🎆☕️ YEAR IN REVIEW, PART II ☙ Thursday, January 1, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠 🎆

Happy New Year! Today, we round up 2025's final three months, October—December, in an astonishing recap of terrific news and unimaginably optimistic developments.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday, New Year’s Day! Happy New Year, dear readers. Yesterday, the Washington Monument became a five-hour spectacular New Year’s Eve show. Today, it’s the college football spectacular, so kick up your dogs and settle in. Today’s post completes the C&C history of 2025, part deux, resolving Part I’s dramatic cliffhanger, but leaving us in suspense for the sequel. Let’s do this thing.

YOUTUBE: The Illumination of America: Washington Monument Lighting and New Year’s Eve Show (5:22:35).

As the final roundup came together, among all the great news and developments, one thing became perfectly clear: health news was the star. Go MAHA! You’re going to love it. And remember— this is just the last three months.

🌍 2025 YEAR IN REVIEW (OCTOBER—DECEMBER) 🌍

🔥🔥🔥 OCTOBER 🔥🔥🔥

October marks the year’s final quarter, and is traditionally the opening act of the country’s so-called holiday season, which Americans enthusiastically celebrate by consuming pumpkin-flavored products: pumpkin lattes, pumpkin scones, pumpkin nasal spray, pumpkin insect repellent, pumpkin air freshener, and so forth.

📉 2025’s October began with a nasty rumor that was mostly spread by the media but was met by much skepticism from the American public: the federal government was shut down. Allegedly. We didn’t believe it, since the US Debt Clock kept spinning just as fast as usual, and our public servants continued filling social media with angry messages blaming each other for the alleged disaster, and no one actually saw any real evidence of this so-called “closure” beyond fancifully dramatic daily media tales about the painful hardships endured by National Park restroom attendants forced against their wills to take paid vacations, which apparently was literally ten times worse than the privations endured by U.S. soldiers during the Bataan Death March. But life always finds a way.

The stock market responded to the rumors of the government shutdown by climbing to record highs. Gold and silver also climbed to record highs. U.S. crude oil production hit a record high, and prices at the pump kept falling. President Trump scored more trade deals —including key ‘rare earths’ agreements— all around the world.

Meanwhile, Democrats modestly demanded only one trillion dollars in new Obamacare funding in order to agree to “re-open” the federal store. Trump refused to take their calls.

By the month’s end, Trump had the leverage he needed —in the form of SNAP (food stamp) payments— and it would only be a matter of days until Democrats caved like a Florida sinkhole.

🚀 In military news, War Secretary Pete Hegseth convened a dramatic “all hands” meeting of all military commanders. This was reported by a sneering CNN as, “Hegseth orders military culture overhaul: ‘if you don’t agree, resign.’” After telling the generals they’d all have to meet military fitness standards, he laid down the law. “From this moment forward,” Secretary Hegseth told the brass, “the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: war fighting, preparing for war, and preparing to win. We are not the WOKE department.”

“It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and fat admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world,” Hegseth told the shocked commanders, as the snacks fell nervelessly from their fingers. “And no more beardos,” he snapped, for emphasis.

💉 In health news, mage drugmaker Pfizer —having for months been treated by the President like a cocker spaniel’s chew toy— finally threw in the towel. TAW. The Wall Street Journal ran the story headlined, “White House Unveils ‘TrumpRx’ Drug-Buying Site and a Pfizer Pricing Deal.” It announced a revolutionary reform in how Americans buy drugs, removing about six levels of middlemen who mark up the drugs and essentially allowing pharma companies to sell direct to the consumer.

Covid drug giant Pfizer, which makes thousands of other drugs, became the first victim, er, volunteer, and agreed to offer some of its most popular drugs on the President’s new platform at steep discounts ranging from 50% to 100% off.

📉 A new Gallup poll found conservatives’ trust in corporate media scraping the bottom, at only eight percent, which ironically is even fewer than the number of conservatives who believe the government faked the Moon Landing:

Even among media-credulous Democrats, since 2020, their trust in mass media dove by a whopping -19%. You’d think media would get the message at some point.

🚀 In October, the Navy began playing live-action “Battleship” in the Caribbean. It scored a ‘hit’ and sank the first of several narco-speedboats, instantly producing progressive fury over the fact that the Administration was actually treating so-called the War on Drugs as a “war.”

The New York Times ran a breathless story headlined, “Trump ‘Determined’ the U.S. Is Now in a War With Drug Cartels, Congress Is Told.” The Navy deployed the carrier group Gerald R. Ford to the blue Caribbean waters right off Venezuela, coincidentally adjacent to the largest oil reserves in the Western hemisphere, which Venezuela was preparing to make a move on.

🕊️ Also in October, President Trump successfully brokered a 20-point peace plan between Israel and Palestine, ending the most contentious and most seemingly impossible-to-stop Middle East war in our lifetimes, freeing civilian hostages who’d been kept in tunnels like snared moles for over two years. Media predicted it wouldn’t hold. It held. Arab newspapers were much less stingy than American media:

Democrats competed furiously to see who could come up with the best explanation for why President Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the incredibly destructive war.

👨‍⚖️ Irascible federal courts found a way to get back at the Supreme Court, which they find too chummy with the Trump 2.0 Administration. After Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s attempted assassin Nicolas Roske came out as “Sophie,” AWFL federal judge Deborah L. Boardman gave him only 8 years in prison— the minimum legal sentence. Corporate media coverage scrubbed all pictures of the assassin, since he looks nothing like “Sophie,” which only proved that trans women aren’t like biological women after all, since a real woman’s picture would have topped every single story.

Here he is, “Sophie”:

🗳️ In election integrity news, the AP reported: “Former Republican election official buys Dominion Voting — a target of 2020 conspiracy theories.” The natives on BlueSky suddenly decided that slandering Dominion was okay after all:

That was the first electoral shoe to drop. The second major electronic voting machine company involved in the 2020 elections was not spared. Just days after news of Dominion’s sale, the Wall Street Journal reported, “Smartmatic Indicted Over Alleged Bribes.” It described a fabulously complicated international bribery and fraud story all wound up with …Venezuela. Where the carrier group was.

But never forget: 2020 was the most secure election in history! Because many Democrats say so!

One cannot help but suspect that a terrible reckoning over the 2020 election catastrophe is inexorably building to a stunning climax.

🔥 President Trump awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom to Charlie Kirk. Meanwhile, the ripples from Charlie’s killing continued spreading.

Religious pollster Barna reported, “New Data: Young Adults Lead a Resurgence in Church Attendance.” For the first time in history, Gen Z and Millennials outpaced their older relatives in rates of regularly going to church. A Christian nation began healing.

📉 The slow-burning Epstein affair claimed yet more high-profile victims, as Britain’s Prince Andrew became the Andrew formerly known as ‘prince.’ He was unceremoniously (literally) stripped of all his titles and banned from all royal properties. In the US, billionaire and donor-class darling Leon Black was exposed as another one of Jeffrey Epstein’s hundreds of best friends.

Another Epstein best buddy, Bill Gates, shocked the world by suddenly and unexpectedly announcing he was getting out of the climate change business— and that it had never been such a big deal anyway. The New York Times: “Bill Gates Says Climate Change ‘Will Not Lead to Humanity’s Demise.’”

Bill’s evolving position on the climate had nothing whatsoever to do with his Epstein connections. Why would it?

👮 In “Operation Nothing But Net,” which might have uncovered the biggest criminal conspiracy in U.S. sports history, the FBI arrested thirty-one people —including players, coaches, and other well-connected folks— in a huge NBA betting scandal.

Another massive, minority-fraud scandal was broken by an independent journalist: James O’Keefe. The Trump Administration moved so fast that O’Keefe said, “I have never witnessed the government respond as quickly to an investigation as it has to our recent story on federal contractor fraud.” The fraud involved minority contractors who get multi-million-dollar grants and then don’t actually do any work — they just sub it out to non-minority contractors at a fraction of the cost. It appeared to be a widespread problem.

Tricks and treats closed out the month, and then it was …

🔥🔥🔥 NOVEMBER 🔥🔥🔥

As the nation’s turkeys began feeling more anxious and looking around in nervous anticipation, food stamp recipients felt the first blow, wondering whether they’d be able to continue buying booze, cigarettes, and food stamps. President Trump cut off SNAP benefits, despite two federal judges who tried to order them continued. (In a standout example of modern lawfare, Democrats filed twenty-four cases and only found two judges who went along.)

But by the end of November’s very first week, the Supreme Court quickly overruled the Democrats’ judges and held that food stamp funding could be temporarily halted. TAW. And then, Trump had Democats right where he wanted them. The next day, the President aimed at what was standing behind the Democrats —the real cause of the shutdown— Big Insurance.

Two days after the Supreme Court greenlighted the SNAP pause, and one day after Trump outed Big Insurance as the real brains behind the Democrats’ demand for $1 trillion for Big Insurance, Politico ran a simple but electrifying headline: “The shutdown endgame is here.” TAW.

🎼 In music news, rap vanished from Billboard’s Top 40 since the music ‘genre’ first appeared 35 years ago. Sean ‘Baby Oil Diddy’ Combs was slid right into federal prison, to begin serving a slippery four-year sentence for wrangling oiled-up male prostitutes across state lines.

🚀 President Trump began standing up for Nigerian Christians who, he said, were “facing an existential threat” from muslim terrorists. The War Secretary immediately joined the cause:

Meanwhile, in the Proxy War, Ukraine began experiencing a dreaded political polycrisis, a state of affairs reasonably compared to simultaneously having a root canal, an income tax audit, and open-skull brain surgery. President Trump showed Zelensky his 28-point peace plan (8 more points than the Israel-Palestine deal), and the former comedian’s government and friend group coincidentally began collapsing in a fraud scandal right at the same time. The Europeans, blindsided by the blur of developments, rushed in to reinforce their little green sweatshirted friend.

The Washington Post described the situation like this:

Back at home, a group of six Democrats published a TikTok video encouraging soldiers to refuse to follow “illegal orders,” which resulted in a New York Times story headlined, “Pentagon Opens Inquiry Into Senator Mark Kelly Over What Hegseth Calls ‘Seditious’ Video.”

💉 In health news, trade magazines began predicting the bitter end of pharma darling Moderna, which makes nothing but unsafe and ineffective mRNA drugs. Stat News ran the story, headlined, “How Moderna, the company that helped save the world, unraveled.”

Science Direct actually published a story with this alarming headline: “Strange Structures Found Lurking in The Blood of People With Long COVID.” Hint: the long-covid patients, who all had “strange,” oversized, misshapen microclots in their blood, were also all vaccinated. Just coincidentally.

An outraged NBC reported, “FDA claims that Covid shots killed 10 children, and vows new vaccine rules.”

Meanwhile, Kennedy’s CDC quietly updated its online FAQ on “vaccines and autism,” reversing its prior position and now saying, “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim” and that health authorities have ignored studies supporting a link. Boom.

HHS also published a careful, comprehensive, 410-page report that demolished the “Gender Dysphoria” (GD) industry and exposed the whole sordid game as unscientific. “There are no verifiable physiological or biochemical markers —such as abnormal imaging, lab, or clinical findings— to confirm the GD diagnosis,” it correctly reported.

📈 In political news, the 1981 classic movie Escape from New York became predictive programming. The Guardian reported, “New York elites flock to Florida after Mamdani victory.” The little socialist Mamdani’s victory kicked off a Stalinesque party purge. Nancy Pelosi promptly announced her retirement —after serving a mere 106 years in Congress— and progressive columnist Michelle Goldberg published a scathing New York Times op-ed titled, “More Democrats Need to Follow Pelosi’s Example and Retire.”

In November, the Democrats began aggressively deploying their “affordability” narrative, wielding a weapon against President Trump over a crisis that Democrats created. Handy!

MAGA began to “fracture” after President Trump had one bad interview —with conservative pundit Laura Ingraham!— wherein he expressed mild sympathy for corporations that sometimes need access to foreign, high-tech, skilled workers.

The psyops shifted into high gear, and many conservatives took the bait, unfortunately. Even firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) adopted Democrat talking points, telling Politico that, “The five-alarm fire is health care and affordability for Americans, and that’s where Trump’s focus should be.” Shortly thereafter, MTG announced her retirement.

Fortunately, C&C and others were able to get the truth out before lasting damage occurred, and the MAGA coalition held.

✈️ The Epstein scandal claimed another scalp: Democrat darling Larry Summers. After those emails, in which the married, elderly economist solicited advice on seducing his Harvard students, Larry’s goose was cooked.

Congress overwhelmingly passed a law requiring the DOJ to release “all” the Epstein files within thirty days.

🔥 After conservative influencer Chris Rufo ran an exposé on Minnesota’s Somali fraud, Reuters ran a story headlined, “Trump says he is ending temporary deportation protections for Somalis in Minnesota.” As you know, this volcanic story would soon erupt into December’s biggest news.

Funny how these big stories all seem to start with conservative influencers. Corporate media is becoming increasingly irrelevant, out of touch, and shrilly annoying.

📈 President Trump launched a new Manhattan Project called the “Genesis Mission,” which aims to build science-fiction-worthy, fully-automated, AI-driven, 24x7 robot laboratories with the goal of solving the biggest and most important problems in science and medicine, and definitely not take over control of America’s nuclear weapons and end the world.

Hopefully, they won’t let the robots control the plug.

🧑‍⚖️ A Fulton County, Georgia Judge finally dismissed Fani Willis’ election-interference RICO case against President Trump. This was the case on which Democrats had pinned most of their hopes for criminally convicting the President. Womp, womp.

📈 In economic news, Black Friday shattered records with $11.8B in online sales.. Domestic crude production set a new historic record. (Apparently, you can drill your way to lower gas prices.) Data center construction fueled new building and infrastructure projects all across the country.

Thanksgiving became the most affordable holiday since the pandemic, as most major chains offered discounted meal packages, and a grateful nation expressed its profound thanks for avoiding a day-drinking future involving the Cackler and the Coach.

All of which led inexorably to …

🔥🔥🔥 DECEMBER 🔥🔥🔥

The year’s final month began with media running countless stories probing experts over whether killing terrorists in unmarked, unregistered drug boats, on the high seas, was in fact a “war crime.” Defending cartel soldiers was a very weird position to take, and the media reluctantly sank the whole thing after a few days of the public not going along.

📉 In economic news, Mexico felt the squeeze as remittances from the U.S. plunged to their lowest level in over a decade. The Wall Street Journal ran an article headlined, “U.S. Trade Deficit Falls to Five-Year Low.” The Journal also ran a long-form, multi-media style, infographics-packed article headlined, “Why Everyone Got Trump’s Tariffs Wrong.”

CNBC reported:

Meanwhile, in news from across the pond, the New York Times ran a quietly morose story headlined, “Volkswagen to End Production at German Plant, a First in Company History.” Guess what dinged Europe’s biggest carmaker hardest? “The company has been hit hard by President Trump’s tariffs,” the Times reported.

After decades of taking advantage of us, Europe’s loss became our gain. Just like Trump predicted.

👮 In law enforcement news, the Minnesota fraud story picked up steam, right from the first week of December, as the New York Times ran a shocking bit of real journalism headlined, “How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch.”

By the end of the month, as you know, following Nick Shirley’s stunning investigative video, the story reached a fever pitch at around 70 mph, showing no signs of slowing down as we head into the new year. The Wall Street Journal ran an astonishing op-ed titled simply, “The Biggest Fraud in Welfare.”

“Something is profoundly wrong with the entire U.S. welfare system,” the authors wrote, probably understating the problem, “one far deeper and more dangerous than the shocking fraud in Minnesota that has been making headlines.”

Here’s a thought for you. If government crackdowns —say on SBA loans, SNAP, Section 8 housing, or daycare grants— need a ‘permission structure’ to justify radical change, but the corporate media refuses to cooperate, what do you do? How about trying independent influencers? Even if it’s not intentional, it still seems to be working.

Meanwhile, following up on James O’Keefe’s fraud exposé of minority contractors from just weeks before, Tribal Business News sullenly reported, “SBA orders 8(a) firms to submit financial records by Jan. 5, raising stakes for tribal contractors.”

President Trump pardoned jailed Colorado elections official Tina Peters, giving her lawyers a brand new constitutional argument for her release. CBS ran a related story headlined, “U.S. Justice Department sues Fulton County officials over 2020 election voter data.” You’d think Fulton County would be falling over itself to prove how secure the 2020 election was, and not making the DOJ sue for records. Weird.

The New York Times ran a terrific story headlined, “Judge Convicted of Obstructing ICE Agents as They Sought Undocumented Immigrant.” Judge Hannah Dugin had switched sides of the judicial bench, and become a convicted felon. It was a historic case in many ways, not least because it tore through the veil of judicial immunity.

📈 In domestic politics, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced an upcoming surge in legislation featuring “an aggressive affordability agenda, and codification of the President’s executive orders. Probably about 150 are codifiable by Congress— and we’re working steadily through that list.”

Senator Mike Lee (R-Ut.) coined the term ‘Zombie Filibuster’ and started lobbying for the same solution we’ve noodled over for months— stopping the ‘silent’ option for filibusterers and making them actually argue without stopping.

Elon and Trump kissed and made up! Axios reported, “Scoop: Elon Musk diving into 2026 midterms for the GOP.” Disappointing Democrats, Elon’s third-party ambitions were shelved in the rosy warmth of the two men’s strong friendship.

Meanwhile, news from the other side of the aisle was not as encouraging. The New York Times ran a deliciously ironic story headlined, “The D.N.C. Is Scrapping Its Report on What Went Wrong in 2024.” Never mind!

✈️ In Epstein news, the DOJ —responding to the law requiring disclosure— dumped hundreds of thousands of Epstein documents, with a couple dozen of them redacted. Guess which ones the media focused on? The media began losing interest; the story was a nothing-burger except that it included hundreds of compromising pictures of Bill “Bubba” Clinton in awkward scenes with Epstein or young-looking girls.

The DOJ has promised more large dumps to follow as they complete required redaction reviews. Who wants to bet each new tranche of documents will contain a certain theme or focus, and be particularly bad news for some Democrat or other? I won’t make the mistake of betting Michelle’s Tahoe again, but I can come up with something.

🚀 In geopolitical news, Time Magazine reported the most remarkable development of the Trump 2.0 term, headlined, “Trump’s National Security Strategy Sparks European Backlash Over ‘Far-Right’ Rhetoric.” If you haven’t read it yet, you can read it here.. It was nothing less than a declaration of a new, multipolar America First global order, based on peaceful democratic populism and mutual respect rather than an endlessly violent globalist grift requiring ever-stricter censorship and control.

The pressure on the Green Sweatshirt reached the boiling point, as his former friend —the New York Times— abandoned ship and reported, “Zelensky’s Government Sabotaged Oversight, Allowing Corruption to Fester.”

And then, just when everybody had calmed down and concluded that Trump was just joking about “acquiring” Greenland, the President appointed Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “special envoys” to Greenland, which is supposedly a Dutch colony of around 56,000 hardy souls located right in America’s geopolitical sweet spot. Denmark was diplomatically displeased that Trump was lobbying the Greenlanders directly, as though they had some choice in the matter.

Finally, just in time for Christmas, Al Jazeera reported, “US bars five top Europeans over alleged efforts to ‘censor American viewpoints.’” The Europeans lost their minds, generating reams of anguished invective.

💉 In health news —the fattest and most encouraging part of December’s events— German researchers published a peer-reviewed study finding that “states with higher vaccination rates exhibited significantly larger increases in excess mortality… even after adjusting for confounders.” Imagine that.

RFK’s new ACIP Vaccine Committee repealed the Hepatitis-B vaccine mandate for infants. Only four of the fifteen types of currently mandated shots —MMR, shingles, polio, and DTP— are currently not under review.

CBS News breathlessly reported, “Appointment of controversial FDA official rocking agency like “an atom bomb,” scientists there say.” One anonymous FDA worker called Dr. Traci Høeg’s appointment as the FDA’s drug approval director, “an extinction-level event.” “Putting Tracy Beth in charge is like dropping an atom bomb,” another anonymous staffer griped.

Traci wasted zero time. One day later, Reuters reported, “Exclusive: US FDA launches fresh safety scrutiny of approved RSV therapies for infants.”

Far-left Slate Magazine reported, “The Supreme Court Just Gave Anti-Vax Parents an Alarming Win. In the case of Miller v. McDonald, the nation’s highest court signaled that it believes Americans have a religious right to refuse all vaccine mandates. A hyperventilating Slate decried the Court’s short, procedural order as “incredibly alarming,” “reckless,” “dangerous,” and on top of all that, “a public health catastrophe.”

The signs are there for all to see. In late December, the Washington Post reported, “U.S. plans to stop recommending most childhood vaccines, defer to doctors.” That is what we voted for.

A week after losing their minds over the FDA memo announcing ten pediatric deaths from the covid jabs, the New York Times ran a shocking followup with an eight-word headline: “FDA Expands Covid Vaccine Inquiry to Adult Deaths.” This development may have provoked the near-crazed Atlantic to run this astonishing, Overton-window-moving, limited hangout headline:

As December wore on, nine more pharma companies caved and agreed to join up with the super-affordable TrumpRx platform. Newsweek reported, “Donald Trump scores big win on Medicare, Medicaid drug pricing.” Among other examples, a diabetes drug will shrink from $525 to $50, a blood thinner from $756 to sixteen dollars, and the new GLP-1 diet drugs from thousands to around $150 a month. Eliquis, the most popular blood thinner in America, will be available to Medicare patients for free.

Finally, HHS corrected the first name of one of Biden’s Covid Czars under his official departmental portrait. Instead of “Rachel Levine, MD,” it now correctly reads “Richard L. Levine, MD.”

🎼 In music news, the Wall Street Journal ran an uplifting story headlined, “Why Christmas Music Is More Popular Than Ever.” Goodbye rap; hello Christmas classics.

⚖️ In TAW legal news, the Washington Post reported, the “Supreme Court hands Trump victory in fight over Texas congressional map.” It cleared the way for five new GOP districts (and five fewer Democrat ones). “The District Court,” said the Supremes, “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”

📈 The month wrapped with terrific economic news. On Christmas Eve, at the top of its home page, the Wall Street Journal reported, “The U.S. Economy Keeps Powering Ahead, Defying Dire Predictions.” The New York Times called it a “surge:”

Meanwhile, rounding out the trio of usually pessimistic media critics, the Washington Post’s entire editorial board ran an optimistic 2025 recap, astonishingly headlined “25 good things that happened in 2025.” The editors said, “here are 25 events during 2025 that renewed our sense of optimism.”

I find it most optimistic of all that the Washington Post’s editors could find 25 good things to like about the first year of Trump 2.0. We found many more than that, as I’ve done my best to document in this two-part Year in Review. I hope it brings you confidence, optimism, and helps you look forward to what will be an even bigger 2026, since all the pieces are now on the 4-D chessboard.

Thank you for your unwavering support and readership this year! I can’t wait to experience the next one together with you.

Enjoy a joyful and rewarding New Year’s Day! I may take the day off tomorrow, we’ll see. C&C will return (tomorrow or Saturday) with an incredible roundup of nearly unbelievable essential news and commentary.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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