Typically, at the end of a year, pundits and the media reflect on the biggest stories of the year. Just two weeks ago, we did that very thing on my last radio show of 2024, highlighting, of course, the historic Trump comeback election, the stories of Israel destroying Hamas and Hezbollah, the undoing of the trans agenda, and the influence of AI in the market.
Now, not even two weeks into 2025, there have been enough unbelievable headline stories in 13 days to last all of 2025.
It all started with the terrorist attack in New Orleans and, just hours later, a Special Forces Master Sergeant blowing himself up outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
Now come the following stories from this week alone, many of which were unthinkable before they became actual headlines and some that will likely be headliners of the year.
1. Meta says it will end fact-checking as Silicon Valley prepares for Trump. This particular headline comes from NPR/WBEZ Chicago. Many of us hold a wait-and-see attitude to see if it is really true. This change of heart and a newfound love for free speech by someone who spent nearly half a billion dollars to influence the 2020 election is unbelievable. Biden said he was upset with the decision, stating, “The whole idea of walking away from fact-checking as well as not reporting anything having to do with discrimination regarding…I find it to be contrary to American justice. Telling the truth matters,” according to The Hill.
2. New Biden water heater ban will drive up energy prices for poor, seniors: expert
This headline is only unpredictable because Biden made this announcement with only two weeks left in office. Can’t he just go to Camp David and enjoy the last few days without touching anything? Does anyone really think this is a good idea? This is another last-ditch effort to engineer the economy for the green energy scam. It is a scam unraveling more every day. I discuss this very topic – will 2025 see the end of the green energy scam with my guest Steve Goreham on my show tonight. Tune in.
3. Biden extends temporary status of nearly 1M migrants ahead of Trump deportations The man cannot leave office soon enough. Polling shows the majority of Americans support mass deportation.
4. Thirteen states’ attorneys general question Walmart’s retreat from DEI. This headline shows you what a failure DEI has been and how desperate the Left is to keep it going. The level of government interference in a private business matter is unbelievable. Of course, Kwame Raoul is participating in this lawsuit as if he doesn’t have bigger problems to get involved in in Illinois. And, if you read the article it doesn’t even sound like Walmart is really changing much of their DEI policies but rather that they are disguising it by building personnel policies around the word “Belonging.”
“By nurturing a workplace culture where everyone is – and feels – included, we create an environment where everyone wins,” the company said. “By making Walmart a welcoming place where people feel like they belong, we’re able to engage associates, strengthen our business, improve our ability to serve customers, and support the communities where we operate.”
This is government overreach and hubris of the highest order.
But good news – corporate America is shedding DEI, banks are leaving the Net-Zero Climate Alliance, which aimed to marry financing with the global climate fight, and courts are unraveling the trans agenda. This week, a federal court struck down Biden’s Title IX rewrite, affirming there are differences between male and female – surprise!
It’s as if elitists everywhere have gotten red-pilled and finally figured out that they had been captured by the nonsense that has made things worse and unworkable. It shouldn’t have taken this long.
Now The California Wildfires – There is no doubt the horrific wildfires in California will be one of the biggest stories of the year and very likely one of the most impactful long-term. The fires have been devastating, burning over 40,000 acres that include some of the most expensive properties in the United States, and so far have killed 16 people. We should all be praying that the fires get under control quickly. The horror of being chased from home by fire is unimaginable. Firefighters are coming from everywhere, including Texas and Mexico. Prison inmates are being used to fight the fires, and still, new ones are sprouting up, and the Santa Ana winds that are helping to fuel and spread the fire are expected to pick up again.
A couple of days ago, I was sent this graphic comparing the Pacific Palisades area affected by fire with the area impacted by The Great Chicago Fire. At this point, the CA fire area is more than twice as big as is shown in the graphic.
Biden has pledged that the U.S. taxpayer will cover 100% of the costs including firefighter salaries, debris removal, temporary shelters, and more, for 180 days.
Read HERE. There is no one who doesn’t think CA residents don’t deserve support from FEMA. However, this level of support seems unprecedented and overly generous compared to the meager support slowly given to the hurricane and flooding victims in North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. There’s no difference between a home and community being swept down a mountain by a torrent of rain and a home and community burned to the ground.
Except in the case of the CA wildfires, there is a difference.
The catastrophic wildfires like the ones raging in LA were predictable, and containment of them was possible. Unlike a 1,000-year flood caused by a hurricane that landed in Florida and created massive floods a couple of states away, warning signs of a massive fire were ignored by the politicians in Californians, even though they live in a tinder box.
Wildfires are omnipresent. In 2018, the town of Paradise was destroyed in one, leaving 85 people dead. Nearly every year, CA sees hundreds of thousands of acres burned in wildfires. If the first job of government is to protect people and property, then CA elected officials’ tenures have been catastrophic failures.
- Water allowed to run to the sea instead of being shore up in reservoirs.
- New reservoirs not built and current ones not maintained.
- Underbrush not cleaned out.
- Pumping stations inadequate or off-line.
- Funds cut from fire departments and land maintenance.
- DEI hires, vax policies that sidelined qualified firefighters, and union contracts that busted the budget.
The list of government failures is enormous.
Will this level of government incompetence finally wake up voters in deep blue California?
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Matthew Hennessey, describes CA as a progressive trap and then notes the following:
What we could have in this week’s terrible and destructive wildfires is a tipping-point event. It’s a potential mass awakening. Smart people in Los Angeles are getting the picture. Something didn’t feel right about the direction of the place, but nobody could quite put a finger on it. Now they see everything more clearly. Traps don’t build themselves. Every trap has a designer.
Did Californians really need a historic, devastating fire to wake them up to the bad policies of their government? That’s a very sad statement on the state of logic and interest in government. Perhaps, wealth, sunshine every day and beachfront access is a huge distraction to real-life concerns.
The most ridiculous claim is that the wildfires are caused by climate change. Again, Steve Goreham will address that myth on my show tonight. Suffice it to say that it isn’t the least bit true, and if you are concerned about CO2 emissions, then the best thing to do is prevent forest fires.
And the Wall Street Journal pointed out that even if you thought the fires were caused by climate change, your job is still to protect against them, and instead, politicians ignored practical, proven methods to prevent and fight fires. In that editorial, California’s Climate Time for Choosing, the authors pointed out how Newsom misspent money on climate change nonsense instead of investing in forest and water management. Here are a few excerpts:
“Democrats blame the L.A. blazes on the changing climate, which is a convenient excuse as citizens rage against the failures of state and local government. The evidence doesn’t support the climate explanation since (among other reasons) California has had a dry climate and Santa Ana winds, even with hurricane-force gusts on occasion, for centuries. If the Democrats who run the state believe their own advertising, why not spend money in useful ways rather than on a green-energy transition to nowhere?
If fires are going to be more common, then overhauling water systems will be essential. But governments have limited resources and need to set priorities. And California’s politicians—state and local—prefer to spend money on income transfers and green subsidies that buy votes rather than infrastructure that pays off in the future.
Democrats have in particular given priority to reducing CO2 emissions over mitigating the effects of a variable climate. The state’s renewable-energy mandates have forced Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to spend heavily on wind, solar and battery power, at the expense of upgrading its aging power lines that have sparked some of the state’s most catastrophic fires.
Mr. Newsom has lately increased spending for wildfire mitigation, including tree thinning, though it may be too little, too late to prevent new and raging fires. Given the hurricane-force gusts, it’s hard to know whether more fire breaks and brush clearing might have reduced the damage from the Los Angeles fires. Even so, the state spends more on “fighting” climate change than preparing for it.
The Governor’s budget last year included $2.6 billion for “forest and wildfire resilience”—far less than the $14.7 billion provisioned for zero-emission vehicles and its “clean energy” transition. California’s $100 billion bullet train and offshore wind turbines will do nothing to prevent fires or protect communities. Rooftop solar subsidies are no consolation for people who lose their homes.
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More broadly, nothing California does to subsidize EVs or punish fossil fuels will have any effect on global temperature. Its CO2 emission reductions are dwarfed
by increases elsewhere, including emissions from fires. Their climate policies are pure political virtue signaling to please the climate lobby.”
The facts coming out about how mismanaged CA and Los Angeles are on this topic, and others speak to pure incompetence by elected officials. However, this level of incompetence can be seen in a number of complex systems that run our modern life, not just government.
A friend sent me this article from 2023 on the topic. Titled Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis, author Harold Robinson notes, “The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent.” The article then goes through the history of the promoting DEI hires in government, education, and the corporate world and what that has wrought. It was somewhat ahead of its time just 18 months ago.
Every blue state has a parallel wildfire issue. The types of questions California is now asking its government officials are not dissimilar to the types of questions voters in other blue states should be asking of their own politicians and bureaucrats. In Illinois, voters should be asking hard questions about energy supply, education results, and taxes – especially property taxes. We shouldn’t have to wait for a catastrophic grid failure like Texas experienced in 2021 when a cold snap led to loss of electricity and 246 people died.
If you missed my article earlier this week, I covered some of the nonsense during the lame-duck session, including a bill that further entrenches Illinois into the green energy scam. That article is HERE.
In 2025, it’s time to Make America Great and Competent Again.