02 U.S. Politics

Cornyn and Tillis Will Support Blanche for Attorney General, but Only at Cost of Key Fund – PJ Media pjmedia.com
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Unfortunately, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has sacrificed the Anti-Weaponization Fund to help victims of Biden-era federal attacks in order to secure support for Donald Trump’s attorney general pick.

While Democrats always cultishly vote for every wacko and criminal a Dem president nominates, Republicans too often take delight in thwarting their party’s goals and defying their constituents. It is frankly disgusting that Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) demanded the DOJ give up on putting through the Anti-Weaponization Fund. First, the Democrats arrested, spied upon, and jailed thousands of Americans for political reasons. Then Senate Republicans ensured that the victims had no funds for obtaining redress and justice.

Cornyn—who, thank God, will be out of the Senate next year—could be engaging in these petty games just to give the finger to Donald Trump, as Trump endorsed Ken Paxton in the Texas GOP Senate primary. Cornyn lost to Paxton, who is much more hardcore MAGA.

Uncertainty on Iranians’ minds as Trump fluctuates on war and talk | US-Israel war on Iran News www.aljazeera.com
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Tehran, Iran – For months now, US President Donald Trump has been making nearly daily proclamations about the war on Iran – from threats of extensive bombing to claims of renewed negotiations. But Faezeh, a financial firm employee in Iran’s capital, says she has long stopped paying attention.

“His words certainly impact our lives, but I try to escape this toxic environment of uncertainty by focusing on what I can control and protecting myself and my loved ones,” the 27-year-old told Al Jazeera.

She is not the only one to do so.

As the war approaches its six-month mark, a number of Iranians are opting against chasing the non-stop headlines in an effort to protect their mental health. This week, as the threat of large-scale US military action once again loomed large, the level of expectation and concern among Iranians appeared to be much lower than on April 7, when the US president warned that “a whole civilisation will die tonight”, only to announce a ceasefire shortly afterwards.

“The US used to have presidents who talked less and did more,” asserted Roham, a colleague of Faezeh at the financial company in central Tehran. “But now with the role of social media and other outlets in which Mr Trump is well-versed, he talks more and doesn’t have to do as much,” he told Al Jazeera.

Japan, US confirm joint yen-buying intervention, signal more action www.channelnewsasia.com
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Japan has been struggling to curb a relentless drop in the yen that pushes up import prices and stokes broader inflation, hitting households’ wallets and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s public approval ratings.

Tokyo’s solo intervention conducted between late April and early May caused only a brief yen rebound. The BOJ’s June rate hike to a 31-year high of 1 per cent also gave the struggling currency little lasting boost.

Friday’s joint intervention followed Tokyo’s solo intervention worth up to US$58.97 billion in New York markets a day earlier.

In a sign of further Japan-US coordination, Bessent said the United States would consider increasing in coming months the size of the Federal Reserve’s repurchase facility providing temporary dollar liquidity, calling the tool an “important backstop”.

In a 2-1 ruling the U.S. Court of Appeals of the First Circuit ruled Christian private schools that take any funds from the state of Maine can legally be required to openly accept and celebrate homonormativity even though it directly contradicts God’s Word.

The court wrote, “Just as combatting religious discrimination qualifies as a legitimate governmental pursuit, so too combatting sexual-orientation and gender-identity discrimination rises to that level.”

The ruling effectively forces Christian schools to withdraw all business with the state. If upheld by SCOTUS, it would create a hierarchy of value of rights that favored sexuality and gender fluidity over religious belief. This would end religious freedom in America, as it has ended, for now, in Maine.

Religious schools that get public funds must follow Maine’s antidiscrimination laws, court rules – Texarkana Gazette
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Private religious schools that receive public funds must follow state laws that prohibit discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation or religion, a federal court ruled last week.

The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston came after two schools — Saint Dominic Academy in Auburn and Bangor Christian Schools, run by Crosspoint Church — asked for exemptions from the Maine Human Rights Act so they wouldn’t be required to enforce policies that contradicted their religious beliefs, such as admitting students who were openly gay or transgender, for instance, or requiring teachers to use students’ preferred pronouns.

The appeals court largely upheld a lower court’s decision denying this exemption, but it differed in its opinion of the state’s rules around religious expression and asked that the lower court reconsider how that provision applies to religious schools.

Catherine Herridge has been covering the efforts by progressives in the Trump administration who appear to have committed acts of treason by knowingly omitting and altering intelligence reports on China to protect China from Trump’s scrutiny.

Herridge claimed, “They had to save President Trump from his own instincts, from his own tendencies, and that there was very much a globalist view. And they had to preserve a globalist view. So, whether it was downplaying or suppressing intelligence about the threat from China, whether it was giving a pass and calling the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation, there was this level of a bureaucracy, a kind of conspiracy that was making decisions about the kind of information that should be reaching policy makers and ultimately the commander-in-chief.”

Catherine Herridge Exposes The Forces Working Against Trump From Within Intel Agencies trendingpoliticsnews.com
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Veteran investigative reporter Catherine Herridge reported during an appearance on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight,” that a senior member of former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group, known as the DIG, described a pattern in which intelligence community officials acted on the belief that they needed to protect a globalist perspective by limiting certain information provided to policymakers, including President Donald Trump.

Herridge’s comments came amid discussion of recently declassified federal documents related to intelligence assessments from 2020 concerning China’s election influence operations. Those records, which were released in connection with a primetime address by President Trump the prior week, included internal communications indicating that some intelligence reports had been edited to remove references linking China’s activities to the 2020 U.S. election.

One November 20, 2020, email from a Strategic Intelligence Analyst in China and North Korea Strategic Assessments stated that officials had “deliberately massaged our one pending PDB (President’s Daily Brief) to avoid any direct links to the election.”

Herridge noted that she had reviewed the materials and found consistency with earlier whistleblower allegations that intelligence about China’s multi-domain influence efforts—aimed at impeding then-President Trump’s re-election and denigrating him as a candidate—had been suppressed or altered. In the same interview, Herridge connected these developments to broader observations shared by a source within Gabbard’s investigative team.

A Federal District Court has ruled that the state of Illinois cannot offer in-state college tuition benefits to illegal aliens. Federal law explicitly prohibits states from providing college aid to illegal aliens. The ruling struck down a law passed by the Illinois legislature and signed into law by Progressive Governor J.B. Pritzker.

The Judge ruling in the case wrote, “Put simply,” he wrote, “U.S. citizens or nationals must be treated no worse than illegal aliens.” The state has 14 days

Court Strikes Down Illinois In-State Tuition Benefits for Illegal Aliens legalinsurrection.com
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In a rebuke to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a federal district court has struck down Illinois laws providing in-state tuition benefits to illegal aliens—a setback to the sanctuary-state governor’s broader immigration agenda.

The ruling also marks the latest win in the Trump administration’s campaign to end taxpayer-funded tuition benefits for illegal aliens, a fight Legal Insurrection has covered from the beginning.

Illinois’ laws allowed illegal aliens to qualify for reduced in-state tuition rates and for other benefits, including scholarships. Meanwhile, American citizens from other states were not offered these same reduced tuition rates or benefits.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit ruled 2-1 that a Christian teacher in a public school cannot show students any material that contradicts the school’s supremacist LGBTQ plus ideology. This ideology compels forced acceptance of belief, including gender fluidity and transitioning children, which is an existential challenge to American Rule of Law, where no entity, government or private, can compel belief or speech.

The dissenting Judge, Lawrence VanDyke, wrote, “Could public school administrators establish a policy allowing office decoration with partisan political messages deemed sufficiently ‘compassionate’ but prohibit—as inherently ‘hostile’—any political speech that did not align with the Democratic Socialists of America platform?…

If your instinctual answer to each of these questions is ‘No!’… you might be an everyday American. But according to the majority today, you vastly overestimate the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech in our nation’s schools. In a decision that is irreconcilable with Supreme Court precedent, the majority announces an expansive new rule that all expression by public-school employees that might be observed by students is necessarily government speech, and not the personal speech of an American citizen—even when any reasonable observer would perceive the speech as the employee’s own personal expression.”

Ninth Circuit Upholds Ban on Christian Employee’s Books www.standingforfreedom.com
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In completely ignoring the Supreme Court’s landmark free speech ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton, the federal appellate court insists that staff who express beliefs that don’t align with a school’s established orthodoxy can be fired.


[UPDATE] On Tuesday, a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Oregon social worker Rod Theis has no free speech right to display books in his public school office that disagree with radical gender ideology — and that his firing was justified.

Theis, a devout Christian, used to work as an education specialist for InterMountain Education Service District, which required him to travel to different district schools to administer standardized tests to students. He was not a teacher and rarely had contact with most students but did have office space in two of the districts’ schools.

Many InterMountain district staff, including teachers, are allowed to decorate their classrooms and offices with various posters, flags, and books that promote Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ messages, pride flags, political candidates, views on political and social topics, and more. While still employed there, Theis followed their lead by displaying three children’s books — Johnny the Walrus, He is He, and She is She — in his offices. The three books teach the biblical view that sex is unchanging and that children should accept themselves as the sex they were born.

Though no student or parent ever complained about the books, one teacher in 2024 researched the books online, determined that they promote a “binary view of gender,” and filed a complaint, claiming that the three books are “transphobic” and therefore offensive. In response, InterMountain officials ordered Theis to remove the books. He filed a lawsuit and received an injunction from a district court that allowed him to display the books when students were not present. Soon thereafter, the same hostile teacher sent several students to Theis’s office, asking to see the books, to which he eventually agreed; the staff member caught Theis on video showing the books to the students, and the school district fired him.

Israeli settlers set fire to West Bank mosques after deadly clash www.channelnewsasia.com
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The Palestinian Authority, which has responsibility for the section of the West Bank where Friday’s shootings took place, said the incident was part of a broader assault on Palestinians.

“Israeli state-backed settler terrorism is intensifying into systematic pogroms across the occupied West Bank,” the Palestinian prime minister’s office said in a statement on X.

The Israeli military said troops sent to Qusra, which sits near several large Israeli settlements, had found graffiti and signs of arson and were searching for suspects. Police officers would be sent to collect evidence, it said.

“The security forces strongly condemn incidents of this kind, including harm to religious sites, and will continue to act decisively to maintain security and public order in the area,” the military said.

An Israeli military official said such violence by Israelis diverted the defence force’s attention from its primary mission of defence and counter-terrorism in a complex environment. The official said, however, that over the weekend troops arrested more than 130 individuals, including weapons traffickers, Hamas operatives, individuals involved in incitement and people planning imminent attacks.

In separate incidents, Palestinian officials said settlers had also tried to burn a mosque near Kour, southeast of Tulkarm, and attacked Palestinian workers at a stone-cutting facility in the town of Kafr Malik, near Ramallah.

Farid Jiyousi, a member of the Kour village council, said three settlers had tried to set the mosque ablaze at dawn but worshippers had put out the fire before it reached the mosque’s main area. “This is the first attack our village has experienced,” he said, adding that the attackers had also sprayed Hebrew graffiti on the mosque walls.

ICC Prosecutor Whose Netanyahu Warrant Fueled Mamdani Arrest Threat is Fired Over Sexual Abuse gellerreport.com
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A female ICC legal assistant has accused the disgusting ICC prosecutor Karim Khan of sexual misconduct. Khan issued an arrest warrant against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, so that he could divert attention from these sexual misconduct allegations. This is the latest example of why the ICC is an illegitimate and corrupt court that should be dismantled.

The scumbag mayor of NYC (and many other lowlife political leaders) vowed to arrest the Israeli PM based on the arrest warrant issued by Khan.

Multiple Jewish Bakeries SHOT AT, Attacked with Gunfire and Vandalism in Antisemitic Attacks gellerreport.com
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Multiple Jewish-owned Toronto bakeries targeted in antisemitic attacks

Toronto police are investigating after two locations of Jewish-owned Kiva’s bagel bar were targeted in separate incidents Sunday morning, including one where a window was struck by gunfire.

In multiple posts to social media, police say officers were first called to the Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue West area at around 8 a.m. after reports that a window at a Jewish-owned bakery had been struck by gunfire.

Investigators located evidence of a firearm discharge at the scene. However, no injuries were reported.

Roughly 20 minutes later, officers responded to another location of the “same Jewish owned bakery chain” near Bathurst Street and Steeles Avenue West after receiving reports of a broken window.

“We don’t know when the shooting occurred. Both incidents occurred sometime overnight,” police told CP24 in an email.

At this time, no suspect descriptions have been provided.

Russia and Ukraine trade attacks, killing 10, including child in Chernihiv | Russia-Ukraine war News www.aljazeera.com
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Russian forces have killed at least six people in Ukraine, according to officials, after launching ballistic missile attacks on the capital, Kyiv, and strikes on other regions, including a supermarket in the northern city of Chernihiv.

The attacks on Sunday came as Russian officials said that Moscow-occupied areas of Ukraine had also come under fire, with four people killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on the occupied city of Horlivka.

Ukraine’s air ⁠force said Russia had launched seven ballistic missiles and 136 drones at Ukraine overnight. Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv cities were all hit.

In northern Chernihiv, officials said a Russian drone hit a supermarket, killing two people, including a nine-year-old girl, and wounding 25 others.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as a “deeply cynical drone strike on an ordinary supermarket”.

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, one person was killed and 16 others required medical attention after a daytime drone attack, the local mayor said.

“This is deliberate Russian terror with absolutely no military justification,” Zelenskyy said.

Pentagon lists 4 killed in Iran war under “Overseas Operations Casualties” on website www.cbsnews.com
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The Pentagon website that informs the public about the dead and wounded in military conflicts now lists four service members killed in Jordan and Iraq in July under “Overseas Operations Casualties” — separate from 14 other service members who have been killed during the war with Iran.

The other 14 appear in th

DNC chair threw phone in frustration as strains for Democrats show ahead of midterms, report says www.independent.co.uk
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Trump Dismisses Claims U.S. Is Short on Munitions in Iran Fight www.breitbart.com
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President Donald Trump dismissed reports that the United States is running short on munitions for the conflict with Iran, telling the Wall Street Journal on Sunday that the U.S. military has “far more munitions than anyone in the world, and far more than we need” as his administration continued weighing diplomacy alongside the possibility of renewed military escalation.

Trump’s comments pushed back against reports from the New York Times and other outlets that concerns over declining stocks of Patriot and other air defense interceptors factored into internal deliberations over whether to expand the U.S. military campaign against Iran, even as the administration has emphasized that diplomatic efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz remain underway.

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz reinforced Trump’s message, declaring that “the U.S. military, and I’ve verified this every which way, has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign as effectively as it needs to be,” while insisting Trump is “keeping all options on the table” as he gives negotiations “some space” to continue.

“I have to tell you, the people that are leaking this nonsense deserve to be in jail,” Waltz said on Meet the Press, while acknowledging that years of military support for Ukraine and operations against the Houthis had strained some inventories before President Donald Trump took office. Waltz argued the administration is rebuilding stockpiles while shifting toward newer, less expensive munitions and other emerging technologies.

Speaking on Fox News, Waltz said the administration’s military campaign had focused on degrading Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping and regional stability, arguing that “the Iranian regime is isolated, economically devastated, militarily devastated,” and adding that Tehran was beginning to struggle financially, including paying government workers and members of its military.

The administration’s public defense of its military readiness follows reports that Trump postponed a planned expansion of the U.S. air campaign after meeting Friday with senior advisers, amid a broader debate over the costs and risks of escalating the conflict while diplomatic efforts continued.

According to the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, U.S. military planners had prepared an expanded campaign that could have lasted up to two weeks before Trump opted to allow diplomacy additional time. The newspaper reported that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine informed senior officials about declining inventories of Patriot and other air defense interceptors, while assessing that lower stockpiles would increase operational risk but would not prevent renewed military operations if Trump ordered them.

 

Christian school chaplain wins settlement after firing over LGBTQ sermon – Fox News
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A school chaplain in the United Kingdom who was fired and blacklisted after preaching a sermon on LGBTQ issues has reached a confidential settlement with his former employer, ending a seven-year legal battle.

The Rev. Bernard Randall, an ordained Church of England minister, worked for five years as chaplain at Trent College, an independent school for K-12 students in Derbyshire, England. In 2018, Randall grew concerned when the school partnered with Educate and Celebrate, an outside group whose stated goal was to “smash heteronormativity” and embed queer theory in school culture. The group has since dissolved.

“I objected to [it] at the time it started, and tried to discuss it with the senior leadership, [but] they weren’t interested,” Randall told Fox News Digital.

The following year, a student asked Randall why pupils were required to accept LGBTQ ideology at a Christian school. Randall said that question, along with similar concerns raised by other students and staff, prompted him to deliver a sermon on freedom of belief and conscience.

Chicago To Lose Seven Grocery Stores After Food Stamps Cuts www.louderwithcrowder.com
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Chicago is expected to lose at least seven grocery stores. This news comes after the city spent nearly $14 million to keep them there.

This was also announced just one day after the mayor claimed he grew the city economically more than any other mayor before him. Something is not adding up here.

The evidence proves otherwise.

Per Fox 11:

City officials are looking for ways to save them, but the deadline is just days away and it looks like those seven stores will close Saturday.

Let’s hope they keep this solution under $14 million.

The Save A Lot company said in a statement that dramatic cuts to SNAP benefits severely impacted these stores. The franchise owner, Yellow Banana, had other financial troubles and then suddenly, the CEO of the company died of a stroke.

A spokesperson for the company said the following:

“Unfortunately, these stores have continued to face significant challenges, including dramatic cuts to SNAP benefits which have severely impacted these stores. Compared to last year, the stores have experienced a 26% decline in SNAP/EBT tender types,” the spokesperson said.

Wokeness Made People ‘More Respectful And Empathetic,’ Fuentes Says During Hunter Biden Interview–  dailycaller.com

Wokeness Made People ‘More Respectful And Empathetic,’ Fuentes Says During Hunter Biden Interview dailycaller.com
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Conservative political commentator Nick Fuentes suggested that the fruits of woke culture isn’t all bad.

During an interview with Nick Fuentes and Hunter Biden uploaded Friday by YouTuber Andrew Callaghan, the 27-year-old conservative voice suggested that woke culture has had long-term benefits. “I don’t think everything about wokeism was bad. I think genuinely it has made people more respectful and empathetic,” Fuentes told Callaghan on his page “Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan.”

WATCH:

“Wokeism had its excesses. Edge-lording also has its excesses … I think we’re at a middle point between saying the edgiest thing we can think of with no regard for anyone and saying ‘everything is racist … you should lose your job,” he said. (RELATED: California Republican Party Plans To Block Candidates Aligned With Nick Fuentes)

Flock Drones Next? City Approves Three-Year Contract For New Technology wltreport.com
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Flock Safety has caused much controversy across the United States with its automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras.

Despite privacy, tracking, and data sharing concerns, some local municipalities are acquiring additional Flock technology.

Newport just became the second city in Rhode Island to approve the purchase of Flock Safety First Responder Drones.

The Newport City Council voted unanimously to approve a three-year, $375,000 contract with Flock Group Inc. for a pilot drone program.

Watch a video demonstration below showing Flock’s drone technology:

DSA Co-Chair Goes All In on Abolishing ICE, Senate legalinsurrection.com
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The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are done hiding the ball.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, DSA co-chair Megan Romer was handed a list of the group’s positions and asked for a simple true-or-false answer on each one. She confirmed nearly all of them without qualification. The few she hedged, she hedged only on timing.

BREAM: So we’re going to put up on the screen a few of the things that are part of your platform, and I want to ask you, just give me sort of a true or false on these. Abolish the Senate?

ROMER: True.

BREAM: Okay. Replace the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them?

ROMER: Yep.

BREAM: Abolish ICE?

ROMER: Absolutely.

BREAM: Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone currently in the U.S. illegally?

ROMER: As a long-term plan, yep.

BREAM: Defund the Pentagon?

ROMER: Absolutely.

BREAM: Abolish prisons, at least in large part?

ROMER: Yeah, again, as part of a long-term program, yeah.

BREAM: Okay, so no prisons. Government or public ownership of most large corporations?

ROMER: Yeah, absolutely. 

That was not a Republican’s description of the DSA platform. It came straight from the group’s co-chair.

Trump revives old tropes as he pushes warnings of ‘communist menace’ | Donald Trump www.theguardian.com
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Perhaps above all else, Donald Trump is a child of the cold war.

Three months before the US president was born, Winston Churchill delivered a historic speech in Fulton, Missouri, that ushered in a generations-long existential struggle between western capitalism and Soviet communism.

Lamenting the spread of Soviet communism across eastern Europe following the allied victory in the second world war, Churchill – by then no longer British prime minister – warned his audience on 5 March 1946 that “an iron curtain has descended across the continent”.

It was the prelude to a nuclear-armed standoff between Washington and Moscow that triggered a hysteria-driven “red scare” in the US – leading to the execution of convicted spies and exemplified by witch-hunts instigated by the Republican senator Joe McCarthy, who claimed he had obtained lists of communist agents working in the state department and other key areas of American life.

The hunt for communists would have been a ubiquitous theme of Trump’s early childhood.