What Happened Today - 11 Dec 2025
What Happened Today – 11 December 2025
DC Shooter Update…
Garcia Update…
Big Boats….vs. Little Boats
Too Woke…Font is too woke
PNW update
Noem’s Hearing Today
ACA Updates…
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DC Shooter Update…
The DC shooter everyone’s talking about is Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29‑year‑old Afghan guy who came here through the U.S. evacuation after the fall of Kabul, and right now he’s sitting in custody, charged and pleading not guilty from a hospital bed while the system scrambles to act like it never saw this coming. One National Guard member has died, another is still fighting for their life, and this one horrific act is being used as a political sledgehammer to smear an entire community of Afghan allies who bled for the U.S. and are now being painted as “dangerous” or “terrorists.”
Where the DC case stands
Lakanwal was identified as the suspect in the ambush shooting of two West Virginia National Guard troops on patrol just blocks from the White House, and he was shot, subdued, and taken into custody at the scene. He’s now formally charged with murder and multiple counts of assault with intent to kill, has pleaded not guilty via a video appearance from his hospital bed, and is being held without bond while the case moves through D.C. Superior Court.
He came into the U.S. in 2021 under the Afghan evacuation program, later got asylum approved but was still waiting on his green card, and U.S. officials have confirmed he previously worked with U.S. government elements in Afghanistan. The way this is being framed publicly by some politicians is less “what failed in the mental health and vetting system” and more “see, this proves Afghan evacuees are a threat,” which is exactly the kind of lazy, dangerous narrative that puts everyone else in his situation under a cloud.
What happened to Afghan allies after we brought them here
Tens of thousands of Afghans were rushed out under Operation Allies Refuge and Operation Allies Welcome, including interpreters, zero‑unit fighters, and families who had targets on their backs because they helped U.S. forces. On paper they were “vetted and resettled,” but in reality a lot of them got dumped into the U.S. with short‑term benefits, patchy legal support, and almost no serious long‑term mental health care after years of combat trauma, displacement, and loss.
Advocates and researchers have been yelling for years that Afghan interpreters and partners are stuck in bureaucratic limbo, injured, unemployed, and traumatized while the government drags its feet on visas, medical care, and permanent status. Even before this latest shooting, there were documented cases of Afghan interpreters and evacuees sinking into severe depression, PTSD, and desperation, with reports of self‑harm and suicidality linked to isolation, broken promises, and feeling abandoned after risking everything for the U.S.
Suicides, mental health, and broken promises
There’s a consistent pattern: people who fought alongside U.S. troops come here expecting stability and are met with poverty, temporary aid, and a maze of paperwork they can’t navigate while reliving war trauma. Studies on Afghan refugees show high rates of PTSD, anxiety, and depression, made worse by housing insecurity, unemployment, language barriers, and the constant fear their status could vanish and they’ll be sent back to the same people who tried to kill them.
Mental‑health groups working with Afghan evacuees openly talk about serious gaps: folks waiting months for counseling, relying on volunteer networks, and quietly breaking down while being told they were “saved.” Within those communities, organizers and clinicians have reported suicidal ideation and suicide attempts tied directly to feeling betrayed by the U.S. after promises of protection, support, and a real chance to rebuild their lives.
How one shooting is being weaponized against a whole group
Instead of asking how someone this traumatized and clearly spiraling slipped through the cracks, political actors are using Lakanwal’s case as ammo to freeze or gut Afghan visa and refugee programs. USCIS actually halted some processing for Afghan nationals after the shooting, leaving families who were already in danger now stuck even longer, and Afghans here are openly saying they’re terrified they’ll lose status or be deported back into the Taliban’s hands because of someone else’s crime.
So Afghans who risked their lives for U.S. troops are getting the worst of both worlds: not enough support to heal or settle, and then blamed collectively when one person snaps and commits violence. The truth is this is not a red‑versus‑blue story; it’s a story about a country that leaned on these people in war, used their trust and sacrifice, and then left far too many of them to drown in trauma and bureaucracy while branding them as the next “threat.”
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Garcia Update…
As of today, a federal judge has ordered ICE to release him and let him come back to his home in Maryland, basically calling out the government for kicking him out “without lawful authority” and forcing ICE to undo what they did.
What ICE did to Abrego Garcia
Abrego Garcia had a legal ruling on his side saying he faced real danger if sent back, but the Trump crew still deported him anyway, cutting straight across what the court had already decided. Advocacy groups are calling it exactly what it is: the administration steamrolling the law to push its hard‑line deportation agenda, using people like him as expendable examples.
Where his case stands now
The judge’s new order means ICE has to release him from custody and allow him to reunite with his family in Maryland while his situation gets sorted out properly under the law. It doesn’t magically fix the harm of dumping him back into danger, but it does put a spotlight on how far this administration is willing to go to strip protections from people the courts already said have the right to stay.
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Big Boats….vs. Little Boats
Yeah, the whole “we can ninja-board a football-field‑size tanker but somehow have to vaporize little fiberglass boats” thing is exactly as sketchy as it feels.
What’s up with the big seized tanker
The “big ass boat” is a sanctioned crude oil tanker the U.S. just snatched in international waters off Venezuela, allegedly hauling “sanctioned” Venezuelan and Iranian oil through a shadow shipping network that Washington says helps foreign terrorist groups and props up Maduro’s regime. Coast Guard, Marines, FBI, DHS and the Pentagon all teamed up, flew in off the USS Gerald R. Ford, fast‑roped onto the ship, took it without a shot, and are now steering it and its cargo into U.S. legal and financial control. Trump basically bragged that the U.S. is likely keeping the oil, which is why Venezuela is screaming “piracy” and “robbery” and threatening to take this to international bodies. On top of that, the move spooked the oil market because it tells every other sanctioned ship in the region they might be next.
Why they can board a tanker but blow up small boats
On paper, the tanker stuff is framed as “law enforcement plus sanctions”: they get a seizure warrant, claim the ship is already under U.S. sanctions, say it’s tied to terrorism or sanctions‑busting, then treat it like a floating asset they can physically repossess. That lets them do the whole Hollywood raid—helicopters, commandos, everyone walks away alive—because the legal story is “we’re serving papers at sea” rather than “we’re at war.”
But for the smaller boats, they’ve quietly shifted to a straight‑up military posture: airstrikes and missiles on “suspected” drug‑running craft linked to Venezuelan gangs or cartels, with no boarding, no warning, and people onboard getting killed. One recent strike literally sank a suspected narco boat with 11 people on it, and even security‑state types are admitting this looks a lot less like interdiction and a lot more like open warfare at sea. Legal experts are already calling out how flimsy the standard is—intelligence links to a cartel, no public evidence, and then missiles instead of arrests—so yeah, your instinct that the “evidence” for these kills hasn’t been aired in any serious way is dead on.
The double standard you’re pointing at
So the pattern is basically:
• Big tanker with oil that can be seized, sold, or leveraged in sanctions politics? Then it magically becomes a surgical law‑enforcement operation with everyone treated as “crew,” not combatants.
• Small, disposable boats with poor Venezuelans or alleged smugglers, no big asset to capture, and a White House desperate to look “tough on drugs”? Then suddenly it’s missiles, “kinetic strikes,” and the lawyers start inventing a war‑style framework to justify killing everyone onboard.
That’s why it feels “odd”: it’s not about what they can physically do—they clearly can take vessels alive when there’s something valuable to grab—it’s about what they choose to do when the people on the boat are treated as expendable and the only political payoff is a bloody highlight reel and a talking point about “smoking drug boats.”
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Too Woke…Font is too woke
Inside the Trump world right now, the culture war is so deep they’re literally fighting over fonts and fake Christmas cheer instead of doing actual governing.
The font nonsense at State
So Marco Rubio’s State Department has decided that the real threat isn’t dictators or wars, it’s…Calibri. They’re yanking the default font back to 14-point Times New Roman like it’s 2003, pitching it as cleaning up “woke” decisions from the diversity-and-accessibility crowd instead of admitting it’s just petty grievance politics dressed up as tradition. This is exactly the vibe of the whole Trump orbit: anything that came out of an inclusion or modernization effort is automatically suspect, so they’ll burn time and energy undoing symbolic stuff while foreign policy is on fire.
What makes it even more ridiculous is how they sell it: as if going backwards on a basic readability/accessibility move is some heroic stand for seriousness and professionalism. These people are obsessed with performative reversals—undo the font, undo the guidelines, undo the optics—because it gives red meat to the base without actually having to solve a single real-world problem. It’s all vibes and no substance, and they like it that way.
McDonald’s and the cursed AI Christmas ad
Then you’ve got McDonald’s trying to cash in on the AI wave and face-planting so hard they had to pull their own Christmas ad. They rolled out this AI-generated holiday spot that was supposed to be cute and festive, and the internet instantly shredded it for being creepy, soulless, and tone-deaf—like a corporate hallucination of “holiday spirit” with zero actual humanity. People were clowning the weird visuals and the whole idea that a mega-corporation thinks slapping AI on everything is automatically clever instead of lazy.
The fact that it got yanked so fast tells you how badly it landed: even for a brand used to bad press, this one hit that uncanny valley where people are already suspicious of AI, already tired of fake “warm family” ads, and definitely not in the mood for algo-generated nostalgia. It fits right into the larger pattern: elites—from government to big business—are chasing symbolism, gimmicks, and culture-war brownie points instead of doing anything that makes regular people’s lives better. They’re tuning everything to pure spectacle, and then acting shocked when everyone sees straight through it.
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PNW update
The country really does feel like it’s physically coming apart at the seams right now, and it’s not “theoretical climate change” or abstract crime stats—it’s rivers eating towns and kids getting mowed down on a sidewalk.
Pacific Northwest underwater
Up in Washington, they’re using the word “catastrophic” and, for once, it isn’t an exaggeration. Days of an atmospheric river parked over the region have dumped absurd amounts of rain, blowing rivers past historic flood levels, washing out highways, triggering mudslides, and knocking out power for tens of thousands of people. The governor has declared a statewide emergency, activated the National Guard, and is talking about up to roughly 100,000 people needing to evacuate as places along the Skagit and Snohomish rivers get told to leave now or risk being trapped by rising water.
What makes it hit even harder is how familiar this is starting to feel—these “once in decades” floods are now coming every few years, supercharged by warmer oceans feeding these atmospheric rivers that shove a firehose of moisture straight into Washington and Oregon. It’s roads collapsing, farms and livestock at risk, entire neighborhoods in the 100‑year floodplain being told to grab what they can and go, while DC still treats climate like a side issue instead of the thing literally rewriting the map in real time.
California’s sidewalk horror
Then you’ve got that nightmare in Anaheim where eight high school runners were doing exactly what adults say kids should do—out training with their team—when a car suddenly jumped the curb and obliterated them on the sidewalk. Police say the driver, a 27‑year‑old man, is suspected of being under the influence of alcohol and drugs, and he’s been arrested on DUI suspicion after swerving off the road and slamming into the group as they waited at a light.
The details are brutal: teens from 16 to 17, some rushed immediately to the hospital, others treated on scene first, with video showing bodies on the ground and a crushed car up against a wall where a sidewalk used to be “safe.” It’s the kind of thing that shatters any illusion that public space is under control—kids can’t even stand and wait for a crosswalk without being at the mercy of one wasted driver and a system that still treats DUIs as an inevitable cost of doing business instead of a full-on public health failure.
The bigger feeling behind it
Put these together and you get the same gut-level message: nothing is stable and the people in charge are not moving with the urgency this era demands. Climate extremes are evacuating towns and smashing infrastructure, while kids get wrecked by a car on an ordinary afternoon run, and the national conversation is somehow still stuck on petty culture-war garbage. It feels like living in a country where the background setting is “disaster risk,” but the top of the food chain would rather argue about fonts and vibes than deal with rivers over levees and cars over sidewalks.
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Noem’s Hearing today…
Noem didn’t really “meet” so much as she ducked out of a grilling and then got played by Trump’s own chaos machine today. The whole thing was messy, defensive, and made her look weak, not powerful.
What actually went down
Noem spent the morning getting torched in a House Homeland Security hearing over Trump’s mass deportation agenda and her role in gutting FEMA and immigration protections. Democrats came at her hard on record deportations, National Guard deployments into cities, and the human cost of all these ICE and DHS crackdowns, including clashes with activists and ugly arrests in places like LA and Chicago. Protesters were in the room yelling “stop terrorizing our communities” and “shame on you,” and she kept cutting off questions when they got too close to the blood on her hands.
The “meeting” she bailed for
In the middle of that heat, Noem suddenly bounces, saying she has to go chair a FEMA Review Council meeting about the future of the agency that Trump wants to basically hollow out and shove back onto the states. One Democrat even joked she was just scared of the questions as she walked out with protesters chasing her down the hall. Then the punchline: that FEMA meeting she was supposedly rushing to? It gets canceled minutes before it was even supposed to start, leaving her looking like she used a fake “urgent business” excuse to escape oversight and still ended up with nothing to show for it.
How it looks for her with Trump
All of this is happening while there’s already open chatter that Trump’s people are pissed at how she’s managing DHS and FEMA and that she’s on thin ice for not being brutal enough in executing his deportation fantasies. Inside the building, there’s a full-on feud between her and Trump’s border czar Tom Homan; they’re basically not speaking, but Trump likes the drama and thinks pitting his attack dogs against each other somehow makes the policies “stronger.” At the same time, outside anger over raids, deportations, and FEMA cuts just keeps growing, and there’s reporting that his hardcore immigration push is starting to drag his approval numbers, even if he and his people won’t admit it out loud.
Bottom line on today with Noem
So “today’s meeting with Noem” really boils down to her getting blasted on the Hill over Trump’s immigration and FEMA agenda, ducking out early to look like a serious power player heading to a big FEMA strategy session, and then that meeting getting yanked at the last minute and leaving her exposed. She walked into the day already rumored to be on borrowed time and walked out looking even more cornered: hated by Democrats, heckled by the public, undercut by Trump’s own people, and still chained to his mass deportation and FEMA-gutting project.
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ACA Updates…
ACA open enrollment itself has not been broadly “extended” this year; the main window and deadlines for 2026 coverage are still the same, but there is a live fight in Congress right now over extending the extra ACA subsidies past the end of 2025.
Enrollment deadlines right now
For 2026 coverage, the standard ACA open enrollment window is November 1, 2025 through January 15, 2026 in most states. If you want coverage to start January 1, 2026, you generally have to pick a plan by December 15, 2025; if you enroll between December 16 and January 15, your coverage usually kicks in February 1, 2026.
A handful of state-based marketplaces give people more time and run their own extended deadlines into late January, including California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Virginia, D.C., and a few others. Those state extensions vary a bit, so the exact last day (and whether there’s any further emergency extension) depends on your state’s exchange site, not on Trump’s people in DC.
What’s happening with ACA subsidy extensions
The bigger “extension” story isn’t about dates, it’s about money: the juiced-up ACA premium subsidies that were put in place so more people could afford plans are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025 unless Congress acts. Democrats in the Senate have a plan moving right now to extend those enhanced subsidies for another three years, and the Congressional Budget Office says that would keep millions more people insured but would add roughly $83 billion to the federal deficit over that period.
If those enhanced subsidies die, people in the middle-income range would see their premium caps jump back up, and the number of insured would drop starting in 2026, which is exactly what Trump-world hardliners are fine with because they’ve never stopped gunning for the ACA. Nothing is final yet: the Senate is expected to vote on the Democratic extension plan alongside a Republican alternative that would restructure the help instead of cleanly extending it, so people are stuck in limbo right up against the mid-December enrollment push.
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Tomorrow is Friday…we’ve made it through another week…almost.
Speak Truth! Keep speaking TRUTH!
Don’t Give up the Ship!
Go Cause Good Trouble, with Your Elbows Up!
These are facts that I researched and verified – AI helped put together some sentence structure, but the words and tone are mine. These are my views based upon facts, research and thoughtful consideration using logic. I own the copyright to any images used. I’m comfortable to stand alone to uphold truth. Feel free to check me, but do not attack me. I am only causing good trouble.