On Monday night, December 15, 2025, around 8:40 p.m., eight young Chabad yeshiva students….about 20–21 years old were riding a southbound No. 3 train back to Crown Heights after a Hanukkah outreach event in Union Square. They changed at Franklin Avenue/Medgar Evers College, and that’s where the trouble started.​

On the platform, two Black men, described by victims as a father and son pair, began yelling “F**k the Jews” at the group, clearly picking them out for their yarmulkes and Chabad dress. The men then boarded the same train and followed them into a crowded car heading toward Nostrand Avenue and Kingston–Throop Avenues.​

Inside the car, the harassment escalated into a full blown assault. When one of the students pulled out his phone to record, one attacker grabbed him by the neck and collar, choking and shoving him against the door, while also pushing and punching others. He repeatedly threatened, “I’ll kill you” and said he’d “teach you a lesson,” at one point making a gun gesture to the victim’s head. Other passengers told him to “chill” and “calm down,” but nobody physically stepped in. The students got off one stop early to get away; shaken, but with no serious physical injuries, they went to police afterward.​

The cellphone video…packed car, hands on the throat, death threats all went viral within hours then bounced through major outlets from New York Post and ABC7 to Times of Israel and i24NEWS.​

The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the case as an antisemitic assault, based on the victims’ account of slurs at Franklin Avenue and the on‑train threats, though some TV reports note that the reviewed footage doesn’t capture the initial moments so the bias element currently rests on testimony, not audio. Detectives say they have a “person of interest” and are combing subway cameras; as of December 17, no arrests have been made.​

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has opened a federal probe; Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon called the attack “horrific” and a “deeply disturbing hate crime,” adding it to a growing federal pile of antisemitic transit cases. Mayor Eric Adams condemned the incident on X, saying New York “can never allow such hate and antisemitism to persist,” while the ADL pointed out that roughly 287 antisemitic incidents have been logged in NYC this year—about 56% of all reported hate crimes.​

All of this lands in a bad week. On December 14, a Chabad Hanukkah event in Bondi Beach, Australia, was shot up, killing 15, including emissaries and wounding many more. On December 16, a man was stabbed in the chest near 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights after a man shouted about Jews and the Holocaust….Its getting quite ugly out here.

So the pattern for Hanukkah 2025 looks like this: light menorahs in public, ride the subway home, and hope that the worst thing that happens is someone refuses to give up a seat. In this case, eight young men in hats and coats instead got a stranger’s hand on their throat and “I’ll kill you” in their ear, for the crime of being Jewish on the wrong train at the wrong time.

Israel’s latest drone strike in southern Lebanon removed senior Hezbollah operator Zakaria Yahya al‑Hajj, a man whose hobbies apparently included: rebuilding terrorist infrastructure and running agents inside Lebanon’s own security services. His activities violated UN Resolution 1701, which was supposed to keep armed groups out of southern Lebanon and weapons north of the Litani River. Hezbollah is definitely pissed off but has curiously not retaliated on ANY of the strikes from israel so far…Probably because they know they’ve blatantly violated the ceasefire agreement and don't want to further rock the boat.

The strike is one in a series: Israel says it has eliminated dozens of Hezbollah operatives and hit more than 30 sites in Lebanon since October, as the group tries to restock and rearm after the 2024–2025 conflict that displaced over a million people and caused up to $20 billion in damage. Some reports say that Hezbollah is still sitting on an arsenal of thousands of rockets left over from the previous war.

Trump’s response has been unusually blunt, even by Trump standards. In recent remarks he stressed that “many, many countries” want Hezbollah gone, and made a point the Western press rarely lingers on: this is not just Israel’s fight, and Hezbollah is bad news for everyone, including Lebanon. The message to foreign capitals was essentially: stand by, your turn to help may come later. The message to Western media: stop pretending this is a strictly Israeli obsession. It isn’t. Its a problem the Western world is going to have to face eventually. Which leads us into the next part of our story…

On the home front, Trump has expanded U.S. travel restrictions to a total of 39 countries, moving several from partial to full bans and adding new states from the Middle East and Africa, plus holders of Palestinian Authority documents. The administration cites “severe deficiencies” in screening, information‑sharing and counterterror cooperation, and appears unbothered that the new map is unlikely to win diversity awards at the UN. Trump does not care for optics anymore.

In practice, this means full or near‑total entry bans for nationals of states like Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and South Sudan, with partial limits for another 15 countries ranging from Nigeria to Zambia. Exceptions exist for U.S. citizens, green‑card holders and certain national interest or humanitarian cases, but the political signal is clear: security trumps sentiment. Lawsuits, NGO statements and angry press conferences are now considered background noise, not blocking fire.

If the 2017 “Muslim ban” era was about arguing over labels, the 2025 version is about results: fewer entries from high risk environments, more pressure on governments that refuse to clean up their identity systems, and a White House that has stopped pretending to care whether polite society approves.

The current ban was further expanded to include Syrians and Palestinians as well.

Side note…Israel has one of the TIGHTEST airport security systems in the world, lowering the terror attacks on Ben Gurion airport to literally ZERO. This process involves a lot of racial profiling and a ton of genital pat downs. Maybe America ought to learn a thing or two from how Israel protects it’s citizens. It wont be winning any DEI awards, however it is very effective. 

Finally, Minnesota. On our very own American soil…..Education Secretary Linda McMahon has issued a remarkable letter calling on Governor Tim Walz to resign over what she describes as a “massive scandal of welfare fraud” spanning nutrition programs, higher education aid and other federal assistance streams. Federal probes into the Feeding Our Future scheme alone allege more than $250 million in fake meal claims tied to pandemic era child nutrition funding, with at least 70 people charged to date.

McMahon accuses Walz of turning Minnesota into a “fraudulent hub of money laundering activity,” claiming the state’s lax oversight attracted scammers “from around the world, especially from Somalia.” It is an awkward line for a man who recently ran as Kamala Harris’s running mate….a ticket critics are now describing, not entirely kindly, as one of the most soft focus, emotionally expressive pairings in recent Democratic history. 

Walz insists he was defrauded, not complicit, and points to new anti‑fraud offices and reforms; the administration counters that this sounds less like leadership and more like closing the barn door after the money laundering syndicate has driven off in the taxpayer funded Mercedes. Walz has traded many insults with Trump, refusing to resign and citing state reforms. 

THE FACTS

On the night of December 15, 2025, around 8:30–9:00 p.m., neighbors at 9 Gibbs Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, heard three to four gunshots in the building foyer. They found 47 year old MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro on the floor near the entrance with multiple gunshot wounds. 

He was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and died early on December 16.

Loureiro was born in Viseu, Portugal, earned his PhD at Imperial College London, joined MIT in 2016, and became director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center in May 2025. His work focused on plasma physics, magnetic reconnection, turbulence and fusion energy. Colleagues describe him as a leading figure in fusion research and a generous mentor.

Brookline Police, Massachusetts State Police, MIT Police and the Norfolk County DA are treating the case as homicide. There were no signs of forced entry at the building. No suspect, motive, or weapon have been publicly identified yet. Investigators have said there is no connection to the December 13 mass shooting at Brown University.

MIT has offered counseling and held gatherings in his memory. Portugal’s government and the U.S. ambassador to Portugal have publicly mourned his death as a loss for Portuguese science and global fusion work.

Most people are looking at this story in shock. What could be the motive? It all seems quite mysterious but clearly there is something going on….

THE THEORIES

Once the basic facts hit the wire, the internet did what the internet does….. it started writing the movie before anyone had seen the script. Here are some of the theories and conspiracies regarding this case:

1. “Jewish nuclear scientist hunted for being pro‑Israel”
Within hours, accounts like @JewsFightBack and @StopAntisemites were calling Loureiro a Jewish, pro‑Israel nuclear scientist “hunted” amid a global antisemitism spike, with some tying the timing to Hanukkah and the Brown University shooting. Jewish outlets such as Yeshiva World and Israel National News briefly echoed the “Jewish scientist” framing before walking it back or going quiet. Screenshots claiming to show a “pro Israel sign” on his Brookline home and photos of him with IAEA chief Rafael Grossi were circulated as proof of a political target. None of this is backed by hard facts: MIT’s biography, mainstream obituaries (Boston Globe, etc.) and Portuguese coverage describe him as a Portuguese physicist, full stop, with no mention of Jewish heritage or Israel activism, and investigators have not suggested a hate crime motive or any link to Brown. 

2. “Iran struck back”
A second cluster, boosted by some pro‑Israel commentators and finance figures, floated the idea that Iran or a proxy killed Loureiro in retaliation for Israeli operations against Iranian nuclear networks, or to blunt strategically sensitive fusion work…..“another scientist taken out,” as one thread put it. The analogy is to past assassinations of Iranian nuclear personnel. Here, though, U.S. authorities have not hinted at foreign involvement, and Loureiro’s work at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center was focused on civilian fusion energy and plasma physics, not classified weapons programs. Israeli paper Israel Hayom noted the Iran rumor only to flag it as social‑media speculation with “no credible information” behind it.​

3. “Big Oil did it”
Further down the stack, conspiracy minded accounts revived the old line that fossil fuel interests took him out to stall fusion “you don’t let a man this close to unlimited energy walk around,” one popular post argued. The theory cites trillion‑dollar oil and gas markets as motive, but produces no names, documents, or links to Loureiro’s actual work. MIT’s fusion research is heavily public, multi‑institutional and grant‑funded; nothing concrete ties any industry player to the crime.

4. Brown‑linked / academic hunting pattern
Other users tried to stitch Loureiro’s murder to the December 13 Brown University shooting into a single pattern of academics….or specifically Jews being “hunted” in New England. FBI Boston and local officials have already said flatly that there is no connection between the two cases; different city, different method, different set of facts.

5. The crazier theories
On the fringes are claims that he was silenced over Earth’s magnetic field reversals, Starlink “microwave weapons,” vaccines, or hidden faster‑than‑light physics buried in plasma equations. These come from the usual small constellation of fringe accounts and have no connection to his published work or to anything officials have said.

Net assessment: everyone has a story, nobody outside law enforcement has evidence. Right now the only solid line is still the boring one: a leading fusion scientist was shot multiple times in his building foyer in Brookline; the motive is unknown; every detailed “why” you see online is, so far, a narrative looking for facts.

In short, we are all waiting to see how this story plays out.