Quote:The Democrat-led city of Denver, Colorado, is offering a how-to guide to help other cities turn into immigrant sanctuaries at the expense of taxpayers.
The guide is titled “Newcomers Playbook: A Guide to Welcoming Newcomers into Your City,” and its authors say they are “thrilled” to offer their guide on how to plan and implement a sanctuary city.
The guide exclaims:
We are thrilled that you are interested in creating a welcoming environment for migrants in your city. As part of Denver’s welcoming approach, we use the term “newcomers” to refer to migrants, recognizing that they are new to our city and embracing a more inclusive language. This playbook is a guide divided into two sections, offering recommendations and strategies for successfully integrating newcomers into your city.
The guide credits the “Office of Mayor Mike Johnston” and several of his migrant agencies. Even though the 22-page booklet celebrates turning cities into immigrant sanctuaries, it is supposedly written by the same mayor who has attacked outside groups and states for sending immigrants to Denver, claimed the wave of immigrants was unsustainable, sent officials on trips to discourage immigrants from coming to Denver, spent millions shipping immigrants to other cities, cut funding and services, and worked to evict immigrants from city-sponsored shelters.
Despite actions that seem to contradict the “welcoming” that the guide claims Denver has offered “newcomers” — that being the latest Orwellian rebranding of the term “illegal aliens” — the guide offers handy tips to aspiring sanctuary cities on how to redirect city services from citizens to immigrants.
Included are tips to establish intake centers to help direct immigrants to free services, how to offer free transportation, free housing, food, clothing, medical care, legal advice, and more.
The guide even suggests that cities purchase or arrange contracts with mobile showers and laundry trucks to offer such services to “newcomers.”
Quote:Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) spoke Saturday at an anti-Israel conference in Detroit, Michigan, that was connected to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the U.S. regards as a Foreign Terror Organization (FTO).
The Detroit Free Press reported on Tlaib’s remarks at the People’s Conference for Palestine at Wayne State University:
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib slammed President Joe Biden and some of her congressional colleagues in a speech to the People’s Conference for Palestine in downtown Detroit, urging them to do more to stop what she calls the “genocide” in Gaza.
…
More than 3,000 people registered for the three-day People’s Conference for Palestine, organizers said, and they descended on Detroit starting Friday from around United States, and some from outside the country. The goal was to “serve as a space to assess, strategize and prepare for what is required for us in the next phase of struggle,” organizers said.
…
Sessions included “Palestinian Resistance and the Path to Liberation,” “Confronting Zionism in Higher Education” and “Zionism and U.S. Imperialism.” A vendor fair included Palestinian art, clothing and more. Many wore keffiyehs, the headdress or scarf that has come to be a symbol for Palestinians.
The National Review noted that one of the speakers, Wisam Rafeedie, is “associated” with the PFLP; while another, Sana Daqqah, is married to a PFLP terrorist:
Among the speakers at the Michigan event was Wisam Rafeedie, an activist associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist-Leninist terror group active in Gaza and headquartered in the Syrian capital of Damascus. The U.S. State Department, as well as Japan, Canada, and the European Union, has designated the PFLP as a terrorist organization.
Quote:The cost of illegal immigration is bearing out in the Big Apple and tourists are the latest to foot the bill.
New York City is more expensive than ever to visit, primarily due to Mayor Eric Adams (D) converting tons of hotels into shelters for newly arrived migrants, the New York Times reported Saturday. As Breitbart News has chronicled, Adams currently has about 65,000 migrants living in more than 16,500 hotel rooms across New York City.
The result has been skyrocketing hotel room costs for tourists who pay the price while hotels, often owned by the largest conglomerates, are raking in up to $185 per hotel room per night, whether migrants are staying in the room or not.
“The average daily rate for a hotel stay in New York City increased to $301.61 in 2023, up 8.5 percent from $277.92 in 2022, according to CoStar, a leading provider of commercial real estate data and analysis,” the Times reported:
During the first three months of 2024, when prices traditionally dip, the average stay was still 6.7 percent higher than during the same time period last year: $230.79 a night, up from $216.38 in 2023. [Emphasis added]
About 135 of the city’s roughly 680 hotels entered the shelter program, with many congregated in Midtown Manhattan, Long Island City in Queens and near Kennedy International Airport — all traditional magnets for tourists. Participating hotels are paid up to $185 a night per room, according to the city. Not a single one has converted back into a traditional hotel. [Emphasis added]
Quote:Actor Johnny Wactor, who played Brando Corbin on General Hospital, was shot and killed on Saturday during an alleged car theft. He was 37.
The tragic shooting reportedly happened when Wactor and a colleague saw three men attempting to steal a catalytic converter from his car. His mother, Scarlett Wactor, said that her son confronted the suspects, who fired at him and fled. He was pronounced dead at the hospital at 3 a.m. Per the New York Post:
No suspects have been arrested as of Sunday afternoon.
Wactor is best known for playing Brando Corbin in 164 episodes of long-running soap opera “General Hospital” between 2020 and 2022, according to his IMDb profile. He also appeared in the supernatural drama show “Siberia” and an episode of “Criminal Minds.”
His mother told TMZ she would remember him as a loving young man. He leaves behind his mother and a pair of younger brothers, the outlet reported.
Wactor’s tragic death comes when Los Angeles has experienced an unprecedented crime wave that has claimed several celebrity victims in the past two years. In August 2023, for instance, two victims were robbed at gunpoint outside of the celebrity-frequented restaurant Craig’s on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. As Breitbart News reported previously, several celebrities found themselves in near-violent or extremely violent altercations in Los Angeles in 2023 when the city faced an unprecedented crime wave ahead of its mayoral election:
Quote:A museum in Seattle had to close its “Confirming Hate Together” exhibit after several employees walked out in protest of Israel.
Employees with the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle reportedly organized under the handle @wlm4palestine on Instagram, accusing the exhibit of conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The “Confirming Hate Together” exhibit billed itself as an exhibition for “anti-Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander hate, Black hate and anti-Jewish hate.”
More than 20 employees walked out last Wednesday — the same day that the exhibit opened.
“A majority of our walkout collective is made up of the most vulnerable employees of the Wing Luke Museum — front of house staff and part-time workers,” a post from @wlm4palestine reads. “There are 22 known WLM Staff across departments and organization levels who are still in solidarity with walkouts, with others who are in solidarity.”
The employees went as far to demand that the museum remove “any language…that attempt[s] to frame Palestinian liberation and anti-Zionism as antisemitism.” The anti-Israel protesters also ask for the museum to “acknowledge the limited perspectives presented in this exhibition.”
“Missing perspectives include those of Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslim communities who are also experiencing an increased amount of violence, scapegoating, and demonization as Zionist forces continue the genocide in Palestine,” the petition said.
The campaign even set up a GoFundMe page asking for donations to compensate wages missed. As of this writing, it has raised over $4,300.
Quote:North Korea on Monday lashed out at South Korea, Japan, and even Pyongyang’s patron China for supporting the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula at a summit in Seoul.
North Korea’s rhetoric was par for the course with regard to South Korea and Japan, but unusually harsh against China, which went out of its way to avoid criticizing the North Korean regime during the summit.
China was less insistent on denuclearization at this weekend’s summit than it was at a similar event held in the Chinese city of Chengdu in 2019. The trilateral meeting issued a statement on Monday that said disarmament and stability on the peninsula are important for all three countries, but avoided the phrase “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula, which appeared in the 2019 joint statement.
“We reiterated positions on regional peace and stability, denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the abductions issue, respectively. We agree to continue to make positive efforts for the political settlement of the Korean Peninsula issue,” the new statement said.
“Abductions” refers to North Korea’s horrific policy of kidnapping Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s. A few of the abductees were later returned to Japan, but the Japanese government has long demanded a full accounting of all of their fates. North Korea periodically claims to be “investigating” the matter, without results.
Quote:France’s globalist President Emmanuel Macron is making a state visit to Germany, the first such for 24 years, and kicked off his visit by warning against nations acting in their own interest.
France and Germany, both led by globalist-left governments and both facing a damaging vote in less than two weeks as the European Parliament is re-elected continent-wide, put on a united front as Macron arrived in Berlin for the first state visit in a near-quarter century. The last French leader to make a full state visit to Germany was Jacques Chirac in 2000.
The Franco-German relationship — keeping the two parties from invading each other — is the founding purpose of the European Union and defending that institution was evidently on Macron’s mind as he addressed German young people to sublimate feelings of national pride into the European Union. “Europe can die”, the French President warned again, if the right wing isn’t defeated, reports Le Figaro.
“We have never had as many enemies inside as outside”, Macron said, expressing his hyper-globalist assessment that nationalism damages democracy, and that there was a “fight” on to prevent this process. He continued, warning: “A form of fascination with authoritarianism is emerging in our democracy.”
Presenting his list of European victories that wouldn’t have been possible “if the nationalists had been in charge in Europe”, Macron again showed particular preoccupations by naming achievements like coronavirus vaccines, “decarbonising the economy”, and underwriting Ukraine’s national defence.
Quote:French President Emmanuel Macron decided on Monday to lift the state of emergency in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia in a move meant to allow political dialogue following the unrest that left seven people dead and a trail of destruction, his office said.
The president’s office said in a statement that the state of emergency won´t be extended “for the moment” and will therefore end Monday at 8 p.m. in Paris, which is 5 a.m. Tuesday in New Caledonia.
The decision aims at “enabling meetings of the various components” of pro-independence movement FLNKS, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front, and allowing elected officials and other local leaders “in a position to call” for lifting the barricades to go there and meet with protesters, the statement said.
New Caledonia’s top French official, High Commissioner Louis Le Franc said on Monday that an evening and overnight curfew will remain in place. Travel will be banned between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. local time except for civil servants, medical professionals and other essential workers on night shifts and health emergencies.
New Caledonia’s ban on public gatherings, transport and carrying of weapons and sale of alcohol will also remain in place, Le Franc said.
The main international airport, La Tontouta, will remain closed to commercial traffic until Sunday, June 2, according to a statement from the archipelago’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Tontouta airport shut down the day after protests against Macron government’s efforts to amend the French Constitution and change voting lists in New Caledonia turned violent.
Quote:Interim President Mohammad Mokhber held a phone conversation on Sunday with the head of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to assure his organization that Tehran would continue to sponsor terrorists following the sudden loss of late President Ebrahim Raisi.
“The basic strategy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in backing the Resistance Front, especially the Palestinian resistance groups, will not alter by the change of people,” Mokhber reportedly assured Ziad al-Nakhalah, the PIJ “secretary general.”
Mokhber became interim president following the death of Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six others in a helicopter crash on May 19. The group was returning from a political engagement in Azerbaijan when the helicopter suddenly lost contact with the ground. Iranian officials initially reported that the helicopter had a “hard landing” that had “not been rough” before confirming on May 20 that the helicopter had crashed and killed everyone on board.
The Iranian Islamist regime has not offered any clarity to the public regarding the nature of the crash. A preliminary report by the Iranian Armed Forces published on Thursday stated that investigators had found no evidence of sabotage, such as bullet holes or explosive residue, but did not suggest any alternate explanation for the crash.
Quote:Wars and rumours of wars are having an impact on military preparedness right across Eastern Europe. NATO member Poland on Monday became the latest state to announce a boost, presenting a plan to strengthen its anti-drone surveillance and on-ground military capabilities in the face of continued Russian threats.
The effort follows Finland, Norway, and Baltic states drawing up similar proposals to deter Moscow’s aggression.
AP reports a system of fortifications and barriers along about 430 miles of Poland’s eastern border with Russia and Russian ally Belarus are part of the planning.
The government says Poland, which supports neighboring Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s aggression, is being targeted by hostile actions by Russia and Belarus.
They include cyberattacks, attempted arson and migrants being pushed illegally across the border, which officials describe as intended to destabilize the European Union, of which Poland is a member, the AP report notes.
The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk has planned a range of security measures including in cyberspace, as well as a more than $2.5 billion investment in strengthening surveillance, deterrence and defense along the eastern border, a system known as Shield-East that is to be completed in 2028.
Quote:Palestinian sources claimed that 50 people had been killed — including civilians — as Israel launched an airstrike Sunday night in Rafah that targeted several major Hamas commanders.
[x/Twitter Posts]
The IDF issued a statement describing the airstrike:
Earlier this evening, an IAF aircraft, in an IDF and ISA intelligence-based strike, eliminated the terrorist Yassin Rabia, the Commander of Hamas’ leadership in Judea and Samaria, as well as Khaled Nagar, a senior official in Hamas’ Judea and Samaria wing.
The strike was carried out in the area of Tal as Sultan, in northwest Rafah, based on precise intelligence.
Hamas’ Judea and Samaria wing is responsible for the planning, funding, and carrying out of terror attacks throughout Judea and Samaria and within Israel.
The terrorist Yassin Rabia managed the entirety of Hamas’ terrorist activity in Judea and Samaria, transferred funds to terror targets and planned Hamas terror attacks throughout Judea and Samaria.
In the past, Rabia carried out numerous murderous terror attacks, including in 2001 and 2002, in which IDF soldiers were killed.
The terrorist Khaled Nagar, a senior official in Hamas’ Judea and Samaria Headquarters, directed shooting attacks and other terrorist activities in Judea and Samaria, and transferred funds intended for Hamas’ terrorist activities in the Gaza Strip. Previously, Khaled Nagar carried out several deadly terror attacks between 2001-2003 which led to the deaths of several Israeli civilians and the injury and death of several Israeli soldiers.
The IDF is aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited several civilians in the area were harmed. The incident is under review.
Quote:Egypt confirmed Monday that one of its soldiers had been killed near the border with Gaza in a “shooting incident,” apparently with Israeli soldiers on the other side of the boundary, in the city of Rafah.
The Times of Israel reported: “Egypt says one of its soldiers was killed during a shooting incident near the border with the Gazan city of Rafah, appearing to confirm reports of a deadly firefight with Israeli troops.” The Egyptian military noted the shooting but did not specifically mention Israel.
However, Israeli media accounts suggested that Egyptian soldiers had started a firefight:
Egyptian army spokesman: 'The Egyptian armed forces are conducting an investigation regarding an incident of opening fire in the border area in Rafah - which resulted in the death of the border security authorities'
Egypt and Israel have formally been at peace since the Camp David Accords of 1978. However, Egypt has opposed Israel’s effort to attack Hamas in Rafah, and suggested that Israeli maneuvers near the border could jeopardize the peace between the two countries.
The peace with Egypt is regarded as “cold,” since Egypt still maintains hostile rhetoric toward Israel and antisemitism is common in Egyptian media. Israeli tourists visit Egypt, but rarely the other way around.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Former President Trump was found guilty on all counts in his historic and unprecedented criminal trial, making him the first former president of the United States to be convicted of a crime.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged former President Donald Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Jurors found the former president guilty on all counts.
Each count carries a maximum prison sentence of 4 years. In total, Trump faces a maximum sentence of 136 years.
Judge Juan Merchan invited the jury into the courtroom to read its verdict after two days of deliberations.
Sentencing for the former president will be July 11 at 10:00 a.m--just four days before the start of the Republican National Convention, where he is expected to be formally nominated as the 2024 Republican presidential nominee. The convention is July 15- 18 in Milwaukee.
Any motions will need to be filed by June 13th.
The conviction does not bar Trump from running for president.
Prosecutors needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump falsified those records to conceal a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic performer, in the lead-up to the 2016 election to silence her about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006.
Moments after the verdict was delivered by the jury, the former president spoke to reporters in the hallway outside the courtroom.
"This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt as a rigged trial and disgrace. It wouldn't give us a venue change," Trump said. "We were at five percent or 6% in this district, in this area. This was a rigged, disgraceful trial."
Trump said "the real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people."
"And they know what happened here and everybody knows what happened here," Trump said. "You have a Soros backed DA and the whole thing."
He added: "We didn't do anything wrong. I'm a very innocent man. And it's okay. I'm fighting for our country. I'm fighting for our Constitution. Our whole country is being rigged right now."
Trump said that the case was "done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent."
"And I think it's it's just a disgrace. And we'll keep fighting--we'll fight till the end and we'll win because our country's gone to hell," he said. "We don't have the same country anymore. We have a divided mess. We're a nation of decline, serious decline."
OK, now the US has become a banana republic that Putin and Xi Jinping can laugh at during their following meetings.
Quote:Americans across the country reacted to the stunning conviction Thursday of Donald Trump in his landmark criminal trial in New York, as he became the first former U.S. president and presumptive major party nominee to be found guilty of a crime.
The verdict has potentially massive political and societal implications with the presidential election just over five months away, or it could be greeted with a shrug by the American public. Those who talked to Fox News Digital on Thursday offered a range of reactions, from outrage to indifference to glee that Trump had been convicted, as well as divergent predictions on how it would affect the 2024 election.
Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 which the former president denies, and the jury found Trump falsified 34 business documents to conceal a hush money payment to Daniels before the 2016 election.
Aaron, speaking in Birmingham, Mich., told Fox News Digital the verdict was "absolutely insane" and made him more inclined to vote for Trump and donate to his campaign.
"It's election interference," he said. "We have a frontrunner in all the polls. He's actually beating Biden, and they've gone after Trump in multiple states."
Chase, also from Birmingham, Mich., said the verdict was a "complete failure of our justice system."
"I think it makes Trump stronger with his base," he added.
Outside the courthouse in Manhattan, a Trump supporter who said he was a native New Yorker called the verdict "despicable."
"[Trump] may be guilty there," he said, pointing to the courthouse, "but not in the eyes of the real New Yorker. We support him. He's going to be our president."
Quote:The Biden campaign is cheering the guilty verdict of former President Donald Trump in New York today in his business records case, the merits of which have been widely questioned by legal scholars and experts.
After Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in deep blue Manhattan, the Biden campaign said in a statement, “In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law.”
[X Post]
“Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain,” the release snarked.
The snide comment comes as Trump has been adamant the “election interference” “all comes out of Washington, DC.
“This is election interference. It all comes out of Washington. They have their reps [representiaves] here,” he said on May 10, telling media members, “I’m sure you know that.”
“It’s to damage Crooked Joe Biden’s political opponent – happens to be me. And we’re leading big in the polls, and the American people get it; it’s a scam,” he added.
Notably, Michael Colangelo, a lead prosecutor on the case, worked in the Biden Department of Justice before New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought him on board to his office, as the Washington Examiner reported. He also previously worked for New York Attorney General Letitia James and on her civil fraud case against Trump.
Per the Examiner’s Ashley Oliver:
Bragg did not hire Colangelo for his white-collar prosecutorial experience, which was lacking at the time he joined Bragg’s office. Rather, Bragg valued Colangelo’s “broad knowledge” of the Trump Organization, according to a New York Times report published at the end of 2022, during the same time frame that Bragg was seeking to ramp up his prosecution efforts against Trump.
Notably, legal expert Jonathan Turley has slammed the case as “absurd,” while Fox News analyst and former defense attorney Greg Jarrett has asserted the trial bore “no resemblance” to the “cherished constitutional promise” of the right to a fair trial.
Biden’s campaign also relied heavily on fear-mongering in its statement about the unprecedented conviction of the former president of the United States and presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
Quote:Republicans’ online donation website was so overwhelmed in the minutes after a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty that its functionality was incapacitated.
WinRed, the Republican Party’s official online donation platform, reportedly shut down after high traffic following the verdict.
The Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts, with Judge Juan Merchant setting sentencing for July 11 – only four days before the Republican National Convention assembles to formally nominate Trump.
WinRed’s link to donate to Trump’s campaign led to a page indicating an error had taken place with the website’s host. Other reports have GOP sources confirming the platform is “overwhelmed.”
Republicans rallied behind Trump after the verdict, with many choosing to find silver linings, the subsequent skyrocketing fundraising among them.
“The bad news is today the Biden leftists in New York made a mockery of our criminal justice system,” Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted. “The good news is Americans have sent Trump over $50 million since this travesty and his deranged enemies just elected Trump for President again!”
Lee Zeldin, the former Congressman and Trump ally who chairs the Leadership America Needs PAC, tweeted after the verdict that he “just secured a $800k donation from someone for President Trump’s Joint Fundraising Committee. Never experienced a massive ask that easy.”
Quote:American Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters on Wednesday that he is optimistic the member nations of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) will agree on a framework to respond to future pandemics, despite the collapsed of talks on a proposed “pandemic treaty” this week.
Becerra is in Geneva, Switzerland, for the W.H.O.’s annual World Health Assembly (WHA). Prior to the opening of the Assembly this week, a working group attempting to draft a pandemic treaty – formally the “W.H.O. convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response,” or “WHO CA+,” as parties cannot agree on what kind of international legal document to make it – failed to agree on a such a draft to introduce to the greater U.N. body. Supporters of a binding international agreement on pandemics lamented the setback, but W.H.O. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, insisted, “this is not a failure.”
Becerra, representing the administration of President Joe Biden at the WHA, told reporters that the expansive nature of such an agreement makes it a challenging diplomatic endeavor and the necessity of years of negotiations on such an ambitious document is not unusual.
“We think the elements of a good deal are already on the table and that is why we feel optimistic because those are pretty good deals,” Becerra said on Wednesday, according to Voice of America. “It is just a matter now of fine-tuning it to make sure everybody says we are ready to sign on the dotted line.”
Becerra urged observers to put “in perspective” the size of the “major international achievement” that a pandemic treaty would represent: “negotiations go on forever … you do not build a nation overnight.”
He reportedly added that “there is clear consensus that we cannot let the status quo be upon us if another pandemic comes.”
Quote:U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is scheduled to meet with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun in Singapore this weekend, holding the first face-to-face bilateral defense meeting in 18 months.
The unusual dialogue comes only a week after China held aggressive military drills around Taiwan to “punish” the island for electing a president Beijing does not like.
Austin’s previous meeting was with one of Dong’s predecessors, Wei Fenghe, at a regional summit in Cambodia. Wei retired and was replaced by Gen. Li Shangfu in March 2023.
Li mysteriously vanished after only a few months on the job and was sacked without explanation in October 2023 with no immediate replacement, suggesting drama behind the scenes in the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy. In December, the Party appointed People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Admiral Dong Jun as Li’s belated successor.
Austin and Dong will meet on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asian defense summit hosted annually by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). This year’s meeting will include sessions on the Myanmar junta and U.S. strategic partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, among other topics.
China has been harshly critical of those U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific, portraying them as a doomed effort by the United States to contain China’s rising power. Beijing has alternately bullied and cajoled Indo-Pacific nations to enter its orbit instead.
Taiwan is certain to be high on the list of subjects Austin and Dong will discuss. China staged several days of belligerent military drills, including simulated missile strikes and bombing runs that would have killed millions of civilians if they were real, after the inauguration of President William Lai Ching-te on May 20.
Quote:American Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested in remarks on Wednesday that President Joe Biden could one day support Ukraine attacking Russian territory with U.S. weapons if deemed necessary to “adjust” to what Ukraine needs to do to fend off the invasion.
“As the conditions have changed, as the battlefield has changed, as what Russia does has changed in terms of how it’s pursuing its aggression, escalation, we’ve adapted and adjusted too, and I’m confident we’ll continue to do that,” Blinken told reporters during a stop in Moldova on Wednesday.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that anonymous sources within the Biden administration appear to agree with the implication in Blinken’s remarks that Biden is considering greenlighting strikes within Russia. The Post claimed the officials were “actively weighing” whether to stop discouraging Ukraine from using American weapons to strike Russian targets. Biden has led efforts to provide Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons in response to the Russian invasion since 2022 but has yet to publicly support Ukrainian attacks inside Russia out of concern that doing so will prompt Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to retaliate directly against the United States or other NATO powers.
Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, colonizing its Crimean peninsula in an “annexation” that Kyiv has rejected for a decade. The war simmered for years in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, fueled by Russia-backed separatists seeking to sever ties with the Ukrainian government. Following Biden’s decision to lift sanctions on the now-defunct Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, Putin dramatically escalated the conflict by formally invading Ukraine using the Russian military in February 2022. Since then, Putin has “annexed” four more regions of the country — the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — and made small but incremental gains in securing a growing amount of Ukrainian territory.
The lack of significant progress for Ukraine in thwarting the invasion in recent months appears to have prompted growing anxiety in the West and mounting calls to stop discouraging Ukraine from attacking Russian territory. Blinken was asked about Biden’s restrictions on U.S. weapons in the context of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg suggesting that Ukraine should be allowed to attack Russia.
“To deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves,” Stoltenberg reportedly said.
Quote:A Dominican Republic national living illegally in the U.S. has admitted to stealing $213,000 in food stamp benefits in Rhode Island, according to a federal press release.
Giomar Lopez Meireles, 41, admitted to defrauding the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). He was also found illegally in possession of a firearm when he was arrested, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Rhode Island.
After pleading guilty, Lopez Meireles is set to be sentenced on September 4.
Investigators said that Lopez Meireles was involved in a scheme to file for SNAP assistance using stolen identities and fraudulent social security numbers. After filing for assistance using the false identities, Lopez Meireles was sent electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards loaded with money, which he then sold to others for cash.
Lopez Meireles reportedly filed false applications for SNAP assistance from September 2021 to November 2023 to the Rhode Island Department of Human Services, which administers the SNAP program in the state.
After a raid was conducted on his apartment, dozens of EBT cards wrapped in paper containing account and PIN numbers were discovered. Officials also discovered a 9 mm pistol in the apartment. It is against the law for an illegal alien to be in possession of a firearm in the United States.
Quote:A judge in the sanctuary state of Washington has cut bail by 90 percent for the illegal alien accused of killing 27-year-old Washington State Trooper Christopher Gadd.
Raul Benitez Santana, a 33-year-old illegal alien from Mexico with multiple run-ins with the law, was arrested and charged with vehicular homicide in connection with Gadd’s death.
According to prosecutors, on March 2, Gadd was parked on the shoulder of an interstate in Snohomish County when eyewitnesses said Santana crashed into him. Santana, eyewitnesses said, was swerving and speeding at the time.
Gadd was killed as a result of the crash, prosecutors said, leaving behind his wife Cammryn and their two-year-old daughter.
When police arrived at the scene of the crash, they found Santana with bloodshot eyes; he later admitted to smoking marijuana and having two beers before getting behind the wheel.
Santana’s bail was initially set at $1 million. Last week, though, Judge Richard Okrent lowered his bail to $100,000 after Santana’s defense attorneys argued his initial bail amount was excessively high for a vehicular homicide suspect.
Following Santana’s arrest in March, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials confirmed that he is an illegal alien who has been living in Washington for at least a decade. In May 2013, Santana was arrested in the state for driving without a license and later sentenced to 90 days in prison for having marijuana.
Later that year, Santana was incarcerated for 90 days after failing to appear in court for charges of driving without a license. In May 2019, he was charged with domestic violence.
Likely thanks to Snohomish County’s sanctuary policy, as well as Washington’s sanctuary state law, signed by Gov. Jay Inslee (D) in 2019, Santana was never turned over to ICE agents despite his prior arrests.
Quote:Two planes almost collided at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday, prompting a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigation.
An air traffic controller at the Arlington, Virginia, airport had to cancel the takeoff clearance for American Airlines Flight 2134, which was already heading down the runway at around 10:30 a.m. when another plane was cleared to land on an intersecting runway, Fox Business reported.
The other aircraft was a private King Air jet, according to the Daily Mail:
X Post Wrote:JUST IN - Hair-rising moment American Airlines came close to smashing into a private aircraft on the runway during take-off as pilot is forced to slam on the brakes at 110mph when private King aircraft lands in its path at Reagan National Airport — Daily Mail
Audio recording of the conversation between the control tower and the planes obtained by TODAY revealed the tense moment the King Air pilot said he couldn’t just “go around” because he was “already on the ground”:
X Post Wrote:There was a frightening close call at Reagan National Airport yesterday: An American Airlines jet was cleared for takeoff and was speeding down the runway at the exact same time a private plane was landing on an intersecting runway.
Quote:U.S. law enforcement authorities in Louisiana allegedly dismantled a sex trafficking network led by three Venezuelan nationals, CNN en Español reported Wednesday — one of which is allegedly a member of the Tren de Aragua transnational criminal organization.
According to alleged testimonies from one of the victims, the sex trafficking ring arranged for the victims to be smuggled into the United States and taught them how to request asylum to U.S. authorities. The victims would then allegedly be forced into prostitution to pay for the “debt” accrued from their smuggling into U.S. territory.
The Tren de Aragua is a transnational criminal organization that started as a local trade union gang in the eponymous Venezuelan state of Aragua in 2012. Over the past decade, the gang has dramatically evolved into a full-fledged crime syndicate with an active presence in several Latin American countries and the United States. The gang has been linked to a wide array of criminal activities ranging from homicide, theft, extortion, contraband, and kidnapping to drug, human, and arms trafficking.
The criminal organization is largely believed to have deep ties with Venezuela’s socialist regime, which allegedly allowed the gang to expand into its current transnational state. The regime has repeatedly insisted that Tren de Aragua “does not exist” and that it is part of a purported international campaign to discredit the image of the Venezuelan government.
According to court documents CNN en Español claimed to obtain from the Middle District Court of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, the sex trafficking ring was led by a man identified as Josmar Jesús Zambrano-Chirinos, an alleged member of the Venezuelan gang.
In addition to Zambrano-Chirinos, Louisiana authorities reportedly arrested Venezuelan nationals Allbert Herrera Machado and Osleidy Vanesa Chourio Díaz. All three individuals were reportedly charged with forced sex trafficking, fraud and coercion.
The news network claimed that American authorities believe the sex trafficking network was operating in Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, and Florida.
Quote:Disgraced “FBI lovebirds” Peter Strzok and Lisa Page have reached a “tentative” settlement with the Department of Justice over the alleged violation of their privacy rights with the release of their disparaging text messages about former President Donald Trump during the Russian collusion investigation.
The deal was disclosed in a court filing Tuesday that did not reveal any of the terms, the Washington Times reported.
Strzok, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who helped lead the Bureau’s investigation into accusations that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia, was terminated in 2018 after his biased anti-Trump conversations with Page, an FBI lawyer, were exposed. During its review of his phone, the DOJ also revealed that he had been having an affair with Page, who resigned the same year.
The pair, referred to as the “FBI lovebirds” by Trump after the damning texts were used in a theater production by that name in 2019, alleged in a federal lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia that the DOJ infringed on their privacy rights when officials shared copies of their messages with the press, including texts calling Trump an “idiot’ and “loathsome human.”
Strzok also sued the department for firing him, arguing that the FBI gave in to “unrelenting pressure” from Trump and violated his First Amendment rights. He sought back pay and reinstatement in his lawsuit.
“Those constitutional claims have not been resolved by the tentative settlement,” according to a Times review of the court notice.
Page’s lawsuit also sought reimbursement for “the cost of childcare during and transportation to multiple investigative reviews and appearances before Congress,” the “cost of paying a data-privacy service to protect her personal information,” and attorney’s fees, Fox News reported.
INTERNATIONAL
UN Whines About Not Being as Influential as 20 Years Ago
Quote:The world’s most powerful nations have significantly undermined what the United Nations can do to help nations resolve conflicts, the globalist organization’s peacekeeping chief lamented Wednesday.
The unelected French career bureaucrat blamed global political divisions and an insistence by countries on sidelining the U.N. in general and the Security Council in particular for the lack of influence.
Jean-Pierre Lacroix used an interview with the Associated Press to point at the U.S. and the West on one side and Russia and often China on the other as affecting not just peacekeeping but everything the United Nations does in trying to promote peace and security.
The political rivalry can lead to the presence of U.N. peacekeepers being questioned by the parties to the conflict — or even asked to leave, as happened in Mali and is happening in Congo, he said.
Lacroix, personally appointed to his role by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, said 20 years ago countries were much more likely to heed the U.N. and now it is being sidelined. East Timor, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cambodia were used as examples of what is possible.
“But we don’t have that anymore,” he said ahead of the International Day of U.N. Peacekeepers on Wednesday.
Quote:A gunman shot and killed a Mexican mayoral candidate as he was about to take the stage during a campaign event in the coastal state of Guerrero. The murder comes amidst one of Mexico’s bloodiest election cycles, with at least 36 candidates murdered and over 300 political attacks in a span of less than a year.
The killing took place on Wednesday afternoon in the town of Coyuca de Benitez in the coastal state of Guerrero. Mayoral candidate Jose Alfredo Cabrera Barrientos was preparing to close his campaign events in preparation for Sunday’s election. He was a candidate of an opposition party competing against Mexico’s ruling party MORENA.
A cell phone video captured the moment when Cabrera Barrientos was preparing to take the stage, and a gunman snuck up behind him. The gunman fired two shots, knocking down the politician. The gunman then reportedly stood over him, firing as many as 15 shots before trying to flee.
Quote:Pro-Palestinian protesters reportedly swarmed police outside Israel’s embassy in Mexico City on Tuesday, throwing rocks and bottles and setting fires on the embassy grounds.
Video of the unrest shows protesters trying to tear down metal fences erected around the embassy, and at one point the grounds were set afire, according to the Hill.
X Post Wrote:Protesters set fire to the Israeli embassy in Mexico City with Molotov cocktails
The demonstrators also threw stones at the police who cordoned off the building. It is reported that as a result of the unrest, six people were burned and several journalists were injured.
According to the Associated Press, some 200 protesters accosted police outside the embassy and six officers were injured.
Mexico City police, deployed in riot gear and carrying shields, used tear gas on the protesters.
X Post Wrote:Israeli embassy in Mexico city firebombed by "Pro Palestine" mobs.
How much destruction must their be before it's admitted these groups are orchestrated terrorists?
Quote:Radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva officially withdrew Brazil’s ambassador to Israel, Frederico Meyer, on Wednesday, marking a new chapter in already tense relations between the countries.
Lula has issued several statements against Israel over the past eight months following Hamas’ unprecedented October 7 terrorist attack and the start of Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terrorists, accusing Israel and its government of commiting “genocide” through its operations.
In one such comment, issued in February on the sidelines of the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Lula compared Israel’s self-defense operations to the actions committed by Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust.
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel in other historical moments. In fact, it did exist when Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” Lula said at the time.
Lula’s remarks — which elicited praise from Hamas — prompted Israel to declare him persona non grata, banning the Brazilian president from visiting Israel until he formally apologizes and retracts his statements. Lula’s top foreign policy advisor Celsor Amorim has insisted that Lula will not issue any kind of apology — arguing Israel should “apologize before humanity.”
Lula responded to his ban by recalling the now-former ambassador Meyer. On Wednesday, Lula officially removed Meyer from his position at the Brazilian embassy in Tel Aviv and designated him the Brazilian envoy to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland. Meyer had remained in Brazil since February and reportedly returned to Tel Aviv last week to prepare his transfer to Geneva.
Sources from the Brazilian Foreign Ministry told AFP that the Brazilian government will not immediately designate a new ambassador to Israel and, as a result, its embassy in Tel Aviv will be led by diplomat Fábio Moreira Farias, a charge d’affaires — effectively downgrading the level of the diplomatic relations between the two countries unless a new ambassador is designated.
Quote:The Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen claimed on Wednesday to have downed another $30 million U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, backing up their claim with footage of a missile launch and debris in the desert.
French naval officials revealed that a civilian ship attacked and damaged by Houthi missiles on Tuesday was carrying a load of grain bound for Iran, a longtime ally and state sponsor of the Houthi terrorist movement.
The Houthis released footage on Wednesday that purportedly showed a Reaper drone being targeted by a surface-to-air missile as it flew over the desert province of Marib in central Yemen. The video included photos of what appeared to be a crashed Reaper in the desert, with its tail assembly separated and one of its hatches opened.
The footage also depicted Houthi fighters celebrating the shootdown by standing atop the crashed drone. The alleged Reaper appeared intact, raising the possibility that the Houthis will pass it along to their patrons in Iran, who have a history of reverse-engineering advanced technology from other countries to improve their own drone weapons.
Quote:Widespread online reaction followed a message from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praising pro-Hamas American university students protesting Israel, welcoming them to the terrorist “Resistance Front,” and encouraging them to “become familiar with the Quran.”
The letter, which is addressed to U.S. college students, was published Wednesday evening on Khamenei.ir, the official website of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “Supreme Leader” of Iran.
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The 85-year-old authoritarian ruler, widely criticized for backing terrorism, has a history of human rights abuses, suppression of dissent, and radical policies, which have led to widespread suffering and repression among the Iranian people.
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In his letter, Khamenei reverses narratives by labeling innocent defenders as terrorists while glorifying those he supports, and distorting historical events to align with his extreme ideological views.
Expressing “empathy and solidarity” with the pro-Hamas students, Khamenei insisted they were “standing on the right side” of history, and that they are a “branch of the Resistance Front.”
The “Resistance Front” is a reference to a loose alliance of Iran-backed terror groups and militias across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Yemen’s Houthis, Iraq’s Islamic Resistance, and Hamas, all of which oppose Western influence, while seeking to destroy Israel and kill American troops.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) secured control of the entire length of the Gaza-Egypt border on Wednesday, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and discovered some 20 tunnels nearby, as it continued military operations in Rafah.
The IDF also discovered a massive, 1.5-kilometer tunnel complex filled with weapons and other facilities for housing Hamas military operations.
IDF Wrote:UNCOVERED: 1.5km long terrorist tunnel route in eastern Rafah containing dozens of anti-tank missiles and weapons was dismantled.
Only 100 meters from the Rafah Crossing, our soldiers located a tunnel shaft branching into several different routes that contained several blast…
IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters (translation via IDF):
Our troops have located dozens of launchers along the corridor, loaded and ready to fire rockets, and launch pits from which Hamas fired rockets and mortars into Israeli territory. Hamas exploited the Philadelphi Corridor, using it to build this infrastructure just dozens of meters from the border with Egypt so that we would not strike them. This infrastructure was located between 10 and 40 meters from the border, specifically so that Israel would not strike near the fence with Egypt. I remind you that in recent weeks, Hamas has fired about seventy rockets and mortars from the Rafah area.
So far, our troops have located about 20 tunnels in the Philadelphi Corridor area. We are investigating these tunnels and neutralizing them. In parallel, the troops continue to conduct operations. These operations are carried out based on intelligence information regarding specific locations in the area.
In recent weeks, our troops uncovered an extensive underground terrorist infrastructure in eastern Rafah, which was 1.5 kilometers long. The entrance shaft to the infrastructure was located about 100 meters from the Rafah crossing. The route branched into several sub-routes and was used by Hamas terrorists for movement, transferring weapons and initiating terrorist attacks. Inside the route, we found large quantities of weapons, including anti-tank missiles, AK-47s, explosives and grenades. The 401st Brigade Combat Team operated in the route and destroyed it.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Thursday that three soldiers had been killed by a booby-trapped tunnel in Rafah that was located in a medical clinic that was part of a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school.
In a statement, the IDF said:
In response to an anti-tank missile fired from an UNRWA school toward IDF troops, the 12th Brigade combat team operated in the school complex by which a mosque and a medical clinic are also located.
During the sweep and clear operation in the medical clinic, two incidents of explosive charges set in a booby-trapped tunnel shaft detonated on the troops. As a result of one of the explosions, three soldiers – Staff Sergeant Amir Galilove, Staff Sergeant Uri Bar Or, and Staff Sergeant Ido Appel – from the 50th Battalion of the Nahal Brigade were killed.
In addition, during the operation, large quantities of weapons were found in the complex, including firearms and grenades. Inside the classrooms at the school, the troops located significant shafts leading to a wide network of underground terror tunnels.
Israel has criticized UNRWA’s role in Gaza, saying the agency indoctrinates Palestinians to hate Israel and Jews, and accusing UNRWA employees of supporting, and even participating in, the October 7 terror attack by Hamas in Israel.
The risk of booby-trapped tunnels and buildings is one reason the IDF prefers to bomb dangerous locations rather than sending troops in. The Biden administration has recently withheld the needed bombs, in protest at the Rafah operation.
Quote:Chinese dictator Xi Jinping used a speech to Arab leaders on Thursday to demand the establishment of a state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and pledged $3 million in funding to a Hamas-affiliated U.N. agency.
Xi opened the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) in Beijing, attended by some of the Middle East’s most influential leaders, including the leaders of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain. The summit is primarily intended to expand Chinese economic influence in the Arab world – Xi prominently promoted China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) during his remarks – but the Communist Party has also proven eager to support the anti-Israel cause in the Middle East, going so far as to engage in talks with the Hamas terrorist organization:
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In addition to Xi’s remarks, China signed onto a joint statement against Israel by participants at the CASCF.
Hamas triggered a war with Israel by invading the country on October 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people, taking another 250 hostage, and engaging in wanton acts of gang rape, infanticide, torture, and desecration of corpses. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded by engaging in self-defense operations in Hamas’s stronghold of Gaza, from where the terrorists invaded, that are ongoing to this day. China has adamantly opposed the self-defense operations and bolstered Hamas, including by claiming to host “unity” talks with Fatah, the Palestinian party in charge of the West Bank. China has also leveraged its permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council to rally anti-Israel sentiment at the international body.
In his remarks on Thursday, as translated by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Xi insisted that the solution to ending hostilities in the Middle East was not to eradicate terrorist organizations such as Hamas, but, rather, to grant Hamas’s demand of a Palestinian state.
Quote:Taiwanese Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said Thursday that China’s aggressive military drills are intended to “nibble away” at the island’s air and sea space.
Lin said this effort to collapse Taiwan’s operational space should be a global concern.
“The Chinese communists’ pressure on Taiwan is all encompassing, especially diplomatically,” Lin told reporters on his way into a parliamentary session.
“The Chinese communists are continuing to change the status quo. They are creating a new normal, pressing on at every stage, trying to nibble away and annex,” he said.
In his remarks to the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee on Thursday, Lin said some nations have expressed interest in developing stronger relationships with Taiwan, pushing back against China’s strategy of diplomatic isolation. He suggested one reason for this growing interest is that Taiwan, unlike China, does not use economic leverage to manipulate or punish its business partners.
The foreign minister said another mark in Taiwan’s favor is that it offers clean, secure, and reliable networking technology, in contrast to Chinese countries, which are all required, by law, to cooperate with Chinese military and intelligence services.
Lin warned that China will try to peel off more of Taiwan’s allies in the years ahead, but “we hope to make more friends.”
The Chinese Defense Ministry on Thursday denounced the United States and United Kingdom for supporting Taiwan’s new government under President William Lai Ching-te. The defense ministry accused Taiwan’s allies of trying to “instigate confrontation” with China, which they supposedly view through a “Cold War” lens.
The tyranny in Beijing was irritated by a delegation of U.S. congressional representatives who met with President Lai on Monday to reaffirm American support for Taiwan’s democracy.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:President Joe Biden’s upcoming address in Normandy, France, to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day on June 6 will focus on the threat of Russia invading Europe, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday.
Sullivan, a key player in the “Russia collusion” hoax, previewed the president’s speech in a press gaggle aboard Air Force One. He said that Biden’s address would focus on drawing lessons from history to apply to threats today.
Past presidential addresses at D-Day commemorations have tended to avoid attacking Russia or the Soviet Union — even at the height of the Cold War — due to the fact that the USSR helped defeat Nazi Germany By the time the Allies landed on the beaches of France in 1944, the Soviets had lost millions of citizens fighting to repel the Nazi invasion.
Here is what President Ronald Reagan said in 1984, in what is considered one of the best orations in U.S. history:
It’s fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the Earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.
We will pray forever that some day that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.
President Donald Trump delivered an address on the 75th anniversary of D-Day that was considered, even by hostile media, one of the best speeches of his presidency. He did not mention Russia or the Soviet Union at all, but rather focused on the heroism of D-Day and only briefly mentioned the fight against the USSR: “These men ran through the fires of hell moved by a force no weapon could destroy: the fierce patriotism of a free, proud, and sovereign people. … In the decades that followed, America defeated communism, secured civil rights, revolutionized science, launched a man to the moon, and then kept on pushing to new frontiers. And, today, America is stronger than ever before.”
Quote:According to a senior-level Customs and Border Protection source, the latest executive order signed by President Biden on Tuesday will do little more than make Americans grow accustomed to more than 2 million migrant entries into the United States annually. The source, not authorized to speak to the media, says the order will do little to change the landscape of an out-of-control border even if legal challenges by pro-migrant civil rights groups fail to kill the order outright.
Tuesday’s executive order titled “A Proclamation on Securing the Border” will deny migrants the opportunity to apply for asylum when a 7-day average of migrant apprehensions at the southwest border reaches 2,500 or more per day. The proclamation, according to the source, could allow for nearly one million migrant apprehensions per year with no limitations on asylum eligibility if cartels or the Mexican government meter crossings at less than 2,500 per day.
In addition, the source says other “lawful pathways” to entry into the United States implemented during the Biden administration have opened the border to nearly one million additional migrants at ports of entry under the cover of darkness in many cases.
“The everyday citizen has already become accustomed to 2,400 crossings being allowed through land border ports of entry and airports based on the whim of this administration,” the source told Breitbart Texas. “These asylum claims are not vetted to any greater extent than an illegal crossing between the ports. Admissions through the CBP One application are just a mechanism to impact the unpopular optics of crossings between ports of entry.”
The source says the order does nothing to address the 800 to 1,000 or more known migrant got-aways the Border Patrol counts daily. In all, through the “lawful pathways,” crossing the border illegally in numbers under 2,500 daily, and counting those that the Border Patrol fails to apprehend, the source says more than 2 million migrants could cross the border each year without triggering any consequences outlined in the order signed on Tuesday.
“Some of the statements contained within the order are outright lies,” the source added. “The order attributes low migrant crossings in 2020 to travel restrictions placed by other countries during the Covid pandemic — that’s a lie.”
“Strong enforcement policies put in place under the previous administration lowered the crossings from previous years in 2020,” the source explained. “Under the Trump era Title 42 COVID-19 authority, we removed 3 million migrants that reached our borders, and most countries didn’t care who headed to the United States illegally.”
The source stated the dilemma that will quickly impact the Border Patrol is a shortage of detention space for those migrants that cannot be removed due to the lack of diplomatic ties or logistical limitations.
Quote:Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) filed charges against three allies of former President Donald Trump with charges related to an alternate electors plot.
In the criminal complaint filed on Tuesday, attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, along with Michael Roman, a former Trump aide, were each charged with one felony count of forgery for their roles in attempting to dispute the 2020 presidential election results.
“The criminal complaint in this case alleges that the defendants were part of a conspiracy to present a certificate of purported electoral votes from individuals who were not Wisconsin’s duly appointed electors,” Kaul said in a press release. “The Wisconsin Department of Justice is committed to protecting the integrity of our electoral process.”
In response to the charges, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) wrote, “Good,” in a post on X.
Chesebro and Roman were among the 18 Trump allies, along with the former president, who were indicted by a Georgia grand jury in August 2023, related to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s case against Trump.
Months later, in October 2023, Chesebro pleaded guilty, a day after Sidney Powell, a former attorney for Trump, took a plea deal and pleaded guilty for her role in disputing the results of the presidential election.
In January, Roman filed a motion claiming that Willis had engaged in an “improper” relationship with a fellow prosecutor, Nathan Wade, and that Wade’s law firm used funds the county paid for in order to take Willis on vacations.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys are requesting to have a gag order imposed on him during his business records trial lifted in the aftermath of his guilty verdict and ahead of a presidential debate at the end of June.
Todd Blanche, Trump’s attorney, wrote a letter on Monday to Judge Juan Merchan, who had overseen Trump’s trial, arguing that the gag order should be lifted in light of Trump’s recent conviction.
On Thursday, a Manhattan jury found the former president guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records concerning payments, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, had made to adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election.
“Now that the trial is concluded, the concerns articulated by the government and the Court do not justify continued restrictions on the First Amendment rights of President Trump – who remains the leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election – and the American people,” Blanche wrote in his letter, obtained by Axios.
Merchan imposed a gag order on the former president on March 26, which barred Trump from speaking publicly against witnesses and counsel, except for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, court staff, family members of court staff, as well as staff of Bragg’s.
At the end of April, Merchan ordered the former president to remove “seven” posts from his Truth Social, after ruling that Trump had violated a gag order. Trump was also ordered to pay a $1,000 fine for nine violations of the gag order.
Blanche continued to point out in the letter that, “the constitutional mandate for unrestrained campaign advocacy by President Trump is even stronger” due to the fact that President Joe Biden’s campaign had held a campaign event outside the Manhattan courthouse on May 28, with actor Robert De Niro, and due to the upcoming presidential debate between Biden and Trump on June 27.
In his letter, Blanche also referred to how Biden had made “public comments regarding the jury’s verdict,” and how there were “continued public attacks” against Trump by Cohen and Daniels, who had been witnesses in the trial.
Trump’s sentencing will occur four days before the Republican Party holds its national convention on July 15.
Quote:Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) ripped Dr. Anthony Fauci during his testimony before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Monday, blasting him on a range of topics — from dog experiments to masking children in schools — and questioning his “so-called science.”
Greene opened up her line of questioning by pulling up a past assertion of Fauci, as he once claimed he represented science itself.
“You said you represent science. Do you represent science? Mr. Fauci? Yes or no. Yes or no,” the congresswoman said as Fauci responded that it was not a yes or no answer.
“I don’t think it is,” Fauci said, prompting Greene to say, “We’ll take that as a you don’t know what you represent.”
“As director of the NIH, you did sign off on these so-called scientific experiments. And as a dog lover, I want to tell you this is disgusting and evil, what you signed off on,” she said, holding up a picture of the experiment uncovered by White Coat Waste Project (WCW), which involved the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), directed by Fauci, granting a university $424,455 in taxpayer dollars to do a lymphatic filariasis vaccine efficacy trial on dogs between September 16, 2020 and January 15, 2022.
WCW described the tests as “unnecessary,” and they involved “injecting the puppies with an experimental drug and intentionally infesting them with flies that carry a disease-causing parasite before euthanizing them,” Breitbart News detailed at the time.
“And these experiments that happened to beagles were paid for by the American taxpayer. And I want you to know, Americans don’t pay their taxes for animals to be tortured like this. So the type of science that you are representing, Mr. Fauci, is abhorrent, and it needs to stop,” she said, also asserting that Fauci represents “the type of science where you confess that you made up the COVID rules, including six-feet social distancing and masking of children.”
Fauci denied that he made up the rules, prompting a back and forth between the two.
Quote:Denver Mayor Mike Johnston (D) is celebrating a new initiative to help migrants transition from the city’s shelter system into jobs with a new program to offer job training, legal help, and English language educational services.
Thus far, the city has enrolled about 800 migrants into the program, and more are expected to be added by the end of June, according to NBC News.
“Our goal was to take what people saw as a crisis and turn it into an opportunity,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston told the media. “We have people arriving in the city who desperately want to work, who have skills and talent and discipline. We have employers in the city who are starving to find employees, and they desperately want to hire them. What we wanted to do was to take those people that are looking to work and connect them to the training and the skills centered on jobs where we have the greatest need. So, what we did is create this first-of-its-kind program in the country, which is this asylum-seeker program.”
The migrants enrolled in the program were in the city’s shelter system and are reportedly applying for asylum, which puts them on a fast track to work permits in six months.
Johnston added that the six-month time period will be used to implement the new program, and migrants will receive English classes, financial literacy training, work training, and legal help with their asylum claims.
“So when that work authorization comes,” Johnston said of the migrants, “you already have the skills, the training, the authorization, the certification to step onto a job on Day One and be a huge asset to a Denver employer.”
Didn't that guy say they were skillful and talented?
Then why do they need that extra training, including English lessons!?
It sounds to me like they know nothing local exmployers may currently need at their workplaces.
Cartels Won't Take Advantage of the Loophole
Right, as if thpse darned criminals were the most decent guys alive nowadays.
Quote:On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas responded to concerns that the exemption for unaccompanied children in President Joe Biden’s immigration executive action will result in cartels taking advantage of that by stating that “We are taking it to the cartels.”
Host Neil Cavuto asked, [relevant exchange begins around 6:05] “[T]here are a number of exemptions for this, including unaccompanied children. And isn’t that a green light for drug cartels to take advantage of that, and the whole purpose of this sort of blows up in your face?”
Mayorkas answered, “Absolutely not.”
Cavuto then cut in to ask, “But who’s going to watch those unaccompanied children, if they are allowed in, you don’t ship them back, you don’t do anything like that. So, where do they go?”
Mayorkas responded, “Neil, we deal with unaccompanied children in a humanitarian way, adhering to our values. We deter irregular migration, we build lawful pathways, we have programs for minors.”
Cavuto then cut in to ask, “But this encourages drug cartels to take advantage of those kids, does it not, sir?”
Mayorkas answered, “Neil, we’re taking it to the drug cartels with unprecedented strength through our Transnational Criminal Investigative Units, through our Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
Cavuto then cut in to ask “No, no this is actually a green light for those cartels, isn’t that the fear, that this is actually greenlighting and [they’ll] say, oh, guys, well, we can use these kids as pawns to get what we want?”
Mayorkas responded, “Neil, let’s be clear, the cartels and smuggling organizations are unscrupulous. They exploit individuals of all different types of vulnerabilities. We are taking it to the cartels. We exempted unaccompanied children from this asylum bar because of the compelling humanitarian picture they present. We’re going to adhere to our values while we take tough enforcement measures, which is what we have done.”
Quote:President Joe Biden said he would help Africa “build back better” in a second term, if reelected, during an interview on Tuesday.
A Time reporter asked Biden, “If you do win in November, Mr. President, with a mandate to continue your approach to foreign policy, what would your goals be in the second term?”
Biden said, in addition to building NATO “both politically and economically,” he is “desperately focused on making sure that we deal with the…what they are calling the south now.”
“There are going to be a billion people in Africa in the next several years. We have to, we have to be a catalyst for change for the benefit, for the, for the better, we have to help them build back better, we have to help them,” he said.
He also said he wanted to build a railroad across the African continent.
“There’s so much opportunity in Africa. And we have to work it,” he said.
Biden’s promise comes as Niger and Chad have kicked out or are in the process of kicking out U.S. troops from their countries, as they lean toward Russia and China.
It also comes after the Biden administration spent $320 million of American taxpayer money to build a temporary pier to Gaza that broke apart in less than two weeks. It was then dismantled and is being repaired before it can be reinstalled.
Quote:Prosecutors used multiple explicit excerpts from Hunter Biden’s audiobook during his gun trial to show evidence of his drug addiction during the time period he purchased a gun.
Hunter narrated the audiobook himself. “The main witness today is, in a sense, Hunter Biden himself, through his audiobook,” NBC News reported:
The excerpts have included his self-described “superpower” of being able to buy crack in any town anywhere. They also have included Biden’s discussion of how “walking into a high crime neighborhood and buying crack was like playing Russian roulette,” sometimes with five bullets in the chamber.
First lady Jill Biden and Hunter’s wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, were forced to listen to the records. The two women “sat stoically” listening, CNN reported. Dr. Jill Biden fixed her eyes on the exhibit display screen during the recording, and appeared to shift her eyes to Hunter and then over to the jury box.
After the trial broke for lunch, Jill Biden departed the courthouse. It was the second day she attended her stepson’s trial.
Meanwhile, Hunter flipped through pages in a binder while many jurors took notes, according to court reporters.
Prosecutors played the audiobook as their first witness, FBI special agent Erika Jensen said.
Jensen will likely be used to confirm digital evidence in this case, including “embarrassing and intensely personal messages and images from Hunter Biden’s laptop,” CNN reported. Jensen authenticated bank statements from Hunter’s Wells Fargo account, which reportedly showed ATM withdraws in April 2019, proving Hunter was in Washington, DC, and California.
Quote:Witness Erika Jensen, an FBI agent, confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop during the second day of his gun trial on Tuesday.
Breitbart News’ Emma-Jo Morris, formerly of the New York Post, first reported the “laptop from hell” story in October 2020. It was immediately spun by the establishment media as “Russian disinformation.”
The DOJ previously asserted its authenticity in court filings, but prosecutors asked Jensen to confirm its authenticity before the jury because it plays an important evidentiary role. The laptop contains Whatsapp messages, iMessages, and text messages related to the case.
The DOJ confirmed the laptop was Hunter’s by determining that he left it at a computer store and that the contents matched what authorities obtained via a search warrant of Hunter’s iCloud, as Breitbart News reported in January.
In court Jensen inspected the laptop, which was in an evidence bag, and explained how the FBI authenticated it. When Jensen grasped the machine, Melissa Cohen-Biden, Hunter’s wife, shook her head and spoke to Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris, who was next to her, according to court reporters.
Hunter’s prosecutor also introduced as evidence an invoice for $85 that Hunter received from The Mac Shop, CNN reported:
“This is the laptop that was recovered from the computer store,” she [Jensen] said. When asked how she was able to confirm the laptop’s authenticity, Jensen said the serial number on the back of the laptop matches the serial number provided in Apple Inc.’s subpoena response for records.
Jensen appeared to be making a point of looking at the jury while she explained the concept of iCloud data and how the FBI obtains the data via warrants. The jurors appeared engaged — a few were taking notes, but most simply listened. Hunter was wearing glasses and appeared to be taking notes when not whispering with his lawyers.
The witness told the jury that between Hunter’s laptop, phone, and tablet, 18,000 pages of messages, photos, and videos were uncovered, per NBC News. Only 75 pages are relevant to the trial.
Shortly after the New York Post broke the laptop story in 2020, CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand wrote the infamous and now discredited Politico story that used “dozens of former intel officials” to push a false and misleading narrative about the origins of Hunter’s laptop.
It took the establishment media well over a year to admit the story was false. Hunter’s laptop holds “authentic communications that can be verified,” the Washington Post admitted in March 2022 — after not pursuing the story for 532 days.
CNN also finally admitted Hunter’s “laptop from hell” was authentic more than 500 days after the initial story broke on October 24, 2020 — notably calling it “Russian disinformation” and “made up” at the time.
After nearly two years, the New York Times admitted the emails from Hunter’s laptop were his, Breitbart News reported.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
* Fast forward 4:45 to establish... 'he said exactly that'
The very next day, social media is claiming he said the absolute opposite.
Quote:Former President Trump told Fox News on Wednesday that critics claiming he'd seek retribution against political opponents are "wrong," but he would have "every right" to go after his adversaries if he is re-elected in November.
Trump sat down for an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity to discuss the state of the country and his political campaign after he was found guilty last week on 34 counts of falsifying business records in NY v. Trump.
Hannity asked the former president what he would say to people who believe he wants retribution and will use the justice system to go after his political adversaries if he returns to the White House in 2025.
"Number one, they're wrong," Trump replied. "It has to stop, because otherwise, we're not going to have a country. Look, when this election is over, based on what they've done, I would have every right to go after them, and it's easy, because it's Joe Biden and you see all the criminality, all of the money that's going into the family and him, all of this money from China, from Russia, from Ukraine."
. . .
Trump said he doesn’t want to do what Democrats have done to the Republican Party.
"They want to arrest on no crime. They want to arrest the person that won the nomination in a landslide," he told "Hannity."
"What they're doing to me, if it's going to continue, we're really not going to have much of a country left. It's really, it is weaponization. You call it lawfare, you call it — some people call it just warfare — but it is weaponization of the election," the 2024 GOP frontrunner added.
Behind Closed Doors,
Biden Shows Signs of Slipping Participants in meetings said the 81-year-old president performed poorly at times.
The White House said Biden is sharp and his critics are playing partisan politics.
The Article
Quote:WASHINGTON—When President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.
In a February one-on-one chat in the Oval Office with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the president said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study, according to six people told at the time about what Johnson said had happened. Johnson worried the president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy.
Last year, when Biden was negotiating with House Republicans to lift the debt ceiling, his demeanor and command of the details seemed to shift from one day to the next, according to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and two others familiar with the talks. On some days, he had loose and spontaneous exchanges with Republicans, and on others he mumbled and appeared to rely on notes.
“I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house,” McCarthy said in an interview. “He’s not the same person.”
The 81-year-old Biden is the oldest person to hold the presidency. His age and cognitive fitness have become major issues in his campaign for a second term, both in the minds of voters and in attacks on him by Republicans. The White House and top aides said he remains a sharp and vigorous leader.
Some who have worked with him, however, including Democrats and some who have known him back to his time as vice president, described a president who appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones.
For much of his career, Biden enjoyed a reputation on Capitol Hill for being a master negotiator of legislative deals, known for his detailed knowledge of issues and insights into the other side’s motivations and needs—and for hitting his stride when the pressure was on. Over the past year, though, with Republicans in control of the House, that reputation has diminished.
White House officials dismissed many of the accounts from those who have met with the president or been briefed on those meetings as motivated by partisan politics.
“Congressional Republicans, foreign leaders and nonpartisan national-security experts have made clear in their own words that President Biden is a savvy and effective leader who has a deep record of legislative accomplishment,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates. “Now, in 2024, House Republicans are making false claims as a political tactic that flatly contradict previous statements made by themselves and their colleagues.”
This article is based on interviews with more than 45 people over several months. The interviews were with Republicans and Democrats who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them contemporaneously, including administration officials and other Democrats who found no fault in the president’s handling of the meetings. Most of those who said Biden performed poorly were Republicans, but some Democrats said that he showed his age in several of the exchanges.
Quote:June 6 (UPI) -- France has announced plans to begin selling Mirage fighter jets to war-embattled Ukraine "by the end of the year," French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday.
Macron made the announcement on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when U.S. and allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, in 1944, turning the tide in World War II and marking the beginning of the end of Nazi totalitarianism in Europe.
"Tomorrow we will launch a new cooperation and announce the transfer of Mirage 2000 [jets], which help Ukraine protect its skies," Macron said during an interview with broadcaster TF1 in the northern city of Caen, coinciding with the start of an official visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Macron said he intends for as many as 4,500 Ukrainian pilots to be trained on Mirage 2000 fighter jets in France over a six month period, beginning as soon as this summer.
He did not, however, say how many fighters he intends to send to Ukraine, and the defense ministry did not elaborate on its plans. Macron said he would brief Zelensky further in a private meeting on Friday at the Elysée Palace.
"We've always had the same philosophy, we help the Ukrainians to fight," Macron added.
Macron said Ukraine has asked Western allies to send military instructors to train its forces on its soil to meet the growing demand for troops.
Zelensky has said that Russia is beginning to gain the upper hand on the battlefield and needs international help to build up Ukrainian troop numbers.
"The Ukrainian president and his minister of defence asked all the allies -- 48 hours ago in an official letter -- saying 'we need you to train us quicker and that you do this on our soil,'" Macron said.
Zelensky has made repeated pleas for additional arms, firepower and other military assistance from Western nations, including the United States, which recently passed more aid and, by some reports, totals at least $175 million, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
This is a change of direction for France, which had, until now, stopped short of sending Mirage fighter jets to Ukraine, and had instead suggested to Kyiv that its defense forces should focus on acquiring F-16s, which are more common that the Mirage.
World leaders and veterans from allied nations had gathered in commemoration of the 80th year of D-Day, which provided the backdrop for Macron to make the fighter jet announcement. U.S. President Joe Biden and Macron drew comparisons between the fight against Nazism in World War II and Ukraine's battle against the current Russian invasion.
Zelensky is scheduled to meet with defense manufacturers, Macron and the French National Assembly on Friday.
Macron told France 24 that the move signals a new attitude of partnership with Kyiv.
"We are working with our partners and we will act on the basis of a collective decision," he said.
Up is down, left is right and sideways is straight ahead. - Cord "Circle of Iron", 1978 (written by Bruce Lee and James Coburn... really...)
Quote:Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters — some openly supporting Hamas and other terror groups — surrounded the White House on Saturday, vandalizing a statue and assaulting a U.S. Park Police officer who tried to protect it.
The protest happened on the day Israel successfully rescued four hostages from Hamas’s clutches in a raid in Gaza.
[Several X Posts & 1 YouTube Video]
The Washington Examiner reported:
Protesters clad in keffiyeh began gathering outside the presidential residence in Washington, D.C., Saturday morning. Their signs called on President Joe Biden to “free Palestine” and “end the siege on Gaza now.” Others stood in a line draped in a two-mile-long red banner around the White House to symbolize the “red line” Israel crossed when they began the operation in Rafah, a southern city in Gaza where many Palestinians have fled to.
…
At one point, U.S. Park Police were on the scene with mace to fend off protesters. They were allegedly attempting to arrest one of the protesters when the crowd began yelling at them to stop, screaming, “Let her go.” It was not immediately clear what they were attempting to arrest her in connection with. In the exchange, police sprayed mace, and it appeared they eventually let the protester go without completing the arrest.
The Examiner reported that there had been no arrests at the time of publication.
Four years ago, radical left-wing protesters surrounded the White House as part of the George Floyd riots and the “Black Lives Matter” movement. They assaulted law enforcement officers, attacked journalists, set a church on fire, and vandalized monuments.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump is set to have a probation interview on Monday in the aftermath of his guilty verdict at the end of May, according to sources.
Three people familiar with the situation informed NBC News that Trump will take part in a virtual interview from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
While the probation interview is usually done in person, Martin Horn, a former commissioner with the New York City Department of Corrections and Probation, explained to the outlet that having Trump appear in person may be “disruptive.”
Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, will reportedly be with the former president during his virtual interview.
“You can argue that Trump’s appearance at the probation office on the 10th floor of the Criminal Court Building in Manhattan where his trial took place, with Secret Service and press following him, would be very disruptive to the probation office and unfair to other defendants who might not want to be identified,” Horn explained.
In order to help the judge decide a punishment for those convicted of a crime, a pre-sentencing report is used, according to the website for the New York State Unified Court System.
Quote:Hunter Biden’s legal defense could be hoping for jury nullification, legal experts warned.
Jury nullification occurs when a defendant is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt but jurors disregard their oath to find the defendant not guilty.
Hunter is charged with one count of false statement in the purchase of a firearm, one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance, and one count of false statement related to information required to be kept by a federal firearms licensed dealer.
Hunter used crack when he purchased the firearm, according to a wide variety of photos from the time on his abandoned laptop, and the gun was found discarded in a public trash can next to a school. The Secret Service allegedly intervened in the investigation of that incident.
While many legal experts say a jury should easily convict Hunter, constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley and Judge Jeanine Pirro said on Fox News that jury nullification is a real risk for the prosecution.
Turley explained to the Hill:
So why wouldn’t Hunter just plead guilty? Even without his earlier plea deal, a guilty plea could significantly reinforce a request to avoid jail time in the case. It would also avoid an embarrassing trial for himself and his father during a presidential election.
While Hunter could always throw in the towel before the start of testimony, there is currently no discernible strategy beyond hoping that a pending case in the Supreme Court might undermine the indictment.
There may also be another possible strategy in play: jury nullification.
Pirro was also surprised Hunter did not plead guilty to forgo the trial, she told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum in reference to potential jury nullification. “They’re [defense] trying to overlook the fact that there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt here,” she said:
They’re trying to get the jury to maybe nullify the verdict, which simply means a jury may believe that the case has been proven to their satisfaction to everyone beyond a reasonable doubt, but they’re going to cut him [Hunter] loose for any reason.
Quote:Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has agreed to testify before a Republican-controlled congressional subcommittee, but likely not until after former President Donald Trump is sentenced in July
Manhattan district attorney agrees to testify in Congress, but likely not until Trump is sentencedThe Associated PressNEW YORK
NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg agreed Friday to testify before what’s likely to be a hostile, Republican-controlled congressional subcommittee, but likely not until after former President Donald Trump is sentenced in July.
The House Judiciary Committee chairman, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, wrote Bragg in late May after Trump’s conviction in his hush money trial, accusing him of having conducted a “political prosecution” and requesting his testimony at a hearing June 13.
In a reply letter, the Manhattan district attorney’s general counsel, Leslie Dubeck, said the prosecutor’s office was “committed to voluntary cooperation.”
That cooperation, it added, including making Bragg, a Democrat, available to testify “at an agreed-upon date.” But the letter said the date picked by Jordan presented “presents various scheduling conflicts.”
It noted that the Trump prosecution is not yet finished. Trump, who was convicted of falsifying records to cover up hush money paid to a porn actor during the 2016 presidential campaign, is scheduled to be sentenced July 11. Before then, prosecutors will be making recommendations to a judge about what kind of punishment Trump deserves.
“The trial court and reviewing appellate courts have issued numerous orders for the purpose of protecting the fair administration of justice in People v. Trump, and to participate in a public hearing at this time would be potentially detrimental to those efforts,” the letter said.
Bragg’s office asked for an opportunity to discuss an alternative date with the subcommittee and get more information about “the scope and purpose of the proposed hearing.”
Jordan has also asked for testimony from Matthew Colangelo, one of the lead prosecutors in the Trump case. Bragg’s office didn’t rule that out, but said in the letter that it would “evaluate the propriety” of allowing an assistant district attorney to testify publicly about an active prosecution.
Jordan, an Ohio Republican, has proposed withholding federal funding from any entity that attempts to prosecute a former president. He has also railed against what he’s described as the “weaponization of the federal government.”
Quote:Le Pen’s populist-nationalist got twice as many votes as the governing group of Emmanuel Macron’s globalist centrists in Sunday’s European Parliament election, prompting Macron to immediately dissolve the national parliament and call fresh French elections in a bid to regain authority for the remainder of his presidential term.
Update 2215 BST: Le Pen speaks
Shortly after President Macron announced he was calling fresh elections to buttress his position, National Rally (RN, Rassemblement National) leader Marine Le Pen took to the stage at her group’s election night party in Paris and declared their readiness to fight the snap election.
Hailing the progress of right-wing parties across Europe as the “dawn of a new day dawning for all the nations and peoples of Europe” and expressing her hope the result would finally comprehensively close “the painful globalist interlude which has caused the people of the world to suffer” Le Pen said it also confirmed the RN as the “great force for change for France”.
She told the Paris rally:
Ladies and gentlemen, dear compatriots. The French have expressed themselves and this historic election shows when people vote, the people win…
…The President… has just announced the dissolution of the National Assembly, to return the people to the polls in a few weeks time. I can only welcome this, we are ready for it… we are ready to exercise power if the French put their trust in us in these new national elections. We are ready to restore the country to defend the interests of the French people. We are ready to put an end to mass immigration. Ready to [build the strength of the economy] as a priority. And ready to begin the reindustrialization of the country. To be clear, we are ready to straighten out the country, and we are ready to relive France.
As noted by Le Monde , RN gaining 31.5 per cent of the votes means Le Pen and Bardella have grabbed the best result for any French political party at the European elections in 40 years. And that’s before you even count the fact the right-populist vote was split to some degree by the running of a rival party co-led by Le Pen’s niece Marion Marechal Le Pen, who picked up a further five and a half per cent.
Quote:Right wing parties gained ground in Sunday’s national elections in Belgium, largely at the expense of left wing and green parties, prompting the liberal coalition Prime Minister to fall on his sword and announce he will resign.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo will resign, he said, reflecting on the poor performance of his governing coalition in the country’s ‘Super Sunday’ election which saw residents vote for their new parliament as well as regional representatives, and for their new members of the European Parliament.
While Belgium didn’t experience a landslide victory, the gaining of ground by a handful of right-wing parties and the cliff-edge collapse of the country’s two Green parties has been enough to shift the electoral picture in the country, making the present centrist-globalist coalition untenable.
Russia hawk De Croo said on Sunday night: “For us it was a particularly difficult evening, we lost. From tomorrow, I will be a resigning Prime Minister. But the liberals [will be back].” De Croo will stay on as caretaker Prime Minister until a new government can be formed, which in Belgium can typically take an extremely long time, over a year in some previous elections.
Early results suggest the conservative-nationalist Eurosceptic New Flemish Alliance (NVA) will be the largest party in Belgium, followed closely by right wing populist Eurosceptic Vlaams Belang (VB). VB were polled to perform stronger than they did, which may take some of the wind out of their sails on election night, but nevertheless it remains Belgium’s Green parties lost 11 of the 21 seats they held yesterday and that largest parties in the country which hosts the institutions of the European Union are Eurosceptic.
Quote:Nearly half of the British public wants a total freeze on all non-essential immigration into the country, but do not trust either of the two main political parties to cut the number of foreigners allowed into the UK.
A survey conducted by the Centre for Migration Control has found that a plurality of the public agrees that “Britain should have a five-year freeze on all further immigration that is not essential to supporting the NHS”, with 32 per cent strongly agreeing and 17 per cent tending to agree, compared to 13 per cent who tended to disagree and 11 per cent who strongly disagreed.
Additionally, 58 per cent supported cutting legal net migration to the “tens of thousands” compared to just 17 per cent who disagreed, The Express reports.
However, there is widespread pessimism about the prospect of either the governing neo-liberal Conservative Party or the opposition left-wing Labour Party delivering on the priority of reducing mass migration, with the survey finding that 49 per cent of the people do not trust either major party to reduce immigration.
The distrust is unsurprising given Labour’s history of backing mass migration and the Conservative Party’s history of brazenly lying to the public on the issue, with the Tories allowing in the largest influx of foreigners in the history of the country despite previously pledging to the public to bring migration down to the “tens of thousands” in their 2010, 2015, and 2017 election manifestos, and promising that immigration would “come down” in the 2019 manifesto.
Arch-globalist Tory bigwig George Osbourne admitted in 2017 that the party never intended to reduce migration and that behind closed doors, party leadership had never agreed with the promises made to the public. Other top figures, be they Labour or Tory have admitted the same.
Robert Bates of the Centre for Migration Control said: “These figures lay bare the sheer disconnect that exists between Westminster and the British public. It is vital that immigration, and the huge numbers entering the country legally, are at the centre of the national debate in the coming weeks.”
The survey comes on the back of another staggering release of official immigration data, with net migration — the overall number of people coming to the country minus those who left — being recorded at 685,000 following the arrival of 1.2 million people.
Quote:Benny Gantz, an opposition leader who brought his party into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government after the October 7 attacks, announced Sunday that he would be leaving, accusing Netanyahu of bungling the war.
The oddly-timed announcement came just a day after Netanyahu oversaw a successful Israeli operation to rescue four hostages from Gaza. Gantz had expected to announce his departure Saturday night but postponed due to the news.
As Breitbart News reported in October:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz agreed Wednesday to form an emergency government of national unity for the duration of the war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
The decision to set aside bitter political differences is a significant one, and marks the achievement of one of the goals Netanyahu listed in his speech to the Israeli nation on Monday. Gantz, a former defense minister and general in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who leads the opposition Blue and White Party, had previously vowed to “shake the country” if Netanyahu passed his judicial reforms (one of which, indeed, was passed).
But Gantz found it politically advantageous to leave, as protests against Netanyahu returned to the streets in some part of Israel in recent weeks, alongside protests for a hostage deal.
He had promised to leave by June 8 if his various demands were not met. The Times of Israel reported Sunday:
Quote:Declaring that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “preventing us from reaching true victory,” National Unity chairman Benny Gantz says that his party is pulling out of the government, making good on an ultimatum.
His party joined the coalition following October 7 for the sake of the country even though “we knew it was a bad government” and has since seen strategic considerations pushed aside for political reasons, he says.
Abdu wrote that Aljamal was “executed” by Israeli forces who entered his home during the successful rescue mission:
[X Post]
Later, after Israeli news sources speculated that Aljamal’s family may have been holding one of the Israeli captives who were freed, such as Noa Argamani, Abdu wrote that there had been several homes attacked during the raid and would not confirm whether the family had been holding captives.
It is known that Argamani and three other hostages were being held by Palestinian civilian families living near the market area of Nuseirat at the time of their rescue.
Quote:Israel released photographs Saturday of the happy reunions of four rescued hostages with their families after a daring special forces raid in Nuseirat, in central Gaza — and a photograph of one of the Israeli soldiers who was killed in the operation.
As Breitbart News noted, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel Police, and Israel Security Agency (ISA) rescued four hostages: Noa Argamani, 25; Almog Meir Jan, 21; Andrey Kozlov, 27; and Shlomi Ziv, 40.
[X Post]
The hostages were rescued from two Hamas buildings, above ground, the Times of Israel reported.
Argamani was among the most iconic of the hostages, with footage of her abduction on a motorcycle airing endlessly after the October 7 Hamas terror attack.
[X Post]
...
Israeli President Isaac Herzog issued a statement:
With overwhelming emotions we received the very moving news about the rescue from captivity of Noa Argamani, Almog Meir, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv, who were kidnapped on October 7th from the music festival in Re’im and were finally reunited with their loved ones. On behalf of the entire people of Israel, I thank the IDF, the Israeli Security Agency (Shabak), the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces for an impressive and courageous rescue operation. I wish for the immediate return of all the hostages to their families. Am Yisrael Chai!
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:New video footage provided to House Republicans reveals then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) admitting responsibility for not having the National Guard protect the Capitol building ahead of protests on January 6, 2021.
The footage, Politico notes, was “was shown in a video shot by the former speaker’s daughter, documentarian Alexandra Pelosi, and recently provided to congressional investigators by HBO.” It was never aired — nor did Alexandra Pelosi provide it to the January 6 Committee when it was supposedly investigating the Capitol riot.
[2 X Posts]
The January 6 Committee also never subpoenaed Speaker Pelosi or her daughter for documents about the riot.
The video substantiates claims by former President Donald Trump that Pelosi was responsible for failing to prepare sufficient security ahead of the protest. Trump offered the National Guard in the days before the “Stop the Steal” rally 6, but was refused. (Trump was later faulted by critics for not intervening quickly to send the Guard during the riot.)
In the video, Pelosi is shown lamenting: “We have responsibility … we did not have any accountability for what was going on there. And we should have. … Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”
She continues: “I take responsibility for not having them [the National Guard] just prepare for war.”
Pelosi later rejected Republican nominees for the minority positions on the January 6 Committee — the first time in congressional history that the leader of the majority party had done so — and instead hand-picked two anti-Trump Republicans. The result was a completely one-sided investigation that declined to question Pelosi’s role in events.
Despite the one-sided nature of the investigation, prosecutors have used its proceedings in criminal cases against Trump and his supporters.
Quote:Hunter Biden has been found guilty on all three charges in his federal gun trial, becoming the first son of a sitting US president to be criminally convicted.
Prosecutors said Biden, 54, lied about his drug use on a federal form when he bought a handgun in 2018.
Biden pleaded not guilty, claiming he was in recovery from drug addiction at the time and was therefore truthful on the gun application form.
A panel of 12 Delaware jurors reached their verdict after about three hours of deliberations.
Biden showed little emotion as he learned his fate on Tuesday. He stared ahead with arms folded before turning around to hug some of the associates on his legal team.
He faced two charges related to lying about his drug use on a federal background check, and one for possessing a gun while addicted to or using drugs.
Once court was adjourned, he kissed and embraced his wife before walking out of the room, escorted by Secret Service agents.
Biden said in a statement that he was "disappointed by the outcome", but "grateful today for the love and support I experienced this last week from Melissa, my family, my friends, and my community".
Several members of Biden's family had supported him in court throughout the trial. However, only two were present for sentencing: his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and James Biden, his uncle, and US President Joe Biden's brother.
US First Lady Jill Biden arrived in the lobby of the court minutes after the verdict was read, and left with her step-son past throngs of photographers and journalists.
Experts say it is possible Hunter Biden could face prison time - although it would be highly unlikely for him to receive the maximum sentence of 25 years.
The judge did not set a date for sentencing, but noted that it would usually take place within 120 days of conviction.
Abbe Lowell, the defence lawyer, said he would "vigorously pursue all the legal challenges available to Hunter".
Speaking after the conviction, special counsel David Weiss said the case was not about addiction, but about "the illegal choices the defendant made" while in the throes of addiction - echoing the words of the trial prosecutors.
"No-one in this country is above the law," Mr Weiss said. "Everyone must be accountable for their actions, even this defendant."
Quote:US President Joe Biden has said he will respect a jury’s decision to find his son guilty of gun crimes, after a week-long trial that laid bare a tumultuous time for the family.
The 12-person jury found Hunter Biden, 54, guilty of lying about his drug use on a form while purchasing a handgun in 2018. He faces possible jail time following the verdict, which marked the first criminal prosecution of a sitting president’s child.
His conviction on all three felony counts comes as President Biden campaigns for re-election in November, and less than two weeks after his election rival Donald Trump was himself convicted of a crime in New York.
While President Biden did not attend the trial in Delaware, many family members including First Lady Jill Biden did so regularly. Hunter Biden’s wife, sister and uncle were all present at times to support him during proceedings.
President Biden flew to Wilmington, Delaware, after the verdict where he greeted and hugged his son on the tarmac.
“I am the president, but I am also a dad. Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today,” he said in an earlier statement. Mr Biden added that he would “accept the outcome of this case and… continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal”.
President Biden earlier ruled out pardoning his son, whose trial surfaced embarrassing details as prosecutors sought to show the extent of Hunter Biden’s crack cocaine addiction at the time he bought the gun. Jurors heard from his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, and a former girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, who described frequent long drug binges.
Quote:President Joe Biden delivered a speech in which he pushed more gun control for the American people Tuesday afternoon, just hours after his son Hunter was convicted on gun charges.
The speech was delivered at an event sponsored by Mike Bloomberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety.
Biden said, “In two weeks we’ll mark the second anniversary of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.”
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) is the gun control bill which Republican Sen. John Cornyn helped Democrats fashion and pass in 2022.
The president went on to outline how the BSCA has opened the door for his administration to spend millions upon millions for more gun control and the promotion of more firearm regulations. And he noted the establishment of the “first ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.”
He said the office was created to send a “clear message” about how important the fight against gun violence is to him.
Referencing his ATF’s actions against the guns that Democrats describe as “ghost guns,” he then made clear that he wants yet more gun control put in place.
Biden said, “It’s time once again to do what I did when I was Senator, ban ‘assault weapons.’ I mean it.”
His comments came three hours after his son, Hunter, was convicted on three gun charges.
One of the things for which Hunter was convicted centered on making a false statement in the course of purchasing of a firearm. On June 3, 2024, Breitbart News noted that the penalty for that one crime is fines up to $250,000 and/or ten years of imprisonment.
Quote:Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict is a “distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement following the conviction.
Biden family members and Biden business-linked entities received more than $15 million from individuals in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania, and China, according to the House impeachment inquiry.
“Crooked Joe Biden’s reign over the Biden Family Criminal Empire is all coming to an end on November 5th, and never again will a Biden sell government access for personal profit,” Leavitt said.
A Delaware jury on Tuesday found Hunter guilty on all three gun charges after only several hours of deliberating.
Testimony from several witnesses during the trial said Hunter used drugs in 2018, the timeframe that he worked on foreign business deals with his family.
One of the biggest deals came when Biden’s family members accepted money from CEFC China Energy Co, an organization with close ties to the CCP. The House Oversight Committee revealed in 2023 that CEFC controlled State Energy HK Limited, a company linked to $1.3 million collective payments to the Biden family members.
Quote:The US has lifted its long-standing ban on weapons supplies and training to Ukraine's Azov brigade, whose origins were mired in controversy over alleged links to far-right groups.
A state department spokesman told the BBC a vetting process "found no evidence of gross violations of human rights" by the brigade.
The Azov brigade, now a unit within Ukraine's National Guard, hailed the move, saying Russia's "lies... received a devastating blow".
Moscow condemned the decision, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the US was "even prepared to flirt with neo-Nazis" to suppress Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made false claims about a "neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv to try to justify first the annexation of Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula and backing of pro-Moscow fighters in the east in 2014, and then his full-scale invasion launched in 2022.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the state department spokesman told the BBC that Washington applied a vetting process to the National Guard of Ukraine's 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade and "found no evidence of gross violations of human rights committed".
"Russian disinformation attempts to conflate Ukraine's National Guard Unit of 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov with a militia formed to defend Ukraine against Russia's invasion in 2014, called the 'Azov Battalion'," the spokesman added.
Under America's "Leahy Law", sponsored in 1997 by then-Senator Patrick Leahy, a finding that a foreign military unit has committed gross violations of human rights means it can be cut off from US military assistance.
The US government says it considers torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance and rape as such types of violations when implementing the law.
Quote:Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) in a letter on Tuesday urged Republican leaders on the House Appropriations Committee to stop the U.S. government from partnering with Ukrainian actors targeting Americans, after a Ukrainian non-governmental organization published an enemies list consisting of American lawmakers, think-tanks, and media figures who questioned or opposed sending more taxpayer aid to Ukraine.
Banks sent letters to Americans on the list — including X and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — informing them that he has asked Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) and State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Mario Diaz Balart (R-FL) to stop the State Department and USAID from partnering with any actors overseas who encourage the harassment of Americans.
Banks comes a day before the committee is marking up its bill to fund the State Department and USAID in fiscal year 2025.
As Breitbart News’s Kurt Zindulka recently reported, the list was compiled by the Ukraine-based DATA Journalism Agency (TEXTY), and comprised 388 individuals and 76 organizations. It included Breitbart News as one of the organizations on its list. It also included Banks, a Navy veteran and chairman of the House Armed Services Military Readiness Subcommittee.
The NGO also published a report about the list, which was titled “Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it.”
Zindulka reported:
…the TEXTY website claims to be “independent” and that its project into supposed anti-Ukrainian sentiment in America was funded “exclusively by the readers”. However, TEXTY is listed as a partner of the Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services (TAPAS) Project in Ukraine, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and UK International Development (UK Dev).
TEXTY’s co-founder and current deputy editor, Anatoly Bondarenko, is also listed as a trainer for the American State Department’s “TechCamp” program, which claims to provide “hands-on, participant-driven workshops that connect private sector technology experts with key populations — journalists, non-governmental organisations, civil society advocates, and more — to explore and apply innovative tech solutions to global issues.”
While the report admits that most mentioned in the study “do not have direct, proven ties to the Russian government or propagandists” it continues to paint a conspiratorial and supposedly interconnected web of 390 individuals and 76 organisations, with a heavy focus on those “affiliated with the Trump wing of the Republican Party.”
Quote:The investors who helped elect President Joe Biden in 2020 want a last-minute amnesty for roughly 1 million illegal migrants, even as multiple polls show rising public opposition to cheap-labor migration.
The Democrats’ pro-migration donors and investors recognize that Biden is losing the election and “they’re just absolutely desperate,” Kevin Lynn, the founder of U.S. Tech Workers.
If Trump is elected, “he will have the mandate to deport 21 million people,” said Lynn, because Biden’s vast inflow of roughly 10 million legal and illegal migrants has discredited the establishment’s claim that migration is good for America and Americans.
The establishment’s pro-migration “narrative is collapsing, and they’re doubling down again” shortly before the election, Lynn said.
Any Biden amnesty late in the campaign would draft diverse party activists to defend the investors’ single cause of migration instead of their varied progressive causes, he said. The amnesty push is also an “insane” threat to Biden and his other left-wing non-migration interest groups because it raises their chance of collectively losing in November, he said.
But Biden and his campaign staffers may be unable to stop White House policy staffers from declaring the amnesty giveaway, he said, because “the old man is out to lunch.”
Quote:A recent study by software company BambooHR has shed light on the harsh realities of return to office (RTO) mandates, suggesting that at some companies they are merely a back-channel approach to layoffs.
The Register reports that the survey, which included responses from over 1,500 employees, with a third working in HR, has exposed the poorly-executed failure of the return to office movement. One startling revelation from the study is that 25 percent of executives and 20 percent of HR professionals hoped that RTO mandates would lead to staff leaving voluntarily.
While this admission confirms long-held suspicions, the study also found that people did indeed quit when RTO mandates were enforced at many of the largest companies. However, the number of voluntary departures was not enough to satisfy management’s expectations. As a result, 37 percent of respondents in leadership roles believed that their employers had resorted to layoffs in the past 12 months due to insufficient numbers of employees quitting in protest of RTO mandates.
The study suggests that the end result has been the emergence of a different office culture, one that is even more performative, suspicious, and divisive than before the coronavirus pandemic. Employees, both working remotely and in-person, feel the need to demonstrate productivity, with more than a third believing that being seen socializing and moving around the office is necessary. This intense need for visibility may actually be harming productivity, according to study author and BambooHR’s head of HR, Anita Grantham.
The data also reveals that remote employees and in-office employees both report spending around two hours of every day not working, with those in the office likely spending those ten hours a week trying to appear as busy as possible. Remote workers, on the other hand, feel the need to demonstrate presence by being hyper-available and never going offline, a phenomenon termed the “green status effect.”
Don't Neglect Your Pistachios or You Might Get Sued!
Quote:A New York woman is taking legal action against Cold Stone Creamery for alleged deceptive advertising because she thought its ice cream contained pistachios.
The Farmingdale woman, identified as Jenna Marie Duncan, filed a class action lawsuit against Cold Stone Creamery after she bought pistachio ice cream from one of the company’s locations in Levittown in 2022, USA Today reported Monday.
Duncan apparently believed the ice cream contained pistachios, but, when she looked on the company’s website, she realized there were no pistachios in the treat.
Per the lawsuit, the food contains “pistachio flavoring made of water, ethanol, propylene glycol, natural and artificial flavor, Yellow 5 and Blue 1.”
The Today article continued:
The lawsuit claims that had Duncan known the product did not contain pistachios, she “would not have purchased it, or would have paid significantly less for it.”
…
The defendant in the case is Kahala Franchising LLC, a company that owns franchises of chains such as Cold Stone Creamery, Wetzel’s Pretzels, Baja Fresh and Blimpie, among others.
According to Cold Stone’s website, its ice cream is made fresh in its stores daily with the finest ingredients.
A federal judge in the state has permitted the lawsuit to move forward, the Today article said.
Queen City News Chief Legal Analyst Khalif J. Rhodes Esq. pointed to the fact that pistachios are expensive, then said he reviewed the judge’s order and laughed:
...
Quote:An illegal alien “got-away,” who successfully crossed the United States-Mexico border, is accused of raping a child in the sanctuary state of Massachusetts.
Yader Alexander Morales-Quevedo, a 24-year-old illegal alien from Guatemala, crossed the southern border without Border Patrol detecting him — entering the U.S. as one of the millions of “got-aways” whom the federal government has little-to-no information on.
In August 2022, Morales-Quevedo was arraigned in New Bedford District Court on child rape charges. Those charges were eventually upgraded to be heard before the Bristol County Superior Court.
In January 2023, Morales-Quevedo was arraigned in the Bristol County Superior Court on child rape and posing or exhibiting a child in a state of nudity or sexual conduct charges.
On May 28, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Morales-Quevedo. ICE officials said he will remain in their custody pending the outcome of the child rape charges against him.
“Yader Alexander Morales-Quevedo will have his day in court, but he is facing some very serious charges,” ICE official Todd Lyons said in a statement. “He posed a significant threat to the children in our Massachusetts communities.”
Since President Joe Biden took office in early 2021, nearly two million illegal alien got-aways have successfully crossed the southern border.
Quote:Three people were injured when shots were fired at an Atlanta mall food court Tuesday afternoon.
A fourth person was injured as well; that fourth individual is believed to be the shooter.
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USA Today reported the location of the shooting was 235 Peachtree St NW, which was elsewhere described as the Peachtree Center Food Court.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted the investigation and lockdown that followed the shooting do not impact “the Peachtree Center MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) station, which is a short walk from the shooting location.”
Quote:President Emmanuel Macron threw down the gauntlet to the French people and the right-populist opposition on Sunday, calling a snap election to save his leadership, but now says he won’t resign even if he loses.
France will elect a new Parliament on June 30th after an astonishingly short election campaign of just three weeks after the fresh vote was called on Sunday just hours after President Emmanuel Macron’s political faction was handed a humiliating defeat in the European elections. The National Rally (RN) right-populists of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella got twice as many votes as Macron’s group, the highest proportion of any French political party in 40 years.
Macron’s ‘put up or shut up’ challenge to the French people could risk everything if the RN wins, particularly now a putative unite-the-right coalition to win the election is coalescing around Le Pen. But high-stakes or not, Macron has now insisted even if he suffers a second massive defeat, he won’t surrender the Elysée Palace and will attempt to continue to govern a country clearly opposed to him, and without the support of parliament.
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Per Le Parisien, Macron invoked the French constitution to insist that while two back-to-back mega defeats may feel like the right time to bow out, nevertheless he’d cling on. He said: “It is not the RN which writes the Constitution, nor the spirit of it. The institutions are clear, the place of the president, whatever the result, is also clear.”
He had called the election to “clarify” the political situation in the country, Macron said, while calling on the French to make sure they vote, stating: “I’m [doing this] to win!”.
As things stand, if RN outright won the election, which will be held in two rounds at the end of this month and on July 7th Macron would probably have little choice but to appoint RN president Jordan Bardella as Prime Minister. With so much still up in the air, it remains unclear what this would mean for France and its political fortunes.
French Presidents have governed with an opposed Parliament before, and Macron does not even control Parliament now. It has also been floated that Macron envisions Bardella and Le Pen taking power in Parliament as part of his long-game plan, a trap set for the right by giving them a taste of power, which the centrist-globalist would presumably be relying on them messing up.
Quote:In a stunning development that has sent shockwaves through Paris, the head of the centre-right Les Républicans party has backed an alliance with Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally in the snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron.
The cordon sanitaire that has surrounded the National Rally for decades may be “disappearing”, with Les Républicans leader Éric Ciotti saying on Tuesday that he is in favour of dropping the longstanding position of his party to not work with the populist party and forming an electoral alliance which could fundamentally reshape the French political landscape.
“I believe that there is a need to serve the country that is in danger,” Ciotti pronounced according to Le Figaro, warning that on the political left, there is an “unnatural alliance of rebels” who defend “ideas which border on anti-Semitism” and then there is the “Macronist bloc which has led the country to where it is today”.
Therefore, he argued, that for his centre-right party to preserve its influence and steer the country back in the right direction: “We need an alliance while remaining ourselves… an alliance with the National Rally.”
Quote:Germany is hosting a conference on Tuesday to gather support for Ukraine’s recovery from the destruction wreaked by Russia’s war, sending a new signal of solidarity with Kyiv at the start of a week of intense diplomacy.
The two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin, following up on a similar gathering in London a year ago, comes before the Group of Seven summit of Ukraine’s leading Western allies in Italy and a global peace summit in Switzerland this coming weekend.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who last week attended events marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in France, is expected at the gathering, which the German hosts say will bring together 2,000 people from politics, business and other areas.
“Even during the current times of war, Ukraine needs to continually rebuild houses, water pipelines, hospitals and power grids,” German Development Minister Svenja Schulze said in a statement. “People want to keep on living in their country, and to do so they need electricity, water and a roof over their heads.”
The task of supporting Ukraine’s recovery in the short and long term “is too big to be tackled by governments alone – which is why we are expressly inviting companies, civil society and municipalities to the conference,” Schulze added.
Among other immediate problems Ukraine faces, sustained Russian attacks on its power grid in recent weeks have forced leaders in Kyiv to institute nationwide rolling blackouts.
In London last year, Ukraine´s allies pledged several billion dollars in nonmilitary aid to rebuild the country´s infrastructure, fight corruption and help pave Kyiv’s road to membership in the European Union.
That focus on reforms remains central this year.
“We are pulling out all the stops so that Ukraine can soon take a seat at the table of the European Union – because, in addition to our military support, that´s the best protection there is,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.
On Monday, the head of the State Agency for Restoration of Ukraine, Mustafa Nayyem, announced his resignation on Facebook. He cited “systemic obstacles that prevent me from exercising my powers effectively” and accused the government of bogging his agency down in red tape.
Quote:A liberal, women-led Berlin mosque known as a haven for gay Muslims was a target for an Islamic State terror cell in Germany, prosecutors say as the group goes to court.
A group of seven immigrants arrested in 2023 across Germany and the Netherlands will soon see their day in court, and German prosecutors allege before their incarceration the men prepared to build bombs and researched targets including a liberal mosque, Jewish citizens, and a fair.
The men, who originated in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan came to Germany from Ukraine as part of the refugee flow that immediately followed the Russian invasion in 2022. One of the group is alleged to have led an Islamic State terrorist cell in Kyiv, Ukraine, and some of the group are said to have already killed in Ukraine, including by beating. Members of the group have allegedly had contact with Islamic State figures elsewhere in the world who launched successful terror attacks, or who were arrested while in the planning phase.
Now the German prosecutor claims this group of seven discussed the liberal Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque in Berlin as a target in July 2022. They are also alleged to have monitored Jews to learn their daily routines. Die Welt, a German broadsheet which claims to have seen the prosecutor’s court documents, notes the group had experimented with building a suitcase bomb, some had received military training from the Islamic State, and that members of the group were already under unfulfilled deportation orders.
Despite the claims, it appears that no concrete plans for an attack were in place at the time of the arrests and these allegations are yet to be tested in court.
The Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque in Berlin reportedly targeted by the group was founded by Seyran Ates, a Muslim woman who has lived under 24-hour police protection for ten years, such is the threat to her life from fundamentalist Islam. The mosque is known for being one of the few where men and women can worship together, and where homosexuals are also welcomed.
Quote:Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has claimed that Ukraine supporters in the West are merely seeking to exploit the country for its natural resources while saying that the war could be over in a day if Europe coalesces around the position of peace.
In an interview with HírTV, Prime Minister Orbán said that the main aim of Western backers of the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine is to expand “wealth and influence” rather than the vague notion of protecting democracy or stemming Moscow’s supposed imperialistic ambitions.
“Ukraine is a rich country in its resources, and that is what they want to acquire. At the end of the matter, there is money, power, agricultural land, and economic opportunities,” the Hungarian leader said.
Orbán also asserted his belief that the West is playing a dangerous game in escalating the conflict, noting that at the outset of the conflict, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz would only commit to “sending helmets” and now “we have German tanks running around Ukraine, German air defence systems being delivered and the entire European economy cut off from the Russian energy system, which otherwise provides a cheap and reasonable supply.”
“War is not a compulsion of fate or a plague of God or an inescapable curse, war is a consequence of human decisions,” he said.
The populist prime minister — who has been a leading advocate for peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow — argued that “war can be stopped and a cease-fire reached in twenty-four hours”.
Quote:The Chinese state media outlet Global Times concluded Monday that the results of European Parliament elections, which saw expected poor results for leftist and “green” parties, would likely “overturn Europe’s policies on immigration, green transition and its support for Ukraine.”
Some of Europe’s most influential economies — notably, France and Germany — witnessed preliminary vote tallies resulting in left-wing parties losing seats and apparent significant gains for both popular right and establishment conservative parties. While, as the Global Times observed, “moderate” and socialist parties will likely maintain control of the European Parliament, the dramatic gains that conservative parties expected indicate that many voters are disillusioned with the status quo and open to alternatives.
The Global Times, citing its usual roster of Chinese “experts,” blamed “remote elites” for losing sight of issues important to working- and middle-class Europeans for the results of the election. The “experts” predicted that the results were not outliers but “foreshadowed the continent becoming more conservative and far-right leaning.”
“This trend will likely overturn Europe’s policies on immigration, green transition and its support for Ukraine,” the state newspaper predicted.
“Europe is mired in deep crisis now. The continent’s current political elites’ rule has failed to solve its problems,” one “expert,” Professor Wang Yiwei, was quoted as saying, lamenting that “remote elite” leaders had failed to retain the trust of the public.
Another expert, Professor Cui Hongjian, suggested that the results were not just a protest vote against the left but that “Europe will continue turning conservative and right-leaning, as the mainstream parties have failed to curb the right-wing forces in the past five years.” Cui did not offer any suggestions for how to “curb” unwanted political groups; in China, the Communist Party maintains an unchallenged stranglehold on power backed by the use of brute force against suspected political dissidents.
The experts predicted a “significant impact on Europe’s immigration, security and green transition policies, as those are the topics the public is mostly unsatisfied with” — suggesting that European governments would begin limiting how many people they allow in their countries from abroad and curtail excessive spending on anti-climate change “green” projects.
The Global Times notably, however, predicted the results of the election would not have any major impact on Europe’s relationship with China despite “far-right” parties increasing their influence and China’s government being a totalitarian communist entity.
“Who becomes next US president will have more direct and influential impact on EU’s ties with China than the EU parliamentary elections,” the government mouthpiece anticipated.
Quote:The BRICS coalition representing several rogue states including China, Russia, and Iran issued a statement following its foreign minister meeting on Monday condemning Israel for attempting to defend itself from the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hamas, specifically its operations in Rafah, Gaza.
Hamas, which is one of several jihadist groups believed to receive $100 million a year in funding from BRICS member Iran, invaded Israel from its Gaza stronghold on October 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people and abducting about 250 people, of which about 128 remain in captivity today. The October 7 siege featured outrageous acts of torture, gang rape, infanticide, and other atrocities, committed by terrorists swarming residential communities and targeting entire families in their homes.
The BRICS countries did not mention Hamas in their statement condemning Israel.
BRICS foreign ministers met on Monday and Tuesday in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, in preparation for the annual summit of its heads of government, scheduled to take place in October this year. The summit brought together the top diplomats of the original BRICS members – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – alongside representatives of its newest member countries: Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Ethiopia. Saudi Arabia also received an invitation to join BRICS but, as of February, has not formalized its membership.
The foreign minister meeting was also open to representatives of countries interested in joining the group, including rogue states such as Cuba and Venezuela, but also critical regional powers such as Turkey.
Quote:The government of South Korea confirmed on Tuesday that between 20 and 30 North Korean soldiers crossed the inter-Korean border, violating the sovereignty of the country.
The leadership of the South Korean military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), confirmed that South Korean soldiers fired at the Northern soldiers, prompting them to rapidly return to their country. The incident reportedly occurred on Sunday.
JCS spokesmen appeared to dismiss the illegal entry into the country as an error and told reporters that the North Korean soldiers in question were not all armed and were navigating in an area where the exact location of the border, formally known as the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), is difficult to delineate due to plant growth. The JCS revealed the exchange during a time of heightened tensions between the two Koreas, however, as communist North Korea launched a campaign in May to flood the Southern border areas with balloons full of trash and feces.
In response, the South Korean government began broadcasting anti-communist messages via a loudspeaker on the border, a policy that it had stopped for six years following agreements made during the term of American President Donald Trump, who prioritized reducing tensions with Pyongyang. Kim Yo-jong, a top North Korean official and the sister of dictator Kim Jong-un, vowed ceaseless trash balloon campaigns indefinitely in response to the loudspeakers.
The soldiers reportedly crossed the border hours before the South Korean loudspeaker broadcast.
“Some North Korean soldiers working within the demilitarized zone (DMZ) on the central front crossed the MDL at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, and headed north after our military’s issued a warning broadcast and fired warning shots,” the JCS explained on Tuesday, according to the South Korean newspaper Korea JoongAng Daily. “Our military is closely monitoring the movements of the North Korean troops and taking necessary measures in accordance with operational procedures.”
JoongAng, citing South Korean officials, described the incursion as “accidental.”
“They were moving through bushes where there was no path, and we were observing them even before they approached the MDL,” South Korean Col. Lee Sung-jun reportedly said in a briefing on Tuesday, describing the illegal crossing as a “simple mistake.”
LATIN AMERICA
Or should I say Latin Russia or Latin Wing of BRICS here?
Quote:Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov welcomed the interest of Venezuela’s socialist Maduro regime in joining the BRICS anti-Western bloc on Wednesday in remarks given on the sidelines of the group’s foreign ministers’ meeting.
BRICS is a China-led trade and security group originally made up of Russia, China, Brazil, India, and South Africa. The bloc agreed to expand in 2023 and as of January 2024 includes Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran. Saudi Arabia is reportedly in the process of finalizing its membership.
Russia currently holds BRICS’ annual rotating chairmanship seat and will host the group’s annual summit in the Russian city of Kazan in late October. The foreign ministers of BRICS member states gathered in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, this week for a two-day ministerial meeting that will conclude on Tuesday.
The BRICS members also invited representatives of Cuba, Belarus, Venezuela, and Turkey, all of whom have expressed interest in applying to join.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil participated in the encounter as part of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s efforts to attain “expedited” entry into the BRICS bloc in 2024 and, according to him, to support “the creation of a more equitable and multipolar world.”
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Gil and his Russian counterpart conversed on the sidelines of the encounter, where the Venezuelan foreign minister reiterated the rogue socialist regime’s intention to join BRICS, which, according to Gil, “is making great efforts to build a new world order.”
“On behalf of President Nicolás Maduro, we thank you for inviting Russia today as a friend of the BRICS,” Gil said. “This is a great honor for us, an opportunity to declare our will, the will of Venezuela to join this important bloc, which is making great efforts to create a new world order based on the desire for the well-being of our peoples.”
Lavrov expressed on behalf of Russia government support for Venezuela’s interest in joining the group and added that, as chairman of the group, Russia will “contribute to the strengthening of relations.”
“We are creating financial and logistical mechanisms that are resistant to external influence and ensure the independence of our relations, progressive development and protection from illegitimate actions, primarily by Washington and its allies,” Lavrov said.
Quote:Venezuela’s socialist regime signed an agreement with the government of Turkey on Friday that will allow the Middle Eastern nation to mine gold in Venezuela’s Orinoco Mining Arc, an area devastated by illegal mining and plagued with human rights abuses.
Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro signed the agreement during a Friday evening event that state media broadcast. The Venezuelan leader claimed that the agreement is part of the “win-win” alliance between Venezuela and Turkey, which Maduro’s predecessor, late dictator Hugo Chávez, first established.
Maduro — accompanied by representatives of the Turkish government and his alleged top money launderer, Alex Saab, whom U.S. President Joe Biden released from prison and sent back to Caracas in December — described Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as his “older brother” and claimed that “Turkish investment is coming to keep developing the Mining Arc.”
“We are going to develop these gold fields, and I wish the best of luck so that what we are signing in gold becomes an example for ecological development, respectful of nature, and very productive, building a productive economy,” Maduro said.
The socialist dictator, in addition to the gold mining agreement, signed joint agreements with Turkey for the construction of an ammonia refinery and for the exploitation of gas fields.
The Orinoco Mining Arc (AMO) is a roughly 43,180-square-mile area adjacent to the southern bank of the eponymous Orinoco River, which covers parts of the Venezuelan states of Amazonas, Bolívar, and Delta Amacuro. The AMO encompasses roughly 12 percent of Venezuela’s land area.
Quote:Bolivian truckers and local transport organizations called for an indefinite strike of heavy transport next week against the government of socialist President Luis Arce and ongoing shortages of diesel fuel and foreign currency.
The indefinite strike, which is scheduled to begin on Monday, June 17, will include road blockades and border closures nationwide.
Bolivian truckers have for months protested an ongoing shortage of diesel fuel that has severely impacted their ability to work, forcing them to spend days searching for a stocked gas station to be able to work. Additionally, the truckers have denounced that the ongoing difficulties in obtaining foreign currency, a product of socialist Bolivia’s precarious economic state, have affected their ability to purchase spare parts for their vehicles’ repairs and their ability to import and export products.
The situation prompted a group of truckers to carry out a two-day blockade of some of Bolivia’s main roads last week, demanding solutions from the Bolivian government while President Arce was visiting Russia to participate in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Bolivian Public Works Minister Édgar Montaño called for talks with trucker representatives, last week, who reportedly rejected the offer and demanded to speak to Arce directly.
The decision to escalate the protests to an indefinite strike was reportedly reached on Monday following an assembly held by different representatives of Bolivia’s national and international transport industry in the city of Oruro. Attendees reportedly said they were “tired” of waiting for a response from the government.
Quote:New Zealand is scrapping a scheme to price gas emissions from livestock — squelching a so-called burp and fart tax initiated under the previous left-wing government led by now departed authoritarian Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
New legislation will be introduced to parliament this month by the ruling conservative coalition to remove the agriculture sector from a new emissions pricing plan, thus responding to farmer pressure that the plan would make their business unprofitable.
“The government is committed to meeting our climate change obligations without shutting down Kiwi farms,” said Agriculture Minister Todd McClay.
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“It doesn’t make sense to send jobs and production overseas, while less carbon-efficient countries produce the food the world needs.”
The New Zealand economy is driven by agriculture with around 10 million cattle and 25 million sheep roaming the nation’s pastures.
As Breitbart News reported, the Ardern government proposed taxing the gasses farm animals create from burping, farting, and peeing as part of a plan to reset agricultural production and “tackle climate change.”
Her Labour administration claimed what it called a farm levy would be a world first and farmers should be able to recoup the cost by simply charging consumers more for their products.
Critics saw it simply as a punitive tax on farmers and their produce.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 opinion against three illegal aliens fighting their deportation orders from the United States, claiming they did not receive proper notice of their removal hearings in federal immigration court.
When illegal aliens Esmelis Campos-Chaves, Varinder Singh, and Raul Daniel Mendez-Colín failed to appear before federal immigration judges, they were ordered deported in absentia. In each case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sent initial Notices to Appear (NTA) in immigration court that did not specify the time and place of the hearings.
Later, though, the DOJ sent notices of hearings to each of the illegal aliens which included the time and place for when they needed to appear before a federal immigration judge. In each case, though, the men did not appear at their court hearings and were ordered deported from the United States in absentia.
Each illegal alien then moved to have their deportation orders rescinded, claiming the DOJ did not sufficiently notify them of their immigration hearings. The Fifth Circuit denied one of the petitions while the Ninth Circuit sided with the other two illegal aliens.
On Friday, Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority, finding that the DOJ did provide proper notice of immigration hearings to each of the illegal aliens, and thus they cannot seek rescission of their deportation orders:
Campos-Chaves, Singh, and Mendez-Colín all received “notice in accordance with paragraph (1) or (2)” for the hearings they missed, and thus their in absentia removal orders may not be rescinded on that ground. The Government concedes that none of them received a compliant NTA. Each did, however, receive a “notice in accordance with paragraph . . . (2),” and each notice met all of the requirements for a notice under that provision. After receiving a defective NTA, each alien received a notice that provided a specific time and place for their removal proceedings. Those notices provided “new” times, and thereby “change[d]” the time and place of their removal proceedings, within the meaning of §1229(a)(2).
Quote:President Joe Biden appeared to freeze while on stage during a star-studded fundraiser on Saturday night and was seen being led off the stage by former President Barack Obama.
Biden and Obama attended the Los Angeles fundraiser, along with celebrities such as George Clooney, Julia Roberts, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, Jack Black, and Jason Bateman, among many others. Before the fundraiser, it was reported that the Biden campaign had raised more than $28 million.
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“Biden freezes before Obama grabs his arm and leads him off stage,” the Republican National Committee’s account on X posted. “Yikes!”
Video footage on social media showed Biden and Obama standing on the stage as the curtains were drawn open, revealing musicians playing behind them. Biden can be seen facing the side of the stage while clapping his hands, before turning to face the audience in front of the stage.
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Obama can be seen giving a few small waves to the crowd before taking Biden’s arm to indicate they should walk off the stage. As the two are walking off stage, Obama is seen keeping his hand on Biden’s back.
“Biden froze again last night and had to get escorted out by Obama,” the X account End Wokeness wrote. “Is this normal?”
“Can you feel the energy?” Pradheep J. Shanker, a radiologist and contributor with National Review wrote in a post on X.
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Quote:Pro-Palestinian protesters reportedly firebombed “the side of a building” on the University of California Berkeley (UCB) campus and claimed that students had been “attacked” on another campus.
In a post on Instagram on Thursday, Palestine Action in the United States shared a post from an anonymous user who claimed responsibility for firebombing the side of Koshland Hall, a building at UCB that houses “labs from the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology.”
The post included a screenshot of a notice that had been written by an author, “student intifada,” on the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center website. In the post the author wrote that students at the University of California Los Angeles “were attacked” and in response, anti-Israel protesters “retaliated” by setting off a firebomb on the side of Koshland Hall.
“Not sure what building it even was,” the group added. “Honestly don’t really care. Every single building on the UC Berkeley campus deserves to be incinerated following the UC system’s treatment of student protestors. Last night they attacked a young woman student who was speaking her mind on a megaphone. So we unloaded a firebomb on the side of a campus building. The flame was big and spread across the trees and bushes on the side of a building.”
Officers from the University of California Police Department (UCPD) began an investigation regarding the alleged use of arson at UCB’s campus, according to Kron4 News.
“Long live the student intifada for Palestine liberation,” the post continued. “Stop the genocide now. UC System must divest from Israel or face our wrath of revenge. Blessed is the flame.”
The Jerusalem Post noted that the post from the “student intifada” author mentioned that a “student with a megaphone” was attacked. However, Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA (SJP UCLA) reportedly confirmed that she had been “later released.”
The manifesto referred to a Students for Justice in Palestine UCLA student with a megaphonne who had been seized by police, but later released, according to SJP UCLA.
Quote:Hunter Biden is dropping his lawsuit accusing Rudy Giuliani and the former New York City mayor’s ex-lawyer of manipulating data found on his infamous laptop.
Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell filed the stipulation for dismissal Thursday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The attorney asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit against Giuliani and Robert Costello “without prejudice, with each party bearing its own attorneys’ fees, costs, and expenses.”
Attorneys for all three parties have agreed to the stipulation, court documents show.
The lawsuit claimed that Giuliani, 80, and Costello violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act when they allegedly hacked and manipulated data on the abandoned laptop in a “total annihilation” of the disgraced first son’s “digital privacy.”
Filed last September, the lawsuit sought more than $75,000 in damages, plus attorneys’ fees and other penalties.
“This dismissal – along with Hunter Biden’s conviction based on evidence taken from the laptop – is a vindication for Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Costello as well as all of the media outlets who broke the laptop story in 2020 and suffered orchestrated censorship by social media, the leftist mainstream media, and others who engaged in election interference,” Giuliani’s attorney Joe Sibley said in a statement to The Post.
Sibley argued that Biden’s legal team agreed to dismiss the lawsuit because “they know they have problems on the merits.”
Lowell and Costello’s lawyer did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
The motion to dismiss the suit must be approved by US District Judge Jessica Clarke before it is finalized.
Quote:Russian gangsters, MS-13 members, and a cadre of corrupt surgeons, lawyers and lenders are pulling off the latest big con in the city: bogus personal-injury lawsuits where immigrants go under the knife to help their twisted ruse.
Migrants and other desperate New Yorkers are pressured into getting unneeded spinal fusion surgery and other operations to boost the value of their fake-accident claims, according to court records, insurance investigators and law-enforcement sources.
Doctors cash in on the sick swindle by performing back and neck fusions, allowing fraudsters to swipe billions through bogus insurance filings, according to court filings and sources.
The racket typically involves a healthy person taking a seemingly minor tumble on the street or at a construction site, then claiming a devastating injury that requires multiple surgeries. A crooked surgeon fuses healthy vertebrae with screws and plates, leading to a lawsuit against a business or landlord or both. Settlements start at $1 million each but can go much higher.
“One-five is now on the cheap side,” said an insurance industry lawyer who asked for anonymity.
These scams rely on law firms that take on hundreds of such cases, along with high-profile doctors, sketchy lending firms that hard-sell migrants into borrowing to cover the costs, and an army of “runners” who recruit victims and orchestrate their falls, according to legal papers and sources familiar with the mix of schemes.
The set-up is fed by a seemingly endless supply of low-income dupes willing to risk their health for a quick score.
“They’re regularly recruiting migrants and homeless people and in some cases are proactively arranging for them to come to New York,” a private investigator told The Post.
So-called “shot callers” pocket most of the windfall settlements, while those who pose as injured receive as little as $1,000 each, according to testimony in one case. Their share gets shriveled by sky-high interest on loans they’re told they need for medical and legal expenses. Others can collect up to six figures.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump vowed to “make the Trump tax cuts permanent” during a speech at Turning Point Action’s “People’s Convention” on Saturday.
During his speech at the convention in Detroit, Michigan, the former president added that if elected president in November, his administration would also “cut taxes even more for working families and small businesses.”
“We will make the Trump tax cuts permanent and cut taxes even more for working families and small businesses,” Trump told the crowd at the end.
Trump’s promise to make the Trump tax cuts permanent comes as many of the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) passed under the Trump administration, are set to expire at the end of 2025.
Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, middle-class families and small businesses received major tax cuts, and Obamacare’s individual mandate was repealed. The legislation also included cutting the tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and opening the Arctic Wildlife Refuse up to oil drilling, among other things.
A report from the Tax Foundation revealed that as a result of the TCJA, 1.4 million jobs would be added to the United States economy by 2025.
Quote:Democrats plan to disrupt Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a special joint session of Congress on July 24 in an unprecedented show of hostility to the democratically-elected leader of a close American ally.
56 Democrats boycotted Netanyahu’s speech in 2015, when Republicans invited him to argue against then-President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. This time, Axios reports, “Democrats plan to go bigger than a boycott”:
The proposals include a press conference, a vigil, or an event with families of those taken hostage by Hamas, many of whom feel Netanyahu hasn’t done enough to free their loved ones.
In a sign of how extensive and high-level some of these discussions are, former House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) told Politico he was participating in one counter-programming meeting.
…
Several progressive House members are planning to attend the speech but disrupt it, one lawmaker said.
The speech may be especially awkward, given that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called earlier this year for Netanyahu to be ousted in new elections. The Biden administration has been trying to undermine the Israeli leader since he was elected in November 2022, with the exception of a brief period when Israel and Saudi Arabia were near a peace deal before October 7 last year.
Quote:Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he has “noticed that Russian President Vladimir Putin only invades Ukraine and Democrats are president.”
Anchor Jake Tapper said, “Let’s start with Ukraine, which I know is an issue you care about in terms of military aid. Last night at a rally in Michigan, the former president, Mr. Trump, went after Ukrainian President Zelenskyy for constantly seeking U.S. aid, saying, ‘It never ends, it never ends.’ This is a criticism that comes after he reportedly told House Republicans that the money the U.S. is sending to Ukraine isn’t worth it and asking, ‘If Ukraine wins, what will be the benefit?’ Now, you’ve been a strong supporter of military aid to Ukraine to fend off Putin’s war. What is your answer to that question? What will be the benefit if Ukraine wins?”
Cotton said, “I think it’s important to look at the context of what’s happened in Ukraine over the last ten years. I’ve noticed that Vladimir Putin only invades Ukraine, and Democrats are president. It happened under Barack Obama. It happened under Joe Biden. It didn’t happen with Donald Trump. In fact, the weapons that Ukraine used in the early days of this war to fend off the Russian invasion are the weapons that Donald Trump sent, that Barack Obama and Joe Biden had refused to send. One reason why Vladimir Putin thought he could get away with going for the jugular and Ukraine is because of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which projected weakness and indecision. It was just a few weeks later that he began to mass troops on Ukraine’s border. President Trump has said that he believes and supports Ukraine’s survival and strength, but he also thinks that Europe should do more.”
Love Vegan Meat? Perhaps You Should Stop Eating it
Quote:While experts extol the health and environmental benefits of a diet free of animal products, new research suggests that consuming ultra-processed vegan food can increase the risk of heart death.
Ultra-processed foods include packaged goods, drinks, cereals and ready-to-eat products that contain colors, emulsifiers, flavors and other additives. UPFs are typically high in sugar, saturated fat, and salt and devoid of vitamins and fiber.
Researchers from the University of São Paulo and Imperial College London assessed the diets of more than 118,000 Brits aged 40 to 69 years old.
They found that a plant-based eating plan promotes overall heart health, but only when that diet features fresh plant-based foods such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes.
Researchers found that for every 10% increase in plant-based foods, the risk of death from heart disease fell by 20%.
Yet, when the increase in plant-based foods came from UPFs, it was linked to a 12% rise in heart disease-related deaths.
Lead study author Fernanda Rauber explained that the composition and processing methods of UPFs can lead to higher blood pressure and cholesterol.
“Food additives and industrial contaminants present in these foods might cause oxidative stress and inflammation, further aggravating the risks,” she said.
“Those shifting towards plant-based foods should also think about the degree of processing involved before making their choices.”
Dr. Eszter Vamos, co-author of the study, noted the deceptive marketing and public perception of plant-based products as healthy.
“While ultra-processed foods are often marketed as healthy foods, this large study suggests that plant-based ultra-processed foods do not seem to have protective health effects and are linked to poor health outcomes,” she said.
Chicago Under Fire... Shootings Are the Norm There
Quote:At least 21 people were shot, two of them fatally, Friday into Saturday night in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s (D) Chicago.
ABC 7 / Chicago Sun-Times reported the first fatal shooting occurred just prior to 8:30 p.m. Friday night.
The shooting happened in “the 1300 block of South Independence Boulevard” and a 13-year-old who was on the sidewalk was killed.
A woman was shot in killed while inside a car “in the 3000 block of North Cicero Avenue” Saturday morning around 2;30 a.m. The shots were fired by a suspect in another car who pulled along side the vehicle in which the woman was sitting.
At least 45 people were shot the weekend of June 7-9, 2024, in Chicago, and at least 41 were shot over Memorial Weekend.
The Sun-Times pointed out that 216 people were killed in Chicago January 1, 2024, through June 15, 2024.
Quote:Nine people were injured after an attacker opened fire on people at a Detroit water park Saturday just after 5 p.m.
The Associated Press noted that the shooting victims included “an 8-year-old boy was shot in the head and in critical condition Saturday night.”
The 8-year-old’s brother and mother were shot in the incident as well.
Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard stressed the attack was apparently random. He explained that the gunman drove to water park, walked up to the pad containing “sprays and fountains,” and began shooting.
The attacker allegedly fired around 28 rounds and “[stopped] multiple times to reload.”
1 News reported that police were able to corner the suspect inside a nearby home, where the suspect took his own life.
Michigan has universal background checks, a gun storage law, a red flag law, and numerous other gun controls.
Quote:The Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed that it was declining to prosecute Attorney General Merrick Garland after the House of Representatives voted to hold Garland in contempt of Congress concerning his refusal to comply with Congressional subpoenas.
In a letter addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Friday, Carlos Felipe Uriarte, the Assistant Attorney General, explained that President Joe Biden had “asserted executive privilege and directed” Garland not to “release materials” that were subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and the House Judiciary Committee in February, according to CNN.
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted 216 to 207 to hold Garland in contempt of Congress for not complying with subpoenas for “records, including transcripts, notes, video, and audio files,” relating to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation of Biden’s “willful mishandling of classified information,” according to a press release from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
“That directive was based on a legal opinion from the Department of Justice (Department) advising that asserting privilege would be legally proper,” the DOJ wrote. “The President’s directive was issued after the Department produced materials responsive to all four requests in the Committee’s subpoenas. The Department provided Special Counsel Hur’s report without any additional redactions and facilitated his congressional testimony.”
As Breitbart News previously reported, the “audio tapes of Hur’s interview with Biden” were requested due to the fact that Garland “only provided written transcripts” that were deemed “insufficient” after a transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden showed he had “poor memory.”
The transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden showed that the president could not remember the date his son Beau had died or even when he had served as vice president.
Most importantly, Republicans wanted the audio tapes of Hur’s interview with Biden. Garland had only provided written transcripts, which Republicans said were insufficient after Hur revealed that Biden experienced mental lapses and “poor memory” during his interview.
In February, Hur concluded his investigation of Biden’s handling of classified information, and revealed in a report that he would not be prosecuting Biden due to him being an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Quote:U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers assigned to the San Diego Field Office seized tons of illicit drugs during May. A single smuggling attempt led to the seizure of more than 11,000 pounds of methamphetamine — the third-largest meth seizure in CBP history.
On May 20, CBP officers assigned to the Otay Mesa Commercial Facility inspected a tractor-trailer carrying squash from Mexico to California. Officers referred the driver, a valid border crossing card holder, to the secondary inspection area.
During the secondary inspection, a non-intrusive scanner detected anomalies, leading to a physical search of the trailer. The search led to the discovery of 1,419 packages containing a substance that tested positive for methamphetamine. Officials valued the 11,469 pounds of methamphetamine at more than $18,000,000.
During May, San Diego Field Office officers seized a total of more than 16,000 pounds of methamphetamine, nearly 562 pounds of fentanyl, nearly 914 pounds of cocaine, 22 pounds of heroin, and more than four pounds of marijuana.
The drugs were found during 145 attempted smuggling incidents, CBP officials stated. The seizures were valued at $38,300,000.
“These extraordinary efforts stand as a testament to the diligent and exceptional work by our officers,” Sidney K. Aki, CBP Director of Field Operations for San Diego, said in a written statement. “The interdiction of these drugs not only disrupts criminal networks but also underscores the importance for continued vigilance and collaboration in the fight against drug trafficking.”
The seizures occurred at the San Ysidro, Otay Mesa, San Diego air and sea ports, Calexico East and West, Tecate, and Andrade Ports of Entry.
The suspects were turned over to ICE Homeland Security Investigations.
Quote:Border Patrol agents in Blythe, California, arrested a California man and his 17-year-old brother after a service K-9 alerted the agents to the presence of a large cache of semi-automatic rifles in their vehicle. In total, agents seized 25 AK-style rifles, two handguns, and ammunition magazines on Wednesday in Blythe, California. Jose Palma Almendariz and his teenage brother now face federal charges related to Wednesday’s firearms and magazine seizure.
Both suspects were turned over to local authorities as the case continues to be investigated. Yuma Sector Chief Sean Patrol agent Sean McGoffin commented on the seizure saying, “Transnational Criminal Organizations traffic weapons to fuel their illicit activity on both sides of the border. This weapons seizure clearly demonstrates the importance of our Border Security mission and commitment of keeping our communities safe.”
According to the Border Patrol, the seizure is believed to be the largest in recent Yuma Sector history.
Law enforcement officers assigned to the Coachella Valley Violent Crime Gang Task Force (CVVCGTF) responded to the U.S. Border Patrol Blythe Station to assist with the weapons seizure and investigation. Based on initial interviews with both suspects, authorities believe the weapons were originally picked up by the pair in Phoenix, Arizona, and were ultimately destined for Mexico. The weapons were found in the cargo compartment of a Honda CRV crossover.
Blythe sits 100 miles north of the Mexican state of Sonora. As reported by Breitbart Texas, clandestine gravesites in the state were recently discovered — evidence of violent clashes between Mexican cartel members. Splinter groups within the Sinaloa Cartel that controls the state have been engaged in internal battles and are largely responsible for the most recent skirmishes in Sonora. The Sinaloa Cartel is also at odds with its rival Juarez Cartel to the east. The weapons seized Wednesday may have been destined for this region of the U.S./Mexico border.
The elder of the two brothers, Jose Palma Almendariz, is currently being held in the Blythe jail as the investigation continues. Palma’s juvenile brother was released to his parents and remains free as the case progresses.
Quote:Vice President Kamala Harris promised another $1.5 billion in direct U.S. aid for Ukraine on Saturday at a peace summit in Switzerland.
The funds will be made available through the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
That includes money for energy assistance, repairing damaged energy infrastructure, helping refugees and strengthening civilian security in the wake of the aggression by Russian President Vladimir Putin, AP reports.
Harris used a a meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to set out the reasons behind the latest funding bequest courtesy of U.S. taxpayers:
This war remains an utter failure for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.
I am here in Switzerland to stand with Ukraine and the leaders from around the world in support of a just and lasting peace,” she added. “As we look forward to that peace and work toward that, the United States is committed to helping Ukraine rebuild.
The new aid total is broken down into $500 million in funding to go toward energy assistance, the White House said in its press release, as Russian strikes have continuously targeted Ukraine’s energy sector.
The effort will also direct $324 million of the previously announced funds to helping the nation repair its energy infrastructure.
More than $379 million will go to humanitarian assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department to “address urgent needs of refugees, internally displaced persons, and conflict affected communities impacted by Russia’s brutal war against the Ukrainian people,” per the release.
The funding comes just days after President Joe Biden signed an agreement tying the U.S. to a decade-long “security” pact with Ukraine that includes continued training of Ukraine’s armed forces, more cooperation in the production of weapons and military equipment, and greater intelligence sharing.
Biden has also approved sending Ukraine another Patriot missile system, something Zelensky says is desperately needed to defend against Russian strikes on Ukraine’s power grid and civilian areas, as well as military targets.
Quote:Western leaders rejected Vladimir Putin’s framework for a ceasefire while backing Ukraine’s demands that Russia return all occupied territories as the basis for any potential peace agreement.
The “first annual Global Peace Summit” held in the luxury Swiss resort of Burgenstock, which did not include any representatives from Moscow, concluded with the status quo essentially remaining the same, with Ukraine continuing to demand that Russia cede territory in the East and Crimea as a prerequisite for actual peace talks to begin, a likely non-starter for Vladimir Putin.
Following the conclusion of the meeting, which saw around 100 delegates from 92 countries and eight international organisations attend, President Zelensky claimed that all participants agreed that Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” must be kept intact, Ukrinform reports.
Despite Ukraine failing to recapture the occupied regions in the Donbas during last year’s counteroffensive, Zelenksy’s chief-of-staff Andriy Yermak said that there would be “no compromise on independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity” in any peace negotiations with Russia.
Before the summit, Vladimir Putin said that Russia would be willing to agree to a ceasefire and potential peace with Ukraine if Kyiv withdraws its troops from the mostly ethnically Russian territories, which Moscow now claims sovereignty over, citing the internationally contested referenda held in the regions to join Russia.
Additionally, Putin demanded that Ukraine forfeit its ambitions to join the American-led NATO military alliance, state media RT reports. Moscow also proposed a “pan-European security architecture” in which all countries on the continent, including Ukraine, would be protected. For this, Putin said that all foreign military operations must cease in Ukraine.
Quote:Those who consider themselves “native French” represent a “serious problem” for social cohesion, far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon declared as he laid out the vision for the “New Popular Front” alliance in the snap legislative election called by President Emmanuel Macron.
Former French presidential candidate, leader of the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party and effective head of the New Popular Front leftist election alliance, Jean-Luc Mélenchon hailed the demographic changes in his country while attacking the native population of France in a speech to supporters on Friday.
“When I was born, one in ten French people had a foreign grandparent, now it’s one in four. Consequently, those who call themselves native French pose a serious problem to the cohesion of society,” he said in comments reported by Le Journal du Dimanche.
“In the Paris region, there are thirteen million of us, including at least eight million immigrants: Corsicans, Bretons, Malians, Algerians, Moroccans… Everyone was torn from the environment from which their parents or grandparents came and put against the wall to build a society.”
The leftist leader went on to call for the “re-foundation of France”, explaining: “Ransacked by liberal policies, trashed by racism, trashed by divisions, it is this new France that we must have in mind when we undertake the policy of the New Popular Front.”
The comments drew swift pushback from nationalist figures, including former presidential candidate and leader of the populist Reconquête (Reconquest) party, Éric Zemmour.
“Let Mélenchon understand: the French were here a thousand years ago, they will remain here for another thousand years and we will do everything to prevent their replacement by his new people,” Zemmour said.
His remarks sound an awful lot like Biden's or Mayorkas', don't you think?
Quote:Former French President François Hollande said he will run as a candidate in the snap legislative elections after throwing his support behind the far-left-led “New Popular Front” alliance.
Seven years after leaving office from a presidency mired by Islamic terrorism and economic hardship, François Hollande has returned to the frontlines of French politics, throwing his hat in the ring to once again serve as a deputy in the National Assembly.
Hollande, a longtime member of the Socialist Party, was nominated by the leftist party to represent the so-called “New Popular Front” in the constituency of Corrèze, Le Figaro reports.
“In an exceptional situation, I had to make an exceptional decision,” Hollande said on Saturday, adding: “If I made this decision, it is because I felt that the situation was serious. The danger represented by the extreme right is now proven. How can we remain indifferent?”
While the far-left has been deeply divided over the past several months, particularly in the wake of the October 7th terror attacks on Israel and the rise of antisemitism in France, the Socialist Party, the green Les Écologists, and the French Communist Party announced this week they would partner with the far-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed/LFI) party of radical leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The move of partnering with Mélenchon — the leading leftist in the country who is often compared to Bernie Sanders in the U.S. or Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and who has been accused of antisemitism and cosying up to radical Islamists — explained by the more centrist elements of the “New Popular Front” as being necessary to confront the rise of the populist right-wing National Rally of Marine Le Pen, which is predicted to win the snap elections called by President Emmanuel Macron after being trounced by the Le Pen party in the European Parliament elections earlier this month.
French Left on the Streets Protesting Against the French Right
Quote:Hundreds of thousands of leftists took to the streets across France on Saturday to protest the alleged threat to democracy posed by the possibility of people voting for the populist National Rally party of Marine Le Pen in the impending snap election called by President Macron.
According to the far-left aligned CGT union, 640,000 leftists protested in 145 anti-National Rally (RN) demonstrations throughout France on Saturday, with approximately 250,000 in Paris, alone.
Estimates from the Ministry of the Interior were considerably lower, however, still showed significant numbers, with the government counting around 75,000 in Paris and 175,000 across the rest of the country for a total of around a quarter million people.
The ministry said that the second-largest gathering was seen in Marseille where an estimated 12,000 people protested, followed by Nantes with 8,500, Rennes with 8,000, Grenoble with 6,900, and Toulouse with 5,000.
At least nine people were arrested in Paris and three police officers were injured according to the capital’s Police Prefecture, Le Figaro reports.
At the Place de la Bastille — the starting point for the French Revolution — the July Column was tagged with graffiti by leftists who wrote “Free Gaza” and “Bardella FDP” (Bardella son of a ***) in reference to the popular 28-year-old president of the anti-mass migration National Rally party.
Quote:Israel rejected a French mediation effort with the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on Friday, saying that France had adopted “hostile” policies toward Israel and ignored atrocities carried out by Hamas terrorists.
In a statement, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said:
As we fight a just war, defending our people, France has adopted hostile policies against Israel.
In doing so, France ignores the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli children, women and men.
Israel will not be a party to the trilateral framework proposed by France.
France, the former colonial power in Lebanon, had proposed mediating as Hezbollah, which illegally occupies the border region in southern Lebanon, stepped up its attacks on Israel, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded.
But France has tarnished its credibility with Israel. In November, President Emmanuel Macron claimed falsely that Israel is killing “babies and women” in Gaza. More recently, France supported the enforcement of potential arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court against Gallant and against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Other mediation efforts have also faltered. The United States, represented by special envoy Amos Hochstein, has reportedly proposed that Israel withdraw its troops from its own border to ease tensions, effectively granting victory to Hezbollah and allowing it operational control of the border region. The U.S. is eager to protect the stability of the Lebanese government, which it has supported financially, even though the government is dominated by Hezbollah.
The violence, which began in October after Hezbollah began firing at Israel in solidarity with the Hamas terror attack, is a major failure for Biden administration policy, which proposed a major gas deal in 2022 that was supposed to help maintain peace. Biden pushed Israel to give up offshore gas fields to Lebanon, arguing that would appease Hezbollah.
So oil was supposed to appease Hezbollah? What a joke!
It's Iranian oil the one that fuels that terrorist organization in the first place!
Israel Pauses the Operation for Aid to Enter Southern Gaza
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Sunday that it will observe a daytime pause in fighting along a route in southern Gaza for aid deliveries, together with Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).
The route is just west of Rafah, where there is heavy fighting.
COGAT is a unit of the Israeli defense ministry that deals with the welfare of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria (the West Bank).
In a statement, the IDF announced:
As part of ongoing efforts by the IDF and COGAT, to increase the volumes of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip and following additional related discussions with the UN and international organizations, starting yesterday (Saturday), a local, tactical pause of military activity for humanitarian purposes will take place from 08:00 until 19:00 every day until further notice along the road that leads from the Kerem Shalom Crossing to the Salah al-Din Road and then northwards.
This is an additional step in the humanitarian aid efforts that have been conducted by the IDF and COGAT since the beginning of the war.
The IDF will continue to support humanitarian efforts on the ground.
The pause was instantly controversial upon its declaration, with right-wing ministers in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government complaining that the military took the decision without consulting the civilian leadership of the country, and arguing that pauses in fighting for aid deliveries only help Hamas continue to fight.
Palestinian sources claimed, falsely, that the humanitarian pause proved that Israel targets humanitarian convoys.
Quote:Iran and Sweden carried out a prisoner swap Saturday that saw Tehran release a European Union diplomat and another man for an Iranian convicted in Stockholm of committing war crimes over his part in 1988 mass executions in the Islamic Republic.
The arrest of Hamid Nouri by Sweden in 2019 as he traveled there as a tourist likely sparked the detentions of the two Swedes, part of a long-running strategy by Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution to use those with ties abroad as chip in negotiations with the West.
As Iranian state television claimed without evidence that Nouri had been “illegally detained,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson described the detentions of diplomat Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi as a “hell on earth” the two men faced.
“Iran has made these Swedes pawns in a cynical negotiation game with the aim of getting the Iranian citizen Hamid Nouri released from Sweden,” Kristersson said. “It has been clear all along that this operation would require difficult decisions, now the government has made those decisions.”
Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, mediated the release, its state-run news agency reported. Oman long has served as an interlocutor between Iran and the West.
In 2022, the Stockholm District Court sentenced Nouri to life in prison over his role in the executions. It identified him as an assistant to the deputy prosecutor at the Gohardasht prison outside the Iranian city of Karaj.
The 1988 mass executions came at the end of Iran’s long war with Iraq. After Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a United Nations-brokered cease-fire, members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, heavily armed by Saddam Hussein, stormed across the Iranian border in a surprise attack.
Iran ultimately blunted their assault, but the attack set the stage for the sham retrials of political prisoners, militants and others that would become known as “death commissions.”
International rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed. Iran has never fully acknowledged the executions, apparently carried out on Khomeini´s orders, though some argue that other top officials were effectively in charge in the months before his 1989 death.
Quote:U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Thursday that a Palau-flagged, Ukrainian-owned, Polish-operated bulk carrier called MV Verbena was sailing through the Gulf of Aden when it was hit by two anti-ship missiles launched by the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen.
A fire broke out on the ship after the missile strikes and one of its crewmembers was severely injured.
CENTCOM said aircraft from the USS Philippine Sea, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, “medically evacuated the injured mariner to a partner force ship nearby for medical attention.”
“This continued reckless behavior by the Iranian-backed Houthis threatens regional stability and endangers the lives of mariners across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden,” CENTCOM said. “The Houthis claim to be acting on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza and yet they are targeting and threatening the lives of third country nationals who have nothing to do with the conflict in Gaza.”
“The ongoing threat to the ability to safely transit the region caused by the Houthis makes it harder to deliver critical assistance to the people of Yemen as well as to Gaza,” the statement noted.
The Verbena was reportedly carrying a load of timber from Malaysia to Italy when it was attacked. The Houthis ostensibly limit their attacks to American and Israeli vessels, and those bound for Israel, but their terror targeting profiles are often wrong. They have even been known to attack ships bound for their patrons in Iran.
The Houthis took responsibility for attacking the Verbena on Thursday, along with two other ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden over the previous 24 hours.
One of the other targets was a Greek-owned, Liberia-flagged coal carrier called the Tutor, which was struck by Houthi missiles and surface drones on Wednesday as it sailed about 66 miles southwest of Yemen’s port city Hodeidah.
Quote:A boat carrying nine Chinese nationals was turned back by Australian Border Force officials forcing the passengers to return to their point of departure in Indonesia.
The human cargo of intended illegal immigrants were found by fishermen off Southern Java after claiming they were denied landing and forced back by Australian authorities, the Sydney Daily Telegraph reports.
The Chinese passengers, along with three Indonesian crew members, were sent back to the port town of Pelabuhan Ratu as part of Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders which officially enforces a “turn back the boats” policy without exception.
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The port has long been known as a departure point for illegal smuggling vessels.
It is the fourth known attempt Chinese national groups have made to break through to Australia in 2024, after having been told by people smugglers that asylum awaits them should they make landfall.
Australia has long had one of the toughest anti-migrant boat policies in the world and never hesitates to push back vessels carrying intended illegals.
The Indonesian crew members told the local authorities different statements, with one saying they had been “captured by the Australian navy” who transferred them all to a new “lifeboat” before pushing them back to Indonesia.
Another claimed the navy had sent them back in their original boat.
Conservative coalition opposition Home Affairs spokesman James Paterson told the Weekend Australian newspaper that another attempt by smugglers to cross the country’s borders showed the left-wing Labor government’s “failure” to properly monitor and secure it even as the rest of the world looks to follow the push back against illegal migrants.
"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 issued several controversial presidential debate rules over the weekend that will govern the encounter between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden on June 27.
The new rules come after Trump said in March he would debate Biden anywhere, anytime, and anyplace, putting pressure on Biden to participate in the event.
The Biden campaign agreed in May to a total of two debates that would be closely regulated. It demanded a ban on audiences and approved CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash as moderators. Tapper is one of Trump’s sharpest critics.
CNN announced additional parameters on Saturday:
Two commercial breaks (Likely to benefit Biden)
Campaign staff will not be able to interact with their candidate during the break
No opening statements, two-minute closing statements
Two-minute answer shot clock, one minute for rebuttals
Mics will be muted “except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak” (Likely to benefit Biden)
CNN reported its rules:
The 90-minute debate will include two commercial breaks, according to the network, and campaign staff may not interact with their candidate during that time. Both candidates agreed to appear at a uniform podium, and their podium positions will be determined by a coin flip.
Microphones will be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak. While no props or pre-written notes will be allowed on the stage, candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.
Some aspects of the debate – including the absence of a studio audience – will be a departure from previous debates. But, as in the past, the moderators “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion,” according to the network.
Biden is planning to spend about a week preparing to debate Trump, who believes his opponent should receive a drug test before the debates. The White House refused to confirm or deny in May whether Biden intends to use performance-enhancing drugs in preparation for the presidential debates.
Special counsel Robert Hur described as “an elderly man with a poor memory” in his report on Biden’s classified documents scandal.
Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff who is going on vacation to help Biden prepare for the debates, did not respond to Politico Playbook’s request for comment about “whether any illegal substances are used as part of Klain’s debate prep.”
Quote:Biden White House aides reportedly pressured House Democrats not to sponsor a bill that would force presidents, vice presidents, and their relatives to disclose foreign income.
Bipartisan backing of a bill could be used as a Republican campaign talking point to slam the Biden family for making millions during and after President Joe Biden was a public official.
The bill, if passed into law, would:
Require top executives to share their tax returns and disclose conflicts of interest
Require detailing of any loans made to family members
Require the documentation of when immediate relatives join the president on Air Force One
Require whether the relatives’ travel was for business purposes
Fulfill Rep. James Comer’s pledge to change laws needed to combat influence peddling
Three Democrats abandoned their sponsorship of the bill apparently due to White House pressure: Reps. Ro Khanna (CA), Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL), and Kweisi Mfume (MD).
“I was excited to come to Washington to introduce my bill. And was proud that I had found three senior Democratic co-sponsors,” Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) explained to the Hill. “I was really disappointed to learn that those co-sponsors had decided not to support the bill and had had conversations with the White House.”
“Mr. Comer and I did extensive publicity about the bill,” she continued. “And [during] all of that publicity … both Mr. Comer and I took great pains to make clear that this is not about any future president, it is about having the right set of rules to restore trust in the executive.”
The White House declined to comment to the Hill about Porter’s accusation.
Quote:Ranking Member Rand Paul (R-KY) and other Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee put Anthony Fauci’s ally, Dr. Robert Garry, on the hot seat during Tuesday’s coronavirus origins hearing.
Garry, who Paul dubbed a member of Fauci’s “inner circle,” was one of four witnesses at the hearing. He and Dr. Gregory Koblentz, another witness, said they did not believe a lab leak was the origin of the virus. The other two witnesses, Dr. Steven Quay and Dr. Richard Ebright, believe the virus was derived from a lab and not naturally.
Paul, who contends there is a “preponderance of evidence indicating” the virus may have come from a lab, highlighted in his opening statement that Garry was one of several of Fauci’s allies who helped author an article in March 2020 in Nature Magazine where they asserted, “We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
However, private communications obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request among some of the paper’s authors, including Garry, from the early days of the pandemic “differ greatly” from what they have said publicly, per Paul:
Bob Garry said, “I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus or one very similar to it to COVID-19, where you insert exactly four amino acids, twelve nucleotides, and all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function. I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.” According to Garry, “It’s not crackpot to suggest this could have happened given the gain of function research we know was happening at Wuhan.”
Quote:The Department of Justice (DOJ) has requested that an appeals court deny an “emergency motion” that Steve Bannon, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump, filed as he attempts to delay an upcoming prison sentence.
In a court filing from Monday, the DOJ argued that Bannon’s emergency motion “seeking release pending the final resolution of his appeal” fails to “show a ‘substantial question likely to result in’ reversal or a new trial, as required for release.”
On June 6, a federal judge ordered Bannon, the host of the War Room podcast, to report to prison for a four-month sentence after being found in contempt of Congress. Days later, Bannon filed an emergency motion calling for a federal appeals court to allow him to stay out of prison as he continues to fight against his contempt of Congress conviction and seek an appeal, according to NBC News.
“Because Bannon cannot justify what would be an extraordinary exception to the general rule of detention following conviction and an unsuccessful appeal, his motion should be denied,” the DOJ wrote in the filing.
Bannon also previously served as the executive chairman for Breitbart News before he was hired as the CEO of the Trump campaign in August 2016. After joining the Trump administration as a chief strategist, Bannon left in August 2017 and rejoined Breitbart News until he departed again in early 2018.
A jury convicted Bannon in 2022, and he was given a four-month prison sentence.
This was put on hold as Bannon sought to appeal the decision. In May, an appeals court upheld Bannon’s contempt of Congress conviction for denying a subpoena from the Democrat-run committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
“Bannon’s release motion should be denied,” the DOJ added in the filing. “Release pending appeal is the exception to the general rule that a defendant ‘shall…be detained’ following a conviction and imposition of a sentence of imprisonment.”
The DOJ added that Bannon “cannot reconcile his claim for special treatment with the bedrock principle of equal justice under the law.”
“Even-handed application of the bail statute requires Bannon’s continued detention,” the DOJ added.
Quote:Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) pushed a unanimous consent vote on a bump stock ban for the purposes of using Republican opposition to paint the GOP as favoring mass shooters, according to sources on Capitol Hill.
A unanimous consent vote can be blocked with one Republican in opposition, and that one Republican vote is what Democrats would highlight to then claim Republicans as a whole are against stopping mass shootings, against keeping Americans safe, etc.
[2 X Posts]
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) called out Schumer for pressing for votes on “fake problems” instead of taking up serious issues that the Senate may play a role in solving.
Vance said, “This is week three of Chuck Schumer focusing on fake problems instead of real problems. We have real legislation. I have a rail safety bill that he promised he would bring up to the floor for a vote. Let’s do the things that actually have a chance of passing and actually making the country a better place.”
The Blaze’s Christopher Redford used an X post to echo Vance’s sentiment, saying, “Ridiculous and cynical. Saying the Senate should use its limited time on legislation that can actually pass and help Americans isn’t dishonoring the dead anymore than Schumer wasting time on Dem messaging votes honors the dead.”
Bump stocks were used in one high-profile shooting in American history: The October 1, 2017, Las Vegas shooting.
In other words, a bump stock ban would not have hindered any of the other highly publicized public shootings since 2007:
Quote:On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Chicago Alderman David Moore, who also serves as a Democratic Committeeperson, stated that the city must “stop listening to all of these activists” and the “white progressives” who “are making a whole bunch of money to tell black people what to do in their community and telling them to stop things like car stops in order to get guns and drugs off the street.”
Moore stated that the city needs “this administration and certain policies to uncuff — to take the handcuffs off of our police. We have to make sure that they have the tools, including the item called ShotSpotter that detect[s] gunshots, making sure that they have the tools that they need to combat these problems. We need to stop listening to all of these activists, who, I have to be honest with you, where white progressives are making a whole bunch of money to tell black people what to do in their community and telling them to stop things like car stops in order to get guns and drugs off the street. And so, these type[s] of policies are hurting our communities, are keeping young people from being able to come out and play, and seniors able to sit on their porches.”
Co-host Lawrence Jones then asked, “So, Alderman, you just made a great point, and I think everybody should listen. The people that are advocating for these policies don’t live in the community where they have to deal with the consequences. Did I get that right?”
Moore answered, “If I can say a church word, amen, hallelujah. You’re absolutely right, and that’s what this is about.”
Moore added that there are “rich white progressives, who want their policies pushed in order to keep poor people down, because there’s profit in poverty.”
Quote:The restaurant chain Pizza Hut reportedly closed 15 eateries in Indiana on Friday while 120 other locations are in danger of the same fate.
The restaurant company is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with a franchisee, the New York Post reported on Tuesday.
The outlet continued:
EYM Group, which owns and operates 142 Pizza Hut locations in Illinois, Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Wisconsin, was accused of defaulting on millions of dollars in payments that were allegedly owed to Pizza Hut by a June deadline.
…
EYM has accused Pizza Hut of failing to modernize its menu as well as its digital ordering system — thus putting it at a disadvantage against the stiff competition in casual dining, including from Little Caesars and Domino’s.
In the midst of these difficulties, Pizza Hut recently revealed it would be offering Chicago tavern-style pizza that customers can enjoy in four recipes, 9 News reported Tuesday.
The outlet added that the brand now also features eight additional toppings and sauces.
“These menu additions represent a bold step forward as part of our culinary mission to bring our guests modern innovation that embraces what we know our customers are loving and looking for in a pizza,” explained Rachel Antalek, the restaurant chain’s Chief Food Innovation Officer. “Tavern is not just a pizza; it is a culinary trend that reflects the excitement of today’s pizza scene.”
Quote:Firefighters have increased their containment of a large wildfire that is burning in steep, hard-to-reach areas and threatening critical infrastructure in mountains north of Los Angeles, officials said. But hot, dry, windy weather could challenge their efforts Tuesday.
The Post Fire was 20% contained Monday night after wind caused explosive growth over the weekend along Interstate 5, the main north-south route on the West Coast.
“Fire weather conditions are making it difficult to control the fire,” the Los Angeles County Fire Department said in a Monday night update. “Important structures like power lines, dams, and oil pipelines are at risk.”
Strong winds from the north mean the fire is expected to keep moving south, the department said. High temperatures and low humidity were forecast for Tuesday. Wind gusts could reach 55 mph (88 kph).
Officials had earlier warned residents of Castaic, home to about 19,000 people, that they should prepare to leave if the fire pushed south.
The fire scorched more than 24 square miles (61 square kilometers) and forced the evacuation Saturday of at least 1,200 campers, off-roaders and hikers from the Hungry Valley recreation area.
The fire erupted Saturday afternoon near I-5 in Gorman. Two structures burned within the evacuated recreation area.
The majority of the more than 1,000 firefighters assigned to the blaze were focused on its southern edge, near popular Pyramid Lake, which was closed as a precaution on Sunday and Monday.
The fire broke out as weather turned hot and windy in a region where grasses brought by a rainy winter have now dried out and become fuel.
Smoke has drifted eastward, causing a slight haze in the Las Vegas area. Officials there advised children, older adults, and people with respiratory and heart disease to stay indoors.
About 75 miles (120 kilometers) to the east, the nearly 2-square-mile (5-square-kilometer) Hesperia Fire was more than 70% contained by Monday night. The fire erupted Saturday and forced road closures and evacuation warnings in San Bernardino County.
In Northern California’s Calaveras County, a new fire, the Aero Fire, burned nearly 8 square miles (20 square kilometers) and led to evacuation orders for some residents, officials said.
Quote:The government of radical leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent a Canadian warship to visit Havana, Cuba, this weekend, a move detractors told Breitbart News on Monday is “morally and strategically unjustifiable” given the Castro regime’s close ties to Canada’s enemies.
“I consider this decision a ratification of the failure and inconsistency of the Prime Minister’s foreign policy on Cuba,” Michael Lima Cuadra, the director of the Canadian human rights organization Democratic Spaces, told Breitbart News.
Democratic Spaces, founded by the Cuban-Canadian researcher, focuses on pressuring the traditionally Cuba-friendly Canadian government to confront and condemn the over half-century of human rights atrocities the Communist Party has committed and continues to do so against its people.
“Cuba is more repressive today than decades ago and has the highest number of political prisoners in the Americas and its inner power circle actively collaborates with regimes like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s in the asymmetric war against Ukraine (in its propaganda efforts, diplomatically and militarily),” Lima Cuadra observed.
Canadian Joint Operations Command confirmed on June 12 that the Canadian Navy would send the HMCS Margaret Brooke to Havana “in recognition of the long-standing bilateral relationship between Canada and Cuba.”
Quote:Mexican government officials publicly rejected a recent travel warning issued by the U.S. Department of State in the border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas. The warning advised U.S. citizens not to travel by bus, citing targeted kidnappings of American citizens and residents in the neighboring border city of Reynosa. Mexican officials continue to claim the border region is safe, even though the region is under the control of the Gulf Cartel and continues to go through a hyperviolent turf war.
Over the weekend, Jorge Cuellar, the Public Safety Spokesman for Tamaulipas, said the travel warning does not match the government’s statistics. The official falsely claimed his state is one of the safest in the nation.
As Breitbart Texas reported, the U.S. Consulate in Matamoros issued a Security Alert specifically pointing out a series of kidnapping cases centered around the border city of Reynosa. The alert claimed the kidnappings focused on intercity buses leaving Reynosa. The alert stated that the kidnappers demanded thousands of dollars for each victim. The U.S. Department of State labels Tamaulipas as a level 4 region, the same level used for active warzones.
In his response, Cuellar claimed that U.S. diplomats likely acted on “the opinion of some people and not statistical data.” According to Cuellar, in the last five months, Tamaulipas has not had any bus kidnappings, and the state has the second-highest crime deterrence rate in northern Mexico.
In late December, the Gulf Cartel kidnapped 32 migrants from a passenger bus in Reynosa. It wasn’t until the incident drew national attention that the Gulf Cartel released the kidnapped migrants — a fact admitted to by Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Breitbart Texas reported. However, in his recent comments, Cuellar falsely claimed that the migrants had been rescued by a large-scale operation by state police forces.
As Breitbart Texas reported, Cuellar is the same public official who has actively tried to downplay the raging cartel violence in Tamaulipas and has publicly lied in the past by denying various high-impact incidents or shootouts.
The region where the kidnappings have been taking place is undergoing a fierce turf war between two rival factions of the Gulf Cartel for control of lucrative drug and human smuggling routes. Despite the claims by Cuellar, the Gulf Cartel has been able to not only fight the hyperviolent turf war using armored vehicles, explosives, and land mines, but the criminal organization has been able to operate with almost complete impunity while carrying out kidnappings, targeted murders and forced disappearances throughout the state.
Quote:Jens Stoltenberg, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), said on Monday that China should be penalized for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Beijing cannot have it both ways. At some point — and unless China changes course — allies need to impose a cost. There should be consequences,” he said.
“China is fueling the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, and, at the same time, it wants to maintain good relations with the West,” he pointed out.
Stoltenberg was speaking at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. His remarks were dismissive of “isolationism,” which he saw as illogical in a deeply interconnected world.
“The vast Atlantic and Pacific Oceans do not protect the U.S. in an age of rising global challenges: intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic submarines, the weaponization of space, and increased cyber and terrorist attacks,” he observed.
Stoltenberg saw Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin joining forces to oppose NATO and the United States, using the invasion of Ukraine as a hammer blow to shatter the post-World War II international order. He suggested the best way to make Putin look for an exit from Ukraine was to make it clear that he cannot outlast NATO’s resources or wear down its resolve.
“It may seem like a paradox, but the path to peace is, therefore, more weapons for Ukraine. I strongly welcome the $60 billion package that the U.S. Congress passed in April. This is significant and complements efforts by other NATO allies,” he said.
Stoltenberg blasted China for “sharing high-end technologies, like semiconductors and other dual-use items,” with Russia. He suggested China’s support was a major factor in Putin’s calculations that he might be able to outlast NATO and Ukraine.
“Russia is receiving support from others, too. North Korea has delivered over one million artillery shells, and Iran has delivered thousands of deadly Shahed drones. In exchange, Pyongyang and Tehran are receiving Russian technology and supplies to help them advance their missile and nuclear capabilities,” he said, contending that stronger NATO unity was the best way to push back against this malign alliance.
Stoltenberg said he had invited Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea to July’s NATO summit in Washington to discuss how they can work together to “uphold the international rules-based order and protect our shared values.”
This is actually one of China’s common talking points: the U.S. is scheming to build an “Asian NATO” with countries like Japan and South Korea, so China must forge closer ties with its own allies to push back.
Quote:Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said on Monday that former President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran “exists only on paper and means nothing.”
“Nobody applies it, nobody follows it. There have been attempts to revive it here in Vienna. But unfortunately, although they were relatively close to success, they failed for reasons unknown to me, because I was not involved in the process,” Grossi complained to Russia’s Izvestia newspaper.
The 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was never submitted to Congress for ratification. Critics of the deal accused Iran of cheating from the start. Israeli intelligence obtained documents in 2018 that showed the Iranian government secretly violated its non-proliferation commitments under the agreement.
Former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in May 2018. Trump said it was clear that “we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement.”
Iran was nominally still bound to its agreement with the European powers that signed the JCPOA, but Tehran has largely treated the agreement like a dead letter since Trump withdrew, and arguably for quite some time before that.
Even before the U.S. withdrawal, Iran complained that it did not receive the vast economic benefits it envisioned when international sanctions were lifted under the agreement. After U.S. sanctions snapped back into place, the regime in Tehran blamed all of its economic woes on the United States, and no concessions by the Europeans were good enough to bring the deal back to life.
Grossi told Izvestia that he finds it frustrating to deal with Iran, which has blocked IAEA inspectors from investigating key sites and refused to hand over documents demanded by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
“I continue to tell my Iranian colleagues that we must provide the agency with at least minimal access to help return to the second version of the JCPOA or any other agreement,” Grossi said.
“There are problems, I’ll be honest with you. We do cooperate with Iran. I don’t deny this. This is important for inspection. My Iranian colleagues often say that Iran is the most inspected country in the world. Well, it is, and for good reason. But this is not enough,” he said.
Grossi has spent the last few years trying to hold the unraveling nuclear deal together, frequently criticizing Iran’s intransigence but always stopping short of statements or actions that might anger Iran enough to make it stop cooperating with his agency entirely.
Quote:Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that American officials have been in contact behind the scenes to work out a prisoner swap deal that might free Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter indicted for espionage on Thursday after being held captive by Russia for more than a year.
“I want to remind you again of the president’s conversation with the heads of information agencies in St. Petersburg – he confirmed that there are such contacts,” Peskov said on Monday, referring to how Russia’s authoritarian President Vladimir Putin claimed on June 5 that the Biden administration was “taking vigorous steps” to work out a deal for Gershkovich.
“But such issues are not resolved through the media. They like a quiet, calm, professional approach and dialogue between intelligence agencies. And, of course, they should be resolved only on the basis of reciprocity,” Putin said on June 5, making it clear that he would demand a heavy ransom for the kidnapped reporter.
Peskov, on Monday, echoed Putin by saying negotiations would be “conducted in complete silence,” without “announcements, statements, or information” provided to the public.
Peskov claimed he could not “comment” on the “court decision” to subject Gershkovich to a secret trial. That unsurprising decision was announced by the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg on Monday.
“The process will take place behind closed doors,” the court said, scheduling the first Gershkovich hearing for June 26.
Providing the first meager public details of the charges against the 32-year-old American prisoner, the court said:
According to the investigation authorities, the American journalist of the Wall Street Journal, Gershkovich, on the instructions of the CIA, in March 2023, collected secret information in the Sverdlovsk region about the activities of the defense enterprise JSC NPK Uralvagonzavod for the production and repair of military equipment.
Gershkovich was arrested in Yekaterinburg in March 2023 while on a reporting trip, becoming the first American journalist arrested in Russia since the end of the Cold War. The Wall Street Journal and U.S. government officials have denounced the charges against him as “ridiculous.” Russia claims he was caught spying “red-handed” but has not revealed a single bit of evidence against him.
French Far-Left Politician on Eradicating the Right-Wing
Quote:Right-wing populist politicians should be “eradicated”, a leading member of the far-left New Popular Front election alliance in France said in a supposed slip of the tongue.
Clémentine Autain has come under criticism for appearing to suggest on national television in France a preference for violence against right-wing populist politicians for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party.
“If we could eradicate them all that would be great,” she said on broadcaster LCI as reported by the Entrevue magazine while stressing the need for a majority in the National Assembly for the leftist New Popular Front, comprised of her own leftist La France Insoumise (LFI) party, the Socialists, the green Écologistes, and the French Communist Party.
[X Post]
The longtime LFI member of the French National Assembly parliament and current candidate in the snap elections for the 11th constituency of Seine-Saint-Denis quickly backtracked from the apparent violent rhetoric.
“Well, eradicate them is not a good word, but if we could drastically reduce the score of the extreme right that would be wonderful,” she said.
Responding to her comments, populist right-wing Member of the European Parliament Gilbert Collard said: “No to hatred! These madmen are dangerous!”
While the left has been deeply divided over the past year in France, with fissures breaking out over Israel and the conflict in Gaza, the left-wing parties finally coalesced last week under the banner of the ‘New Popular Front’ — a reference to a similar leftist alliance in France ahead of World War II — in order to combat the supposed threat posed by the “extreme right” as Le Pen’s National Rally is on course for a victory in the snap elections called by President Macron after his defeat to Le Pen’s party in the European Parliament elections earlier this month.
Quote:Russian strongman Vladimir Putin praised the “dignity and courage” of the communist regime of North Korea, one of the most repressive governments on Earth, in an article published in the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Tuesday.
Putin is expected to arrive in Pyongyang on Tuesday night after a brief stop in the far-east Russian city of Yakutsk. Moscow and Pyongyang both confirmed that Putin would visit the country on Monday, squeezing in a stop to meet dictator Kim Jong-un before a planned visit to communist Vietnam.
Reports in Russian state media indicate that Putin and Kim will engage in “intensive” discussions on trade and defense and that Putin is planning on signing a “comprehensive” agreement with North Korea on various issues. The reports did not offer any specificity on what the agreement would include.
North Korea has enjoyed friendly relations with Russia for years that have grown in the past two years in response to Kim Jong-un vocally supporting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kim made his first trip outside the country to Russia, meeting with Putin, in September in the eastern city of Vladivostok and inviting him to Pyongyang.
“Putin accepted the invitation with pleasure and reaffirmed his will to invariably carry forward the history and tradition of the Russia-DPRK [North Korea] friendship,” North Korean state media reported at the time.
Quote:Landmines reportedly killed North Korean troops working near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) on Tuesday despite South Korean troops firing warning shots at North Korean intruders for the second time in June.
South Korean military officials reported “multiple explosions” that “maimed or killed” North Koreans who were “clearing land and carrying out mine-related operations” in or near the DMZ. The statement did not provide further details about the explosions or casualties, although it said smoke from the explosions could be seen on closed-circuit TV (CCTV) cameras.
South Korea warned in April that North Korea had been planting landmines on all of the roads leading through the DMZ since relations between the two Koreas grew more tense in 2024.
The mines appeared to be one of several angry symbolic gestures Pyongyang made to indicate that peaceful “reunification” was no longer the goal of the regime. Dictator Kim Jong-un, in January, ordered his forces to block all cross-border passages to an “irretrievable level.”
The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Tuesday that 20 to 30 North Korean troops briefly crossed into South Korea’s side of the DMZ on Tuesday morning, the second border violation in less than two weeks.
The JCS said South Korean forces “conducted warning broadcasts and fired warning shots, prompting the North Korean soldiers to return to their side of the border.”
As with a similar brief incursion on June 9, the JCS was willing to characterize the border violation as an “accident.” In both cases, the North Korean squads appeared to be carrying tools and raw materials for constructing walls, guard posts, and tank barricades.
“These activities appear to be measures to strengthen internal control of the North Korean military and residents and fend off their attempts to cross the border,” the JCS said.
“They are burying landmines mainly in areas where people have crossed the border in the past. The ‘barren land’ is being created to facilitate surveillance,” the statement said.
The landmine explosions occurred just hours before Russian strongman Vladimir Putin arrived in Pyongyang for his first visit to North Korea in 24 years. In remarks before his departure, Putin said he would thank North Korea for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and congratulate its rulers for successfully evading Western sanctions.
"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:Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) introduced a bill Friday that would allow presidents and vice presidents — current and former — to move their own civil or criminal cases from a state court to a federal court to stop political local prosecutions such as the one former President Donald Trump faced in New York, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
“Presidents and Vice Presidents have a right to a fair trial free from political interference, and they should never be targeted by partisan state prosecutors and judges looking to score political points,” Tillis said in a statement provided to Breitbart News.
“The No More Political Prosecutions Act is commonsense legislation that provides Presidents and Vice Presidents (current and former) with the option to move their state cases to a federal court, the same option already provided to other federal officials and employees,” he said.
Tillis’s bill is co-sponsored by Trump allies Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), Ted Budd (R-NC), and Mike Lee (R-UT).
The bill would simply amend an existing statute that covers many federal officials and staff, including members of Congress and federal judges, who have an option to move their cases to federal court.
Presidents and vice presidents are some of the only federal officials currently unable to remove their cases to federal court, particularly after leaving office, leaving them vulnerable to state prosecutors and judges who can be elected or appointed by state legislatures or governors. This is in contrast to federal judges, who are Senate-confirmed and have lifetime appointments, which help to preserve their independence from the political process.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump will get to speak last at the first presidential debate against President Joe Biden on Thursday, as CNN determined with a coin flip.
Both candidates will have an opportunity to deliver a two-minute closing statement that serves as an elevator pitch and call to action.
The Biden campaign won the coin toss and chose to select where Biden stood on the stage over who spoke last during the debate, the Hill reported. The Biden campaign chose to stand to Trump’s left, or from the viewer’s perspective, on the right.
The debate parameters follow several controversial rules that CNN finalized that favor Biden, his campaign acknowledged.
The agreed-upon rules are:
Two commercial breaks (Likely to benefit Biden)
Campaign staff will not be able to interact with their candidate during the break
No opening statements, two-minute closing statements
Two-minute answer shot clock, one minute for rebuttals
Mics will be muted “except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak” (Likely to benefit Biden)
CNN reported its rules:
The 90-minute debate will include two commercial breaks, according to the network, and campaign staff may not interact with their candidate during that time.
Both candidates agreed to appear at a uniform podium, and their podium positions will be determined by a coin flip.
Microphones will be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak. While no props or pre-written notes will be allowed on the stage, candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.
Some aspects of the debate – including the absence of a studio audience – will be a departure from previous debates. But, as in the past, the moderators “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion,” according to the network.
Adams on Bragg Dropping Charges Against Protesters
Quote:On Friday’s broadcast of New York’s 1010 WINS’s “The PM Rush,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) stated that he respects Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s decision to drop some charges relating to the disorder at Columbia University and Bragg decided that with “those who couldn’t — he couldn’t get proper I.D. from that the school, Columbia, is going to be addressing that on a local level.” And “I’m going to continue to make sure that those who break the law, the police officers are going to enforce the law.”
Adams said, “There [are] various level[s] to the criminal justice system. The one that I control is the law enforcement aspect of it. But we have the judicial system and we have prosecutors. And I respect each area of how they’re going to handle to keep the public safety in our city. I had communication with D.A. [Bragg]. He’s still prosecuting those who assaulted police officers, and he made a determination based on those who couldn’t — he couldn’t get proper I.D. from that the school, Columbia, is going to be addressing that on a local level. But I respect his decision. And I’m going to continue to make sure that those who break the law, the police officers are going to enforce the law.”
He couldn't identify them? Or he DIDN'T WANT to do it?
Quote:Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced a resolution on Friday condemning President Joe Biden’s “unconstitutional” security guarantees to Ukraine.
Biden extended security guarantees to Ukraine for the next ten years, which will help Ukraine boost its defense industrial base and push Ukraine closer to joining NATO.
Politico reported:
But there’s a major catch: The deal is only between the current administrations of the U.S. and Ukraine and won’t be ratified by Congress. Should former President Donald Trump reenter the Oval Office in January, he could rip up the agreement, reneging on Washington’s commitment.
That makes the announcement a high-stakes gamble by President Joe Biden, who has put American credibility on the line in hopes of reassuring Ukraine and European allies, even if he can’t guarantee the deal will last 10 months –– let alone 10 years. But it could also draw a stark contrast with his Republican opponent, marking Biden as a transatlantic champion and Trump an unreliable ally.
“A lasting peace for Ukraine must be underwritten by Ukraine’s own ability to defend itself now, and to deter future aggression,” Biden said. Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky called the signing of the agreement an historic day.
However, Paul and Lee believe that the agreement is unconstitutional, serves as a “backdoor” into NATO membership, and bypasses Congress. Paul said in a written statement:
President Biden’s bilateral security agreement with Ukraine commits America to yet another endless war. This deal risks entrapping future administrations to a prolonged military engagement without a clear exit strategy or sufficient burden-sharing from our European allies. We must prioritize American interests and avoid endless foreign entanglements.
Quote:of the list on countries receiving air defense weapons, and effectively making American allies wait at least 16 months for those same weapons.
The administration said it was because in recent months Russia has stepped up its missile and drone attacks in Ukraine in an attempt to destroy its energy system ahead of the winter.
“This is not a new tactic for them, but they have certainly applied a lot more energy and effort into it in recent months,” National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told reporters Thursday. He added:
As we’ve heard from President Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian military is in desperate need of additional air defense capabilities. We take our partnership seriously, especially when a partner like Ukraine is in such jeopardy. Right now, we know that Ukraine urgently needs these additional capabilities,
We have continued to dig deep and provide Ukraine with a variety of air defense systems and interceptor missiles from our own stockpiles, including those of the Patriot system, NASAMs, and of course, the Hawks.
Many of our allies and partners have stepped up in historic ways as well. But obviously, more is needed, and it’s needed now. So as a result, the United States government has made the difficult but necessary decision to reprioritize, near term, planned deliveries of foreign military sales to other countries of particularly Patriot and NASAM missiles to go to Ukraine instead.
The move is the latest move by President Joe Biden in escalating the U.S.’s involvement in Ukraine’s war with Russia. He recently approved allowing Ukraine to use U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia, if Russian forces were readying to attack across the border into Ukraine.
At first the administration claimed the policy was only to hit Russian forces who were readying to attack Kharkiv, but now the Biden administration claims its new policy would allow Ukraine to strike Russian forces anywhere inside Ukraine where they are preparing to launch attacks into Ukraine.
It is unclear if the move would be able to be reversed should former President Donald Trump win re-election in November.
Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), a staunch critic of continuing to send billions of U.S. taxpayer money into Ukraine to fuel the war, slammed the decision, saying, “At this point we are actively endangering our national security by focusing on Ukraine to the exclusion of other priorities. A slow running disaster from the Biden admin.”
Quote:A large group of pro-Israel counter-protesters rushed to demonstrate outside a synagogue and Jewish school targeted Thursday in Los Angeles by a mob of pro-Palestinian activists.
The confrontation began earlier Thursday, when the pro-Palestinian activists showed up at the school in Valley Village, an area with a large Jewish population in the San Fernando Valley region of L.A.
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A large group of pro-Israel counter-demonstrators then came to the school to face off against the pro-Palestinian activists. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) arrived and separated the two groups on opposite sides of the street.
Local Fox affiliate KTTV-11 covered the dueling protests, noting that it was not clear why the synagogue and school had been targeted.
There is a growing wave of antisemitism in the U.S. associated with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who had attended the synagogue when he was in Los Angeles, said there was a double standard at work — that “if people protested Hamas by going to a random mosque and shouting at the constituents, it would be national news and Joe Biden would make a statement about the evils of Islamophobia.”
Quote:Approximately 30.3 tons of fentanyl have crossed the nation’s southern border since President Joe Biden (D) took office, the Republican National Committee (RNC) said Friday.
That amount of fentanyl is enough to take the lives of about 13.8 billion people, the RNC’s press release said, citing a United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) webpage about the drug.
According to the DEA’s site:
Illicit fentanyl, primarily manufactured in foreign clandestine labs and smuggled into the United States through Mexico, is being distributed across the country and sold on the illegal drug market. Fentanyl is being mixed in with other illicit drugs to increase the potency of the drug, sold as powders and nasal sprays, and increasingly pressed into pills made to look like legitimate prescription opioids. Because there is no official oversight or quality control, these counterfeit pills often contain lethal doses of fentanyl, with none of the promised drug.
There is significant risk that illegal drugs have been intentionally contaminated with fentanyl. Because of its potency and low cost, drug dealers have been mixing fentanyl with other drugs including heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine, increasing the likelihood of a fatal interaction.
In May, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data showed fentanyl has “largely fueled” a rise in youth overdose deaths since the beginning of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, Breitbart News reported at the time.
“Until relatively recently, opioid deaths were an adult problem. The crisis has now overtaken young people, with Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia doctors reporting a rise in youth emergency room and addiction treatment visits — especially among Latinos,” the report said.
Meanwhile, Biden’s deputies have tried to blame Republicans for his failure to slow the huge wave of fentanyl flowing over his semi-open southern border, even as Republican voters showed staunch opposition to his mass migration priorities, Breitbart News reported in March.
Quote:The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) upheld on Friday a federal ban on gun ownership for subjects of domestic violence restraining orders.
The case centered on Zackey Rahimi, who had been barred from gun possession under a 1994 law prohibiting gun possession by those subject to the aforementioned restraining orders.
NBC News suggested SCOTUS’s decision shows there are some gun controls that can survive the Bruen (2022) test.
CNN quoted Chief Justice John Roberts indicating he and seven of his colleagues had “no trouble” coming together on this decision.
Writing for the majority, Roberts said, “Our tradition of firearm regulation allows the government to disarm individuals who present a credible threat to the physical safety of others.”
Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissent against the decision.
Thomas wrote, “The court and government do not point to a single historical law revoking a citizen’s Second Amendment right based on possible interpersonal violence. Yet, in the interest of ensuring the Government can regulate one subset of society, today’s decision puts at risk the Second Amendment rights of many more.”
Quote:While speaking out against Biden-era immigration protocol Thursday on FNC’s “The Ingraham Angle,” former Immigrations and Customs Enforcement acting director Tom Homan also criticized Republicans who opposed impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Homan said those Republican lawmakers could “go to hell,” and he talked about the threat that he argued was being concealed by sanctuary cities and other governments that do not compile specific data about violent crimes.
“Well, look, every Republican congressman that did not vote to impeach Mayorkas, you can go to hell,” he declared. “An HR2 that passed the House and went to the Senate, Chuck Schumer won’t even put on the floor. You know, he disgusts me.
But you’re right. Under the Trump administration, we were suing sanctuary cities and actually looking pretty good. One of the first thing Biden did when he got into office is ended the lawsuit. So, there’s no accountability to sanctuary cities. What people need to know is the biggest cities in this nation, Houston, New York, Chicago, L.A., are sanctuary cities.”
“They don’t release nationalities of their criminals,” he continued. “So, we don’t really know how many criminals are raping young women. How many are being arrested for domestic violence or robbery or burglary? We don’t know.”
Quote:Actor Donald Sutherland, known for his roles in Hunger Games and Pride & Prejudice, among many others, died on Thursday at the age of 88.
Sutherland, who won an Emmy for his performance in Citizen X, died in Miami after a long illness, the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) told Deadline. The actor’s official cause of death remains unclear.
The Klute star, who is also the father of actor Kiefer Sutherland, was born on July 17, 1935 in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, and got his big break in the 1967 World War II drama, The Dirty Dozen.
Throughout his more than 60 year acting career, Sutherland garnered 200 film and TV credits, according to his IMDb page. His 200th acting credit, Heart Land, is currently in pre-production.
Sutherland also had roles in the 1970 film, M*A*S*H, in which he played Hawkeye Pierce; the 1970 film, Kelly’s Heroes, in which he portrayed Sergeant Oddball alongside actor Clint Eastwood; and the 1973 film, Don’t Look Now, in which he played John Baxter.
The beloved actor’s extensive acting credits also include Dirty Sexy Money, Trust, The Undoing, and The Pillars of the Earth, among many others.
Sutherland also won a Golden Globe for the television movie Path to War, as well as an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe for his performance in the miniseries Citizen X.
Sutherland is survived by his wife Francine Racette, his sons Roeg, Rossif, Angus, and Kiefer, his daughter Rachel, and four grandchildren.
Quote:Actor, sumo wrestler, and fighter Taylor Wily has died at his home in Hawaii at the age of 56.
No cause of death has been revealed for the six-foot-two, 434-pound actor.
The news of his passing was confirmed by Hawaiian station KITV-TV.
Hawaii Five-0 executive producer Peter M. Lenkov lamented the loss on Instagram, writing, “I am devastated. Heartbroken. I’ll post some detailed feelings later. Just too hard right now.”
The mountainous man initially became one of the first American sumo wrestlers in the 1980s and compiled a record of 57-27-14 over two seasons of wrestling.
Wily later competed as one of the fighters in the very first UFC event in November of 1993, though he lost his bout to Gerard Gordeau.
He had an uncredited role in a 1982 episode of the original Magnum, P.I., but his TV career began picking up speed in the late 2000s when in 2008 he got his breakout role as Kemo in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
But it was in 2010 he landed his signature role as Kamekona in the re-boot of Hawaii Five-0, in which he appeared in 171 episodes until the series ended in 2020.
He also appeared on seven episodes of the re-booted Magnum P.I., reprising his role as Kamekona.
The Honolulu-born Wily was a big-hearted and passionate fellow. Back in 2020 when the pandemic began, he posted an inspirational video urging everyone to come together in this “unpredictable times.”
Quote:The prosecutors in the latest case against actor and producer Alec Baldwin concerning the death of a cinematographer on the set of his movie, Rust, are accusing him of having a history of reckless treatment of firearms.
State prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Erlinda Johnson alleged on Monday that Baldwin had fired at least one blank round from his firearm at the crew before the incident that led to the death of cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. The filing also alleges that he was seen engaging in “horseplay” with guns and that he was “erratic and aggressive,” all of which raised safety concerns, according to Variety.
The prosecutors signaled that they intend to introduce more unsafe use of firearms and Baldwins behavior — some on video — which was introduced during the trial of the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, which led to her conviction and 18-month prison sentence.
One video in the Reed trial showed Baldwin aiming his Colt-style single-action revolver at the crew and then firing the blank at them after the director said “cut.”
Other videos showed Baldwin constantly fidgeting with the gun by cocking it and un-cocking it repeatedly, and brandishing it with his finger on the trigger, both violations of movie industry gun safety practices.
Quote:British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proposes a social credit score-lite for the United Kingdom, where access to modern life basics like a car or financial services could be withdrawn for young people who refuse National Service.
Party leaders from top polling electoral factions — except for Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who was to his disgust excluded — were challenged on national television on Thursday night by state broadcaster the BBC, answering audience questions. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who faces apocalyptic polling for his chances to return to the job but who nevertheless hasn’t conceded defeat yet was called on to defend his first election-time policy of promising to introduce national service for young people if re-elected.
While Sunak cited a volunteer ambulance organisation as an example of the sort of mandatory volunteering that could be possible, in reality much of the public concern and discussion has been over the military element of National Service given how widely agreed it is Europe is entering a period of instability and war, and the fact it is to be mandatory.
The Prime Minister was reluctant to engage on how precisely the government would force young people to sign up for National Service and appeared to stumble at one juncture, blurting out a “sorry?” when asked directly about compulsion. While falling short of committing to any one path, and hand-waving away responsibility for doing so by saying an independent body would make these decisions, Sunak said the government was considering restricting access to modern life essentials.
He said: “You will have a set of sanctions and incentives and we will look at the models that are existing in Europe to get the appropriate mix of those, there is a range of different options that exist… whether that’s looking at driving licenses, access to finance…”.
Quote:A new record high of illegal migrants crossing the English Channel this year from the beaches of France was set on Monday, prompting Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to declare that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “can’t stop the boats”.
A total of 882 illegal aliens successfully reached British shores on Monday after crossing the Channel in 15 small boats operated by people-smuggling gangs along the French coast.
Monday’s crossings marked the highest figure for the year and took the total since January to 12,313, according to calculations from the Daily Mail.
The paper noted that this was 18 per cent higher than during the same time last year, when 10,472 illegals had made the journey, and up five per cent from 2022 when 11,690 had landed at this point of the year.
It means this year is currently on pace to surpass the yearly record set in 2022, which saw 45,774 boat migrants recorded reaching the country.
Responding to the continued waves of illegals pouring into the country, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: “Rishi can’t stop the boats and Labour don’t care. This is a national security emergency.”
While Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has attempted to claim his policies resulted in the decline in illegal arrivals seen last year when 29,437 migrants reached the country via the busy waterway, this year’s increase backs up claims from Nigel Farage and even the BBC that the weather was likely more of a factor in the reduction seen in 2023.
Prime Minister Sunak has pinned his hopes on deterring the people smuggling trade with the long-delayed Boris Johnson-era scheme to send illegals to the East African nation of Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed offshore rather than putting them up at taxpayer expense in hotels in Britain while awaiting a decision.
Quote:Russian natural gas imports to the European Union have overtaken those from the United States for the first time in nearly two years after Brussels sanctions over the Ukraine invasion took hold.
Pipeline gas and liquid natural gas (LNG) from Russia accounted for around 15 per cent of total imports to the EU in May, analysis from the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS) found.
Following energy sanctions from Brussels and individual member states, the United States surpassed Russia in September of 2022 and has come to supply the EU with around one-fifth of its natural gas imports, the vast majority being LNG shipped in tankers across the Atlantic. However, last month, U.S. supply only counted for 14 per cent, falling behind Russia and Norway.
“It’s striking to see the market share of Russian gas and [liquefied natural gas] inch higher in Europe after all we have been through, and all the efforts made to decouple and de-risk energy supply,” head of gas analytics at ICIS Tom Marzec-Manser told the Financial Times.
While the consultancy firm did say that last month was unique in some regards and the trend reversal is “not likely to last”, given factors such as an outage of a top American LNG facility and Russia increasing shipments to Europe via Turkey ahead of planned maintenance, May’s leapfrogging demonstrated the continued dependence on Russian gas in the EU.
The continued dependence on Russia — and indeed the United States — comes in large part due to the pursuit of so-called green forms of energy while actively spurning domestic fracking for natural gas and a refusal to invest in viable carbon-neutral forms of energy like nuclear power.
Quote:Russia resumed its aerial pounding of Ukraine´s power grid and Kyiv´s forces again targeted Russian oil facilities with cross-border drone strikes, officials said Thursday.
With no major changes reported along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, where a recent push by the Kremlin´s forces in eastern and northeastern Ukraine has made only incremental gains, both sides in the war have taken aim at distant infrastructure targets.
In its seventh major attack on Ukrainian power plants since Moscow intensified energy infrastructure attacks three months ago, Russia fired nine missiles and 27 Shahed drones at energy facilities and critical infrastructure in central and eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said. Air defenses intercepted all the drones and five cruise missiles, it said.
The attack hit power structures in the Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv and Vinnytsia regions of Ukraine, causing “extensive damage,” according to national power company Ukrenergo. Seven workers were injured, it said.
Ukrenergo announced extended blackouts across the country despite electricity imports and help with emergency supplies from European countries.
Private energy company DTEK said one of its power plants was hit in the overnight attack but did not specify its location. Three company employees were injured and the plant´s equipment was severely damaged, DTEK said on social media.
Among the most damaging recent strikes on Ukraine´s energy supply were an April barrage that damaged Kyiv´s largest thermal power plant and a massive attack on May 8 that targeted power generation and transmission facilities in several regions.
Rolling blackouts have affected Ukrainian households and industry.
In Russia, meanwhile, authorities in two regions reported fires at oil storage depots after drone attacks, two days after a Ukrainian strike started a huge blaze at another refinery.
Ukraine has in recent months stepped up aerial assaults on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals in an effort to disrupt the Kremlin´s war machine.
Murat Kumpilov, head of Russia´s Adygea region, said a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at an oil depot in the town of Enem that was later extinguished.
The head of the Tambov region, Maxim Yegorov, said an oil reservoir went ablaze at an oil depot there.
Krasnodar region Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev said a drone hit a private house in the town of Slavyansk, killing a woman.
Russia´s Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 15 Ukrainian drones over three regions but didn´t mention any damage.
Quote:Russian strongman Vladimir Putin said South Korea deciding to offer weapons aid to Ukraine would be a “very big mistake,” threatening “respective decisions” that would anger Seoul in remarks on Thursday responding to South Korea announcing it would consider arming Ukraine.
South Korean officials announced the decision to reconsider its current stance of only providing humanitarian aid and reconstructive assistance following Putin’s visit to North Korea, where he signed a mutual defense treaty that bound Russia to defend Pyongyang in the event of an attack. Putin made a surprise visit to North Korea on Tuesday and Wednesday in which communist dictator Kim Jong-un welcomed him with lavish festivities and gifted him two Pungsan hunting dogs.
North Korea had once maintained a similar mutual defense treaty with the fallen Soviet Union, but Russia had not taken measures to commit to military intervention in defense of the rogue communist state until this week.
North Korea and South Korea have formally been in a state of war for 74 years. The Korean War – in which China and the United States are also belligerent parties – began in 1950 and its active hostilities ceased with an armistice agreement in 1953, but neither side surrendered or signed a peace treaty. As a result, Russia committing to military defense of North Korea could potentially make it a party to the Korean War, alarming Seoul.
Conversely, North Korea’s commitment to Russia could make it a player in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, as the Ukrainian military has in recent months attempted to expand its attacks into Russian territory.
Putin confirmed while in Pyongyang this week that the new agreement with Pyongyang “provides for mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties to this treaty.”
The South Korean government summoned Russia’s ambassador to Seoul to protest the treaty and said it had “grave concern” that Russia’s support of communist North Korea could exacerbate already mounting tensions between the two Koreas.
“The government expresses grave concern and condemns the signing of the comprehensive strategic partnership agreement between North Korea and Russia, which aims to strengthen mutual military and economic cooperation,” South Korean National Security Advisor Chang Ho-jin told reporters on Thursday. In response to Russia’s actions, Chang said, South Korea would “reconsider the issue of arms support to Ukraine.”
“Specific measures will be revealed later, and it will be interesting to see how Russia responds, rather than revealing our plans in advance,” Chang added.
The South Korean news service Yonhap reported that Seoul also implemented several new sanctions on Russia in response to the Ukraine invasion this week.
Putin’s remarks in Vietnam were in response to Chang’s announcement.
“As for the supply of lethal weapons to the combat zone in Ukraine, it would be a very big mistake,” Putin told reporters during his brief stay in Hanoi, according to Russian media. “I hope it will not happen. If it does, then we too will then make the respective decisions, which South Korea’s current leadership is unlikely to be pleased with.”
“We reserve our right to supply weapons to other regions of the world,” Putin said, which some news outlets interpreted as a threat to arm North Korea.
South Korean President Yoon, a hardline conservative, has been vocally supportive of Ukraine in the ongoing conflict. Yoon made a surprise visit to Kyiv in July 2023 in which he met with President Volodymr Zelensky and offered Korean infrastructure expertise, first-aid equipment, and other non-lethal aid. Yoon also announced $150 million in humanitarian aid.
“We need a new large-scale rehabilitation industry. I invited the Republic of Korea to show leadership in creating rehabilitation centers in Ukraine,” Zelensky said at the time.
Seoul appeared to back down from its threat to arm Ukraine, at least for now, in comments to reporters on Friday. The South Korean news outlet Yonhap quoted an anonymous Yoon official stating that Seoul was merely looking at “various options.”
“There are various options for providing weapons, and our position on the recent developments between Russia and North Korea depends on how Russia approaches the situation going forward,” the unnamed official said.
Quote:A Russian court sentenced U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Gordon Black, 34, on Wednesday to three years and nine months in a penal colony for allegedly robbing and threatening to murder his Russian girlfriend.
According to Russian media, Black was arrested on May 2 in the eastern Russian port city of Vladivostok after his girlfriend, Alexandra Vashuk, reported him to the police following an argument.
Vashuk accused Black of stealing about 10,000 rubles (about $120) from her and physically attacking her. She said he grabbed her by the neck during the confrontation, which she interpreted as a threat to her life.
Russian court officials said Black “partially” acknowledged his guilt on the theft charge, although he said he planned to return the money he took from her purse. Black said he took Vashuk’s money because he could not access his own funds while in Russia and accused her of starting the argument that turned violent because she had been drinking heavily.
Black is married and has a child in Texas. His wife, Megan, said she did not know he was in Russia until she received a message from him on May 2 “telling me that he wasn’t coming home.” She said they were in the process of finalizing their divorce at the time of his arrest.
Megan said, through her attorneys, that she believes Black’s “ill-advised” decision to travel to Russia was “motivated entirely by personal reasons,” specifically an “extra-marital affair,” and had nothing to do with “geopolitical intrigue.” Russian officials have not charged him with espionage-related offenses, as they have done with kidnapped Americans, like former Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Quote:The Vatican has summoned Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former papal nuncio to the United States, to undergo an extrajudicial penal trial for the crime of schism and having denied the legitimacy of Pope Francis and the Second Vatican Council.
Archbishop Viganò has been a thorn in the side of Pope Francis ever since 2018, when he published an explosive report accusing the pontiff 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.
Now the Vatican’s doctrinal office, headed by Argentinean Cardinal Víctor “Tucho” Fernández, has ordered the former Vatican diplomat to appear in Rome to answer the charges on June 20, either in person or via a legal representative.
Swedish Court on the Syrian General Accused of War Crimes
Quote:A Swedish judge on Thursday acquitted a former Syrian army general of indiscriminate attacks on civilians in his home country more than a decade ago, saying prosecutors failed to provide evidence of his involvement in the war crimes.
Brig. Gen. Mohammed Hamo, who now lives in Sweden, was charged in February with aiding and abetting crimes against international law. Prosecutors said that as head of the Ordnance Department of the Syrian Army’s 11th Division, he was responsible for providing the weapons that were used to commit war crimes in 2012.
The prosecutor alleged that Hamo, described by Swedish news agency TT as the highest-ranking officer to stand trial in a European court for such crimes in Syria, had participated in the division´s indiscriminate attacks on military and civilian targets in the Syrian cities of Homs and Hama.
The Stockholm District Court said it was clear that the Syrian army´s warfare included “indiscriminate attacks” that violated international law. But Judge Katarina Fabian said prosecutors did not produce sufficient evidence to convict Hamo.
During the trial, the prosecution chiefly relied on video clips, photographs and testimonies to paint a broad picture of the period showing shelling and fighting between Syrian Army and armed groups. The videos included documentaries by the British Broadcasting Corporation to depict the situation in the region around Homs in 2011 and 2012. None of the material implicated directly Hamo.
Little is known about the 65-year-old Hamo. In June 2012, he was transferred to northern Syria, and the following month he decided to leave the army and fled to Turkey. There, he joined a group that was fighting against the Syrian regime.
He traveled to Sweden in 2015, where he sought asylum. He was granted asylum, but Sweden’s Migration Board informed the authorities that Hamo was previously “a senior officer within the framework of an army that was systematically considered to have committed violations of human rights,” the court said.
Hamo was living in central Sweden when he was arrested on December 7, 2021. A court at the time released him two days later, saying there wasn´t enough evidence to keep him incarcerated. He has since been free.
Quote:Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has admitted that Islamist terrorists have likely infiltrated the European Union through the Ukraine refugee scheme, as a terror cell believed to have come to Germany from Kyiv goes to trial.
In its annual report on extremist threats, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic spying branch, said that the threat of jihadist terrorism remains high, with around 27,200 suspected Islamic extremists in the country.
Head of the BvF Thomas Haldenwang admitted that it is likely that Islamic terror groups used schemes for Ukrainian refugees to sneak sleeper cells into the European Union.
Haldenwang highlighted the threat posed by the Central Asian ISIS branch Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISPK)/(ISIS-K), the group believed to be responsible for the Moscow concert hall attack that killed 145 and injured hundreds more in March carried out by gunmen from Tajikistan.
“The ISPK has also managed to bring followers to Western Europe, possibly via the wave of refugees from Ukraine, who are now staying here in various Western European countries,” the spy chief admitted in comments reported by Der Tagesspiegel.
Nevertheless, the Angela Merkel-appointed spy chief maintained that the largest danger posed to German democracy was from “right-wing extremism”.
According to his report, There were around 40,600 suspected right-wing extremists, an estimated 14,500 of whom are believed to be willing to use violence. Meanwhile, the BvF said that there were around 37,000 suspected left-wing extremists, with around 11,200 capable of taking violent actions.
Meanwhile, the domestic intel agency also said that there was a 56.6 per cent increase in reported antisemitic incidents in Germany last year, with a 45 per cent increase in violent anti-Jewish offences.
Quote:An Iraqi man who is accused of standing by to carry out attacks for the Islamic State group after he arrived in Germany in 2022 has been arrested, prosecutors said Thursday.
The suspect, identified only as Mahmoud A. in line with German privacy rules, was arrested on Wednesday in Esslingen, near Stuttgart in southwestern Germany, federal prosecutors said in a statement. A judge ordered him to be kept in custody on suspicion of membership in a foreign terrorist organization pending a possible indictment.
He is accused of joining IS in Iraq in or before May 2016 and fighting for the extremist group.
Prosecutors said that Mahmoud A. arrived in Germany in October 2022 and stood by to carry out attacks on behalf of IS. They didn’t specify whether any specific attacks were ever planned.
Quote:Three young teenagers have been arrested in France after the anti-semitic-inspired gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl after dragging her into an abandoned building in Courbevoie.
While walking home on Saturday through a local park, the young Jewish girl came in contact with two boys, who forced her to follow them to a nearby abandoned daycare centre. They were met by a third boy, who began insulting the 12-year-old girl about her religion, allegedly referring to her as a “dirty Jew”, according to police information cited by Le Figaro.
The situation dramatically escalated, with the young girl being beaten and thrown to the ground as the boys took pictures of her. One of her assailants is said to have held a lighter close to her face, threatening to “burn” her.
Then they allegedly began to gang rape the 12-year-old, violently forcing vaginal and anal penetration and fellatio. Her attackers also reportedly threatened to kill her if she spoke with the police.
However, having told her parents of the attack, the family did go to the police. Three boys, aged 12, 13 and 14 were arrested in connection to the alleged rape based on visual descriptions confirmed by a friend of the 12-year-old girl as well as from CCTV footage placing the three youths near the scene of the incident. The rape was later confirmed by a gynaecological examination at the Garches Medico-Judicial Center.
ASIA
Pelosi Visited India While Xi Jinping Traveled to Tibet
Quote:Chinese dictator Xi Jinping dashed to Tibet on Wednesday to meet with Communist Party officials after former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and a bipartisan congressional group met with the Dalai Lama in India.
The Dalai Lama is the 88-year-old exiled spiritual leader of the oppressed Tibetans, whose language, culture, and religion are under constant attack from Xi’s tyranny. Among other depredations, the Chinese government has claimed the power to control the Dalai Lama’s spiritual reincarnation.
Pelosi and the sitting congressional representatives met with the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, a northern Indian city in the Himalayas, where the exiled Tibetan religious leader has dwelled for most of his long life. The group also met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi during the trip to India.
Pelosi taunted Xi by saying the Dalai Lama would be remembered far better by historians.
Sure, they will remember him... as the guy that licked a poor kid!
Quote:The Chinese Communist regime admitted on Wednesday that it used force to board Filipino ships and force them out of the Philippines’ territorial waters, an act of piracy the Chinese touted as a “police action” because the Filipinos entered an area illegally claimed by China.
The Philippine military said its forces used their “bare hands” to fend off Chinese “barbarians” and demanded China pay damages for its conduct during the incident.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) posted video and photos of the encounter on Wednesday night, showing Chinese personnel attacking their rigid-hulled inflatable boats (RHIBs) with knives, axes, and poles.
[X Posts]
As with so many chapters in the growing tension between China and the Philippines, the incident on Monday occurred when the Philippine military was attempting to resupply its outpost in the Spratly Islands on the Second Thomas Shoal, which Filipinos refer to as Ayungin Shoal and China calls Ren’ai Reef.
The shoal is considered a “disputed” territory, although an international tribunal rejected China’s claim to the area in 2016. China ignored the judgment and has been trying to seize the area by force ever since.
Quote:Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un exchanged lavish gifts at a ceremony on Wednesday in Pyongyang, which the Russian leader visited for the first time in 24 years on Tuesday.
Putin arrived in the North Korean capital on Tuesday for a quick two-day official visit that was part of a broader international tour. Putin then traveled to communist Vietnam on Thursday.
During Putin’s stay in North Korea, he and Kim boosted their countries’ relationship to that of a “comprehensive strategic partnership” and signed a mutual defense treaty that calls for both countries to assist each other in the event that either is militarily attacked. They then exchanged gifts, as is traditional in high-level diplomatic engagements.
The Russian state news agency Tass reported on Thursday that Kim gave Putin, a well-known dog-lover, two Pungsan hunting dogs. The Pungsan is a rare breed of Korean canine considered the national dog of North Korea. Putin received the dogs at the Kumsusan Guesthouse in Pyongyang.
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“Dogs, when fighting an opponent, usually gnaw into the other’s neck. But this dog pounces on him in one fell swoop and gnaws into his throat. Thus, the Pungsan mirrors the values of the Korean nation,” Cho Il-kyung, head of North Korea’s National Heritage Preservation Agency, reportedly said, “which hates injustice, cherishes moral duty and is ruthless toward those who dare provoke it.”
Cho — who described the North Korean breed as having a torso that is “small compared to other dogs in the West” but said it is “very intelligent, agile and persistent” — claimed that the Pungsan is considered a “possible ancestor of the famous Japanese Akita and Shiba Inu breeds.”
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Putin graciously accepted the two dogs but has yet to choose names for them. In addition to the two dogs, Putin received “several pieces of art depicting his likeness” as gifts from the North Korean dictator.
Quote:The office of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Thursday expressed “grave concern” about North Korea’s mutual defense pact with Russia and said South Korea may consider supplying arms to Ukraine as part of its response.
“We emphasize that any cooperation that directly or indirectly helps North Korea increase its military power is a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and is subject to monitoring and sanctions by the international community,” said the statement from Yoon’s office on Thursday:
In particular, Russia, which led the resolution on sanctions against North Korea as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, is harming our security by violating the resolution and supporting North Korea, which will inevitably have a negative impact on South Korea-Russia relations.
The presidential statement said South Korea would seek to “further strengthen the extended deterrence of the South Korea-U.S. alliance and the South Korea-U.S.-Japan security cooperation system to neutralize North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles” now that Russia has acted to make North Korea even more of a threat.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the defense pact with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un during Putin’s visit to Pyongyang on Wednesday. The pact represents a dramatic revision of Russia’s policy on North Korea, establishing what Putin described as a “comprehensive partnership” that would “provide for mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties.”
"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.
Welfare agencies are required by federal policy to give illegal immigrants voter registration forms, Alabama secretary of state says
Quote:
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen is sounding the alarm about federal policies enacted by President Biden that he says provide illegal immigrants and non-citizens a "mechanism" to register to vote.
In a recent interview with Fox News Digital, Allen pointed to Executive Order 14019, which was issued in 2021, arguing the Biden administration’s broad interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 "weaponizes and mobilizes the entire federal government apparatus to become voter registration agencies."
...
That includes illegal immigrants and non-citizens, Allen said, arguing how the 2021 executive order came without tools to verify the forms are sent to only U.S. citizens.
These individuals receive information on voter registration regardless of whether they are ultimately approved to receive the public benefits they applied for, he said.
"And that's why it's so vitally important that the federal government, Congress, reform the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and then allow the states to conduct their own voter registration, take it out of the hands of the federal government," Allen said. "It's through state agencies that are federally funded and, of course, mandated by federal law, which is the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. And it doesn't matter how they come in contact through the mail or through in-person or through online, if they are applying for these public benefits, if they come in contact with that agency, they are receiving the voter registration form. And that's very, very troubling that non-citizens, whether legal or illegal immigrants, are receiving those voter registration forms."
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In March, Allen testified before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee about the limited tools available to state election officials to guarantee that only U.S. citizens are registering to vote or voting in elections.
At the hearing, he testified how his office in December had asked the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services for a list of non-citizens to be able to cross‐check the voter file in Alabama. But the federal government denied that request and instead directed the Alabama secretary of state’s office to use the Systematic Alien Verification Entitlements (SAVE) program to verify citizenship.
Yet, SAVE explicitly states that it is not to be used to verify citizenship for the purposes of voter registration, Allen testified.
"The federal government and the federal courts have blocked previous efforts by states to verify citizenship and I think that it is important now more than ever, especially given what is happening at our southern border," Allen told the committee.
Speaking with Fox News Digital on Monday, Allen advocated for two pieces of legislation at the federal level. First, he supported the Citizen Ballot Protection Act, which was first introduced by Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., in December and sponsored in the House by Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala. The proposal would permit a state to include as part of the mail voter registration form a requirement that applicants provide proof of citizenship.
Secondly, Allen also praised the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, introduced just last month by Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah. That legislation would require states to obtain proof of citizenship — in person — when registering an individual to vote and require states to remove non-citizens from existing voter rolls.
"It's a top priority of other secretaries of state of like mind, Republican secretaries of state, that we are watching this very, very closely and trying to bring to light what's going on and the need to reform the National Voter Registration Act of 1993," Allen told Fox News Digital.
He said that not only other officials but the general public in his state cares about election integrity.
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On Tuesday, Allen also called out a new executive order (EO) issued by President Biden this week that is expected to shield as many as 500,000 illegal immigrants from deportation. It was widely criticized by Republicans, who argued the order serves as an election-year ploy by Biden to win over Hispanic and Latino voters by allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the country indefinitely under "parole in place" while receiving taxpayer-funded benefits.
"Today, Biden issued an EO to offer mass amnesty to illegal immigrants currently residing in our country," Allen said in a statement. "Couple this with his previous voter registration EO and it is clear that Biden is attempting to win the upcoming election, not by winning over legitimate American voters, but by attempting to legitimize illegal immigrants. He won’t stop with this EO. He will keep attempting to dilute the power of the vote of legal Americans. Biden and his administration are radical and lawless."
Reached for comment about both executive orders, a White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital, "It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. Receiving protection from deportation does not give an individual the right to vote."
Alabama state law ensures that paper ballots are used in every election and the tabulators used on Election Day cannot be connected to the internet.
Allen also praised the state’s photo identification law, which requires anyone who shows up to vote to present a valid photo ID.
"We feel those are good, strong statutes to make sure that our elections are strong, safe, secure, transparent and accountable in the state of Alabama," Allen told Fox News Digital. "And so I want the people of this state to understand that it's the top priority of our office, this administration, every day when we come into this state Capitol to make sure the elections are strong in our state. And then at the end of the night, you're going to know who wins and loses in Alabama."
While it is illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections anywhere across the country, several local jurisdictions, including in California, Maryland, Vermont and New York, have enacted laws allowing non-citizens to vote in city or municipal elections in recent years. More than 500 non-citizens registered to vote in the Washington, D.C., council elections which took place earlier this month.
Allen stressed that there is no such jurisdiction in the state of Alabama. On necessary reforms to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, Allen said the law does not allow states to remove people who have moved out of state from the voter rolls in a timely manner. It currently takes four years to complete that process, while Allen argued it should instead take only two.
Up is down, left is right and sideways is straight ahead. - Cord "Circle of Iron", 1978 (written by Bruce Lee and James Coburn... really...)
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