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12 Dead, 50 Wounded By Colorado Gunman During Batman Premiere (Video)

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Victims As Young As Six Reported

12 people are dead and an estimated 50 more have been wounded by a lone gunman shooting randomly into the premiere of the “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises” movie minutes after midnight in a Colorado multiplex, according to multiple reports. The assassin, who first threw a teargas canister into the theater he reportedly accessed from an outside exit, was subdued and taken into custody by police after a call at 12:39 AM local time. Ten people died at the Century Aurora 16 multiplex theater in Aurora, Colorado, and four died at or on the way to the hospital.

UPDATE: NBC reports the gunman James Holmes, born 12/13/87.

“Witnesses said gunman wore a gas mask and was clad in black,” the Denver Post reported:

A witness, Benjamin Fernandez, 30, said he was watching the movie when he heard a series of explosions. He said that people ran from the theater and there were gunshots as police shouted ‘get down!”

Frenandez said he saw people falling, including one young girl.

Salina Jordan, 19, was in Theater 8 and saw people hit in her theater. She said one girl was struck in cheek, others in stomach including a girl who looked to be around 9 years old.

Jordan said it sounded like firecrackers until someone ran into Theater 8 yelling “they’re shooting out here!”

The police came running in, telling people to run out. Some police were carrying or dragging bodies, she said.

…

Robert Jones, 28, was in Theater 9 when the shooting started.

Jones said when he first saw smoke billowing from the front of the theater, he thought it was a special effect. Shots rang out almost immediately after.

“I thought it was pretty much the end of the world,” Roberts said.

Roberts stayed flat on the ground until police came into the theater.

Tammi Stevens said her son, 18-year-old Jacob Stevens, was inside Theater 9 when the shooting started. Stevens was waiting for her son at Gateway High School while police interviewed him.

Jacob told his mom that he saw a guy walk into the theater wearing body armor and throw some sort of cannister that then emitted some sort of gas.

“You let your kids go to a late night movie…you never think something like this would happen,” Stevens said.

CNN adds:

Aurora, a Denver suburb, is about 13 miles from Littleton, Colorado — site of the April 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

In that incident, two teenage students, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, armed themselves with guns and bombs and opened fire inside the high school. They killed 13 people and wounding 23 others before killing themselves.

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&contentId=bestoftv/2012/07/20/early-batman-shooting-cell-video.cnn

https://youtube.com/watch?v=T7sIiqq66rk%3Fversion%3D3%26hl%3Den_US

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ugG-xzq22Vs%3Fversion%3D3%26hl%3Den_US

Editor’s note: This report has been updated to reflect the change in the number of reported dead from 14 to 12.

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News

‘We’d Bomb Mexico’: Republican Breaks Ranks and Blasts Trump Over ‘WMDs’

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December 17, 2025

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U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) delivered sharp criticism of President Donald Trump’s policy of using military force to destroy vessels the U.S. Department of Defense believes are smuggling illicit drugs, including fentanyl, to the United States.

Critics have called the strikes illegal, murder, and war crimes. Earlier this week, President Trump signed an executive order designating illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

“The framers understood a simple truth,” Congressman Massie said on the House floor on Wednesday. “To the extent that war-making power devolves to one person, liberty dissolves. If the president believes military action against Venezuela is justified and needed, he should make the case, and Congress should vote — before American lives and treasure are spent on regime change in South America.”

The U.S. Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress.

READ MORE: ‘Negative, Negative, Negative’: Trump Faces Bleak Midterm Prospects Says Analyst

“Let’s be honest about likely outcomes,” Massie continued, “Do we truly believe that Nicolás Maduro will be replaced by a modern-day George Washington? How did that work out? In Cuba, Libya, Iraq, or Syria?”

“Previous presidents told us to go to war over WMDs,” he said, referring to weapons of mass destruction, the alleged reason President George W. Bush took America to war against Iraq. “Weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.”

“Now, it’s the same playbook, except we’re told that drugs are the WMDs,” Massie explained.

“If it were about drugs, we’d bomb Mexico, or China, or Colombia. And the president would not have pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández,” he said, the former president of Honduras serving time in a U.S. prison after having been convicted of drug trafficking.

Massie also issued a warning: “This is about oil and regime change.”

READ MORE: FCC Scrubs Website After Chair’s ‘Independent Agency’ Assertion Ignites Heated Clash

 

Image via Reuters

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‘Negative, Negative, Negative’: Trump Faces Bleak Midterm Prospects Says Analyst

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December 17, 2025

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Can President Donald Trump break a pattern held by several of his predecessors — rebounding into a positive net approval rating by next year’s midterm elections?

It will be challenging but not impossible, says CNN forecaster Harry Enten, who noted that if he doesn’t, it could spell trouble for congressional Republicans on the November ballot.

“I would say the report card is negative,” Enten said on Wednesday. “It’s minus. It’s no good.”

READ MORE: FCC Scrubs Website After Chair’s ‘Independent Agency’ Assertion Ignites Heated Clash

Enten then shared a critical statistic.

“Every single day since March 12th, Trump has been in the red. Negative. That is days in row, 281. He has spent more time underwater than Jacques Cousteau, for goodness’ sake.”

“The bottom line is this, the American people don’t like what Trump’s doing, and they haven’t liked what Trump’s doing for a long period of time: 281 days,” he explained, noting that his net negatives are on “all the key issues.”

“He’s underwater across the board.”

“Immigration, a key issue for him: underwater by six points. Foreign policy, which has been one of his better issues, underwater by 14 points. Trade and tariffs, of course, this has been a key component of Trump’s presidency: underwater by 15 points.”

READ MORE: Trump Bets ‘Dangling’ Cash Will Shift Voters’ Views: Report

“The economy, the reason Trump got elected to a second term, underwater by 16 points, and the Epstein case — which I think will be talking a lot about going into the latter part of this week — underwater by 29 points. Negative, negative, negative, negative, negative,” he exclaimed.

Enten noted that there are still ten and a half months until the midterms.

“But if history is any guide, it’s not a good one for you, because take a look at your term two, negative net approval ratings at this point, when positive by the midterm, well, we have three examples: Richard Nixon, he was forced out of office, of course. He never went positive. George W. Bush, he never saw positive territory again. Barack Obama earlier this century, he did not go positive by the midterm.”

And now, “It’s just negative across the board for the president of the United States. He is, again, gonna have to break history. He has done it before, but he’s really gonna have to do it if he really wants to give his Republican Party much of a chance come the 2026 midterms, because if the numbers look like this and look like this, well, this will become another X.”

READ MORE: GOP Crack-Up Continues as Another House Republican Calls It Quits

 

Image via Reuters

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FCC Scrubs Website After Chair’s ‘Independent Agency’ Assertion Ignites Heated Clash

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13 hours ago

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December 17, 2025

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), established by Congress in 1934 as an independent agency to regulate a wide swath of communications, is not an independent agency, according to its Trump-appointed chairman, during a raucous debate on Capitol Hill.

The FCC has jurisdiction over radio, broadcast television, satellite, and cable communications, and oversees licensing of broadcasters, with some authority to revoke licenses for regulatory or technical violations.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the licenses of outlets he has criticized to be revoked.

In a heated debate, U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) challenged FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Project 2025 author, over the agency’s independence.

“Yes or no, please, yes or no?” Senator Luján asked Carr during a Commerce Committee oversight hearing on Wednesday. “Is the FCC an independent agency?”

READ MORE: Trump Bets ‘Dangling’ Cash Will Shift Voters’ Views: Report

When Carr immediately declared, “I think that…” Luján pulled him back.

“Yes or no, is all we need, sir. Yes or no, is it independent?” the New Mexico Democrat asked again.

“Well, there’s a test for this in the law, in the key portion of that test,” Carr replied.

“Yes or no, Brendan,” Luján again asked.

“So just so you know, Brendan,” the senator continued, “on your website, it just simply says, man, the FCC’s independent. This isn’t a trick question.”

“Okay, the FCC is not…” Carr began.

“Yes or no?”

After more back and forth, Carr ultimately declared, “the FCC is not an independent agency.”

The Bulwark reported that in 2021 Carr declared that the FCC is an independent agency.

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein reported early Wednesday afternoon, “FCC folks have been frantically scrubbing their website to remove reference to it being an ‘independent’ agency now that Carr this morning said it’s not.”

An archived version of the FCC’s website reads: “An independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress, the Commission is the federal agency responsible for implementing and enforcing America’s communications law and regulations.”

READ MORE: GOP Crack-Up Continues as Another House Republican Calls It Quits

That page now calls it a “U.S. government agency overseen by Congress.”

Axios’ media correspondent Sara Fischer on social media declared, “This is INSANE. I took this screenshot of the @FCC website at 11:52 a.m. ET where it explicitly states the FCC is an independent agency. 25 minutes later, it has been removed following Carr’s comments during this hearing!”

“This, combined with SCOTUS appearing poised to uphold POTUS firing of FTC commissioners,” Fischer added, “shows how effective Trump has been in diminishing the independence of federal agencies that are supposed to regulate the media/ad/tech industries.”

READ MORE: White House Teases Out What Trump Will Say in Rare Oval Office Address

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