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I can remember when I first realized that something strange was happening to white men in Hollywood. It was around 2014, and my younger colleagues in LA – often British writers, directors and actors who had moved to California to "make it" – began reporting, anecdotally, that their work was disappearing. By that I don’t mean the normal vicissitudes of a volatile creative industry. I don’t mean actors "resting" or scripts getting stuck in "development hell." I mean that all jobs, and job opportunities, were abruptly vanishing. Applications went nowhere, résumés were binned, hopeful meetings were suddenly canceled.

Each Supreme Court term typically includes at least one explosive case that inflames political passions and captures the public imagination. When the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, or when it greatly broadened presidential immunity, as it did last year in Trump v. the United States, or when it ruled against race-based college admissions in 2023, it reaffirmed its centrality and reminded voters that it mattered. As it happens, very few Americans can name the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (surveys show it is consistently under 16 percent), but most know instinctively the high court’s opinions deeply impact governance, politics and culture.

When I was a boy, Friday nights were time for a new episode of The Rockford Files, a show about a hapless ex con PI, played by James Garner, who lived on a boat in a California marina. Fifty years later, Friday nights are for a different kind of files: the Epstein Files. Usually, government saves Friday evenings for the kinds of things it doesn’t want the news to cover, and the Friday before Christmas is generally a good place to hide. But in the age of the instantaneous news cycle in a world without a Santa Claus, they’re not going to get their holiday wish. This week’s episode of The Epstein Files involved several intersecting, ongoing plotlines with a common theme. The Democrats are constantly trying to swing and smack the Donald Trump piñata.

President Donald Trump has reopened the healthcare debate with a mix of ideas that do not align. He has pledged to “terminate” Obamacare, then signaled openness to extending ACA subsidies, then endorsed personal freedom accounts that would send money directly to individuals. These proposals represent very different diagnoses of what is wrong with American health care. No serious reform effort can point in contradictory directions.But this problem extends far beyond Trump. Republicans have offered inconsistent signals, with some now willing to extend ACA subsidies again despite a decade of arguing – correctly – that these subsidies inflate premiums and entrench insurer dominance. Others want to preserve zero premium plans that simply shift costs onto taxpayers.

Boris Johnson has urged European leaders to hand $247 billion of frozen Russian central bank assets to Ukraine – but says he fears they “lack the courage” to do so, in an interview with The Spectator. The former British prime minister also warned that Trump is at risk of “morally polluting” himself if he caves to Putin’s demands in peace negotiations and encouraged his negotiating team to stop the “nauseating deals” they are discussing about joint business ventures.“I think Europe is at a very difficult point because Europe has got to do the reparations alone,” Johnson said. “And I'm worried that they lack the courage. They must do it. I think that's the only way to get the Americans to take Europe seriously.

“We are so excited to be joined by Kash and his beautiful girlfriend Alexis,” said Katie Miller, wife of Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, on this week’s podcast. And there, on the couch next to her, sits FBI Director Kash Patel and Alexis Wilkins, his significant other, a country-music singer and conservative political commentator, a female twenty-something Bob Roberts for our modern age. “So I just want to clarify,” Miller says. “You’re not Jewish.” “I’m not,” Wilkins says, while Patel laughs beside her. “You are not from Israel.” “No.” “So how did we get to are you a Mossad agent?

As the appalling story of Sunday’s anti-Jewish mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach continue to unfold, and 16 people are now dead, there have been few glimmers of light in the darkness. The men identified as the shooters are a father and son, Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24. The father was shot and killed by police last night, and the son was overpowered and taken into custody. The New South Wales police commissioner says little is yet known about the pair, but Sajid Akram was a licensed gun owner, with six guns in his possession. Old social media posts have also emerged of Naveed Akram being praised for his Islamic studies in 2022.

The radicals are now in charge of NYC. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has unveiled his transition team and voters who agreed with his diagnosis that “everything is too expensive” will now have to live with the anti-police activists, anti-merit educrats and anti-Zionist radicals running the show. The moderate center is in for a shock.Take Alex Vitale, Mamdani’s “safety advisor” and author of The End of Policing, who seeks to abolish police departments, viewing them as “a tool of white supremacy.” Vitale will collaborate with convicted armed robber Mysonne Linen on Mamdani’s public safety plan. They support Mamdani’s plan to replace the NYPD with a “Department of Community Safety” for a range of police calls.

Since the National Institutes of Health was founded as a one room laboratory in 1887 its mission was simple; perform biomedical research to enhance health, lengthen life and reduce illness and disability for Americans. Scientists for more than one hundred years have taken this scientific approach to turn discoveries into better health. This mission unites all Americans of every race, color and creed. Everyone wants science that benefits their health. Over the last decade and a half this mission has been corrupted by a new mission and ideology: diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). This political ideology was reflected in all aspects of the NIH, including hiring practices, promotion and tenure, employee training, performance reviews, communications, management and, yes, even science.