• January 2021 pipe bomber in FBI custody: After nearly five years of apparently fruitless searching and finding no more information than the height of the suspect, the FBI has finally made an arrest in the case of the pipe bombs discovered near the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters in January 2021. Brian Cole, a Virginia resident, was arrested this morning and will be arraigned later today. The Patriot Post’s Mark Alexander asks, “WHY did this take five years to resolve? The answer is in part because Biden’s weaponized DOJ spent so much time on the J6 prosecutions of the mostly nonviolent offenders. But that is not the only answer…” This story is still developing.

• IG report on Hegseth and Signal: A War Department Inspector General investigation into Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal snafu has concluded that he did violate departmental policy in using the app to share sensitive information, but it also noted that Hegseth had the authority to declassify intelligence. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell welcomed the IG’s report, stating that it “is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth and proves what we knew all along — no classified information was shared.” He proclaimed, “This matter is resolved, and the case is closed.” Hegseth also responded, posting on X, “No classified information. Total exoneration. Case closed. Houthis bombed into submission. Thank you for your attention to this IG report.” After seeing the report, Sen. Eric Schmitt appeared to agree, calling it a “nothing burger.”

• Immigration applications frozen: Foreign aliens from 19 countries pursuing U.S. citizenship have just had their proceedings halted under a new directive from President Donald Trump. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has placed a hold on green cards, citizenship, benefit applications, and even naturalization ceremonies for nationals from Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela, and 16 other high-risk countries of concern. Additionally, all asylum applications have been frozen regardless of the nation of origin. The hold will allow USCIS to perform a “comprehensive re-review, potential interview, and re-interview of all aliens” from the affected countries. This action comes on the heels of the Islamic terror attack by a legal Afghan migrant who killed one National Guardsman and injured another.

• Henry Cuellar pardoned: On Wednesday, President Trump announced that he had given a “full and unconditional pardon” to Texas Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar and his wife. In May 2024, the Biden administration’s DOJ charged the couple with accepting $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijan oil company and a Mexican bank. In issuing his pardon, Trump asserted that Cuellar was a victim: “the Biden Administration weaponized the Justice System against their Political Opponents.” Trump noted that Cuellar had spoken out against “the Biden Border ‘Catastrophe.’” Cuellar thanked Trump “for his tremendous leadership and for taking the time to look at the facts.” It was Cuellar’s daughter who reached out to Trump in a letter, asking for compassion and clemency for her parents.

• Congress subpoenas Jack Smith’s testimony on Trump’s classified docs: The House Judiciary Committee will compel former Special Counsel Jack Smith to appear for a deposition on December 17. Smith will need to turn over documents relating to his prosecution of Donald Trump by the 12th. Committee Chairman Jim Jordan says the deposition is meant to delve into Smith’s tactics, such as placing a leading presidential candidate under a gag order during an election year. Smith’s attorneys are objecting to the deposition’s closed-door nature and requesting that it be open to the public. Smith’s desire to get Trump has been apparent, with him going so far as to say that he would have secured a conviction had Trump not won the 2024 election. Smith has said that the implication that his actions were politically motivated is “laughable.”

• Trump’s ninth cabinet meeting: On Tuesday, President Trump met with his cabinet for 2.5 hours. It was the ninth such meeting, which, as Gary Bauer pointed out, is “the same number of cabinet meetings that Joe Biden held over all four years!” Foreign policy took the main stage at the meeting, with Venezuela remaining in the spotlight. Of narco-terrorists smuggling drugs out of Venezuela on speedboats, Trump’s stated policy was “taking those son of a b****es out.” He added that strikes against cocaine manufacturing plants and drug cartels on land are coming soon. Trump once again suggested that the tariff income from his new policies is so high that soon Americans “won’t even have income tax to pay.” News media and economists are skeptical that tariffs could ever again pay for the national budget — as they did toward the end of the 1800s — but Trump has confounded them before.

• Medal of Honor Act raises pensions: Since 1863, some 3,528 service members have received the highest military decoration in the United States — the Medal of Honor. Up until this week, the 61 living recipients — heroes in every sense of the word — were receiving a special pension of $16,880 annually. The Medal of Honor Act, signed by President Trump on Monday, quadrupled that pension to approximately $67,500. MOH recipients “spend most of their time traveling our country, telling their stories,” says Rep. Troy Nehls, a sponsor of the legislation. This special pension will “lift the financial burden off of these selfless warriors” as they continue to inspire “the next generation of America’s heroes.”

• Trump undoes Biden’s fuel standards: In the Oval Office yesterday, President Trump announced that he was rolling back Joe Biden’s restrictive fuel economy standards, asserting that doing so will save Americans some $109 billion. “Combined with the insane electric vehicle mandate, Biden’s burdensome regulations helped cause the price of cars to soar more than 425%, and in one case, they went up 18% in one year,” Trump explained. “Today, we’re taking one more step to kill the Green New Scam.” Under the Biden administration, automakers were required to increase vehicle fuel efficiency standards to an average of 50 miles per gallon by 2031. Trump has now eliminated that onerous and costly CAFE standard and allowed the free market to direct manufacturing output.

• Was DC killer threatened by the Taliban? The 29-year-old Afghan national who attacked two National Guard members in DC last week may have been threatened by the Taliban. Investigators are reportedly digging into information indicating that the Afghan attacker may have been motivated to carry out the attack after receiving a threat from the Taliban that they would murder his family in Afghanistan if he did not perpetrate the terrorist attack. As one intelligence source explained, “Most of them have families back home, and if the Taliban cannot get to them, they are making it very clear that they will go after their families.” The investigation is also focusing on the vetting process following Joe Biden’s disastrous exit from Afghanistan. With tens of thousands of Afghans brought into America following the U.S.‘s exit, the effort by the Taliban to blackmail and weaponize them for terrorism against Americans is troubling.

• ICE arrests another Afghan terrorist in the U.S.: Not only did the U.S. waste $148 billion on Afghanistan reconstruction from 2002 to 2025 to no avail, but it also spent $14 billion to resettle nearly 200,000 Afghans in the U.S. with shoddy vetting. After the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration abandoned certain protocols in the interest of processing tens of thousands of Afghans into our country quickly. There was no way to check the identities of anyone coming in because, at the time, the Afghan government was in chaos. As a result, on Wednesday, another Afghan man with links to the terrorist group that killed 13 American soldiers at Abbey Gate was arrested by federal immigration officials. Jaan Shah SafiSafi is a terrorist linked to ISIS-K and is the third Afghan to be detained in the past week.

Headlines

• ICE agents descend on Minneapolis to crack down on Somali migrants (NY Post)

• Venezuela resumes accepting U.S. deportation flights after Trump closes airspace to country (Fox News)

• California announces new online portal to report alleged misconduct by federal agents (Just the News)

• Illinois police department rehires illegal alien arrested by ICE earlier this year (Not the Bee)

• Trump-backed congressional push to halt state AI regs falls short (National Review)

• Texas Tech restricts teaching of race and gender (Fox News)

• Humor: Democrats accuse Luke Skywalker of war crimes for using more than one proton torpedo against Death Star (Babylon Bee)

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