<Megyn Kelly set off a storm online after a Fox News host revived her old blackface controversy, and her reaction made the moment even louder as a quick jab on air turned into a heated public exchange, with Kelly firing back in a way that grabbed attention far beyond the usual political chatter.

Her response spread fast across social platforms, where people debated whether she had been provoked or simply lost her composure.

The trigger came when the Fox host brought up the past incident directly, something Kelly has avoided engaging with for years. Instead of brushing it off, she lashed out with a stream of pointed comments, attacking both the messenger and the motive behind the remark. That impulsive pushback is what many observers called a meltdown, noting the intensity felt disproportionate to the original criticism.

A spark that reopened an old wound

Kelly’s blackface controversy has hovered over her career ever since it first erupted. The moment had faded from headlines, but it never stopped following her into new roles. So when it resurfaced this week, it hit with the kind of force you get when unresolved history collides with public pressure. Her reaction seemed less like a calm correction and more like a defensive wall snapping under tension.

Once she began posting on X, the tone shifted quickly. She blasted the host as irrelevant and accused him of weaponizing a years-old issue for clout. That only fueled more conversation, pulling in commentators from both sides who questioned her strategy. Some argued she was right to stand her ground. Others said the outburst only reignited a debate she has tried to outrun.

The scandal still shadows her more than she admits. The public response made that clear. People weren’t just dissecting her words, they were revisiting the entire arc of that controversy and how it shaped her reputation. The renewed spotlight wasn’t kind, and her reaction suggested she knew it.>

https://www.celebtattler.com/news/n...

<Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus is feeling the heat. His Dallas defense in Year 1 as the team's defensive coordinator under head coach Brian Schottenheimer is allowing 29.8 points per game, the most in the NFL.

One of the elephants in the room regarding the Cowboys' defensive decline is the 2025 season was the first without All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons, whom Dallas traded away to the Green Bay Packers a week before the season began. Eberflus noted his impact but also accurately assessed Parsons' departure "is what it is."

"Obviously you have an All-Pro pass rusher that wins really quick [Parsons], that's certainly going to help any defense if it's Micah or if it's Myles [Garrett] or whoever that might be. But that impact player is always going to help to a certain degree in pass downs and other downs," Eberflus said Thursday. Again, you can't look back right? It is what it is and then you just focus where you are."

Parsons himself saw that comment on Twitter/X, and he reposted Eberflus' press conference quote with a number of laughing emojis. He then clarified why he took an apparent shot at Eberflus and the Cowboys an hour after posting the initial reaction.

"Y'all want me to feel bad? Jerry Jones slandered my name to Cowboys media and national media for months," Parsons posted on Thursday. "So I do think I can react to comment if I want to! #respectfully."

Dallas' defense was also derailed by injuries across the board at cornerback with DaRon Bland (foot), ex-Cowboy Trevon Diggs (knee/concussion), Shavon Revel (knee) and Caelen Carson (knee, hamstring). Diggs and Eberflus also clashed about zone vs. man coverage usage all year long.

"I think the start of the year, guys were in and out, in terms of we weren't at full force," Eberflus said. "And then when we got some guys back, I thought we had a good stretch there. I thought the stretch was pretty good. We started to improve. I know we improved in the run defense and the third-down defense. And then from there we just didn't execute the way we wanted to at certain moments. Certainly, some good execution in there at times, but it's got to be better."

Despite the Cowboys' defense ranking bottom-three in the NFL in almost every key defensive metric this season, Eberflus claimed he didn't think he would "do anything differently" when CBS Sports asked what things he would do differently if he could go back to the beginning of the year.

"I don't really think about it that way," Eberflus said Thursday. "I think about being in the moment and just keep adjusting and learning and growing and getting better. I don't think I'd do anything differently. I think I would just work to adjust when you get different players in and those things. I think that's what you do as a coach."

Cowboys defense under Matt Eberflus in 2025, NFL ranks NFL rank

PPG allowed

29.8

Last

Total YPG allowed

376.8

30th

Yards per play allowed

6.2

31st

Passing yards per game allowed

253.6

Last

Third down conversion rate allowed

46.5%

30th

Red zone TD rate allowed

68.9%

31st

Completion percentage allowed

68.6%

30th

Pass yards per attempt allowed

8.2

31st

Passer Rating

109.7

Last

However, Eberflus ultimately fell on the sword and took full accountability for the year-long struggles Dallas has had on defense.

"Ownership and accountability is right with me," Eberflus said when asked how much ownership he takes for the defensive struggles. "I'm the defensive coordinator, so it's always that. … I take full accountability." We wanted to see more progress during the course of the year," Eberflus said. "It was just more up and down. It just wasn't linear."

Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones may choose to have Eberflus' ownership of his defensive woes result in a firing after just one season. Jones admitted regret for hiring him in Week 16 after Dallas was officially eliminated from playoff contention.

"Ultimately, you point your finger right back at you on who hired Matt Eberflus," Jones said. "It's easy to say you could have done things differently, but that goes with the territory. Any time you make the ultimate decision, then you've got to look at that and weigh it.">

<The year 2025 is just a few hours from coming to its conclusion. Depending on where you live on this great big planet of ours, it might already be the new year. For the Eastern Time Zone though, this will be the last post of the year. It will be our annual dedication to the members of the Yankee family who left us in 2025.

Below is the outline of details of this exercise, excerpted from my original tribute, December 31, 2022:

As I also wrote back then, most of these men wore Yankees pinstripes, just like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Thurman Munson, and all the other legends who are no longer with us. Even if it was just for a day, imagine how amazing a feeling that must have been.

Sandy Alomar Sr. (2B)

October 19, 1943 – October 13, 2025

Yankees career: 1974-76

NYY statistics: 294 G, .248/.287/.302, 231 H, 40 2B, 4 3B, 4 HR, 46 SB, 70 OPS+

MLB honors: 1x All-Star (1970)

MLB.com obit

Josh covered the Alomar patriarch’s passing during the October 14th news roundup:

We close with the loss of a man who could have an argument for being Mr. Baseball. Sandy Alomar Sr. passed away over the weekend at the age of 81. Sandy saw two children make the majors, after his own 15 seasons in the bigs, with parts of three coming with the Yankees (1974-76, the last of which saw the Yankees win their first pennant in 12 years). He then spent another 16 years as a coach across a trio of MLB clubs, and continued to be a titan in Latin baseball development. Rest in peace, Sandy.

Brian Dayett (IF)

January 22, 1957 – September 7, 2025

Yankees career: 1983-84

NYY statistics: 75 G, .237/.288/.378, 37 H, 8 2B, 1 3B, 4 HR, 86 OPS+

RIP Baseball obit

Josh covered the Alomar patriarch’s passing during the September 9th news roundup:

A melancholy happy trails to former Cubs and Yankees outfielder Brian Dayett, who passed away Sunday at the age of 68 due to Parkinson’s disease complications. Dayett was drafted by the Yankees in the 16th round back in 1978, eventually spending two seasons with the club from 1983-84 (75 games in total) before being dealt to Chicago, where he spent the rest of his five-year career before playing in Japan and going into coaching. Our best wishes go to his family and friends.

Octavio Dotel (RHP)

November 23, 1975 – April 8, 2025

Yankees career: 2006

NYY statistics: 14 G, 10 IP, 10.80 ERA, 7 K, 7.65 FIP, 2.900 WHIP

MLB honors: 1x World Series champion (2011)

MLB.com obit

Kevin memorialized Dotel with a full writeup on April 8th, and Kunj had an excerpt in the following morning’s news:

In case you missed the news yesterday, former MLB and Yankees pitcher Octavio Dotel passed away tragically yesterday. Dotel was one of many victims after a club collapsed in the Dominican Republic, though he was initially rescued alive, it seems he passed while being transferred to the hospital. Kevin has a longer, detailed write up on Dotel’s life here, please do give it a read.

Lee Elia (IF, minors)

July 16, 1937 – July 9, 2025

Yankees career: 1969 (minors); 1989 (coach)

NYY statistics: Never played in majors with NYY

MLB honors: 1x World Series champion (1980, coach)

ESPN obit

We did not have any coverage of Elia’s passing at Pinstripe Alley in the moment, which is probably not too surprising since he was far more well known for his connections to other teams — especially the Cubs and Phillies, who he managed in the 1980s. But Elia did play for the Yankees’ Triple-A team in Syracuse in ‘69 toward the end of his on-field career, and later returned to the organization on manager Dallas Green’s coaching staff in ‘89.

Rich Hinton (LHP)

May 22, 1947 – August 7, 2025

Yankees career: 1972

NYY statistics: 7 G, 16.2 IP, 4.86 ERA, 13 K, 3.84 FIP, 1.680 WHIP

Matt covered Hinton’s passing during the September 2nd news roundup:

Former Yankee pitcher Rich Hinton passed away back in August at the age of 78. Hinton briefly played for the Yankees in 1972, but was an opponent of the team in 1976 as a member of the Cincinnati Reds, while he also pitched for three other teams in his nine-year career....>

<Billy Hunter (SS)

June 4, 1928 – July 3, 2025

Yankees career: 1955-56

NYY statistics: 137 G, .239/.276/.327, 79 H, 10 2B, 5 3B, 3 HR, 63 OPS+

MLB honors: 1x All-Star (1953); 3x World Series champion (1956, with NYY; 1966 and 1970, coach); Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame (1996)

Kevin covered Hunter’s passing during the July 5th news roundup:

Bill Hunter, the last living member of both the St. Louis Browns and the inaugural 1954 Baltimore Orioles, has died at age 97. He was also a Yankee, having come to New York alongside Don Larsen and others in what became a 16-player trade. In 1955, Hunter was the club’s starting shortstop and won a World Series title with the Yanks in 1956, his final season in New York. After his playing career ended, Hunter spent 13 seasons as the Orioles’ third base coach. The condolences of everyone here at Pinstripe Alley go out to Bill Hunter’s friends and family.

Andy Kosco (RF/1B)

October 5, 1941 – December 19, 2025

Yankees career: 1968

NYY statistics: 131 G, .240/.268/.382, 19 2B, 1 3B, 15 HR, 100 OPS+

MLBTR obit

Peter covered Kosco’s passing during the December 24th news roundup:

Former Yankees outfielder Andy Kosco has passed away at the age of 84. He played 131 games for the Yankees in 1968, batting .240 with 15 home runs, and his most notable moment came when he replaced Mickey Mantle at first base in the Hall of Famer’s final game on September 28, 1968. The Yankees would trade Kosco to the Dodgers for pitcher Mike Kekich following the end of that season, and the Dodgers would later flip him to the Brewers in 1971 for another former Yankee in Al Downing.

Terry Ley (LHP)

February 21, 1947 – August 30, 2025

Yankees career: 1971

NYY statistics: 6 G, 9 IP, 5.00 ERA, 7 K, 6.01 FIP, 2.000 WHIP

Obit

We missed covering Ley’s passing in our normal news writeups, but SABR’s Max Effgen had a very nice remembrance of him that we’ll link to here:

Jesús Montero (C/DH)

November 28, 1989 – October 19, 2025

Yankees career: 2011

NYY statistics: 18 G, .328/.406/.590, 20 H, 4 2B, 4 HR, 163 OPS+

MLB.com obit

I memorialized Montero with a full writeup on October 19th, and Josh had an excerpt in the following morning’s news:

By now you likely know that one-time top Yankee prospect Jesús Montero died over the weekend, after complications from a motorcycle collision in his native Venezuela. Andrew wrote up the news for us yesterday as well. Montero was just 35 years old. Montero spent a year with the Yankees at the major league level, and four with the Seattle Mariners. Our hearts go out to his loved ones.

Nate Oliver (2B/SS)

December 13, 1940 – April 5, 2025

Yankees career: 1969

NYY statistics: 1 G, 0-for-1

MLB honors: 2x World Series champion (1963, 1965)

RIP Baseball obit

Nick covered Oliver’s passing during the April 12th news roundup:

Nate Oliver, a seven-year MLB veteran who briefly appeared with the Yankees, passed away on April 5th at the age of 84. The middle infielder played for the Dodgers from 1963 to 1967, including an appearance as a pinch-runner in the 1966 World Series. He appeared in one game for the Yankees in 1969 before spending time with the Cubs in that, his final, season. Oliver was also known for his singing voice, having performed the national anthem before games in the Dodgers, Angels, Reds, and Athletics’ ballparks — one time even filling in for Ella Fitzgerald. Rest in peace....>

<....Art Schallock (LHP)

April 25, 1924 – March 6, 2025

Yankees career: 1951-55

NYY statistics: 28 G, 90 IP, 3.90 ERA, 44 K, 4.54 FIP, 1.733 WHIP

MLB honors: 3x World Series champion (1951-53, with NYY)

Nick covered Schallock’s passing during the March 9th news roundup:

We join the baseball world in celebrating the life of Art Schallock, the pitcher who spent parts of five seasons with the Yankees and held the distinction of oldest living ex-MLB player before his death Thursday at the age of 100. Shallock, who pitched for the Yankees in the 1953 World Series, was roommates with Yogi Berra and replaced Mickey Mantle on the Yankees’ roster upon his initial call-up. He visited with the team last season when they played in San Francisco, talking with Anthony Rizzo and Aaron Boone in his first appearance at an MLB stadium in over 40 years. Schallock is survived by two children and five grandchildren.

Other Notable Yankees Figures Lost in 2025

Lou Cucuzza Sr.

November 19, 1938 – February 22, 2025

Former Yankees Visiting Clubhouse manager

Kevin covered Cucuzza’s passing during the February 24th news roundup:

Lou Cucuzza, Sr. passed away Sunday at the age of 86. Cucuzza, whose two sons currently work for the Yankees, was the Visiting Clubhouse manager for the Yankees, for whom he worked for 35 years until his retirement. The Yankees, in their statement mourning his death, noted Cucuzza’s long service and impact on baseball. Rest in peace.

Joe Fosina

December 3, 1936 – July 8, 2025

Former Yankees uniform reconditioner

Miller Gardner

October 24, 2010 – March 21, 2025

Son of former Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner.

Josh covered Miller Gardner’s passing during the March 24th news roundup:

By now I’m sure you’re all aware of the news that former Yankees All-Star outfielder Brett Gardner’s son Miller has passed away after a sudden illness while on vacation. He was just 14 years old. There isn’t really anything you can say at times like this, so I’ll just leave it there. Our hearts as a blog go out to Brett, Jessica, Hunter, and the rest of Miller’s family and loved ones.

Dick Groch

November 14, 1940 – October 1, 2025

Nick covered Groch’s passing during the October 3rd news roundup:

Our condolences to the family of the late Dick Groch, who died Wednesday, per MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy. The longtime Yankees scout is perhaps best known for his emphatic urging for the team to draft Derek Jeter with its sixth pick in the 1992 amateur draft. “He’s not going to the University of Michigan,” he famously told Yankees brass to allay their concerns that the shortstop was going to honor his outstanding commitment to the college instead of signing out of high school. “The only place Derek Jeter is going is Cooperstown.”

Jeff Torborg

November 26, 1941 – January 19, 2025

MLB honors: 1x World Series champion (1965); 1x AL Manager of the Year (1990)

Matt covered Torborg’s passing during the January 20th news roundup:

It was announced on Sunday that former MLB player and manager Jeff Torborg has passed away at the age of 83. While he is most known for his stints as manager of the White Sox, Mets, and other teams, the New Jersey native also spent a long time as a pitching and bullpen coach on the Yankees’ staff in the 1970s and ‘80s. We send our best wishes to his loved ones.>

<Welcome to the new year. What a ride 2025 was. The stoics tell us the universe is operated by reason and logic, and it takes emotional control to understand this fact.

Donald Trump isn’t a stoic. His philosophy, if indeed he has one, is defined by manipulation — the results of which are apparent to anyone in the United States, no matter their personal philosophy.

Trump demands one way: loyalty. Everyone who works for him knows this. They accept it because they see something in it for themselves — above and beyond whatever societal benefits they think come from Trump’s actions, or their own. There are many others who don’t know Trump, yet they selflessly offer their support because they believe he has the better vision for humanity. Despite what they say publicly, I know of no member of his senior staff who believes that. Their actions tell us otherwise. Many if not all of them have, at one time or another, openly defied and ridiculed the president. But no matter: Their personal enrichment now leads them elsewhere.

However manipulative he may be, Trump cannot invent his own universe, take us with him and dwell in it. The universe will ultimately prove him wrong. I submit that it already has.

His latest public appearance, which came on Dec. 29 with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not only showed the world how manipulative the pair are, but it also served to highlight the president’s fragile mental and physical health.

Think of how far we have traveled with Trump in the last few years. He used to conduct endless rallies outside of small rural airports where thousands cheered him. Some of these events took place in oppressive heat. Trump would stand and speak with the energy and alacrity of a bad disco dancer on Adderall. Sometimes members of the audience would pass out while he tirelessly ranted about some arcane subject that mattered little, but he would draw applause nonetheless. Now he speaks in nearly empty rooms, or before small groups. He talks less frequently, for shorter lengths of time, and he is often seated when he does so.

I remember standing next to Dr. Sanjay Gupta during a press conference in the Brady Briefing Room during Trump’s first administration. The subject was the president’s annual physical. For more than an hour, members of the press sifted through dozens of pages of test results, asked questions about Trump’s health and gave Dr. Ronny Jackson the opportunity to tell us the president would live to be 200. Going through the paperwork, I turned to Dr. Gupta and said that, while I was no doctor, Trump’s test results resembled my father’s — who had suffered from mild heart disease before he passed. “I am a doctor,” Gupta smiled, before pointing to specific examples of why that was true.

Today? Trump and his administration refuse to have extended press conferences about his health. He claims to not even know where or why he had a recent MRI. Meanwhile he brags about acing three different cognitive tests in the last year. Why has he taken three cognitive tests in the last year? He doesn’t say.

Trump’s cultural coup is doomed to fail

It’s been nearly eight years since that first presidential health press conference. Does anyone truly believe that Trump, living with the stress of being a vindictive man on a revenge tour and combined with the extraordinary stress of being a president, has done his heart any favors?

This year could well be a huge turning point in our country due to the failing health of an aging president. In fact, odds are still high that if something were to befall Trump, it would happen while he is gripping a seven-iron and trying to chip himself out of the rough at his favorite golf course.

The White House is aware of this, and that’s why Vice President JD Vance is on the road, prepping like a second-string quarterback while the starter is wavering on the field. Or, if that metaphor doesn’t appeal to you, how about a late-inning relief pitcher warming up in the bullpen? Vance is the primary example of someone putting their personal distaste for Trump aside in order to personally profit from him. He proves that even if you were a “Never Trump guy,” claimed that Trump was unfit for office or compared him to Adolf Hitler, you can still work for him. You only have to smile and swallow the political swill; there’s potentially a personal pot of gold at the end of the Trump political s**t show.

The chickens rarely come home to roost for those who stay loyal to Trump — or at least they haven’t yet. Those who dream of Stephen Miller wearing orange, or can’t wait to see FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi or a host of other high Trump officials serving time may one day look back and point to 2026 as the year those things became possible....>

<....The facts are these: 2026 does not bode well for Trump, his followers or any of us if we continue on the current path. The president is faltering and failing. His enablers, handlers and fans are mistaken in their efforts to support such a feckless, festering, feral fool. They have sacrificed their higher obligation — not to religion or a political party, but to each other. We built an entire civilization through some level of cooperation. Today’s politics is all about tearing things down.

Look ahead to November and the midterm elections. That’s the obvious event that could change the path of our existence.

Impeachment looms heavily in the mind of Trump should his MAGA cohorts fail to hold onto Congress. He sends out weekly emails to his supporters warning them of that scenario — and striking fear in his followers once again. Trump knows a Democratic-dominated Congress will not be the geldings his MAGA supporters who dominate today’s chambers are.

But getting enough Democrats elected means finding candidates who can appeal to enough Americans, something the party has spectacularly — with the exception of Joe Biden — been unable to do since Trump knuckle-crawled onto the political stage.

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control,” said the stoic philosopher Epictetus. “Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”

Or, if you are in a 12-step program, you could just grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, the courage to change those that I can and the wisdom to know the difference. That’s where we need to be going as we move into 2026 when it comes to Trump, the MAGA movement and our existential angst.

A year ago we were in the final days of an administration headed by a man some were convinced was sliding into dementia. Biden began his term getting Congress to work together to pass a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill. Things went downhill after that. While you can argue he should never have run for a second term, you also cannot deny the Democrats went along with it until his debate with Trump. After that, the party kicked him to the curb like an unwanted mongrel. Out of fear and panic, Democrats ate their own, and after making a big political meal out of Biden, their standard bearer, Trump’s GOP could not stop grinning at the Democrats as they brought in Vice President Kamala Harris to challenge Trump.

And so here we are, staring at a world of injustice, which, according to Marcus Aurelius, “lies in what you aren’t doing, not only in what you are doing.”

Do not decline to get involved. It’s not enough to avoid doing evil. You must be a force for good in the world, as best you can. If that’s hard to understand, then look to former President Jimmy Carter, who echoed those stoic thoughts in a modern world when he said, “I have one life and one chance to make it count for something. My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can.”

That might even appeal to some Christians.

Trump, not being a stoic — and while happily exploiting Christians — is still enjoying his revenge tour, which will continue as long as he is able to stand upright, or to speak while seated. On Tuesday he vetoed two bipartisan infrastructure-related bills. One of the bills would help lower the price of a water pipeline in Colorado. Trump said his veto restored “economic sanity.” Those who need the water pipeline might see things differently....>

<....Trump also got the go-ahead from a U.S. appeals court that allows him to strip Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood health centers in 22 states and Washington, D.C., an effort that was part of his One Big Beautiful Bill. The court action may make the president happy, but it does nothing to abate the anger millions have against him.

As a nation, our biggest challenge going into 2026 is to overcome our anger with each other. Anger won’t solve our problems; it will only cause more. When we lived in caves, we learned to band together to help each other. We became apex predators not because of individualism but because of a sense of community.

Extinction is the norm on this planet. If we have any hope of avoiding it, then we must work together as one community. Label it whatever you wish, but the science is sound on this subject — and it is obvious that, by denying science, we’ve taken a pronounced step backward and are hastening our own demise.

My wish for 2026 is that we take a step forward in a different philosophical direction. My concern is that Trump’s failing health will ultimately be a breaking point for the anger on both sides of the political aisle.

My hope? A stoic understanding of our responsibility to each other that will allow us to move beyond our current existential crisis. Space travel. Peace. Good rock n’ roll. Better movies. Fun at the Kennedy Center. Cities on the moon, Mars and elsewhere as we tame and inhabit our solar system.

At the very least, I hope we don’t explode into a paroxysm of violence that consumes the world.>

<[Event "21st World Open"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.07.02"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "4"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Rind, Bruce"]
[Black "Castaneda, Nelson"]
[ECO "E66"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

1.c4 c5 2.g3 Nc6 3.Bg2 g6 4.Nc3 Bg7 5.Nf3 e5 6.O-O d6 7.a3 Nge7 8.Rb1 a5 9.d3 O-O 10.Bd2 Rb8 11.Ne1 Be6 12.Nc2 Nd4 13.b4 axb4 14.axb4 b6 15.Ne3 h5 16.Ned5 Nxd5 17.Nxd5 h4 18.e3 h3 19.Bh1 Nf5 20.bxc5 dxc5 21.Qf3 Nd6 22.Rfc1 f5 23.Qe2 Bf7 24.Qf1 e4 25.Bc3 Bxd5 26.cxd5 Bxc3 27.Rxc3 Qf6 28.Rcc1 exd3 29.Qxd3 c4 30.Qf1 b5 31.Qxh3 b4 32.Qf1 Rfe8 33.Bf3 b3 34.Bd1 Qe5 35.Bxb3 Rxb3 36.Rxc4 Nxc4 37.Rxb3 Nd2 38.Qa6 0-1>

Most contributors and their posts are welcome, but no interlopers are tolerated here.

<[Event "94th US Open"]
[Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.08.15"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "9"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Shabalov, Alexander"]
[Black "Fedorowicz, John"]
[ECO "D91"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Online blitz"]
[Site "ICC"]
[Date "1996.03.16"]
[EventDate "1996"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "NN"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "C56"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<The turn of the calendar is more than a ritual. It’s a reminder that democracy is not self sustaining, not guaranteed, and not permanent unless we choose it again and again.

If we want this new year to be about renewal rather than retreat, we need to give some serious thought to what it’ll take to reclaim and defend the democratic republic that generations before us fought, organized, and sacrificed to build.

The American Revolution was not just a revolt against British rule. It was a revolt against three ancient tyrannies that had dominated human society for thousands of years. Warlord kings. The morbidly rich. And theocrats.

The Founders knew exactly what they were fighting. They wrote about it constantly, in the Declaration of Independence and in decades of letters to one another. They believed those three forces were the natural enemies of freedom, and unless they were restrained, they would always claw their way back into power.

Today, every one of those tyrannies is back. And they’re not even pretending otherwise.

The first tyranny was the warlord king. For most of human history, power came from violence. Kings ruled because their ancestors slaughtered their neighbors, seized land, and enforced obedience at sword point. They claimed God had chosen them, demanded loyalty, and crushed dissent.

How To Recognize the Rise of Authoritarianism Before It’s Too Late

By 1776, monarchy was so normalized that the idea of overthrowing a king was considered radical, dangerous, and insane. But that was exactly what the American Revolution set out to do.

King George III ruled as all kings did. He taxed, punished, and occupied at will. He treated the colonies as property. Jefferson spelled it out in the Declaration, describing a ruler who had become a tyrant, “unfit to govern a free people.”

The Founders rejected that model completely. No kings. No thrones. No divine rights.

Fast forward to now.

We now have a president who openly admires strongmen and autocrats. He talks about ruling, not governing. He issues decrees like a monarch and demands personal loyalty and a constant stream of gifts and flattery.

He surrounds himself with suck-ups, fellow billionaires, and yes men. He’s reimagined the White House not as the people’s house but as a palace, complete with plans for a massive ballroom modeled after the gilded throne room of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

This is not just cosmetic: it’s symbolic, reflecting how kings think.

At the same time, this regime talks casually about seizing territory, controlling other nations’ resources, and using military and economic force to bend countries to our will. Greenland, Panama, and now Venezuela. That isn’t diplomacy: it’s warlord logic dressed up in patriotic slogans.

The second tyranny the Founders feared was the morbidly rich.

In the 18th century, they were called lords, dukes, earls, and princes. They inherited wealth they didn’t earn and used it to control governments. They owned monopolies like the East India Company, whose corruption and brutality helped ignite the American Revolution itself.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams wrote again and again about how wealth corrupts democracy, never mincing words. Jean-Jacques Rousseau warned that the central duty of a republic was to protect the poor from the tyranny of the rich. Jefferson agreed, writing that the rich prey on the poor like animals “devouring their own kind.” Adams warned that once wealth and power become hereditary, elections would collapse into corruption.

Look around today.

Trump is an oligarch who’s stocked his administration with oligarchs. Billionaires write this administration’s policy. Billionaires get tax cuts. Billionaires dismantle regulations that protect workers, consumers, and the planet. The morbidly rich now sit openly in the halls of power, not behind the curtain but right at the table, shaping an economy designed to funnel wealth upwards and lock it there.

This system Trump is reinventing is not capitalism. It’s aristocracy with better branding.

The third tyranny is the most dangerous of all, because it wraps itself in moral certainty. The theocrats.

The Founders knew them well. State churches. Mandatory tithes. Clergy meddling in lawmaking. Religious authorities insisting they spoke for God and therefore couldn’t be questioned....>

<....Ben Franklin fled Massachusetts as a teenager to escape compulsory church attendance and taxes that funded the clergy. Jefferson and Adams spent years fighting off efforts to inject Christianity into our government. They were explicit, repeatedly arguing that religious rule destroys freedom of conscience and poisons democracy.

Today, the mask is off.

A sitting vice presidential candidate can stand on a stage and declare, “By the grace of God we will always be a Christian nation.” That isn’t faith; it’s Christian nationalism. It’s theocratic rule by another name.

Rightwing Christian leaders now openly argue that their particular church’s doctrine should override the Constitution. They demand control over our schools, courts, and bodies. They want public money for their religious institutions and the religious laws they dictate enforced by the state.

This is exactly what the Founders warned us about. Exactly.

And all three tyrannies are now working together.

A would-be king who demands loyalty. A billionaire class that bankrolls him. A religious movement that sanctifies his power and declares him “chosen” by their god.

This alliance has toppled democracies before. We’ve watched it happen in real time in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and beyond, and it always starts the same way. A strongman rises to power and brings along with him the oligarchs. He hands off power to theocrats in exchange for institutional church support. Elections are hollowed out and courts captured by big money. And finally, as he bleeds the country dry, dissent gets criminalized.

We are not immune. We never were.

So what do we do?

We do what the Founders did.

We remember the importance of democracy. We teach real history and real civics. We tell the truth about why this country was founded and who it was founded to resist. We make sure the next generation understands that freedom is fragile and must be defended.

We resist. In the streets, in town halls, at school board meetings, and at city councils. We call Congress at 202-224-3121 and keep calling. We make it impossible for them to pretend we consent to oligarchy, theocracy, or a wannabe king’s gilded rule.

And we reform. We get money out of politics. We overturn Citizens United. We make voting a right, not a privilege that can be stripped away. We break the grip of billionaires and corporations on our democracy and make them pay their fair share to maintain our republic rather than just running up our national debt.

This is the moment.

If we fail, two and a half centuries of struggle will slip away, replaced by a warlord/oligarchic/theocratic state dressed up in red, white, and blue.

If we succeed, we can finally finish the work the Founders began and build a nation that truly belongs to all of us. And that’s worth fighting for with everything we have.

See you in the streets … and on the air.>

There is no room for compromise with the enemy.

None whatever.

<Each year, legal commentators Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern review the Supreme Court's most problematic decisions — and their choice for 2025's most egregious comes as a surprise.

Writing in Slate, Lithwick declared the case NIH v. American Public Health Association as the year's worst ruling, citing it as emblematic of broader institutional dysfunction.

The case centered on the Trump administration's cancellation of thousands of National Institutes of Health research grants —including funding for suicide prevention, HIV transmission, Alzheimer's, and cardiovascular disease research. The administration justified the cancellations by citing concerns about DEI initiatives, "gender ideology" and COVID research.

"This Is the Nastiest Opinion by a Supreme Court Justice in 2025," the Slate article was titled.

"There were a lot of decisions in 2025 that immiserated huge amounts of people and made the world materially worse," Lithwick wrote.

"But my pick is not one of those. Instead, I need to talk about NIH v. American Public Health Association. Yes, it has to do with slashing research grants, which does materially harm a lot of people. But more profoundly for me, this case is emblematic of every single level of destruction and mayhem coming out of the Supreme Court — all the arrogance bundled into one."

U.S. District Judge William Young conducted a bench trial and issued a 103-page opinion requiring the NIH to restore the grants. A federal appeals court agreed. However, in an unsigned 5-4 shadow-docket order, the Supreme Court reversed this decision, claiming it contradicted a previous emergency ruling in Department of Education v. California.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized the approach, noting that "a half paragraph of reasoning (issued without full briefing or any oral argument) thus suffices here to partially sustain the government's abrupt cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars allocated to support life-saving biomedical research."

Most notably, Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Brett Kavanaugh, issued a sharply worded concurring opinion attacking Judge Young — a Reagan appointee with 47 years of judicial experience — for allegedly defying their previous order. Gorsuch stated that judges "are never free to defy" Supreme Court decisions, adding: "This is now the third time in a matter of weeks this Court has had to intercede in a case squarely controlled by one of its precedents."

The rebuke proved so pointed that Young subsequently apologized to both justices from the bench.

Lithwick also highlighted Justice Amy Coney Barrett's dismissal of Jackson in another decision as reflecting broader animosity among the justices. She emphasized the hostile working environment created by such exchanges and noted that lower-court judges face additional pressure, including death threats and impeachment threats from members of Congress.

"Right there, you have the perfect shadow-docket sandwich: perfunctory, bad decision making, conclusory predictions about what constitutes an “emergency” and who’s going to win, decided in a couple of days, wiping out extensive factual findings," Lithwick wrote.

"And it’s rooted in a <different> shadow-docket order that, as Justice Elena Kagan said at the time, was “at the least under-developed, and very possibly wrong.”>

<For right-wing firebrand Candace Owens, conspiracy theories are a form of “mind yoga”, a way of bending the mind “like a pretzel”. They’re also extremely compelling, for her millions of social media followers and podcast listeners at least, and extremely lucrative, helping the 36-year-old American build a staggering media empire in under a decade.

Coronavirus and the vaccines. The moon landings. Climate change. The #MeToo case against Harvey Weinstein. Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s legal battle. All these disparate subjects have received Owens’s signature treatment. On her eponymous podcast, she is the queen of the “just asking questions” approach: positioning herself as an investigating crusader who is bold enough to probe the topics that she believes the mainstream media don’t want you to know about.

She is part one-woman outrage machine, part millennial version of a medieval mystic; she has certainly worked out how to cleverly monetise the human impulse to “uncover” so-called “truths” and to feel like we are somehow in possession of a secret knowledge that explains how the world works. But her latest forays into so-called “mind yoga” are tying her in ever more complex knots that set her apart from even the most fact-averse of her fellow microphone-toting far-right truthers.

Last summer, French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte filed a defamation lawsuit against Owens, who has regularly and fervently spouted bizarre claims that the first lady was born male; the couple have accused her of mounting “a campaign of global humiliation” and “relentless bullying on a worldwide scale”. Their civil suit followed separate criminal prosecutions in France against 10 people accused of making malicious comments about the first lady’s gender and sexuality. On Monday (5 January), a Paris court found the eight men and two women guilty of cyberbullying, describing their claims as “particularly degrading, insulting and malicious”; their penalties ranged from cyberbullying awareness training to eight-month suspended prison sentences.

In November, Owens made the even stranger allegations that the Macrons had attempted to orchestrate her assassination (the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group, the organisation that Owens claimed was involved in the “plot”, told French media that these allegations were fake news).

And towards the end of last year, Owens dragged herself and her followers even further down the rabbit hole by stirring up conspiracies around the death of her one-time boss, Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and founder of conservative student group Turning Point, who was shot dead in September. Among her inflammatory claims? The suggestion that his death was somehow an “inside job” involving Turning Point employees.

Her claims prompted Kirk’s longtime producer, Blake Neff, to finally call Owens out for spending months “attacking Charlie’s closest friends”, who, he said, “have had to endure harassment from people who have gotten whipped up by what Candace is saying”. Owens is now playing an even higher stakes game, running the risk of finally alienating one-time allies on her end of the political spectrum, while also surely aware that her most devoted core of fans will expect wilder theories to come.

So how did Owens become one of the most influential – and arguably, one of the most dangerous – women on the internet? Her early days didn’t exactly lay obvious foundations for a hard-right pivot. The third of four children, she spent her childhood in Stamford, Connecticut and, following her parents’ divorce, was brought up by her grandparents. At school, she experienced racist bullying; when she was in her senior year, she received death threats from some white classmates, including the son of Stamford’s then-mayor. Her family sued the Stamford Board of Education, eventually gaining a $37,500 settlement.

Around this time, she developed “an abiding interest in current affairs”, as a Tatler profile would later put it, with her political sympathies initially skewing towards the Democrats. After dropping out of a journalism degree at the University of Rhode Island, Owens interned in the fashion cupboard at American Vogue (“There was not some kind of formal hierarchy, but it was very clear that she was running the show,” a fellow intern recalled in Vanity Fair).....>

<....She then worked her way up the ranks in administration in a New York private equity firm before co-founding a marketing agency. Dig back into the agency’s blog archives, and you will find Owens mouthing off about “the bat-s***-crazy antics of the Republican Tea Party”. But her politics would soon change drastically. In 2016, she launched a Kickstarter campaign for a platform called Social Autopsy, a searchable database of internet trolls (there is, of course, a certain irony to Owens initially touting herself as some kind of anti-cyberbullying champion).

She is part one-woman outrage machine, part millennial version of a medieval mystic

Inevitably, it stoked criticism: wouldn’t this just amount to doxxing, the typically malicious act of posting another person’s private details on the internet? Owens ended up on the receiving end of online hate herself, and blamed left-wing activists. “I became a conservative overnight,” she later reflected. “I realised that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls.”

Not long after, she started posting on YouTube: her first video was a sketch in which she “came out” to her parents as a conservative. Owens positioned herself as a supporter of Donald Trump, who was then in the early stages of his first presidency, and decried ideas around identity politics, structural racism and the Black Lives Matter movement. She particularly vehemently opposed any suggestion that African-Americans should perceive themselves as victims – and still does.

Owens crossed paths with Kirk at a conservative conference in Florida late in 2017. “Within 30 seconds of seeing her on stage, I said to myself, ‘Oh my goodness, I have not seen a talent like this in my six years of politics,’” Kirk later told The Washington Post. He immediately hired her to work in communications for Turning Point, and they spent the next few years touring colleges, spreading the conservative gospel.

Around this time, Owens launched the Blexit Foundation, an organisation encouraging a “Black exit” from the Democrats, urging Black voters to throw their support behind the Republican Party instead. Kanye West publicly supported her, writing “I love the way Candace Owens thinks” on Twitter. And she and Kirk also took their Turning Point mission overseas.

At an event in London in December 2018, Owens ended up appearing to suggest that if Hitler had simply stuck to Germany, his policies would have been “fine”. “Whenever we say ‘nationalism’, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler,” she said. “He was a national socialist, but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine.” The “problem”, she added, was that he “had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalise.” Owens would later claim that her words had been taken out of context by “leftist journalists”, and stated that there is “no excuse or defence ever” for “everything that [Hitler] did”.

Owens left Turning Point in 2019, but her profile continued to grow and grow. 2021 saw the launch of Candace, an online show for the conservative platform Daily Wire, co-founded by another right-wing controversy magnet, Ben Shapiro; it featured sit-down interviews with the likes of Trump, but she also used her platform to weigh in on pop culture and lifestyle topics (such as her vehement belief that women should not wear leggings outside of the gym, because doing so is indicative of “the decline of our culture”).

But in 2024, Owens parted ways with Daily Wire, reportedly over her antisemitic comments (although she would later claim this was a “smear campaign” and a “ridiculous storyline”). Owens’s great talent, though, is for turning controversy into content, and it wasn’t long before she returned with her own venture, a self-titled podcast. Since launching in June of 2024, its ascent has been dizzying: in October 2025, it ranked as the No 1 show across platforms in terms of downloads and views per episode, with an average of around 3.5 million downloads per show, according to analytics from Podscribe.

The right-wing podcast sphere is booming in a way that the left can’t seem to match. Just a quick glance at the US charts demonstrates the dominance of controversial conservative-skewing figures such as Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson and Theo Von. According to a Media Matters report from 2024, right-leaning online shows had nearly five times as many followers and subscribers as their left-wing equivalents. Controversy and conspiracy pay off: the more outrageous the content, the more the listeners keep coming back (not for nothing was “rage bait” announced as the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year)....>