Quote:Russian authorities said six people died and over 100 were wounded in Ukrainian drone and missile attacks on Sunday, while the second day of Russia’s aerial bombing of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine killed at least one person.
Among the dead were five people – including two children – who were hit by falling debris from Ukrainian missiles that were shot down over a coastal area in Sevastopol, a port city in Russia-annexed Crimea, said Mikhail Razvozhayev, the city’s Moscow-installed governor. Another person died in Grayvoron city in Russia’s Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, citing the Health Ministry, said 124 people were wounded in Sevastopol. Falling rocket fragments caused a forest fire of over 150 square meters (1,600 square feet) and set a residential building alight, RIA Novosti said, noting that a fifth missile had exploded over the city.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said both Ukraine and the U.S. bore “responsibility for a deliberate missile strike on civilians.” It said that U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles were used in the Ukranian attack.
Razvozhayev declared Monday a day of mourning in Sevastopol, with public events canceled.
Air defenses overnight shot down 33 Ukrainian drones over Russia’s western Bryansk, Smolensk, Lipetsk and Tula regions, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Sunday. No casualties or damage were reported.
A fresh attack on Kharkiv killed at least one person and wounded 11 on Sunday, according to local officials. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the city was attacked by a guided bomb and that around half of Kharkiv was without electricity because of the strike.
Sunday’s attacks came after Russia struck Kharkiv on Saturday afternoon with four aerial bombs, hitting a five-story residential building and killing three people. Regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said that 41 people were still being treated for injuries on Sunday.
In a video address following the attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukraine´s partners to bolster its air defenses.
“Modern air defense systems for Ukraine – such as Patriots, accelerated training of our pilots for F-16s, and most importantly, sufficient range for our weapons – are truly necessary,” he said.
Two people were wounded by falling debris when two Russian missiles were shot down over the Kyiv region overnight, Ukraine´s air force commander Mykola Oleschuk said.
Regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin of Ukraine’s partly occupied Donetsk region said that Russian attacks on Saturday killed two people and wounded four.
In other developments, the Ukrainian Navy released photos Sunday that it says confirm the destruction of a warehouse in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region used to launch and store Iranian-designed Shahed drones.
Navy officials said training instructors and cadets were killed in the attack on Friday night. Moscow has not yet commented on the reports, but officials said air defenses shot down a number of drones in the region overnight on Friday.
"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:CNN defended its debate co-hosts from critics on Monday after they came under fire for being biased against former President Donald Trump.
The statement came after the Trump campaign ripped CNN for abruptly ending its interview with Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt. CNN’s Kasie Hunt, a former MSNBC host, suddenly ended the interview when Leavitt highlighted CNN’s Jake Tapper’s long history of criticizing Trump.
Tapper is co-hosting Thursday’s first presidential debate with Dana Bash. Both are critics of Trump.
They suggested Trump is a liar, was tougher on Democrats than Putin, pushed Russia propaganda, used rhetoric similar to Adolf Hitler, pushed falsehoods “fast and furious,” “tried to kill democracy once. He’ll do it again,” is an antisemite, could cause a civil war, and blamed Trump’s rhetoric for a New Zealand shooting.
“Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are well respected veteran journalists who have covered politics for more than five decades combined,” the network said in a statement obtained by the Hill.
“They have extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate this cycle,” the network said. “There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate on June 27 in Atlanta.”
The debate comes at a pivotal time for CNN. The network is on track for its lowest-rated month in prime time since 1991, the New York Times reported, citing Nielsen ratings that showed fewer than 100,000 average viewers a night among adults ages 25 to 54.
The debate is scheduled to be a highly watched first rematch between the two candidates since Biden took control of the federal government. Under Biden’s regime prices soared about 20 percent across the board, and more than 1.7 million known “gotaways” (illegal immigrants who evaded Border Patrol) entered the country, according to Congress.
Oh really... And this is how veteran journalists in a "prestigious" news medium do almost on a daily basis?
Quote:The Trump campaign ripped CNN on Monday for abruptly ending its interview with Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
CNN’s Kasie Hunt, a former MSNBC host, suddenly ended the interview when Leavitt highlighted CNN’s Jake Tapper’s long history of criticizing former President Donald Trump. Tapper is co-hosting Thursday’s first presidential debate.
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“CNN cutting off my microphone for bringing up a debate moderator’s history of anti-Trump lies just proves our point that President Trump will not be treated fairly in Thursday’s debate,” Leavitt said in a statement obtained by Breitbart News.
“Yet President Trump is still willing to go into this 3-1 fight to bring his winning message to the American people, and he will win,” she added.
After the segment, Hunt posted on X that she cut Leavitt off because she allegedly did not show respect to Tapper, someone who perpetrated the Russia collusion hoax and refused to cover Trump live due to “potentially dangerous” content.
“You come on my show, you respect my colleagues. Period,” Hunt said. “I don’t care what side of the aisle you stand on, as my track record clearly shows.”
Quote:A temporary election worker for Maricopa County in Arizona was arrested after he allegedly stole items from an election center.
Law enforcement officials revealed that 27-year-old Walter Ringfield was arrested on Friday after he reportedly stole a security fob and keys from the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center, according to KTAR News.
Ringfield, who was on probation for a previous felony, was booked into jail on charges of “theft and criminal damage,” according to the outlet.
The Maricopa County Elections Department said in a statement to ABC15 that election workers who had been conducting “daily inventory” on Friday morning, realized that “an item” was missing “from the Ballot Tabulation Center and had been taken the night before.”
“On Friday morning, when completing a daily inventory, Maricopa County election workers identified that an item was taken from the Ballot Tabulation Center on Thursday evening,” the Maricopa County Election Department said. “Staff took immediate action to investigate the matter and contacted the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. The stolen item has been recovered but to ensure the integrity of the Maricopa County Elections, election workers are reprogramming and reconducting logic and accuracy testing of all equipment.”
Security footage reportedly showed an employee taking the security fob and keys off a desk before placing the items in his pocket.
When questioned, Ringfield reportedly denied taking the items. However, law enforcement officers who arrived at his home the following day spotted “part of the keys” in his car.
The security fob was reportedly not found, according to the outlet.
Ringfield is reportedly not eligible for bond due to being on probation.
Quote:A man is accused of throwing a Big Gulp drink on Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx during an altercation outside her home in Flossmoor, Illinois.
Assistant Public Defender Catherine Stockslager said Friday that the suspect, identified as 34-year-old William Swetz, apparently did not recognize Foxx when the two bumped into each other as he drove along the 800 block of Sterling Avenue on Friday, CWB Chicago reported on Sunday:
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Foxx was taking a walk when the suspect came upon her in his pickup truck. According to Assistant State’s Attorney Jose Villareal, the man ordered Foxx to get out of the way and Foxx “made a hand gesture” at him.
“Official documents provided to CWBChicago say Foxx flipped Swetz off. The documents also say Swetz’s initial remark to Foxx was a bit spicier: ‘Get the f*** off the road, b**ch,'” the outlet said.
Swetz reportedly brought his vehicle to a halt before allegedly reversing toward Foxx, leading her to believe he might strike her. However, she moved out of the way as he pulled up beside her.
While the man remained in the vehicle, the pair continued the confrontation, and he is accused of throwing a “brown drink” on Foxx, who believed it was root beer because some of the liquid hit her mouth.
The suspect is accused of throwing the drink at Foxx from a Big Gulp cup and fleeing the scene. He was arrested hours later. Foxx did not suffer any serious injury during the incident, Fox 32 Chicago reported on Sunday:
Prosecutors Say Marylander Was Killed by Illegal Immigrant
Quote:Harford County, Maryland, prosecutors say the rape and murder of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, a mother of five children, allegedly at the hands of an illegal alien “got-away,” is the most horrific case ever seen in the county’s history.
On August 5, 2023, Morin was last seen heading out for a walk at the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail in Bel Air, Maryland, in Harford County. When Morin did not return home, her boyfriend, Richard Tobin, reported her missing. The following day, her body was found on the side of the trail.
On June 15, 2024, the Tulsa Police Department announced that they had arrested 23-year-old Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, an illegal alien from El Salvador with ties to the MS-13 Gang, in connection with Morin’s rape and murder as well as a violent assault of a nine-year-old girl and her mother in Los Angeles, California.
Harford County prosecutors have since detailed a brutal rape and vicious murder where Morin was found with ten to 15 head wounds. They allege that Martinez Hernandez raped and strangled Morin to death.
Martinez Hernandez is among roughly two million known illegal alien got-aways who have successfully crossed the southern border on President Joe Biden’s watch, undetected by Border Patrol agents.
“Biden’s first day in office was to remove every executive order that Trump had put in place to secure our border,” Morin’s half-sister, Erin Morin Layman, told Fox News. “[Biden] stopped building the wall. As far as I’m concerned, the Biden administration has the blood of Rachel Morin on their hands.”
“It’s sickening because this could have all been prevented,” Layman continued. “How many more like this? It’s just really sad, and no one’s safe. It’s not the first story, and it won’t be the last.”
Quote:WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to one count of conspiring to obtain and disclose national defense information as part of a plea agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
A court document from the United States District Court of the Northern Mariana Islands states:
The defendant, JULIAN PAUL ASSANGE (“ASSANGE”), was not a United States citizen, did not possess a U.S. security clearance, and did not have authorization to possess, access, or control documents, writings, or notes relating to the national defense of the United States, including United States government classified information.
Assange will appear in court at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday before a judge in Saipan, which serves as the capital and the largest island of the Northern Mariana Islands, according to a letter from Matthew J. McKenzie.
The letter states:
We appreciate the Court accommodating these plea and sentencing proceedings on a single day at the joint request of the parties, in light of the defendant’s opposition to traveling to the continental United States to enter his guilty plea and the proximity of this federal U.S. District Court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of the proceedings.
Quote:Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) said on this week’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Saturday Show” that if former President Donald Trump wins in November, there will be violence and “more killings.”
Host Jonathan Capehart asked, “How concerned are you about your safety if Donald Trump is re-elected?”
Waters said, “I’m very concerned, not only about my safety and not only about the safety of members of Congress. I’m concerned about the safety of so many people in this country, particularly people of color. Donald Trump has said that if he does not win, it is going to be fraud, and because it is going to be fraud, there will be blood in the streets. He threatens about a civil war, and he threatens there’s going to be violence. I would say all of this talk is motivational with many of those who are racist, who are sitting at home listening to him, and they are taking him up on his threats even before the elections take place. It is about thousands, maybe millions of people being threatened and being at risk because of Donald Trump and his desire to seek revenge on anything and everybody.”
She added, “I do believe having listened to Donald Trump so many times and having the attack, the insurrection that took place on the House of Representatives in Congress, on the Capitol, the Capitol grounds, we could be in for more killings like that. I think Donald Trump has to take responsibility for what he is saying about blood in the streets and violence if he is not elected to be the president of the United States of America.”
If you think I'm exaggerating here, remember what Antifa and BLM did while Trump was still in office. They didn't stop even when Biden had already become the next president. Then keep in mind the words of other leftists like those French guys that asked for protests in the streets and the eradication of the right wing in France.
Quote:Florida’s healthcare spending on illegal migrants has been nearly cut in half since legislation now requires hospitals to track unpaid care given to illegal migrants.
Senate Bill 1718, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), went into effect in July of 2023, and with almost a full year in effect the results are stunning. While the bill does not require that illegals be denied care that hospitals know will never be paid for, the amount of those unpaid bills has decreased considerably in the year since migrants have been asked for their immigration status.
The new reporting system has confirmed a 54 percent drop in Medicaid spending since the law took effect last year, according to Politico.
While the results have not been thoroughly proven to be a direct result of the reporting requirement, state Republicans are hailing the law as a success.
Unsurprisingly, advocates for illegals are stunned and dismayed by the law and have accused Republicans of using the reporting requirement to chase illegals out of Florida.
“Obviously, there’s been somewhat of an exodus of migrants in Florida,” Thomas Kennedy of the Florida Immigrant Coalition told Politico. “When this was all going through — we had warned about the exacerbated work[force] shortages and the distressed industries — we said this would be a bad idea.”
Quote:Federal authorities revealed that members of the Sinaloa Cartel used a network of Chinese underground bankers to launder more than $50 million in drug proceeds.
This week, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a ten-count superseding indictment charging 24 men allegedly tied to the international conspiracy involving individuals in California, Mexico, and others with ties to China.
“This DEA investigation uncovered a partnership between Sinaloa Cartel associates and a Chinese criminal syndicate operating in Los Angeles and China to launder drug money,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a prepared statement. “Laundering drug money gives the Sinaloa Cartel the means to produce and import their deadly poison into the United States.”
Authorities began charging some individuals in 2023, and soon after, some fled to Mexico. According to the USDOJ, they worked with Mexican and Chinese authorities to arrest several individuals who had fled from Los Angeles.
Federal prosecutors claim the lead defendant, 45-year-old Edgar Joel Martinez Reyes, who is from East L.A., would run a network of couriers who would collect drug cash, and then he would work with Chinese money launderers to make money available to Sinaloa Cartel members in Mexico. Court documents claim that Martinez would use cryptocurrency and various financial schemes to move the funds. These schemes included depositing small amounts of money at a time.
According to the USDOJ, the Chinese underground money laundering network works by individuals depositing Chinese currency into bank accounts. Once the money was deposited, the individual received the cash in U.S. dollars. The Sinaloa Cartel would then use the funds moved to China to pay for various goods and services from Chinese partners who supplied the cartel with precursors or equipment.
Prosecutors claim that the money laundering operation ran from 2019 to 2023 and that in 2021, Martinez Reyes traveled to Mexico, where he struck a deal with the Chinese underground bankers.
Quote:CLAIM: President Biden and his fellow Democrats claim crime is down based on an FBI report.
VERDICT: False. Biden and his fellow Democrats do not mention that thousands of police precincts are not reporting crime data to the FBI.
On June 11, 2024, Biden told an Everytown for Gun Safety gun control gathering:
You know, the year before I came to the presidency, the murder rate was the highest increase on record. Last year, we saw the largest decrease of murder in the history of (inaudible). (Applause.) And those rates are continuing to fall faster than ever. Last year, we also saw one of the lowest rates of all violent crime in nearly 50 years. Murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery all dropped sharply, along with burglary and property crime.
He did not mention that 2021 and 2022 witnessed a decline in crime reports from police precincts around the country.
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The Marshall Project explained that that in 2020, “almost every law enforcement agency was included in the FBI’s database.” However, in 2021, the FBI went to a new system for compiling data and would only accept police precinct reports through the new system.
The result? “Thousands of police agencies fell through the cracks because they didn’t catch up with the changes on time.” Thus, in 2022 there were far fewer police precincts turning in crime data; the Marshall Project reported in 2023 that “more than 6,000 law enforcement agencies were missing from the FBI’s national crime data last year, representing nearly one-third of the nation’s 18,000 police agencies.”
At some point in 2023 the FBI pivoted, announcing that it would accept crime data via the old reporting system once more. But the Marshall Project says it remains to be seen how many of the over 6,000 outstanding police precincts will begin or have begun reporting again.
One thing that the Marshall Project noted as certain: NYPD and LAPD are still not reporting crime data to the FBI.
How convenient for Biden and the FBI...
I wonder if Laken Riley would approve of that. Right, she can't because an illegal alien killed her, just like the 12-year-old killed just days ago.
Quote:The likely next prime minister of Canada has suddenly flipped his pro-migration platform and is now promising to deeply cut Justin Trudeau’s migration flood.
“It’s going to be much lower, especially for temporary immigration,” said Pierre Poilievre, head of the pro-migration Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. He continued:
It’s impossible to invite 1.2 million new people to Canada every year [as Trudeau has done]. When you’re building 200,000 housing units, it’s impossible. There’s no room.
Poilievre declined to give a target number for more migrants. Instead, he said that immigration should be tied to the rate of home building and job creation.
The sudden shift comes after Canadians have rejected the mass migration policies imposed by Trudeau. Those investor-backed open-door policies have demoralized young Canadians, slashed wages, reduced productivity, rocketed housing prices, and super-charged poverty and crime.
“Our economy is now smaller than it was in 2019 when adjusted for inflation and immigration, and pretty much in the same place it was a decade ago,” admitted a June 4 report by Canada’s RBC Royal Bank. Amid Trudeau’s migration, “a growing share of savings and investment has flowed to real estate and construction, which, while needed and beneficial for many reasons, are both relatively inefficient and can hold back the overall productive growth of an economy,” the report said.
Quote:For the first time in 30 years, Argentina experienced a zero-percent increase in the inflation rates of food and drinks during the third week of June, President Javier Milei confirmed on Monday morning.
A study published on Sunday by Econométrica, a private Argentine consulting firm, first reported the no-inflation week. In its study, Econométrica analyzed 8,000 prices in local online supermarkets and found no change when compared to the preceding week — something that has not happened in Argentina in three decades. In addition to the lack of variation in prices in one week, the study found that the prices of food and drinks only experienced an increase of 0.1 percent in the past 15 days.
President Milei, who is currently in Prague, confirmed the study’s findings on Monday morning in a telephone interview held with Argentina’s Radio Mitre, celebrating the news as a result of his economic policies.
“That means that we are on the right path — which there is still a long way to go, but the first signs that things are working are beginning to appear,” Milei told Argentine journalist Eduardo Feinmann.
“I sometimes present it, explain it, but, well, I have encountered in recent times gross levels of intellectual dishonesty. Because we all know that wholesale inflation is the one that predicts and anticipates retail inflation and the reality is that inflation in December when we arrived was 54 percent, that annualized gives 17,000,” he continued.
Milei added, “it also speaks of the misery or incompetence of other colleagues, doesn’t it? But the truth is that there is no country in the world where we are not recognized for our titanic task in terms of lowering inflation.”
We Could Dare to Say Nicaragua Now Works For China
Quote:Nicaragua’s communist regime has granted control of the nation’s gold mines to China in dubious and expedited procedures, the Argentine news outlet Infobae reported over the weekend.
Nicaraguan biologist and activist Amaru Ruiz explained to Infobae that the regime of dictator Daniel Ortega has granted at least 13 mining leases over the past six months to three Chinese companies through procedures that are “not normal,” as the leases were approved in an expedited manner and without due process. Some of them were allegedly approved as quickly as two months after being requested.
The 13 lease contracts reportedly grant the Chinese companies Zhong Fu Development, Thomas Metal, and Nicaragua XinXin Linze Minera Group exclusive rights for the exploration and exploitation of mineral deposits spanning nearly 250,000 hectares for a period of 25 years, renewable for an additional 25 years.
The three companies, Infobae stated in its report, would manage 11.66 percent of the entire mining area that communist dictator Daniel Ortega has so far leased, which is estimated at almost 2 million hectares according to official information.
“We don’t even know if there are environmental impact studies with the granting of these concessions,” Ruiz said. “We consider that they do not exist because of the time in which the concession is granted, which is really very short compared to other processes of other companies.”
Gold has become Nicaragua’s top export in recent years, registering over $1.1 billion in gold export revenues during 2023, a 22.4-percent increase when compared to 2022.
In May, the United States imposed sanctions on Comintsa and Capital Mining, two Nicaraguan-based gold companies with ties to the Ortega regime. The Department of the Treasury explained that Comintsa is owned by Salvador Mansell Castrillo, who previously served as Ortega’s energy and mines minister and one of the Ortega regime’s high-ranking offers sanctioned by the United States in 2021.
Similarly, the U.S. Treasury Department explained in its May statement that Capital Mining serves as an intermediary company of the Ortega regime in Nicaragua’s gold sector controlled by Laureano Ortega Murillo, dictator Daniel Ortega’s son.
“The designations of Comintsa and Capital Mining target government-affiliated gold companies generating revenue for the Ortega-Murillo regime,” the Department of the Treasury stated. “Gold is Nicaragua’s top commodity export, and this action aims to degrade the ability of the Ortega-Murillo regime to manipulate the sector and profit from the corrupt operations of Comintsa and Capital Mining.”
Take into account that some of that gold has been stolen from a Costa Rican region called Crucitas in San Carlos, Alajuela.
The Costa Rican authorities have been dealing with this issue for years now.
Quote:The European Union on Monday slapped new sanctions on Russia over its war on Ukraine, targeting Moscow’s shadow fleet of tankers moving liquefied natural gas through Europe as well as several companies.
At a meeting in Luxembourg, where the sanctions were endorsed, EU foreign ministers also expressed concern about a rise in hybrid attacks by Russia – including allegations of election interference, cyber-attacks and sabotage.
In an effort to push Russia into using more costly routes for energy purposes, the ministers said in a statement, the EU will “forbid reloading services of Russian LNG in EU territory for the purpose of transshipment operations to third countries.”
The EU estimates that about 4-to-6 billion cubic meters (141 billion-212 billion cubic feet) of Russian LNG was shipped to third countries via EU ports last year. Russia is suspected of running a “ghost fleet” of up to 400 ships to evade sanctions and keep up the flow of energy earnings so that it can finance the war.
The measures will target ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore transfers as well as reloading operations. It also involves a crackdown on the re-export of LNG to third countries via the EU, plus a ban on new investments to help Russia complete LNG projects it is working on.
Scores of new “entities” – often companies, banks, agencies and other organizations – were added to the EU´s list, including some in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Many are accused of circumventing the bloc´s sanctions or providing sensitive equipment to Russia.
Quote:The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the American ambassador on Monday to protest what it says was the use of U.S.-made advanced missiles in a Ukrainian attack on Russian-annexed Crimea that reportedly killed four people and wounded more than 150.
Washington “has effectively become a party” to the war on Ukraine’s side, the ministry said in a statement, adding, “Retaliatory measures will certainly follow.” It did not elaborate.
There was no immediate comment from U.S. or Ukrainian officials. The Associated Press could not independently verify Russia’s claims about the missiles used.
Kyiv’s forces have relied heavily on Western-supplied weaponry since Russia’s invasion more than three years ago. The military aid has been crucial in allowing Ukraine to hold the Kremlin’s army at bay, with few major changes along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine for many months.
Some Western countries have hesitated over providing more – and more sophisticated – help for Kyiv’s army because of concerns about potentially provoking the Kremlin. But as Ukraine has at times struggled to hold the line against Russia’s bigger and better-equipped military, Western leaders have gradually relented and granted more support.
In the latest key development, the Pentagon said last week that Ukraine’s military is being allowed to use longer-range missiles provided by the U.S. to strike targets inside Russia if it is acting in self-defense. Since the outset of the war, the U.S. had maintained a policy of not allowing Ukraine to use the weapons it provided to hit targets on Russian soil for fear of further escalating the conflict.
Quote:At least 22 people have been killed in a large coordinated terror attack on two synagogues, two churches, and a police outpost in a Russian Muslim-majority region.
Six gunmen were killed by the Russian security services, the Kremlin said overnight, following a series of coordinated terror attacks on a Holy day in the country’s southwestern-most Dagestan Republic. The total number of killed and injured has not been published, but it may stretch into the dozens. As well as the slain terrorists claimed, at least 15 police officers were also killed and “several civilians”.
Among the civilian dead is a long-serving Christian Orthodox priest, Father Nikolay, who was killed at his church where he has been priest for 40 years.
Per information from the Russian state, two Synagogues at the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala, two Orthodox churches, and a police outpost were attacked on Sunday. In the case of the Derbent Synagogue, the Russian Jewish Congress stated, the attack started shortly before evening prayers. They said the attack at Makhachkala was similar.
Police were on routine patrol at the Derbent synagogue and private security were also present station. They were killed, and terrorists set fire to the synagogue. The fire was extinguished by early hours of Monday morning.
Three days of mourning have been declared by Dagestan, one of the constituent Republics of the Russian Federation bordering the Caspian sea on the Caucasus region.
Russian authorities say they have identified the attackers and say they received foreign funding, but have not released specific details, nor officially stated what the motive for the attack may be. Yet the Russian Dagestan Republic is a Muslim majority area and anger in the area over the Israel-Hamas war has seen attacks targeting Jewish people living in the area.
In 2023, a “mob” of Palestine flag-carrying men besieged a hotel and Dagestan’s main airport “in search of Jewish passengers arriving from Israel”. The Guardian stated at the time:
Airline employees were shown hustling passengers back inside planes as the crowds approached the aircraft. Russia closed Makhachkala airport on Sunday evening due to “intruders” at the airport.
“This is your captain,” one announcement said. “There’s an angry mob outside that doesn’t know where we’ve come from and why [we are here]. It’s possible we’ll also come under attack.”
Quote:A German police officer escorting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Stuttgart has died after a car rammed into the Hungarian leader’s convoy.
While on the way Monday to the airport after watching his national football team compete against Scotland in the UEFA European Championship in Stuttgart, Germany the previous night, Prime Minister Orbán’s motorcade was hit with tragedy.
According to a report from the German daily Bild, a 69-year-old woman ignored signs for road closures as the Hungarian leader’s convoy made its way through the city, ramming into the police motorcycle of a 61-year-old officer accompanying Orbán’s car.
The strength of the crash flung the officer’s motorcycle into a fellow 27-year-old officer on another motorcycle who was blocking traffic at the time of the incident.
Despite being rushed to hospital, the 61-year-old officer died from his injuries. The 27-year-old officer is meanwhile reported to have sustained “serious injuries”.
Stuttgart Police Chief Markus Eisenbraun said: “We are deeply shocked by the accident of our colleagues. The tragic circumstances of the death of our valued colleague have left us speechless and have hit the entire Stuttgart police force to the core.”
Quote:Facing the prospect of becoming a lame duck president with three years left in his term and the French establishment turning against him, Emmanuel Macron said Sunday he would continue to “act” until 2027 while making a vague vow of “change”.
In an attempt to regain legitimacy following his drubbing in the European Parliament elections to Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally earlier this month, President Macron made a madcap gambit of calling for snap legislative elections, which will be conducted in two rounds, starting on June 30th and concluding on July 7th.
Macron appeared to be banking on divisions on the left and fear of the so-called “far-right” to convince the French public to once again coalesce around his centrist neo-liberal government.
However, with just a little over a week left before the French people head back to the polls, it seems his gamble will not pay off, with his Renaissance party continuing to languish in a distant third place behind the National Rally and the hastily cobbled together New Popular Front led by far-left socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Making a last-ditch attempt at reclaiming the narrative, in an open letter published in regional newspapers across the country, Macron wrote on Sunday that he recognised that his decision to call for a snap election has resulted in “anger that has turned against me,” Le Monde reports.
“The goal cannot be to just continue as things were. I have heard that you want change,” he said. “Yes, the way we govern must change profoundly… The government to come, which will necessarily reflect your vote, will, I hope, bring together republicans of different persuasions who have shown courage in opposing the extremes.”
Mr Macron has faced calls from opposition leader Marine Le Pen to resign if he were to lose control of the National Assembly following the elections, but Macron shot down on Sunday any possibility of relinquishing power before the end of his second — and final — term in office.
“You can trust me to act until May 2027 as your president, protector at every moment of our republic, our values, respectful of pluralism and your choices, at your service and that of the nation,” Macron said, while dismissing the idea that the elections represented a referendum on whether he should stay in office, but rather just on “who should govern France”.
Quote:Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has accused a prominent legacy media outlet of printing falsehoods and “collaborating” with the Kremlin to smear him to protect the “dying Conservative Party”.
The Mail on Sunday, the sister paper of the Daily Mail, may be facing a lawsuit from Nigel Farage over its headline over the weekend which read: “Zelensky: Farage Is Infected with ‘Virus of Putin’,” after the Brexit leader stated the West played a role in provoking the Russian invasion with EU and NATO expansionism.
Mr Farage said that the headline was “totally untrue” and said he instructed the Carter-Ruck law firm to “deal with it”.
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The alleged quote from Zelensky appears to have originated from BBC journalist Gordon Correrra, who said on X that a source within the government in Kyiv allegedly said in response to Mr Farage’s comments: “The virus of Putinism, unfortunately, infects people.”
Mr Farage noted that the quote was not attributed to Zelensky and did not mention his name personally as the MoS headline appeared to imply. The BBC also reported that the Zelensky government refused to put out an official statement on the controversy.
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Meanwhile, the Brexit leader also criticised the Daily Mail for directly approaching the Kremlin to ask whether it considered him an “ally”.
The “Daily Mail are so desperate to smear Reform that they have now contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry and goaded them into a supposed quote from someone in Sergey Lavrov’s office calling me an ‘ally’,” Mr Farage said.
“That a UK newspaper group is actively collaborating with the Kremlin to protect their dying Conservative party is an absolute scandal. The British people will see through this act of utter desperation.”
Quote:Despite vowing last year to increase deportations the leftist coalition government in Germany only managed to deport less than three per cent of migrants set for removal in the first four months of the year.
In the wake of soaring antisemitic incidents and Islamist attacks across Europe following the October 7th terror attacks on Israel, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that his government would begin deportations of illegals, failed asylum seekers and foreign criminals on a “large scale“.
However, figures reported by public broadcaster Deutsche Well have shown that this has yet to come to pass, with just 6,300 foreigners being removed from Germany from January to April. This is compared to 240,000 who faced a deportation order, meaning that just 2.63 per cent of migrants were removed after receiving an order to leave.
DW reports that around 80 per cent of those with a deportation order could not be removed because they either did not have identification papers or came from countries that Germany currently considers unsafe — such as Syria and Afghanistan — and therefore refuses to send migrants back to homelands.
Chancellor Scholz has said that his government would look to end the prohibition on sending migrants back to Syria and Afghanistan, following a mass stabbing that left a police officer dead by a failed asylum seeker from Afghanistan who avoided removal on the grounds that his home country was unsafe.
“It outrages me when someone who has sought protection here commits the most serious crimes. Such criminals should be deported, even if they come from Syria and Afghanistan,” the chancellor said earlier this month.
However, this would likely need the requirement of the Islamist governments in control of the two countries, meaning that it is currently unknown when deportations will actually start to resume to Afghanistan and Syria.
At a conference in Potsdam over the weekend, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that rather than negotiating with the Taliban regime in Kabul, Berlin has begun talks with Afghanistan’s regional neighbours on possibly accepting Afghan nationals from Germany.
Quote:The United Nations invited the jihadist Taliban terrorist organization to a two-day conference on Afghanistan in Doha, Qatar, next weekend, its third such meeting since the Taliban seized power in 2021.
The Islamist extremists have reportedly demanded no Afghan women should be allowed to participate in the meeting.
Human rights activists seem deeply worried that the U.N. will bow to the Taliban’s demands and create some political cover by scheduling other meetings in Doha that would include critics of the Taliban’s misogynist policies.
“Excluding women risks legitimizing the Taliban’s abuses and triggering irreparable harm to the U.N.’s credibility as an advocate for women’s rights and women’s meaningful participation,” said Tirana Hassan of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“What is happening in Afghanistan is the most serious women’s rights crisis in the world and the idea that the U.N. would convene a meeting like this and not discuss women’s rights and not have Afghan women in the room is beyond belief,” said Heather Barr, another HRW representative.
“The only plausible explanation is that they’re doing this to get the Taliban to the table, but for what? Already, three years of diplomatic engagement has produced nothing and all this does is set an appalling precedent, emboldens and legitimizes the Taliban and hands them a huge political win. It is a betrayal not just of Afghan women but all women around the world,” said Barr.
Quote:Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi told soldiers on Sunday night in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, that they have nearly succeeded in dismantling Hamas’s remaining battalions in the area.
In a statement, Halevi said (translation via IDF):
We have very high levels of achievements from the combat in Rafah, and I express great appreciation for that. This is reflected in the amount of terrorists that have been eliminated, as well as the infrastructure destroyed, the underground tunnel routes, its mapping, its destruction, and the progress in the complex underground combat. The fact that the 162nd Division now controls the Philadelphi Corridor from the sea to the border between Israel, Gaza, and Egypt, is very significant in cutting off Hamas’ supply for future smuggling. We are now dealing with the underground assets. We are clearly approaching the point where we can say we have dismantled the Rafah Brigade, that it is defeated not in the sense that there are no more terrorists, but in the sense that it can no longer function as a fighting unit. It has suffered many casualties, and you will ensure until the completion of the mission here, to eliminate as many terrorists and destroy as much terrorist infrastructure as possible going forward. With great appreciation, what is happening here is very impressive professionally, keep it up.
While Israel has all but eliminated Hamas as a fighting force above ground, it retains significant assets underground — including weapons, leaders, and dozens of Israeli hostages.
One Israeli analyst has concluded that it will not be possible to destroy Hamas completely while it hides underground — at least, not in the near term — because Israel has not developed a strong enough underground fighting capability, and there is too much danger to soldiers to send them directly into the tunnels to confront Hamas.
There is growing pressure from the Israeli public to reach a deal with Hamas on the release of hostages — though Hamas insists on Israel ending the war and promising, with U.S.-backed guarantees, never to fight against the terror group ever again. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected that condition.
The Biden administration opposed Israel’s entry into Rafah, warning of a humanitarian catastrophe that never materialized. A million Palestinians who had taken refuge in the town, which borders Egypt, simply evacuated.
Israel now controls the Gaza-Egypt border, and with it the smuggling routes used by Hamas to rearm its forces.
Quote:Father Mikah Suleiman was abducted by armed gunmen in northwest Nigeria this weekend, the third such kidnapping of a Christian pastor in the past month.
As Breitbart News has reported, Nigeria has been experiencing a “surge” in anti-Christian violence in recent weeks, including numerous kidnappings and execution-style murders, carried out mostly by radical Islamists.
On June 2, Muslim Fulani raiders murdered a pastor, his wife, and three other Christians at around midnight in Plateau state, central Nigeria.
The following day, Muslim terrorists associated with the Islamic State executed three Christians, creating a propaganda video out of the slaying.
On Sunday, June 9, Father Gabriel Ukeh was kidnapped from the rectory of Saint Thomas Parish in Zaman Dabo in Kaduna State, northwest Nigeria, an area hit hard by anti-Christian violence.
Then on June 16, armed assailants abducted Father Christian Ike — the pastor of St. Matthew’s Church in Ajalli, southern Nigeria — after a church service at an outstation of the parish.
Now, a “gang of terrorists” has abducted Father Mikah Suleiman, parish priest of St. Raymond Damba Catholic Church in Zamfara State, from his parish rectory in the early hours of Saturday June 22.
“We invite all the faithful of Christ and all men and women of good will to pray sincerely that he be released immediately safe and sound,” reads a statement from the Sokoto diocese, where the priest carries out his ministry.
Human rights activists have protested the inaction of the Nigerian government as well as the silence of world leaders in the face of the ongoing anti-Christian assaults.
Quote:Tamayo Perry, surfing legend turned actor in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, lost his life from a shark attack off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii, on Sunday.
Perry was struck around one p.m. near Goat Island and his body was soon found by other surfers. His body was missing an arm and a leg, Stab magazine reported.
A local surfer called emergency services when he thought he saw a surfer being attacked by a shark, and first responders got to the scene quickly. But efforts to revive Perry after his body was brought to shore proved fruitless, according to the New York Post.
“Tamayo’s personality was infectious and as much as people loved him, he loved everyone else more,” said acting Honolulu ocean safety chief Kurt Lager. He added that Perry was “a lifeguard loved by all.”
Perry was also employed as a popular local lifeguard.
“Tamayo was a legendary waterman and highly respected,” said Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi. The mayor also said Perry’s death is “a tragic loss.”
The 49-year-old Oahu celebrity parlayed his surfing status into a part in the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, On Stranger Tides among other films.
Perry has appeared in more than a dozen surfing videos including The Bomb (1998), Revelation (2000), All Aboard (2002), and Loaded Pipe (2004)
[/spoiler
SPORTS
[spoiler=Euro 2024]
Switzerland 1 - Germany 1 Substitute Niclas Fullkrug scored a late equaliser for Germany
as they rescued a draw with Switzerland to top Group A
Quote:The Swiss thought they were going through to the last 16 as group winners after an early goal from Dan Ndoye until Fullkrug headed in the equaliser.
There was an outburst of celebration from home supporters behind the goal as Germany maintained their unbeaten start to Euro 2024.
It was a blow to Switzerland, who had defended resolutely for more than 90 minutes but they still progress to the knockout stages.
"At the end I think this point is well deserved. We risked a lot, as we could have conceded a second goal," said Germany boss Julian Nagelsmann.
"It was a very strong group and a very good match. I think if we had scored that first goal, it would have been very difficult for Switzerland."
Murat Yakin's Swiss side knew victory would see them leapfrog Germany and they almost delivered in Frankfurt until pressure took its toll in stoppage time.
Germany, who had largely frustrated the home fans in the stands, created a flurry of chances late on and eventually did enough.
Earlier, Swiss fans were bouncing and singing in the stands after Ndoye had placed a first-time shot into the roof of the net from Remo Freuler's dangerous cross.
Quote:Brazil are off to an underwhelming start at the Copa America after being held to a 0-0 draw in their opening clash with Costa Rica on Monday night.
Despite enjoying 74 percent of the ball in Los Angeles, the likes of Vinicius Jr and Rodrygo were unable to inspire the nine-time champions to victory in their first game at the tournament.
Instead, a resilient Costa Rica backline restricted them to just three shots on target in the game as the underdogs secured an invaluable and unexpected point in Group D.
Marquinhos thought he had fired Brazil ahead when he tapped in from close range after 33 minutes, only for VAR to deem that he did so while in an offside position and rule the goal out.
Rodrygo also felt he should have had a penalty when he was brought down inside the box in the first half, yet the referee waved away Brazilian protests.
The team known for decades of sublime offensive play never got closer to a scoring in front of a lively crowd of 67,158 dominated by their yellow-clad fans at SoFi Stadium.
The result leaves Colombia top of Group D after their 2-1 victory over Paraguay earlier in the evening.
Brazil has won the Copa America nine times, but its current transitional squad led by Real Madrid stars Vinicius and Rodrygo got off to a discouraging start.
The draw was a monumental achievement for Costa Rica, the undermanned CONCACAF team with the youngest roster in the tournament but a reputation for overachievement and sturdy defending. Los Ticos had lost nine straight meetings with Brazil.
Vinicius was taken down in the box in the 22nd minute by a big hit from Haxzel Quiros, but got no whistle.
In the 30th minute, Rodrygo went low to head on Raphinha's free kick to Marquinhos, who banged it home at the far post. However, A four-minute VAR review then followed, before Mexican referee Cesar Ramos eventually agreed with the assistant's decision to wave it off for offside by a minuscule margin.
In the 39th minute, a kick by Lucas Paqueta appeared to go off a hand of Juan Pablo Vargas in the penalty area but Ramos made no call.
Paqueta ripped a shot off the post in the 63rd minute. Costa Rica then survived when Haxzel Quiros nearly headed the ball into his own net before Sequeira smothered it.
Costa Rica survived a few more moments of chaos beginning in the 86th minute, with Rodrygo failing to capitalize on a pair of scoring chances and not getting a foul call against Jeyland Mitchell in the box.
Bruno Guimaraes then had a clean look at the net in the first minute of injury time, but pushed it just wide.
Brazil's national team is in a transitional period - particularly without Neymar, who hasn't played since tearing a knee ligament in a match for Brazil last October. Neymar spoke to team Sunday before watching the match at SoFi Stadium, where he got massive cheers in the second half when his worried face appeared on the scoreboard.
"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:The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) invited a second delegation from Cuba — a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism — to visit airport facilities in Florida in May, Martí Noticias reported on Monday.
The FAA-sponsored visit occurred separately from a tour that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) hosted on May 20 that saw communist Cuban officials participate in a secret guided tour of TSA’s control facilities at the Miami International Airport — leading to an outcry of condemnation from the local Miami-Dade County administration, members of the United States Congress, airport personnel, and the Cuban diaspora in Florida that ultimately prompted TSA and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to reportedly issue an apology.
Martí Noticias, a U.S.-based outlet focused on Cuba, stated on Monday that the FAA confirmed to it that it had hosted a tour for Castro regime officials in May. The outlet also stated that it had obtained access to internal documentation from the Cuban Foreign Ministry relevant to the visit, as well as statements from U.S. officials who spoke to the outlet under the condition of anonymity.
According to a brief statement that the FAA sent to the outlet, “the meeting took place in May, but the Cuban authorities will have to be contacted for information on their itineraries.”
The Cuban Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment from Martí Noticias.
A diplomatic note that the Cuban Foreign Ministry issued on March 27 that Martí Noticias accessed stated that the FAA allegedly invited four officials from the Civil Aviation Institute of Cuba to visit the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center in May “as part of the Miami/Havana and Houston/Havana Operation Agreement.”
U.S. officials told Martí Noticias on the condition of anonymity that the purpose of the Castro regime officials’ visit was to “discuss the continued safe and efficient movement of aircraft” between Miami and Houston’s air terminals and Cuba.
The anonymous officials asserted that the Castro regime officials were received by a delegation of 15 U.S. officials, including executives in charge of Airspace Support and Procedures from both Miami and Houston’s airports, as well as officials from the FAA’s Western Hemisphere and International Affairs offices.
Quote:Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, CNN’s Thursday night presidential debate co-hosts, repeatedly showed nasty bias against former President Donald Trump during previous network remarks.
Tapper and Bash’s bias is significant because they could use their positions to produce an unfair debate in which Trump might have to contend with them while also debating President Joe Biden.
“Trump’s real debate opponent on Thursday will be CNN,” businessman David Sacks posted on X. “I’m sure the CNN debate will be fair and unbiased based on all of CNN’s actions for the last 8 years!” Donald Trump Jr. mocked.
The event already appears framed in favor of the president. Biden’s performance expectations are low while the debate rules benefit him.
In addition, CNN analysts will immediately fact-check Trump after the debate, CNN Political Director David Chalian told the New York Times, noting the debate is “not the ideal arena for live fact-checking.”
Tapper, one of Trump’s sharpest critics and who purports to be an unbiased journalist, previously moderated two Republican presidential debates.
Quote:The Biden campaign has dismissed public calls for President Joe Biden to undergo a drug test before Thursday’s presidential debate on CNN despite polling showing that the vast majority of Americans support both candidates undergoing such testing.
Trump floated the proposal on Tuesday, posting on Truth Social, “DRUG TEST FOR CROOKED JOE BIDEN??? I WOULD, ALSO, IMMEDIATELY AGREE TO ONE!!!”
Biden campaign spokesman Adrienne Elrod quickly dismissed this call, acting as if it were a completely absurd request despite growing concerns about Biden and his mental fitness — particularly following the emergence of viral videos showing Biden in seemingly confused states.
“I mean, I don’t even really know what to say about that. I worked on Hillary Clinton’s campaign, you know, she also debated him very effectively. He accused her of being on drugs,” she said.
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Biden is currently at what has been dubbed “debate camp” — the presidential retreat Camp David — with his advisers. He arrived on Thursday, June 20.
While it remains unclear what the prep looks like, there is much speculation following several concerning videos showing Biden seemingly confused. The White House hit back against the videos showcasing Biden malfunctioning in public, asserting that they were “cheap fakes.”
As Breitbart News detailed:
The White House invented the term “cheap fakes” after a video on Sunday showed former President Barack Obama walking Biden off stage after the president appeared to freeze at a fundraiser.
Another video from June 13 appeared to show Biden wandering off into the distance in Europe before Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni turned him back to the group of world leaders watching a skydiving show.
A third video showed Vice President Kamala Harris and allies dancing at a Juneteenth event while Biden appeared to stare blankly, not moving, with an empty smile on his face.
Quote:The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) “condemn[ed]” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass Wednesday for speaking out (belatedly) against an antisemitic protest at a synagogue on Sunday, saying the protest was legitimate.
As Breitbart News reported, a mob of pro-Palestinian activists targeted the Adas Torah synagogue in the Jewish neighborhood of Pico-Robertson, blocking the entrance to bar access to an event about buying real estate in Israel.
It was the second protest at a synagogue in Los Angeles in the space of three days. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers eventually cleared the protesters, after violence broke out aith pro-Israel counter-demonstrators.
Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and Mayor Bass (D) condemned the protest late on Sunday evening (after Breitbart News reported that neither had done so). On Monday, President Joe Biden also condemned the protest, calling it “dangerous, unconscionable, antisemitic, and un-American” for targeting a synagogue. The Israeli government also weighed in, calling the targeting of a Jewish house of worship, and the subsequent violence, “absolutely shocking.”
But CAIR objected to Bass’s words when she repeated her condemnation of the protest on Monday, June 24.
In a statement, CAIR said:
On June 24, Mayor Bass spoke at a press conference held in response to the violence that broke out when pro-Israel counter-protesters confronted pro-Palestinian demonstrators who were gathered outside the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles to protest a real estate event organized by an Israel-based agency that reportedly markets real estate in Israel and the illegally occupied West Bank.
During the conference, Mayor Bass condemned the pro-Palestinian protesters and characterized the demonstration as “violent” and “abhorrent.” She did not mention the violence that was perpetrated against the pro-Palestinian protesters by pro-Israel counter-protesters or the reports that law enforcement on the scene did little to stop the violence against them.
CAIR denied that the protest was antisemitic, claiming that there were Jews involved in the demonstration. CAIR did not explain why the protesters blocked access to a house of worship rather than protesting peacefully nearby.
Mayorkas Thinks the Border Was Closed in 2021 & 2022
Quote:On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas responded to a question on why President Joe Biden didn’t take the executive action on the border he took recently earlier by arguing that “essentially, the border was closed” until May of last year.
BBC U.S. Special Correspondent and MSNBC Contributor Katty Kay asked, “Mr. Secretary, the flows of people across the border have caused the President a huge amount of political trouble. If this executive order has worked as well as you’re saying it’s worked this morning, why not just do it a year-and-a-half ago and save the Democrats all the kind of pushback they’ve had on the border?”
Mayorkas answered, “Well, let’s remember the chronology here. On day one of the President’s administration, he presented Congress with a legislative proposal to fix our immigration system. Up until May of last year, Title 42, the public health order, was in place. That prevented people from entering the United States, with some exceptions. It provided the government with the authority to expel people from the United States, essentially, the border was closed. Everyone expected pandemonium to break out when Title 42 was lifted. It did not. The President went to Congress and requested supplemental funding, the funding that we and the Department of Homeland Security and other departments that administer the immigration system so desperately need. He went for that funding to Congress in August, did not receive it. He went again in October, did not receive it. We then went into, very difficult, but ultimately successful, bipartisan negotiations for a legislative solution. That would have delivered the fixes that our system [has] long needed. It would have provided the immigration system with the resources we have long needed, 1,500 Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations personnel, 1,200 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and agents, 4,300 asylum officers, more than 100 immigration judges. That was a bipartisan, practical solution that involved difficult compromises, but compromises that delivered success. Congress failed to act. The President has acted.”
Quote:On Wednesday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Now,” John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE Director under President Obama, stated that the report that DHS identified more than 400 migrants who were brought to the United States by a human smuggling network affiliated with ISIS “highlights the vulnerabilities we’re facing along our southern border,” and said that “we need to tighten up things here, especially on the vetting on the front end, because almost all of these individuals were apprehended and ultimately released into the United States to await their immigration court hearings.”
Sandweg said he has confidence in ICE to find these individuals, because they’re good at doing that, “But, obviously, look, a concerning story. And I think it highlights the vulnerabilities we’re facing along our southern border, and really emphasizes the need to address the issue permanently and get that — get the situation fixed.”
He added, “I think, first of all, Natasha, look, we have — there’s a problem with vetting. They recently did — the DHS inspector general came out and highlighted some concerns that they found in their kind of audit evaluation of the DHS vetting operations. So, the first thing we need to do is make sure that all accessible federal databases, when an individual is apprehended at the border, we take their biometrics, they’re run against various databases, we need to ensure that, in real-time and incredibly quickly, we get the results, right? If there’s any derogatory information, any intelligence to suggest the individual’s a threat or linked to ISIS, that that is known right away.”
Sandweg continued, “Now, part of the challenge here is we still don’t know what the nature of this threat is. So, I don’t want to overemphasize it, right? We know that a smuggling organization has been bringing individuals from Central Asia and then that smuggling organization had some links to ISIS. That doesn’t necessarily mean that these individuals were plotting an attack against the United States or actually were members of ISIS. Moreover, Natasha, it’s really important to emphasize that we have an incredibly robust intelligence apparatus focused on terror threats like ISIS…Secretary Mayorkas was on TV today, indicated that there is no known threat stream. So, we don’t have any of that corroborating intelligence that would suggest these terror groups are looking to exploit our border. Nevertheless, it’s really clear that we need to tighten up things here, especially on the vetting on the front end, because almost all of these individuals were apprehended and ultimately released into the United States to await their immigration court hearings.”
Sandweg concluded, “[G]enerally, we have incredible intelligence services in the United States. And before these individuals get to the United States, we should know about that, right?”
Quote:Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) wrote to President Joe Biden on Wednesday to demand that the administration do more to support Israel against Hamas, and do more to free American and Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Johnson’s letter comes as the Biden administration has admitted that Hamas, not Israel, rejected a proposed deal to achieve a ceasefire and the release of at least some of the hostages. Hamas wants Israel to end the war in any deal.
In the letter, first obtained via the Jewish Insider news website, Johnson says that Biden’s current stance makes it more difficult, not easier, to reach a deal on Hostage releases:
It has been 8 months since Iranian-backed terrorists invaded Israel and murdered over 1,200 Israelis, took 235 people– including American citzens — hostage, and committed acts of rape and other horrific atrocities that are clear violations of international law and human rights.
The failure to resolutely support Israel in its military objectives to eliminate Hamas has made it harder to facilitate the release of those being detained, including American hostages that Hamas brutally kidnapped on October 7, 2023. Instead of focusing on bringing home the Americans and Israelis held hostage, your administration has spent months pressuring and attempting to micromanage Israel. The United States must do everything in our power to support Israel’s right to self-defense, and work toward the immediate release of hostages, including the remaining American citizens.
Since the massacre on October 7th, multiple decisions by your administration have undercut Israel’s efforts to bring U.S. Hostages home, weakened the U.S.-Israel relationship, and eroded America’s ability to deter our enemies.
The letter says that Biden has not shown the “ironclad” commitment to Israeli security that he promised earlier in the war, and urges the administration to “put maximum pressure on Hamas and its enablers.”
Johnson closes by asking the White House to brief him and other congressional leaders by July 10 on the administration’s plans to address the situation, and on what is being done to help Israel fight Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Quote:Steve Bannon will receive a boost from the House of Representatives as he fights a prison sentence orchestrated by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ).
The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), the House’s internal legal body, voted 3-2 Tuesday to file a legal brief supporting the former Trump adviser’s fight to remain a free man. The group took action after an uprising of Republican support on Capitol Hill to aid Bannon’s appeal.
Bannon is set to report to prison July 1 for a four-month sentence for defying a Congressional subpoena from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) now-defunct January 6 Committee. Bannon insists executive privilege protects him from being forced to divulge information to the committee.
BLAG – comprised of the Speaker and the majority and minority leadership of the House – operates at a staff level as part of the House General Counsel’s Office and is responsible for articulating the House’s institutional position in legal filings with federal, state, and local courts.
“The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group voted 3-2 to file a brief with the D.C. Circuit in the case against Steve Bannon,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) – the Republican BLAG members – said in a joint statement Wednesday.
The statement continued:
The amicus brief will be submitted after Bannon files a petition for rehearing en banc and will be in support of neither party. It will withdraw certain arguments made by the House earlier in the litigation about the organization of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol during the prior Congress.
House Republican Leadership continues to believe Speaker Pelosi abused her authority when organizing the Select Committee.
Wall Street Journal on American Journalist Detained in Russia
Quote:Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editor-in-chief Emma Tucker wrote a fiery editorial on Tuesday denouncing Russia’s secret trial for captive reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Tucker said the trial, which began on Wednesday, was a “travesty of justice” and denounced the espionage charges against Gershkovich as entirely false.
Gershkovich was arrested in Yekaterinburg in March 2023 and has been held in pre-trial detention ever since. Russian officials refused to detail the espionage charges against him, vaguely insisting he was caught “red-handed” spying for American intelligence services.
When Russian prosecutors announced the reporter’s closed-door trial this month, they accused him of “collecting secret information” for the CIA about a tank manufacturer near Yekaterinburg.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has frankly described Gershkovich as a hostage, a bargaining chip who would only be freed if the United States agrees to reward him by releasing high-profile Russian detainees. Prisoner swap deals involving Gershkovich have reportedly been negotiated over the past year, but none ever came to fruition, possibly because the Russians generally do not trade prisoners until after they have been convicted and sentenced.
The WSJ has steadfastly denied all charges against its reporter, as Tucker did again on Tuesday.
“Let us be very clear, once again: Evan is a staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal. He was on assignment in Russia, where he was an accredited journalist,” Tucker wrote.
“But the Kremlin has clamped down severely on independent reporting, effectively turning journalism into a crime. Evan was seized by Russia’s security services, falsely accused of being a U.S. spy and thrown in prison,” she continued.
Tucker noted that Gershkovich would be tried in secret, with no evidence revealed to the outside world, and that the verdict was a foregone conclusion: “This bogus accusation of espionage will inevitably lead to a bogus conviction for an innocent man who would then face up to 20 years in prison for simply doing his job. And an excellent job he was doing, at that.”
Tucker noted that covering the trial in a fair and impartial manner was difficult, given the restrictions imposed by the Russian government and its growing hostility towards journalists, but she promised the WSJ would provide “impartial and accurate reporting” that avoids “baseless allegations” – not least because lobbing such allegations at the Russian regime would give it even more excuses to treat Gershkovich harshly.
Tucker concluded by endorsing diplomatic efforts to secure Gershkovich’s freedom and hoped “Evan and other U.S. detainees in Russia will return home soon.”
CANADA
Utter a Speech on Free Speech Before Getting Arrested. No Joke!
Quote:English political activist Tommy Robinson was arrested on Monday evening in Canada after delivering an address in Calgary on the importance of free speech following which around 10 plain-clothed under-cover police officers detained him.
Tommy Robinson, an outspoken critic of mass migration, and commentator on the incongruity of Islamic beliefs with Western society, particularly majority-Muslim child rape gangs in England, was arrested on an alleged immigration offence after giving a speech to around 150 people in Calgary during his planned three-stop tour of Canada hosted by Ezra Levant’s Rebel News.
Footage posted on social media showed Robinson being handcuffed and put in the back of a police car by what appeared to be undercover officers in street clothes. The right-wing activist was seen laughing while describing his arrest as “absolutely insane”.
“What have I got a warrant out for?” Robinson was heard questioning, to which an officer replied: “You’ve got an outstanding immigration warrant, we’ll talk about it in the vehicle.”
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At the time of this reporting, Calgary Police have not made any statement on why the English political campaigner was arrested. However, Robinson has previously been convicted of entering the United States with a friend’s passport.
After spending several hours behind bars, Robinson was released, but said that he had his passport seized and was told to not leave the province of Alberta, potentially preventing him from continuing his speaking tour, which had planned stops in Edmonton and Toronto.
“OK I’m free, well, sort of. None of this makes sense, I’m now detained in Calgary, prevented from leaving the city, these conditions stop me from continuing my tour of Canada and meeting with guests for podcasts. I’m not even allowed to leave to travel home,” Robinson wrote on social media following his release.
Rebel News, the right-wing Canadian news outlet which was sponsoring Robinson’s tour, said they have hired legal representation for the activist with the hopes of receiving a prompt judicial review in order to allow him to continue his tour and then return to England.
Quote:Bolivian police have arrested the leader of an attempted coup, hours after the presidential palace in the capital La Paz was stormed by soldiers.
Armoured vehicles and troops had taken up position on Murillo Square where key government buildings are located. They all later withdrew.
The rebel military leader in charge, Gen Juan José Zúñiga, had said he wanted to "restructure democracy" and that while he respected President Luis Arce for now, there would be a change of government. He is now under arrest.
President Arce condemned the coup attempt, calling on the public to "organise and mobilise... in favour of democracy".
"We cannot allow once again coup attempts to take Bolivian lives," he said in a televised message to the country from inside the presidential palace.
His words clearly resonated, with pro-democracy demonstrators taking to the streets in support of the government.
Mr Arce also announced he was appointing new military commanders, confirming reports that Gen Zúñiga had been dismissed after openly criticising Bolivia's former leader, Evo Morales.
Mr Morales also condemned the coup attempt and called for criminal charges to be brought against Gen Zúñiga and his "accomplices".
The public prosecutor's office has opened a criminal investigation.
It is increasingly clear that this was a short-lived and ill-judged military uprising rather than any wider unravelling of power.
Nevertheless, the coming weeks will be key in establishing whether Gen Zuñiga's military insurrection was just an isolated incident.
Certainly, the government now looks more vulnerable, and others may try to dislodge Mr Arce's administration - albeit through politics rather than via the military.
Furthermore, he could count on the support of Evo Morales, the influential former president and the elder statesman of Bolivia's left.
Mr Morales called on his supporters, particularly in the country's indigenous coca-growers movement, to take to the streets to demand an end to the attempt coup.
That display of popular power may well have helped strengthen the resolve against Gen Zuñiga's plans, which also included freeing "political prisoners" including former leader Jeanine Áñez.
Speaking from Murillo Square after it was taken by troops, Gen Zúñiga had said: "We are going to recover this homeland.
"An elite has taken over the country, vandals who have destroyed the country."
He was sacked after appearing on television on Monday, saying he would arrest Mr Morales if he ran for office again next year, despite the former president being barred from doing so.
Quote:Venezuela’s socialist regime accused Canada on Sunday of being a “destabilizing factor” for allegedly meddling in the territorial dispute between Venezuela and Guyana over the Essequibo region.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil condemned Canada in response to statements that High Commissioner in Guyana Mark Berman reportedly issued, in which he expressed the Canadian government’s support of Guyana in the territorial dispute and urged respect for international law. Berman made the comments during an official event to observe Canada Day.
“The Canadian Government is concerned with the tensions between Guyana and Venezuela, and we reiterate that we stand with the Guyanese people. We stand with the Government, and we call for respect of international law,” Berman reportedly said. “In this complex, ever-changing global environment, good relations are paramount, and I can’t emphasize enough the importance we place on our relationship with Guyana.”
Gil responded to Berman’s statements by accusing Canada of conspiring with Guyana and Venezuelan “right-wing lackeys” to hand the contested territory to U.S. companies.
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Petro the "Anti-Nazi" Didn't Mind Wiretapping Judges
Quote:Colombia’s far-left President Gustavo Petro denied on Tuesday that his government engages in illegal wiretapping after several magistrates — including members of the highest branch of the Supreme Court of Justice — accused government intelligence officials of spying on them.
Petro dismissed the accusations as “fake news” and accused local media of being “Mossad press” for reporting on the subject. Petro compared the media to both the Israeli intelligence agency and Nazi Germany Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The Colombian president also urged Colombian Supreme Court Justice Jorge Enrique Ibáñez, who issued the formal denouncement that led to the ongoing investigations, to “stop falling into naiveté that Nazi groups build.”
Petro has not at press time explained his reference to the Mossad – which could be interpreted as an accusation of foreign interference by Israel in Colombian politics – or his repeated references to Nazi Germany in response to the scandal.
Justice Ibáñez is a member of Colombia’s Constitutional Court, the nation’s highest court. Last week, the head of the Constitutional Court José Fernando Reyes presented a letter to the nation’s Attorney General Luz Adriana Camargo in which Ibáñez accused Colombian intelligence agents, under the control of Petro, of targeting him and his family with illegal wiretapping and persecution. The alleged wiretapping occurred for “several months,” the letter read.
Ibáñez added that the auxiliary magistrates who work in his office have also been the target of the illegal wiretapping and did not rule out that other members of the Constitutional Court could be subject to the same illegal practices.
While the complete details of the complaint were presented in a confidential manner and are not publicly known at press time, Ibáñez reportedly became aware of the alleged illegal wiretapping this month after his cell phone began to experience technical issues, which prompted the Colombian justice to send a text message on the WhatsApp messaging platform warning his contacts about the alleged wiretapping situation.
The leaders of the four branches of the Colombian Supreme Court issued a press statement on Tuesday condemning the alleged wiretapping, stressing that if the wiretapping is verified it would put the independence of the judicial branch at risk. The message also described the alleged illegal acts as an “affront to democracy in Colombia.”
Quote:An increasingly desperate Emmanuel Macron has warned the public that “civil war” awaits France if they fail to vote for his brand of centrist neo-liberalism in the upcoming legislative elections.
Voting for either of the “two extremes” of the populist right-wing National Rally or the leftist-socialist New Popular Front will lead to “civil war”, Macron said in an interview in which he castigated the leadership of the two main opposition parties “and those who follow them”.
The embattled French leader, who’s party is trailing in third place in the snap elections he called, said that the “response of the extreme right” to France’s current problems would lead to insecurity “because it refers people to a religion or an origin, that is what divides them and pushes them towards civil war,” Le Figaro reports.
On the other hand, Macron said that the agenda of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) the leftist party at the head of the New Popular Front electoral coalition proposes a form of “communitarianism”, which he said also has a form of “civil war behind it”.
The hyperbolic comments from Macron were backed up by his second in command, 35-year-old Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who said on Monday: “La France Insoumise feeds the National Rally and the National Rally feeds La France Insoumise with speeches of division, hatred, stigmatisation, which feed off each other.”
“In our country, some people have hatred, impulses, desires to attack certain communities or certain French people… Probably the victory of the extremes would release these impulses and could lead to violence.”
Quote:The left-wing Labour Party will reportedly establish a new bureaucracy to push forward the ‘net zero’ green agenda if it wins the July 4th general election.
In the mad dash towards eliminating carbon emissions in Britain, Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer’s transition team, headed by former top bureaucrat and Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray will look to establish an “Office of Net Zero”, Sky News reports.
Gray — known for leading the investigation into the lockdown party scandal which contributed to the collapse of the Boris Johnson government before controversially jumping ship and joining the Labour Party — will reportedly seek to draft a group of civil servants dedicated to speeding up the green transition.
While Labour has tried to make the green agenda a point of differentiation with the governing Conservatives, in reality, there is little room between the two Westminster establishment parties on the issue.
Indeed, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak already established the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Desnez) last year, although the office only has an oversight role while Labour’s reported plans would make their office more active in policy.
Further demonstrating the similarities between the two establishment parties, Labour set out its leftist vision of decarbonising the power system by the end of the decade, while the supposedly conservative party has promised to do so by 2035.
Under the “Conservatives”, the government also banned fracking, meaning that the country was more susceptible to international price shocks such as those sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Quote:A guard of honour and a lavish banquet awaited Japan’s Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako in London on Tuesday as King Charles III was set to receive them at the start of a three-day state visit to Britain.
The couple, who arrived on Saturday and held informal engagements over the weekend, were to be met by the British monarch and Queen Camilla on Horse Guards Parade in central London at around noon.
The three days of pomp and pageantry will begin with royal salutes, the firing of guns and the playing of the two countries’ national anthems, while Naruhito, 64, and Charles, 75, will inspect the guard of honour.
The royals will then travel the short distance to Buckingham Palace in a carriage procession.
The king, hosting his first state visit since it was revealed in February that he has cancer, will later take the emperor and empress to a special exhibition of items from the Royal Collection relating to Japan.
They then head to Westminster Abbey to lay a wreath at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior.
The state banquet at Buckingham Palace — the showpiece of a state visit to the UK — will take place in the evening.
Quote:The Norwegian government on Tuesday signed a deal to start stockpiling grain, saying the COVID-19 pandemic, a war in Europe and climate change have made it necessary.
The deal to store 30,000 tons of grain was signed by agriculture and food minister Geir Pollestad and four private companies. The wheat, that will belong to the Norwegian government, will be stored by the companies in facilities across the country.
In a statement, Norway´s ministry for agriculture and food said “the building up of a contingency stock of food grains is about being prepared for the unthinkable.”
Norway will sign further stockpiling contracts in the coming years, with the goal of building up the reserve until 2029. The aim is to have some 82,500 tons of grain in store by the end of the decade “so that we then have enough grain for three months´ consumption by Norway´s population in a crisis situation that may arise,” Pollestad told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
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As of the first quarter of this year, Norway has 5.6 million inhabitants.
Last year, the Scandinavian nation said that it would spend 63 million kroner ($6 million) per year on stocking up on grain.
Norway had stored grain in the 1950s but closed down its storage sites in 2003 after deciding they were no longer needed.
All this effort for just 3 months worth of grain!? I don't get it, guys.
Quote:Populist surge or not in the recent elections, centrists still dominate the European Union and Merkel acolyte and arch-globalist Ursula von der Leyen is set up for another term at the top job despite having presided over a dramatic decline in economic welfare and the erosion of individual liberties.
Despite significant gains from conservatives and populists in the European Parliament elections earlier this month, neo-liberal and leftist factions within Brussels closed ranks to agree on the European Council nomination of German politician Ursula von der Leyen for a second term as the president of the European Commission, the top post in the bloc.
The nomination came, POLITICO reports, as a result of an agreement between six negotiators, including Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk representing Von der Leyen’s globalist-centrist European People’s Party, the socialists, represented by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez, and the neo-liberals represented by French President Emmanuel Macron and outgoing Dutch PM Mark Rutte.
Despite Von der Leyen showing interest before the EU elections of potentially including the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) led by Italian PM Giorgia Meloni in a coalition, this was shot down by the socialists and liberals, who demanded that Meloni be barred from talks as a pre-requisite for supporting a second term for the EU chief.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán slammed the closed-loop negotiations, saying on Tuesday that the deal backing Von der Leyen was “made with the leftists and the liberals runs against everything that the EU was based on.”
“Instead of inclusion, it sows the seeds of division. EU top officials should represent every member state, not just leftists and liberals!” the populist leader added.
Quote:Outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, so spectacularly rejected by his own voters in last year’s elections, has been confirmed as the next Secretary General of NATO, and will take up the post later this year.
Mark Rutte, who fell from grace in the Netherlands over the migration crisis and his aggressively unwavering implementation of European Union green directives that critics said would have destroyed Dutch agriculture, will be the next Secretary General (SG) of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The departure of Jens Stoltenberg in October, after his term was extended, will come at a critical time for the defensive alliance after it became massively involved in the defence of a non-member state, Ukraine, from Russian aggression.
When his term ends later this year, Stoltenberg will have been Secretary General for ten years, the longest of any SG since the end of the Cold War.
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Rutte’s appointment appears to confirm the emerging 21st century norm that Secretary Generals of NATO are the former Prime Ministers of small northern European countries. He will be the fourth Dutch NATO leader, meaning the country will have had more SGs than any other NATO state.
Stoltenberg wrote of his successor on Wednesday: “Mark is a true transatlanticist, a strong leader and a consensus-builder. I wish him every success as we continue to strengthen NATO. I know I am leaving NATO in good hands.”
Indeed, while Rutte is unmistakably part of the elite European centrist-globalist managerial class and pursued the European agenda as the Prime Minister of the Netherlands to the very breaking point of the electorate, he is also regarded as a “Trump whisperer” who gets along well with the man who may be the next U.S. President. As previously reported:
While the men may not agree on their political views, Rutte has been diplomatic towards Trump in the past and even chided other European leaders for their non-stop criticism of the former President.
In 2019, Rutte said he felt annoyed by the “white wine-sipping elite” who rolled their eyes at Trump’s criticism of bodies like NATO, saying the President was right to point out they had problems and needed to improve… [Rutte] pointed out that, in fact, the former President was right to point out how little some European states pay for their defence, in defiance of their NATO treaty obligations. Amid the news cycle of commentators losing their heads over Trump’s latest NATO comments, which as a report at the time noted the more grounded leaders realised should be taken “seriously but not literally”, Rutte had said “We should stop moaning and whining and nagging about Trump”.
Quote:Sergei Melikov, the governor of Dagestan, said on Monday that Islamic “sleeper cells” under foreign direction carried out the bloody attacks on churches and synagogues that killed at least 21 people on Sunday.
The Islamic State congratulated the attackers but did not take direct responsibility for the slaughter.
Russian police said they killed five gunmen in an “anti-terrorist operation” to end the killings in the cities of Makhachkala and Derbent on Sunday. Before they were brought down, the terrorists attacked two Orthodox churches, two synagogues, and a police checkpoint.
A 66-year-old Russian Orthodox priest, Rev. Nikolai Kotelnikov, was among the murder victims. Sunday was the Pentecost or Trinity Sunday holiday on the Orthodox calendar.
The official death toll from the attack rose to 21 on Tuesday after a police officer succumbed to his wounds in the hospital. Sixteen of the dead were police officers, according to Dagestan officials. Another 46 people were injured, including 13 police officers.
Russian officials have revealed few details about the attackers, probably because the regime of strongman Vladimir Putin is still calculating the best political use of the crime. Although Dagestan has a history of Islamist extremism, and ISIS perpetrated a horrific massacre at a concert hall in Moscow three months ago, Russian officials quickly suggested Ukraine, the United States, and NATO could be the true masterminds behind the Dagestan attack.
Putin also tried to blame the March massacre on shadowy Western puppet masters, even though ISIS took credit for the attack. On Monday, an ISIS-affiliated Russian-language outfit called Al Azaim Media applauded the Dagestan massacre and claimed ISIS inspired it, but stopped short of claiming direct responsibility or identifying the killers as Islamic State operatives.
“Our recent call did not keep us waiting long,” Al Azaim Media wrote, implying the attackers responded to calls for violence from Islamic State leadership.
“Our brothers from the Caucasus let us know that they are still strong. They showed what they are capable of,” the statement said.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in Washington, D.C. said on Monday that Wilayat Kavkaz, the Islamic State branch in the Northern Caucasus, was the likely perpetrator of the “complex and coordinated attack.”
ISW pointed to social media video that appeared to show Russian police capturing two suspects in the attack alive on a public beach and a post on Telegram from a source close to Russian security services that identified two of the attackers in Makhachkala as the sons of a Dagestani official named Magomed Omarov.
Police raided Omarov’s house on Sunday night, detained him for questioning, and local officials sacked him from his position as a district official. He was also expelled from the Putin-supporting United Russia political party, which scrubbed his profile from its website.
Quote:An unnamed official of the Kenyan Interior Ministry told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday that a force of police officers is finally ready to depart for Haiti after almost a year of political and legal hurdles.
If the information the Interior Ministry official and police sources provided is accurate, two “advance teams” have already been dispatched, and an unspecified number of police officers will depart for Haiti on Tuesday.
Kenyan President William Ruto has been promising to send a thousand Kenyan police officers to Haiti since July 2023, an offer the United States and United Nations welcomed, as Haiti has degenerated into gangland chaos since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021. The Haitian government is clearly unable to control the gangs on its own, but no major power is eager to put troops on the ground.
The U.N. Security Council (UNSC) voted to authorize Kenyan deployment to Haiti in October 2023. It was the first time the UNSC authorized a multinational intervention since the African Union sent forces into Somalia to fight Islamist gangs in 2007.
Ruto’s deployment plan was blocked in January by Kenya’s high court, which ruled the president lacked the constitutional authority to deploy police on foreign soil. Kenyan opposition leaders vowed to file more lawsuits to prevent Ruto from sending officers to Haiti.
Ruto told the BBC in May that he had, nevertheless, sent a “planning team” to Haiti and would commence his deployment at the earliest opportunity. The Biden administration urged all relevant parties to withdraw their objections and allow the deployment to commence, stung by the murder of three missionaries by gangsters, two of them American citizens.
“We shouldn’t be losing people. We shouldn’t be losing missionaries. We are doing this to stop more people from losing their lives to gangs,” Ruto told the BBC.
Quote:Kenyan President William Ruto announced on Wednesday morning that he would back down from signing a proposed tax hike bill that prompted a series of TikTok-fueled riots that left at least 13 dead and dozens injured.
Ruto, who was elected in 2022 after successfully running as an anti-China candidate seeking to reduce the communist nation’s growing influence on Kenya, was slated to sign a finance bill into law that included tax increases targeting a wide array of goods and services, ranging from bread to car insurance. Ruto previously asserted that the tax hikes were necessary to balance the budget of the economically struggling nation.
Opponents of the bill communicated on the Chinese TikTok social media platform to organize protests and riots against the Kenyan government. The protests escalated on Tuesday as local lawmakers voted to pass the bill; protesters stormed the premises of the Kenyan Parliament, and there were reports of police responding by firing live ammunition.
Tuesday’s reports indicated that the riots left at least five dead and at least 45 injured, including Auma Obama, former U.S. President Barack Obama’s 64-year-old sister.
Ruto — who, on Tuesday, claimed that the protesters had been infiltrated by “criminals” and “hijacked by dangerous people” — addressed his nation on Wednesday morning, announcing that he would “concede” to the protesters’ demands and would thus not sign the finance bill into law.
“Listening keenly to the people of Kenya who have said loudly that they want nothing to do with this Finance Bill 2024, I concede,” Ruto said. “And, therefore, I will not sign the 2024 Finance Bill, and it shall, subsequently, be withdrawn. The people have spoken.”
It sounds a bit strange or even laughable to hear that he will send troops and cops to Haiti to stop the very same kind of events that had taken place in Kenya itself in the past few days.
"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:CNN is touting the rules for Thursday night’s debate between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, showing how the microphones will work, with one candidate’s mic muted as the other is speaking, per Biden’s direct request.
CNN had a segment on Wednesday showcasing how the microphones will work during the debate. Each candidate has two green lights, and when they are on, it signals to the candidate that his microphone is on and ready to go. When they are off, the microphone is off.
CNN demonstrated what it will look like when one candidate tries to talk over the other, making the interruptions of the other “difficult to understand.”
The New York Times revealed that the muted mics were “another Biden request, intended to guard against Mr. Trump’s penchant for interrupting and speaking over debate opponents.”
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That is not the only Biden request. As was previously reported, there will be no live audience at this debate. This is also a request from the Biden campaign, as it made it clear the 81-year-old is not interested in dealing with reactions from a live audience.
The campaign detailed this demand in a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates, in which it provided notice that it would not participate in commission debates. However, it explained its reasoning behind no audiences in that letter.
It read in part:
The debates should be conducted for the benefit of the American voters, watching on television and at home – not as entertainment for an in-person audience with raucous or disruptive partisans and donors, who consume valuable debate time with noisy spectacles of approval or jeering.
As was the case with the original televised debates in 1960, a television studio with just the candidates and moderators is a better, more cost-effective way to proceed: focused solely on the interests of voters.
Indeed, the Times also confirmed that the Biden campaign demanded no audience for this network debate as well.
Quote:The CIA interfered in the 2020 election by colluding with the Biden campaign to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story, a congressional report found Tuesday.
“It’s inappropriate for a currently serving staff officer or contractor to be involved in the political process,” former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell acknowledged to Congress during its investigation of the incident.
In 2020, 51 ex-spies signed an infamous letter that called reporting on Hunter’s laptop “Russian disinformation” ahead of the election. Current Secretary of State Antony Blinken allegedly coordinated the story for political purposes.
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.
President Joe Biden cited the story during a presidential debate with Trump to discredit the contents of the laptop.
The House Judiciary report on Monday alleged three key facts about the CIA’s involvement in the 2020 election:
• High ranking CIA officials, up to and including then-CIA Director Gina Haspel, were made aware of the Hunter Biden statement prior to its approval and publication. Because several former senior intelligence officials signed the statement, the PCRB sent the draft statement to the CIA’s then-Chief Operating Officer (COO) Andrew Makridis, who said he subsequently informed then-Director Haspel or then-Deputy Director Vaughn Frederick Bishop that the statement would be published soon. Senior CIA leadership had an opportunity at that time to slow down the CIA’s process for reviewing publication submissions and ensure that such an extraordinary statement was properly vetted.
• Some of the statement’s signatories, including Michael Morell, were on active contract with the CIA at the time of the Hunter Biden statement’s publication. Throughout the course of the Committees’ investigation, the signatories claimed to not have had access to any classified information when asserting that the allegations surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the hallmarks” of Russian disinformation. However, at the time of the statement’s publication, at least two signatories—Morell and former CIA Inspector General David Buckley—were on the CIA’s payroll as contractors. Due to purported operational concerns, the CIA declined to declassify the entire universe of signatories who were on active contract. In addition, some signatories to the Hunter Biden statement also had special “Green Card” access to the CIA at the time of the statement’s publication, allowing them to gain entry to secure CIA facilities.
• After publication of the Hunter Biden statement, CIA employees internally expressed concern about the statement’s politicized content, acknowledging it was not “helpful to the Agency in the long run.” At least one employee found it “[i]nteresting to see what was submitted and approved” when discussing media talking points that the statement’s co-author, former Senior Intelligence Service Officer Marc Polymeropoulos, submitted related to the statement. When discussing Polymeropoulos’s talking points, another CIA official stated, “It appears [Polymeropoulos] is actively involved in a pro-Biden campaign and may be disclosing classified information in his efforts.” The CIA’s internal review board, known as the Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB), determined that Polymeropoulos’s talking points contained classified information that had to be removed prior to publication.
Former DNI Clapper Doesn't Regret Lying About Hunter's Laptop
Later on the FBI confirmed it was Hunter's anyway.
Quote:Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the House Judiciary Committee last year that he did not regret signing the infamous 2020 letter of 51 former intelligence officials suggesting the Hunter Biden laptop was fake.
Clapper and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Brennan were two of the most prominent figures to sign the letter. They were also key players in the discredited “Russia collusion” hoax against then-President Donald Trump.
The laptop had incriminating evidence of apparent crimes by Hunter Biden, and evidence to suggest that then-candidate Joe Biden had been implicated in his son’s business affairs and influence-peddling.
As Breitbart News noted at the time, the letter suggested that the laptop was a product of a Russian “information” (i.e. disinformation) campaign.
The House Judiciary Committee released transcripts of closed-door interviews with Clapper, Brennan, and other officials who signed the letter. Earlier testimony had revealed the role of Antony Blinken — now Secretary of State — and former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell in circulating the letter to help Biden in the last presidential debate.
And now you know why Blinken is doing a lousy job as a Secretary of State.
Quote:Harvard University is being criticized for the preliminary recommendations of its antisemitism task force, which were released Monday alongside recommendations from a task force on Anti-Muslim bias, creating what critics call a “false equivalence.”
The task forces were established after a pattern of pervasive antisemitism on campus became clear in the aftermath of the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas against Israel. Student groups blamed Israel for the terror; pro-Palestinian activists set up an “encampment” that disrupted student life and intimidated Jewish students; and faculty and staff, including former president Claudine Gay, either acted too slowly or actually endorsed antisemitic rhetoric on campus.
After the two reports were released, with the report on “anti-Muslim and anti-Arab” bias clearly intended to appease those who claim that antisemitism is used to deflect criticism of Israel, critics repeated their dissatisfaction with the university administration.
Harvard Chabad issued a statement declaring that the fact that the university had failed “to understand the severity of what is happening at Harvard and in the world at this moment,” and had suggested that “there’s an inability to focus on antisemitism without making false equivalencies.”
The antisemitism task force was plagued from the start by accusations of anti-Israel bias against its chairman, and it also suffered the resignation of several members. Its preliminary report acknowledges pervasive bias across campus against pro-Israel students in general and against Israeli students in particular.
The task force also says that many students “believe that extracurricular student life is now characterized by political litmus tests [i.e. against Israel] that make it impossible for some students to participate in activities because of political views unrelated to the activity.”
The committee recommends that diversity, equity, and inclusion training include training on anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish prejudice, and that the campus host contentious dialogues to show students how to disagree respectfully.
Quote:An illegal alien, released into the United States by President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has been accused of murdering a young woman on her twenty-first birthday in the sanctuary state of New York, prosecutors say.
Jhon Moises Chacaguasay-Ilbis, a 21-year-old illegal alien from Ecuador, was arrested in Syracuse, New York, and charged with second-degree murder and concealing a human corpse.
According to prosecutors, Chacaguasay-Ilbis allegedly strangled Joselyn Jhoana Toaquiza to death on her 21st birthday on June 18 and then threw her body in a shallow grave at a Syracuse park.
Prosecutors said they have evidence that Chacaguasay-Ilbis and Toaquiza knew each other from elementary school back in Ecuador. It is unclear when Toaquiza first arrived in the United States.
On Thursday, while being arraigned in a Syracuse criminal court, Chacaguasay-Ilbis said he had no memory of the events of the day in question because he was drunk.
Prosecutors said Chacaguasay-Ilbis is an illegal alien who first crossed the southern border in January 2023 near El Paso, Texas. After being briefly detained, prosecutors said, Chacaguasay-Ilbis was released from DHS custody into the United States interior.
Chacaguasay-Ilbis is in custody at the Onondaga County Justice Center without bail, though that could change after a second court hearing in early July.
Quote:Louisville, Kentucky’s police chief has resigned after less than a year on the job following a sexual harassment scandal and the botched arrest of top-ranked golfer Scottie Scheffler.
Former Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel handed in her resignation notice Tuesday after being suspended due to “the mishandling of a sexual harassment claim about an officer,” the Daily Mail reported.
Gwinn-Villaroel’s resignation followed the release of an audio recording from a May 22 meeting where she promoted Major Brian Kuriger to a senior leadership role less than a minute after Major Shannon Lauder accused him of sexually harassing and attacking her.
“We’ll have to revisit on the status moving forward,” Gwinn-Villaroel is heard telling Lauder in audio obtained by USA Today.
In a press conference following the public release of the recording, Lauder’s attorney, Jared Smith, said Gwinn-Villaroel’s tone was “aggressive” and “threatening.”
While Smith did not give additional details regarding an attack or sexual harassment, he disclosed that he had been retained by Lauder prior to the May 22 meeting and had been investigating allegations that spanned the last four years.
Gwinn-Villaroel was suspended from her role after this scandal came to light before two additional officers filed lawsuits against LMPD, also alleging sexual harassment.
The waters appeared to be muddied when Shannon Lauder’s husband, Lt. Jeff Lauder, was named as an employee who allegedly propositioned plaintiff Sgt. Lauren Carby for sex at a party in 2020, USA Today reported. This action was allegedly “encouraged” by Shannon Lauder.
The other lawsuit, filed by Officer Christine Silk, accused two male officers of sexual harassment. One was identified as Silk’s field training officer, Justin LeMon, who she claims sent her unsolicited nude photos after she declined his advances.
Kuriger, LeMon, and both Lauders have all been placed on administrative leave.
Gwinn-Villaroel, who had only been in the permanent chief position since July 2023, was also marred by the Scottie Scheffler scandal after the number-one athlete was arrested outside of the PGA Championships in May.
After being accused of “assaulting” a traffic cop while trying to enter Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, a judge dismissed all charges against the champion golfer after video footage revealed that he did not.
Quote:Authorities reportedly believe that “multiple people” should be charged in the death of Friends star Matthew Perry. Charlie Sheen’s ex-wife Brooke Mueller, meanwhile, is being questioned by police.
As the investigation into Perry’s ketamine-related death comes close to an end, police believe “multiple people” should be charged, a law enforcement investigative source told People.
The source reportedly added that the U.S. Attorney’s Office will ultimately decide on whether or not to press charges.
Meanwhile, actor Charlie Sheen’s ex-wife actress Brooke Mueller has been interviewed “multiple” times by police regarding Perry’s death after the two became friends during their stints in rehab, according to a report by In Touch Weekly.
Mueller is reportedly cooperating with authorities and has not been arrested.
“She’s hired lawyers and has had multiple meetings with law enforcement since they arrived at her sober living house with a search warrant. She’s being tight-lipped about the situation,” a source told the magazine.
“It’s tough to say or know exactly what her role is [in Matthew’s death], but she’s adamant she had nothing to do with that,” the source added.
While Mueller has not been handcuffed or arrested, authorities have reportedly seized her iPhone and laptop.
As Breitbart News reported, Perry, forever immortalized as Chandler Bing on the hit 1990s sitcom Friends, died on October 28 at the age of 54.
An autopsy report released in December by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner revealed that the actor’s cause of death was listed as acute effects of ketamine.
Drowning, coronary artery disease, and buprenorphine, which is used to treat opioid use disorder, were also listed as contributing factors.
Perry was found dead under the water in his hot tub by an employee at his Los Angeles home in October.
While the public speculated that Perry might have taken illicit drugs, given his history of addiction and decades-long substance abuse, an initial toxicology test showed there was no fentanyl or meth in his system at the time of his death, which tracked with the actor’s claim that he had been sober the two and a half years leading up to his death.
LATIN AMERICA
Lula Thinks Milei Offended Him and the Brazilian People
Quote:President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil threatened to damage the longstanding friendly ties between his country and neighboring Argentina in an interview on Wednesday, demanding an apology from Argentina President Javier Milei for the latter’s criticism of his corruption and socialist policies.
Lula was notably absent from Milei’s inauguration as president in December and has been vocally critical of the world’s first third-party libertarian president, who in turn had, prior to his election, condemned Lula as an authoritarian ruler akin to dictators Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia. Milei had suggested in an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson in September that he would not “do business” with “communists” such as Lula.
Milei also repeatedly referred to the Brazilian president as a “communist” and a “thief” – a reference to his multiple convictions on charges of corruption during his first two terms in office, and said he would not meet with Lula if given the chance.
“I didn’t talk to the president of Argentina because I think that he should apologize to Brazil and to me, he said a lot of nonsense, I just want him to apologize,” Lula said in an interview with the Brazilian news outlet UOL on Wednesday. Lula was referring to the leaders encountering each other at the G7 summit in Italy, where both Argentina and Brazil have stated that they “greeted” each other politely but did not speak to each other.
Milei has never offended the Brazilian population, just stated how corrupt Lula actually is and that's all.
People Are Afraid of Petro Never Leaving the Presidency
Quote:A poll published on Wednesday found that 62 percent of Colombians believe the nation’s radical leftist President Gustavo Petro will try to modify the country’s Constitution to stay in power beyond his presidential term.
The survey, conducted by the Colombian research agency Invamer, was conducted in Colombia’s main cities between June 15-23. Invamer found that Petro’s disapproval ratings reached 62 percent in June, marking a two percent increase from April. The highest disapproval ratings were documented in the inland city of Medellín, where 77 percent of respondents disapproved of his performance as president, while the lowest disapproval rating, 48 percent, was found in the city of Cartagena.
Among several other questions asked in the poll, Invamer asked respondents if they believed Petro would attempt to pursue another term in office, which is currently unConstitutional in Colombia. The poll found that 67 percent of respondents believe Petro will try to change the Colombian Constitution, while 62 percent said they believed Petro would do so specifically to stay in power.
Colombia’s current Constitution was implemented in 1991 as the result of a Constitutional process that included the participation of the Marxist M19 terrorist guerrilla. Petro has repeatedly and proudly boasted to have been a part of M19 during his youth.
Historically, the South American nation has not allowed a president to be reelected. Between 1910 and 2005, a Colombian president was only able to serve for a single term without any possibility of being reelected. In 2005, the Colombian Constitution was amended to allow a president to run for a second four-year term, allowing former conservative President Álvaro Uribe Vélez to be reelected for a second term until 2010. Uribe’s successor, Juan Manuel Santos, was also able to serve for two terms after being reelected in 2014.
The Colombian Constitution was once again amended in 2015, reversing the changes to presidential term limits and restoring the single four-year term limit.
Gustavo Petro, who took office in August 2022 and became the first leftist president in Colombia’s history, has spent almost half of his term unsuccessfully attempting to introduce leftist reforms to Colombia’s health, economic, political, labor, and social systems, none of which have passed in Congress. The reforms are unpopular – 60 percent of respondents in Invamer’s latest poll expressed disagreement with Petro’s reforms.
EUROPE
Greek Police Officer Attacked While Protecting Judge
Quote:A Greek police officer guarding the house of a top judge was hospitalized with burns after a gasoline bomb attack in Athens early Thursday, authorities said.
The motive for the predawn attack in a city suburb was not clear and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Police said gasoline bombs were thrown at the officer by unknown people who escaped. The officer, who suffered face and arm injuries, was stationed outside the house of Supreme Court President Ioanna Klapa, which was not damaged. A nearby police car was severely damaged.
Government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis condemned the attack and said it was an “absolute priority” for authorities to arrest the perpetrators.
Police, and more rarely other symbols of authority, are frequently targeted by Greek far-left militants, although attacks leading to death or severe injury have declined in recent years.
Quote:Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman traveled to Beijing on Tuesday to meet with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun and Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice-chair of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and China’s highest-ranking uniformed official.
The meeting suggests the Saudis are turning to China for defense cooperation after four years of disastrous relations with the administration of American President Joe Biden.
The Saudi state press agency said several other high-ranking officials traveled to Beijing with the defense minister to discuss stronger relations with China and increased military “coordination efforts,” as Prince Khalid put it.
The Chinese Defense Ministry published a summary of Khalid’s meeting with Dong that said Saudi Arabia and China are ready to “raise bilateral military ties to a higher level.”
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) noted that Saudi Arabia has taken several concrete steps during the Biden presidency to solidify its military relationship with China, its largest trading partner and biggest oil customer:
China’s state-owned defense industry displayed the latest model FC-31, its fifth-generation fighter jet, and more than 30 unmanned aerial vehicles at the World Defence Show in Riyadh in February, hoping to ramp up exports to the region.
The Chinese and Saudi navies also held a joint counterterrorism exercise in October, against the backdrop of the Israel-Gaza war.
In addition to their growing military ties, China and Saudi Arabia have deepened their cooperation in a range of other fields, including artificial intelligence and infrastructure.
Quote:Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) continued his first trip to Israel on Wednesday by meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
“We stand with Israel through this. I’m so sorry for what’s been done to this nation but I’m just honored to be here today,” Fetterman said, in a statement distributed by the prime minister’s office.
The hoodie-wearing first-term U.S. Senator has bucked the “progressive” left by standing with Israel and supporting its war against Hamas, which began after Hamas carried out a brutal terror attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
Netanyahu welcomed Fetterman, saying that “Israel has had no better friend than Senator John Fetterman”:
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Netanyahu’s full statement, as provided by the prime minister’s office, was as follows:
We’ve been through dark times in these months of anguish war. During that time, I can say that Israel has had no better friend than Senator John Fetterman. Senator, welcome to Israel.
I want to thank you for your courageous statements that show moral clarity and moral courage and you just say it the way it is. We appreciate this friendship at all times but especially at these times. So welcome, friend.
Quote:Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or “Doctors Without Borders,” denied Wednesday that its “colleague,” Fadi Al-Wadiya was also an Islamic Jihad terrorist — but the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) produced photos of him in uniform.
As Breitbart News noted earlier Wednesday, Fadi Al-Wadiya was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday. He was a senior member of the Iranian-backed terror group, responsible for directing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.
Doctors Without Borders claimed that Al-Wadiya was just a physical therapist “on his way to work.” It denied that he was a terrorist, and produced a photograph of him treating a child in Gaza in 2022.
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But the IDF produced photos showing Al-Wadiya in military fatigues, wearing the Islamic Jihad uniform:
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The Times of Israel noted:
The IDF said he was a prominent member of Islamic Jihad, involved in developing missiles for the terror group, as well as being an electronics and chemistry expert.
Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, says al-Wadiya worked for Islamic Jihad’s rocket manufacturing unit for more than 15 years.
He attaches three images showing al-Wadiya in Islamic Jihad uniform.
Quote:Senior Hamas official Khaled Meshaal told Sky News on Thursday that Gaza had been “destroyed” as a result of the war Hamas began on October 7, but that the destruction was “part of the “march of our people toward liberation.”
The Times of Israel reported:
In an interview with Sky News Arabic today, Mashaal acknowledges the damage wrought to the territory in the aftermath of the October 7 attack. “Gaza is now destroyed,” he says. “Every fair-minded person sees that this is absolutely true.”
However, he says, this is all part of the “march of our people toward liberation.”
Meshaal was once the leader of Hamas’s political bureau, and is reported to have built a net worth of some $4 billion in comfortable exile in Doha, Qatar.
Asked about Meshaal’s comments, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said: “The IDF has released evidence today, that — far from the usual narrative that is put out so widely about the majority of properties in Gaza being destroyed — the IDF statistics show that only 17% of structures have been destroyed in Gaza, not the much higher figures which have been quoted by other organizations.”
As for Meshaal’s “willingness to sacrifice his own people for their so-called ‘march toward liberation’,” Mencer said that it was “important for people that wish to see a better future … that we engage in activity that brings people together towards a better future … the only ‘liberation’ which there is, is liberating Gaza from Hamas.”
At the end of the day, Hamas doesn't care about civilians. They're nothing but their human shields.
"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:A letter signed by 16 top economists warning of the economic dangers of electing former President Trump, which is being amplified by the Biden campaign and other Biden surrogates, is littered with signatories who have either donated to Biden or supported him politically in the past.
"While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden's economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump," the economists wrote in a letter first reported on by Axios this week that has been promoted by various members of the Biden campaign on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The letter’s Nobel Prize-winning signatories show political donations to President Biden's 2020 and 2024 campaigns. The signatories also donated tens of thousands of dollars to other Democrat candidates and signed previous letters supporting Biden's agenda, including attacking "selfish and reckless" Trump, a Fox News Digital review found.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University professor who reportedly spearheaded the letter, previously signed a letter supporting Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and donated $1,250 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020.
Between 2004 and 2020, Stiglitz donated over $90,000 to Democrat candidates, FEC records show.
Georgetown University Professor George A. Akerlof, who is married to Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, donated $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund and maxed out as a donor in 2020, giving the campaign $5,600.
Akerlof, who donated nearly $90,000 to Democrats between the 1990s and 2022, also signed a letter supporting Build Back Better, and signed a letter in 2020 calling Trump’s re-election effort "selfish and reckless."
Harvard University economist and historian Claudia Goldin donated $500 to the Biden campaign in 2020 and 2024 and has donated over $8,000 to Democrats in recent years. Goldin also signed a 2020 letter endorsing the Biden campaign.
Economist and mathematician Eric Maskin signed a 2020 letter expressing support for the Biden campaign’s agenda and donated $3,000 to Democrats in recent years, including Senate candidates Raphael Warnock, Beto O’Rourke and Jon Ossoff.
When reached for comment on his background supporting Biden and Democrats, Maskin said, "Although I am a registered Democrat and have donated money to Democratic candidates on occasion, I have also voted for many Republicans over the years (including Bill Weld and Charlie Baker for governor of Massachusetts)" in a statement to Fox News Digital.
He added that he considers himself to "be more a centrist than a strong partisan in either ideological direction" and pointed to an op-ed he recently wrote against political polarization in favor of a Republican senator and "supported the 2020 Biden agenda on its economic merits and signed the recent letter for the same reasons."
Quote:No surrogates for President Joe Biden appeared to be in the CNN spin room immediately following the presidential debate, prompting confusion from the press.
“Dozens” of reporters were left waiting with only people from former President Donald Trump’s camp, Daily Caller correspondent Henry Rodgers posted on X, citing MSNBC coverage.
While the Democrats’ team was seemingly absent, “endless Trump surrogates are on the spin room floor speaking to press,” Rodgers noted.
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“The spin room is full of Trump surrogates,” said Axios reporter Alex Thompson. “No one from Biden’s camp we can see.”
He added that “reporters keep asking each other if they have seen any of them.”
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“Biden surrogates have abandoned the spin room,” said conservative radio host Erick Erickson.
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When Biden’s surrogates — which included California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) — finally arrived, they were completely swarmed by the press.
Quote:During MSNBC’s debate coverage on Thursday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) responded to President Joe Biden’s performance by stating that “We’ve all had those nights. All of us, not one person watching, hasn’t had those nights.” And “You don’t turn your back because of one performance.” Newsom also stated that the talk about the panic among Democrats over Biden’s performance is “unhelpful to our democracy, the fate and future of this country, and the world.”
After Newsom defended Biden on substance, host Alex Wagner asked, “I feel like, on the signature issue that Democrats have, which is abortion, the President’s response was garbled and undirected, at best. Do you feel like he did what he needed to do on an issue that could motivate voters at the polls?”
Newsom responded, “I think it’s significantly insignificant, because it’s de minimis, because the American people have made up their mind. They don’t support the policies of Donald Trump. They certainly don’t support his policies or his assertion somehow that the American people always wanted this to be states’ rights, which is laughable and absurd. So, from that perspective, I don’t think that will matter.”
He added that Democrats should “worry less and do more. We have the opportunity to turn the page, we have the opportunity to put our heads down, we have the opportunity to universally have the back of this President, who’s had our back. You don’t turn your back. You go home with the one that brought you to the dance, 100%, all in. And I was very, very proud that he was able to articulate the work that he has done and lay a foundation of understanding of the lies and the deceit that continue to come out of Donald Trump’s mouth.”
Wagner then asked, “You were out there getting a chorus of questions about whether Biden should step down. There is panic that has set in among people who have watched this debate, who are Democrats, people who are strategists, and some, even inside Democratic campaigns. Do you think it’s unfounded?”
After Wagner said there is panic, Newsom said, “There shouldn’t be.”
At the end of Wagner’s question, he stated, “I think it’s unhelpful. And I think it’s unnecessary. We’ve got to go in, we’ve got to keep our heads high, and as I say, we’ve got to have the back of this President. You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that? It’s been a masterclass, 15.6 million jobs, that’s eight times more than the last three Republican presidents combined. The only thing the last three Republican presidents have in common is recessions. Democrats delivered. This President has delivered. We need to deliver for him at this moment. With all due respect, the more time — we start having these conversations, go down these rabbit hole[s], [it’s] unhelpful to our democracy, the fate and future of this country, and the world.”
Newsom added that Biden gained “stamina” as the night went on.
Later, when asked if Biden should do the next debate, Newsom answered, “Absolutely. We’ve all had those nights. All of us, not one person watching, hasn’t had those nights. … You have good moments, you have bad moments.”
Quote:CNN political commentator Van Jones said Thursday on CNN’s post-presidential Debate that President Joe Biden’s debate performance was so bad that he should let Democrats go on without him.
Jones said, “That was painful. I love Joe Biden. I worked for Joe Biden. He didn’t do well at all. He did not do well at all.”
He added, “I’ll give you the analysis. You kind of have the old man versus the con man. I can walk you through how it’s supposed to see it and say it, but I just want to speak for my heart I love that guy. As a good man he loves his country. He’s doing the best that he can. But he had a test to meet tonight to restore confidence of the country and of the base and he failed to do that. I think there’s a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now, we’re still far from our convention. And there is time for this party to figure out a different way forward, if he will allow us to do that but that was not what we needed from Joe Biden and his personally painful for a lot of people. It’s not just panic, its pain of what we saw tonight.”
Quote:CNN host Chris Wallace said Thursday on CNN’s post-presidential debate that President Joe Biden could not recover from his debate performance.
Host Erin Burnett said, “Chris, he goes through six days of preparation at Camp David, and they know the rules. He practices with the mics. He knows every one of these questions is coming. And yet he couldn’t fill the time. Now, I just want to, let’s see what the White House is saying: Sources close to the White House are saying he had a cold, wasn’t feeling well. I mean, as you would expect, that came out early on in the debate. But what accounts for someone with so much experience doing so much preparation and this being outcome?”
Wallace said, “Honestly, I think the question answers itself. He wasn’t capable of doing any better than he did.”
He continued, “He was incapable tonight. On the biggest of stages that he sought, he in effect, dictated. And with all of that preparation, he was incapable of doing better than he was. And you can’t come back from that.”
Wallace added, “You can’t be on a stage where tens of millions of Americans watched you and come up empty. And that’s what he did tonight.”
Quote:MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said Thursday following the presidential debate that President Joe Biden’s inner circle is discussing if he should be in the presidential race.
Wallace said, “I was on the phones for some of it after that became clear, and there is a conversation happening inside Biden’s circle, and certainly a much more frank conversation happening inside the Democratic coalition, and I think there will be stories of a lot of concern about the performance tonight.”
Host Rachel Maddow said, “When you say conversations are happening, what do you mean?”
Wallace said, “I think conversations range from whether he should be in this race tomorrow morning to what was wrong with him. He has a cold that came out, Kelly O’Donnell reported that a few minutes in.”
She added, “So those things, the reason why reporters were reporting on the cold is what you articulated. The voice was very, very soft. It wasn’t the Joe Biden performance at the State of the Union. It wasn’t seizing a moment to get on the offensive on immigration. It wasn’t Joe Biden on the offensive on January 6. It wasn’t Joe Biden on the offensive on abortion. His two shining issues.”
What's Trump's take on Biden's job as the current US president?
Quote:Former U.S. President Donald Trump said during the 2024 presidential debate on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if he had remained in office.
Among other factors, Trump said Putin was emboldened by President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden countered by accusing Trump of being too willing to make a deal with the “war criminal” Putin to end the conflict.
“If we had a real president — a president that was respected by Putin — he would have never invaded Ukraine,” Trump said.
“A lot of people are dead right now, much more than people know. They talk about numbers. You can double those numbers, maybe triple those numbers,” Trump said of the casualties from the Ukraine war.
Trump said Biden did “nothing to stop it.”
“In fact, I think he encouraged Russia from going in,” Trump continued. “I’ll tell you what happened. He was so bad with Afghanistan, it was such a horrible embarrassment — the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country — that when Putin watched that, and he saw the incompetence — he should have fired those generals like I fired the one that you mentioned, so he’s got no love lost.”
This was a sarcastic aside to Biden for his earlier criticism about Trump having a tempestuous relationship with his defense secretary, Gen. Jim Mattis.
“No general got fired for the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, Afghanistan,” Trump continued. “Where we left billions of dollars of equipment behind, we lost 13 beautiful soldiers, and 38 soldiers were obliterated. And by the way, we left people behind too. We left American citizens behind.”
“When Putin saw that, he said, ‘You know what? I think we’re going to go in,’” Trump said. “This was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream. The difference is, he never would have invaded Ukraine, ever, just like Israel never would have been invaded in a million years by Hamas.”
“You know why? Because Iran was broke with me. I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything. They had no money for terror. That’s why you had no terror at all during my administration. This place, the whole world is blowing up under him,” Trump concluded.
It is difficult to argue that Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was anything but a disaster, although Biden certainly tried. Trump was fundamentally correct about the American casualties. A suicide bomb attack on the Kabul airport on August 26, 2021, that was later claimed by the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan (known as ISIS-K) killed 13 U.S. service members, as Trump indicated. His comment about “38 soldiers obliterated” was probably a reference to the Taliban shooting down a U.S. Special Forces helicopter in August 2011, during the second term of the Obama administration, when Biden was vice president.
As Trump said, Biden left $7.2 billion in U.S. military equipment behind in Afghanistan for the Taliban to capture, a figure confirmed by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR).
Trump was also correct that Biden rescinded the sanctions Trump restored on Iran after he pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal. Biden’s enforcement of sanctions against Iran became very relaxed — dangerously so, according to critics like Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA).
Quote:Populist right leader Marine Le Pen says her party would use the commanding position it is predicted to soon enjoy in the French Parliament to block President Macron from deploying soldiers to the Ukraine War.
French President Emmanuel Macron has spoken openly and repeatedly about his interest in getting directly involved in the Ukraine War, by committing his own troops there. But France is two days from kicking off a week-long, two-round parliamentary election in which the anti-war populists (National Rally, RN) led by Marine Le Pen are polled to come first, and they say they wish to block any such intervention, triggering a mini-constitutional crisis.
While as President, Macron is the chief of the armed forces and has the prerogative to deploy soldiers at will, Le Pen asserts that his position confers no ability to grant funding. Looking to a post-election situation where RN dominated the French Parliament and her party colleague Jordan Bardella is French Prime Minister, Le Pen said they would seek to block deployment by withholding money.
Polling looks good for RN, with aggregate polls placing the party in the early-to-mid 30s. But France has a two-stage election system, which has punished the RN in the past, and these runoffs can be hard to predict.
Le Pen said, reports French conservative broadsheet Le Figaro: “Chief of the armed forces, for the President is an honorary title since it is the Prime Minister who holds the purse strings… Jordan [Bardella] has no intention of picking a fight with him, but he has set red lines. On Ukraine , the president will not be able to send troops… in matters of sending troops abroad, the Prime Minister has, through budgetary control, the means of opposing it.”.
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Le Pen said she didn’t wish to “call into question” the competencies of the President, but allies of Macron immediately leapt into action to oppose what they said was an attack on the French constitution itself. France TV Info cited the remarks of Mayor Francois Bayrou, a prominent Macron supporter, who said Le Pen was “deeply” undermining the constitution, rebutting her suggestion the position of head of the army was merely honorary.
He countered that the President is: “…the one who appoints civil and military posts in the State, the one who chairs the Defense Councils, the one of whom the Constitution says in full ‘he is the head of the armies’.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has expressed his expectation that, whatever the outcome of next week’s election, the French government will still support his nation. In very clear reference to claims that Le Pen’s party has had sympathy with Vladimir Putin in the past, Zelensky said: “We believe that the French will continue to support Ukraine whatever the political situation… We are convinced that the next government will be independent of the Russian aggressor and will remain committed to European values and a strong and united Europe, the very Europe that Ukraine defends against Russian tyranny.”
Quote:Italian media outlets reacted to the first presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, with one major Italian newspaper’s headline reading, “Biden Paves the Way for Trump’s Triumph.”
“The hoarse voice and the gaffes: in the TV duel, Biden paves the way for Trump’s triumph,” a headline from the Italian newspaper la Repubblica read, adding, “Now it’s up to Jill to convince her husband to leave.”
The newspaper goes on to call the first presidential debate between Trump and Biden “a disaster for the Democratic Party,” adding that the “Democrats are in a panic.”
“It was the feared performance of the 81-year-old leader,” la Repubblica reported. “With a hoarse voice from a cold, stiff, uncertain, and at times stammering, Biden gave a fragile, uncertain, tense image of himself.”
Another report by the same newspaper stated Biden “has no chance of being re-elected.”
Meanwhile, another major Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, reported that the Democrats had turned on their televisions to watch the presidential debate “with trepidation,” and ended up turning off their TVs “in panic” by the end, as Biden had confirmed their “worst fears.”
The newspaper added that “faced with old Joe’s first hesitations,” Trump “said nothing,” likely because he “understood that Biden’s difficulties were so evident that they did not require underlining.”
Corriere della Sera also referred to Trump as “an expert commutator,” adding that the two CNN moderators were “intimidated” by the 45th president, and therefore, “did not want to contest” him.
A third major Italian newspaper reported that “Joe Biden’s failure in the first debate against a more confident Donald Trump could change the face of the presidential campaign in the United States.”
Quote:The United Kingdom submitted a brief questioning to the International Criminal Court challenging its jurisdiction over Israel, potentially delaying moves to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, news reports revealed on Thursday.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli figures, including Netanyahu, in May accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The warrants have not yet been issued but the decision on whether doing so would be lawful or not may be delayed by the British government’s move, which was revealed on Thursday but made on June 10.
The United Kingdom submitted a brief as an entity not party to the case, offering information or expertise pertinent to the court’s future decisions. The British submission hinges on the fact Israel is not a member of the court and, while Palestinian leaders joined in 2015, the Oslo Accords signed by Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat in 1993 made clear Israel alone has legal jurisdiction over its soldiers.
The ICC awarded itself the competence to investigate war crimes in Palestinian and Israeli territory in 2021, but the British paper challenges this power.
The Times of Israel reported that the ICC originally tried to keep the UK’s challenge secret. Now that it is out in the open, other ICC members have until July 12 to submit their own briefs on the matter. A decision on issuing arrest warrants or not appears to be suspended until after this time, so the court’s pre-trial chamber can consider these questions.
The United Kingdom government has previously made abundantly clear the decision by the ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan, who is a UK-born human rights lawyer, to pursue an arrest warrant is not welcome. As reported in May when the announcement was made, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called it “deeply unhelpful,” saying there was no moral equivalence between a diplomatic state – Israel – defending itself and “the terrorist group Hamas”.
"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 admitted Friday that former President Donald Trump “knocked him down” in Thursday night’s debate.
Pressure is mounting on Biden to step down, as many Democrats and media members displayed hysteria following the disastrous event. Donors are reportedly backing away from Biden’s reelection campaign.
Sixty-seven percent said Trump won the debate, a CNN flash poll of debate watchers found Thursday night.
The debate averaged 47.9 million viewers, short of the 2020 amount of 73.132 million total viewers, the third most watched of all-time, IndieWire reported.
In his first appearance after the debate, Biden admitted that his performance fell short of standards.
“I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” he told a crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up,” he said, as the attendees cheered.
“I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth,” Biden claimed.
Biden told a multitude of falsehoods during the debate.
“I know it will take to bring this economy to everybody,” Biden said, slurring words.
“I give you my words of Biden, I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job,” he claimed:
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Quote:President Joe Biden, who reportedly will not drop out of the 2024 presidential race, will participate in the second debate in September, a Biden adviser told CNN Friday.
ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis will serve as moderators for the September 10 debate. More details of the event, including rules, location, staging, and format, are not yet decided, according to ABC News.
Pressure is mounting on Biden to step down as many Democrats and media members display hysteria following a disastrous Thursday debate.
Biden mumbled, sounded raspy, and appeared to lose track of his thoughts a few times. Even during his prepared closing statement, Biden did not deliver without error. First lady Jill Biden later walked him down the studio steps after the debate.
Biden’s performance made New York Times columnist Tom Friedman weep, he wrote Friday.
Sixty-seven percent said Trump won the debate, a CNN flash poll of debate watchers found Thursday night.
Democrats could take a three-step political process to replace Biden with an alternative candidate on their 2024 ticket, top editors at Politico outlined in February.
The three-step political process, according to Politico‘s Charlie Mahtesian, a senior politics editor, and Steven Shepard, a senior campaign and elections editor and chief polling analyst, does not include a “late-entering white knight candidate” due to filing deadlines. The deadlines for primary access already passed in the spring.
The political process to replace Biden includes, according to Politico:
Biden Must Voluntarily Step Aside Before Democrat National Convention
Quote:CLAIM: President Joe Biden said he was the “only” president this century with no American troop deaths.
VERDICT: False.
President Joe Biden claimed Thursday during the first 2024 presidential debate that he is the “only president” this century with no American troop deaths during his watch.
Specifically, Biden said:
The truth is, I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have any this – this decade, that doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world, like he did.
This is false.
During Biden’s presidency’s 13 American troops were killed in August 2021 during the Afghanistan withdrawal that he ordered.
In addition, three American soldiers were killed in Jordan in January 2024 after they were targeted by Iran-backed militia groups. A Department of Defense statement issued on January 29, 2024 stated:
Three U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday in Jordan, while more than 40 other service members were injured following an uncrewed aerial system attack at a military base near the Syrian border. Those service members were in Jordan to support Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the U.S. and coalition mission to ensure the defeat of ISIS.
In addition, two Navy SEALs died also in January during an operation to interdict a ship carrying Iranian-made weapons bound for Yemen.
So 18 service men and women have been killed or disappeared mysteriously.
Trump/Biden Debate Fact-Check: Trump, not Biden attacked Insulin Costs first (Video Included)
EDIT BY DERVVULFMAN: Setting the record straight... This video is four years old.
Politico has actively stated that Biden worked to make the cost $35 dollars. But the video footage and Executive Order 13937 (July 24, 2020) are clear proof otherwise.
Even SNOPES stated the claim Biden froze Trump's Insulin plan was "true"...
Snopes Wrote:An important caveat to note is that Executive Order 13937, issued by Trump, had not yet been put into law. Though it was published in the federal register on Dec. 23, 2020, the order was not scheduled to go into effect until Jan. 22, 2021 — two days after Biden issued a freeze on all rules made by Trump that were not yet in effect.
Quote:President Joe Biden’s team hit back at the New York Times’ editorial board for telling him to drop out of the race following his embarrassing debate performance.
As the first major news outlet to demand the president bow out of his reelection bid, the New York Times published an opinion piece, titled “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race,” on Friday.
“Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago,” the editorial board wrote.
Complaining that another term for former President Donald Trump would be disastrous for the country, the publication stated that Biden dropping out would be “the best chance to protect the soul of the nation.”
In response to the Times’ flaming debate review, Biden’s campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond said the publication’s endorsement does not mean anything to him.
“The last time Joe Biden lost the New York Times editorial board’s endorsement, it turned out pretty well for him,” Richmond told CNN on Friday.
During his first post-debate appearance, Biden admitted to an audience in Raleigh, North Carolina, that he was “knocked down” by Trump in the Thursday debate.
“I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” the president said Friday. “I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.”
Even former President Barack Obama conceded that his former vice president’s debate skills were not good, writing on X, “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know.”
Quote:Several major Hollywood donors for President Joe Biden have been sent into panic mode after President Joe Biden’s poor performance at Thursday night’s presidential debate.
Anonymous Hollywood donors told Variety that they had received messages and feedback from donors in the media and entertainment industry who were panicked by what they saw from Biden during the debate. Donors reportedly called for Biden to “drop out” or they would not be “giving any more money” to the Democrat Party.
During the presidential debate, Biden appeared to freeze. Biden also spoke with a hoarse voice and mumbled.
The president was also unable to get through his closing statement without making a lot of errors.
“With all the text chains I’m on, people are basically like, ‘If he doesn’t drop out, we’re not giving any more money to Democrats or the Democratic Party,'” an anonymous Hollywood donor told the outlet. “It’s like super intense.”
Another anonymous Hollywood donor told the outlet that there was “a sense that the money dried up last night about 10 minutes into the debate.”
While several Democrat officials and media members also panicked after seeing Biden’s debate performance against former President Donald Trump and called for Biden to be replaced, the Biden campaign has maintained that the president will not be dropping out of the presidential race.
Biden Campaign Co-Chair Mitch Landrieu told NBC News that Biden “had a cold” and had “looked a little sluggish,” but added that he was okay with people judging Biden’s fitness based on the debate.
The outlet notes that other donors in Hollywood have admitted that Biden’s debate performance was “concerning” but have vowed to support him.
Other more high-profile donors for the Democrat Party, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Haim Saban have reportedly decided to wait before making a decision:
But in Hollywood, all eyes are on Jeffrey Katzenberg, the town’s most active Democratic fundraiser, who organized the recent fete that brought Biden and former President Barack Obama to L.A. and drew the likes of George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jimmy Kimmel and Jack Black. Sources close to Katzenberg say he is taking a wait-and-see approach to how Biden’s debate performance plays out in the coming days. The same is true for media mogul Haim Saban, traditionally one of the Democratic Party’s most prolific donors. Saban has kept a low profile after someone, presumaby within the White House, leaked an email he sent to two Biden aides criticizing the president’s move to withhold some military support to Israel. Both Katzenberg and Saban declined to comment.
Quote:The Trinity River Authority announced a “potential failure watch” for the dam located at the base of one of Texas’ largest man-made lakes. The alert says there is no “immediate danger of either failure or breach of the dam.”
In an announcement sent out to affected persons surrounding Lake Livingston and downstream, the Trinity River Authority said recent heavy rainfall and flooding in the dam’s drainage area resulted in the declaration of a “potential failure watch.”
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Emergency management officials in Polk County, which sits on the east side of Lake Livingston and the Trinity River, said they will monitor and evaluate the spillway’s integrity. The TRA will implement necessary repairs and remedial actions, Fox 26 Houston reported.
Lake Livingston is the largest “single-purpose” reservoir in Texas and spans 83,000 surface acres. The lake has more than 45 miles of shortline. Construction finished in 1971.
The water level at Lake Livingston Dam is currently 131 feet above sea level, which is considered to be at 100 percent capacity. During the month of May, more than 27 inches of rain fell on the north end of the lake. This does not include rainfall along the path of the Trinity River which runs from Arlington, Texas, to Galveston Bay.
Quote:More than 200 firefighters were battling a wildfire northeast of Phoenix that threatened scores of homes and has forced dozens of residents to evacuate
Arizona wildfire advances after forcing evacuations near PhoenixThe Associated PressSCOTTSDALE, Ariz.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) — More than 200 firefighters were battling a wildfire northeast of Phoenix on Saturday that threatened scores of homes and has forced dozens of residents to evacuate.
No structures have been damaged as the wildfire traversed nearly 6 square miles (15 square kilometers) on the cusp of the Boulder Heights subdivision, said Matthew Wilcox, spokesman for a multi-agency wildfire response team.
There were 275 people combatting the fire Saturday as temperatures surpassed 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) before midday, with wind gusts expected in the afternoon.
“We still have unseasonably high humidity, hot weather,” Wilcox said. “We have no wind right now, but gusts were predicted.”
Air tankers and helicopters have helped douse flames from the sky above the Boulder View Fire. The cause of the fire is under investigation. It began about 5 miles (8 kilometers) east of Carefree, just outside northern Scottsdale on the edge of the Tonto National Forest.
The Red Cross set up an evacuation center at a high school in Scottsdale, and shelters for horses and other large animals were established at several locations, including the rodeo grounds at nearby Cave Creek.
In central California, increasing temperatures and low relative humidity this weekend could result in worsening wildfire conditions for the Fresno June Lightning Complex. The complex — made up of three large fires in eastern Fresno County as well as several smaller fires — was nearly 17 square miles (44 square kilometers) and 42% contained by Saturday morning. One structure was confirmed destroyed, and evacuation orders remained in place.
To the north, the Apache Fire in Butte County has destroyed 14 structures and damaged two others since Monday. The blaze was one square mile (2.8 square kilometers ) and 95% contained by Saturday morning.
Quote:A pair of NASA astronauts are still stuck at the International Space Station (ISS) while the Boeing spacecraft they traveled in experiences issues, as Boeing insists that “the astronauts are not stranded.”
Butch Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams were supposed to return to Earth on the Boeing Starliner on June 14 after completing a “test drive” of the new capsule, but they have since been stuck for more than three weeks, the Associated Press reported.
While NASA and Boeing work to troubleshoot equipment problems that reportedly “popped up on the way there,” three potential return dates were called off for the astronauts.
The Starliner’s issues have included problems with docking at the ISS, and several leaks of helium, which is used to pressurize fuel for the capsule’s thrusters.
“So far, we don’t see any scenario where Starliner is not going to be able to bring Butch and Suni home,” NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said at a press conference last week.
Still, no return date has been set for Wilmore and Williams.
Even with these glaring problems, a Boeing representative said the spacecraft’s issues won’t prevent a return trip and asserted that “the astronauts are not stranded.”
Both astronauts appeared to be filled with joy upon their third visit to the ISS about a week before their intended departure date, with Williams performing a little happy dance as she entered.
Quote:A group of men posing as delivery drivers broke into a Colorado family’s house while their two children were home with a babysitter.
Ring doorbell footage from June 12 shows the terrifying moment when three men forced their way inside the Aurora home after the babysitter opened the door for who appeared to be a delivery worker, complete with a bright vest and a package, the Daily Mail reported.
The parents, who were not home at the time of the invasion, called 911 as soon as they saw the incident unfold on their Ring doorbell camera phone app.
The invaders allegedly hit the babysitter, pushed the six-year-old son to the ground, and “inappropriately touched” the 14-year-old daughter, according to the parents.
“It’s not about the material things stolen because they can be replaced,” the mother told FOX31 Denver.
Aurora Police said the unidentified suspects stole personal items, including jewelry and cash.
Investigators believe that the family may have been targeted because they run a business out of their home, the local outlet reported.
It is unclear how the three suspects got away, and police are encouraging anyone with information on them to step forward.
Quote:Future high schoolers in California will soon be mandated to complete a financial literacy class to graduate, the governor’s office said.
A bill introduced by State Rep. Kevin McCarty (D) and supported by a bipartisan group of several Republicans and Democrats aims to place a semester-long personal finance class in the curriculum by the 2027-2028 school year and to make it required starting with the class of 2030-2031.
AB 2927 would appropriate $300,000 from the California’s General Fund to develop and recommend a curriculum to the state board to then be adopted by schools around the state.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced his support for the plan on Thursday.
“We need to help Californians prepare for their financial futures as early as possible,” he said in a statement. “Saving for the future, making investments, and spending wisely are lifelong skills that young adults need to learn before they start their careers, not after.”
The move was also celebrated by Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire (D), who said “Financial literacy is a critical tool that pays dividends for a lifetime.”
“There’s a wealth of data about the benefits of learning these valuable lessons in high school, from improving credit scores and reducing default rates to increasing the likelihood that our future generations will maintain three months of savings for emergencies and have at least one kind of retirement account,” McGuire added.
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D) added that the bill’s text “is the culmination of many robust and productive conversations with stakeholders across the state on how best to implement financial literacy into every student’s high school curriculum.”
Quote:The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday that it is not “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment to remove homeless people from encampments and to imprison them for repeatedly violating anti-camping laws.
The case, City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, was watched closely by civic leaders nationwide who are struggling to deal with homelessness — especially in Los Angeles, California, where the homeless population has continued to grow.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, expressed sympathy for the homeless, and acknowledged that the issue is complex and difficult to resolve. But he noted that laws against encampments were “commonplace,” and said that the Eighth Amendment was a “poor foundation” on which to mount a challenge against them. The right forum in which to debate responses to homelessness was in democratically-elected governments, not in the federal courts.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the Court’s decision “disappointing” — although her own city is struggling to deal with homeless encampments:
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Bass’s strategy is to move homeless people into motels or hotels, and bill the taxpayers — and has met with only limited success, with some people benefiting but the homeless population growing.
In April, Bass implored wealthy residents of the city to donate money for property to be devoted to the homeless. Los Angeles County is trying to replace a quarter-cent sales tax for homeless services to a half-cent in a ballot initiative.
Quote:Federal agencies suffered a massive blow to their regulatory power on Friday, when the Supreme Court overruled Chevron, a case under which federal courts have deferred for decades to agency interpretations of the laws they enforce.
As Chief Justice John Roberts began in his majority opinion, if a court determines that a federal law “is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue at hand, the court must, at Chevron’s second step, defer to the agency’s interpretation if it is based on a permissible construction of the statute.”
“Cognizant of the limits of human language and foresight, [those who wrote the Constitution] anticipated that all new laws,” Roberts explained, “though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, would be more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning was settled by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.”
“The Framers also envisioned that the final interpretation of the laws would be the proper and peculiar province of the courts,” the 6-3 opinion continued. “In the foundational decision of Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice Marshall famously declared that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”
“The views of the Executive Branch could inform the judgment of the Judiciary, but did not supersede it,” Roberts observed. “Otherwise, judicial judgment would not be independent at all.”
“Congress in 1946 enacted the APA [Administrative Procedure Act] as a check upon administrators whose zeal might otherwise have carried them to excesses not contemplated in legislation creating their offices,” the opinion recounted. “It was the culmination of a comprehensive rethinking of the place of administrative agencies in a regime of separate and divided powers.”
The APA “specifies that courts, not agencies, will decide all relevant questions of law arising on review of agency action—even those involving ambiguous laws—and set aside any such action inconsistent with the law as they interpret it.” Roberts continued. “And it prescribes no deferential standard for courts to employ in answering those legal questions.”
“The deference that Chevron requires of courts reviewing agency action cannot be squared with the APA,” the justices said. “In the decades between the enactment of the APA and this Court’s decision in Chevron, courts generally continued to review agency interpretations of the statutes they administer by independently examining each statute to determine its meaning.”
“Chevron, decided in 1984 by a bare quorum of six Justices, triggered a marked departure from the traditional approach,” the majority determined. “Neither Chevron nor any subsequent decision of this Court attempted to reconcile its framework with the APA.”
“Chevron defies the command of the APA that the reviewing court—not the agency whose action it reviews—is to decide all relevant questions of law and interpret statutory provisions,” Roberts found. “It requires a court to ignore, not follow, the reading the court would have reached had it exercised its independent judgment as required by the APA.”
“Courts interpret statutes, no matter the context, based on the traditional tools of statutory construction, not individual policy preferences,” the majority declared. “Indeed, the Framers crafted the Constitution to ensure that federal judges could exercise judgment free from the influence of the political branches.”
“The only question left is whether stare decisis, the doctrine governing judicial adherence to precedent, requires us to persist in the Chevron project. It does not,” the majority declared.
So basically, neither any agency nor the courts' jurisprudence can tell the courts what to establish as the right interpretation of the law, namely the APA. The courts must discern what the actual intention of that law was and compare it with any agency's application of that law and the related circumstances. This means any agency can't become its own judge, jury and executioner at the same time.
Quote:The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled a person accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of civil fraud has a right to a trial by jury before a federal judge, rejecting the agency’s authority to bring enforcement actions and assess fines through internal tribunals.
The ruling is a significant blow to what has become in recent years one of the primary enforcement mechanisms against fraud in cases brought by the S.E.C., which regulates securities markets. The agency’s practice of dragging those accused of securities fraud before in-house tribunals, often adjudicated by the very agency bringing the accusation or by administrative law judges who are often seen as rubber stamps for the agency, violates the right to a jury trial, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a six-justice majority opinion.
“A defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator,” the chief justice wrote.
The S.E.C. was purportedly authorized by Depression-era securities laws to have the choice to bring antifraud lawsuits in federal courts or to adjudicate its accusations itself. In the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law passed in 2010, Congress extended the S.E.C.’s authority to bring civil suits in its own tribunals to accusations against unregistered investment advisers.
When the S.E.C. adjudicates fraud accusations in-house, there are no juries to act as fact finders, no life-tenured federal judges presiding, and the litigation is governed by a different set of rules about evidence, procedure, and discovery. The central issue in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, No. 22-859, was whether these administrative tribunals violate the Seventh Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial in “suits at common law.”
The S.E.C. contended that administrative proceedings do not require juries or presiding federal judges because they are not private lawsuits under common law but efforts to protect so-called “public rights” created statutes. They further argued that many agencies conduct adjudications without juries, with over two dozen agencies authorized to impose penalties administratively.
The bombshell decision could result in hundreds of convictions against non-violent January 6 defendants being overturned — and could result in at least some charges being dropped against President Donald Trump as well.
In order to continue a prosecution under the Enron law, the prosecution would have to show that the defendants not only invaded the Capitol, but that they also impeded the delivery of documents or objects needed for the proceeding.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon will report to prison by Monday, July 1, after the Supreme Court denied a request for him to stay out of jail pending the outcome of his appeal.
The Supreme Court issued a one-sentence denial, saying merely that Bannon’s “application for release pending appeal” was denied.
Bannon, the host of the War Room podcast, sent an emergency appeal to delay his prison sentence for defying a subpoena from the Democrat-run January 6 Select Committee that was created to investigate the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The emergency appeal had been addressed to Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles these types of requests from courts in Washington, D.C.
“The application for release pending appeal presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is denied,” the Supreme Court wrote.
Before being hired to work as the CEO of the Trump campaign in August 2016, Bannon served as the executive chairman of Breitbart News. Bannon went on to join the Trump administration as a chief strategist and left in August 2017, later rejoining Breitbart News until his departure in early 2018.
Bannon was convicted by a jury in October 2022 and sentenced to four months in prison for defying a subpoena from the January 6 Select Committee. This was placed on hold as Bannon sought an appeal regarding the decision.
In May, an appeals court upheld Bannon’s conviction from 2022.
Meanwhile, US AG Merrick Garland is still enjoying his steakes at any luxury restaurant even after defying a House Committee's subpoena. How quaint.
Quote:Canada’s Globe and Mail dropped another bombshell on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s faltering government on Thursday, revealing that Trudeau’s former Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan prioritized rescuing Afghan Sikhs ahead of Canadians after the Taliban stormed Kabul in August 2021.
According to three military sources who spoke with the Globe and Mail, Sajjan intervened after the Canadian military decided its top “operational priority” was to rescue Canadian citizens from the chaos unleashed by U.S. President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The original priority list of Canadian special operators like Joint Task Force 2 (JTF-2) was to go after Canadian citizens and Afghans who worked directly for the Canadian government before the Taliban captured Kabul. “Vulnerable groups, such as feminists, human-rights activists, minorities and LGBTQ people” came next, and then anyone else who could be saved.
Sajjan stepped in and moved a group of 225 Afghan Sikhs to the top of the list and actively participated in their rescue, relaying “local information and other details about the Sikhs” to Canadian special operations forces.
“The way it was presented to us at first was: If we can do this and pay attention to it, great, but not stopping doing everything else. But a day or so later, it came back to us as a firm order. Our leadership was furious. They were very upset,” one special forces officer said of the order to rescue Sikhs first.
“There was such furious anger that the last 24 hours were solely dedicated to getting the Sikhs out. We were unsuccessful,” the officer said, adding a melancholy coda to the affair.
Other sources told the Globe and Mail that Sajjan’s effort to rescue the Sikhs failed because “the frightened Afghan Sikhs left the rendezvous point shortly before Canadian soldiers arrived to take them safely to Kabul international airport.”
Luckily for them, most of the Sikhs in question were able to survive the Taliban coup and escape to India several months later, some of them using planes chartered by the Indian government.
The Globe and Mail noted Sajjan is “an influential figure in the Sikh community whose father served on the board of the World Sikh Organization” and Trudeau’s Liberal party was desperately courting Sikh votes at the time.
Quote:The policies enacted by President Joe Biden to respond to Nicaragua’s communist regime using its main airport as a hub for U.S.-bound migrants have had little to no effect in curbing migration, the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa reported on Thursday.
Nicaragua’s communist dictator Daniel Ortega has been accused of “weaponizing” Managua’s international airport against the United States by allowing migrants to arrive to the airport and freely pass through the country en route to the United States.
Thousands of migrants from Latin America and other continents seeking to cross the U.S. southern border have opted to first land in Managua because the Sandinista government has very limited visa requirements. Nicaragua’s location in Central America also allows migrants to avoid having to cross through the deadly Darién Gap jungle trail located between Colombia and Panama.
The Ortega regime has been able to profit from allowing migrants to transit through its airport by reportedly charging them a fee of upwards $200 per person to use the facilities. Experts have suggested that Ortega sees migrants as a “golden opportunity” bargaining tool to negotiate potential sanctions relief with the United States.
In recent months, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has attempted to “crack down” on the use of charter flights that land in Nicaragua, a growing trend among migrants seeking to reach the United States, and imposed sanctions on Nicaraguan-based charter flight airlines and its executives. The Biden administration issued a warning to relevant airlines suggesting they undergo vetting processes and take measures to “avoid complicity.”
Experts estimate that roughly 1,150 charter flights landed in Managua between May 2024 and May 2024.
The measures adopted by the Biden administration, according to La Prensa’s report, have had an “insufficient” effect in the reduction of U.S.-bound migrants using Nicaragua. The migrant flow remains “constant and almost unchanged” compared to 2023, which reportedly saw more than 300,000 migrants use the airport in their journey towards the United States, the report claimed.
According to statistics from the Central Bank of Nicaragua quoted by the newspaper, a total of 198,500 travelers landed in Managua’s airport between January and March 2024, of which only 179,600 left the country on an outbound flight, leaving 18,900 individuals who potentially left the country by land towards the United States.
During the same time period in 2023, 147,600 travelers were registered to have disembarked at the airport, of which only 130,800 departed through an outbound flight, leaving a differential of 16,800 people.
Quote:The Congress of Argentina passed President Javier Milei’s omnibus bill on Thursday evening, paving the way for sweeping reforms to the Argentine state.
Thursday’s Congressional session, which lasted more than 12 hours, saw the members of Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies cast the final vote required on the bill’s final details after the Argentine Senate voted to approve the bill on June 12. The bill had the support of 147 deputies against 107 who voted to reject it. Two lawmakers abstained from voting.
The bill, titled the “Law of Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines,” was first presented by Milei roughly two weeks after he took office on December 10 and contains reforms and deregulation measures across a wide variety of sectors. The bill also codifies the contents of the Necessity and Urgency Decree (DNU) executive order signed by Milei in December, which undid more than 350 socialist policies.
The bill’s title is a reference to a book written by Argentine politician and diplomat Juan Bautista Alberdi in 1852 that saw many of its contents eventually incorporated into Argentina’s original 1853 constitution.
While the original iteration of the bill contained more than 660 articles, the final approved version was trimmed down to 234. Most of its fiscal-related contents were separated into an ancillary bill on “Palliative and Relevant Fiscal Measures,” which was also passed on Thursday.
The final approval of the omnibus bill follows six months of Congressional debates where Milei’s Liberty Advances party only holds seven seats in the Senate and 38 in the lower chamber, leading to negotiations with other political blocs that resulted in modifications to the original text.
Quote:Russian state media was initially dismissive of Thursday night’s debate between former U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. President Joe Biden, as the Kremlin blithely insisted the U.S. presidential race was “not on our radar.”
On Friday morning, the tenor of Russian coverage had changed, as state media gleefully reported that Biden’s disastrous performance put the “final nail” in his “political coffin.”
“It’s not on our radar. We have a lot of issues that matter much more for our country, that are relevant for us. These are the issues that our president is focusing on. The U.S. debate does not fit into these priorities,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked if Moscow was following the debate and its tumultuous aftermath.
Peskov claimed to be equally blasé about changes in European Union leadership, scoffing that his Kremlin bosses “do not think that European diplomacy will do anything to normalize relations.”
“I don’t think you can expect the Russian president to set his alarm clock to wake up early in the morning for a U.S. debate,” he said when asked if President Vladimir Putin watched the U.S. presidential debate.
“We are absolutely not going to evaluate these debates, this is an internal matter of the United States, this is the U.S. election campaign. We have never interfered in United States election campaigns,” he huffed.
On Friday morning, Russian state media became quite interested in “evaluating” the Biden debacle. Sputnik, for example, asked California psychiatrist and author Carole Lieberman to dissect Biden’s performance.
“It seems like he was on some performance-enhancing drug, but it was either a lower dose or a less potent drug, or they didn’t take into consideration that his cognitive decline was worse since the State of the Union,” Lieberman said.
Liberman noted that Biden had “a hollow stare, a shaky voice, and seemed as though he might not make it through the whole 90 minutes – but was going to collapse right there.”
“Biden showed some of the typical signs of lying, such as being short of breath, having a rigid body, staring, shuffling, and having increasing difficulty trying to speak,” she said, judging that the sitting president’s biggest problem was “getting lost in the middle of sentences.”
In contrast, Lieberman thought Trump looked “much stronger and passionate” about the problems with America and “his desire to fix it,” although she took back a few points for Trump allowing his “narcissism” show.
Quote:A German court on Friday convicted a 15-year-old boy of plotting an Islamic extremist attack on a Christmas market and gave him a four-year sentence.
The Cologne state court said the boy was convicted of conspiracy to murder and disturbing the public peace by threatening crimes, German news agency dpa reported. The proceedings were conducted behind closed doors under juvenile law, and the defendant’s name wasn’t released in line with German privacy rules.
The teenager was detained in November near Cologne. The court found that he became radicalized last fall and, within a few weeks, had agreed with a 16-year-old acquaintance to attack a Christmas market in Leverkusen.
The plan was for the defendant to drive a rented truck into the market and kill as many visitors as possible, while his accomplice was to film the attack, the court said. According to the verdict, the defendant posted a video in a chat group announcing an attack on “infidels,” with a symbol of the Islamic State group visible in the background.
There are no formal pleas in the German legal system, but the court said the 15-year-old admitted to the charges against him.
His alleged accomplice, who also is accused of conspiracy to murder, is due to go on trial July 17 in Neuruppin, near Berlin in eastern Germany.
Quote:French left-wing leader defends police-killing chants and throws in threats of his own in the final days before France goes to the polls in round one of Emmanuel Macron’s big-risk snap parliamentary elections.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-wing leader who is perhaps the most visible face of the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition bringing in the whole spectrum from pro-Europe centrism to full-blooded communists laughed off chants by his supporters at an anti-right wing rally. Making reference to the populist party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella polled to come first in the elections, National Rally (RN), the demonstrators had chanted “A dead cop is one vote less for the RN”.
Mélenchon replied “It’s absurd… but We still have the right to laugh”. He later clarified his point, asserting “Not about the deaths of people, of course”. French broadsheet Le Figaro noted his insouciant reply set off a wave of concern, citing former police union spokesman — and now RN politician — Matthieu Valet who said: “He respects nothing, not even those who died for the [country]. He doesn’t even hide his hatred of the cops anymore”.
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Jordan Bardella, the leader of the RN Parliamentary faction who hopes to walk out of this election as Prime Minister, said: “The far left is defending a new right: that of being able to insult our police officers and laugh at their deaths… Mr. Mélenchon and his friends no longer have any moral limits”. President Macron’s interior minister Gérald Darmanin, who banned several “extremist” groups this week, responded to Mélenchon: “the far left once again infamous in the hatred of the police. How can sincere left-wing voters accept this?
Spit on the coffin of our police officers and gendarmes for a few votes… [this makes me want to] vomit.”
Quote:Iran’s “moderate” reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, once dismissed as a dark horse with little chance of winning the emergency election to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi, managed to become the frontrunner by about a million votes when the results were announced on Saturday. Pezeshkian could not get past the 50 percent threshold to win outright, so he will face hardliner Saeed Jalili in a runoff election on July 5.
Pezeshkian collected 42.4 percent of the vote, or about 10.4 million votes, in the low-turnout election. Jalili came in second with 38.6 percent or 9.4 million votes. Another hardliner and the early favorite to win the election, parliamentary speaker Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, placed third with just 13.8 percent.
Turnout was estimated at just 40 percent of Iranian voters, a record low. Many Iranians do not bother to vote because the elections are rigged in advance by a theocratic Guardian Council, and even if a “moderate” like Pezeshkian wins, his ability to actually reform the Iranian system would be minimal. The autocratic ruler of the country will remain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is aging and in poor health, so he could be replaced soon.
Human rights activists, both within Iran and internationally, urged Iranians to boycott the election to replace Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash in May. The Iranian regime complained that the U.S. government was “meddling” in the election and depressing turnout by criticizing the vote as a farce.
Raisi won his election in 2021 with 18 million votes, which was almost as much as the two front-runners in Friday’s contest combined, and turnout for Raisi’s election was considered a record low at the time. Critics of the regime believed it only allowed Pezeshkian to run against five hardliners to create the illusion of a real choice and were taken aback that he polled as well as he did.
Quote:As the United Nations threatens to suspend aid to operations across the Gaza Strip, Fox News Digital has exclusively learned that Israel plans to activate a desalination plant that will increase fresh water access in the region.
"Israel will increase the electricity supply to the desalination facility in Khan Yunis by building new electricity power lines," an Israeli security official told Fox News Digital.
"This will re-enable the desalination facility established with UNICEF funding in 2017 to provide drinking water to areas in Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis and the Mawasi area – a potential solution for hundreds of thousands of residents throughout the Strip," the official explained.
The government-backed plan awaits final approval, but once in operation, the plant will provide approximately 20,000 cubic meters of water a day for residents – a massive increase from its current capacity of 1,500 cubic meters, which the officials blamed on a "lack of capacity to maximize" generator activity.
"The power line would enable the required 5 megawatts of electricity, which can be provided through the power line that will be connected and provided by Israel," the official said. "Along with the new power line, the Israeli military would allow the international community and NGOs to bring in equipment and conduct infrastructure works that will regulate the power line operation for the desalination facility after a mandatory security inspection."
The official could not elaborate on how much this project would cost or whether it indicates that Israel will look to empower or establish additional desalination plants to further increase water output. The official stressed, however, that the plant in Khan Yunis is the "biggest plant" in the region.
Quote:A new report from an Iranian resistance group alleges that the Islamist regime has attempted to dodge U.S. sanctions on its nuclear programs by shifting personnel and resources to a university closely associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
"Ever since The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) exposed the Iranian regime’s previously undisclosed nuclear program in 2002 … the regime has persistently thwarted the IAEA’s efforts to uncover the full scope of its nuclear weapons ambitions," Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the NCRI told Fox News Digital.
"Our revelations have shown that Tehran’s nuclear program has always been about building the nuclear bomb, and it is run by the IRGC," he argued. "The weaponization part of the nuclear program has not only remained intact but has expanded and enhanced with no meaningful scrutiny." Jafarzadeh first revealed the details of Iran’s nuclear program in 2002.
The NCRI issued a report in which it discussed how Iran shifted its nuclear program personnel and resources placed on U.S. sanctions to the Islamic Azad University. The U.S. listed the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND) on the international sanctions list, and university personnel asked researchers to "present their activities as being in service of front companies."
The NCRI claimed to have gathered its information through a network of the People’s Mojahedin Organization, known as the MEK, from inside Iran, including reports from inside "the regime entities."
"In order to preserve SPND, the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) has attempted to create a new and better cover to continue its operations, ostensibly making it work on a series of advanced military cases in order to divert attention and lessen focus on its primary goal of making nuclear weapons," the report says.
Shortly before his sudden death, former Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi passed the SPND Act in April, ordering the Ministry of Defense to implement the plan within a month and make the SPND "an independent legal entity with the nature of a public institution and has financial, transactional and administrative independence."
"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:Several U.S. military bases in European countries such as Germany and Italy were placed on an increased security alert over the weekend.
Bases such as the U.S. Army Garrison in Stuttgart, Germany, the U.S. Army’s Rheinland-Pfalz base, and the U.S. Army’s Ramstein Air Base were among the bases that were placed on a threat level of “Charlie,” according to Stars and Stripes.
This came after the U.S. European Command (EUCOM), which is headquartered in Stuttgart, issued an increased threat level to “Charlie.”
Other U.S. military bases such as the U.S. Army Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz’s base in Baumholder, Germany, and other military bases in Romania, Bulgaria, and the Aviano Air Base in Italy also increased their threat level to “Charlie.”
The outlet noted that another base in Germany, the Spangdahlem Air Base, directed military members not to wear their uniforms off base, or even when commuting to work.
According to the U.S. Army’s website, Charlie is one of five security levels in the Force Protection Condition (FPCON).
The lowest threat level is, “Normal,” which is followed by threat level “Alpha,” which applies when “there is an increased general threat of possible terrorist activity against personnel or facilities,” according to the U.S. Army’s website.
Bravo is the third threat level, which “applies when an increased or more predictable threat of terrorist activity exists.”
After the Bravo threat level is Charlie, the second highest threat level, which “applies when an incident occurs or intelligence is received” that indicates “some form of terrorist action or targeting against personnel or facilities is likely.”
The “Delta” threat level, which is the highest, “applies in the immediate area where a terrorist attack has occurred or when intelligence has been received that terrorist action against a specific location or person is imminent,” according to the U.S. Army’s website.
EUCOM explained in a statement that it is “constantly” reviewing “factors” that may affect “the safety of the U.S. military community abroad,” according to the outlet.
A United States official stated that the current threat level had not been seen “in at least 10 years,” according to CNN.
Le Pen is Kicking Macron's Butt in Parliamentary Elections?
Quote:The Parliamentary faction of President Emmanuel Macron has been utterly destroyed in the unexpected snap election he called just three weeks ago, with Le Pen’s Party looking to nearly treble its seat holding.
Polling has closed in France for the first round of this week-long Parliamentary election. While actual seat distribution won’t be fully known, the exit polls following this knock-out round have given a confident answer that Marine Le Pen’s nationalist-populist National Rally (RN) won the day. Per the exit polls, her faction gained 34 per cent of the vote, while the left-wing coalition founded for the purpose of this election picked up 29 per cent, and President Macron’s Ensemble looks at just 20 per cent.
In terms of seats, any one party or group would need 289 seats in the 577 seat house. A series of exit polls suggest that by the end of next Sunday, RN could have as few as 250 seats, but could get as many as 310 depending on second round voting. This is a simply enormous leap for RN, given Le Pen’s party had just 88 Members of Parliament last time.
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Speaking this evening, Marine Le Pen urged voters to back her in the second round to give the party an absolute majority in the house so it can choose the next Prime Minister and begin the end of the Emmanuel Macron presidency. She boasted her faction has practically “wiped out the Macron camp”.
More detailed results will continue to come in overnight and into Monday. There now follows a week of further campaigning, before the final head-to-head rounds next week.
Because of the French system which sees this knock-out round followed a week later by the decider, there is a specific tradition of parties issuing tactical voting guidelines to their voters and horse-trading between parties to maximise the chances of defeating the first-placed candidate. For instance, while Le Pen’s RN looks set to be the largest single party and will fight a large number of constituencies next Sunday, it will be doing so against the combined weight of votes of all other parties coalescing around a single opposing figure.
This system makes the final outcome hard to predict — hence the very wide margin of error in the exit polls — and makes clear much remains to play for. President Macron has already called on the public to vote against the right next week.
Quote:Chinese state media confirmed the expulsion on Thursday of two former defense ministers, Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, from the Communist Party and said they are both facing criminal investigations based on alleged “serious violations of discipline and laws.”
Wei Fenghe retired from China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) in October 2022 and the defense minister position in early 2023, apparently without controversy, in part due to his age. Li Shangfu succeeded him in March 2023, but abruptly disappeared in August before being accused of unspecified improprieties while on the job.
The Communist Party did not explain why Li suddenly vanished from all public obligations at the time. In August, Beijing suddenly announced that genocidal dictator Xi Jinping had fired him, an ominous sign that he may face corruption charges. Despite China being in the throes of multiple significant military challenges – most of them on its borders, where the Communist Party regularly violates the sovereignty of neighboring states – Chinese authorities chose to simply not have anyone hold the office of defense minister until announcing the appointment of the current incumbent, Dong Jun, in December.
The Chinese government newspaper China Daily on Friday reported that both former ministers were under investigation “following clues uncovered during cases handled by the Discipline Inspection Commission of the Central Military Commission.”
“According to the statements, both Li and Wei seriously violated political and organizational discipline, and resisted organizational scrutiny,” China Daily continued.
Li reportedly “sought improper benefits in personnel arrangements” and took bribes, among other corrupt acts.
Wei, the outlet continued, reportedly “accepted gifts and money in violation of regulations, exploited his position to benefit others and accepted large sums of money, and is suspected of taking bribes.”
The accusations are notable given their similarity despite Wei holding the defense minister position for much longer – nearly five years from 2018 compared to Li, who took office in March and disappeared in December.
China Daily, citing the flagship Chinese government news agency Xinhua, declared the two officials apostates of communism, claiming they had “lost [their] faith and loyalty” in the Communist Party.
The U.S. outlet Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Friday that the criminal investigations appear to be part of a larger purge by Xi that included several other senior military leaders, including two generals with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force. The South China Morning Post listed “nine generals, including previous and serving commanders from the PLA Rocket Force and the air force as well as a number of CMC officials with the Equipment Development Department” purged in December.
More Than An Article This One Looks Like Coming From a Fantasy Videogame...
Quote:The state minister at the Ministry of Climate Change, Environment and Energy for the Maldives, Fathimath Shamnaz Ali Saleem, was detained and suspended from her position on accusations of committing acts of “sorcery” on President Mohamed Muizzu, Maldivian outlets reported on Thursday.
The Maldivian newspaper the Edition reported on Friday that the national police service confirmed that Shamnaz and Minister at the President’s Office Adam Rameez had been suspended from those top government roles due to an ongoing investigation but did not clarify the nature of the probe. Accusations of “black magic” can result in serious legal consequences in the Maldives, an explicitly Islamist government in a majority Sunni Muslim country.
Some forms of indigenous magic practices are legal with a license, and witchcraft is not explicitly illegal but is considered a violation of Sharia, or Islamic law. Islamic leaders in the island nation have, for years, attempted to strengthen laws against sorcery, with minimal results.
A sorcery scandal rocking the highest levels of the Muizzu government follows a challenging time for Maldivian international relations, including high-profile feuds with Israel and the Maldives’ closest neighbor, India. The Muizzu government recently banned Israeli passport holders from entering the country in an attempt to protest Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas — a move officials later admitted could negatively affect “millions” of Arab Israelis with Israeli passports.
The Maldives also dramatically escalated what began as a benign tourism rivalry with India following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s suggestion that Indian nationals choose domestic beaches for their vacations over the Maldives. Various ministers in the Maldivian government responded with personal insults towards Modi, including deriding him as a “puppet of Israel.”
Multiple reports revealed on Friday the suspension of the climate change minister, who possesses outsized power in the Maldives as an island nation that prioritizes climate alarmism as a state policy. The Indian Hindustan Times reported on Friday that Shamnaz and Rameez were two of four people arrested on charges of “black magic” — specifically, “charges of using witchcraft, reportedly to get closer to Muizzu.”
“The incident came to light on June 23, following which the four accused were remanded in custody for seven days. On Wednesday, Shamnaz was suspended as the state minister at the ministry of environment, reported local media house Sun,” the Hindustan Times reported. It noted that Rameez is known to be close to Muizzu but disappeared from the public eye nearly half a year ago.
The Edition confirmed the suspensions of both officials with Muizzu’s office on Friday as the result of an unspecified “investigation.”
“However, the Maldives Police Service said on Wednesday that Shamnaz and two others, excluding Rameez, have been placed under arrest on charges of sorcery,” it added. “It is yet unclear whether Rameez is suspected of being an accomplice.”
"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:Democrats implied Monday that former President Donald Trump could pursue his political opponents, legally, if he returns to the White House, following the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity in Trump v. U.S.
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Democratic Party activist and pundit Van Jones warned that the decision granted presidents a “license to thug”:
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As Breitbart News reported, the Court held 6-3 that a president enjoys absolute immunity for official acts, but not for unofficial acts. While it is up to the courts to adjudicate the difference, the Supreme Court said that a president has the right to pre-trial challenges regarding whether any particular acts fall into the “official” or “unofficial” category.
Democrats warned that the “MAGA SCOTUS” had given presidents license to eliminate their political opponents. They appeared to be following the lead of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote in dissent for the Court’s liberals:
The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. … The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today. Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.
...
In arguing that Trump — or any other president — could pursue his opponents legally, Democrats appeared to concede that Biden had been doing so illegally, at least according to the Supreme Court, which also ruled last week that prosecutors had abused a federal statute to pursue some participants in the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021.
Weird. I thought Joe Biden was doing a great job at attacking political opponents even before the SCOTUS ruled in favor of the presidential immunity.
Quote:Monday, following the Supreme Court granting current and former presidents limited immunity, former Attorney General Bill Barr reacted to the high court’s rulings over the past week.
On the presidential immunity ruling, the so-called Chevron doctrine and the obstruction statute as it pertained to January 6 protesters, Barr said the Supreme Court was protecting institutions and processes against the “passions of the moment.”
“Well, I think this idea of going after the Supreme [Court] — I think these opinions were bang on,” Barr said. “They were very reasonable opinions. I’m talking about the immunity opinion, the opinion on the Chevron doctrine, cutting that back. Also, the opinion the obstruction statute — making sure that that’s properly employed and isn’t used as a dragnet.”
He continued, “And I think that these were very reasonable opinions that put the law in the right place. And I’m afraid that, this anything goes, let’s do whatever we can to solve the — you know, to address the political imperative at the moment, we’re going to throw the baby out with a bathwater. We’re going to do long-term institutional damage to the United States. And I think the Supreme Court’s doing just the opposite. I think they’re protecting our institutions and the processes we have against being disfigured by the passions of the moment.”
Quote:Former President Donald Trump called for Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw his Manhattan business records trial, to toss his guilty verdict in light of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling.
The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled on Monday that presidents are covered by limited immunity from criminal prosecutions for official acts taken while in office, however, they do not have immunity for unofficial acts.
In the Supreme Court’s decision, the court held:
Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.
In a letter addressed to Merchan, Trump’s lawyers “sought permission to file a motion” to overturn the guilty verdict, according to the New York Times. At the end of May, a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first-degree related to payments made to adult entertainment actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election.
Lawyers for the former president have also reportedly asked Merchan to “postpone” Trump’s sentencing, as Merchan takes into consideration if the immunity decision from the Supreme Court has affected Trump’s guilty verdict, according to the outlet.
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention begins on July 15.
The outlet notes that while the request to have the conviction overturned may be “a long shot,” Trump’s lawyers “are likely to argue that prosecutors built their case partly on evidence from his time in the White House”:
The effort to set aside the conviction might be a long shot. The Manhattan case centers on acts Mr. Trump took as a candidate, not a president.
Yet his lawyers are likely to argue that prosecutors built their case partly on evidence from his time in the White House. And under the Supreme Court’s new ruling, prosecutors not only may not charge a president for any official acts, but also cannot cite evidence involving official acts to bolster other accusations.
Quote:Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said she plans to file articles of impeachment against unnamed Supreme Court justices following the Court’s ruling on presidential immunity on Monday.
The only justice impeached in American history was Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1805. The Senate acquitted him.
“The Supreme Court has become consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control,” Ocasio-Cortez posted on X.
“Today’s ruling represents an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture. I intend on filing articles of impeachment upon our return,” she said, without naming her target.
The Court’s ruling held in a six-to-three decision that presidents are covered by limited immunity from criminal prosecutions for actions taken in office.
Moving forward, the “case will now be remanded and will likely result in the dismissal of some or all of the charges facing the former president in federal court in Washington, DC, relating to the Capitol riot of January 6,” Breitbart News’s Joel Pollak wrote.
Former President Donald Trump, whom the ruling impacted, celebrated it as a “big win” for democracy. The ruling was the latest good news for Trump and his reelection campaign.
Democrats and the Biden campaign roundly condemned the ruling. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) ripped it as a “disgraceful decision by the MAGA SCOTUS,” while Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) accused the Court of going “rogue.”
“Today’s ruling doesn’t change the facts, so let’s be very clear about what happened on January 6: Donald Trump snapped after he lost the 2020 election and encouraged a mob to overthrow the results of a free and fair election,” a senior Biden campaign official said in a statement.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the opinion for the Court’s majority, said:
This case poses a question of lasting significance: When may a former President be prosecuted for official acts taken during his Presidency? Our Nation has never before needed an answer. But in addressing that question today, unlike the political branches and the public at large, we cannot afford to fixate exclusively, or even primarily, on present exigencies. In a case like this one, focusing on “transient results” may have profound consequences for the separation of powers and for the future of our Republic.
I wanna emphasize now that the US is not just a democracy but an actual republic with certain democratic elements. A classical Greek democracy would allow adult males, age 18 or 20 depending on the sources, to cast their votes and they were supposed to have "direct" influence on a set of situations the polis or Greek city was facing at that time. Even so leaders (archons) and military commanders (strategoi) had room for making their own decisions, at least up to some point. And yes, they could be ostracized as well.
A republic isn't that direct at all. For instance, you got a constitution or basic laws inspired by ancient documents like Roman laws. At least some of those laws are inalienable, valid for everybody even if they would like to relinquish them voluntarily. Thus, we could view a republic as kind of indirect or representative because you need to vote for a group of people that are called to represent you and the system is dependable on a basic framework that is supposed to protect you from basic / common dangers, keeping in mind that it should last for many generations. AFAIK, a democracy only offered the ostracization as an effective control mechanism.
IMHO, a democratic system depends a hell of a lot on a beehive mentality often focused only on the main goals rather than a collective of individuals with the same rights AND duties that must make decisions taking several non-beehive-related factors in consideration. Therefore, a federal republic like the US cannot let the majority pick a president just because. The most populated states are not supposed to stumble upon the others while discussing and approving or disapproving federal bills. Balance is a component badly needed by the republic in the US.
Next time, when a Democrat tells you that anything affecting Trump or the GOP or the conservatives is a threat to the American democracy, think it twice or even thrice. What's more important? The beehive mentality? Or the basic constitutional rights and protections?
If you ever notice you keep picking the beehive-related option, know that you're already under the rule of a monarch (the queen bee) or tyrant.
Wait! Biden Can Perform Better Next Time... Or Not?
Quote:President Joe Biden spoke from the White House about the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling on Monday but not without committing a gaffe.
The gaffe comes after Biden took an incredible amount of criticism for his gaffe-ridden debate performance on Thursday.
After quoting a Supreme Court justice during his speech, Biden gaffed, “end of quote,” instead of pausing to indicate he finished delivering the quote.
It is not the first time Biden has read the “end of quote” bit off a teleprompter.
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He also refused to take questions from the press as he left the podium.
Biden’s speech about the Court’s ruling came just days after his terrible debate performance. Political experts said the speech was intended to change the media cycle from his debate performance to the Court’s decision.
Biden, however, sparked mockery because he appeared to be wearing makeup that made him look orange, a color associated with former President Donald Trump’s iconic television career.
Quote:Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion to Monday’s Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity questioning the constitutionality of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment, suggesting not only is the office invalid but Smith cannot legally hold it.
Thomas’s nine-page concurrence suggests that Smith’s appointment is unconstitutional and that lower courts must tackle this issue. He questions whether Smith’s appointment itself violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution as well as whether “any office for the Special Counsel has been ‘established by Law,’ as the Constitution requires.”
“Those questions must be answered before this prosecution can proceed,” Thomas concludes. “We must respect the Constitution’s separation of powers in all its forms, else we risk rendering its protection of liberty a parchment guarantee.”
The Supreme Court ruled Monday in a 6-3 decision that presidents are covered by limited immunity from criminal prosecutions for actions taken while in office. That ruling stemmed from Smith’s prosecution of President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, over allegations he interfered in the 2020 election. Smith is also prosecuting Trump in Florida for the retention of classified documents.
Thomas’s legal reasoning could provide a roadmap for Judge Aileen Cannon, who while presiding over Smith’s classified documents case heard arguments in a June 21 hearing that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith as special counsel is unconstitutional. Her ruling could potentially strike a critical blow to Smith’s case in Florida as well as Washington.
At the heart of the hearing was a brief filed by former U.S. Attorneys Ed Meese and Michael Mukasey, Citizens United, and constitutional scholars. The brief claims Garland improperly appointed Smith to an office that does not exist with authority Garland does not possess. Gene Schaerr with the boutique law firm Schaerr Jaffe argued on behalf the group during the June hearing.
Thomas’s concurring opinion first examined whether Smith’s appointment complied with the Appointments Clause. That constitutional provision stipulates that “Officers of the United States” must be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate while also giving Congress the authority to create specific offices.
“By requiring that Congress create federal offices ‘by Law,’ the Constitution imposes an important check against the President—he cannot create offices at his pleasure.” Thomas wrote. “If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President.”
Thomas noted that Congress previously established an office similar to a special counsel called an “independent counsel,” but that statute expired in 1999. Congress – which created the Department of Justice – has authorized officers with authority and powers similar to those Garland granted Smith, but those officers require presidential appointment and senatorial confirmation.
Given those restrictions, special counsels are generally detailed from the pool of federal prosecutors, which have already received Senate confirmation. Yet Garland hired Smith as a private citizen, granting him the powers of a Constitution officer despite Smith being no more than an employee of Garland.
“If this unprecedented prosecution is to proceed, it must be conducted by someone duly authorized to do so by the American people,” Thomas said, noting no former president has ever faced criminal prosecution.
Quote:President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has extended and redesignated a temporary amnesty program to more than 300,000 Haitian nationals living in the United States, ensuring they are not eligible for deportation and can hold American jobs.
Late last week, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the extension and redesignation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for about 309,000 Haitian nationals living in the U.S. who would otherwise be eligible for deportation.
The announcement shows that again, Biden’s DHS is looking to massively expand TPS. Previously just about 165,000 Haitians were eligible for the program.
With the latest extension and redesignation, nearly double the amount of Haitian nationals will be eligible to remain in the U.S. and hold American jobs through February 2026 as long as they claim that they were in the country as of June 3, 2024.
“We are providing this humanitarian relief to Haitians already present in the United States given the conditions that existed in their home country as of June 3, 2024,” Mayorkas said in a statement. “In doing so, we are realizing the core objective of the TPS law and our obligation to fulfill it.”
TPS was first created under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1990 (INA) and prevents federal immigration officials from deporting people from countries that are designated as experiencing famine, war, or natural disasters.
Since the Clinton administration, TPS has been transformed into a de facto amnesty program as the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden administrations have continuously renewed the program for a variety of countries.
Today, nearly 900,000 foreign nationals in the U.S. are shielded from deportation after having secured TPS. The vast majority are from Venezuela, Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, and Ukraine.
OK, let's say we could agree on granting some amnesty to Ukrainians that truly need that. Yet, the rest of those countries listed above HAVE to be vetted, twice if possible. The US government doesn't know automatically if they're simple refugees or have been released from prison or are active gangsters or drug dealers. It gotta filter them, like it or not. The problem is that those that have demonstrated to be dangerous criminals can't be deported relying on the usual mechanisms only. What a mess!
Quote:U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized a large cache of weapons at the Progresso International Bridge. The weapons were found in a vehicle in the southbound lane of the bridge that connects Texas and Mexico.
CBP Office of Field Operations officers working the Progresso International Bridge on Wednesday selected a vehicle in the outbound lanes for secondary inspection, according to a statement from CBP officials. With the use of CBP K-9 teams and non-intrusive inspection systems, the officers found a large cache of weapons, magazines, and ammunition likely bound for cartels in Mexico.
...
The officers seized 67 rifles, handguns, and shotguns, along with 69 magazines and 33 rounds of ammunition hidden inside the vehicle.
“Our frontline officers continue to exercise resolute vigilance and through an effective combination of training, inspections experience and technology they interdicted a significant load of undeclared weapons,” Port Director Walter Weaver, Progreso/Donna Port of Entry said in a written statement. “These types of seizures perfectly exemplify and illustrate CBP’s ongoing commitment to helping secure our shared border with Mexico.”
Officers turned over the weapons and suspects to ICE Homeland Security Investigations for criminal investigation.
Quote:President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is reportedly flying illegal aliens, deported by former President Donald Trump’s administration, back into the United States.
Biden’s DHS is carrying out the little-known program, according to the Washington Free Beacon, where illegal aliens from Cameroon who were deported by the Trump administration are now being flown back into the United States despite having been found to have invalid asylum claims.
The Free Beacon‘s Joseph Simonson reports:
The Biden administration is flying previously deported Cameroonians whose asylum claims were determined to be invalid back into the United States, according to interviews with Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff and internal agency memos reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. [Emphasis added]
The program, which has not been announced to the public, appears to be a response to a February 2022 Human Rights Watch report about dozens of Cameroonians deported between 2019 and 2021 and then allegedly mistreated by their government. An estimated 80 to 90 Cameroonians were deported during that period of time. [Emphasis added]
But now some are arriving back in the United States under a program with little precedent, both current and former ICE officials say. All of the individuals deported under the previous administration were found not to have valid asylum claims in the United States. [Emphasis added]
Though such a program is unusual, it is not unprecedented for Biden’s DHS.
In December 2021, as Breitbart News reported, DHS flew two illegal aliens from Haiti back to the United States to reevaluate their asylum claims after they had been deported under the Trump administration.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has, on several occasions, said “equity” and “justice” for migrants are at the center of the agency’s mission.
Quote:Israel has lost effective sovereignty in the northern part of the country, thanks to constant Hezbollah projectile fire that has led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday.
The Times of Israel reported:
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that Israel “has effectively lost sovereignty in the northern quadrant of its country because people don’t feel safe to go to their homes.”
In an on-stage interview at the Brookings Institution, Blinken reiterates his belief that Israel does not want a war in Lebanon, but admits that “they may well be prepared to engage in one if necessary — from their perspective — to protect their interests.”
He says that Hezbollah does not actually want a war, that Lebanon does not want one either because it would be the primary victim; and that Iran does not want a war because it would prefer to save Hezbollah for a scenario in which it has a direct conflict with Israel.
The Biden administration’s attempts to mediate have reportedly included proposals that would require Israel to withdraw from the strategic Har Dov region, part of which is within Israeli territory and which allows a commanding perspective on Israel’s entire northern region.
Hezbollah recently placed tents in the Har Dov region in an attempt to encroach on the territory and to push Israel back from defending its own border region.
Ironically, Hezbollah maintains a presence in the area in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1707 of 2006, which bars the Iranian-backed group from occupying Lebanon south of the Litani River, several kilometers north.
Quote:In a matter of days, Prince Harry will be presented with an award named in honor of a fallen soldier and promising NFL player.
If you are confused, you are not alone.
On Thursday, ESPN announced that the royal would be this year's recipient of the esteemed Pat Tillman Award for Service at the 2024 ESPY Awards, a decision that Tillman's own mother finds stunning.
"I am shocked as to why they would select such a controversial and divisive individual to receive the award," Mary "Dannie" Tillman told The DailyMail. "There are recipients that are far more fitting. There are individuals working in the veteran community that are doing tremendous things to assist veterans."
"These individuals do not have the money, resources, connections or privilege that Prince Harry has. I feel that those types of individuals should be recognized," she said.
The Pat Tillman Foundation - which Mary is not associated with - has been selecting recipients since the award was established in 2014. Mary has never been consulted or privy to recipients in the past.
Harry, who served in the British army for 10 years, is being recognized for his work with the Invictus Games, an international sporting event for wounded service men and women. He launched the international event in 2014, one year before stepping down from active duty.
So what does the prince know about real sacrifice in the battlefield?
Quote:Federal immigration authorities in Mexico discovered 63 migrants concealed inside a tractor-trailer at a military checkpoint just 30 miles from El Paso, Texas. The migrants were discovered on Friday during joint enforcement operations involving the military and Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM).
According to INM, the migrants were being transported in dangerously cramped, high-temperature conditions. Three unaccompanied migrants were among the group discovered in the tractor-trailer. Most of the migrants were citizens of several South and Central American countries. According to INM, 18 migrants were citizens of Guatemala, 23 were citizens of Ecuador, six were from El Salvador, five were from Honduras, and two were from the Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic.
No information was released concerning the arrest or charges facing the vehicle driver involved in Friday’s event. Single adult migrants were transported to migrant facilities for processing. According to INM, the unaccompanied migrant children were taken to a shelter specifically for migrant children.
The military checkpoint in Sumalayuca is the last checkpoint travelers pass through on Mexico’s Highway 45 before reaching the border city of Juarez, Chihuahua. The checkpoint is in the arid sand dunes of the Chihuahuan desert and is an obstacle that migrants must walk around to avoid detection or hope to pass through while concealed within vehicles. In recent weeks, attempts to walk around have proved deadly.
In early June, an El Salvador migrant perished while attempting to avoid detection by INM Officers posted at the checkpoint. The woman, according to a report in Mexico, was accompanied by two cousins who reported the death using Mexico’s 911 system. Officers were dispatched from the checkpoint and discovered the lifeless migrant who had succumbed to the harsh temperatures in the region, which can reach more than 100 degrees during the summer months.
Quote:Bolivia’s socialist former President Evo Morales accused his former protegé and fellow socialist President Luis Arce on Sunday of staging last week’s failed coup d’etat against himself.
Morales, who publicly denounced the failed coup and expressed support for Arce, made the accusations on Sunday in the latest broadcast of his weekly radio show Kawsachun Coca, claiming that Arce “lied and deceived the whole world” with a “self-coup.”
The statements mark the latest chapter in a growing schism between Morales and Arce that has taken over their political party, the ruling Movement Towards Socialism Party (MAS), and is fueled by Morales’s repeated attempts to return to power for an unconstitutional fifth term.
On June 26, a group of Bolivian soldiers led by now-former Army Commander Juan José Zúñiga broke into the premises of La Paz’s Plaza Murillo, located in front of the presidential palace. Arce, other regional leaders, and international organizations denounced the incident as a coup attempt against the socialist government. Zúñiga maintained control of the plaza for roughly three hours before standing down and being arrested in the late hours of Wednesday evening.
Bolivian authorities placed Zúñiga in a six-month pre-trial detention period and charged him with terrorism and armed uprising. Shortly before his arrest on Wednesday evening, Zúñiga claimed to reporters that Arce “was aware” of the coup attempt and that the Bolivian president had instructed him to take out “armored vehicles” to “raise” his popularity. Bolivian government officials denied the “self-coup” allegations on Thursday morning.
Morales, on his Sunday radio show, claimed that, while he initially “thought” that last Wednesday’s events were a coup, he now finds himself “confused” and now thinks the incidents “seem like a self-coup.” The Bolivian socialist leader stated that he received unspecified reports from “military patriots” that changed his mind.
The socialist former president also stated that the solidarity he expressed to Arce in a telephone call amidst Wednesday’s events was a “lie” and claimed that Zúñiga will be set free in “six months.”
“Before his [Zúñiga’s] arrest he informed his comrades and relatives that Lucho [Arce] betrayed him, he just confirmed it. In [Bolivian Police] cells, General Zúñiga said, ‘Lucho has betrayed me,’ he repeated that,” Morales said. “These new elements convince me that it is a self-coup, or finally that Lucho has planned well to use the Army, to do so much damage to the Army, to victimize himself with crocodile tears with such a lie.”
“I want to take this opportunity to say to the whole world – to apologize. Unfortunately, Lucho lied, deceived the Bolivian people and the whole world with this coup or self-coup,” he continued.
Quote:Former Vatican emissary Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano has refused to obey a summons to the Vatican to face charges of schism, restating he does not recognize Pope Francis as the head of the Catholic Church.
“As I stated in my Communiqué of June 20, I do not recognize the authority of the tribunal that claims to judge me, nor of its Prefect, nor of the one who appointed him,” Archbishop Viganò said in a statement.
“This decision of mine, which is certainly painful, is not the result of haste or a spirit of rebellion; but rather is dictated by the moral necessity which, as Bishop and Successor of the Apostles, obliges me in conscience to bear witness to the Truth, that is, to God Himself, to Our Lord Jesus Christ,” he declared.
Pope Benedict XVI appointed Archbishop Viganò as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States in 2011 and the archbishop served in this role for five years, from 2011 to 2016.
Viganò became something of a conservative superstar in 2018, when he published an explosive report accusing Pope Francis of reinstating homosexual abuser Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to a position of prominence despite knowing of McCarrick’s serial abuse.
In his 11-page affidavit, Archbishop Viganò asserted that Pope Benedict had imposed “canonical sanctions” on Cardinal McCarrick in 2009-2010 forbidding him from traveling, celebrating Mass in public, or participating in public meetings, but that Pope Francis later lifted these sanctions and made McCarrick a close personal advisor.
“Francis is abdicating the mandate which Christ gave to Peter to confirm the brethren. Indeed, by his action he has divided them, led them into error, and encouraged the wolves to continue to tear apart the sheep of Christ’s flock,” Viganò stated, before calling on the pope to resign.
“In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, he must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them,” the archbishop said.
Over the intervening years, Viganò has continued making ever more incendiary claims, leading many of his former admirers to part ways with him. He has not only rejected the authority of Pope Francis, but has also refused to accept the validity of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), an important ecumenical council highly commended by Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
In June, the Vatican’s doctrinal office, headed by Argentinean Cardinal Víctor “Tucho” Fernández, ordered the former Vatican diplomat to appear in Rome to undergo an extrajudicial penal trial for the crime of schism for having denied the legitimacy of Pope Francis and Vatican II.
Quote:Thousands turned out to protest the outcome of the first round of the French parliamentary elections on Sunday night, objecting to the French people having voted in greater numbers for Le Pen’s populists than the pan-left bloc.
France-wide election results trickled in overnight for the first round of the Parliamentary selection, largely confirming the exit polls published Sunday night and the opinion polling in the days running up to the vote. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) is the largest party with 33.15 per cent of votes cast on the highest turnout for a French election in decades. The New Popular Front, a new pan-left alliance put together for this vote got 27.99 per cent and globalist-managerialist President Emmanuel Macron’s faction came in third with just 20.76 per cent.
The French people may have spoken at the ballot box, but the result clearly left some feeling very upset. Protests erupted in several French cities overnight, most particularly in Paris, where thousands gathered. The New Popular Front, which represents a spectrum of left wing parties from the pro-European Union centrists to full-blooded communists has earlier threatened they would “resist” the result if the RN won, and the protests may be the firs throes of that, although given there is a week to run until the second round of the election actually allocates the majority of the seats and decides whether Le Pen’s RN can command a majority in the house or not, perhaps expect more violence next week.
Le Soir notes the Monument to the Republic, a large limestone and bronze statue in the centre of Paris extolling the virtues of the nation and including a giant lion guarding a ballot box, was covered in graffiti by anti-right-wing protesters who scaled the stones and unfurled banners. The paper further relates that in the city of Lyon, police clashed with protesters who set off an explosive at a branch of American fast food chain McDonald’s and that missiles were exchanged between protesters and police in Nantes.
TF1 cited police sources who said there were 800 on the “against the far right” protest, who manifested as “a hostile group composed of hooded and masked individuals [which] was interrupted by the police in its attempt to enter the town hall of the 1st arrondissement of Lyon”.
Quote:A rocket belonging to a Chinese civilian aerospace manufacturer crashed into a mountain after accidentally launching Sunday, the company announced.
Space Pioneer, also known as Beijing Tianbing Technology, was attempting a ground test with their Tianlong-3 rocket when a “structural failure” caused it to separate from the launch pad, a statement obtained by CNN said.
“Due to the structural failure of the connection between the rocket body and the test platform, the first-stage rocket was separated from the launch pad,” the company stated.
“After liftoff, the onboard computer was automatically shut down, and the rocket fell into the deep mountains 1.5 kilometers [0.9 miles] southwest of the test platform. The rocket body fell into the mountain and disintegrated.”
Videos shared on social media by onlookers shows the moment the rocket was launched before falling and causing a fiery explosion:
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No injuries were reported as a result of the crash.
CNN described Space Pioneer as a “leading company” in the commercial rocket industry, as they work to develop reusable orbital rocket technology
The company successfully launched its Tianlong-2 rocket — China’s first liquid carrier rocket launched by a commercial operator — in April 2023, according to the Chinese government.
The rocket that disintegrated on Sunday was reportedly built in order to help build the country’s satellite internet network.
Quote:Courts in Hong Kong heard four liquidation suits against Chinese developers from their frustrated creditors last week, a record number of cases to hit the courts at the same time.
The liquidation surge spells more trouble for the Chinese real estate market, which has been tottering on the verge of collapse for years.
The four developers hauled into court last week were Kaisa Group Holdings, Shimao Group Holdings, Redsun Properties, and DaFa properties.
All four were granted temporary reprieves from liquidation, but the longest grace period the courts extended was seven weeks. Kaisa Holdings was bluntly told there would be “no excuse” for giving it another extension. Court observers noted that the restructuring terms are getting worse with every extension.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) noted on Monday that several other Chinese developers are facing their own impending hearings or have already been ordered to liquidate their assets to repay creditors, including at least one state-supported enterprise.
Glen Ho, a specialist at the international auditing and consulting firm Deloitte, anticipated “a second wave of restructurings from 2025 onwards” because there will probably be “no significant improvement in sales or the confidence of home buyers.”
Quote:Members of the Taliban terrorist organization concluded their participation on Monday in a U.N.-led international meeting on the future of Afghanistan, thanking organizers for including them and specifically expressing praise for the government of U.S. President Joe Biden [f]or the engagement.
Doha, Qatar, hosted a two-day summit for a variety of representatives of international governments on Sunday and Monday, informally known as the “Doha talks,” led by U.N. Undersecretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo. Despite her leadership, the Taliban excluded Afghan women from participating, outraging international human rights groups and complicating discussions with Western countries present.
The head of the Taliban del[e]gation, top spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, acknowledged the global disgust with the Taliban’s flagrant abuse of women in his remarks to the summit, but described it as a diplomatic obligation for other countries to ignore the Taliban’s flagrant human rights abuses.
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This week’s meeting was the third iteration of the “Doha talks” but the first in which the Taliban participated, as the jihadist terrorists attempted to impose unreasonable demands on the United Nations for their participation in the past two engagements.
The Taliban, which now calls itself the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” has been the uncontested government of Afghanistan since August 15, 2021, when the terrorists stormed Kabul and the U.S.-backed government there fled without a fight. President Biden’s decision to violate an agreement brokered with the Taliban and former Afghan government by his predecessor, Donald Trump, in early 2021 prompted the terrorists to launch a territorial conquest campaign that resulted in the fall of Kabul.
Mujahid’s publicly released remarks to the meeting on Sunday emphasized the Taliban’s alleged support for “positive engagement” with the world and demanded that relevant parties lift sanctions on his terrorist organization to allow Afghanistan to enrich itself.
Quote:Israel’s flag carrier El Al said on Monday that a flight from Warsaw to Tel Aviv was forced to make an emergency landing in Antalya, Turkey, on Sunday.
Due to strained relations between Turkey and Israel, Turkish airport crew members refused to refuel the plane or allow anyone except the passenger who needed medical assistance to leave the aircraft.
El Al Flight LY5102 was about three hours into its journey from Warsaw, Poland, to Tel Aviv, Israel, when it declared an in-flight emergency. The plane landed at Antalya Airport on the advice of a doctor who was treating the stricken passenger.
The plane remained on the ground for several hours while the sick passenger was evacuated to a hospital, during which time none of the other passengers were allowed to leave. The plane kept its engines running the entire time to provide power and air conditioning, which substantially depleted its fuel reserves.
According to El Al, Turkish airport workers “refused to refuel the company’s plane, even though it was a medical case.” Once the medical emergency had been handled, the plane made a 40-minute flight to Rhodes, Greece, so it could land again and refuel then continue to Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv later on Sunday.
Turkish officials disputed this account, claiming it was the El Al captain’s decision to refuse fuel at Antalya Airport.
“Fuel was to be provided to the plane due to humanitarian considerations, but as the relevant procedure was about to be completed, the captain decided to leave of his own accord,” a Turkish diplomatic source told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Monday.
Israeli state TV station KAN disputed the Turkish diplomat’s claims, insisting that the flight crew was originally told it would be allowed to deplane and refuel, but Turkish officials then retracted their permission to do both, supposedly because “permits” were needed to fuel the aircraft.
Neither Turkish nor El Al officials have disclosed details about the passenger’s ailment, health status, or current location.
Turkey was a popular tourist destination for Israelis before the Gaza war, and there used to be a number of direct flights available between Tel Aviv and Istanbul every day. Istanbul was also a convenient hub for Israeli flights to other parts of the world.
Those flights were canceled after Hamas attacked Israeli civilians on October 7, and the administration of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which openly supports Hamas, became harshly critical of the Israeli response. Turkish Airlines said in April that it will not resume flights to Israel until March 2025 at the earliest.
Arab League: Hezbollah No Longer Considered Terrorists
Quote:The Arab League announced on Sunday that it no longer considers Lebanese Hezbollah to be a terrorist organization, even though Hezbollah has been showering Israeli civilians with rockets for months to support the Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
“In earlier Arab League decisions, Hezbollah was designated as a terrorist organization. This terminology was reflected in our resolutions and led to the severing of our communication with them. Member states of the Arab League have now agreed that this approach no longer applies,” explained Arab League Assistant Secretary-General Hossam Zaki.
Zaki pointed out that the Arab League does not maintain a formal list of terrorist organizations and feels no need to create one.
The Times of Israel (TOI) confirmed that Hezbollah was the only terrorist group so designated by the Arab League until now. The League apparently applied this designation on an ad hoc basis in 2016 after the influential Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) branded Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
The GCC made that decision in March 2016 after accusing Hezbollah of causing “incitement in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq.” Hezbollah sent fighters to help keep Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in power, while the GCC mostly supported rebel groups.
The GCC countries, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), were also concerned about Hezbollah’s “stranglehold” on Lebanese politics – an entirely reasonable concern, given the state of Lebanon both then and now – and by Iran’s support for the Lebanese terrorist group.
The Arab League slapped Hezbollah with its terrorist designation ten days later, citing “provocative statements by Iranian officials against Arab countries” and Iran’s use of groups like Hezbollah to conduct “flagrant interference” in the affairs of other states.
“Hezbollah’s terrorist practices and its intervention in Syria on the side of the Assad regime have further destabilized the region and fueled the sectarian strife. Hezbollah is a key partner for the Assad regime in the killing of more than 300,000 civilians in Syria,” a member of the Arab League’s political committee said in March 2016.
Quote:Israel is in a political uproar on Monday after authorities released Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which Hamas and other terror groups used as a base, including for smuggling or killing hostages.
Abu Salmiya was released after seven months in detention without charge.
Many Israelis believe he is responsible for the terror at the hospital; Palestinians saw his release as a sign of his innocence, and unfair treatment of detainees.
The Jerusalem Post reported:
The Shin Bet and the IDF have released 50 Gaza detainees, including the director of Shifa Hospital Muhammad Abu Salmiya, who has been in administrative detention in Israel since November 23.
Although Hamas was using Shifa Hospital as a terror base and to conceal hostages, there was never any concrete proof publicly produced that Abu Salmiya was directly involved in this.
Back in November, a senior IDF source told The Jerusalem Post that Abu Salmiya had given suspicious answers when questioned about what he knew about Hamas’s systematic usage of his hospital, but suspicious answers without evidence cannot usually be used to hold someone in administrative detention for more than seven months.
It is entirely possible the release was a legal necessity, if there was no evidence specifically pointing to Abu Samiya.
The release prompted a round of finger-pointing among members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, who attempted to blame each other for releasing Abu Salmiya — at least without Israeli hostages also being released.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) revealed Monday that soldiers had discovered and destroyed a large tunnel underneath central Gaza, one kilometer long, that had been used to transport terrorists and weapons in a key strategic area.
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In a statement, the IDF said:
The 99th Division, the only reserve division operating in the Gaza Strip, has been fighting for the past few months in the area of the central Gaza Strip. The soldiers have eliminated approximately 100 terrorists and destroyed more than 100 terrorist structures, weapons storage facilities, observation posts, launch pits and underground tunnel routes.
In cooperation with the Yahalom Unit, the troops destroyed a terrorist tunnel one kilometer in length. The tunnel included branches which were used by terrorists to move between different locations underground. In addition, the troops operated against a booby-trapped mosque that was used as a hideout for terrorists in the area. Secondary explosions were detected after the strike, indicating the presence of large quantities of weapons stored at the site.
The tunnel apparently passed underneath the Netzarim Corridor, a swath of central Gaza that is one of the only pieces of territory still actively controlled by IDF forces.
The IDF also found and destroyed the largest Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket production facility found thus far, according to the Times of Israel.
Quote:Iran warned of an “obliterating war” if Israel launches a full-scale attack on Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terror group in southern Lebanon.
The Iranian mission to the United Nations wrote in a post on X that if Israel embarked “on full-scale military aggression,” to “attack Lebanon,” there would be an “obliterating war.” Iran’s warning comes as several countries such as the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada have issued warnings for their citizens to avoid traveling to Lebanon.
“Albeit Iran deems as psychological warfare the Zionist regime’s propaganda about intending to attack Lebanon, should it embark on full-scale military aggression, an obliterating war will ensue,” the Iranian mission to the U.N. wrote. “All options, incl. the full involvement of all Resistance Fronts, are on the table.”
The Times of Israel reported that Iran issued the warning “after the Israel Defense Forces attacked several Hezbollah positions”:
The warning came after the Israel Defense Forces attacked several Hezbollah positions, in response to the Iran-backed terror group’s latest barrage on northern Israel hours earlier, amid escalating tensions on the Lebanese border.
On Thursday, Hezbollah fired rockets at an Israeli military base, after Israel had launched strikes on Nabatieh, a city in Lebanon, and the town of Sohmor.
Quote:Australian Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil announced on Monday that visa fees for international students have been more than doubled – a transparent, if not explicit, attempt to clamp down on heavy migration, especially from China.
Effective on Monday, Australia’s student visa fee rose from $710 in Australian dollars (about $472 U.S.) to a whopping $1,600 (about $1,068 U.S.). The country also implemented a new rule preventing people with temporary visitor or graduate visas from applying for a student visa while still in Australia.
The U.S. student visa fee is currently $110. The total package price for application and fees works out to about $764 in the United States, $930 in the United Kingdom, and just $164 in Canada.
“The changes coming into force today will help restore integrity to our international education system, and create a migration system which is fairer, smaller and better able to deliver for Australia,” O’Neil said.
Australian officials said the increased revenues from the higher fees would be spent on migration and education initiatives, such as increased vocational training.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) described Australia’s student visa clampdown as “the latest move by the government to rein in record migration that has intensified pressure on an already tight housing market.”
Migration rose to record levels after Australia lifted its coronavirus restrictions, surging by 60 percent in the past year alone. A great deal of that immigration surge was caused by Chinese students pouring into Australian universities, as an Education Ministry report released in February made clear.
"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:Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is being criticized for his radical criminal justice “reform” policies after a convicted robber out of jail on a suspended sentence murdered the wife of a New Zealand CEO.
CBS News reported that Patricia McKay, 68, was killed when she and her husband, visiting from abroad, were robbed at gunpoint, and she was struck and killed by a car during the ensuring struggle, during which shots were fired:
A 68-year-old woman visiting from New Zealand was walking with her husband just outside a Newport Beach mall when she was robbed and killed by three men, police said.
Patricia McKay was outside the Fashion Island mall shopping center, near Santa Rosa Drive and Newport Center Drive, around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday when two men approached her and her husband and tried to rob them — one of the suspects allegedly armed with a handgun, according to the Newport Beach Police Department.
…
McKay was pronounced dead at the scene. Her body was found in the parking lot just outside the Barnes and Noble bookstore.
The Los Angeles Times reported that one suspect, Leroyernest Joseph McCrary, 26, of Compton, was waking the streets freely despite a long criminal record and a conviction for robbery, due to probation and a suspended prison sentence:
McCrary, who also goes by the name LeRoy Ernest McCrary, has a history of crimes in L.A. County. He was arrested and charged in October 2022 with being a narcotics addict in possession of a firearm, a felony. He pleaded no contest to that felony charge the October of the following year.
McCrary also was charged in a robbery case in September 2023 and pleaded no contest. He received a concurrent sentence for both convictions and got two years of probation and three years in state prison, with the sentence suspended.
McCrary also was arrested on suspicion of driving with a suspended license in both 2018 and 2021.
The Daily Mail reported that blame lay with Gascón, noting that he is “a progressive prosecutor who has been vocal about his belief that the criminal justice system needs to focus more on intervention and rehabilitation, blasting ‘tough on crime’ policies as racist and a failure.”
Gascón benefited in his 2020 election race from millions of dollars in spending by left-wing billionaire George Soros. He boasts of his record of reducing prison sentences for crimes.
Quote:The mother of Johan José Martínez Rangel — one of the two Venezuelan illegal immigrants accused of sexually assaulting and murdering 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray in June — was an official under Venezuela’s socialist regime, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.
Martínez Rangel, 22, stands accused, alongside 26-year-old Franklin José Peña Ramos, of sexually assaulting and strangling Nungaray before leaving her for dead in a creek in Houston, Texas, in the early hours of June 17.
The Daily Mail reported that Venezuelans from Martínez Rangel’s home state of Guárico responded to the news of Nungaray’s death by sharing on social media that his mother, Nazareth Rangel Palacios, is a “staunch supporter” of the socialist regime that dictator Nicolás Maduro leads and served as a councilwoman for the Venezuelan government in the past.
The Mail reviewed the public electoral registry data of both Martínez Rangel and Rangel Palacios and found that both are registered at the same voting center in San Juan de Los Morros, the capital city of Guárico. Venezuela’s National Electoral Center (CNE) maintains a public registry of each voter’s name and corresponding voting center that can be freely accessed by typing a Venezuelan citizen’s identification card number on the CNE’s website.
“Rangel Palacios was a vocal militant for the ruling party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela [PSUV], and was photographed with her son in pro-government events until he left the country in about 2018,” the Mail found.
Pictures that the Daily Mail published appear to show Nazareth Rangel in the company of her son. The mother is seen sporting a red shirt with a stylized black and white silhouette of the eyes of late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez. The “eyes” are one of the main symbols of the PSUV and have been extensively utilized in propaganda, state events, murals, socialist paraphernalia, and plastered on the buildings of government institutions since 2012, when they were first used as part of Chávez’s 2012 presidential campaign.
Martínez Rangel is believed to have entered Colombia before illegally entering the United States through the southern border in March. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, Border Patrol agents apprehended Martínez Rangel at the border near El Paso, Texas, on March 14. The same day, he was released into the U.S. interior on an order of recognizance with a Notice to Appear (NTA) at a later date before a federal immigration judge.
Quote:On Wednesday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “The Hill,” Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-NC) stated that while he thinks President Joe Biden is fit, there are “legitimate questions about whether Joe Biden can do the job. And I want to see him answer those tough questions.” And Biden hasn’t really been visible since the day after the debate.
Nickel said, “I think what he needs to do is he needs to get out there in front of the American public, he needs to answer the tough questions, no holds barred from reporters, he needs to come to places like North Carolina’s 13th district and talk to Democrats, Republicans, Independents so they know that he’s up for the job. That’s the first thing he needs to do and he needs to do it soon.”
Nickel added that he thinks Biden is up for the job, but “he needs to get out there and make the case himself.”
Nickel further stated, “[W]e’ve got to do everything we can to stop Donald Trump. I’m very hopeful that Joe Biden’s up to the task, but it was a bad debate, and he’s got to prove to the American public that he can do the job. And that’s, I think, where we are right now.”
He further stated, “I think, again, the place I keep coming back to is legitimate questions about whether Joe Biden can do the job. And I want to see him answer those tough questions.” And that we “haven’t seen him really since” he did a rally in North Carolina the day after the debate.
Nickel concluded that the concerns about Biden’s fitness are a “distraction from what a disaster Donald Trump would be.”
Quote:A man was killed Thursday evening in a Chicago alleyway while handling a large firework during Fourth of July celebrations.
The firework hit the 34-year-old man in the head while he was handling it around 10:00 p.m. in the 3000 block of North Kostner, CWB Chicago reported on Friday, noting he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Law enforcement said he suffered “trauma to the body” after lighting a mortar that failed to detonate. The man was standing over it when he tried to light it again. However, it exploded and killed him instantly.
“Records from the Cook County Medical Examiner reveal that fireworks have killed at least two other people in recent years,” the outlet said.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the man as Earl Lory, ABC 7 reported Friday. The outlet noted that officials are still investigating the case.
The article also said that “Chicago firefighters have been battling blazes likely due to the use of illegal fireworks on the Fourth of July.”
Video footage shows officials at the scene of the man’s death and clips of fireworks going off in the middle of the city’s streets:
Quote:The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that officials can place ballot drop boxes around their communities in this fall’s elections, overturning its own ruling two years ago limiting their use in the presidential swing state.
The court limited the use of drop boxes in July 2022, ruling then that they could be placed only in local election clerks’ offices and no one other than the voter could return a ballot in person.
Conservatives controlled the court at that time, but Janet Protasiewicz’s election victory in April 2023 flipped the court to liberal control. Seeing an opening, Priorities USA, a progressive voter mobilization group, asked the court in February to revisit the decision.
At least 29 other states allow for absentee ballot drop boxes, according to the U.S. Vote Foundation, and expanded use in Wisconsin could have major implications in the presidential race.
Wisconsin again figures to be a crucial swing state after President Joe Biden barely won it in 2020 and Donald Trump narrowly took it in 2016. Democrats believe that making it easier to vote absentee will boost turnout for their side.
The justices announced in March they would review the ban on drop boxes but wouldn’t consider any other parts of the case. The move drew the ire of the court’s conservatives, who accused the liberals of trying to give Democrats an advantage this fall. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in April urged the court to again allow drop boxes.
The court ruled 4-3 on Friday that drop boxes can be utilized in any location.
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, one of the court’s four liberal justices, wrote for the majority that placing a ballot in a drop box set up and maintained by a local election clerk is no different than giving the ballot to the clerk, regardless of the box’s location. Local clerks have great discretion in how they administer elections and that extends to using and locating drop boxes, she added.
“Our decision today does not force or require that any municipal clerks use drop boxes,” Bradley wrote. “It merely acknowledges what (state law) has always meant: that clerks may lawfully utilize secure drop boxes in an exercise of their statutorily-conferred discretion.”
All three conservative justices dissented. Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote that the liberals are simply trying to advance their political agenda and criticized them for ignoring the precedent set by the 2022 ruling.
Quote:The Pentagon chose the eve of the Fourth of July holiday to quietly announce a “significant” package of air defense interceptors valued at some $2.2 billion is destined for Ukraine.
The announcement came just days before the U.S. hosts the NATO summit in Washington and as Ukraine has continued to lobby for military support and acceptance into the alliance.
UPI reports the funding originates from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which sees the U.S. secure the weaponry and training from partners and companies rather than from presidential drawdowns taken from U.S. stockpiles.
The funding will be used to purchase interceptors for PATRIOT and NASAMS air defense systems for Ukraine, the Department of Defense said.
“The Biden Administration plans to accelerate delivery of these munitions by re-sequencing upcoming Foreign Military Sales deliveries for Ukraine,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
“As a result, Ukraine will be provided with the interceptors it urgently needs to protect its people and critical infrastructure against Russia’s aerial attacks.”
The Biden administration also announced an additional $150 million package under the presidential drawdown authority that includes missiles for HAWK air defense systems, ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, Javelin and AT-4 anti-armor systems as well as ammunition and artillery rounds, among other lethal items, the UPI report notes.
“This support will also help strengthen Ukraine’s air defense against Russian attacks and reinforce Ukraine’s capabilities across the front lines,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Quote:The Russian government on Wednesday curtly rejected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s offer to mediate ceasefire talks in the Ukraine war.
According to the Kremlin, Erdogan sidled up to Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, told the Russian dictator that he thinks peace in Ukraine is possible, and offered himself as mediator. The regime of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin turned him down cold.
“No, it’s not possible,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of Erdogan’s offer to Russian reporters.
Erdogan has been trying to insert himself into the Ukraine conflict for quite some time. In March, he tried to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky interested in Turkish-hosted peace talks while Zelensky was visiting Istanbul.
“Since the beginning, we have contributed as much as we could toward ending the war through negotiations. We are also ready to host a peace summit in which Russia will also be included,” Erdogan told reporters, indicating he would also pitch his peace summit idea to Putin.
Zelensky turned Erdogan down, much more politely than Putin would four months later, saying that Ukraine was not interested in any summits with Russia until the Russians agreed to a ten-point plan that included restoring all of Ukraine’s territory and withdrawing all of its troops.
Quote:Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in Moscow, days after a similar visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, to discuss the ongoing Russian invasion with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Kremlin offered Orbán a cordial reception, just as Kyiv did less than a week ago, but leaders in the European Union issued statements appearing to indicate disapproval of Orbán’s travels. Orbán, who currently holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union, has described his travel as a “peace mission” intended to “clarify the facts” between Zelensky and Putin, hoping to carve out space for direct talks between the two countries.
In his public remarks alongside Orbán, Putin described his decision to invade Ukraine as “the largest European crisis” and declared himself at Orbán’s “disposal” to help him in his capacity leading the European Council.
He offered some criticism independent of Ukraine, however, lamenting that direct trade between Hungary and Russia had declined – likely a product of Orbán courting a massive amount of Chinese investment.
“I know that this time you have come not only as our long-standing partner, but also as the President of the Council of the European Union,” Putin said. “I hope we will have the opportunity to exchange views on building bilateral relations in this difficult situation and, of course, to discuss the possible scenarios for the largest European crisis – I am referring to Ukraine.”
“I hope you will acquaint me with your personal stance and the stance of the European partners,” Putin continued, according to a translation of his remarks by the Kremlin. “As for bilateral relations, unfortunately, we have seen a serious decline in trade, by more than 35 percent. But in general, there is much to work on. We are implementing ambitious projects.”
“In any case, we are delighted to see you and we have much to discuss,” he concluded.
Quote:Long after the other counts in Britain’s General Election closed, James McMurdock has been elected in Essex after the race went down to the wire with three recounts ordered.
“He’s won! He’s an MP! Go on my son!” celebrated Nigel Farage on Friday afternoon after a surprise extra victory for his Reform Party was announced, when a hotly contested seat declared for James McMurdock.
McMurdock was elected for South Basildon and East Thurrock with 12,178 votes, only fractionally ahead of Labour with 12,080 votes. The Conservatives also performed well in this three-way marginal, and were only slightly behind on 10,159.
Responding to the victory, Mr Farage said McMurdock was a “paper candidate” — meaning a candidate standing as a pure formality with no expectation of winning and no money ploughed into a campaign — and that his whole team consisted of just him, and his mother and father. Nevertheless, the “former city boy”, meaning bank or financial services worker, emerged as “absolutely neck-and-neck with Labour” and the vote came down to the wire.
Local newspaper the Basildon Echo reports the council had originally been ready to declare the result by the early hours of this morning, but with a result with just a couple of hundred votes in it and allegations of serious counting errors by the Labour party, a total recount was ordered. Eventually, after each result was challenged, the whole election was recounted three times. On Friday afternoon as the final recount was underway, Mr Farage had said he was biting his nails over the tension of the result.
Quote:The defeated leader of the Conservative Party, which suffered its worst election result in well over a century overnight, has said he is stepping down from power and will also give up control of what remains of his political faction.
“I have heard your anger, disappointment and I take responsibility for this loss,” said Rishi Sunak on Friday morning at the podium in front of Downing Street. The Prime Minister acknowledged the country has given a clear signal that it wants change, and said he would go to King Charles III to tender his resignation.
The Prime Minister immediately got in his official car to make the short journey from his official residence to the King’s at Buckingham Palace, just a short walk away. The Royal Standard was hastily hauled up at the building shortly before to denote the King’s arrival. During his ongoing cancer treatment, Charles has been living in the countryside.
This event is emblematic of the extraordinary speed and little fuss, by global standards, with which the British government changes. Today, as with most General Elections, the vast majority of seat counts — which are done by hand with paper ballots, often relying on local bank tellers volunteering for their skill at fast counting — and the resignation of the Prime Minister and the appointment of the new one are all done within a single morning.
After Mr Sunak left Buckingham Palace, the United Kingdom is technically briefly left without a government until Sir Keir Starmer, the winner of last night’s vote, arrives by a separate car to meet the King. During this brief period of minutes, the country is under the direct control of the monarch.
Sir Keir won a commanding majority in the commons overnight, taking 412 seats to the Conservatives’ 121. Yet the election is one of the most extraordinary and disproportionate in history: Sir Keir’s Labour appears to have won fewer votes than it did in the last election while doubling its seat count. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party got a massive 14 per cent of the vote but was only rewarded with less than one per cent of the seats.
The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, got a close share of the vote at 12 per cent, yet got 11 per cent of the seats, demonstrating how far Mr Farage’s faction has to go to learn to dominate the UK election system’s quirks before the next election.
As well as leaving the post of Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak also said this morning that, unsurprisingly, he would be resigning from the post of party leader as well. There isn’t much of a Conservative Party left to lead at the moment, but nevertheless he said his departure would be delayed slightly so the arrangements to select a successor could be put in place.
"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:Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines released a statement on Wednesday that said Iranian government actors have funded pro-Gaza protests in the United States.
“In recent weeks, Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years. We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters,” she said.
She added that Americans participating in the pro-Gaza protests are acting in “good faith” and might be unaware they are receiving funding from Iran, but urged them to be “vigilant.”
She said:
I want to be clear that I know Americans who participate in protests are, in good faith, expressing their views on the conflict in Gaza – this intelligence does not indicate otherwise. Moreover, the freedom to express diverse views, when done peacefully, is essential to our democracy, but it is also important to warn of foreign actors who seek to exploit our debate for their own purposes.
Furthermore, Americans who are being targeted by this Iranian campaign may not be aware that they are interacting with or receiving support from a foreign government. We urge all Americans to remain vigilant as they engage online with accounts and actors they do not personally know.
While the DNI issuing public statements is rare, the intelligence community has become more proactive in calling out what it sees as foreign influence in the U.S., particularly around elections since former President Donald Trump’s win in 2016, which Democrats blamed on Russian election interference.
Haines said her statement would be the “first of what will be regular updates” leading up to the 2024 election.
She said, “The Intelligence Community recognizes the importance of informing the public of foreign efforts to influence our democratic processes and, consequently, leading into the Presidential and congressional elections this year, we are launching today the first of what will be regular updates regarding such threats.”
So they vandalize buildings, statues, fountains, they block buildings and take hostages... but they're just acting in good faith!?
Quote:Residents of the west-central town of Springfield, Ohio, are demanding that their city council do something to stem the tide of the Haitian immigrants that have flooded the city, especially in the aftermath of the death of a child in a school bus accident caused by a migrant driving illegally.
The town situated just west of the state capitol in Columbus has been a target of Haitian immigrants at least since 2014, and in the ensuing years, some ten thousand had moved to the Rust Belt town. But in the last four years alone, that population has ballooned to more than 20,000. The influx is causing serious pressures to mount on the town.
Ohio’s Republican U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance put the blame for the mounting problems squarely on the Biden administration, which is causing small towns all across the country to suffer just like Springfield.
“This self-imposed disaster is crushing the job prospects of our citizens, making it more difficult for Ohio families to find homes and draining social service programs funded by American taxpayers,” Vance told the media. “People who are here illegally should be sent back to their home countries as soon as possible, and individuals here on temporary status should not expect to stay indefinitely.”
The explosion of immigrants — many of whom do not speak English — has placed serious burdens on the town. Town services are being stretched thin, and costs for translating services, housing, and legal services have become a major expense.
For a few years, longtime residents were unbothered by the growing Haitian community, but over time, clashes have begun to occur as Haitians have become more obtrusive by driving illegally, piling into apartments and homes by the dozens, filling local schools with children who need special care in education and language services, and increasingly becoming a focus for government spending.
Residents are becoming uneasy as their town becomes increasingly decorated with Haitian flags, for instance. And some expressed concern when the Haitian flag was raised at City Hall instead of the U.S. flag during the city’s flag day celebrations.
But that uneasiness turned to outright anger when an 11-year-old child paid the price with his life for all this immigration. The incident occurred in August of last year when migrant Hermanio Joseph drove a 2010 Honda Odyssey into oncoming traffic causing a school bus filled with children on their way to their first day of school to spin out of control and flip over.
The accident left 11-year-old Aiden Clark dead and a dozen other children injured, some seriously.
The migrant, who had only been here a bit longer than a year, did not have a driver’s license and had never passed any state driving exams to obtain one.
Joseph, 36, was later convicted on first-degree felony involuntary manslaughter and fourth-degree felony vehicular homicide charges, both enhanced charges because he was driving without a license.
But the city has faced other problems, as well, especially in housing.
Migrants are claiming that some unscrupulous property owners are gouging them for rent and allowing a dozen or more to move into buildings and apartments where residency laws state that fewer than ten may reside.
“When I first came I was in a three bedroom house,” Haitian immigrant Patrick Joseph said, according to the Dayton Daily News. “We had more than 20 people living in that house. (The landlords) just rent the bed in the bedroom. A room can sleep like 10 people. And sometimes the house has only one bathroom.”
Quote:Democrat Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and Ron Wyden (OR) have asked the Department of Justice to launch a criminal investigation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas due to gifts he allegedly received.
The two senators announced on Tuesday that they “sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week requesting he appoint a special counsel to probe whether Thomas violated ethics, false statement and tax laws,” per The Washington Post.
The action marks a significant escalation in efforts by Democratic senators to address ethics controversies related to Thomas and the court in recent years. Whitehouse’s staff said it was likely the first time anyone had requested a special counsel investigate a Supreme Court justice. Whitehouse sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, while Wyden chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge and executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, said the Justice Department has the legal authority to appoint a special counsel to investigate Thomas, but whether it would is another matter. “Inevitably it would be seen as political retribution for rulings the justices made that they don’t like,” he said. “I just don’t know how you get out of that box.”
The Justice Department has issued no comment on the request. In their statement, Whitehouse and Wyden said that evidence shows Justice Thomas “committed numerous willful violations of federal ethics and false-statement laws.”
“We do not make this request lightly,” they said. “The evidence assembled thus far plainly suggests that Justice Thomas has committed numerous willful violations of federal ethics and false-statement laws and raises significant questions about whether he and his wealthy benefactors have complied with their federal tax obligations.”
Elliot S. Berke, the justice’s attorney, previously said that Thomas “has always strived for full transparency and adherence to the law, including with respect to what personal travel needed to be reported,” adding that any failures of disclosure were “strictly inadvertent.”
The two senators specifically called on the DoJ to examine a “$267,000 loan Thomas used to purchase a luxury motor coach in 1999, adding that they have not received adequate answers from Thomas about how he handled the matter,” per the Post.
As Breitbart News reported last year, the justice disclosed gifts received after financial disclosure rules were changed.
“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s financial disclosures this week have fueled hyperventilating attacks from leftwing Democrats, but they actually show their concerted efforts against the only black conservative on the nation’s highest court are groundless,” reported Ken Klukowski.
“Financial disclosure guidance for federal judges changed in March, and Thomas accordingly disclosed additional details from hospitality and gifts he had received in past years. His critics – who happen to ardently oppose his views of the Constitution and the law – pounced, arguing that these disclosures suggest wrongdoing,” he added.
Quote:Armed guards protect Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor although she joined a dissent in McDonald v. Chicago (2010), rejecting “a private right of armed self-defense.”
In July, one of Sotomayor’s armed guards shot a would-be carjacker outside her home.
According to the New York Post, the incident occurred shortly after 1:00 a.m. on July 5, 2024. At that time, 18-year-old Kenneth Flowers allegedly pointed a gun at a U.S. Marshal assigned to protect the justice, and the Marshal opened fire, leaving Flowers with non-life-threatening wounds.
In the five-to-four McDonald decision, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) found that Second Amendment rights are incorporated via the Fourteenth Amendment.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, and two dissents were also written. One dissent was written by Justice John Paul Stevens and the second by Justice Stephen Breyer. Importantly, Breyer was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sotomayor.
Breyer/Ginsberg/Sotomayor contended, “I can find nothing in the Second Amendment’s text, history, or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as ‘fundamental’ insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes.”
Later in the dissent, after criticizing a prior SCOTUS decision — District of Columbia. v. Heller (2008) — Breyer/Ginsberg/Sotomayor stressed, “Further, there is no popular consensus that the private self-defense right described in Heller is fundamental.”
In the early portion of the dissent’s conclusion, Breyer/Ginsberg/Sotomayor claimed, “In sum, the Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self-defense. There has been, and is, no consensus that the right is, or was, ‘fundamental.’”
Sotomayor enjoys armed protection while rejecting claims that the Second Amendment is in place to shelter the People’s “private right to self-defense.”
Quote:Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein is likely to face new sexual assault charges in his New York re-trial, with prosecutors saying some accusers who weren’t ready to come forward before are now prepared to speak out.
During a court hearing Tuesday, where Harvey Weinstein was present, New York prosecutors said they are currently investigating new allegations of sexual assault and could put the new charges before a grand jury by the fall, according to multiple reports.
“A number of women came forward to indicate they were raped by the defendant in Manhattan,” Nicole Blumberg, Manhattan’s Assistant District Attorney, said in court, according to a Variety report.
She said the alleged incidents include a “violent” and “trauma-informed” matter that falls within the state’s statute of limitations.
While a November re-trial is expected, Weinstein’s lawyers are pushing for an earlier date, citing their client’s poor health.
In April, a New York appeals court overturned his 2020 conviction of two felony sexual assaults. The 4-3 decision stated the trial judge was wrong to have allowed “prosecutors to call as witnesses a series of women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them — but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him.”
The decision shocked many in the entertainment industry, where Weinstein ruled supreme for three decades as one of Hollywood’s premiere producers and studio bosses.
No matter how the New York re-trial turns out, the 72-year-old Weinstein isn’t going to be a free man anytime soon.
The guilty verdict in his Los Angeles criminal case still holds, with a jail sentence of 16 years.
Quote:California fast food franchise owners are being forced to cut their employees’ hours following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) $20 minimum wage law, which went into effect in April.
Lawrence Cheng, whose family owns several Wendy’s restaurants in southern California, has had to fill in behind the register to make up for the dramatic cuts, he told the Associated Press.
While he used to have “nearly a dozen employees” working the afternoon shift at his Fountain Valley location, he is reportedly down to just seven per shift.
“We kind of just cut where we can,” Cheng told the outlet. “I schedule one less person, and then I come in for that time that I didn’t schedule and I work that hour.”
Before Newsom’s mandate, he was paying his 250 workers $16 an hour. Now, the only way he can keep up with paying them $20 is to simply have them work fewer hours.
Cheng also said he had to raise menu prices by about 8 percent three months before the law went into effect to offset the increased costs.
In addition to raising the minimum wage for fast food workers, Assembly Bill 1228 also established the California Fast Food Council, a group of bureaucrats who have the power to continually raise the minimum wage even higher.
“I’ve been in the business for 25 years and two different brands and I never had to increase the amount of pricing that I did this past time in April,” said Juancarlos Chacon, the owner of nine Los Angeles Jersey Mike’s locations.
Due to the price increases, he said he noticed that customers are now less likely to purchase a drink or sides with their sandwiches.
Quote:In a bid to help curb migration the recently inaugurated government of Panama has begun installing barbed wire to block crossings used by U.S.-bound migrants passing through the dangerous Darién Gap jungle trail, NBC News reported on Monday,
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, who took office on July 1, vowed during his presidential campaign to crack down on U.S-bound migrants that pass through Panama by “closing down” the Darién Gap, a 30-mile-wide, 100-mile-long jungle trail that Panama shares with neighboring Colombia.
The Darién Gap is the only land bridge between South and Central America and has been used in recent years by hundreds of thousands of South American migrants to reach the United States.
Panama’s Migration Service documented the passage of 186,969 migrants through the Darién Gap between January and June 20 — less than two weeks before the start of Mulino’s administration on July 1.
“I will make an effort, that I have already started to talk about, to end the odyssey of the Darién, which has no reason to exist, and I reiterate that Panama and our Darién is not a transit route,” Mulino said in May during his official proclamation as president-elect.
According to a report published by NBC News on Monday, videos of the barbed wire fences installed in the Darién Gap began surfacing on messaging platforms as early as June 27. Public Security Minister Frank Abrego — who served as the first director of Panama’s Senafront National Border Service between 2008 and 2016 — reportedly confirmed in late June that “the patrol at the national border service has begun to block the majority of border passages.”
The Spanish news agency EFE reported on Wednesday that Senafront announced in a statement reviewed by the news agency that “measures were taken to control the massive irregular migration faced by the Panamanian State.”
These measures, according to the statement reviewed by EFE, are based on blocking “three unauthorized passes used by irregular migrants, which are identified as the passes along the Pacific coast and the Caribbean coast,” as well as “the land passes that give access to the sector of Hito de Chucurti; the latter was blocked with perimeter barriers that prevent the passage of migrants.”
Senafront explained that the goal is to “channel irregular migration” to Bajo Chiquito, a small town that in recent years has become the first stop of migrants crossing through the dangerous jungle trail.
Quote:Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro held a phone call on Wednesday with the president-elect of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, ensuring the leader that the Latin American country would continue to seek ways to strengthen ties with the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism.
Pezeshkian won a sham election orchestrated by the true head of the rogue government of Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Sunday, in which he had presented himself as a “moderate” voice against “hardliner” candidate Saeed Jalili. The election was a runoff following the first round of voting on June 28. Pezeshkian surprisingly came in first place but did not exceed the 50-percent support threshold necessary to avoid a runoff.
All elections in Iran are planned to ensure Khamenei’s handpicked winner, as a “Guardian Council” of clerics bans unwanted candidates from the ballot and the regime has total control over the process of vote tallying and election oversight.
The elections were held by necessity following the death of incumbent President Ebrahim Raisi in May. Raisi, a “hardliner” who dedicated most of his presidency to killing and otherwise silencing peaceful anti-regime dissidents in the country, died in a mysterious helicopter crash in May.
Prior to his death, Raisi dedicated much of his foreign policy to increasingly geopolitical activities alongside Latin America’s most brutal communist and socialist dictatorships. Venezuela is Iran’s closest ally in the region; Raisi visited Caracas a year ago to discuss, among other issues, cooperation in the oil industry and opposing the influence of the United States around the world.
Pezeshkian assured Maduro that his administration would not change Iran’s foreign policy away from prioritizing Venezuela. According to Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Pezeshkian took the opportunity of the phone call to invite Maduro to Iran and promise an in-person meeting in the near future.
“The two officials expressed interest to hold a meeting at the highest level in the future in a bid to further expand mutual ties,” IRNA reported. “The president-elect stated that the Islamic Republic of Iran and Venezuela have common challenges and ideals, including the desire for freedom, independence, and justice, and they have a common view and position on the Palestinian issue and support for the oppressed people of Gaza.”
“Undoubtedly, my government also aims to broaden cooperation with Venezuela,” Pezeshkian affirmed.
Maduro responded by promising that his regime would “remain your true friend and companion” and express confidence in Pezeshkian’s ability to run the office of the presidency.
Quote:The socialist government of Brazil announced on Monday that it had enacted a free trade agreement with the Palestinian Authority, the organization in charge of the West Bank, in a show of solidarity with the anti-Israel cause.
Brazil, which officially recognizes “Palestine” as a state and withdrew its ambassador to Israel in the aftermath of the barbaric October 7 siege of Israel by the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas, enacted the deal by ratifying a long-delayed proposed free trade agreement between the “state of Palestine” and Mercosur, a regional trade bloc consisting of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The other members of Mercosur have not approved the agreement.
Brasilia described the deal as a free trade agreement with “Palestine” but it appears to be applicable only to the Palestinian Authority, not to Hamas, which governs Gaza.
The deal follows a month of antagonistic statements towards Israel by radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom Israel declared persona non grata in February after Lula compared Israel’s self-defense operations against Hamas to the actions of Nazi Germany. Israel demanded an apology Lula has yet to grant, opting instead to repeatedly accuse Israel of “genocide” for waging war against Hamas.
Lula himself announced the ratification of the deal during the ongoing Mercosur summit on Monday.
“We are proud to be the first country in the bloc to ratify the free trade agreement with Palestine,” Lula said. “But I cannot help but regret that this occurs in a context in which the Palestinian people are suffering as a result of a completely irrational war.”
The Brazilian Foreign Ministry said on Monday that the free trade agreement was now in effect and would aid with support for the “Palestinian” cause against Israel and with developing deeper ties with the greater Middle East, presumably omitting Israel.
Preceding the enactment of the deal, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Friday explaining that the free trade deal was a document created by Mercosur and introduced to the bloc by Paraguay, which accepted Brazil’s ratification last week. It noted that the “state of Palestine,” by which it appears to mean the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, ratified the free trade deal in April.
As both the Palestinian Authority and Brazil have signed the deal, “the agreement will come into force for Brazil and the State of Palestine after thirty days.” The Foreign Ministry clarified that none of the other Mercosur nations are beholden to the agreement until they ratify the free trade deal on an individual basis. It is not clear at press time if any of the other three South American countries, all governed by right-wing presidents, will do so. Argentina, in particular, is widely expected not to enact such a deal under its current libertarian President Javier Milei, a staunch supporter of Israel who prioritized a visit to the country following October 7.
Milei pointedly opted not to attend the Mercosur summit, choosing to travel to Brazil, instead, while Lula was not in the country. Milei used the opportunity to address the Brazilian version of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and meet with Lula’s predecessor, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who had once promised to open a Brazilian embassy in Jerusalem but failed to deliver on that commitment.
While the Palestinian Authority reportedly signed the free trade agreement in April, the document had been floating around in Mercosur’s bureaucracy since 2011, the Brazilian government noted.
“The agreement is a concrete contribution towards an economically viable Palestinian state that can live in a peaceful and harmonious way with its neighbors,” the Brazilian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
The deal will cover, Brazil noted, “trade in goods; rules of origin; bilateral safeguards; technical regulations, assessment and compliance standards and procedures; sanitary and phytosanitary measures; technical and technological cooperation; institutional arrangements and dispute resolution.”
Quote:The State Department announced on Tuesday that a landmark nuclear cooperation agreement has gone into effect, allowing the U.S. to export peaceful nuclear technology to the Philippines.
This closer cooperation between America and the Philippines comes at a moment when China is using force to bully the Philippines out of its own territory, in flagrant defiance of international court rulings.
The Philippines signed the nuclear cooperation pact, known as the Agreement for Cooperation Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy or the “123 Agreement,” at a meeting in San Francisco in November 2023. The agreement stipulated that technology transfers could begin on July 2, 2024.
“The 123 Agreement will pave the way for the transfer of information and expertise, nuclear material, equipment, and components directly between the Philippines and the U.S. or through persons authorized by their respective authorities to engage in transfer activities, which will support potential nuclear power projects with U.S. providers,” Philippine Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said when the agreement was signed.
The Philippines has a fitful relationship with nuclear power. Its first nuclear plant was constructed in the late 1970s under authoritarian President Ferdinand Marcos but abandoned in 1986 after Russia’s Chernobyl disaster, without nuclear fuel ever being loaded into the reactor.
In 2022, some of the 30-year-old fuel intended for the original reactor was dropped into a new research reactor that was not intended to become fully operational. The old fuel rods seem to be working properly as of July.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced soon after taking office that “it is time to re-examine our strategy toward building nuclear power plants.”
Marcos Jr. spoke of using new technology that allows “smaller scale, modular nuclear plants,” which would be designed in full compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations, which were tightened after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster. However, his first idea for revitalizing Philippine nuclear power was to finish the Bataan plant started by his father.
This has been a controversial proposal in the Philippines since the Bataan reactor had a troubled history of design flaws and potential hazards before the Chernobyl disaster convinced the government under Marcos Sr. to give up. Still, the Philippines is currently reliant on coal for its energy needs, and there is a growing conviction– both in Manila and other capitals around the world — that nuclear power is the only way to provide enough power with fewer emissions.
Philippine congressman Mark Cojuangco, an enthusiastic supporter of bringing the Bataan plant online, told the BBC in March 2023 that the facility was constructed to higher standards in certain respects than American plants of the 1970s, it has not really “aged” because it was never brought online and it has been well-maintained over the past three decades.
“People always use the analogy of cars or motorcycles. But the mode of ageing of a nuclear reactor is from neutron bombardment. So far, this reactor has had none, so effectively it’s brand new,” Cojuangco said when his BBC interviewer said the control room of the reactor looked like a museum of obsolete electronics technology.
China is muscling the Philippines out of its own South China Sea territory, foreclosing the possibility of developing offshore gas and oil resources. On Tuesday, China’s state-run Global Times sneeringly dismissed Philippine concerns that China’s illegal construction and naval activities are damaging the marine environment in the disputed Spratly Islands. Instead, the Chinese Communist regime accused the Philippines of damaging the environment by using an ancient grounded ship as a tiny military outpost on the Second Thomas Shoal.
Quote:China’s state-run Global Times worried on Monday that even though the “far-right has been successfully blocked” by the surprising results of France’s election, “the influence of the far-right has not diminished.”
The rubble of France’s chaotic special election — including some literal rubble created by left-wing demonstrators who rioted even though they nominally won — will be picked through for years to come. The “far-right” referred to by the Global Times, Marine Le Pen and her National Rally (RN) Party, went into the first round of the election with surprising strength — but then the far-left, center-left, and Islamists implemented an effective strategy to get out of each other’s way and collectively overwhelm the RN in key districts.
Everyone seems to have been at least a little surprised by the results, including the shopkeepers who watched their businesses get torched by the ostensible winners. The Global Times was untroubled by radical leftists seizing power and celebrating with an orgy of violence, as long as the “far-right” wound up in third place.
The Chinese Communist paper warned that France is not out of the “far-right” woods yet because the political winds of Europe are still blowing in that direction.
“The RN has become a major force in France, with a growing support base. Even if they are successfully blocked this time, the far-right will not lose the support of the people,” warned Professor Cui Hongjian of Beijing Foreign Studies University:
If traditional political forces want to prevent the far-right from becoming the dominant force in politics, they need to make significant systemic changes. Otherwise, the populist soil will continue to nourish the far-right, making them increasingly powerful in future elections.
On Tuesday, the Global Times made the exact opposite point with a video blog from former editor Hu Xijin, who insisted that the election results prove the “far right” is “still not popular overall in France” and “still has a long way to go before forming a decisive influence in Europe.”
Hu said the rest of the world “does not need to worry too much” about if France’s more moderate leftist President Emmanuel Macron shot himself in the foot by forcing a snap election that then made him play second fiddle to a gaggle of radical left-wingers — a remarkably facile analysis from someone who fancies himself an expert in world affairs. France is a member of the European Union and NATO, so its leadership is a highly relevant concern to other member states.
“As the far-right failed to assume power, France’s foreign policy will be consistent,” Hu predicted.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) agreed with Hu on that point but explained more thoroughly:
The conclusion from the election is that French foreign policy will probably remain unchanged. The constitution gives the president de jure broad powers in defence (he is chief of the armed forces) and strong influence in foreign affairs, a portfolio that has in fact been seen as the sole prerogative of the presidency since Charles de Gaulle occupied the position from 1958 to 1969.
Macron’s support to Ukraine, his commitment to EU strategic autonomy and his relatively moderate stance on Gaza are more or less shared by other political parties, with the notable exception of [far-left] France Unbowed, which has been hostile to NATO and Israel and has called for immediate peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.
Quote:The Chinese state-run propaganda newspaper Global Times mocked the ongoing NATO summit in Washington on Tuesday as a display of a “brittle” alliance, claiming that the fact that most member states hold free and fair elections – and thus routinely change their rules – weakens them.
The Global Times and other Chinese government outlets routinely disparage the concept of elections, encouraging the world to adopt totalitarian communism in the name of “stability.”
“Regardless of electoral democracy’s advantages, including transparency and competitiveness, it has flaws that should not be ignored. The biggest problem is that it cannot truly reflect the essence of democracy,” the state newspaper quoted a regime-approved “expert” declaring in 2019.
This week, the Times used the NATO summit as an example of the nefarious consequences of allowing the people of a nation to choose their leaders, expressing particular worry that former President Donald Trump may win the 2024 American presidential election and that populist conservative movements have expanded their bases of support in France and the United Kingdom.
The leaders of NATO member countries, and key allies such as Ukraine and South Korea, are meeting this week in Washington, DC, for their annual summit. Defending Ukraine from the ongoing Russian invasion and colonization of its territory is a top priority for the meeting, though leaders have also floated conversations on challenging China’s illegal claims in the South China Sea, where the Communist Party has been especially belligerent attacking American allies such as the Philippines.
The Global Times published an assessment of the summit condemning what it called plans to build an “Asian NATO” by forging stronger ties with South Korea and Japan and describing NATO generally as a source of global discord. The Chinese state outlet explicitly objected to NATO member states holding elections to decide their political leadership.
“The NATO summit aims to project ‘unity’ and ‘shared interests’ outwardly, but internally, there are increasing anxieties and worries among member countries,” the Global Times assessed, citing a regime-approved professor. “For example, the rise of far-right forces in Europe, political challenges faced by Germany and France and other core European countries, and the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House have all added uncertainties.”
“The Tuesday summit came as some Democrats called on Joe Biden to step aside over his fitness and age, while Biden declined and defended his 2024 campaign,” the outlet continued. “Also in Europe, there is a major political turmoil in France – although the left-wing parties’ alliance won the decisive round of France’s legislative election on Sunday night, a parliament without a majority may lead to uncertainty in France, according to media reports.”
Quote:Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop using hoodwinked Indian nationals as cannon fodder for his brutal invasion of Ukraine, the feat occurring at a private dinner the two attended Monday night.
The Russian government said on Tuesday that several dozen Indians will be discharged from the Russian military and allowed to return home.
The story of Indians tricked into fighting for Russia in Ukraine grew into a major scandal in 2024 and became a political embarrassment for Modi, who won a third term in office with far less support than anticipated in June.
The families of several Indian men came forward to the media in March to complain their loved ones were duped by human traffickers into leaving home for lucrative private sector jobs in the Middle East.
Instead, the men were impressed into the Russian military when their flights were “laid over” in Moscow, or they were told the promised Middle Eastern jobs were no longer available but the Russian military was hiring noncombat contract workers.
Those who accepted such “noncombat” job offers soon found themselves clutching rifles on the front lines in Ukraine. At least four of them have reportedly been killed.
The Indian opposition blasted Modi for not doing anything to help the Indians abducted into Russian military service, pointing out that India’s longstanding strategic alliance with Russia should have made for an easy phone call to Moscow. Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi slammed Russia for using Indians as “cannon fodder” and demanded government intervention after several families in his district approached him for help.
Modi never quite got around to picking up that phone, but when his office announced plans for the reelected prime minister to visit Moscow this week, it promised Modi would raise the subject of the Indian conscripts and demand their return.
Although India has maintained good diplomatic relations – and a massive oil trade – with Russia despite Western sanctions and has refused to condemn the invasion of Ukraine, Modi was a bit more critical of the war during his trip to Russia than Putin might have been expecting.
Modi embraced Putin when he arrived in Moscow, the two enjoyed a quiet walk together to reinforce the impression of a lasting personal friendship, and Putin declared the “particularly privileged strategic relationship” between Russia and India to be as strong as ever.
However, Modi told Putin he was deeply troubled by civilian casualties from Russia’s massive missile bombardment of Ukrainian cities on Monday. The damage included casualties at a children’s cancer hospital in Kyiv, a national tragedy that left Ukraine in mourning and much of the world stunned with horror.
“I believe there is no peace on the battlefield and solutions to the war can only be found through dialogue,” Modi told Putin at the outset of their formal talks on Tuesday.
“Whether it is terrorism or conflict, the loss of lives – especially of innocent children – is heartbreaking. President Putin and I have spoken frankly and I want to tell the international community that is closely watching our meeting that I am filled with hope from his words and thinking,” the Indian prime minister told reporters after the meeting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Modi’s criticism did not go far enough.
Quote:South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol is expected to participate in this week’s NATO summit, preceding his arrival in Washington with remarks to Reuters on Tuesday in which he described North Korea’s relationship to China, NATO’s top preoccupation, as a “distinct threat” to Europe.
President Joe Biden is currently hosting the NATO summit. In his remarks on Tuesday to open the event, the president emphasized NATO’s support for non-member Ukraine – whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is in attendance – and NATO’s wish to see Russia defeated in its invasion of the country. He recognized the presence of NATO’s “Indo-Pacific Partners” in passing, but did not mention North Korea as a threat of particular concern to NATO.
Yoon, a conservative, has spent much of his tenure making the case that North Korea is more than a regional threat. The expanding ties between Russia and North Korea, he told Reuters, make the communist regime an increasingly visible threat to Europe. North Korea has long maintained ties with Russia and the former Soviet Union, but dramatically expanded the nature of its defense ties with Moscow by signing a “comprehensive partnership” on security in June. The deal, signed during Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s visit to Pyongyang that month, requires either party to offer military support in the event that the other is attacked. It remains unclear at press time if either party will interpret Ukrainian self-defense operations against Russian forces as an attack that requires North Korean intervention.
“Military co-operation between Russia and North Korea poses a distinct threat and grave challenge to the peace and security on the Korean peninsula and in Europe,” Yoon told Reuters in remarks published on Tuesday. The South Korean president said he would raise the issue of North Korea complicating the already challenging war theater in Ukraine with other world leaders at the NATO summit.
“North Korea is clearly a menace to the international society,” Yoon continued. “I hope that Russia will sensibly decide which side – the South or the North – is more important and necessary for its own interests.”
Yoon added that his government is open to maintaining relations with Russia but “the future of ROK [South Korea]-Russia relations depends entirely on Russia’s actions.”
The newspaper Korea JoongAng Daily reported on Wednesday that Yoon is expected to hold meetings with “more than 10 countries, including Japan, Germany, and Britain,” during his time at the NATO summit. Yoon is one of four non-NATO states – the others being Australia, New Zealand, and Japan – attending the summit in their capacity as Indo-Pacific NATO partners. He has attended NATO summits consecutively since 2022, when he became the first South Korean president to do so.
Yoon made a stop in Hawaii before traveling to Washington, delivering remarks on Tuesday expressing commitment to improving military cooperation with America.
“North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile capabilities and continued provocations are threatening security on the Korean Peninsula and in the region. A steadfast combined defense readiness is more critical than ever,” Yoon said in Hawaii, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap.
“Strong power and solidarity among countries that share values are essential to protecting our liberal democracy and economic prosperity from these reckless forces,” he continued.
Yoon will be facing a Washington particularly ill-prepared to handle the threat of communist North Korea when he attends NATO meetings on Wednesday. Biden has clearly failed to prioritize keeping Pyongyang’s nuclear threat at bay, focusing most of his foreign policy efforts on Ukraine and pressuring Israel to limit its self-defense operations against Hamas.
The State Department’s top official on North Korea, Senior Official for the DPRK [North Korea] and Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Jung Pak, resigned sometime in the past week, Yonhap revealed on Tuesday. Pak’s State Department biography still shows her at press time as an employee of the federal government, but Yonhap cited anonymous sources who confirmed that she had resigned. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller later confirmed that Pak “stepped down” and the Biden administration has not formally appointed a replacement.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
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Oh really... And this is how veteran journalists in a "prestigious" news medium do almost on a daily basis?
I don't get it, guys.
cops to Haiti to stop the very same kind of events that had taken place in Kenya itself in the past few days. 
