of a senior figure in the militant group since the cease-fire began two months ago. The target of the attack was Raed Saad, a senior commander in the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, according to the Israeli authorities. Mr. Saad helped plan the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel that ignited the two-year war in Gaza, the Israeli military said. Hamas ... said in a statement that the attack was another 'criminal breach of the cease-fire agreement.' The group has frequently taken weeks or months to publicly confirm the deaths of senior figures killed by Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement that he and the country’s defense minister had personally ordered Mr. Saad’s assassination.” (Also linked yesterday.)  ~~~

~~~ Sudan. Samy Magdy of the AP: “A drone strike hit a United Nations facility in war-torn Sudan on Saturday, killing six peacekeepers, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. The strike hit the peacekeeping logistics base in the city of Kadugli, in the central region of Kordofan, Guterres said in a statement. Eight other peacekeepers were wounded in the strike. All the victims are Bangladeshi nationals, serving in the U.N. Interim Security Force for Abyei, UNISFA.” (Also linked yesterday.)  ~~~

~~~ Australia. From a New York Times liveblog: “At least 10 people were killed in a shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday, including a man police said was one of the shooters. The rare mass shooting sent crowds scattering on Australia’s best-known beach. The police later said that two people were in custody. ABC Australia quoted the police as saying on Sunday night that the situation had been “neutralized” and that there were no active shooters unaccounted for. The chief executive of the Australian Jewish Association said that members of the Jewish community had been targeted. The police did not provide details, including whether they believed the shooting was a targeted attack.”