☕️ RANKED OPTIMISM☙ Monday, December 26, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Post-Xmas thoughts on 2025’s looming end; NYT fumes over faith-filled messaging; Trump aides swat fake-news games; Europe melts over “far right”; aid sent to Nigerian Christians; WaPo finds hope; more

Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! I hope you all enjoyed a joyful and rewarding Christmas, filled with warmth, love, and peace. Mind had a lot of coughing in the background. Other than that, and apart from being shunned like first-century lepers by the rest of the extended family, the Childers’ holiday was a blessing. Defying both prediction and past performance, my teenagers rose early after all, which made me nostalgic for the old days of chaos and small children underfoot. They’re simply too big to get under my feet now, and they would complain bitterly anyway.

In today’s roundup: preliminary thoughts about 2025’s imminent end in my post-Christmas morning monologue; Times apalled at heartwarming religious messaging from federal officials celebrating the nation’s religious holiday; Trump officials learn new techniques to handle fake news reporters’ narrative schemes; zany European elites whine absurdly about ‘far right’ voters and compare them to the Grinch; Trump delivers on promise to send physical salvation to persecuted Nigerian Christians, which triggers liberals; and the Washington Post shocks liberal readers by finding 25 reasons to be optimistic about 2025.

⛑️ C&C MORNING MONOLOGUE ⛑️

Apart from people in service industries, most folks are taking today off. Today is the Friday after Christmas, the beginning of a brief, halcyon —but deucedly unproductive— moment in-between, skating between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. (Good luck getting any work done.) But most of all, enjoy these final closing days of the new millennium’s first quarter-century. It is difficult to shake the sense that, like General Washington and his brave band of chilly revolutionaries crossing the Delaware river under dark fog, we are navigating a similar historic demarcation point, which will someday become a thick black diacritical mark on the human timeline that future historians will decorate with colored arrows and dramatic labels.

It is now undeniable. There’s simply too much happening, too quickly, for it not to be so. “Irresistible tectonic forces were in play,” some future historian might write, “as the entire world plunged headlong toward the middle of the 21st Century.”

With the benefit of hindsight, Trump’s historic explosion of executive orders, combined with Congress’s equally historic passivity, now seems more strategic than accidental. Unlike congressional bills, especially controversial ones, which generally take weeks or months to bounce between the House and Senate as they bruise and finally ripen, executive orders are made effective instantly with the stroke of a pen.

Why might Republicans intentionally lean into executive orders and defer legislating till later? The surprising answer lies in a single word: lawfare.

In Trump’s Year One, the Administration surfaced and resolved a library of legal issues, as Trump rolled out successive executive orders immediately challenged by Democrat lawsuits. These cases have largely been resolved. And now the progressive brush has been cleared. The bulldozers have leveled the legal landscape. So Congress can start building things. Indeed, Speaker Mike Johnson has recently hinted at a “surge” of lawmaking as the new year begins.

In other words, the flurry of executive orders instead of legislation now looks like a massive rope-a-dope, to smoke out and squash the Democrats’ best legal arguments, clearing the field for next year’s lawmaking. I don’t know for certain that was the plan, but that’s what it looks like to me.

If I’m right, 2026 will be even more exciting than this year was.

Geopolitically, the world is rapidly transitioning from one state to another, like boiled liquid water becoming steam. As the end of 2025 looms, the creeping authoritarianism of globalism is in full retreat. Remember how we used to panic over UN takeovers through new pandemic power treaties? Poof! Gone! Remember the media’s love affair with coachroach sausage? They will eat ze bugs. That horrible idea has departed to wherever Klaus Schwab went— a paper bogeyman who crumpled under a couple conveniently timed Me-Too problems and some creative accounting.

As Churchill noted in his famous WWII speech, America —“the New World, with all its power and might”— once again “steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.” As the globalist experiment shrivels like weeds doused in Roundup —in under a year!— it has now become nearly conventional wisdom that Old Europe’s elite masters have somehow gotten themselves sideways with all three great powers: Russia, China, and America. In other words, they have nowhere left to hide.

Barely months ago, the notion that the European Continent’s anti-democratic masters in Brussels could be dispatched like the ghosts of Hitler would have drawn the horse’s laugh; now an EU collapse is a forbidden topic, whispered only in terrified private in the marble and mahogany halls in London, Paris, and Berlin.

I will round up the ‘year in review’ for the New Year’s Eve C&C post, but it won’t be easy. We’ve gotten so much more than we expected when Trump won the election last year. I would’ve been satisfied just for the Biden pain to stop, never mind preventing the unimaginable catastrophe of Kamala “the Cackler” Harris in the Oval Office. (That Democrats ever considered Kamala as an option is a stain on their permanent record, alongside slavery, drag queen story hour, and banned light bulbs.)

Candidate Trump promised a golden age, which we affectionately considered to be just campaign used-car salesmanship, normal Trumpian superlatives or hyperbole— not a label. Instead, its been Christmas every day.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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If you doubted, if you weren’t sure, if you’ve been holding out for definitive proof that the Biden era is well and truly dissolving like the gossamer threads of nightmare banished by the first full light of dawn, then yesterday should have sealed the deal. I speak particularly about the full-throated, all-in, unqualified religious Christmas messaging on official U.S. government social media accounts. (Plus the fact that the Agenda didn’t even take the big day off, but more on that in a moment). This morning, the New York Times, gnashing its teeth into powder, ran a reaction story headlined, “Trump Administration Emphasizes Religion in Official Christmas Messages.” Well, Christmas is a religious holiday, so that’s not news, but whatever. For instance:

CLIP: warm and delightful Gen-X Christmas memories from the office of Homeland Security, with accompanying 80s soundtrack (1:25).

This tweet from the official Homeland Security account is a perfect example, and it probably infuriated progressives who work at the Times. Click the link —you’ll love it— it included a wonderfully sentimental and nostalgic video packed with terrific callbacks to the 70s, 80s, and 90s— and more importantly, it began with the title: “Remember the Miracle of Christ’s Birth.”

That was only the topmost gift in a Santa’s sack of official Christmas commentary. War Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted, “Merry Christmas to all. Today we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya quoted John Chapter 1: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Assistant US Attorney (and covid superlawyer) Harmeet Dhillon —who isn’t even a Christian— tweeted, “Wishing Christians nationwide a wonderful day filled with joy and peace, celebrating the birth of Jesus!” Secretary Rubio said, “The joyous message of Christmas is the hope of Eternal Life through Christ.”

HUD Secretary Scott Turner even used his official X account to read the birth narrative from Luke Chapter 2:

CLIP: Secretary Turner reads the Bible on social media, singeing the Times reporters like vampires splashed with holy water (2:10).

It was all just too much for the Times.

“Government officials have traditionally steered clear of such overtly religious language,” the Times noted sourly, “as the Constitution bans an official state religion.” What the Times meant is that government officials have “traditionally” been too chicken to mention the real source of the Christmas celebration, out of fear that the New York Times would round up a bunch of mealy-mouthed malcontents and platform them as “critics.”

Behold, not only is courage back, but humor as well. When the Times dinged the White House yesterday, asking it to respond to “critics” of all the religious messaging, here was the hilarious response:

The Times printed that, unironically.

🔥 If you’ll allow me a moment’s digression, that amusing anecdote illustrates a new counterattack I’ve noticed Trump officials deploy when dealing with the media. For most of my life, nasty progressive reporters have hidden behind an effective framing game called “How Do You Respond.” At press events, they’ll “gotcha” a conservative official by asking a sincere-sounding question like this: “how do you respond to critics who complain your policy stinks like room-temperature French cheese— and kills children?”

It is the laziest reporting imaginable. It’s a fake way to pretend to be unbiased. The reporters aren’t actually quoting critics. They are just making stuff up, fishing for an awkward soundbite, leaving officials fumbling to answer, since they’ve always been forced to be “professional” and treat the reporters’ fake question as if it were perfectly fair and appropriate and not based on a lie.

But this year, Trump officials began pushing back. Now, whenever a reporter starts a question with “how do you respond to critics who say…”, Trump’s officials jump right down the reporter’s throat. They immediately ask, “What critics?” Without waiting for an answer, they demand, “who is saying that?” It is wonderful. The moron reporters are left with an unsolvable riddle. They can either answer, “AOC and Bernie say that,” which will draw a guffaw from everyone in the room. Or, humiliated, they can mumble something illegible and move on, which is what they usually do.

The Times tried to mount a lame defense. It did actually round up a bunch of complaining critics, all of them inherently biased. For instance, the article quoted the president of “Americans United for Separation of Church and State,” an atheist NGO; a VP from a libertarian think tank; and a ‘religion and culture professor’ at a Canadian university. Okay.

The gist of the critics’ complaint seemed to be that federal officials’ mere recognition of the holiday’s religious basis somehow amounted to “establishing a state religion.” Okay again, Scrooges.

This fracas, if you can call it that, evidences the real motive behind the effort to secularize Christmas. It’s never been about being “inclusive.” It is intended to erode the undeniably Christian religious roots of the most popular American holiday of all. Without a secular version of the holiday, how can critics deny the fact that Christmas has always been a national religious holiday— from the first time George Washington slipped on a new pair of military boots?

The bottom line is that a courageous, muscular Christianity is back at the helm. This is not new. It has only returned to active duty. Which makes us far better off than our poor European cousins, who are dealing with goofy nonsense like the next story.

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Western Europe is the birthplace of modern Christianity. It is the headquarters of Catholicism. It generated the Renaissance, which was monofocused on Biblical truth. It has more beautiful churches per capita than anywhere else on Earth. Its oppressed citizens still joyfully celebrate the holiday in vast numbers. But, unlike our American government, the European Union’s elites are downright hostile to Christmas. Which leads to bizarre, mind-bending episodes like this Babylon Bee-worthy headline, which ran Wednesday in Politico’s EU edition:

If the article has a point, which is debatable, it’s that progressives doubt the sincerity of all the pro-Christmas claptrap from the ‘far-right’ on the European continent. “Many of the politicians leading these campaigns are not especially devout,” Politico smirked, “and only a minority of their voters are practicing Christians.”

That’s pretty rich coming from progressives. They don’t even think Christmas is a real holiday. They happily platform Somali cultural traditions, but sneer at Christians’ cultural traditions. And they really hate being criticized for refusing to say “Merry Christmas,” which is what the article was trying to get at. They badly want to call out Europe’s conservative politicians and voters as hypocrites— but their criticism dissolves into hogwash since they prefer the Grinch over the Savior.

So they are left with nothing more than the mindless banality of evil, dressed up as inclusiveness. “Progressive parties and institutions, including the EU,” Politico explained, “have tried to emphasize inclusivity by using neutral phrases like ‘holiday season.’” In other words, the celebration of Christ’s birth should be for everyone— and that, they argue, is only possible if you remove the baby Jesus.

The irony, of course, is that Christ’s birth is for everyone. Which is precisely why progressives prefer to scramble Christmas like it was a free-range, naturally-sourced, egg-white omelet. You can keep your Christmas, but you have to say “happy holidays.” And no Nativity scenes.

🎄 Well, you can have Nativity Scenes in Europe. They just have to be inclusive. Like this silly version, put up by the City of Brussels (the capital of the EU):

The EU elites are literally erasing the baby Jesus. His tiny face was erased. And I hesitate to characterize Mary and Joseph’s faces. They appear to have been involved in an accident with an industrial halal-slicing machine. Joseph has no arms, like they’d been chopped off by a machete-wielding jihadist on the tram.

As Christianity ascends in America, it withers in Western Europe. We have much for which to be grateful.

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Nigerian Christians had an unexpected reason to celebrate Christmas. This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported the story under the headline, “Trump Discloses Christmas Day Strike Against ISIS in Nigeria.” It was a promise, fulfilled: “The President previously said he would move to protect the country’s Christian population.”

“Violence against Christians has escalated in northern Nigeria during the past decade,” the Journal explained, “as Islamic extremists such as Boko Haram wage an insurgency against the country’s secular government and expand their influence in the region.” This year, muslim terrorists captured over 300 children from Nigeria’s Christian schools. In March last year, more than 280 schoolchildren were abducted in the town of Kuriga. In 2021, gunmen kidnapped 317 girls from a boarding school in Jangebe. At the end of 2020, 344 boys were taken from a school in Katsina.

Since 2014, there have been at least 17 cases of mass abductions in which at least 1,700 Christian children were seized from their schools by Islamist gunmen.

According to Amnesty International, more than 100,000 Nigerian Christians have been killed by Muslim extremists since 2011. Some estimates from groups that track Christian persecution are much higher. Until recently, when President Trump promised help, corporate media had covered the plight of these gentle religious people with a level of attention and diligence usually reserved for victims of communism or Republican lawmakers shot by transgender activists.

The truth is, the media only cares about genocide and political violence when it is directed at muslims, like the Palestinians. I’ll let you figure out the reasons why, for extra credit.

In his latest surprise move, the President took direct action yesterday. “The United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria,” Trump announced in a Truth Social post. “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.”

Media shouldn’t have been surprised. Trump has warned that the days of America announcing its military moves in advance are over. Nobody announced this one either, and it didn’t leak, even though the Nigerian government was involved and apparently approved the attack. “The President was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end,” War Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X after Trump’s announcement.

The War Department provided few details about the strike or strikes, leaving the terrorists wondering what might be coming next. U.S. Africa Command, which conducted the operation, only said it was directed at Muslim militants “in known ISIS camps in Nigeria.” Be afraid.

Which was more impressive? That President Trump so quickly followed through with his promise? Or that the Trump Team was obviously steaming ahead over the holiday yesterday, from blanketing social media with warm Christmas messages to sending physical salvation to persecuted Nigerian Christians? Ironically, the Democrats don’t even believe in Christmas, but you can be sure that Biden’s team took the week off every year.

As they reminded us over and over, elections have consequences. Let me know what you think in the comments.

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It was another Christmas miracle! But I fear the Washington Post may soon unmiraculously shed more of its leftist readers. Yesterday, the paper’s entire editorial board ran its 2025 recap, astonishingly headlined “25 good things that happened in 2025.” They played it straight. “Continuing our longstanding tradition of using year-end to reflect on moments of joy and hope,” the editors wrote, hopefully, “here are 25 events during 2025 that renewed our sense of optimism.”

Is optimism making a comeback? During the difficult years, we carefully preserved optimism here in C&C, against tall odds. So it was refreshing to see that word appear in a WaPo Editorial Board paragraph. Refreshing and surprising. Progressives are about as optimistic as Eeyore after finding out he’s been evicted again.

WaPo’s list of optimism mostly avoided politics, with the notable exception of the second item, which was a massive admission: “Despite tariffs, the U.S. economy kept growing throughout 2025, thanks largely to a boom in AI innovation. The S&P 500 soared to new heights, up more than 15 percent for the year.” Boom.

Here are a few more of the optimistic developments that WaPo managed to discover, like diamonds in the rough of Trump’s first year back in office:

• Fat drugs. Believe it or not, the U.S. obesity rate has been shrinking for the first time since it peaked in 2022 at a record 40%. This year, it kept deflating like a punctured bike tire, down to 37%.

• The war on drugs. Overdose deaths fell by an astonishing -25% compared to the prior year.

• Medical breakthroughs (with no vaccines on the list, which was good news in itself). WaPo noted the new twice-a-year HIV drug, the first-ever treatment for Huntington’s, and the first progress in dementia research since it stalled 25 years ago.

• The private space industry. From one company (Firefly Aerospace) that landed its own probe on the moon (allegedly), to Starlink’s record 100 missions using reusable booster assemblies.

• Zero hurricanes hit the U.S. this year, a recent record, which was especially good news after 2024’s horrible hurricane season.

• Even with all the Trumpian deregulation (or possibly because of it), there were some notable environmental wins. Cute green sea turtles have been struck from the endangered list, and the salmon have returned to Oregon’s rivers after their fifty-year vacation. Woot.

• Five more states adopted universal school choice, bringing the total to 18. The fact that WaPo counted this as ‘good news’ speaks volumes. (The commenters were not happy).

• I know you’ve been worried about this one: New York City’s giant rat problem has improved, thanks largely to the exciting technological development of putting trash in bins instead of leaving it piled in buffet-style heaps by the sidewalk.

I left out some of the sillier items, like Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce, or climate-change-related ‘wins.’ I’m not saying Taylor Swift’s engagement at age 36 wasn’t optimistic news; thank goodness they finally found a courageous volunteer to snap her up before spinsterhood set in. There’s still time for baby Swifts! Not that there’s anything wrong with unparenthood or whatever they’re calling it these days. But still.

I’m not sure which was the more optimistic news: the 25 items on the list —even including Taylor’s pending nuptials— or the fact that the WaPo published an official editorial about optimistic developments in the first place. I can’t wait to see where all of this is going.

Have a fabulous Friday! Skate back here tomorrow morning, for the Weekend Edition roundup of delicious essential news and spicy commentary.

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