Weekly Update by Michael Armstrong – December 19, 2025

Dear friends,

It’s been quite a week. A shooting at Brown University, leaving two dead and many others injured, quickly turned into a days-long manhunt. It resolved with an apparent suicide but was also soon linked to the murder of a former classmate and MIT professor, leaving more questions than answers.

The world was treated to Vladimir Putin’s year end press conference. It painted a rosy picture of strength and resilience but perhaps more importantly an overriding determination to bring the war in Ukraine to a close on their terms.

Meanwhile, the EU has waffled on its outspoken desire to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine. It was a public humiliation for both Chancellor Merz of Germany and the President of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen. Both had pushed the plan hard, with Merz declaring there was “no alternative.” There was, but it starts with a D and ends with an EBT.

Ultimately, they borrowed to provide the desired funding. Belgium, where the majority of the Russian funds are held, balked at releasing them without an unlimited commitment to shared legal liability for doing so. This was a bridge too far for their European peers. Hungary proposed a way out of the impasse. It exempted them and a few others who protested for assuming any of the debt burden but allowed their colleagues to proceed as they desired.

The US has been flexing its military might. An attack that killed and wounded US troops in Syria has been responded to by strikes on numerous locations. This in cooperation with the new regime in Syria. A Venezuelan tanker carrying sanctioned oil was also seized this week, drawing strong rebukes from Maduro and others.

Trump has since announced a full blockade against vessels transporting these products. The majority of them sail to “teapot” refineries in China that are immune to international sanctions, but the same vessels also supply Cuba and are often part of the “shadow fleet” that transports Russian and Iranian crude. A conflict of some sort is certainly brewing.

The saddest news of all was the massacre at Bondi Beach in Australia. With 15 dead and many more wounded the country is grappling with a multitude of issues, chief among which are gun control and unassimilated migrants. The attack was perpetrated by a father, who held an Indian passport, and a son, who had been investigated for his links to radical Islam.

Being from Texas, where you expect everyone to be armed, it seems a tragedy that an event like this could transpire for so long without being met by equal force. The heroic intervention of another (unarmed) Muslim immigrant likely saved many lives, yet there has been considerable backlash online- as if he is a traitor to his race or religion for saving life. How appalling.

It’s abhorrent. All know by now that the targets of this heinous attack were Jews commemorating the beginning of Hanukkah, which celebrates the cleansing of the temple after it was defiled by Antiochus Epiphanes. While not a Holy Day ordained by God, Christ Himself is recorded as being at the Temple during this time in John 10:22. With the Sabbath upon us, it gives us pause to consider the general attitude toward those who do observe God’s annual Holy Days and what the future may hold.

Michael