Jim Mattis and I Fought Together.  No One Called Him Mad Dog.  —  Jim Mattis was a scholar of war, blunt, courageous and loyal to his troops.  Our enemies will cheer his departure.  —  Mr. Nagl is a former Army officer.  —  I met Jim Mattis in Anbar Province, Iraq, in 2004.

Treasury secretary startles Wall Street with unusual pre-Christmas calls to top bank CEOs  —  Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin startled financial analysts, bankers and economists on Sunday by issuing an unusual s declaring that the nation's six largest banks had ample credit to extend to American businesses and households.

Supreme Court Intervenes In Apparent Mystery Mueller Case  —  Chief Justice John Roberts stayed a subpoena and contempt order in a case that likely arose from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation in a Sunday night order.  —  Sunday's order could mark the first time that the Supreme Court …

How Banks Unwittingly Finance Mass Shootings  —  The New York Times reviewed hundreds of documents including police reports, bank records and investigator notes from a decade of mass shootings.  Many of the killers built their stockpiles of high-powered weapons with the convenience of credit.

U.S. Stocks Hit 19-Month Low as D.C. Tumult Weighs: Markets Wrap  — Trump team attempts to assure markets over Powell, liquidity  — Many exchanges are shut or will close early on Christmas Eve  —  U.S. stocks tumbled to the lowest since May 2017 as the turmoil in Washington kept investors …

“They Are Suspicious of Beto”: Why Are Democrats Trying to Annihilate an O'Rourke Campaign Before It Has Even Started?  —  The howls about O'Rourke from the Chapo wing of the Internet say as much about Bernie Sanders's diminished stature as they do about the golden boy from Texas.

Trump Rings in the New Year in the Worst Possible Way  —  One week sums up a failing presidency.  —  There are many reasons to be optimistic about 2019.  The increasingly isolated man in the Oval Office is not one of them.  —  With the first two years of Donald Trump's presidency drawing to a close …

What Trump's Syria decision means on the front lines of the fight against the Islamic State  —  The voice of Gen. Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces militia, is tight and controlled as he describes President's Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops …

Court says Justice Ginsburg up and working after surgery  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is up and working as she recuperates from cancer surgery.  —  A spokeswoman for the court, Kathy Arberg, also says that Ginsburg remained in New York at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on Sunday.

The Virtue Signalers Won't Change the World  —  Feminist history is typically described in three waves: The struggle to secure voting rights, then workplace rights, and third—roughly—to upend stereotypes.  The battle against racism and its effects is often described in a similar three-part timeline …

Trump's Populist Schism Over Syria  —  His troop-withdrawal plan is politically risky.  The Republican base is more hawkish than isolationist.  —  The most surprising thing about President Trump's decision to overrule his top advisers and withdraw U.S. forces from Syria and Afghanistan isn't that it was improvised and disruptive.