Quote:The Democrat-led city of Denver, Colorado, is offering a how-to guide to help other cities turn into immigrant sanctuaries at the expense of taxpayers.
The guide is titled “Newcomers Playbook: A Guide to Welcoming Newcomers into Your City,” and its authors say they are “thrilled” to offer their guide on how to plan and implement a sanctuary city.
The guide exclaims:
We are thrilled that you are interested in creating a welcoming environment for migrants in your city. As part of Denver’s welcoming approach, we use the term “newcomers” to refer to migrants, recognizing that they are new to our city and embracing a more inclusive language. This playbook is a guide divided into two sections, offering recommendations and strategies for successfully integrating newcomers into your city.
The guide credits the “Office of Mayor Mike Johnston” and several of his migrant agencies. Even though the 22-page booklet celebrates turning cities into immigrant sanctuaries, it is supposedly written by the same mayor who has attacked outside groups and states for sending immigrants to Denver, claimed the wave of immigrants was unsustainable, sent officials on trips to discourage immigrants from coming to Denver, spent millions shipping immigrants to other cities, cut funding and services, and worked to evict immigrants from city-sponsored shelters.
Despite actions that seem to contradict the “welcoming” that the guide claims Denver has offered “newcomers” — that being the latest Orwellian rebranding of the term “illegal aliens” — the guide offers handy tips to aspiring sanctuary cities on how to redirect city services from citizens to immigrants.
Included are tips to establish intake centers to help direct immigrants to free services, how to offer free transportation, free housing, food, clothing, medical care, legal advice, and more.
The guide even suggests that cities purchase or arrange contracts with mobile showers and laundry trucks to offer such services to “newcomers.”
Quote:Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) spoke Saturday at an anti-Israel conference in Detroit, Michigan, that was connected to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the U.S. regards as a Foreign Terror Organization (FTO).
The Detroit Free Press reported on Tlaib’s remarks at the People’s Conference for Palestine at Wayne State University:
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib slammed President Joe Biden and some of her congressional colleagues in a speech to the People’s Conference for Palestine in downtown Detroit, urging them to do more to stop what she calls the “genocide” in Gaza.
…
More than 3,000 people registered for the three-day People’s Conference for Palestine, organizers said, and they descended on Detroit starting Friday from around United States, and some from outside the country. The goal was to “serve as a space to assess, strategize and prepare for what is required for us in the next phase of struggle,” organizers said.
…
Sessions included “Palestinian Resistance and the Path to Liberation,” “Confronting Zionism in Higher Education” and “Zionism and U.S. Imperialism.” A vendor fair included Palestinian art, clothing and more. Many wore keffiyehs, the headdress or scarf that has come to be a symbol for Palestinians.
The National Review noted that one of the speakers, Wisam Rafeedie, is “associated” with the PFLP; while another, Sana Daqqah, is married to a PFLP terrorist:
Among the speakers at the Michigan event was Wisam Rafeedie, an activist associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist-Leninist terror group active in Gaza and headquartered in the Syrian capital of Damascus. The U.S. State Department, as well as Japan, Canada, and the European Union, has designated the PFLP as a terrorist organization.
Quote:The cost of illegal immigration is bearing out in the Big Apple and tourists are the latest to foot the bill.
New York City is more expensive than ever to visit, primarily due to Mayor Eric Adams (D) converting tons of hotels into shelters for newly arrived migrants, the New York Times reported Saturday. As Breitbart News has chronicled, Adams currently has about 65,000 migrants living in more than 16,500 hotel rooms across New York City.
The result has been skyrocketing hotel room costs for tourists who pay the price while hotels, often owned by the largest conglomerates, are raking in up to $185 per hotel room per night, whether migrants are staying in the room or not.
“The average daily rate for a hotel stay in New York City increased to $301.61 in 2023, up 8.5 percent from $277.92 in 2022, according to CoStar, a leading provider of commercial real estate data and analysis,” the Times reported:
During the first three months of 2024, when prices traditionally dip, the average stay was still 6.7 percent higher than during the same time period last year: $230.79 a night, up from $216.38 in 2023. [Emphasis added]
About 135 of the city’s roughly 680 hotels entered the shelter program, with many congregated in Midtown Manhattan, Long Island City in Queens and near Kennedy International Airport — all traditional magnets for tourists. Participating hotels are paid up to $185 a night per room, according to the city. Not a single one has converted back into a traditional hotel. [Emphasis added]
Quote:Actor Johnny Wactor, who played Brando Corbin on General Hospital, was shot and killed on Saturday during an alleged car theft. He was 37.
The tragic shooting reportedly happened when Wactor and a colleague saw three men attempting to steal a catalytic converter from his car. His mother, Scarlett Wactor, said that her son confronted the suspects, who fired at him and fled. He was pronounced dead at the hospital at 3 a.m. Per the New York Post:
No suspects have been arrested as of Sunday afternoon.
Wactor is best known for playing Brando Corbin in 164 episodes of long-running soap opera “General Hospital” between 2020 and 2022, according to his IMDb profile. He also appeared in the supernatural drama show “Siberia” and an episode of “Criminal Minds.”
His mother told TMZ she would remember him as a loving young man. He leaves behind his mother and a pair of younger brothers, the outlet reported.
Wactor’s tragic death comes when Los Angeles has experienced an unprecedented crime wave that has claimed several celebrity victims in the past two years. In August 2023, for instance, two victims were robbed at gunpoint outside of the celebrity-frequented restaurant Craig’s on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. As Breitbart News reported previously, several celebrities found themselves in near-violent or extremely violent altercations in Los Angeles in 2023 when the city faced an unprecedented crime wave ahead of its mayoral election:
Quote:A museum in Seattle had to close its “Confirming Hate Together” exhibit after several employees walked out in protest of Israel.
Employees with the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle reportedly organized under the handle @wlm4palestine on Instagram, accusing the exhibit of conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The “Confirming Hate Together” exhibit billed itself as an exhibition for “anti-Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander hate, Black hate and anti-Jewish hate.”
More than 20 employees walked out last Wednesday — the same day that the exhibit opened.
“A majority of our walkout collective is made up of the most vulnerable employees of the Wing Luke Museum — front of house staff and part-time workers,” a post from @wlm4palestine reads. “There are 22 known WLM Staff across departments and organization levels who are still in solidarity with walkouts, with others who are in solidarity.”
The employees went as far to demand that the museum remove “any language…that attempt[s] to frame Palestinian liberation and anti-Zionism as antisemitism.” The anti-Israel protesters also ask for the museum to “acknowledge the limited perspectives presented in this exhibition.”
“Missing perspectives include those of Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslim communities who are also experiencing an increased amount of violence, scapegoating, and demonization as Zionist forces continue the genocide in Palestine,” the petition said.
The campaign even set up a GoFundMe page asking for donations to compensate wages missed. As of this writing, it has raised over $4,300.
Quote:North Korea on Monday lashed out at South Korea, Japan, and even Pyongyang’s patron China for supporting the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula at a summit in Seoul.
North Korea’s rhetoric was par for the course with regard to South Korea and Japan, but unusually harsh against China, which went out of its way to avoid criticizing the North Korean regime during the summit.
China was less insistent on denuclearization at this weekend’s summit than it was at a similar event held in the Chinese city of Chengdu in 2019. The trilateral meeting issued a statement on Monday that said disarmament and stability on the peninsula are important for all three countries, but avoided the phrase “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula, which appeared in the 2019 joint statement.
“We reiterated positions on regional peace and stability, denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the abductions issue, respectively. We agree to continue to make positive efforts for the political settlement of the Korean Peninsula issue,” the new statement said.
“Abductions” refers to North Korea’s horrific policy of kidnapping Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s. A few of the abductees were later returned to Japan, but the Japanese government has long demanded a full accounting of all of their fates. North Korea periodically claims to be “investigating” the matter, without results.
Quote:France’s globalist President Emmanuel Macron is making a state visit to Germany, the first such for 24 years, and kicked off his visit by warning against nations acting in their own interest.
France and Germany, both led by globalist-left governments and both facing a damaging vote in less than two weeks as the European Parliament is re-elected continent-wide, put on a united front as Macron arrived in Berlin for the first state visit in a near-quarter century. The last French leader to make a full state visit to Germany was Jacques Chirac in 2000.
The Franco-German relationship — keeping the two parties from invading each other — is the founding purpose of the European Union and defending that institution was evidently on Macron’s mind as he addressed German young people to sublimate feelings of national pride into the European Union. “Europe can die”, the French President warned again, if the right wing isn’t defeated, reports Le Figaro.
“We have never had as many enemies inside as outside”, Macron said, expressing his hyper-globalist assessment that nationalism damages democracy, and that there was a “fight” on to prevent this process. He continued, warning: “A form of fascination with authoritarianism is emerging in our democracy.”
Presenting his list of European victories that wouldn’t have been possible “if the nationalists had been in charge in Europe”, Macron again showed particular preoccupations by naming achievements like coronavirus vaccines, “decarbonising the economy”, and underwriting Ukraine’s national defence.
Quote:French President Emmanuel Macron decided on Monday to lift the state of emergency in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia in a move meant to allow political dialogue following the unrest that left seven people dead and a trail of destruction, his office said.
The president’s office said in a statement that the state of emergency won´t be extended “for the moment” and will therefore end Monday at 8 p.m. in Paris, which is 5 a.m. Tuesday in New Caledonia.
The decision aims at “enabling meetings of the various components” of pro-independence movement FLNKS, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front, and allowing elected officials and other local leaders “in a position to call” for lifting the barricades to go there and meet with protesters, the statement said.
New Caledonia’s top French official, High Commissioner Louis Le Franc said on Monday that an evening and overnight curfew will remain in place. Travel will be banned between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. local time except for civil servants, medical professionals and other essential workers on night shifts and health emergencies.
New Caledonia’s ban on public gatherings, transport and carrying of weapons and sale of alcohol will also remain in place, Le Franc said.
The main international airport, La Tontouta, will remain closed to commercial traffic until Sunday, June 2, according to a statement from the archipelago’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Tontouta airport shut down the day after protests against Macron government’s efforts to amend the French Constitution and change voting lists in New Caledonia turned violent.
Quote:Interim President Mohammad Mokhber held a phone conversation on Sunday with the head of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to assure his organization that Tehran would continue to sponsor terrorists following the sudden loss of late President Ebrahim Raisi.
“The basic strategy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in backing the Resistance Front, especially the Palestinian resistance groups, will not alter by the change of people,” Mokhber reportedly assured Ziad al-Nakhalah, the PIJ “secretary general.”
Mokhber became interim president following the death of Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six others in a helicopter crash on May 19. The group was returning from a political engagement in Azerbaijan when the helicopter suddenly lost contact with the ground. Iranian officials initially reported that the helicopter had a “hard landing” that had “not been rough” before confirming on May 20 that the helicopter had crashed and killed everyone on board.
The Iranian Islamist regime has not offered any clarity to the public regarding the nature of the crash. A preliminary report by the Iranian Armed Forces published on Thursday stated that investigators had found no evidence of sabotage, such as bullet holes or explosive residue, but did not suggest any alternate explanation for the crash.
Quote:Wars and rumours of wars are having an impact on military preparedness right across Eastern Europe. NATO member Poland on Monday became the latest state to announce a boost, presenting a plan to strengthen its anti-drone surveillance and on-ground military capabilities in the face of continued Russian threats.
The effort follows Finland, Norway, and Baltic states drawing up similar proposals to deter Moscow’s aggression.
AP reports a system of fortifications and barriers along about 430 miles of Poland’s eastern border with Russia and Russian ally Belarus are part of the planning.
The government says Poland, which supports neighboring Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s aggression, is being targeted by hostile actions by Russia and Belarus.
They include cyberattacks, attempted arson and migrants being pushed illegally across the border, which officials describe as intended to destabilize the European Union, of which Poland is a member, the AP report notes.
The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk has planned a range of security measures including in cyberspace, as well as a more than $2.5 billion investment in strengthening surveillance, deterrence and defense along the eastern border, a system known as Shield-East that is to be completed in 2028.
Quote:Palestinian sources claimed that 50 people had been killed — including civilians — as Israel launched an airstrike Sunday night in Rafah that targeted several major Hamas commanders.
[x/Twitter Posts]
The IDF issued a statement describing the airstrike:
Earlier this evening, an IAF aircraft, in an IDF and ISA intelligence-based strike, eliminated the terrorist Yassin Rabia, the Commander of Hamas’ leadership in Judea and Samaria, as well as Khaled Nagar, a senior official in Hamas’ Judea and Samaria wing.
The strike was carried out in the area of Tal as Sultan, in northwest Rafah, based on precise intelligence.
Hamas’ Judea and Samaria wing is responsible for the planning, funding, and carrying out of terror attacks throughout Judea and Samaria and within Israel.
The terrorist Yassin Rabia managed the entirety of Hamas’ terrorist activity in Judea and Samaria, transferred funds to terror targets and planned Hamas terror attacks throughout Judea and Samaria.
In the past, Rabia carried out numerous murderous terror attacks, including in 2001 and 2002, in which IDF soldiers were killed.
The terrorist Khaled Nagar, a senior official in Hamas’ Judea and Samaria Headquarters, directed shooting attacks and other terrorist activities in Judea and Samaria, and transferred funds intended for Hamas’ terrorist activities in the Gaza Strip. Previously, Khaled Nagar carried out several deadly terror attacks between 2001-2003 which led to the deaths of several Israeli civilians and the injury and death of several Israeli soldiers.
The IDF is aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited several civilians in the area were harmed. The incident is under review.
Quote:Egypt confirmed Monday that one of its soldiers had been killed near the border with Gaza in a “shooting incident,” apparently with Israeli soldiers on the other side of the boundary, in the city of Rafah.
The Times of Israel reported: “Egypt says one of its soldiers was killed during a shooting incident near the border with the Gazan city of Rafah, appearing to confirm reports of a deadly firefight with Israeli troops.” The Egyptian military noted the shooting but did not specifically mention Israel.
However, Israeli media accounts suggested that Egyptian soldiers had started a firefight:
Egyptian army spokesman: 'The Egyptian armed forces are conducting an investigation regarding an incident of opening fire in the border area in Rafah - which resulted in the death of the border security authorities'
Egypt and Israel have formally been at peace since the Camp David Accords of 1978. However, Egypt has opposed Israel’s effort to attack Hamas in Rafah, and suggested that Israeli maneuvers near the border could jeopardize the peace between the two countries.
The peace with Egypt is regarded as “cold,” since Egypt still maintains hostile rhetoric toward Israel and antisemitism is common in Egyptian media. Israeli tourists visit Egypt, but rarely the other way around.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Former President Trump was found guilty on all counts in his historic and unprecedented criminal trial, making him the first former president of the United States to be convicted of a crime.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged former President Donald Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Jurors found the former president guilty on all counts.
Each count carries a maximum prison sentence of 4 years. In total, Trump faces a maximum sentence of 136 years.
Judge Juan Merchan invited the jury into the courtroom to read its verdict after two days of deliberations.
Sentencing for the former president will be July 11 at 10:00 a.m--just four days before the start of the Republican National Convention, where he is expected to be formally nominated as the 2024 Republican presidential nominee. The convention is July 15- 18 in Milwaukee.
Any motions will need to be filed by June 13th.
The conviction does not bar Trump from running for president.
Prosecutors needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump falsified those records to conceal a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic performer, in the lead-up to the 2016 election to silence her about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006.
Moments after the verdict was delivered by the jury, the former president spoke to reporters in the hallway outside the courtroom.
"This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt as a rigged trial and disgrace. It wouldn't give us a venue change," Trump said. "We were at five percent or 6% in this district, in this area. This was a rigged, disgraceful trial."
Trump said "the real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people."
"And they know what happened here and everybody knows what happened here," Trump said. "You have a Soros backed DA and the whole thing."
He added: "We didn't do anything wrong. I'm a very innocent man. And it's okay. I'm fighting for our country. I'm fighting for our Constitution. Our whole country is being rigged right now."
Trump said that the case was "done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent."
"And I think it's it's just a disgrace. And we'll keep fighting--we'll fight till the end and we'll win because our country's gone to hell," he said. "We don't have the same country anymore. We have a divided mess. We're a nation of decline, serious decline."
OK, now the US has become a banana republic that Putin and Xi Jinping can laugh at during their following meetings.
Quote:Americans across the country reacted to the stunning conviction Thursday of Donald Trump in his landmark criminal trial in New York, as he became the first former U.S. president and presumptive major party nominee to be found guilty of a crime.
The verdict has potentially massive political and societal implications with the presidential election just over five months away, or it could be greeted with a shrug by the American public. Those who talked to Fox News Digital on Thursday offered a range of reactions, from outrage to indifference to glee that Trump had been convicted, as well as divergent predictions on how it would affect the 2024 election.
Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 which the former president denies, and the jury found Trump falsified 34 business documents to conceal a hush money payment to Daniels before the 2016 election.
Aaron, speaking in Birmingham, Mich., told Fox News Digital the verdict was "absolutely insane" and made him more inclined to vote for Trump and donate to his campaign.
"It's election interference," he said. "We have a frontrunner in all the polls. He's actually beating Biden, and they've gone after Trump in multiple states."
Chase, also from Birmingham, Mich., said the verdict was a "complete failure of our justice system."
"I think it makes Trump stronger with his base," he added.
Outside the courthouse in Manhattan, a Trump supporter who said he was a native New Yorker called the verdict "despicable."
"[Trump] may be guilty there," he said, pointing to the courthouse, "but not in the eyes of the real New Yorker. We support him. He's going to be our president."
Quote:The Biden campaign is cheering the guilty verdict of former President Donald Trump in New York today in his business records case, the merits of which have been widely questioned by legal scholars and experts.
After Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in deep blue Manhattan, the Biden campaign said in a statement, “In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law.”
[X Post]
“Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain,” the release snarked.
The snide comment comes as Trump has been adamant the “election interference” “all comes out of Washington, DC.
“This is election interference. It all comes out of Washington. They have their reps [representiaves] here,” he said on May 10, telling media members, “I’m sure you know that.”
“It’s to damage Crooked Joe Biden’s political opponent – happens to be me. And we’re leading big in the polls, and the American people get it; it’s a scam,” he added.
Notably, Michael Colangelo, a lead prosecutor on the case, worked in the Biden Department of Justice before New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought him on board to his office, as the Washington Examiner reported. He also previously worked for New York Attorney General Letitia James and on her civil fraud case against Trump.
Per the Examiner’s Ashley Oliver:
Bragg did not hire Colangelo for his white-collar prosecutorial experience, which was lacking at the time he joined Bragg’s office. Rather, Bragg valued Colangelo’s “broad knowledge” of the Trump Organization, according to a New York Times report published at the end of 2022, during the same time frame that Bragg was seeking to ramp up his prosecution efforts against Trump.
Notably, legal expert Jonathan Turley has slammed the case as “absurd,” while Fox News analyst and former defense attorney Greg Jarrett has asserted the trial bore “no resemblance” to the “cherished constitutional promise” of the right to a fair trial.
Biden’s campaign also relied heavily on fear-mongering in its statement about the unprecedented conviction of the former president of the United States and presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
Quote:Republicans’ online donation website was so overwhelmed in the minutes after a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty that its functionality was incapacitated.
WinRed, the Republican Party’s official online donation platform, reportedly shut down after high traffic following the verdict.
The Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts, with Judge Juan Merchant setting sentencing for July 11 – only four days before the Republican National Convention assembles to formally nominate Trump.
WinRed’s link to donate to Trump’s campaign led to a page indicating an error had taken place with the website’s host. Other reports have GOP sources confirming the platform is “overwhelmed.”
Republicans rallied behind Trump after the verdict, with many choosing to find silver linings, the subsequent skyrocketing fundraising among them.
“The bad news is today the Biden leftists in New York made a mockery of our criminal justice system,” Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted. “The good news is Americans have sent Trump over $50 million since this travesty and his deranged enemies just elected Trump for President again!”
Lee Zeldin, the former Congressman and Trump ally who chairs the Leadership America Needs PAC, tweeted after the verdict that he “just secured a $800k donation from someone for President Trump’s Joint Fundraising Committee. Never experienced a massive ask that easy.”
Quote:American Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters on Wednesday that he is optimistic the member nations of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) will agree on a framework to respond to future pandemics, despite the collapsed of talks on a proposed “pandemic treaty” this week.
Becerra is in Geneva, Switzerland, for the W.H.O.’s annual World Health Assembly (WHA). Prior to the opening of the Assembly this week, a working group attempting to draft a pandemic treaty – formally the “W.H.O. convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response,” or “WHO CA+,” as parties cannot agree on what kind of international legal document to make it – failed to agree on a such a draft to introduce to the greater U.N. body. Supporters of a binding international agreement on pandemics lamented the setback, but W.H.O. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, insisted, “this is not a failure.”
Becerra, representing the administration of President Joe Biden at the WHA, told reporters that the expansive nature of such an agreement makes it a challenging diplomatic endeavor and the necessity of years of negotiations on such an ambitious document is not unusual.
“We think the elements of a good deal are already on the table and that is why we feel optimistic because those are pretty good deals,” Becerra said on Wednesday, according to Voice of America. “It is just a matter now of fine-tuning it to make sure everybody says we are ready to sign on the dotted line.”
Becerra urged observers to put “in perspective” the size of the “major international achievement” that a pandemic treaty would represent: “negotiations go on forever … you do not build a nation overnight.”
He reportedly added that “there is clear consensus that we cannot let the status quo be upon us if another pandemic comes.”
Quote:U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is scheduled to meet with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun in Singapore this weekend, holding the first face-to-face bilateral defense meeting in 18 months.
The unusual dialogue comes only a week after China held aggressive military drills around Taiwan to “punish” the island for electing a president Beijing does not like.
Austin’s previous meeting was with one of Dong’s predecessors, Wei Fenghe, at a regional summit in Cambodia. Wei retired and was replaced by Gen. Li Shangfu in March 2023.
Li mysteriously vanished after only a few months on the job and was sacked without explanation in October 2023 with no immediate replacement, suggesting drama behind the scenes in the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy. In December, the Party appointed People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Admiral Dong Jun as Li’s belated successor.
Austin and Dong will meet on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asian defense summit hosted annually by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). This year’s meeting will include sessions on the Myanmar junta and U.S. strategic partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, among other topics.
China has been harshly critical of those U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific, portraying them as a doomed effort by the United States to contain China’s rising power. Beijing has alternately bullied and cajoled Indo-Pacific nations to enter its orbit instead.
Taiwan is certain to be high on the list of subjects Austin and Dong will discuss. China staged several days of belligerent military drills, including simulated missile strikes and bombing runs that would have killed millions of civilians if they were real, after the inauguration of President William Lai Ching-te on May 20.
Quote:American Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested in remarks on Wednesday that President Joe Biden could one day support Ukraine attacking Russian territory with U.S. weapons if deemed necessary to “adjust” to what Ukraine needs to do to fend off the invasion.
“As the conditions have changed, as the battlefield has changed, as what Russia does has changed in terms of how it’s pursuing its aggression, escalation, we’ve adapted and adjusted too, and I’m confident we’ll continue to do that,” Blinken told reporters during a stop in Moldova on Wednesday.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that anonymous sources within the Biden administration appear to agree with the implication in Blinken’s remarks that Biden is considering greenlighting strikes within Russia. The Post claimed the officials were “actively weighing” whether to stop discouraging Ukraine from using American weapons to strike Russian targets. Biden has led efforts to provide Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons in response to the Russian invasion since 2022 but has yet to publicly support Ukrainian attacks inside Russia out of concern that doing so will prompt Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to retaliate directly against the United States or other NATO powers.
Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, colonizing its Crimean peninsula in an “annexation” that Kyiv has rejected for a decade. The war simmered for years in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, fueled by Russia-backed separatists seeking to sever ties with the Ukrainian government. Following Biden’s decision to lift sanctions on the now-defunct Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, Putin dramatically escalated the conflict by formally invading Ukraine using the Russian military in February 2022. Since then, Putin has “annexed” four more regions of the country — the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — and made small but incremental gains in securing a growing amount of Ukrainian territory.
The lack of significant progress for Ukraine in thwarting the invasion in recent months appears to have prompted growing anxiety in the West and mounting calls to stop discouraging Ukraine from attacking Russian territory. Blinken was asked about Biden’s restrictions on U.S. weapons in the context of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg suggesting that Ukraine should be allowed to attack Russia.
“To deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves,” Stoltenberg reportedly said.
Quote:A Dominican Republic national living illegally in the U.S. has admitted to stealing $213,000 in food stamp benefits in Rhode Island, according to a federal press release.
Giomar Lopez Meireles, 41, admitted to defrauding the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). He was also found illegally in possession of a firearm when he was arrested, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Rhode Island.
After pleading guilty, Lopez Meireles is set to be sentenced on September 4.
Investigators said that Lopez Meireles was involved in a scheme to file for SNAP assistance using stolen identities and fraudulent social security numbers. After filing for assistance using the false identities, Lopez Meireles was sent electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards loaded with money, which he then sold to others for cash.
Lopez Meireles reportedly filed false applications for SNAP assistance from September 2021 to November 2023 to the Rhode Island Department of Human Services, which administers the SNAP program in the state.
After a raid was conducted on his apartment, dozens of EBT cards wrapped in paper containing account and PIN numbers were discovered. Officials also discovered a 9 mm pistol in the apartment. It is against the law for an illegal alien to be in possession of a firearm in the United States.
Quote:A judge in the sanctuary state of Washington has cut bail by 90 percent for the illegal alien accused of killing 27-year-old Washington State Trooper Christopher Gadd.
Raul Benitez Santana, a 33-year-old illegal alien from Mexico with multiple run-ins with the law, was arrested and charged with vehicular homicide in connection with Gadd’s death.
According to prosecutors, on March 2, Gadd was parked on the shoulder of an interstate in Snohomish County when eyewitnesses said Santana crashed into him. Santana, eyewitnesses said, was swerving and speeding at the time.
Gadd was killed as a result of the crash, prosecutors said, leaving behind his wife Cammryn and their two-year-old daughter.
When police arrived at the scene of the crash, they found Santana with bloodshot eyes; he later admitted to smoking marijuana and having two beers before getting behind the wheel.
Santana’s bail was initially set at $1 million. Last week, though, Judge Richard Okrent lowered his bail to $100,000 after Santana’s defense attorneys argued his initial bail amount was excessively high for a vehicular homicide suspect.
Following Santana’s arrest in March, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials confirmed that he is an illegal alien who has been living in Washington for at least a decade. In May 2013, Santana was arrested in the state for driving without a license and later sentenced to 90 days in prison for having marijuana.
Later that year, Santana was incarcerated for 90 days after failing to appear in court for charges of driving without a license. In May 2019, he was charged with domestic violence.
Likely thanks to Snohomish County’s sanctuary policy, as well as Washington’s sanctuary state law, signed by Gov. Jay Inslee (D) in 2019, Santana was never turned over to ICE agents despite his prior arrests.
Quote:Two planes almost collided at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday, prompting a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigation.
An air traffic controller at the Arlington, Virginia, airport had to cancel the takeoff clearance for American Airlines Flight 2134, which was already heading down the runway at around 10:30 a.m. when another plane was cleared to land on an intersecting runway, Fox Business reported.
The other aircraft was a private King Air jet, according to the Daily Mail:
X Post Wrote:JUST IN - Hair-rising moment American Airlines came close to smashing into a private aircraft on the runway during take-off as pilot is forced to slam on the brakes at 110mph when private King aircraft lands in its path at Reagan National Airport — Daily Mail
Audio recording of the conversation between the control tower and the planes obtained by TODAY revealed the tense moment the King Air pilot said he couldn’t just “go around” because he was “already on the ground”:
X Post Wrote:There was a frightening close call at Reagan National Airport yesterday: An American Airlines jet was cleared for takeoff and was speeding down the runway at the exact same time a private plane was landing on an intersecting runway.
Quote:U.S. law enforcement authorities in Louisiana allegedly dismantled a sex trafficking network led by three Venezuelan nationals, CNN en Español reported Wednesday — one of which is allegedly a member of the Tren de Aragua transnational criminal organization.
According to alleged testimonies from one of the victims, the sex trafficking ring arranged for the victims to be smuggled into the United States and taught them how to request asylum to U.S. authorities. The victims would then allegedly be forced into prostitution to pay for the “debt” accrued from their smuggling into U.S. territory.
The Tren de Aragua is a transnational criminal organization that started as a local trade union gang in the eponymous Venezuelan state of Aragua in 2012. Over the past decade, the gang has dramatically evolved into a full-fledged crime syndicate with an active presence in several Latin American countries and the United States. The gang has been linked to a wide array of criminal activities ranging from homicide, theft, extortion, contraband, and kidnapping to drug, human, and arms trafficking.
The criminal organization is largely believed to have deep ties with Venezuela’s socialist regime, which allegedly allowed the gang to expand into its current transnational state. The regime has repeatedly insisted that Tren de Aragua “does not exist” and that it is part of a purported international campaign to discredit the image of the Venezuelan government.
According to court documents CNN en Español claimed to obtain from the Middle District Court of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, the sex trafficking ring was led by a man identified as Josmar Jesús Zambrano-Chirinos, an alleged member of the Venezuelan gang.
In addition to Zambrano-Chirinos, Louisiana authorities reportedly arrested Venezuelan nationals Allbert Herrera Machado and Osleidy Vanesa Chourio Díaz. All three individuals were reportedly charged with forced sex trafficking, fraud and coercion.
The news network claimed that American authorities believe the sex trafficking network was operating in Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, and Florida.
Quote:Disgraced “FBI lovebirds” Peter Strzok and Lisa Page have reached a “tentative” settlement with the Department of Justice over the alleged violation of their privacy rights with the release of their disparaging text messages about former President Donald Trump during the Russian collusion investigation.
The deal was disclosed in a court filing Tuesday that did not reveal any of the terms, the Washington Times reported.
Strzok, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who helped lead the Bureau’s investigation into accusations that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia, was terminated in 2018 after his biased anti-Trump conversations with Page, an FBI lawyer, were exposed. During its review of his phone, the DOJ also revealed that he had been having an affair with Page, who resigned the same year.
The pair, referred to as the “FBI lovebirds” by Trump after the damning texts were used in a theater production by that name in 2019, alleged in a federal lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia that the DOJ infringed on their privacy rights when officials shared copies of their messages with the press, including texts calling Trump an “idiot’ and “loathsome human.”
Strzok also sued the department for firing him, arguing that the FBI gave in to “unrelenting pressure” from Trump and violated his First Amendment rights. He sought back pay and reinstatement in his lawsuit.
“Those constitutional claims have not been resolved by the tentative settlement,” according to a Times review of the court notice.
Page’s lawsuit also sought reimbursement for “the cost of childcare during and transportation to multiple investigative reviews and appearances before Congress,” the “cost of paying a data-privacy service to protect her personal information,” and attorney’s fees, Fox News reported.
INTERNATIONAL
UN Whines About Not Being as Influential as 20 Years Ago
Quote:The world’s most powerful nations have significantly undermined what the United Nations can do to help nations resolve conflicts, the globalist organization’s peacekeeping chief lamented Wednesday.
The unelected French career bureaucrat blamed global political divisions and an insistence by countries on sidelining the U.N. in general and the Security Council in particular for the lack of influence.
Jean-Pierre Lacroix used an interview with the Associated Press to point at the U.S. and the West on one side and Russia and often China on the other as affecting not just peacekeeping but everything the United Nations does in trying to promote peace and security.
The political rivalry can lead to the presence of U.N. peacekeepers being questioned by the parties to the conflict — or even asked to leave, as happened in Mali and is happening in Congo, he said.
Lacroix, personally appointed to his role by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, said 20 years ago countries were much more likely to heed the U.N. and now it is being sidelined. East Timor, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cambodia were used as examples of what is possible.
“But we don’t have that anymore,” he said ahead of the International Day of U.N. Peacekeepers on Wednesday.
Quote:A gunman shot and killed a Mexican mayoral candidate as he was about to take the stage during a campaign event in the coastal state of Guerrero. The murder comes amidst one of Mexico’s bloodiest election cycles, with at least 36 candidates murdered and over 300 political attacks in a span of less than a year.
The killing took place on Wednesday afternoon in the town of Coyuca de Benitez in the coastal state of Guerrero. Mayoral candidate Jose Alfredo Cabrera Barrientos was preparing to close his campaign events in preparation for Sunday’s election. He was a candidate of an opposition party competing against Mexico’s ruling party MORENA.
A cell phone video captured the moment when Cabrera Barrientos was preparing to take the stage, and a gunman snuck up behind him. The gunman fired two shots, knocking down the politician. The gunman then reportedly stood over him, firing as many as 15 shots before trying to flee.
Quote:Pro-Palestinian protesters reportedly swarmed police outside Israel’s embassy in Mexico City on Tuesday, throwing rocks and bottles and setting fires on the embassy grounds.
Video of the unrest shows protesters trying to tear down metal fences erected around the embassy, and at one point the grounds were set afire, according to the Hill.
X Post Wrote:Protesters set fire to the Israeli embassy in Mexico City with Molotov cocktails
The demonstrators also threw stones at the police who cordoned off the building. It is reported that as a result of the unrest, six people were burned and several journalists were injured.
According to the Associated Press, some 200 protesters accosted police outside the embassy and six officers were injured.
Mexico City police, deployed in riot gear and carrying shields, used tear gas on the protesters.
X Post Wrote:Israeli embassy in Mexico city firebombed by "Pro Palestine" mobs.
How much destruction must their be before it's admitted these groups are orchestrated terrorists?
Quote:Radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva officially withdrew Brazil’s ambassador to Israel, Frederico Meyer, on Wednesday, marking a new chapter in already tense relations between the countries.
Lula has issued several statements against Israel over the past eight months following Hamas’ unprecedented October 7 terrorist attack and the start of Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terrorists, accusing Israel and its government of commiting “genocide” through its operations.
In one such comment, issued in February on the sidelines of the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Lula compared Israel’s self-defense operations to the actions committed by Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust.
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel in other historical moments. In fact, it did exist when Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” Lula said at the time.
Lula’s remarks — which elicited praise from Hamas — prompted Israel to declare him persona non grata, banning the Brazilian president from visiting Israel until he formally apologizes and retracts his statements. Lula’s top foreign policy advisor Celsor Amorim has insisted that Lula will not issue any kind of apology — arguing Israel should “apologize before humanity.”
Lula responded to his ban by recalling the now-former ambassador Meyer. On Wednesday, Lula officially removed Meyer from his position at the Brazilian embassy in Tel Aviv and designated him the Brazilian envoy to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland. Meyer had remained in Brazil since February and reportedly returned to Tel Aviv last week to prepare his transfer to Geneva.
Sources from the Brazilian Foreign Ministry told AFP that the Brazilian government will not immediately designate a new ambassador to Israel and, as a result, its embassy in Tel Aviv will be led by diplomat Fábio Moreira Farias, a charge d’affaires — effectively downgrading the level of the diplomatic relations between the two countries unless a new ambassador is designated.
Quote:The Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen claimed on Wednesday to have downed another $30 million U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, backing up their claim with footage of a missile launch and debris in the desert.
French naval officials revealed that a civilian ship attacked and damaged by Houthi missiles on Tuesday was carrying a load of grain bound for Iran, a longtime ally and state sponsor of the Houthi terrorist movement.
The Houthis released footage on Wednesday that purportedly showed a Reaper drone being targeted by a surface-to-air missile as it flew over the desert province of Marib in central Yemen. The video included photos of what appeared to be a crashed Reaper in the desert, with its tail assembly separated and one of its hatches opened.
The footage also depicted Houthi fighters celebrating the shootdown by standing atop the crashed drone. The alleged Reaper appeared intact, raising the possibility that the Houthis will pass it along to their patrons in Iran, who have a history of reverse-engineering advanced technology from other countries to improve their own drone weapons.
Quote:Widespread online reaction followed a message from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praising pro-Hamas American university students protesting Israel, welcoming them to the terrorist “Resistance Front,” and encouraging them to “become familiar with the Quran.”
The letter, which is addressed to U.S. college students, was published Wednesday evening on Khamenei.ir, the official website of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “Supreme Leader” of Iran.
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The 85-year-old authoritarian ruler, widely criticized for backing terrorism, has a history of human rights abuses, suppression of dissent, and radical policies, which have led to widespread suffering and repression among the Iranian people.
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In his letter, Khamenei reverses narratives by labeling innocent defenders as terrorists while glorifying those he supports, and distorting historical events to align with his extreme ideological views.
Expressing “empathy and solidarity” with the pro-Hamas students, Khamenei insisted they were “standing on the right side” of history, and that they are a “branch of the Resistance Front.”
The “Resistance Front” is a reference to a loose alliance of Iran-backed terror groups and militias across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Yemen’s Houthis, Iraq’s Islamic Resistance, and Hamas, all of which oppose Western influence, while seeking to destroy Israel and kill American troops.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) secured control of the entire length of the Gaza-Egypt border on Wednesday, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and discovered some 20 tunnels nearby, as it continued military operations in Rafah.
The IDF also discovered a massive, 1.5-kilometer tunnel complex filled with weapons and other facilities for housing Hamas military operations.
IDF Wrote:UNCOVERED: 1.5km long terrorist tunnel route in eastern Rafah containing dozens of anti-tank missiles and weapons was dismantled.
Only 100 meters from the Rafah Crossing, our soldiers located a tunnel shaft branching into several different routes that contained several blast…
IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters (translation via IDF):
Our troops have located dozens of launchers along the corridor, loaded and ready to fire rockets, and launch pits from which Hamas fired rockets and mortars into Israeli territory. Hamas exploited the Philadelphi Corridor, using it to build this infrastructure just dozens of meters from the border with Egypt so that we would not strike them. This infrastructure was located between 10 and 40 meters from the border, specifically so that Israel would not strike near the fence with Egypt. I remind you that in recent weeks, Hamas has fired about seventy rockets and mortars from the Rafah area.
So far, our troops have located about 20 tunnels in the Philadelphi Corridor area. We are investigating these tunnels and neutralizing them. In parallel, the troops continue to conduct operations. These operations are carried out based on intelligence information regarding specific locations in the area.
In recent weeks, our troops uncovered an extensive underground terrorist infrastructure in eastern Rafah, which was 1.5 kilometers long. The entrance shaft to the infrastructure was located about 100 meters from the Rafah crossing. The route branched into several sub-routes and was used by Hamas terrorists for movement, transferring weapons and initiating terrorist attacks. Inside the route, we found large quantities of weapons, including anti-tank missiles, AK-47s, explosives and grenades. The 401st Brigade Combat Team operated in the route and destroyed it.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Thursday that three soldiers had been killed by a booby-trapped tunnel in Rafah that was located in a medical clinic that was part of a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school.
In a statement, the IDF said:
In response to an anti-tank missile fired from an UNRWA school toward IDF troops, the 12th Brigade combat team operated in the school complex by which a mosque and a medical clinic are also located.
During the sweep and clear operation in the medical clinic, two incidents of explosive charges set in a booby-trapped tunnel shaft detonated on the troops. As a result of one of the explosions, three soldiers – Staff Sergeant Amir Galilove, Staff Sergeant Uri Bar Or, and Staff Sergeant Ido Appel – from the 50th Battalion of the Nahal Brigade were killed.
In addition, during the operation, large quantities of weapons were found in the complex, including firearms and grenades. Inside the classrooms at the school, the troops located significant shafts leading to a wide network of underground terror tunnels.
Israel has criticized UNRWA’s role in Gaza, saying the agency indoctrinates Palestinians to hate Israel and Jews, and accusing UNRWA employees of supporting, and even participating in, the October 7 terror attack by Hamas in Israel.
The risk of booby-trapped tunnels and buildings is one reason the IDF prefers to bomb dangerous locations rather than sending troops in. The Biden administration has recently withheld the needed bombs, in protest at the Rafah operation.
Quote:Chinese dictator Xi Jinping used a speech to Arab leaders on Thursday to demand the establishment of a state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and pledged $3 million in funding to a Hamas-affiliated U.N. agency.
Xi opened the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) in Beijing, attended by some of the Middle East’s most influential leaders, including the leaders of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain. The summit is primarily intended to expand Chinese economic influence in the Arab world – Xi prominently promoted China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) during his remarks – but the Communist Party has also proven eager to support the anti-Israel cause in the Middle East, going so far as to engage in talks with the Hamas terrorist organization:
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In addition to Xi’s remarks, China signed onto a joint statement against Israel by participants at the CASCF.
Hamas triggered a war with Israel by invading the country on October 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people, taking another 250 hostage, and engaging in wanton acts of gang rape, infanticide, torture, and desecration of corpses. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded by engaging in self-defense operations in Hamas’s stronghold of Gaza, from where the terrorists invaded, that are ongoing to this day. China has adamantly opposed the self-defense operations and bolstered Hamas, including by claiming to host “unity” talks with Fatah, the Palestinian party in charge of the West Bank. China has also leveraged its permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council to rally anti-Israel sentiment at the international body.
In his remarks on Thursday, as translated by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Xi insisted that the solution to ending hostilities in the Middle East was not to eradicate terrorist organizations such as Hamas, but, rather, to grant Hamas’s demand of a Palestinian state.
Quote:Taiwanese Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said Thursday that China’s aggressive military drills are intended to “nibble away” at the island’s air and sea space.
Lin said this effort to collapse Taiwan’s operational space should be a global concern.
“The Chinese communists’ pressure on Taiwan is all encompassing, especially diplomatically,” Lin told reporters on his way into a parliamentary session.
“The Chinese communists are continuing to change the status quo. They are creating a new normal, pressing on at every stage, trying to nibble away and annex,” he said.
In his remarks to the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee on Thursday, Lin said some nations have expressed interest in developing stronger relationships with Taiwan, pushing back against China’s strategy of diplomatic isolation. He suggested one reason for this growing interest is that Taiwan, unlike China, does not use economic leverage to manipulate or punish its business partners.
The foreign minister said another mark in Taiwan’s favor is that it offers clean, secure, and reliable networking technology, in contrast to Chinese countries, which are all required, by law, to cooperate with Chinese military and intelligence services.
Lin warned that China will try to peel off more of Taiwan’s allies in the years ahead, but “we hope to make more friends.”
The Chinese Defense Ministry on Thursday denounced the United States and United Kingdom for supporting Taiwan’s new government under President William Lai Ching-te. The defense ministry accused Taiwan’s allies of trying to “instigate confrontation” with China, which they supposedly view through a “Cold War” lens.
The tyranny in Beijing was irritated by a delegation of U.S. congressional representatives who met with President Lai on Monday to reaffirm American support for Taiwan’s democracy.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:President Joe Biden’s upcoming address in Normandy, France, to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day on June 6 will focus on the threat of Russia invading Europe, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday.
Sullivan, a key player in the “Russia collusion” hoax, previewed the president’s speech in a press gaggle aboard Air Force One. He said that Biden’s address would focus on drawing lessons from history to apply to threats today.
Past presidential addresses at D-Day commemorations have tended to avoid attacking Russia or the Soviet Union — even at the height of the Cold War — due to the fact that the USSR helped defeat Nazi Germany By the time the Allies landed on the beaches of France in 1944, the Soviets had lost millions of citizens fighting to repel the Nazi invasion.
Here is what President Ronald Reagan said in 1984, in what is considered one of the best orations in U.S. history:
It’s fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the Earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.
We will pray forever that some day that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.
President Donald Trump delivered an address on the 75th anniversary of D-Day that was considered, even by hostile media, one of the best speeches of his presidency. He did not mention Russia or the Soviet Union at all, but rather focused on the heroism of D-Day and only briefly mentioned the fight against the USSR: “These men ran through the fires of hell moved by a force no weapon could destroy: the fierce patriotism of a free, proud, and sovereign people. … In the decades that followed, America defeated communism, secured civil rights, revolutionized science, launched a man to the moon, and then kept on pushing to new frontiers. And, today, America is stronger than ever before.”
Quote:According to a senior-level Customs and Border Protection source, the latest executive order signed by President Biden on Tuesday will do little more than make Americans grow accustomed to more than 2 million migrant entries into the United States annually. The source, not authorized to speak to the media, says the order will do little to change the landscape of an out-of-control border even if legal challenges by pro-migrant civil rights groups fail to kill the order outright.
Tuesday’s executive order titled “A Proclamation on Securing the Border” will deny migrants the opportunity to apply for asylum when a 7-day average of migrant apprehensions at the southwest border reaches 2,500 or more per day. The proclamation, according to the source, could allow for nearly one million migrant apprehensions per year with no limitations on asylum eligibility if cartels or the Mexican government meter crossings at less than 2,500 per day.
In addition, the source says other “lawful pathways” to entry into the United States implemented during the Biden administration have opened the border to nearly one million additional migrants at ports of entry under the cover of darkness in many cases.
“The everyday citizen has already become accustomed to 2,400 crossings being allowed through land border ports of entry and airports based on the whim of this administration,” the source told Breitbart Texas. “These asylum claims are not vetted to any greater extent than an illegal crossing between the ports. Admissions through the CBP One application are just a mechanism to impact the unpopular optics of crossings between ports of entry.”
The source says the order does nothing to address the 800 to 1,000 or more known migrant got-aways the Border Patrol counts daily. In all, through the “lawful pathways,” crossing the border illegally in numbers under 2,500 daily, and counting those that the Border Patrol fails to apprehend, the source says more than 2 million migrants could cross the border each year without triggering any consequences outlined in the order signed on Tuesday.
“Some of the statements contained within the order are outright lies,” the source added. “The order attributes low migrant crossings in 2020 to travel restrictions placed by other countries during the Covid pandemic — that’s a lie.”
“Strong enforcement policies put in place under the previous administration lowered the crossings from previous years in 2020,” the source explained. “Under the Trump era Title 42 COVID-19 authority, we removed 3 million migrants that reached our borders, and most countries didn’t care who headed to the United States illegally.”
The source stated the dilemma that will quickly impact the Border Patrol is a shortage of detention space for those migrants that cannot be removed due to the lack of diplomatic ties or logistical limitations.
Quote:Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) filed charges against three allies of former President Donald Trump with charges related to an alternate electors plot.
In the criminal complaint filed on Tuesday, attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, along with Michael Roman, a former Trump aide, were each charged with one felony count of forgery for their roles in attempting to dispute the 2020 presidential election results.
“The criminal complaint in this case alleges that the defendants were part of a conspiracy to present a certificate of purported electoral votes from individuals who were not Wisconsin’s duly appointed electors,” Kaul said in a press release. “The Wisconsin Department of Justice is committed to protecting the integrity of our electoral process.”
In response to the charges, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) wrote, “Good,” in a post on X.
Chesebro and Roman were among the 18 Trump allies, along with the former president, who were indicted by a Georgia grand jury in August 2023, related to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s case against Trump.
Months later, in October 2023, Chesebro pleaded guilty, a day after Sidney Powell, a former attorney for Trump, took a plea deal and pleaded guilty for her role in disputing the results of the presidential election.
In January, Roman filed a motion claiming that Willis had engaged in an “improper” relationship with a fellow prosecutor, Nathan Wade, and that Wade’s law firm used funds the county paid for in order to take Willis on vacations.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys are requesting to have a gag order imposed on him during his business records trial lifted in the aftermath of his guilty verdict and ahead of a presidential debate at the end of June.
Todd Blanche, Trump’s attorney, wrote a letter on Monday to Judge Juan Merchan, who had overseen Trump’s trial, arguing that the gag order should be lifted in light of Trump’s recent conviction.
On Thursday, a Manhattan jury found the former president guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records concerning payments, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, had made to adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election.
“Now that the trial is concluded, the concerns articulated by the government and the Court do not justify continued restrictions on the First Amendment rights of President Trump – who remains the leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election – and the American people,” Blanche wrote in his letter, obtained by Axios.
Merchan imposed a gag order on the former president on March 26, which barred Trump from speaking publicly against witnesses and counsel, except for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, court staff, family members of court staff, as well as staff of Bragg’s.
At the end of April, Merchan ordered the former president to remove “seven” posts from his Truth Social, after ruling that Trump had violated a gag order. Trump was also ordered to pay a $1,000 fine for nine violations of the gag order.
Blanche continued to point out in the letter that, “the constitutional mandate for unrestrained campaign advocacy by President Trump is even stronger” due to the fact that President Joe Biden’s campaign had held a campaign event outside the Manhattan courthouse on May 28, with actor Robert De Niro, and due to the upcoming presidential debate between Biden and Trump on June 27.
In his letter, Blanche also referred to how Biden had made “public comments regarding the jury’s verdict,” and how there were “continued public attacks” against Trump by Cohen and Daniels, who had been witnesses in the trial.
Trump’s sentencing will occur four days before the Republican Party holds its national convention on July 15.
Quote:Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) ripped Dr. Anthony Fauci during his testimony before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Monday, blasting him on a range of topics — from dog experiments to masking children in schools — and questioning his “so-called science.”
Greene opened up her line of questioning by pulling up a past assertion of Fauci, as he once claimed he represented science itself.
“You said you represent science. Do you represent science? Mr. Fauci? Yes or no. Yes or no,” the congresswoman said as Fauci responded that it was not a yes or no answer.
“I don’t think it is,” Fauci said, prompting Greene to say, “We’ll take that as a you don’t know what you represent.”
“As director of the NIH, you did sign off on these so-called scientific experiments. And as a dog lover, I want to tell you this is disgusting and evil, what you signed off on,” she said, holding up a picture of the experiment uncovered by White Coat Waste Project (WCW), which involved the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), directed by Fauci, granting a university $424,455 in taxpayer dollars to do a lymphatic filariasis vaccine efficacy trial on dogs between September 16, 2020 and January 15, 2022.
WCW described the tests as “unnecessary,” and they involved “injecting the puppies with an experimental drug and intentionally infesting them with flies that carry a disease-causing parasite before euthanizing them,” Breitbart News detailed at the time.
“And these experiments that happened to beagles were paid for by the American taxpayer. And I want you to know, Americans don’t pay their taxes for animals to be tortured like this. So the type of science that you are representing, Mr. Fauci, is abhorrent, and it needs to stop,” she said, also asserting that Fauci represents “the type of science where you confess that you made up the COVID rules, including six-feet social distancing and masking of children.”
Fauci denied that he made up the rules, prompting a back and forth between the two.
Quote:Denver Mayor Mike Johnston (D) is celebrating a new initiative to help migrants transition from the city’s shelter system into jobs with a new program to offer job training, legal help, and English language educational services.
Thus far, the city has enrolled about 800 migrants into the program, and more are expected to be added by the end of June, according to NBC News.
“Our goal was to take what people saw as a crisis and turn it into an opportunity,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston told the media. “We have people arriving in the city who desperately want to work, who have skills and talent and discipline. We have employers in the city who are starving to find employees, and they desperately want to hire them. What we wanted to do was to take those people that are looking to work and connect them to the training and the skills centered on jobs where we have the greatest need. So, what we did is create this first-of-its-kind program in the country, which is this asylum-seeker program.”
The migrants enrolled in the program were in the city’s shelter system and are reportedly applying for asylum, which puts them on a fast track to work permits in six months.
Johnston added that the six-month time period will be used to implement the new program, and migrants will receive English classes, financial literacy training, work training, and legal help with their asylum claims.
“So when that work authorization comes,” Johnston said of the migrants, “you already have the skills, the training, the authorization, the certification to step onto a job on Day One and be a huge asset to a Denver employer.”
Didn't that guy say they were skillful and talented?
Then why do they need that extra training, including English lessons!?
It sounds to me like they know nothing local exmployers may currently need at their workplaces.
Cartels Won't Take Advantage of the Loophole
Right, as if thpse darned criminals were the most decent guys alive nowadays.
Quote:On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas responded to concerns that the exemption for unaccompanied children in President Joe Biden’s immigration executive action will result in cartels taking advantage of that by stating that “We are taking it to the cartels.”
Host Neil Cavuto asked, [relevant exchange begins around 6:05] “[T]here are a number of exemptions for this, including unaccompanied children. And isn’t that a green light for drug cartels to take advantage of that, and the whole purpose of this sort of blows up in your face?”
Mayorkas answered, “Absolutely not.”
Cavuto then cut in to ask, “But who’s going to watch those unaccompanied children, if they are allowed in, you don’t ship them back, you don’t do anything like that. So, where do they go?”
Mayorkas responded, “Neil, we deal with unaccompanied children in a humanitarian way, adhering to our values. We deter irregular migration, we build lawful pathways, we have programs for minors.”
Cavuto then cut in to ask, “But this encourages drug cartels to take advantage of those kids, does it not, sir?”
Mayorkas answered, “Neil, we’re taking it to the drug cartels with unprecedented strength through our Transnational Criminal Investigative Units, through our Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
Cavuto then cut in to ask “No, no this is actually a green light for those cartels, isn’t that the fear, that this is actually greenlighting and [they’ll] say, oh, guys, well, we can use these kids as pawns to get what we want?”
Mayorkas responded, “Neil, let’s be clear, the cartels and smuggling organizations are unscrupulous. They exploit individuals of all different types of vulnerabilities. We are taking it to the cartels. We exempted unaccompanied children from this asylum bar because of the compelling humanitarian picture they present. We’re going to adhere to our values while we take tough enforcement measures, which is what we have done.”
Quote:President Joe Biden said he would help Africa “build back better” in a second term, if reelected, during an interview on Tuesday.
A Time reporter asked Biden, “If you do win in November, Mr. President, with a mandate to continue your approach to foreign policy, what would your goals be in the second term?”
Biden said, in addition to building NATO “both politically and economically,” he is “desperately focused on making sure that we deal with the…what they are calling the south now.”
“There are going to be a billion people in Africa in the next several years. We have to, we have to be a catalyst for change for the benefit, for the, for the better, we have to help them build back better, we have to help them,” he said.
He also said he wanted to build a railroad across the African continent.
“There’s so much opportunity in Africa. And we have to work it,” he said.
Biden’s promise comes as Niger and Chad have kicked out or are in the process of kicking out U.S. troops from their countries, as they lean toward Russia and China.
It also comes after the Biden administration spent $320 million of American taxpayer money to build a temporary pier to Gaza that broke apart in less than two weeks. It was then dismantled and is being repaired before it can be reinstalled.
Quote:Prosecutors used multiple explicit excerpts from Hunter Biden’s audiobook during his gun trial to show evidence of his drug addiction during the time period he purchased a gun.
Hunter narrated the audiobook himself. “The main witness today is, in a sense, Hunter Biden himself, through his audiobook,” NBC News reported:
The excerpts have included his self-described “superpower” of being able to buy crack in any town anywhere. They also have included Biden’s discussion of how “walking into a high crime neighborhood and buying crack was like playing Russian roulette,” sometimes with five bullets in the chamber.
First lady Jill Biden and Hunter’s wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, were forced to listen to the records. The two women “sat stoically” listening, CNN reported. Dr. Jill Biden fixed her eyes on the exhibit display screen during the recording, and appeared to shift her eyes to Hunter and then over to the jury box.
After the trial broke for lunch, Jill Biden departed the courthouse. It was the second day she attended her stepson’s trial.
Meanwhile, Hunter flipped through pages in a binder while many jurors took notes, according to court reporters.
Prosecutors played the audiobook as their first witness, FBI special agent Erika Jensen said.
Jensen will likely be used to confirm digital evidence in this case, including “embarrassing and intensely personal messages and images from Hunter Biden’s laptop,” CNN reported. Jensen authenticated bank statements from Hunter’s Wells Fargo account, which reportedly showed ATM withdraws in April 2019, proving Hunter was in Washington, DC, and California.
Quote:Witness Erika Jensen, an FBI agent, confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop during the second day of his gun trial on Tuesday.
Breitbart News’ Emma-Jo Morris, formerly of the New York Post, first reported the “laptop from hell” story in October 2020. It was immediately spun by the establishment media as “Russian disinformation.”
The DOJ previously asserted its authenticity in court filings, but prosecutors asked Jensen to confirm its authenticity before the jury because it plays an important evidentiary role. The laptop contains Whatsapp messages, iMessages, and text messages related to the case.
The DOJ confirmed the laptop was Hunter’s by determining that he left it at a computer store and that the contents matched what authorities obtained via a search warrant of Hunter’s iCloud, as Breitbart News reported in January.
In court Jensen inspected the laptop, which was in an evidence bag, and explained how the FBI authenticated it. When Jensen grasped the machine, Melissa Cohen-Biden, Hunter’s wife, shook her head and spoke to Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris, who was next to her, according to court reporters.
Hunter’s prosecutor also introduced as evidence an invoice for $85 that Hunter received from The Mac Shop, CNN reported:
“This is the laptop that was recovered from the computer store,” she [Jensen] said. When asked how she was able to confirm the laptop’s authenticity, Jensen said the serial number on the back of the laptop matches the serial number provided in Apple Inc.’s subpoena response for records.
Jensen appeared to be making a point of looking at the jury while she explained the concept of iCloud data and how the FBI obtains the data via warrants. The jurors appeared engaged — a few were taking notes, but most simply listened. Hunter was wearing glasses and appeared to be taking notes when not whispering with his lawyers.
The witness told the jury that between Hunter’s laptop, phone, and tablet, 18,000 pages of messages, photos, and videos were uncovered, per NBC News. Only 75 pages are relevant to the trial.
Shortly after the New York Post broke the laptop story in 2020, CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand wrote the infamous and now discredited Politico story that used “dozens of former intel officials” to push a false and misleading narrative about the origins of Hunter’s laptop.
It took the establishment media well over a year to admit the story was false. Hunter’s laptop holds “authentic communications that can be verified,” the Washington Post admitted in March 2022 — after not pursuing the story for 532 days.
CNN also finally admitted Hunter’s “laptop from hell” was authentic more than 500 days after the initial story broke on October 24, 2020 — notably calling it “Russian disinformation” and “made up” at the time.
After nearly two years, the New York Times admitted the emails from Hunter’s laptop were his, Breitbart News reported.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
* Fast forward 4:45 to establish... 'he said exactly that'
The very next day, social media is claiming he said the absolute opposite.
Quote:Former President Trump told Fox News on Wednesday that critics claiming he'd seek retribution against political opponents are "wrong," but he would have "every right" to go after his adversaries if he is re-elected in November.
Trump sat down for an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity to discuss the state of the country and his political campaign after he was found guilty last week on 34 counts of falsifying business records in NY v. Trump.
Hannity asked the former president what he would say to people who believe he wants retribution and will use the justice system to go after his political adversaries if he returns to the White House in 2025.
"Number one, they're wrong," Trump replied. "It has to stop, because otherwise, we're not going to have a country. Look, when this election is over, based on what they've done, I would have every right to go after them, and it's easy, because it's Joe Biden and you see all the criminality, all of the money that's going into the family and him, all of this money from China, from Russia, from Ukraine."
. . .
Trump said he doesn’t want to do what Democrats have done to the Republican Party.
"They want to arrest on no crime. They want to arrest the person that won the nomination in a landslide," he told "Hannity."
"What they're doing to me, if it's going to continue, we're really not going to have much of a country left. It's really, it is weaponization. You call it lawfare, you call it — some people call it just warfare — but it is weaponization of the election," the 2024 GOP frontrunner added.
Behind Closed Doors,
Biden Shows Signs of Slipping Participants in meetings said the 81-year-old president performed poorly at times.
The White House said Biden is sharp and his critics are playing partisan politics.
The Article
Quote:WASHINGTON—When President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.
In a February one-on-one chat in the Oval Office with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the president said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study, according to six people told at the time about what Johnson said had happened. Johnson worried the president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy.
Last year, when Biden was negotiating with House Republicans to lift the debt ceiling, his demeanor and command of the details seemed to shift from one day to the next, according to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and two others familiar with the talks. On some days, he had loose and spontaneous exchanges with Republicans, and on others he mumbled and appeared to rely on notes.
“I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house,” McCarthy said in an interview. “He’s not the same person.”
The 81-year-old Biden is the oldest person to hold the presidency. His age and cognitive fitness have become major issues in his campaign for a second term, both in the minds of voters and in attacks on him by Republicans. The White House and top aides said he remains a sharp and vigorous leader.
Some who have worked with him, however, including Democrats and some who have known him back to his time as vice president, described a president who appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones.
For much of his career, Biden enjoyed a reputation on Capitol Hill for being a master negotiator of legislative deals, known for his detailed knowledge of issues and insights into the other side’s motivations and needs—and for hitting his stride when the pressure was on. Over the past year, though, with Republicans in control of the House, that reputation has diminished.
White House officials dismissed many of the accounts from those who have met with the president or been briefed on those meetings as motivated by partisan politics.
“Congressional Republicans, foreign leaders and nonpartisan national-security experts have made clear in their own words that President Biden is a savvy and effective leader who has a deep record of legislative accomplishment,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates. “Now, in 2024, House Republicans are making false claims as a political tactic that flatly contradict previous statements made by themselves and their colleagues.”
This article is based on interviews with more than 45 people over several months. The interviews were with Republicans and Democrats who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them contemporaneously, including administration officials and other Democrats who found no fault in the president’s handling of the meetings. Most of those who said Biden performed poorly were Republicans, but some Democrats said that he showed his age in several of the exchanges.
Quote:June 6 (UPI) -- France has announced plans to begin selling Mirage fighter jets to war-embattled Ukraine "by the end of the year," French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday.
Macron made the announcement on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when U.S. and allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, in 1944, turning the tide in World War II and marking the beginning of the end of Nazi totalitarianism in Europe.
"Tomorrow we will launch a new cooperation and announce the transfer of Mirage 2000 [jets], which help Ukraine protect its skies," Macron said during an interview with broadcaster TF1 in the northern city of Caen, coinciding with the start of an official visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Macron said he intends for as many as 4,500 Ukrainian pilots to be trained on Mirage 2000 fighter jets in France over a six month period, beginning as soon as this summer.
He did not, however, say how many fighters he intends to send to Ukraine, and the defense ministry did not elaborate on its plans. Macron said he would brief Zelensky further in a private meeting on Friday at the Elysée Palace.
"We've always had the same philosophy, we help the Ukrainians to fight," Macron added.
Macron said Ukraine has asked Western allies to send military instructors to train its forces on its soil to meet the growing demand for troops.
Zelensky has said that Russia is beginning to gain the upper hand on the battlefield and needs international help to build up Ukrainian troop numbers.
"The Ukrainian president and his minister of defence asked all the allies -- 48 hours ago in an official letter -- saying 'we need you to train us quicker and that you do this on our soil,'" Macron said.
Zelensky has made repeated pleas for additional arms, firepower and other military assistance from Western nations, including the United States, which recently passed more aid and, by some reports, totals at least $175 million, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
This is a change of direction for France, which had, until now, stopped short of sending Mirage fighter jets to Ukraine, and had instead suggested to Kyiv that its defense forces should focus on acquiring F-16s, which are more common that the Mirage.
World leaders and veterans from allied nations had gathered in commemoration of the 80th year of D-Day, which provided the backdrop for Macron to make the fighter jet announcement. U.S. President Joe Biden and Macron drew comparisons between the fight against Nazism in World War II and Ukraine's battle against the current Russian invasion.
Zelensky is scheduled to meet with defense manufacturers, Macron and the French National Assembly on Friday.
Macron told France 24 that the move signals a new attitude of partnership with Kyiv.
"We are working with our partners and we will act on the basis of a collective decision," he said.
Up is down, left is right and sideways is straight ahead. - Cord "Circle of Iron", 1978 (written by Bruce Lee and James Coburn... really...)
Quote:Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters — some openly supporting Hamas and other terror groups — surrounded the White House on Saturday, vandalizing a statue and assaulting a U.S. Park Police officer who tried to protect it.
The protest happened on the day Israel successfully rescued four hostages from Hamas’s clutches in a raid in Gaza.
[Several X Posts & 1 YouTube Video]
The Washington Examiner reported:
Protesters clad in keffiyeh began gathering outside the presidential residence in Washington, D.C., Saturday morning. Their signs called on President Joe Biden to “free Palestine” and “end the siege on Gaza now.” Others stood in a line draped in a two-mile-long red banner around the White House to symbolize the “red line” Israel crossed when they began the operation in Rafah, a southern city in Gaza where many Palestinians have fled to.
…
At one point, U.S. Park Police were on the scene with mace to fend off protesters. They were allegedly attempting to arrest one of the protesters when the crowd began yelling at them to stop, screaming, “Let her go.” It was not immediately clear what they were attempting to arrest her in connection with. In the exchange, police sprayed mace, and it appeared they eventually let the protester go without completing the arrest.
The Examiner reported that there had been no arrests at the time of publication.
Four years ago, radical left-wing protesters surrounded the White House as part of the George Floyd riots and the “Black Lives Matter” movement. They assaulted law enforcement officers, attacked journalists, set a church on fire, and vandalized monuments.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump is set to have a probation interview on Monday in the aftermath of his guilty verdict at the end of May, according to sources.
Three people familiar with the situation informed NBC News that Trump will take part in a virtual interview from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
While the probation interview is usually done in person, Martin Horn, a former commissioner with the New York City Department of Corrections and Probation, explained to the outlet that having Trump appear in person may be “disruptive.”
Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, will reportedly be with the former president during his virtual interview.
“You can argue that Trump’s appearance at the probation office on the 10th floor of the Criminal Court Building in Manhattan where his trial took place, with Secret Service and press following him, would be very disruptive to the probation office and unfair to other defendants who might not want to be identified,” Horn explained.
In order to help the judge decide a punishment for those convicted of a crime, a pre-sentencing report is used, according to the website for the New York State Unified Court System.
Quote:Hunter Biden’s legal defense could be hoping for jury nullification, legal experts warned.
Jury nullification occurs when a defendant is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt but jurors disregard their oath to find the defendant not guilty.
Hunter is charged with one count of false statement in the purchase of a firearm, one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance, and one count of false statement related to information required to be kept by a federal firearms licensed dealer.
Hunter used crack when he purchased the firearm, according to a wide variety of photos from the time on his abandoned laptop, and the gun was found discarded in a public trash can next to a school. The Secret Service allegedly intervened in the investigation of that incident.
While many legal experts say a jury should easily convict Hunter, constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley and Judge Jeanine Pirro said on Fox News that jury nullification is a real risk for the prosecution.
Turley explained to the Hill:
So why wouldn’t Hunter just plead guilty? Even without his earlier plea deal, a guilty plea could significantly reinforce a request to avoid jail time in the case. It would also avoid an embarrassing trial for himself and his father during a presidential election.
While Hunter could always throw in the towel before the start of testimony, there is currently no discernible strategy beyond hoping that a pending case in the Supreme Court might undermine the indictment.
There may also be another possible strategy in play: jury nullification.
Pirro was also surprised Hunter did not plead guilty to forgo the trial, she told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum in reference to potential jury nullification. “They’re [defense] trying to overlook the fact that there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt here,” she said:
They’re trying to get the jury to maybe nullify the verdict, which simply means a jury may believe that the case has been proven to their satisfaction to everyone beyond a reasonable doubt, but they’re going to cut him [Hunter] loose for any reason.
Quote:Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has agreed to testify before a Republican-controlled congressional subcommittee, but likely not until after former President Donald Trump is sentenced in July
Manhattan district attorney agrees to testify in Congress, but likely not until Trump is sentencedThe Associated PressNEW YORK
NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg agreed Friday to testify before what’s likely to be a hostile, Republican-controlled congressional subcommittee, but likely not until after former President Donald Trump is sentenced in July.
The House Judiciary Committee chairman, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, wrote Bragg in late May after Trump’s conviction in his hush money trial, accusing him of having conducted a “political prosecution” and requesting his testimony at a hearing June 13.
In a reply letter, the Manhattan district attorney’s general counsel, Leslie Dubeck, said the prosecutor’s office was “committed to voluntary cooperation.”
That cooperation, it added, including making Bragg, a Democrat, available to testify “at an agreed-upon date.” But the letter said the date picked by Jordan presented “presents various scheduling conflicts.”
It noted that the Trump prosecution is not yet finished. Trump, who was convicted of falsifying records to cover up hush money paid to a porn actor during the 2016 presidential campaign, is scheduled to be sentenced July 11. Before then, prosecutors will be making recommendations to a judge about what kind of punishment Trump deserves.
“The trial court and reviewing appellate courts have issued numerous orders for the purpose of protecting the fair administration of justice in People v. Trump, and to participate in a public hearing at this time would be potentially detrimental to those efforts,” the letter said.
Bragg’s office asked for an opportunity to discuss an alternative date with the subcommittee and get more information about “the scope and purpose of the proposed hearing.”
Jordan has also asked for testimony from Matthew Colangelo, one of the lead prosecutors in the Trump case. Bragg’s office didn’t rule that out, but said in the letter that it would “evaluate the propriety” of allowing an assistant district attorney to testify publicly about an active prosecution.
Jordan, an Ohio Republican, has proposed withholding federal funding from any entity that attempts to prosecute a former president. He has also railed against what he’s described as the “weaponization of the federal government.”
Quote:Le Pen’s populist-nationalist got twice as many votes as the governing group of Emmanuel Macron’s globalist centrists in Sunday’s European Parliament election, prompting Macron to immediately dissolve the national parliament and call fresh French elections in a bid to regain authority for the remainder of his presidential term.
Update 2215 BST: Le Pen speaks
Shortly after President Macron announced he was calling fresh elections to buttress his position, National Rally (RN, Rassemblement National) leader Marine Le Pen took to the stage at her group’s election night party in Paris and declared their readiness to fight the snap election.
Hailing the progress of right-wing parties across Europe as the “dawn of a new day dawning for all the nations and peoples of Europe” and expressing her hope the result would finally comprehensively close “the painful globalist interlude which has caused the people of the world to suffer” Le Pen said it also confirmed the RN as the “great force for change for France”.
She told the Paris rally:
Ladies and gentlemen, dear compatriots. The French have expressed themselves and this historic election shows when people vote, the people win…
…The President… has just announced the dissolution of the National Assembly, to return the people to the polls in a few weeks time. I can only welcome this, we are ready for it… we are ready to exercise power if the French put their trust in us in these new national elections. We are ready to restore the country to defend the interests of the French people. We are ready to put an end to mass immigration. Ready to [build the strength of the economy] as a priority. And ready to begin the reindustrialization of the country. To be clear, we are ready to straighten out the country, and we are ready to relive France.
As noted by Le Monde , RN gaining 31.5 per cent of the votes means Le Pen and Bardella have grabbed the best result for any French political party at the European elections in 40 years. And that’s before you even count the fact the right-populist vote was split to some degree by the running of a rival party co-led by Le Pen’s niece Marion Marechal Le Pen, who picked up a further five and a half per cent.
Quote:Right wing parties gained ground in Sunday’s national elections in Belgium, largely at the expense of left wing and green parties, prompting the liberal coalition Prime Minister to fall on his sword and announce he will resign.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo will resign, he said, reflecting on the poor performance of his governing coalition in the country’s ‘Super Sunday’ election which saw residents vote for their new parliament as well as regional representatives, and for their new members of the European Parliament.
While Belgium didn’t experience a landslide victory, the gaining of ground by a handful of right-wing parties and the cliff-edge collapse of the country’s two Green parties has been enough to shift the electoral picture in the country, making the present centrist-globalist coalition untenable.
Russia hawk De Croo said on Sunday night: “For us it was a particularly difficult evening, we lost. From tomorrow, I will be a resigning Prime Minister. But the liberals [will be back].” De Croo will stay on as caretaker Prime Minister until a new government can be formed, which in Belgium can typically take an extremely long time, over a year in some previous elections.
Early results suggest the conservative-nationalist Eurosceptic New Flemish Alliance (NVA) will be the largest party in Belgium, followed closely by right wing populist Eurosceptic Vlaams Belang (VB). VB were polled to perform stronger than they did, which may take some of the wind out of their sails on election night, but nevertheless it remains Belgium’s Green parties lost 11 of the 21 seats they held yesterday and that largest parties in the country which hosts the institutions of the European Union are Eurosceptic.
Quote:Nearly half of the British public wants a total freeze on all non-essential immigration into the country, but do not trust either of the two main political parties to cut the number of foreigners allowed into the UK.
A survey conducted by the Centre for Migration Control has found that a plurality of the public agrees that “Britain should have a five-year freeze on all further immigration that is not essential to supporting the NHS”, with 32 per cent strongly agreeing and 17 per cent tending to agree, compared to 13 per cent who tended to disagree and 11 per cent who strongly disagreed.
Additionally, 58 per cent supported cutting legal net migration to the “tens of thousands” compared to just 17 per cent who disagreed, The Express reports.
However, there is widespread pessimism about the prospect of either the governing neo-liberal Conservative Party or the opposition left-wing Labour Party delivering on the priority of reducing mass migration, with the survey finding that 49 per cent of the people do not trust either major party to reduce immigration.
The distrust is unsurprising given Labour’s history of backing mass migration and the Conservative Party’s history of brazenly lying to the public on the issue, with the Tories allowing in the largest influx of foreigners in the history of the country despite previously pledging to the public to bring migration down to the “tens of thousands” in their 2010, 2015, and 2017 election manifestos, and promising that immigration would “come down” in the 2019 manifesto.
Arch-globalist Tory bigwig George Osbourne admitted in 2017 that the party never intended to reduce migration and that behind closed doors, party leadership had never agreed with the promises made to the public. Other top figures, be they Labour or Tory have admitted the same.
Robert Bates of the Centre for Migration Control said: “These figures lay bare the sheer disconnect that exists between Westminster and the British public. It is vital that immigration, and the huge numbers entering the country legally, are at the centre of the national debate in the coming weeks.”
The survey comes on the back of another staggering release of official immigration data, with net migration — the overall number of people coming to the country minus those who left — being recorded at 685,000 following the arrival of 1.2 million people.
Quote:Benny Gantz, an opposition leader who brought his party into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government after the October 7 attacks, announced Sunday that he would be leaving, accusing Netanyahu of bungling the war.
The oddly-timed announcement came just a day after Netanyahu oversaw a successful Israeli operation to rescue four hostages from Gaza. Gantz had expected to announce his departure Saturday night but postponed due to the news.
As Breitbart News reported in October:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz agreed Wednesday to form an emergency government of national unity for the duration of the war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
The decision to set aside bitter political differences is a significant one, and marks the achievement of one of the goals Netanyahu listed in his speech to the Israeli nation on Monday. Gantz, a former defense minister and general in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who leads the opposition Blue and White Party, had previously vowed to “shake the country” if Netanyahu passed his judicial reforms (one of which, indeed, was passed).
But Gantz found it politically advantageous to leave, as protests against Netanyahu returned to the streets in some part of Israel in recent weeks, alongside protests for a hostage deal.
He had promised to leave by June 8 if his various demands were not met. The Times of Israel reported Sunday:
Quote:Declaring that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “preventing us from reaching true victory,” National Unity chairman Benny Gantz says that his party is pulling out of the government, making good on an ultimatum.
His party joined the coalition following October 7 for the sake of the country even though “we knew it was a bad government” and has since seen strategic considerations pushed aside for political reasons, he says.
Abdu wrote that Aljamal was “executed” by Israeli forces who entered his home during the successful rescue mission:
[X Post]
Later, after Israeli news sources speculated that Aljamal’s family may have been holding one of the Israeli captives who were freed, such as Noa Argamani, Abdu wrote that there had been several homes attacked during the raid and would not confirm whether the family had been holding captives.
It is known that Argamani and three other hostages were being held by Palestinian civilian families living near the market area of Nuseirat at the time of their rescue.
Quote:Israel released photographs Saturday of the happy reunions of four rescued hostages with their families after a daring special forces raid in Nuseirat, in central Gaza — and a photograph of one of the Israeli soldiers who was killed in the operation.
As Breitbart News noted, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel Police, and Israel Security Agency (ISA) rescued four hostages: Noa Argamani, 25; Almog Meir Jan, 21; Andrey Kozlov, 27; and Shlomi Ziv, 40.
[X Post]
The hostages were rescued from two Hamas buildings, above ground, the Times of Israel reported.
Argamani was among the most iconic of the hostages, with footage of her abduction on a motorcycle airing endlessly after the October 7 Hamas terror attack.
[X Post]
...
Israeli President Isaac Herzog issued a statement:
With overwhelming emotions we received the very moving news about the rescue from captivity of Noa Argamani, Almog Meir, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv, who were kidnapped on October 7th from the music festival in Re’im and were finally reunited with their loved ones. On behalf of the entire people of Israel, I thank the IDF, the Israeli Security Agency (Shabak), the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces for an impressive and courageous rescue operation. I wish for the immediate return of all the hostages to their families. Am Yisrael Chai!
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:New video footage provided to House Republicans reveals then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) admitting responsibility for not having the National Guard protect the Capitol building ahead of protests on January 6, 2021.
The footage, Politico notes, was “was shown in a video shot by the former speaker’s daughter, documentarian Alexandra Pelosi, and recently provided to congressional investigators by HBO.” It was never aired — nor did Alexandra Pelosi provide it to the January 6 Committee when it was supposedly investigating the Capitol riot.
[2 X Posts]
The January 6 Committee also never subpoenaed Speaker Pelosi or her daughter for documents about the riot.
The video substantiates claims by former President Donald Trump that Pelosi was responsible for failing to prepare sufficient security ahead of the protest. Trump offered the National Guard in the days before the “Stop the Steal” rally 6, but was refused. (Trump was later faulted by critics for not intervening quickly to send the Guard during the riot.)
In the video, Pelosi is shown lamenting: “We have responsibility … we did not have any accountability for what was going on there. And we should have. … Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”
She continues: “I take responsibility for not having them [the National Guard] just prepare for war.”
Pelosi later rejected Republican nominees for the minority positions on the January 6 Committee — the first time in congressional history that the leader of the majority party had done so — and instead hand-picked two anti-Trump Republicans. The result was a completely one-sided investigation that declined to question Pelosi’s role in events.
Despite the one-sided nature of the investigation, prosecutors have used its proceedings in criminal cases against Trump and his supporters.
Quote:Hunter Biden has been found guilty on all three charges in his federal gun trial, becoming the first son of a sitting US president to be criminally convicted.
Prosecutors said Biden, 54, lied about his drug use on a federal form when he bought a handgun in 2018.
Biden pleaded not guilty, claiming he was in recovery from drug addiction at the time and was therefore truthful on the gun application form.
A panel of 12 Delaware jurors reached their verdict after about three hours of deliberations.
Biden showed little emotion as he learned his fate on Tuesday. He stared ahead with arms folded before turning around to hug some of the associates on his legal team.
He faced two charges related to lying about his drug use on a federal background check, and one for possessing a gun while addicted to or using drugs.
Once court was adjourned, he kissed and embraced his wife before walking out of the room, escorted by Secret Service agents.
Biden said in a statement that he was "disappointed by the outcome", but "grateful today for the love and support I experienced this last week from Melissa, my family, my friends, and my community".
Several members of Biden's family had supported him in court throughout the trial. However, only two were present for sentencing: his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and James Biden, his uncle, and US President Joe Biden's brother.
US First Lady Jill Biden arrived in the lobby of the court minutes after the verdict was read, and left with her step-son past throngs of photographers and journalists.
Experts say it is possible Hunter Biden could face prison time - although it would be highly unlikely for him to receive the maximum sentence of 25 years.
The judge did not set a date for sentencing, but noted that it would usually take place within 120 days of conviction.
Abbe Lowell, the defence lawyer, said he would "vigorously pursue all the legal challenges available to Hunter".
Speaking after the conviction, special counsel David Weiss said the case was not about addiction, but about "the illegal choices the defendant made" while in the throes of addiction - echoing the words of the trial prosecutors.
"No-one in this country is above the law," Mr Weiss said. "Everyone must be accountable for their actions, even this defendant."
Quote:US President Joe Biden has said he will respect a jury’s decision to find his son guilty of gun crimes, after a week-long trial that laid bare a tumultuous time for the family.
The 12-person jury found Hunter Biden, 54, guilty of lying about his drug use on a form while purchasing a handgun in 2018. He faces possible jail time following the verdict, which marked the first criminal prosecution of a sitting president’s child.
His conviction on all three felony counts comes as President Biden campaigns for re-election in November, and less than two weeks after his election rival Donald Trump was himself convicted of a crime in New York.
While President Biden did not attend the trial in Delaware, many family members including First Lady Jill Biden did so regularly. Hunter Biden’s wife, sister and uncle were all present at times to support him during proceedings.
President Biden flew to Wilmington, Delaware, after the verdict where he greeted and hugged his son on the tarmac.
“I am the president, but I am also a dad. Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today,” he said in an earlier statement. Mr Biden added that he would “accept the outcome of this case and… continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal”.
President Biden earlier ruled out pardoning his son, whose trial surfaced embarrassing details as prosecutors sought to show the extent of Hunter Biden’s crack cocaine addiction at the time he bought the gun. Jurors heard from his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, and a former girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, who described frequent long drug binges.
Quote:President Joe Biden delivered a speech in which he pushed more gun control for the American people Tuesday afternoon, just hours after his son Hunter was convicted on gun charges.
The speech was delivered at an event sponsored by Mike Bloomberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety.
Biden said, “In two weeks we’ll mark the second anniversary of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.”
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) is the gun control bill which Republican Sen. John Cornyn helped Democrats fashion and pass in 2022.
The president went on to outline how the BSCA has opened the door for his administration to spend millions upon millions for more gun control and the promotion of more firearm regulations. And he noted the establishment of the “first ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.”
He said the office was created to send a “clear message” about how important the fight against gun violence is to him.
Referencing his ATF’s actions against the guns that Democrats describe as “ghost guns,” he then made clear that he wants yet more gun control put in place.
Biden said, “It’s time once again to do what I did when I was Senator, ban ‘assault weapons.’ I mean it.”
His comments came three hours after his son, Hunter, was convicted on three gun charges.
One of the things for which Hunter was convicted centered on making a false statement in the course of purchasing of a firearm. On June 3, 2024, Breitbart News noted that the penalty for that one crime is fines up to $250,000 and/or ten years of imprisonment.
Quote:Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict is a “distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement following the conviction.
Biden family members and Biden business-linked entities received more than $15 million from individuals in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania, and China, according to the House impeachment inquiry.
“Crooked Joe Biden’s reign over the Biden Family Criminal Empire is all coming to an end on November 5th, and never again will a Biden sell government access for personal profit,” Leavitt said.
A Delaware jury on Tuesday found Hunter guilty on all three gun charges after only several hours of deliberating.
Testimony from several witnesses during the trial said Hunter used drugs in 2018, the timeframe that he worked on foreign business deals with his family.
One of the biggest deals came when Biden’s family members accepted money from CEFC China Energy Co, an organization with close ties to the CCP. The House Oversight Committee revealed in 2023 that CEFC controlled State Energy HK Limited, a company linked to $1.3 million collective payments to the Biden family members.
Quote:The US has lifted its long-standing ban on weapons supplies and training to Ukraine's Azov brigade, whose origins were mired in controversy over alleged links to far-right groups.
A state department spokesman told the BBC a vetting process "found no evidence of gross violations of human rights" by the brigade.
The Azov brigade, now a unit within Ukraine's National Guard, hailed the move, saying Russia's "lies... received a devastating blow".
Moscow condemned the decision, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the US was "even prepared to flirt with neo-Nazis" to suppress Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made false claims about a "neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv to try to justify first the annexation of Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula and backing of pro-Moscow fighters in the east in 2014, and then his full-scale invasion launched in 2022.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the state department spokesman told the BBC that Washington applied a vetting process to the National Guard of Ukraine's 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade and "found no evidence of gross violations of human rights committed".
"Russian disinformation attempts to conflate Ukraine's National Guard Unit of 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov with a militia formed to defend Ukraine against Russia's invasion in 2014, called the 'Azov Battalion'," the spokesman added.
Under America's "Leahy Law", sponsored in 1997 by then-Senator Patrick Leahy, a finding that a foreign military unit has committed gross violations of human rights means it can be cut off from US military assistance.
The US government says it considers torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance and rape as such types of violations when implementing the law.
Quote:Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) in a letter on Tuesday urged Republican leaders on the House Appropriations Committee to stop the U.S. government from partnering with Ukrainian actors targeting Americans, after a Ukrainian non-governmental organization published an enemies list consisting of American lawmakers, think-tanks, and media figures who questioned or opposed sending more taxpayer aid to Ukraine.
Banks sent letters to Americans on the list — including X and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — informing them that he has asked Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) and State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Mario Diaz Balart (R-FL) to stop the State Department and USAID from partnering with any actors overseas who encourage the harassment of Americans.
Banks comes a day before the committee is marking up its bill to fund the State Department and USAID in fiscal year 2025.
As Breitbart News’s Kurt Zindulka recently reported, the list was compiled by the Ukraine-based DATA Journalism Agency (TEXTY), and comprised 388 individuals and 76 organizations. It included Breitbart News as one of the organizations on its list. It also included Banks, a Navy veteran and chairman of the House Armed Services Military Readiness Subcommittee.
The NGO also published a report about the list, which was titled “Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it.”
Zindulka reported:
…the TEXTY website claims to be “independent” and that its project into supposed anti-Ukrainian sentiment in America was funded “exclusively by the readers”. However, TEXTY is listed as a partner of the Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services (TAPAS) Project in Ukraine, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and UK International Development (UK Dev).
TEXTY’s co-founder and current deputy editor, Anatoly Bondarenko, is also listed as a trainer for the American State Department’s “TechCamp” program, which claims to provide “hands-on, participant-driven workshops that connect private sector technology experts with key populations — journalists, non-governmental organisations, civil society advocates, and more — to explore and apply innovative tech solutions to global issues.”
While the report admits that most mentioned in the study “do not have direct, proven ties to the Russian government or propagandists” it continues to paint a conspiratorial and supposedly interconnected web of 390 individuals and 76 organisations, with a heavy focus on those “affiliated with the Trump wing of the Republican Party.”
Quote:The investors who helped elect President Joe Biden in 2020 want a last-minute amnesty for roughly 1 million illegal migrants, even as multiple polls show rising public opposition to cheap-labor migration.
The Democrats’ pro-migration donors and investors recognize that Biden is losing the election and “they’re just absolutely desperate,” Kevin Lynn, the founder of U.S. Tech Workers.
If Trump is elected, “he will have the mandate to deport 21 million people,” said Lynn, because Biden’s vast inflow of roughly 10 million legal and illegal migrants has discredited the establishment’s claim that migration is good for America and Americans.
The establishment’s pro-migration “narrative is collapsing, and they’re doubling down again” shortly before the election, Lynn said.
Any Biden amnesty late in the campaign would draft diverse party activists to defend the investors’ single cause of migration instead of their varied progressive causes, he said. The amnesty push is also an “insane” threat to Biden and his other left-wing non-migration interest groups because it raises their chance of collectively losing in November, he said.
But Biden and his campaign staffers may be unable to stop White House policy staffers from declaring the amnesty giveaway, he said, because “the old man is out to lunch.”
Quote:A recent study by software company BambooHR has shed light on the harsh realities of return to office (RTO) mandates, suggesting that at some companies they are merely a back-channel approach to layoffs.
The Register reports that the survey, which included responses from over 1,500 employees, with a third working in HR, has exposed the poorly-executed failure of the return to office movement. One startling revelation from the study is that 25 percent of executives and 20 percent of HR professionals hoped that RTO mandates would lead to staff leaving voluntarily.
While this admission confirms long-held suspicions, the study also found that people did indeed quit when RTO mandates were enforced at many of the largest companies. However, the number of voluntary departures was not enough to satisfy management’s expectations. As a result, 37 percent of respondents in leadership roles believed that their employers had resorted to layoffs in the past 12 months due to insufficient numbers of employees quitting in protest of RTO mandates.
The study suggests that the end result has been the emergence of a different office culture, one that is even more performative, suspicious, and divisive than before the coronavirus pandemic. Employees, both working remotely and in-person, feel the need to demonstrate productivity, with more than a third believing that being seen socializing and moving around the office is necessary. This intense need for visibility may actually be harming productivity, according to study author and BambooHR’s head of HR, Anita Grantham.
The data also reveals that remote employees and in-office employees both report spending around two hours of every day not working, with those in the office likely spending those ten hours a week trying to appear as busy as possible. Remote workers, on the other hand, feel the need to demonstrate presence by being hyper-available and never going offline, a phenomenon termed the “green status effect.”
Don't Neglect Your Pistachios or You Might Get Sued!
Quote:A New York woman is taking legal action against Cold Stone Creamery for alleged deceptive advertising because she thought its ice cream contained pistachios.
The Farmingdale woman, identified as Jenna Marie Duncan, filed a class action lawsuit against Cold Stone Creamery after she bought pistachio ice cream from one of the company’s locations in Levittown in 2022, USA Today reported Monday.
Duncan apparently believed the ice cream contained pistachios, but, when she looked on the company’s website, she realized there were no pistachios in the treat.
Per the lawsuit, the food contains “pistachio flavoring made of water, ethanol, propylene glycol, natural and artificial flavor, Yellow 5 and Blue 1.”
The Today article continued:
The lawsuit claims that had Duncan known the product did not contain pistachios, she “would not have purchased it, or would have paid significantly less for it.”
…
The defendant in the case is Kahala Franchising LLC, a company that owns franchises of chains such as Cold Stone Creamery, Wetzel’s Pretzels, Baja Fresh and Blimpie, among others.
According to Cold Stone’s website, its ice cream is made fresh in its stores daily with the finest ingredients.
A federal judge in the state has permitted the lawsuit to move forward, the Today article said.
Queen City News Chief Legal Analyst Khalif J. Rhodes Esq. pointed to the fact that pistachios are expensive, then said he reviewed the judge’s order and laughed:
...
Quote:An illegal alien “got-away,” who successfully crossed the United States-Mexico border, is accused of raping a child in the sanctuary state of Massachusetts.
Yader Alexander Morales-Quevedo, a 24-year-old illegal alien from Guatemala, crossed the southern border without Border Patrol detecting him — entering the U.S. as one of the millions of “got-aways” whom the federal government has little-to-no information on.
In August 2022, Morales-Quevedo was arraigned in New Bedford District Court on child rape charges. Those charges were eventually upgraded to be heard before the Bristol County Superior Court.
In January 2023, Morales-Quevedo was arraigned in the Bristol County Superior Court on child rape and posing or exhibiting a child in a state of nudity or sexual conduct charges.
On May 28, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Morales-Quevedo. ICE officials said he will remain in their custody pending the outcome of the child rape charges against him.
“Yader Alexander Morales-Quevedo will have his day in court, but he is facing some very serious charges,” ICE official Todd Lyons said in a statement. “He posed a significant threat to the children in our Massachusetts communities.”
Since President Joe Biden took office in early 2021, nearly two million illegal alien got-aways have successfully crossed the southern border.
Quote:Three people were injured when shots were fired at an Atlanta mall food court Tuesday afternoon.
A fourth person was injured as well; that fourth individual is believed to be the shooter.
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USA Today reported the location of the shooting was 235 Peachtree St NW, which was elsewhere described as the Peachtree Center Food Court.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted the investigation and lockdown that followed the shooting do not impact “the Peachtree Center MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) station, which is a short walk from the shooting location.”
Quote:President Emmanuel Macron threw down the gauntlet to the French people and the right-populist opposition on Sunday, calling a snap election to save his leadership, but now says he won’t resign even if he loses.
France will elect a new Parliament on June 30th after an astonishingly short election campaign of just three weeks after the fresh vote was called on Sunday just hours after President Emmanuel Macron’s political faction was handed a humiliating defeat in the European elections. The National Rally (RN) right-populists of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella got twice as many votes as Macron’s group, the highest proportion of any French political party in 40 years.
Macron’s ‘put up or shut up’ challenge to the French people could risk everything if the RN wins, particularly now a putative unite-the-right coalition to win the election is coalescing around Le Pen. But high-stakes or not, Macron has now insisted even if he suffers a second massive defeat, he won’t surrender the Elysée Palace and will attempt to continue to govern a country clearly opposed to him, and without the support of parliament.
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Per Le Parisien, Macron invoked the French constitution to insist that while two back-to-back mega defeats may feel like the right time to bow out, nevertheless he’d cling on. He said: “It is not the RN which writes the Constitution, nor the spirit of it. The institutions are clear, the place of the president, whatever the result, is also clear.”
He had called the election to “clarify” the political situation in the country, Macron said, while calling on the French to make sure they vote, stating: “I’m [doing this] to win!”.
As things stand, if RN outright won the election, which will be held in two rounds at the end of this month and on July 7th Macron would probably have little choice but to appoint RN president Jordan Bardella as Prime Minister. With so much still up in the air, it remains unclear what this would mean for France and its political fortunes.
French Presidents have governed with an opposed Parliament before, and Macron does not even control Parliament now. It has also been floated that Macron envisions Bardella and Le Pen taking power in Parliament as part of his long-game plan, a trap set for the right by giving them a taste of power, which the centrist-globalist would presumably be relying on them messing up.
Quote:In a stunning development that has sent shockwaves through Paris, the head of the centre-right Les Républicans party has backed an alliance with Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally in the snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron.
The cordon sanitaire that has surrounded the National Rally for decades may be “disappearing”, with Les Républicans leader Éric Ciotti saying on Tuesday that he is in favour of dropping the longstanding position of his party to not work with the populist party and forming an electoral alliance which could fundamentally reshape the French political landscape.
“I believe that there is a need to serve the country that is in danger,” Ciotti pronounced according to Le Figaro, warning that on the political left, there is an “unnatural alliance of rebels” who defend “ideas which border on anti-Semitism” and then there is the “Macronist bloc which has led the country to where it is today”.
Therefore, he argued, that for his centre-right party to preserve its influence and steer the country back in the right direction: “We need an alliance while remaining ourselves… an alliance with the National Rally.”
Quote:Germany is hosting a conference on Tuesday to gather support for Ukraine’s recovery from the destruction wreaked by Russia’s war, sending a new signal of solidarity with Kyiv at the start of a week of intense diplomacy.
The two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin, following up on a similar gathering in London a year ago, comes before the Group of Seven summit of Ukraine’s leading Western allies in Italy and a global peace summit in Switzerland this coming weekend.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who last week attended events marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in France, is expected at the gathering, which the German hosts say will bring together 2,000 people from politics, business and other areas.
“Even during the current times of war, Ukraine needs to continually rebuild houses, water pipelines, hospitals and power grids,” German Development Minister Svenja Schulze said in a statement. “People want to keep on living in their country, and to do so they need electricity, water and a roof over their heads.”
The task of supporting Ukraine’s recovery in the short and long term “is too big to be tackled by governments alone – which is why we are expressly inviting companies, civil society and municipalities to the conference,” Schulze added.
Among other immediate problems Ukraine faces, sustained Russian attacks on its power grid in recent weeks have forced leaders in Kyiv to institute nationwide rolling blackouts.
In London last year, Ukraine´s allies pledged several billion dollars in nonmilitary aid to rebuild the country´s infrastructure, fight corruption and help pave Kyiv’s road to membership in the European Union.
That focus on reforms remains central this year.
“We are pulling out all the stops so that Ukraine can soon take a seat at the table of the European Union – because, in addition to our military support, that´s the best protection there is,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.
On Monday, the head of the State Agency for Restoration of Ukraine, Mustafa Nayyem, announced his resignation on Facebook. He cited “systemic obstacles that prevent me from exercising my powers effectively” and accused the government of bogging his agency down in red tape.
Quote:A liberal, women-led Berlin mosque known as a haven for gay Muslims was a target for an Islamic State terror cell in Germany, prosecutors say as the group goes to court.
A group of seven immigrants arrested in 2023 across Germany and the Netherlands will soon see their day in court, and German prosecutors allege before their incarceration the men prepared to build bombs and researched targets including a liberal mosque, Jewish citizens, and a fair.
The men, who originated in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan came to Germany from Ukraine as part of the refugee flow that immediately followed the Russian invasion in 2022. One of the group is alleged to have led an Islamic State terrorist cell in Kyiv, Ukraine, and some of the group are said to have already killed in Ukraine, including by beating. Members of the group have allegedly had contact with Islamic State figures elsewhere in the world who launched successful terror attacks, or who were arrested while in the planning phase.
Now the German prosecutor claims this group of seven discussed the liberal Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque in Berlin as a target in July 2022. They are also alleged to have monitored Jews to learn their daily routines. Die Welt, a German broadsheet which claims to have seen the prosecutor’s court documents, notes the group had experimented with building a suitcase bomb, some had received military training from the Islamic State, and that members of the group were already under unfulfilled deportation orders.
Despite the claims, it appears that no concrete plans for an attack were in place at the time of the arrests and these allegations are yet to be tested in court.
The Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque in Berlin reportedly targeted by the group was founded by Seyran Ates, a Muslim woman who has lived under 24-hour police protection for ten years, such is the threat to her life from fundamentalist Islam. The mosque is known for being one of the few where men and women can worship together, and where homosexuals are also welcomed.
Quote:Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has claimed that Ukraine supporters in the West are merely seeking to exploit the country for its natural resources while saying that the war could be over in a day if Europe coalesces around the position of peace.
In an interview with HírTV, Prime Minister Orbán said that the main aim of Western backers of the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine is to expand “wealth and influence” rather than the vague notion of protecting democracy or stemming Moscow’s supposed imperialistic ambitions.
“Ukraine is a rich country in its resources, and that is what they want to acquire. At the end of the matter, there is money, power, agricultural land, and economic opportunities,” the Hungarian leader said.
Orbán also asserted his belief that the West is playing a dangerous game in escalating the conflict, noting that at the outset of the conflict, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz would only commit to “sending helmets” and now “we have German tanks running around Ukraine, German air defence systems being delivered and the entire European economy cut off from the Russian energy system, which otherwise provides a cheap and reasonable supply.”
“War is not a compulsion of fate or a plague of God or an inescapable curse, war is a consequence of human decisions,” he said.
The populist prime minister — who has been a leading advocate for peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow — argued that “war can be stopped and a cease-fire reached in twenty-four hours”.
Quote:The Chinese state media outlet Global Times concluded Monday that the results of European Parliament elections, which saw expected poor results for leftist and “green” parties, would likely “overturn Europe’s policies on immigration, green transition and its support for Ukraine.”
Some of Europe’s most influential economies — notably, France and Germany — witnessed preliminary vote tallies resulting in left-wing parties losing seats and apparent significant gains for both popular right and establishment conservative parties. While, as the Global Times observed, “moderate” and socialist parties will likely maintain control of the European Parliament, the dramatic gains that conservative parties expected indicate that many voters are disillusioned with the status quo and open to alternatives.
The Global Times, citing its usual roster of Chinese “experts,” blamed “remote elites” for losing sight of issues important to working- and middle-class Europeans for the results of the election. The “experts” predicted that the results were not outliers but “foreshadowed the continent becoming more conservative and far-right leaning.”
“This trend will likely overturn Europe’s policies on immigration, green transition and its support for Ukraine,” the state newspaper predicted.
“Europe is mired in deep crisis now. The continent’s current political elites’ rule has failed to solve its problems,” one “expert,” Professor Wang Yiwei, was quoted as saying, lamenting that “remote elite” leaders had failed to retain the trust of the public.
Another expert, Professor Cui Hongjian, suggested that the results were not just a protest vote against the left but that “Europe will continue turning conservative and right-leaning, as the mainstream parties have failed to curb the right-wing forces in the past five years.” Cui did not offer any suggestions for how to “curb” unwanted political groups; in China, the Communist Party maintains an unchallenged stranglehold on power backed by the use of brute force against suspected political dissidents.
The experts predicted a “significant impact on Europe’s immigration, security and green transition policies, as those are the topics the public is mostly unsatisfied with” — suggesting that European governments would begin limiting how many people they allow in their countries from abroad and curtail excessive spending on anti-climate change “green” projects.
The Global Times notably, however, predicted the results of the election would not have any major impact on Europe’s relationship with China despite “far-right” parties increasing their influence and China’s government being a totalitarian communist entity.
“Who becomes next US president will have more direct and influential impact on EU’s ties with China than the EU parliamentary elections,” the government mouthpiece anticipated.
Quote:The BRICS coalition representing several rogue states including China, Russia, and Iran issued a statement following its foreign minister meeting on Monday condemning Israel for attempting to defend itself from the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hamas, specifically its operations in Rafah, Gaza.
Hamas, which is one of several jihadist groups believed to receive $100 million a year in funding from BRICS member Iran, invaded Israel from its Gaza stronghold on October 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people and abducting about 250 people, of which about 128 remain in captivity today. The October 7 siege featured outrageous acts of torture, gang rape, infanticide, and other atrocities, committed by terrorists swarming residential communities and targeting entire families in their homes.
The BRICS countries did not mention Hamas in their statement condemning Israel.
BRICS foreign ministers met on Monday and Tuesday in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, in preparation for the annual summit of its heads of government, scheduled to take place in October this year. The summit brought together the top diplomats of the original BRICS members – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – alongside representatives of its newest member countries: Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Ethiopia. Saudi Arabia also received an invitation to join BRICS but, as of February, has not formalized its membership.
The foreign minister meeting was also open to representatives of countries interested in joining the group, including rogue states such as Cuba and Venezuela, but also critical regional powers such as Turkey.
Quote:The government of South Korea confirmed on Tuesday that between 20 and 30 North Korean soldiers crossed the inter-Korean border, violating the sovereignty of the country.
The leadership of the South Korean military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), confirmed that South Korean soldiers fired at the Northern soldiers, prompting them to rapidly return to their country. The incident reportedly occurred on Sunday.
JCS spokesmen appeared to dismiss the illegal entry into the country as an error and told reporters that the North Korean soldiers in question were not all armed and were navigating in an area where the exact location of the border, formally known as the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), is difficult to delineate due to plant growth. The JCS revealed the exchange during a time of heightened tensions between the two Koreas, however, as communist North Korea launched a campaign in May to flood the Southern border areas with balloons full of trash and feces.
In response, the South Korean government began broadcasting anti-communist messages via a loudspeaker on the border, a policy that it had stopped for six years following agreements made during the term of American President Donald Trump, who prioritized reducing tensions with Pyongyang. Kim Yo-jong, a top North Korean official and the sister of dictator Kim Jong-un, vowed ceaseless trash balloon campaigns indefinitely in response to the loudspeakers.
The soldiers reportedly crossed the border hours before the South Korean loudspeaker broadcast.
“Some North Korean soldiers working within the demilitarized zone (DMZ) on the central front crossed the MDL at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, and headed north after our military’s issued a warning broadcast and fired warning shots,” the JCS explained on Tuesday, according to the South Korean newspaper Korea JoongAng Daily. “Our military is closely monitoring the movements of the North Korean troops and taking necessary measures in accordance with operational procedures.”
JoongAng, citing South Korean officials, described the incursion as “accidental.”
“They were moving through bushes where there was no path, and we were observing them even before they approached the MDL,” South Korean Col. Lee Sung-jun reportedly said in a briefing on Tuesday, describing the illegal crossing as a “simple mistake.”
LATIN AMERICA
Or should I say Latin Russia or Latin Wing of BRICS here?
Quote:Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov welcomed the interest of Venezuela’s socialist Maduro regime in joining the BRICS anti-Western bloc on Wednesday in remarks given on the sidelines of the group’s foreign ministers’ meeting.
BRICS is a China-led trade and security group originally made up of Russia, China, Brazil, India, and South Africa. The bloc agreed to expand in 2023 and as of January 2024 includes Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran. Saudi Arabia is reportedly in the process of finalizing its membership.
Russia currently holds BRICS’ annual rotating chairmanship seat and will host the group’s annual summit in the Russian city of Kazan in late October. The foreign ministers of BRICS member states gathered in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, this week for a two-day ministerial meeting that will conclude on Tuesday.
The BRICS members also invited representatives of Cuba, Belarus, Venezuela, and Turkey, all of whom have expressed interest in applying to join.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil participated in the encounter as part of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s efforts to attain “expedited” entry into the BRICS bloc in 2024 and, according to him, to support “the creation of a more equitable and multipolar world.”
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Gil and his Russian counterpart conversed on the sidelines of the encounter, where the Venezuelan foreign minister reiterated the rogue socialist regime’s intention to join BRICS, which, according to Gil, “is making great efforts to build a new world order.”
“On behalf of President Nicolás Maduro, we thank you for inviting Russia today as a friend of the BRICS,” Gil said. “This is a great honor for us, an opportunity to declare our will, the will of Venezuela to join this important bloc, which is making great efforts to create a new world order based on the desire for the well-being of our peoples.”
Lavrov expressed on behalf of Russia government support for Venezuela’s interest in joining the group and added that, as chairman of the group, Russia will “contribute to the strengthening of relations.”
“We are creating financial and logistical mechanisms that are resistant to external influence and ensure the independence of our relations, progressive development and protection from illegitimate actions, primarily by Washington and its allies,” Lavrov said.
Quote:Venezuela’s socialist regime signed an agreement with the government of Turkey on Friday that will allow the Middle Eastern nation to mine gold in Venezuela’s Orinoco Mining Arc, an area devastated by illegal mining and plagued with human rights abuses.
Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro signed the agreement during a Friday evening event that state media broadcast. The Venezuelan leader claimed that the agreement is part of the “win-win” alliance between Venezuela and Turkey, which Maduro’s predecessor, late dictator Hugo Chávez, first established.
Maduro — accompanied by representatives of the Turkish government and his alleged top money launderer, Alex Saab, whom U.S. President Joe Biden released from prison and sent back to Caracas in December — described Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as his “older brother” and claimed that “Turkish investment is coming to keep developing the Mining Arc.”
“We are going to develop these gold fields, and I wish the best of luck so that what we are signing in gold becomes an example for ecological development, respectful of nature, and very productive, building a productive economy,” Maduro said.
The socialist dictator, in addition to the gold mining agreement, signed joint agreements with Turkey for the construction of an ammonia refinery and for the exploitation of gas fields.
The Orinoco Mining Arc (AMO) is a roughly 43,180-square-mile area adjacent to the southern bank of the eponymous Orinoco River, which covers parts of the Venezuelan states of Amazonas, Bolívar, and Delta Amacuro. The AMO encompasses roughly 12 percent of Venezuela’s land area.
Quote:Bolivian truckers and local transport organizations called for an indefinite strike of heavy transport next week against the government of socialist President Luis Arce and ongoing shortages of diesel fuel and foreign currency.
The indefinite strike, which is scheduled to begin on Monday, June 17, will include road blockades and border closures nationwide.
Bolivian truckers have for months protested an ongoing shortage of diesel fuel that has severely impacted their ability to work, forcing them to spend days searching for a stocked gas station to be able to work. Additionally, the truckers have denounced that the ongoing difficulties in obtaining foreign currency, a product of socialist Bolivia’s precarious economic state, have affected their ability to purchase spare parts for their vehicles’ repairs and their ability to import and export products.
The situation prompted a group of truckers to carry out a two-day blockade of some of Bolivia’s main roads last week, demanding solutions from the Bolivian government while President Arce was visiting Russia to participate in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Bolivian Public Works Minister Édgar Montaño called for talks with trucker representatives, last week, who reportedly rejected the offer and demanded to speak to Arce directly.
The decision to escalate the protests to an indefinite strike was reportedly reached on Monday following an assembly held by different representatives of Bolivia’s national and international transport industry in the city of Oruro. Attendees reportedly said they were “tired” of waiting for a response from the government.
Quote:New Zealand is scrapping a scheme to price gas emissions from livestock — squelching a so-called burp and fart tax initiated under the previous left-wing government led by now departed authoritarian Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
New legislation will be introduced to parliament this month by the ruling conservative coalition to remove the agriculture sector from a new emissions pricing plan, thus responding to farmer pressure that the plan would make their business unprofitable.
“The government is committed to meeting our climate change obligations without shutting down Kiwi farms,” said Agriculture Minister Todd McClay.
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“It doesn’t make sense to send jobs and production overseas, while less carbon-efficient countries produce the food the world needs.”
The New Zealand economy is driven by agriculture with around 10 million cattle and 25 million sheep roaming the nation’s pastures.
As Breitbart News reported, the Ardern government proposed taxing the gasses farm animals create from burping, farting, and peeing as part of a plan to reset agricultural production and “tackle climate change.”
Her Labour administration claimed what it called a farm levy would be a world first and farmers should be able to recoup the cost by simply charging consumers more for their products.
Critics saw it simply as a punitive tax on farmers and their produce.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
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