Canada receives but a passing mention in the recently released U.S. National Security Strategy, but that doesn’t mean it will not have an impact here.
In many ways, it already does. Canada as a neighbour was among the first countries to be affected by key policy changes brought forth by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Lost in the din of a violent week is CBP’s release of its statistics for agency “encounters” for the month of November. They reveal that not only is the border secure, but historically secure and becoming more so. Illegal migrant “travel season” starts in February, however, and we’ll soon see how long it lasts, but for now the greatest border accomplishment of Trump II can be measured in the record low number of alien children who are attempting to cross illegally – news you likely won’t hear about anywhere else.
The American alcohol industry is grappling with severe financial headwinds as 2025 comes to a close, marked by a wave of bankruptcies and the lowest consumer drinking rates recorded in nearly a century.
The target was a drug trafficker turned F.B.I. informant who didn’t stand a chance. As he had lunch with friends at a restaurant in Medellín, Colombia, a hit man in a dark hoodie sneaked up behind him and shot him five times in the head.
The man who had ordered the hit quickly received a photograph of the body, the authorities said. He reshared it widely — boasting that he had killed “the rat.”
The man behind the killing was Ryan Wedding, a Canadian who rose to fame as an Olympic snowboarder two decades ago, only to become what the authorities describe as one of the world’s biggest drug lords. “El Jefe,” as he was known, ran a drug-trafficking empire out of Mexico and was now one of the most wanted fugitives in the world.
All individuals traveling to the United States will now be photographed before entering or leaving the country starting Friday, according to a new regulation from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
In some cases, U.S. customs officials will also be able to capture travelers’ fingerprints.
These requirements take effect on Dec. 26 and apply to all non-U.S. citizens, including Canadian travelers and diplomats.
WASHINGTON — Minnesota’s lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan donned a hijab to express solidarity with Somalis in a local TV appearance amid federal and congressional investigations into fraudsters in their refugee community who bilked taxpayers out of as much as $9 billion.
“I am incredibly clear that the Somali community is part of the fabric of the state of Minnesota,” Flanagan said at Karmel Mall in Minneapolis alongside local officials in a video released by Somali TV of Minnesota on Thursday.
Please tell me this isn't real. @fancypants_s https://t.co/AfbAYalkLb
— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) December 26, 2025
@fancypants_s https://t.co/oKWyoxfaSW
— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) December 26, 2025
h/t Patti Jo
China’s military buildup is making “the U.S. homeland increasingly vulnerable,” according to the Pentagon’s annual China military power report.
This is the result of a combination of their decades-long arms buildup and a shift in nuclear force doctrine. “China maintains a large and growing arsenal of nuclear, maritime, conventional long-range strike, cyber and space capabilities able to directly threaten Americans’ security,” according to the report.
Conversations between humans and AI chatbots can significantly influence voters’ decisions, with the impact in Canada potentially three times greater than in the United States, according to a study published in the journal Nature on Dec. 4.
The study, conducted by researchers from MIT and other universities in Canada, Poland, and the United States, analyzed how conversations with AI chatbots could persuade people to change their voting intentions more effectively than traditional political advertisements.
The attack on US troops by a Syrian security forces member who was a supporter of the extremist “Islamic State” group in mid-December has consequences well beyond the four deaths that resulted.
One question continues to arise after the recent killing of two US soldiers and a civilian translator in central Syria by a follower of the extremist “Islamic State” group.
The killer had infiltrated the Syrian security forces. How many others in the Syrian security forces might hold similarly extreme opinions?
U.S. President Donald Trump has been a disruptive force since he burst onto the political scene a decade ago — but the pace of change in the first year of his second presidency is unlike just about anything seen before in the nearly 250-year history of the American republic.
Since his inauguration in January, Trump has upended the global trade order with a sweeping new tariffs scheme, radically curtailed immigration while deploying enforcement agents to round up migrants en masse and issued pink slips to federal public servants at a scale unmatched in the modern era.
The U.S. Department of State has announced sanctions against a number of individuals including the British head of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) Clare Melford, whose organization issued a report this summer listing “digital denialism” of Canadian residential schools as one example of “hate speech” that harms democracy.
Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers linked to a Sept. 25 GDI report on hate speech in Canada in an X post to announce Melford’s travel ban, saying that GDI has interfered with speech on American platforms, including by labeling opinions that “question” the nature of Canadian residential schools as hate speech.
America is not a “nation of immigrants,” and never has been, but there has been a generations-long effort to make Americans feel a false sense of camaraderie with culturally unrecognizable people from all over the globe.
Every generation for the past century-plus has been told the same thing: The United States exists to save the entire world’s less well-to-do by bringing them here and allowing them to experience the American Dream.
It was an argument made by politicians and members of the media, to be sure, but government schools made sure to “mold young minds” into believing the nonsense as well.
Arkansas’s governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is being praised by conservatives for her handling of a demand from an association of atheists and agnostics miffed by her decision to include a “theological account of the Christian story of Jesus’ birth” in her official proclamation closing state offices for Christmas.
The spat kicked off when Ms. Sanders — who served as White House press secretary during the first Trump administration — announced that state offices would be closed an extra day this year, December 26, “in celebration of Christmas.”
Canada’s Liberal government is pushing through sweeping new legislation targeting refugees that observers fear will usher in a new era of US-style border policies, fueling xenophobia and the scapegoating of immigrants.
Bill C-12, or Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act, includes many changes around border security along with new ineligibility rules for refugee claimants.
It was fast-tracked and passed through a third reading in the House of Commons on 11 December before members of parliament rose for the holidays. If it receives Senate approval in February, the bill will become law.
