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Scenes from Umayyad Square in Damascus, where Syrians are celebrating the first anniversary of the fall of Assad’s regime.

Sec Rollins: As Trump said, we are very pleased to announce that today, we are going to be effectuating a $12B bridge payment to our farmers… by the end of this month, every farmer that is able to apply for it will know exactly what that number looks like.

President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, Alina Habba, resigned Monday as the top federal prosecutor for New Jersey, leaving the job after an appeals court said she had been serving in the post unlawfully. In a statement posted on social media, Habba assailed the court’s ruling as political, but said she was resigning “to protect […]

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani posted a video on Sunday advising illegal immigrants on how to avoid and resist federal immigration authorities — urging them to “stand up to ICE,” refuse entry to officers, and assert their rights during enforcement actions. The Democratic socialist, set to take office on January 1, called himself as […]

TRUMP: “Since my successful meeting in South Korea with President Xi, purchase have been made, and soybeans are being exported out of the United States to China as we speak.”

After weeks of speculation about whether he’d stay in his modest Queens rental, incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed that he and his wife, Rama Duwaji, will pack up their Astoria apartment and settle into Gracie Mansion once he’s sworn in. The choice, he explained, wasn’t symbolic or political — it was personal.

“My wife Rama and I have made the decision to move into Gracie Mansion in January,” he said, making clear that the move was driven by concerns close to home.

“This decision came down to our family’s safety and the importance of dedicating all of my focus on enacting the affordability agenda New Yorkers voted for.”

For years, Mamdani’s critics hammered him for his rent-stabilized, $2,300 one-bedroom — a setup they said was wildly out of sync with his six-figure earnings in the Assembly and his calls for sweeping rent freezes. The tension around the apartment only intensified during the mayoral campaign, with opponents repeatedly framing his living situation as hypocritical.

Even as the firestorm built, Mamdani stayed largely silent about whether he’d abandon the Astoria unit for the official residence on the Upper East Side. He finally broke that silence, framing the decision within his broader vision for the city.

“My priority, always, is serving the people who call this city home. I will be a mayor for the line cooks on Steinway, for the children swinging at Dutch Kills Playground, for the bus riders waiting for the Q101,” he said.

“While I may no longer live in Astoria, Astoria will always live inside me and the work I do.”

Throughout the campaign, opponents seized on his apartment as a political weak point. Andrew Cuomo — running as an independent — accused Mamdani of misusing the rent-regulated system, arguing that someone with his family background shouldn’t occupy a unit that could go to a struggling tenant.

Mamdani, the son of filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani, pushed back throughout the race. He has long maintained that when he first moved in, he had no idea the place was rent-stabilized. His team also pointed out that he’d been earning only $47,000 at the time.

Still, even as he prepares to step into the mayoralty, Mamdani acknowledged that leaving his longtime home won’t be easy. He reflected on the details of daily life in the building that had shaped his years in Astoria.

“Cooking dinner side by side in our kitchen, sharing a sleepy elevator ride with our neighbors in the evening, hearing music and laughter vibrate through the walls of the apartment,” Mamdani said.

“To Astoria: thank you for showing us the best of New York City. We have called this neighborhood home as our city weathered a devastating pandemic, cruel attacks on immigrants, and years of an affordability crisis,” he continued.

“Time and again, this community has shown up for one another. We will miss it all — the endless Adeni chai, the spirited conversations in Spanish, Arabic and every language in between, the aromas of seafood and shawarma drifting down the block.”

{Matzav.com}

Jasmine Crockett Launches Texas Senate Campaign Jasmine Crockett filed Monday to run in the Democratic Senate primary. She’ll face James Talarico, who raised $6.2M early. * Colin Allred dropped out and filed for the new 33rd District after the Supreme Court approved Texas’ new map. * Allred said a “bruising primary” would hurt Democrats. * […]

TRUMP: “Farmers are an indispensable national asset; part of the backbone of America… Unfortunately, under sleepy Joe Biden, our farmers were crushed by the worst inflation in modern history, and crippling restrictions on energy, water, and countless other necessities…”

JUST IN: The New Jersey Assembly has passed Assemblyman Schnall’s inspector bill with the governor’s recommendations. The legislation will require construction inspectors to give a 4-hour window for arrival, easing the burden on contractors.

TRUMP: “I’m delighted to announce this afternoon that the United States will be taking a small portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars we receive in tariffs… We’re going to use that money to provide $12B in economic assistance to American farmers.”

A chuppah was held just before Shkiya on Tuesday for the grandson of the Karlin-Stoliner Rebbe, marking a historic moment for the chassidus. This wedding is the first ever to take place inside the Karlin-Stolin Bais Hamedrash in Givat Ze’ev.

President Trump has removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from the list of free-entry days at national parks, while adding his own birthday and other dates.

Footage of U.S. troops celebrating the one year anniversary since the fall of the Assad regime at the Al-Tanf military base in Syria.

Soldiers from the Royal Thai Army’s First Area Army used an anti-material rifle to demolish the Golden Horse Monument, a symbol of the Royal Cambodian Army’s 3rd Support Division, located in Phlan Hin Paet Kon along the Thailand-Cambodia border.

China set a road repair record in Beijing, replacing 2.4 kilometers of roadway and laying 8,000 tons of asphalt in just six hours.

A Texas DPS traffic stop of an 18-wheeler turned chaotic when troopers discovered that 24-year-old driver John David Amaya lacked a commercial license and was hiding 23 illegal immigrants in the truck’s sleeper cab.

“82 truck drivers have been detained in Alabama on ICE holds since late October… 12 of those detained did not have a license of any kind.”

Images of stray dogs with striking blue coats wandering through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone set off a frenzy of online theories earlier this year. With the backdrop of the 1986 nuclear catastrophe, many quickly imagined radiation-induced abnormalities or strange genetic twists behind the vivid color.

But according to the scientists closest to the scene, those theories could not “be further from the truth.”

Timothy Mousseau, a University of South Carolina researcher who advises the organization overseeing the dogs, says the explanation is far more mundane — and far less dramatic. As he put it on the Dogs of Chernobyl Facebook page, “The blue dye likely came from a tipped over port-a-potty where the dogs were rolling around in the poop, as dogs are prone to do.”

He compared it to a familiar household problem. “The blue coloration was simply a sign of the dog’s unsanitary behavior!” he explained. “As any dog owner knows, most dogs will eat just about anything, including feces!” The behavior, he noted, mirrors the way some dogs are mysteriously attracted to cat litter boxes.

Mousseau further emphasized that none of the dogs’ unusual appearance signals anything dangerous or biologically altered. Their fur does “not reflect any kind of mutation or evolutionary adaptation to radiation,” he said.

Dogs of Chernobyl — a program supported by the Clean Futures Fund (CFF) that provides care for the roughly 700 strays still living around the former nuclear plant — first posted the images in October. Staff at the time had not yet managed to bring the brightly colored animals in for examination.

“We are on the ground catching dogs for sterilization, and we came across three dogs that were completely blue,” the group wrote on Instagram. “We are not sure exactly what is going [on]. … We do not know the reason, and we are attempting to catch them so we can find out what is happening.”

Those dogs are descendants of pets abruptly abandoned in 1986, when over 120,000 residents were forced to leave. As CFF recounts, “The evacuees were not allowed to bring anything that they could not carry, and their pets had to be left behind.” The site notes, “They were told they would return in 3 days, but they were never allowed to return. Their pets became abandoned.”

{Matzav.com}

A senior figure in the prime minister’s office confirmed that Bibi Netanyahu is set to sit down with President Donald Trump in the United States on December 29, according to information provided to The Times of Israel.

Another Israeli official noted that the conversation between the two leaders is slated to occur at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where arrangements for the gathering have already been put in motion.

The same official added that Netanyahu is weighing a U.S. itinerary stretching from December 28 through January 4. While the visit would span the start of the new year, American government agencies will be closed on January 1, limiting formal activity that day.

{Matzav.com}