Well, with at least three stories that would lead on a normal news day (do we have those anymore?), we’ve decided to go South of the border to start the day.
“Violence erupts in Mexico after cartel leader “El Mencho” killed in military operation” CBS News reports:
Violent clashes erupted in parts of western Mexico on Sunday amid a military operation that led to the death of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader, triggering widespread security concerns throughout the region.
Mexican security forces killed Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, also known as “El Mencho,” during an operation in the western state of Jalisco, Mexico’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement on X. It said he was wounded during the raid in the town of Tapalpa and died while being flown to Mexico City.
The state of Jalisco is the base of the cartel known for trafficking huge quantities of fentanyl and other drugs to the United States.
USA TODAY has a helpful capsule account of the notorious cartel boss’s career. The violence is mostly in areas controlled by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Vehicles and businesses are set ablaze.
Californians trapped as cartel unleashes hell near US border over drug kingpin’s killing, according to the New York Post. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the U.S. provided “intelligence support” to the Mexican government. Rocket launchers capable if bringing down airplanes were found in the cartel’s extensive arsenal.
This would lead the news on an ordinary day: An armed man apparently trying to kill President Trump was shot dead by Secret Service at Mar-a-Lago. President Trump was not at Mar-a-Lago when the shooting occurred, at around 1:30 am Sunday. The identified as Austin Martin Tucker of North Carolina:
The armed madman who was shot and killed by Secret Service after he snuck onto President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate Sunday was reportedly obsessed with the Epstein files — and implored others to “raise awareness” just days before the deadly encounter.
Other colleagues told the outlet that Martin was deeply disturbed by what he believed was a concerted government campaign to cover up the Epstein files so elites could continue “getting away with it.”
They also said he voiced frustrations about the economy and how difficult it is for young people to afford to live on their own. He went so far as to try and organize a union at the country club for higher wages, but no one supported the move, the outlet reported.
Inevitably, “sources” have told nuisance gossip spot TMZ that the gunman was “a vocal supporter of Trump.” Quest for a motive arriving on schedule.
The Jerusalem Post asks when (not if?) President Trump will attack Iran and gives the four most likely options. Iran is finding itself more isolated than it expected, with pals China and Russia not coming to the regime’s rescue. Rusia expert Rebecca Grant evaluates the Iranian arsenal versus the U.S.’s. She also highlights Iran’s four top threats and how the U.S. fights back.
The U.S.-Iran negotiations are being conducted along nuclear policy lines. But the protests were for a better life for Iranians and the dislodgement of a tyrannical regime. Thousands are dead. Four recount their ordeals in the Wall Street Journal.
As you know, the Supreme Court ruled Friday in a 6-3 majority that President Trump’s tariffs are illegal. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which has been stalwart against the tariffs, heralded what it called “The Real Tariff Liberation Day,” and praised the ruling:
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Court’s decision for the law and the economy. Had Mr. Trump prevailed, future Presidents could have used emergency powers to bypass Congress and impose border taxes with little constraint.
As Chief Justice John Roberts explains in the majority opinion, “Recognizing the taxing power’s unique importance, and having just fought a revolution motivated in large part by ‘taxation without representation,’ the Framers gave Congress ‘alone . . . access to the pockets of the people.’” …
The tariff law ruling also gives the lie to the Democratic charge that the current Court is a rubber stamp for Mr. Trump. The Court has now shown it is willing to block abuses of executive power by Presidents of both parties. This is exactly what the Constitution calls on the Justices to do.
Writing at City Journal, Ilya Shapiro argued that on tariffs, the Supreme Court had “delivered a reminder” that a President must work with the tools that Congress has provided. Here is his conclusion:
And then there’s Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote a separate concurrence resting on legislative history—an opinion that, tellingly, no other justice joined. In a case where statutory text was front and center, turning to congressional committee reports feels like looking for circumstantial evidence after the statute has already confessed.
In the end, the decision is less a rebuke than a reminder: Congress controls the taxing power. If it wishes to arm the president with sweeping tariff authority, it must do so unmistakably. Until then, presidents must work with the tools Congress has actually provided.
Three conservative Justices—Clarence Thomas, Samel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh—dissented. Justice Thomas has ripped the ruling, saying that the majority “errs” on the Constitution. A Washington Post editorial (hey, they’re really getting good!) explains how Justice Neil Goruch has Justice Elena Kagan, who has ruled differently for Democrat Presidents, “dead to rights.”
A Wall Street Journal editorial, meanwhile, praises Gorsuch for trying to “revive Congress,” while Allysia Finley writes that there is “plenty of hypocrisy to go around” regarding the tariffs case. This isn’t over by a longshot. President Trump, though he will not disobey the Supreme Court, “won’t blink” but will use a different legal justification of tariffs.
A historic snow dump has brought New York to a standstill. This time Mayor Zohran Mamdani is granting a “full, classic snow day” to school students. But New York ace financial writer Charles Gaspario thinks it’s already too late for Mamdani to redeem himself financially:
Truth be told, I thought it would take at least one budget cycle for our socialist boy-wonder mayor to implode in a sea of idiocy over how he plans to govern this city and how he intends to pay for it.
The fact that it’s happening even before his first budget is finished — with an absurd debate over raising taxes on rich people who are already leaving the city in droves or socking it to working-class homeowners through higher property taxes — is downright scary.
It’s a big red warning sign that this mayor is so fundamentally unfit for the job of governing Gotham that Gov. Hochul should remove him from office before he destroys what’s left of the city’s economy. …
The fact that Mamdani doesn’t understand all of this is the reason you don’t elect as mayor a 34-year-old former lefty rapper with a degree in Africana Studies unless you actually think destroying what’s left of the city’s economy is a good thing.
Eli Lake reports at The Free Press that the White House has “had enough” of Tucker Carlson, after repeatedly asking him to cut his Israel bashing. I did not catch the Tucker Carlson-Ambassador Mike Huckabee interview in which the U. Ambassador to Israel triggered the fever swamps. Also in The Free Press, Peter Savrodnik had a distressing story about antisemitism battles among Christians on the right.
Forty-six years to the day after a bunch of unheralded amateurs stunned the heavily favored Soviet Union en route to winning Olympic gold, the U.S. men’s hockey team engineered another epic victory. The Americans won a battle of the sport’s superpowers on Sunday, toppling longtime nemesis Canada 2-1 in overtime to win their country’s first Olympic gold in men’s hockey since the famed 1980 “Miracle on Ice.”
Not a Miracle. FBI head Kash Patel got beat up in press for attending big hockey victory bash in Italy.
He’s Big Marco Now. From Axios: “JD or Marco? Trump keeps asking advisers about 2028.”