President Donald Trump said tariffs are the reason that real gross domestic product increased at an annual rate of 4.3% in the third quarter of 2025. In July, August, and September, GDP increased at 4.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, even though economists predicted the economy would grow at a 3.2% annual rate due to the second quarter’s 3.8% growth. “The TARIFFS are responsible for the GREAT USA Economic Numbers JUST ANNOUNCED…AND THEY WILL ONLY GET BETTER!” Trump wrote on TruthSocial. “Also, NO INFLATION & GREAT NATIONAL SECURITY. Pray for the U.S. Supreme Court!!!” The Supreme Court is considering a case that would overturn Trump’s tariffs. Due to the recent government shutdown, the Dec. 23 report for the third quarter of 2025 replaces the release of the advance estimate originally scheduled for Oct. 30, as well as the second estimate originally scheduled for Nov. 26. White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai said the report shows that Americans “can count on benefitting from a historic economic boom in 2026.” “Today’s blockbuster, expectation-smashing GDP report is the latest proof that President Trump’s America First trade and economic agenda continues to turn the page on the Biden economic disaster: American consumers are spending, and American exports are surging,” Desai said. “President Trump built the greatest economy in the world in his first term, and he’s in the process of doing it all over again.” The post Trump Says This Economic Policy Is Responsible for ‘Expectation-Smashing’ GDP Report appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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Wikipedia can’t be trusted, can it? An entire generation of Americans was brought up through school being told not to implicitly rely on the so-called online encyclopedia because just about anyone could get on it and create their own post, or even make edits to the pages of a well-known business, a historical event or an important political figure.  But times have changed, haven’t they? Rather than downplaying information that can be altered at will by anonymous editors, the globe’s media and information gatekeepers (Big Tech) are siphoning up, regurgitating and, in many cases, outright rubber-stamping Wikipedia content. Big Tech companies routinely elevate Wikipedia in search results. Take Google for example. MRC has repeatedly exposed Google for elevating Wikipedia in its search results. In one study, MRC caught the search behemoth hiding X owner Elon Musk’s Grokipedia and instead promoting leftist Wikipedia. In two other studies, MRC revealed how Google elevated Wikipedia articles in search results to smear President Donald Trump’s allies: In one instance, Google repeatedly elevated the overtly biased Wikipedia page for Trump Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller; and in another instance, Google promoted leftist Wikipedia links in searches for Trump allies like Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, podcast host and Navy intelligence officer Jack Posobiec and The Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh. General search isn’t the only problem though. Artificial intelligence chatbots are also pointing people to leftist Wikipedia. According to Pew Research Center, “Wikipedia links are somewhat more common in AI summaries than in standard search pages”—two times more common, in fact.  In order to train AI, chatbots are given datasets to devour and set loose to scour the internet to hoover up data and information to pull from for their responses. And guess what one of the most prominent data sources for training AI is? You guessed it: Wikipedia. This is not surprising, though, given the fact that the AI-powered search engines chatbots rely on are relentlessly pushing Wikipedia. The phrase, “You are what you eat,” seems most apt here. MRC studies bear that out, too. In one recent study, MRC researchers queried chatbots on the recent government shutdown. Three AI chatbots (ChatGPT, Grok and Meta AI) astonishingly—and inaccurately—blamed Republicans for the shutdown, citing leftist media sources like Wikipedia, National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service in doing so.  Another MRC study exposed Google’s AI for running cover for a reporting failure on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. In two separate searches, Google’s AI denied that NPR and PBS hid the Biden laptop scandal, citing Wikipedia, which downplayed NPR’s “delayed” reporting and PBS’s initial “caution.” In yet another MRC study, AI relied on sources like Wikipedia to suggest that elitist media outlets should not give up on smearing Trump as antisemitic or fascist despite his successful mediation of a peace deal between Israel and Hamas. All this makes clear that Wikipedia is perhaps more influential now than ever before. But why is that a bad thing? Wikipedia’s overt anti-conservative bias distorts media and information, propagandizing to the masses, and thereby distorting reality. Former Vice President and Democrat Party candidate for president Kamala Harris said the quiet part out loud when discussing the importance of AI inputs in training.  On how AI can be used to nudge individuals in a preferred direction, Harris said, “And so, the machine is taught—and part of the issue here is what information is going into the machine that will then determine—and we can predict then, if we think about what information is going in, what then will be produced in terms of decisions and opinions that may be made through that process.” Wikipedia Citation Disparity Evidences Effective Blacklist of Right-Leaning Media Just how biased is Wikipedia against conservatives? A December 11 MRC study underscored just how biased Wikipedia is. MRC analyzed Wikipedia citations across all languages and found that it cites left-leaning media outlets nearly 20 times more often than right-leaning media outlets. From the study: “Wikipedia overwhelmingly favored left-leaning media sources (5,320,017 citations versus 292,250), with editors citing radical leftist outlets such as MSNBC, Mother Jones, The Associated Press, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The New York Times, 18.2 times more than right-leaning sources like the New York Post, Real Clear Politics, The Daily Wire, The Federalist or the Washington Examiner. “In head-to-head comparisons within regional markets, the results were much the same. Wikipedia cited left-leaning outlets like The New Yorker and The Washington Post significantly more than their right-leaning counterparts like the New York Post and The Washington Times. “Wikipedia’s obvious favoritism of elitist media in its citations underscores MRC’s previous reporting, which showed that Wikipedia uses an effective blacklist to suppress right-leaning media on its pages.” Wikipedia’s Vast Leftist Editing Power Wikipedia’s anti-conservative bias does not end with its citations. The so-called encyclopedia’s leftist slant is also powered by its base of “volunteer” editors. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has made clear in numerous interviews that there exists a group of editor accounts, the “power 62,” that wield an immense amount of power on the website, 85% of which are anonymous.  But the well of Wikipedia’s depraved bias goes deeper still. As MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider wrote in an op-ed, Wikipedia has waged a hidden war on truth. “Our recent investigation shows that Wikipedia and its educational partner, Wiki Education, have developed a vast, little-known system for shaping, and increasingly weaponizing, the content millions of Americans rely on every day,” wrote Schneider on The Daily Wire. “What we found is not simply concerning; it reveals the quiet architecture of an ideological project. It is also possible that, in attempting to hide its operations, Wikipedia has crossed legal lines that could carry serious consequences.” Wiki Education brags that since 2010, it has been responsible for 120 million words on Wikipedia, amassing millions of views. It further adds that it has infiltrated 7,650 classes, impacting 145,000 students nationwide.  Apparently Big Tech Didn’t Get the Message Wikipedia’s influence appears clear, as Big Tech hoovers up information from its pages, trains on its data and pushes it all out for unsuspecting masses to consume. Its societal impact, though, has perhaps not yet been realized. “Remember, students, don’t cite Wikipedia,” we were told by our teachers and professors. Maybe Big Tech didn’t get the message? But conservatives and free thinkers are beginning to learn the truth about Big Tech companies and their leftist war chest of harvestable digital information (Wikipedia). With MRC Free Speech America research revealing Wikipedia's staggering bias—citing left-leaning outlets nearly 20 times more often than right-leaning ones—and with Big Tech platforms elevating its distorted content in searches and AI responses, the threat to truthful discourse is undeniable.  Conservatives, pro-free speech activists and lawmakers on Capitol Hill must act decisively: demand transparency and accountability from Wikipedia and Big Tech giants, push for congressional investigations into ideological censorship and support alternatives that restore balance to the information ecosystem before leftist gatekeepers fully monopolize public knowledge.

This article is for those of you with fractured families. Maybe the holidays have always been stressful and unpleasant because your family argues. Maybe it’s worse in the 2020s because your family is at political odds, and your liberal family actually thinks you’re a Nazi and says so. Maybe you’ve been estranged from your family for years.My guess is that many people who fit the description above have abandoned Christmas or any holiday celebrations. I know I did for years. My sister and I grew up in a family headed by an abusive, mentally and morally deranged mother. Our childhood was full of screaming, wooden spoons broken across our backsides, and bizarre punishments for crimes we didn’t commit.My mother wasn’t actually there in the room with us in 1985. She didn’t see us. She was a little girl in her cold childhood home in 1960 screaming at her parents. Maybe you’ve abandoned some of your family’s traditions too. Maybe, like me, you’ve spent years alone at Christmas. You don’t put up a tree. You don’t make that special dish.But you don’t have to let the sorrowful ghosts of Christmases past turn every Christmas future into lonely melancholy. If you have just one single friend, or one single family member whose company you enjoy, I encourage you to haul out the holly, make that special dish, and bring the peace and comfort of Christmas back into your life.If you grew up like I did, you need this, and you deserve it.Going home, wherever that may beThis year, my sister and I are going to have a merry Christmas with her family. We are estranged from our mother but not from each other. Now my sister, my brother-in-law, and my nephew are my family. When I visit them at Christmas, I’m going home.We’re going to have a loving holiday like we wanted to have, but could not, when we were children. We’re going to cook for each other, sing along to the Carpenters’ Christmas album (on a record player, of course), and string popcorn with a needle and thread to make the old-fashioned poor-people garlands we loved to put on the tree when we were young.That’s not the only family tradition we’re going to relive, and that’s key. While we had a nightmare childhood, there were parts of it that are worth cherishing. There are traditions in our family that we do not have to “let go.” We don’t have to allow the traditions to be emotionally contaminated by our mother’s histrionic meltdowns at the holidays.That was a lesson my sister and I learned only over time. In my younger years, I stayed by myself doing nothing and celebrating nothing. “Christmas” seemed like a sick and painful joke. What was there to celebrate (I recognize the religious celebration of Jesus’ birth, but I’m focused on something different here) about a time of year that brought shouting, accusations, and thrown dishes?Our mother had borderline personality disorder. Such people have wild, extreme mood swings within minutes or hours. Under stress, they often lose their ability to control their emotions at all. For example, our mother could swing from raucous laughter to ugly crying while making plausibly deniable suicide threats: “I don’t feel I have anything to live for, and none of you would miss me anyway.”She triedBut you know, she tried. We were poor, and our condition reminded my mother of her own childhood poverty. She had it worse than we did. For years, my mother lived in what I call “Appalachia of the North.” They had no hot running water, no indoor bathroom, and electricity was only a sometimes-service. Obviously gifts were few at Christmas time.She wanted us to have a better Christmas than she had as a girl. We always put up a tree, we played the Christmas music, and my mother would usually make lasagna (I’m going to tell you how to make Christmas lasagna below). She couldn’t afford a huge pile of presents for us, but Aunt Vivian and Uncle Marty always sent a huge package of wrapped, brand-name presents to us kids. To us, it was magic. We did feel lucky.But it couldn’t last. By about 4 p.m., mother would be in hysterics. It was nothing we children provoked. We were happy opening our presents, we thanked mom for everything she did, and we looked forward to Christmas dinner.Out of the blue, she’d start yelling. We didn’t pick the wrapping paper up quickly enough. We didn’t save the pre-strung bows for next year (“Those are expensive, and you act like I’m made of money!”). It could be anything. She’d scream-cry about how “nothing I ever do is good enough for you kids!” or “I work so hard to make a nice holiday, and I wonder why the f**k I do because NONE OF YOU APPRECIATE IT!”The lasagna would be slammed down on the table while we looked down at our hands trying not to cry (crying provoked punishment).My mother wasn’t actually there in the room with us in 1985. She didn’t see us. She was a little girl in her cold childhood home in 1960 screaming at her parents. That didn’t make it right for her to inflict it on us, but I’m old enough now that I understand what was going on in her mind.And now all of that is gone. It’s over. It’s no part of our lives. And it never will be again.RELATED: A caregiver’s Christmas Evrymmnt via iStock/Getty ImagesAn extraordinary blessingAs adults in our 40s, my sister and I got to know each other as real, whole people for the first time. Instead of being children alternately banding together to protect each other from mother, or as adversaries triangulated against each other to serve my mother’s whims, we met as brother and sister. And as adult friends.We learned that not only did we love each other, but we liked each other too. It’s an extraordinary blessing.I want this for you too. Whoever you are. I know some of you don’t have any family left, and I’m sorry. Do you have a friend similarly situated? Maybe he can come to your table this year.If you have anyone to gather with at Christmas, revive an old family tradition of yours that you’ve neglected for years because it’s associated with hard memories. Maybe it’s a particular carol. Maybe it’s a special dish (our family is English by heritage, so we make Christmas pudding, for example). Whatever it is, why not “repurpose” it? Imbue it with peace and happiness from your life today. Give it new life. Give it love.Christmas lasagnaThis year, I’m going to make Christmas lasagna. For some reason, that dish became our family’s classic Christmas dinner, and I think it’s great. Here’s how to do it. Take your favorite lasagna recipe, but use these methods to alter it:This is a meat-and-spinach lasagna (red and green for Christmas, see?).Mix the ricotta with two cloves of chopped garlic, a beaten egg, and a dash of basil and oregano. Don’t forget salt and pepper.Mix the spinach with mozzarella, and make that your one green layer.For the meat, use half ground beef and half Italian sausage.If you make this and don’t like it, I’ll eat my hat.Remember the Velveteen Rabbit. He was old and worn, and the world thought he wasn’t worth anything anymore and was best left to the past."Real isn't how you are made. It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, then you become real."Christmas wasn’t made real for us in the right way long ago. But we’ve made it real again today, in our late middle age, because we love each other.God bless you, and merry Christmas.

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