{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftodays-news.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Ftodays-news-december-13-15-2025-H_zlf7bm","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"Today's News, December 13-15, 2025","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/01f7d4b2-716c-43f9-8a03-c96056c76782/9a391738-ae74-4361-9c45-507a0fa1621f/wwop-todays-20news-20cover.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"","height":200,"description":"Trump’s team is framing California’s collapsing economy and infrastructure as a national security issue, Republicans keep quietly winning on voter registration (with Arizona looking like the next Florida), trust in government is at rock bottom, and federal control over AI, energy, and data centers is being positioned as strategic necessity—not a state fight. Terror threats are rising at home and abroad, yet enforcement actions are accelerating, cultural trends like trans identification and demographic “replacement” narratives are reversing, and economic signals—from a lower trade deficit and rising mortgage demand to massive data-center land grabs—point to growth bottlenecked by energy and water. Internationally, anti-socialist movements are gaining ground, Europe’s leadership looks weak by its own voters’ admission, China’s export “records” mask real decline, EV dogma is cracking, and even gas engines are evolving—while the culture closes with a reminder that books, like history, matter most when you actually keep them close and read them."}