It has been a week of stunning events and dangerous rhetorical excesses. Currently the political debate is divided over the question of when government officials can use deadly force against people who are protesting or ignoring orders from those officials. This question is steeped in politics, as it so often is. Whether a person deserves death at the hands of the state almost always has a political element to it, which is not exactly a new thing.

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Congress is actually showing some signs of standing up for itself. This is remarkable, since for the past year they have been no more than a rubber stamp, approving anything Donald Trump wants while ignoring anything he does to encroach on their constitutional powers. Today, however, several votes were held which did indeed push back on Trump in notable ways. All of them will likely wind up being merely symbolic, but it is still refreshing to see at least some signs of life from Congress.

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There's an issue emerging in the political world that -- so far -- has not adequately been addressed by either party. This means there is a big opportunity for one of them to jump onto the populist side of the issue and get out in front of a growing amount of rage among some voters. So far, though, neither party seems all that interested, meaning the deep pockets of the industry leaders might win out over how average voters see the issue. So far, the only politician positioning himself on the side of average people is (no real surprise) Senator Bernie Sanders. Everyone else, to one extent or another, seems to be either supporting or ignoring the impact of new data centers being built all across the country.

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Donald Trump is not being subtle about why he decided to launch a military attack against Venezuela and spirit away their country's leader, Nicolás Maduro. Instead of Trump's previous attempts to cloak his naked power grab with some sort of justification, he now just flat-out admits "it's about the oil." Venezuela has a lot of oil in the ground -- more than any other country on the planet, in fact. Trump wants it for the U.S. So he's going to force them to allow American companies to go in and take it, one way or another.

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In the midst of my yearly frenzy putting together the annual awards column, the "predictions for next year" part sometimes gets a little shortchanged. It's the last item on the "Part 2" list, therefore by the time I get to it I'm usually pretty loopy and have lost a certain amount of focus. But on the last week of 2025, my mind has been turning to thinking about what to expect next year again, so I thought I would just share some random thoughts I've been having, in no particular order.

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Millions of Americans will be visiting family over the next few weeks, and we're all familiar with having to deal with an older relative who is prone to grumpiness over aspects of modern life that they don't approve of. "We didn't have that when I was a kid," your cranky grandpa will say, "So why do we need it now?" Other family members, being used to this sort of thing, will humor the old guy rather than launching into an explanation of modern life and why some things get better over time. It's easier just to let grumpy grandpa rant and rave, as you sit across from him at the holiday dinner table.

But there's one grumpy oldster we can't just ignore in this fashion, because he is President Cranky Grandpa and his ranting and raving actually has consequences. Thankfully though, his latest grumpiness is going to help Democrats make their case in next year's midterm elections.

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Welcome back to the second of our year-end awards columns! And if you missed it last Friday, go check out [Part 1] as well.

This article is mind-bendingly long enough, so we're not going to bother with any other introductory words at all. Instead, let's just get right to the awards, shall we?

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The Democratic National Committee's effort to analyze what went wrong in the 2024 election was always kind of a joke from the start. Soon after the effort was announced, it was revealed that it would not be looking into two crucial questions from 2024, namely Joe Biden's decision to run for re-election when he obviously was not up to the task, and what happened after he (finally) decided to end his campaign and Kamala Harris was anointed the official party candidate (without any primaries or any sort of selection process at all). Those are some pretty big things to decide to ignore, you've got to admit.

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As I contemplate (for this Friday's year-end awards column) making predictions for the next year in politics, I have to wonder what will happen to Mike Johnson in 2026. Will he still be speaker of the House at this point next year? Or will the House Republicans have ousted him in favor of someone else?

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This is the last legislative week scheduled for Congress in this calendar year. This means that if nothing gets done, the expanded Obamacare subsidies will indeed expire starting on New Year's Day -- which will negatively affect over 20 million Americans. In some cases, they will see their premiums double or even triple. As things stand, a last-minute solution to the problem does not seem at all likely.

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