December 26, 2025

BUREAUCRAT GAMES AT VA, FEHBP: Officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) used “novel” interpretations of law and regulation to get around long-standing bars on government funding of abortions.

It’s one thing for a President to countermand decisions percolating up from deep within the bureaucracy, but that’s a short-term solution to a problem that cries out for a long-term resolution. As it happens, Trump is actively countermanding, but, as I explain in a lengthy news analysis on The Washington Stand, he’s also pushing a permanent reform for which future chief executives will thank him.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Mark Tapscott

BORAT’S GUIDE TO THE UNITED NATIONS:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

PRETTY MUCH, YEAH:

Posted at 11:08 am by Stephen Green

FASTER, PLEASE:

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S NIGER VACATION HAS BEEN CANCELLED:

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: It’s the Feast of Stephen and I’m Full. “I will continue to do a ‘Best Of’ rerun of a classic Morning Briefing post on holidays and the day after holidays, but with a twist. I’ll be recording video greetings for each one. These won’t be behind the paywall. Still, I would encourage everyone to join us over there. This doesn’t apply to those Monday Post Office holidays that I barely know are happening.”

Posted at 9:47 am by Stephen Green

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Teacher ‘likened to terrorist’ after showing Trump videos to students.

A teacher in an English school was accused of posing a risk to children and referred to the Government’s counter-terrorism programme after showing Donald Trump videos to his US politics class.

The teacher, who is in his 50s, has told The Telegraph he was “likened to a terrorist” after showing the videos, including one of Mr Trump’s inauguration, to A-level students.

Henley College, a sixth-form in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, with more than 2,000 students, reported the politics lecturer to the local child safeguarding authority, which concluded a referral to Prevent, the Government’s counter-terrorism programme, was a “priority”.

The teacher was accused of causing his A-level students, aged 17 and 18, “emotional harm”. In one document, seen by The Telegraph, local officials in charge of child protection suggested the showing of the videos could amount to a “hate crime”.

The extraordinary claims prompted the teacher, who first qualified in the mid 1990s, to begin a grievance procedure against the college. In a negotiated settlement, it gave him a £2,000 payoff after effectively forcing him to resign from his £44,000-a-year post.

His case is the latest uncovered by The Telegraph in which child protection laws have seemingly been used to try to ban adults with alleged Right-wing views from working with children.

The Free Speech Union believes the laws, intended to protect children from murderers and rapists, are being wrongly used to go after adults with unfashionable opinions. It said the teacher’s case was a clear example of child safeguarding protocols “being weaponised to silence someone for political reasons”.

The teacher, who does not wish to be identified, said: “They likened me to a terrorist. It was completely jarring. It’s dystopian, like something from a George Orwell novel.”

1984: A warning for the rest of us; a how-to guide for the dystopian left to make Airstrip One a reality.

Related:

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll