An Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle departs after receiving fuel from a KC-135 Stratotanker over Southwest Asia, Dec. 22, 2020.

(JNS) -- The White House is holding up delivery of a fleet of F-15 jet fighters to Israel.

The $18 billion sale of 50 fighter planes is “one of the largest arms deals with Israel in recent years,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

“When Secretary Blinken was recently here in Israel, we had a candid conversation, I said I deeply appreciated the support the U.S. has given Israel from the beginning of the war. pic.twitter.com/xq5iw1JzcU

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) June 18, 2024

The sale had been delayed by two of four congressional leaders needed to sign off on major arms deals, but they removed their objections on May 22.

Read the full story ›

Kim Jong Un

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un have signed an agreement pledging they will come to each other’s aid if either is faced with "aggression" from any adversary.

While the details are not fully known, both leaders agreed that the pact is one of the strongest they have had since Putin's last visit to North Korea in 2000. The agreement emerged after one-on-one talks lasting approximately 90 minutes.

According to a report from Russian news agency Sputnik, Putin said, "A new fundamental document was prepared today, something that will form the basis of the long-term relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang."

White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby said the Biden administration was "not concerned about the trip. What we are concerned about is the deepening relationship between the two countries."

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U.S. officials further noted that North Korea may be supplying the Russian military with ballistic missiles and other munitions to use in the war against Ukraine, in exchange for economic assistance and technology transfers.

Putin received a red-carpet welcome and both leaders were seen riding in a luxury limousine together.

North Korea previously had a treaty with the former Soviet Union in 1961. That alliance, according to the treaty document, was "based on the principle of socialist internationalism" and to "promote the maintenance and strengthening of peace and security in the Far East and throughout the world in accordance with the purposes and principles of the United Nations."

However, Eurasia Group founder and President Ian Bremmer told Fox Business that Russia’s new agreement with North Korea should be concerning for everyone.

"The Russians cannot get military equipment directly from countries that are concerned about facing American, European, Japanese and South Korea sanctions, so that doesn't leave many countries out there willing and capable to help Russia with their war effort," Bremmer said. He added that Russia has thus been forced to partner with countries that are considered "rogue," like Iran and North Korea, and that they have the economic means to get what they want.

"The fact that this country is now working so closely with a chaos actor like North Korea, that we have no influence over, we have very little intelligence about, we have no engagement with, should be a serious concern for pretty much everyone out there," Bremmer said.

Putin has reportedly now flown to Vietnam to reinforce long-standing military ties between the two countries.

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German economist and World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab made waves on social media this week after a leaked video from a September 2022 WEF Young Global Leaders conference showed Schwab telling his audience that merging human beings with technology could be used as a way to circumvent death and live forever.

A well-known proponent of "The Great Reset," Schwab envisions a future where all of humanity will live under the yolk of a One World Government, where citizens will "own nothing" and "be happy."

In the video, Schwab touted the benefits of transhumanism to his audience, stating that a person would be able to have a 50-year career through life-extending technologies that includes injections, and the use of avatars in place of a body after it dies.

In a leaked recording of a private WEF Young Global Leaders indoctrination session, Klaus Schwab promises new recruits that their "avatars" will continue to live on after they die, and that their brains "will be replicated through artificial intelligence and algorithms".

"You… pic.twitter.com/c8qEBctl15

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) June 12, 2024

"Your avatar will continue to live, and your brain will be replicated through artificial intelligence and algorithms." Schwab said, adding this could happen within the next 50 years.

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Yuval Noah Harari, a World Economic Forum lecturer and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, claims “We are probably one of the last generations of homo sapiens," and says that eventually "those who own the data" will be able to "hack" human beings.

Transhumanism, according to an article by the WEF published in 2018, is a movement wherein advocates believe the human condition can be enhanced by technology in all forms, including genetic engineering, bioengineering, artificial intelligence and molecular nanotechnology.

Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum

The WEF article goes on to note that the end result of a fusion between human and machine would be an "enhanced or augmented" version of homo sapiens – but still insists the person would remain fundamentally human.

However, a journal published in 2018, "Transhumanism as the dominant ideology of the fourth industrial revolution" by Klaus-Gerd Giesen, a professor of political science at Clermont Auvergne University in Clermont-Ferrand, France, contradicts this premise.

Giesen states that transhumanist thought can be broken down into three main underpinnings: 1) humans are fundamentally obsolete, 2) there must be a complete integration between human and machine, and 3) doing this would make human beings transcend humanity itself – essentially enabling a person to become a technological god.

"The very concept of human resources may be rendered obsolete, with workers becoming just another technological resource: a mere tool of production ... And the fact that this project has found support among very important sections of the state apparatus and the private sector is highly significant," Giesen states in his journal.

According to Giesen, a transhumanist's main goal is undoing the current world order and replacing it completely with a new set of values that would eventually result in a redistribution of wealth and the restructuring of social classes.

Susan Levin, a professor in the Humanities and chair of the philosophy department at Smith University, stated during a 2021 interview that even if technology and science were able to deliver a transhuman world, people still shouldn't want to get on board.

"We should have serious qualms about signing on. For they largely presume the veracity of their own, highly contentious and constrictive answers to longstanding questions in Western philosophy about human nature and a flourishing life. Why should we accept their extreme version of rational essentialism, which excludes a necessary role for emotion in a life well lived?" Levin said.

Meanwhile, Schwab and other global "elites" like Microsoft founder Bill Gates have been a driving force behind efforts to lower birth rates through funding abortion, vaccines and contraception. It seems like an about-face to push for people to "live forever," although arguably a transhuman, part-machine population devoid of its humanity might be easier to control.

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Anti-Israel protests at Columbia University on Sunday, April 21, 2024

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Paul Sperry
Real Clear Wire

Echoing the Muslim prophet Muhammad, Professor Hatem Bazian, a tenured University of California, Berkeley professor, told his fellow Muslims: “The Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews.”

At the Santa Clara conference sponsored by the American Muslim Alliance, Bazian exhorted the crowd: “They are on the west side of the river, which is the Jordan River, and you’re on the east side until the trees and the stones will say, ‘Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him!’ And that’s in the Hadith [the sayings and deeds of Muhammad] about this. This is a future battle before the Day of Judgment.”

Bazian’s threatening prophecy from 1999 might be lost to history but for the central role he has been playing in the anti-Israel protests that have erupted at college campuses. Two groups he helped create, Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine, have been instrumental in organizing the demonstrations. In recent months he has visited the encampments from coast to coast, exhorting students to condemn Israel for launching counterstrikes in Gaza after marauding Hamas terrorists attacked and slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis in October and took hundreds of others captive, including several Americans. Bazian has urged students to call on administrators and national leaders to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza, whom he claims are victims of a “genocide” carried out by the Israeli government.

Although many opponents of Israel’s war against Hamas deny that their movement is tied to antisemitism, critics say Bazian’s deep involvement in the protests and his long history of inflammatory rhetoric against the Jewish people puts that claim in doubt. “The campus unrest is being driven by people with a very troubling past,” said Jon Schanzer, a former U.S. Treasury counterterrorism official. “They’re trying to legitimize Hamas.”

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Drawing on a wide array of public records, RealClearInvestigations found that Bazian has been agitating against Jews and Israel on college campuses for decades. His 1999 exhortation of Holy War between Muslims and Jews was part of a larger pattern of words and deeds in which he sought to radicalize young Americans against the Jewish people. Bazian’s history – and the top place he holds in the ongoing turmoil – also reveal the key role he’s long planned for America’s institutions of higher learning to play in mainstreaming and spreading ideas that many people consider hateful.

A Palestinian immigrant, Bazian was born in the West Bank town of Nablus and attended high school in Jordan. He graduated from San Francisco State University and then moved to Berkeley, where he chairs the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project.

Upon arriving at Berkeley in 1993, Bazian helped start the first college chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine – whose national organization says it supports more than 350 “Palestinian solidarity organizations.” In 2006, he co-founded its umbrella organization, American Muslims for Palestine. “We support campus activism through Students for Justice in Palestine,” AMP states on its website.

“AMP is directly involved in the campus chaos,” Schanzer said, by helping coordinate protests at colleges where its SJP outposts operate. AMP provides funding and guidance for the chapters for, among other things, holding anti-Israel “teach-ins,” erecting pro-Palestinian tables, crafting media “talking points,” and creating flyers and placards for the campus encampments and occupations that demonize Israel and sanitize Hamas atrocities as “resistance.”

As AMP’s chairman, Bazian has visited several encampments, including at the University of Pennsylvania, San Diego State University, UC-San Diego, University of San Francisco and UC-Berkeley, where his acolytes have set up a “Gaza Solidarity Camp.” RCI’s review of videos posted on social media of his encampment talks reveals he’s instructed students not to be “nice” while protesting, because he said being polite won’t get the attention of college administrators or President Biden, whom he demands divest from Israel and pressure Israel to withdraw from Gaza.

Meanwhile, his organization, which employs a full-time campus outreach coordinator, is under both federal and state investigation for ties to Hamas, and is also a defendant in a major new lawsuit brought by survivors of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack.

A Richardson, Texas-based lawyer representing Bazian and AMP did not reply to requests for comment. After also reaching out to Bazian directly, RCI’s messages went unanswered. Bazian has a history of seeming to endorse, or even call for, violence, and then denying doing so. In 2004, while Hamas was leading a deadly resistance, or “intifada,” in Israel that included suicide bombers, Bazian reportedly called for an “intifada” inside America while addressing a largely Muslim crowd at an anti-Iraq war rally.

“Are you angry? Are you angry?! Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine,” Bazian shouted. “How come we don’t have an intifada in this country?”

“They’re going to say [I’m] some Palestinian being radical – well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet,” he added. “It’s about time we have an intifada in this country!”

He later claimed his remarks were meant to incite only a “political intifada” inside this country, not violent revolt. Last month, while rallying protestors at a University of San Francisco encampment, Bazian again called  for “intifada,” asking students, “Can you all say intifada?”

“Intifada!” protesters shouted back.

Speaking to students gathered outside tents at the same USF rally, Bazian encouraged the forceful taking and “holding” of campus buildings as protesters did at Columbia University before New York police stormed the facility and removed them. Recruiting new protesters, he bellowed, “Let me say we welcome agitators for justice. We celebrate courage and continue to make changes because a free Palestine is a reality that is waiting to be actualized. Free Palestine! Don’t let anyone stop you from making history!”

Student protesters have echoed his rhetoric that Hamas has the right to “resist” Israel by resorting to violence.

On Oct. 7 – the same day as the horrific attacks on Israel which included the murder of hundreds of innocent youths attending a music festival – the flagship Berkeley chapter of Students for Justice In Palestine released a statement with SJP chapters at dozens of other colleges pledging their “unwavering support of the resistance in Gaza … We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Palestine.” Bazian’s flagship group made it clear it was honoring “our comrades in blood and arms” fighting on the ground in Gaza – that is, Hamas – and warned that “what is coming is greater. Victory or martyrdom.”

Parroting Hamas’ rhetoric for annihilating Israel, they then pronounced: “From River to Sea, glory to the Palestinian resistance and glory to our martyrs.” Berkeley’s SJP chapter later held a vigil for “martyrs in Palestine” killed during and after the bloody anti-Israel incursion.

According to an FBI memo, one of the founders of Hamas has stated, “Hamas is a Palestinian Jihad movement that strives for the liberation of all Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the river [Jordan], from the north to the south,” a goal that would erase Israel from the map.

An NPR report earlier this month on the meaning of intifada – an Arabic word that can mean to “shake off” or “uprising” – quoted people who say it is inextricably related to violence and those who say it is not.

Basil Rodriguez, whom NPR identified as a Palestinian American graduate student at Columbia, told the network: “For me, it just speaks to liberation. To free Palestine from the [Israeli] apartheid regime, and the military occupation. For me it calls for freedom and for change.”

Eliana Goldin, whom NPR identified as a Jewish undergraduate and leader of a pro-Israel group at Columbia, said “The word ‘intifada’ was only associated with death and terrorism and destruction. So ‘intifada’ still feels just as charged as if someone were to say Holocaust. Or if someone were to mention any sort of catastrophe that happened against a people that you consider yourself a part of.”

Schanzer, the former Treasury official, agreed. “When they’re calling for an ‘intifada,’ they’re calling for a violent uprising,” he said. “These are things we commonly associate with Hamas rhetoric.”

The next day, Oct. 8, while pockets of Hamas terrorists inside Israel’s borders were still killing, raping, and kidnapping civilians, the National Students for Justice in Palestine, which is controlled by the AMP, distributed a “Resistance Toolkit” that celebrated Hamas’ war crimes as “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance: Across land, air and sea, our people have broken down the artificial barriers” separating Gaza from Israel.

Adopting Bazian’s language about “actualiz[ing]” the creation of a Palestinian state, the toolkit continued to exalt Hamas: “Our people are actualizing revolution. Palestine will be liberated from the river to the sea.” By our people, it meant “our people back home” in Gaza.

Then the toolkit rationalized Hamas’ brutal terrorist tactics, arguing “there is no ‘right’ way for Palestinians to fight.” It added that the Israelis who were murdered were not “civilians” and that their “death falls solely on the zionist entity.”

The toolkit went on to praise the “ingenuity” of Hamas terrorists for capturing an Israeli bulldozer and using it “to breach the illegitimate border fence” and for “neutraliz[ing]” the barrier “in hours.”

“This action of resistance shatters the illusion of Israel as an impenetrable, indestructible entity,” the five-page document gushed while marveling at the “large-scale” battle marshaled by Hamas, which it noted was ongoing. “The resistance fighters are still launching new attacks into [Israel].”

Advocating further violence, the NSJP toolkit advised students that liberating Palestine “requires confrontation by any means necessary” — including “armed struggle,” not just slogans and rallies, which it asserted is “legitimate.” It provided templates of pro-Hamas graphics for student protesters to use for campus posters and other propaganda, including one depicting the Hamas terrorists paragliding into Israel to carry out their mass slaughter.

“We will also be having a ‘how to organize a protest,’ including roles, security, media training, and more, on the national call-in meeting on Oct. 9,” it advised.

In a chilling closing remark, NSJP confirmed it wasn’t just supporting from afar the Oct. 7 actions of Hamas – a specially designated terrorist organization – but was actually a “part” of its movement. “We as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not [just] in solidarity with this movement,” NSJP averred.

The group’s toolkit spread through dorm rooms across the country thanks to social media, and soon anti-Israel protests broke out at major universities using the tactics and propaganda suggested by NSJP. For example:

• Protesters at Tufts University called the terrorists “liberation fighters paragliding into occupied territory,” noting that Hamas had shown “the creativity necessary to take back stolen land.”

• The rabble at Columbia University blamed Israel for the terror attacks, justifying the murder of women and children as provoked by Israeli “oppression.” Demonstrators could be heard chanting support for their “friends and brothers in Hamas,” and actually called on the terrorists to attack Israel again. “Never forget the 7th of October,” some taunted Jewish students. “That will happen … 10,000 more times!” The Anti-Defamation League, moreover, recorded explicit support for terrorism and violence at the Columbia encampment on April 17, when one protestor declared: “We are Hamas,” while others chanted: “Al-Qassam [the name of Hamas’ military wing] you make us proud, kill another [Israeli] soldier now!”

• At several other colleges, SJP-influenced protests featured chants such as “Resistance is justified” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” reflecting the same anti-Israel propaganda distributed by the Berkeley chapter of SJP in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7.

Such militancy is the culmination of decades of grooming by Bazian. In a speech at the 2011 AMP conference in Chicago, he predicted college campuses would be ground zero in the battle for the “Palestine movement.” “The university is going to be the frontline and the pro-Israelis know this,” Bazian said. To that end, AMP expanded its operations on college campuses by founding the National Students for Justice in Palestine to better organize and fund chapters and recruit pro-Palestinian activists.

Some FBI veterans who have investigated the Hamas network of front groups in America say hardcore Muslim leaders like Bazian are brainwashing students into thinking they are part of a heroic struggle for “freedom,” but are merely co-opting them for their own anti-Jewish holy war.

“Bazian and other Muslim organizers keep framing these campus protests as a ‘human-rights’ struggle, when it’s clearly just another front in their religious war,” said former special FBI counterterrorism agent John Guandolo. “This isn’t about freeing Gaza or protecting Palestinian civilians,” he added. “This is about Islam and their hatred of Jews and fulfilling their scriptural commands. This is jihad.”

By hiding the religious element, he said, Bazian has managed to create an army of anti-Israel radicals at several hundred campuses across the country, many of whom are not even Muslim. He says they are being used as proxies in Hamas’ jihad, or holy war, against their Islamic enemy: the Jews. “Bazian is a senior leader in the jihadi movement in America,” Guandolo said. “He’s not on campus for the Chick-fil-A.”

A federal lawsuit recently filed by Oct. 7 families against AMP and NSJP alleges they “are not innocent advocacy groups, but rather the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization operating in plain sight” and “provide ongoing, continuous, systematic and material support for Hamas.” Acting as “agents” of Hamas in America, it claims, they are central command for the pro-Hamas campus protests and pose a dangerous threat to Jews in America.

It is illegal to provide material support to Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that was founded in 1988 in the Gaza Strip to establish an “Islamic Palestinian State that encompasses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza,” according to the 51-page internal FBI memo. Its covenants call for jihad to achieve the goal of destroying the Jewish state, while asserting this “armed struggle” against Jews is the duty of every Muslim. The FBI memo, written in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, noted that the Hamas leadership has launched several bloody “intifadas” targeting the Jewish people and told Palestinians they can “do whatever they want against the brothers of monkeys and pigs,” a phrase borrowed from the Muslim holy book the Quran to describe Jews.

In a previous statement, Bazian dismissed the lawsuit as “an Islamophobic text reeking in anti-Palestinian racism,” while his attorney Christy Jump insisted, “AMP operates fully within the laws of the United States.”

However, state and federal investigators are looking into whether Bazian’s AMP has crossed the line between legal activism and material support for terrorism. Virginia’s attorney general is investigating allegations AMP “may have used funds raised for impermissible purposes under state law, including benefiting or providing support to a terrorist organization,” referring to Hamas. AMP has denied the allegations and called them “defamatory.”

AMP’s troubles deepened last month when the House Oversight Committee launched a probe into AMP and its sister organization, the National Students for Justice in Palestine, over their allegedly “substantial ties to Hamas.” House investigators subpoenaed AMP for all documents and communications related to its funding of SJP’s college hubs and its support for Hamas and the Oct. 7 massacre. AMP was told to comply with the order by June 12. Asked if the nonprofit group would cooperate, Jump did not respond.

The federal lawsuit alleges AMP and NSJP are radicalizing students by exploiting their passions for “justice” and “human rights” in the Middle East, while hiding from them their religious extremism and true motive of targeting Jews in general.

“Through NSJP, AMP uses propaganda to intimidate, convince and recruit uninformed, misguided and impressionable college students to serve as foot soldiers for Hamas on campus and beyond,” according to the court filing. Part of their goal, it alleges, is to “establish an environment where violence against Jews could be construed as acceptable.”

Others worry they are grooming junior terrorists and that their mass movement across campuses, which is becoming increasingly violent, could end in armed confrontation on U.S. soil.

“When college students see that their marches and protests aren’t achieving their goals [of a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment from Israel], they may consider their next steps – which will be influenced by the company they have been keeping,” warned Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute in Washington, D.C.

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By Nick Pope
Daily Caller News Foundation

Two hardline climate activists defaced Stonehenge in the U.K. Wednesday in an act of protest, footage posted to social media shows.

Activists affiliated with the disruptive U.K.-based group Just Stop Oil sprayed the prehistoric monument with orange paint, presumably in an effort to draw attention to climate change, video of the incident uploaded to X — formerly known as Twitter —shows. Just Stop Oil is one of many similarly-styled confrontational organizations that receives funding from the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF), an American nonprofit that is itself funded by a number of wealthy American liberals.

The two protesters approached the monument and began spraying orange paint from pressurized containers loosely resembling fire extinguishers, the footage shows. Bystanders intervened and restrained the activists, but not before they had done a considerable amount of damage to Stonehenge.

BREAKING: Just Stop Oil Spray Stonehenge Orange

2 people took action the day before Summer Solstice, demanding the incoming government sign up to a legally binding treaty to phase out fossil fuels by 2030.

Help us take megalithic action — https://t.co/R20S8YQD1j pic.twitter.com/ufzO8ZiDWu

— Just Stop Oil (@JustStop_Oil) June 19, 2024

“The U.K.’s government in waiting has committed to enacting Just Stop Oil’s original demand of ‘no new oil and gas.’ However, we all know this is not enough. Continuing to burn coal, oil and gas will result in the death of millions. We have to come together to defend humanity or we risk everything,” Just Stop Oil said of the protest. “That’s why Just Stop Oil is demanding that our next government sign up to a legally binding treaty to phase out fossil fuels by 2030 … Stone circles can be found in every part of Europe showing how we’ve always cooperated across vast distances – we’re building on that legacy.”

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Located in southern England, Stonehenge is one of the most famous prehistoric monuments on the planet. The first pillars were erected during the Neolithic age some 5,000 years ago, according to English Heritage.

Just Stop Oil, meanwhile, has drawn considerable attention for similar stunts in the past, including blocking streets, disrupting major sporting events and attempting to vandalize the Magna Carta and other culturally significant items. However, the group’s tactics have occasionally drawn the ire of other citizens, including one group calling itself “Just Stop Pissing Everyone Off” that has effectively blocked Just Stop Oil demonstrations in the past.

CEF is the primary funder of the A22 network, an international coalition of similarly-confrontational climate activist groups that counts Just Stop Oil among its members, according to CEF’s website. Wealthy U.S. liberals — including the charitable foundation of oil heiress Aileen Getty, Abigail Disney, and Hollywood fixtures like Adam McKay and Jeremy Strong — are donors to CEF, according to CEF’s 2023 annual report.

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Benjamin Netanyahu

By Jake Smith
Daily Caller News Foundation

A reportedly angry White House canceled a high-level intelligence meeting with Israeli officials after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked the Biden administration for withholding military aid.

Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday that it was “inconceivable” that the Biden administration was stonewalling military aid shipments to Israel, given Israeli forces’ ongoing war efforts against Hamas in Gaza. President Joe Biden’s top advisers were furious over Netanyahu’s claims and decided to scrap the Thursday meeting, which would have involved crucial intelligence discussions with the State Department, Pentagon, U.S. intelligence agencies and their Israeli counterparts, according to Axios.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

“When Secretary Blinken was recently here in Israel, we had a candid conversation, I said I deeply appreciated the support the U.S. has given Israel from the beginning of the war. pic.twitter.com/xq5iw1JzcU

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) June 18, 2024

Some Israeli officials were already on their way to Washington, D.C., when they heard the news, according to Axios. The decision to scrap the meeting was meant to send a punitive message to the Israeli government, two U.S. officials told Axios.

“This decision makes it clear that there are consequences for pulling such stunts,” one U.S. official told Axios.

Netanyahu claimed Tuesday that “for the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.” It was previously confirmed in May by Biden administration officials that one high payload munitions package was being put on hold over fears that it could be used in Gaza and have disproportionate effects on the civilian population.

But Netanyahu’s claims were met publicly with confusion from the White House. Behind closed doors, officials in Biden’s orbit were stunned and enraged by Netanyahu’s claims.

“We genuinely do not know what he is talking about,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday.

The White House decided to take it a step further and tell the Israeli government that the Thursday meeting was not happening, which was relayed to Netanyahu by U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein in Israel on Tuesday, two Israeli officials briefed on the incident told Axios. Hochstein told Netanyahu that his claims were inaccurate and crossed a line with the Biden administration.

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“The Americans are fuming. [Netanyahu’s] video made a lot of damage,” one senior Israeli official told Axios.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan with still meet with his Israeli counterpart, and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is scheduled for meetings in Washington next week, according to Axios.

The relationship between the Biden administration and the Israeli government — particularly with Biden and Netanyahu — has grown increasingly tense in recent months over disagreements with how the war in Gaza should be carried out. Biden has long pressured the Israelis to curtail their military operations and commit to a permanent ceasefire, but Netanyahu has said a ceasefire can only be reached once Hamas — which has refused multiple ceasefire deals itself — is fully defeated.

In phone calls, Biden and Netanyahu have openly aired their grievances and thoughts on the war. In some calls Biden appeared confused or upset with Netanyahu’s plans — in one call, Biden hung up the phone out of anger.

Netanyahu is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on July 24. It is unclear whether he will meet with Biden in person while in Washington.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Joe Biden has been described, during his time in the White House, as opening America's southern border and inviting in millions of illegal aliens.

That characterization is because he canceled a long list of border security measures implemented by President Donald Trump, and then made it clear around the world that there would be help for those who reached the border.

Now, in an election year, he's doubling down.

He's announced new legal protections and an easier path to citizenship for illegals. And immigrants married to U.S. citizens now no longer have to return to their home country.

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It's all prompted members of the GOP to accuse Biden of "inviting" more illegals into America.

''This Biden Amnesty is a direct attack on American democracy," said former President Trump.

"This Biden Amnesty is a direct attack on American democracy." - President Trump.⁰

Watch our complete coverage of President Trump's Speech here: https://t.co/lb1q4YDAJT pic.twitter.com/BHedxQWihr

— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) June 18, 2024

The Washington Examiner noted Biden's scheme "will undoubtedly lead to a greater surge in migrant crime, cost taxpayers millions of dollars they cannot afford, overwhelm public services, and steal Social Security and Medicare benefits from American seniors to fund benefits for illegals."

That was the description from Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign.

Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller even suggested impeachment might be appropriate.

And NumbersUSA, which lobbies for better immigration policy, said it simply is unconstitutional.

The Gateway Pundit turned blunt in its report.

"Joe Biden on Tuesday announced mass amnesty for at least 500,000 illegal aliens (the number is likely much higher). According to Trump advisor and America First Legal founder Stephen Miller, 'Biden’s unconstitutional amnesty will give illegal aliens immediate green cards (making it easier to vote illegally) and a three-year path to citizenship (giving them full voting rights).'"

He continued, "It also includes a diploma mill provision: leftists and opportunistic corporations can churn out meaningless diplomas and illegals who receive them will be made into citizens as well. Once citizens, illegals get chain migration. So all their relatives become citizens too."

The report noted, "As usual, what’s left of Biden’s brain melted in real-time during his remarks."

Biden — who has imported MILLIONS OF UNVETTED ILLEGALS into our communities via his OPEN BORDER — now claims "every nation must secure its borders."

He's about to unilaterally provide MASS AMNESTY to a million illegal aliens. pic.twitter.com/G7XREEsbtC

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 18, 2024

BIDEN (malfunctioning): "...homeland security secretary, uhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhhuhuhuh" pic.twitter.com/7ubWXbDqrf

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 18, 2024

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Virginia Gamba, special representative of the U.N. secretary-general for children and armed conflict, briefs reporters at U.N. headquarters on Thursday, June 13, 2024.

(JNS) -- The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Jewish state’s mission to the United Nations reacted harshly to a U.N. official’s claim that a limited word count was responsible for the exclusion of Hamas’s usage of human shields from a controversial blacklist that included Israel.

Virginia Gamba, special representative to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for children and armed conflict, briefed reporters last Thursday about the annual Children and Armed Conflict report, which is also known as the “list of shame.”

JNS asked Gamba why the report she compiled contained only one sentence on Hamas’s use of human shields, which is central to the terrorist group’s military strategy and to understanding the casualty toll of Gazan children in Israel’s war against Hamas.

Read the full story ›

(JNS) -- U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a member of the progressive congressional “Squad,” tried to bolster his image among Jews by soliciting “pics of us” from a rabbi, a screenshot of a spring 2022 text exchange provided to Jewish Insider reveals.

The representative, one of the most vocal in condemning Israel even before the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel, had requested via text: “Do you have pics of us? So I can show the world I’m friends with Jewish people.” Jewish Insider has kept the rabbi’s name private at his request.

Rather than provide an image, he deflected, saying, “‘Oh, I’m sure you guys have it. Don’t worry about it,’” wrote the Jewish Insider.

Read the full story ›

By Jake Smith
Daily Caller News Foundation

The Biden administration’s Gaza aid pier could be dismantled months earlier than expected amid a series of growing problems, according to the New York Times.

The Biden administration initially hoped that the pier, meant to serve as a causeway for aid delivery to Gaza via a maritime corridor, would survive elemental conditions until at least September, before the seasonal sea conditions become too turbulent, the NYT reported. But a string of logistical and weather problems have plagued the pier since it was built in mid-May, and now U.S. defense officials are warning aid groups that it may be shuttered permanently by as soon as next month.

If closed by that point, the pier will have likely experienced little success in its goal of getting aid to the Palestinians; it has only been operational for roughly 10 days in the month since it was constructed, according to the NYT.

Exclusive video of Biden’s shoddy Gaza Pier (before it broke into pieces): pic.twitter.com/Xqyqjt7Ru4

— Kristina Wong (@kristina_wong) June 14, 2024

“Supplies from the pier aren’t flowing to Palestinians, and never really have,” Stephen Semler, a national security expert at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in an essay last week. “The reality is that the [pier] is not working, at least not for Palestinians.”

The Mediterranean’s choppy sea conditions and high winds have rattled the pier, routinely grinding operations to a halt. In one case, a stint of bad weather in late May broke the pier apart completely and sent it floating away, forcing officials to tow it northbound toward Israel for repairs. The pier was re-anchored to the shores of Gaza on June 7, but the United Nations’ World Food Program stopped delivering from the pier two days later, citing security concerns.

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Less than a week later, the pier was detached from the shores again and brought back northward to avoid another round of bad weather.

“They did have weather-related issues. They had to dismantle it for the safety of everybody involved.  But I honestly don’t know what the new status is,” White House National Security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday.

Even with a $230 million price tag, the pier was hastily built — President Joe Biden only told the Pentagon his plans days before he announced it in March — and never meant to withstand the conditions of the Mediterranean. The pier can only be operated during “sea state three” levels, meaning shorter and moderate waves. The Mediterranean is routinely at a “sea state level four” with higher waves typically between three and five feet.

Aid officials say the pier has failed in its goal of delivering between 150 truckloads of aid per day to the Palestinians, instead only hitting the equivalent of about seven truckloads per day, according to the NYT.

“The volume is negligible,” J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the NYT. “And the seas are just going to get rougher and rougher.”

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A new survey, the 2024 British Social Attitudes assessment, has discovered a stunning plunge in support by the public for the transgender ideology, those beliefs that claim that men can become women, or vice versa, by simply declaring the change.

The Christian Institute notes that the new results, compared to 2019, show "twice as many Brits say those who claim to be the opposite sex should not be allowed to change their sex on their birth certificate."

Further, the report said, "There has also been a 14-percentage point rise since 2021 in those who say trans rights have 'gone too far.'"

Asked, in 2019, whether "a person who is transgender should be able to have the sex recorded on their birth certificate changed if they want?' 24% said no. In the latest survey, that figure is 50%.

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"When participants were asked about 'attempts to give equal opportunities' to those who claim to be the opposite sex, 47% said they had 'gone too far,' up from 33% in 2021," the report said.

The National Centre for Social Research said its report confirmed "substantial changes" in attitudes about the alternative social and sexual lifestyle choices.

Simon Calvert, of the institute, said, "The growing public disquiet over allowing those who claim to be the opposite sex to change their birth certificates has happened during a period when trans activism has become increasingly aggressive."

A poll from last year showed U.K. support for the pro-trans measures is among the lowest in the world, beaten to the bottom in the category only by the U.S.

The Daily Mail noted, Fiona McAnena, of women's rights group Sex Matters, praised the findings, with, "This huge swing in opinion is down to the fact that the more the public understand the real-world impact of pretending that people can change sex, the less they like it."

Under the U.K.'s Gender Recognition Act, people only can change their sex on their birth certificate if their doctor has confirmed they are trans and they have obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate.

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Giorgia Meloni

A conservative Italian leader, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, is being credited for blunting and blocking Joe Biden's agendas for abortion and LGBT ideology at a recent meeting of the G7.

A report in the Washington Stand explains that Biden, bent on pushing his social agendas to the entire globe, was stymied by Meloni's actions, including her description of Biden's efforts to promote anti-family ideologies for political reasons as "profoundly wrong."

"I believe it is profoundly wrong, in difficult times like these, to campaign using a precious forum like the G7," she said.

Biden had demanded a promise that the nations would promote abortion-on-demand, part of what he claims is "sexual and reproductive health."

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Such a commitment was in last year's statement that came out of meetings in Japan, which affirmed a commitment "to achieving comprehensive SRHR [Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights] for all, including by addressing access to safe and legal abortion and post abortion care."

That was dropped from this year's statement, mentioning only support for universal access to adequate, affordable, and quality health services…."

The New York Times said Biden insisted on including a specific demand for "reproductive rights," but since G7 statements are by consensus, Meloni's opposition kept Biden's agenda promotion at a minimum.

The Stand explained, "Experts say the controversy reveals Western secular leaders’ myopic focus on promoting social issues. 'The very fact of tension over whether abortion was to be included in the G7 statement gives you a sense of the priorities of those Western nations pushing for it to be included,' Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. 'The G7 is supposed to be looking out for the good of the international order, not jamming social policy through international agreements to be imposed on unwilling nations with quasi-religious fervor. It’s a sign of the times that the West is now known for this, to our increasing shame.'"

Another report, from Bloomberg News, explained Meloni also removed a comment to "gender identity" and "sexual orientation" from the final release.

Meloni's office said there was no controversy, as such arguments didn't happen at the summit.

And her office also denied the Bloomberg claims.

Still, the Stand confirmed, "French President Emmanuel Macron complained openly of the abortion removal. 'France has a vision of equality between women and men, but it’s not a vision shared by all the political spectrum.'"

Meloni's pro-family reputation is based on several factors, including that her parliament adopted an amendment that lets trained pro-life advocates “with a qualified experience supporting motherhood” to counsel abortion-minded women inside Italian abortion facilities.

She also has tried to boost her nation's birth rate, denounced surrogacy, rejects gender ideology and has been watching her party gain legislative seats.

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(JNS) -- Close to 30 Palestinian terrorists receive benefits from Israel’s National Insurance Institute, according to intelligence information uncovered by lawmaker Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beiteinu) and made public by the Israel Hayom daily on Monday afternoon.

Last month, Welfare and Social Affairs Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur confirmed that Jerusalem transfers 7.3 million shekels ($1.96 million) to 265 people in Gaza annually, mainly in disability payments for Palestinians who worked in Israel and paid their premiums.

While Ben-Tzur claimed at the time that the government did not have any information on the basis of which it could stop the payments, a document from the Defense Ministry’s National Headquarters for Combating Economic Terrorism paints a different picture.

Read the full story ›

"Look at the Pope – He's freaking out! This can't be normal, can it?"

That was President Trump's reaction to a Reuters photograph of Joe Biden touching heads with Pope Francis on Friday.

Both figures were present at the G7 Summit in Italy when they had their "head-to-head."

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It was also caught on video, capturing the world's imagination and being shared numerous times on social media with a variety of comments.

Heads up, Your Holiness! https://t.co/kqUMtcz7aO pic.twitter.com/Ahh3MHjN3V

— New York Post (@nypost) June 14, 2024

President Joe Biden goes in for an intimate forehead to forehead with Pope Francis at the G7 summit in Italy.

The Pope appeared uncomfortable with the gesture. According to insiders at the G7, Biden’s performance is the “worst” it has ever been, noting that he is “losing… pic.twitter.com/XbrAoi8QaZ

— steve smith the anti-communist (@stevesmithsnoq) June 15, 2024

-Joe Biden pressed his head against Pope Francis' at the G7 summit in Italy. Pope Francis appears uncomfortable and surprised as Joe Biden gets up close and personal and touches him, forehead to forehead. Biden doesn’t understand what personal space means #G7Summit #PopeFracis… pic.twitter.com/lGULtoJLKi

— The Jewish Voice (@TJVNEWS) June 14, 2024

Trump wasn't the only big name chiming in.

Late-night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel speculated on what Biden may have said to the pope: "Hey Francis, where can a fella find some Raisin Bran around here?"

He also clowned: "Joe likes to really get in there and smell the incense."

"The president and the pope have known each other for many years. A lot of people don't realize Biden is the Joseph who raised Jesus."

BIDEN x POPE – Little Head Bumping Time Vs Trump 78th Birthday – Under Low-Key

バイデン x ローマ法王 – ちょっとした頭突きタイム vs 控えめなトランプ78歳の誕生日
#lemans24 pic.twitter.com/J3iYjGJyXG

— Spotlight (@classifiedvibes) June 16, 2024

Is the news we hear every day actually broadcasting messages from God? The answer is an absolute yes! Find out how!

Follow Joe on Twitter @JoeKovacsNews

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A Marine calms an infant during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 21, 2021.

After the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021, tens of thousands of Afghan interpreters and others were left behind to face the Taliban. As instances of capture and torture continue to rise, so does their death toll.

Earlier this month, Amu TV reported that a former employee of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Ahmad Farid Irfani, died at the hands of the Taliban. According to the report, "Family members, who wished to remain anonymous, reported that Irfani had told them he was beaten and forcibly taken away by the Taliban, who then tortured him through the night."

"[Irfani's] body bore marks from rifle butts and gun barrels. He was severely tortured. He died on the way to Ibn Sina Hospital," one family member told Amu. Photographs confirmed injuries to his forehead, eyes, face and shoulders. At the time of his arrest, Irfani was carrying documents to obtain a Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV.

Using a pseudonym to protect his identity, WND spoke to former interpreter Ahmad Ehsan, who is still in Afghanistan, having attempted unsuccessfully – twice so far – to gain approval for a Special Immigrant Visa.

Evacuees from Afghanistan board a Boeing 777 bound for the United States from Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, Aug. 28, 2021.

Although he served as an interpreter and cultural adviser in Kabul for the U.S. military until January 2021, Ehsan has been denied SIV status on two occasions. Despite having the support of his command and many others, a failed polygraph, marred by "extenuating circumstances," is the reason he remains in hiding from the Taliban.

Because of the Biden administration’s failure to "properly withdraw" from Afghanistan, Ehsan told WND, thousands of people like he and Irfani, who once supported the mission of the United States, were left behind to face the wrath of the Taliban.

"Thousands were eligible for evacuation, but instead, those that were evacuated included street boys, shopkeepers, and even Taliban fighters," he explained.

With each capture, torture and death of a U.S. ally, Ehsan fears he will be "the next person to die." He pointed out that the Taliban are lying about their declaration of general amnesty for former military personnel and government employees of the previous government, which worked alongside the U.S. for 20 years in support of a quasi-democratic system.

Ehsan said members of the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence, or GDI, are "working day and night" to collect information about anyone who worked alongside or supported the U.S. mission over the past 20 years.

Taliban

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has documented 38 cases of detention, 10 cases of torture and abuse, and a handful of deaths at the hands of the Taliban in the first quarter of 2024.

According to Ehsan, most organizations estimate that approximately 300 to 350 Afghan interpreters and others have been killed by the Taliban in the past three years.

"Because I've been on the ground in Afghanistan since the U.S. withdrawal," he argued, "I know the number is more than a thousand who have been arrested, tortured and killed." Sadly, he added, "the number is growing more day by day."

Ehsan told WND, "The Taliban is working very tactically and systemically to try to hide their crimes every day." Interestingly, he added, rumors are circulating that the Taliban are injecting Afghan people, including former interpreters or security forces, with an unknown substance, causing them to die days or weeks later.

In addition, he said many of the crimes committed against the people of Afghanistan are no longer photographed or filmed. Despite the existence of publicly available images from the past three years of the atrocities committed against U.S. allies in Afghanistan, he said, "they think the international community will forget about it and make them recognizable as a legitimate government."

"But the Taliban doesn't have any sympathy for their people or their country," he told WND. "They have an extremist ideology and it's very hard for Afghan people to tolerate the terrorist groups in Afghanistan."

Living in fear since the Taliban has taken control of the government, Ehsan knows time is running out. He revealed that he has family inside the United States, but they have been unsuccessful at helping him obtain a Special Immigrant Visa. WND verified with one family member that pleas to a congressman for help have been ignored.

See previous story: “WATCH: 'We were left behind to be killed by the Taliban': Afghan interpreter for U.S. provides new details of 'shameful' withdrawal nightmare.”

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(Photo by Joe Kovacs)

By Philip Lenczycki
Daily Caller News Foundation

A private social network run by a self-identified Chinese government agent provides illegal immigrants with resources to get into the U.S. and evade border authorities, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered.

The American Self-Guided Tour Channel is a Chinese-language group with over 8,000 members on the encrypted instant messaging platform Telegram that serves as both a forum for discussing Chinese illegal immigration and a hub for documents detailing specific routes to the U.S., a DCNF review of the channel found.

Documents in the Telegram channel translated by the DCNF identify U.S. border wall gaps, instruct Chinese nationals on how to answer questions from Border Patrol agents and provide scripts for requesting asylum.  

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Furthermore, the channel is overseen by an individual who spreads Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, bans accounts who fail to toe the Party line and identifies himself as a Chinese police officer.

“We’re allowing an element that is completely beyond our law to be established firmly as a beachhead in the United States of America, and the people of America are going to pay a severe price, much worse than we are paying even now,” North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop said after learning about the findings of the DCNF’s investigation.

Customs and Border Protection data shows that the overwhelming majority of the roughly 48,000 Chinese illegal immigrants encountered by U.S. authorities in 2024 have been single adults — and experts warn that “military-aged males” make up the lion’s share.

Bishop described the 1,100% spike in Chinese illegal immigrants since fiscal year 2022 as “historically unprecedented,” and told the DCNF that the inner workings of China’s human smuggling networks have largely remained a mystery to lawmakers up until now.

“Even people, like me, who’ve seen a lot of it have not yet totally come to grips with the sort of depth that you’ve described,” said Bishop, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee’s Oversight, Investigations and Accountability subcommittee.

The DCNF discovered the American Self-Guided Tour Channel and several related Telegram groups facilitating Chinese illegal immigration after analyzing a Chinese illegal immigrant’s abandoned cell phone, which was found near the California-Mexico border by a San Diego man in January 2024.

Telegram did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

‘Try Alternate Identities’

Through a months-long review of the American Self-Guided Tour Channel, the DCNF discovered that the group contains documents instructing Chinese nationals on how to navigate the U.S. immigration system, including scripts for claiming asylum and answering questions from Border Patrol agents.

One document translated by the DCNF advises those wishing to apply for a green card in the U.S. to “be sure to prepare a story about your persecution in advance.”

Another document provides responses to questions Border Patrol agents may ask in order to establish whether or not an asylum-seeker has a credible fear of persecution from their home country. Under current law, migrants who claim “credible fear” of persecution can seek asylum in the U.S.

“Even if moving would be inconvenient, can you live safely elsewhere in the country?” reads one of the hypothetical questions.

“No, because the situation I’m facing is nationwide,” the suggested answer states. “Even if I move to another place, I’ll be under threat just as before.”

Another post provides templates on how to craft asylum claims based on political, religious, racial, sexual and even gender persecution, despite women comprising only a small fraction of Chinese illegal immigrants.

“I am [name, ancestral hometown] nationality, I was born on [birthday]. Because I suffered gender-based violence and discrimination in my motherland, I am seeking asylum in [country],” the document’s template on gender persecution states. “My family forced me to marry, they wanted me to marry a man much older than me. When I refused, they beat me and threatened me saying that if I didn’t obey, they’d kill me. After marrying, my husband started physically and mentally abusing me, I was forced to leave my home and live in hiding. I tried seeking help from the local government, but they’re either corrupt or unwilling to help me. If I am forced to return to [motherland], I fear for my life, there I will face more violence and discrimination.”

Documents stored on the channel indicate a relatively sophisticated understanding of the U.S. immigration system, with some featuring intricate flow-charts to map out various potential U.S. immigration pathways.

One such flow-chart suggests that, as a last resort, those who’ve received a deportation order, but lack a passport to return to their countries, may consider starting the immigration process over with a false identity.

“You can try alternate identities, [but] the difficulty is relatively high and Trump may invite you to a meeting with state security agents in the future,” the document states, referring to former President Donald Trump.

‘Crossing Point’

The American Self-Guided Tour Channel also serves as a hub for travel guides facilitating Chinese illegal immigration, some of which identify specific border crossing points between the U.S. and Mexico, the DCNF discovered.

The guides vary in their geographic scope, with some focusing on travel between multiple countries, such as from China to Ecuador, which Rep. Bishop told the DCNF doesn’t require a travel visa for Chinese nationals.

“Essentially without visas, as I understand it, they can fly to Ecuador, and then they have an overland route and come up and come right through the border,” Bishop said.

The Telegram channel’s guides commonly list Quito, Ecuador, and Necocli, Colombia, as the first and last travel locations in South America for Chinese illegal immigrants.

Other guides on the channel provide more detailed advice on how to travel through a single country. One guide for Mexico falls into this category and features a series of Google Map screenshots that chart a path between Tapachula, Mexico and Laredo, Texas.

While most of the guides concern travel through South and Central America, several also focus on where and how to cross the U.S. southern border.

One such document identifies 15 border wall gaps along the southern border, including 12 in California as well as crossing points in Arizona and New Mexico.

This guide also provides Chinese nationals with basic instructions on what to carry and how to make the crossing.

“Take a taxi to a location near the wall crossing point, get out, and head straight in, carrying a few hundred dollars in cash for random contingencies,” the document advises.

The DCNF confirmed the existence of several of the crossing points while visiting the California border in June 2024.

Bill Wells, the mayor of El Cajon, California, told the DCNF that Chinese nationals now constitute a significant portion of crossings near San Diego.

“When I’ve been out at the border, most of my interactions have been with Chinese people,” Wells said. “I’ve come across groups of Chinese people standing on the side of the road in the middle of the night waiting to be picked up. I’ve come across migrant encampments, where there’s 100 or so Chinese people waiting to move on to the next stage, maybe 30 yards from the fence where they just crossed.”

Despite this, Wells told the DCNF that local officials remain in the dark about how the human smuggling networks operate.

“We have no idea,” Wells said. “You would think that something of such major importance to not only the nation, but to municipalities, you would have somebody from the government calling you and saying, ‘Hey, this is what we know. This is what’s going on. This is how it’s going to affect you or not affect you.'”

Wells told the DCNF that he believes Chinese illegal immigration poses a serious national security threat to the U.S. and pointed to multiple sensitive military and public utility sites close to the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego.

“There’s just so much to worry about from a committed enemy,” Wells said.

‘Cyber Police’

The DCNF’s review of the American Self-Guided Tour Channel also discovered that its owner — @wjackcn, or “Jack W” — claims to work as a cyber police officer stationed in China.

“Yes, I am cyber police,” Jack W stated on April 30, 2024, after an account in the channel asked him if he was a cyber police officer.

Cyber police serve China’s Ministry of Public Security by monitoring website content and spreading propaganda, according to federal authorities.

After identifying himself as a cyber police officer, Jack W outlined his policing duties in a post in which described himself as being “responsible for national security affairs, fighting reactionaries and foreign hostile forces.”

Later that day, Jack W directed channel members interested in national security work to apply to China’s premier civilian intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security.

“If you want to work for the Ministry of State Security, please use the method of participating in the National Civil Servant exam,” Jack W told members of the Telegram channel.

Although the DCNF was unable to confirm Jack W’s affiliation with the Ministry of Public Security or Ministry of State Security, a review of the account’s posts found that it promoted Chinese illegal immigration and has banned members for expressing “hurtful opinions towards the motherland.”

In one instance, after a now-deleted account called for the CCP to be overthrown on April 22, 2024, Jack W banned 20 accounts.

The next month, Jack W announced he’d banned multiple accounts who’d criticized Chinese police officers.

“Those who disparaged an Urban Management and Law Enforcement video have already been banned,” Jack W announced on May 20, 2024, referring to a Chinese government agency that the U.S. nonprofit Human Rights Watch has described as a “thuggish para-police” tasked with enforcing non-criminal administrative regulations.

Jack W’s Telegram channel has also promoted CCP propaganda.

On June 4, 2024, the American Self-Guided Tour Channel posted an image of a tank with the caption: “Celebrating the 35th Anniversary of the Defeat of the Western-Backed Colour Revolution,” in reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, during which the Chinese government slaughtered as many as 10,000 pro-democracy protesters, according to the former British ambassador to China.

A DCNF review of the Telegram channel also discovered that, in addition to Jack W, several other members have identified themselves as Chinese police officers, military personnel and CCP members.

Rep. Bishop described Chinese illegal immigration as “the most astonishing threat.”

“Chinese nationals presenting at the southern border of the United States were almost unheard of previously,” Bishop told the DCNF.

In May 2024, Bishop chaired the House Homeland Security Committee’s Oversight, Investigations and Accountability subcommittee hearing concerning the approximately 8,000% increase in Chinese illegal immigration the U.S. has experienced since March 2021.

The hearing followed a January 2024 DCNF investigation revealing an internal Customs and Border Protection email showing that the Biden administration dramatically simplified the vetting process for Chinese illegal immigrants in April 2023 by reducing the number of interview questions Border Patrol agents are required to ask from roughly 40 down to just five.

“The experts that testified before the Subcommittee on Oversight that I chaired when we had a hearing on this established fairly persuasively that there is no vetting,” Bishop told the DCNF. “It’s a perfunctory, quick interview, and they move on into the country and are released.”

“China is the foremost adversary of the United States on the world stage,” Bishop warned. “Something’s descending on the United States that we should never have allowed to occur.”

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Yet another study has confirmed the scientifically supportable but politically blasphemous belief that most children who report transgender feelings actually, if left alone, grow out of them.

The New York Post reports that confirmation comes from a "transgender expert."

It reveals Riittakerttu Kaltiala, psychiatrist who presided over youth gender transition treatments for years, confirmed 80% of those children who question their gender "eventually accept their bodies if no medical interventions are carried out."

Kaltiala is a leading scientist regarding pediatric gender medicine in Finland and operates at the country's largest gender clinic.

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In an interview with a publication, Helsingin Sanomal, she said 12 separate studies support that statement.

The report suggested the comments are part of a revelation that liberals "are not in lockstep when it comes to transgender issues," as the New York Times alspo recently published an op-ed defending writer J.K.Rowling's comments on transgenderism.

The interview included Kaltiala's caution to parents of gender-questioning children against using their offspring’s preferred pronouns or a new chosen name, because that is an "intervention" that could influence the child.

In America, instructions for teachers to use a child's "chosen" pronouns are common, and often include orders that prevent them from sharing that information with a child's parents.

But those name and pronoun alternations are "a message saying that ‘this is the right path for you,'" she said.

"The developmental mission of youth is not helped by the fact that young people’s self-expression is supported and directed from the outside,” she added. “The environment should also not commit to identity experiments in a way that might make a later change of direction anxiety-inducing."

She debunked the oft-used threats by pro-LGBT advocates that children quickly resort to suicide if their gender agenda is stalled.

"It is not justified to tell the parents of young people identifying as transgender that a young person is at risk of suicide without medical treatments and that the danger can be alleviated with gender reassignment,” she said.

That, actually, she charged, is "purposeful disinformation."

She especially expressed concern over those who start questioning themselves in adolescence, because of their ability to "grab the idea available in the media and social media that their problems are caused by gender identity."

That endorses the explanations from Abigail Shrier, who wrote "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our Daughters," and said "peer contagion" could be responsible for the surge in adolescents with such problems.

The New York-based Komodo Health estimated 42,000 children and teens in the U.S. got a diagnoses of "gender dysphoria"" in 2021.

WND reported only weeks earlier on a similar conclusion from a study in the Netherlands.

In direct opposition to the suspect claims of transgender activists that children who are "gender-confused" must have medical "care" that goes up to and includes surgical body mutilations, that 15-year study confirmed that most of those kids, if left alone, "grow out of it."

A report from the Daily Mail confirms the study results show that "being trans is usually just a phase for kids."

The report explained, "Researchers in the Netherlands tracked more than 2,700 children from age 11 to their mid-twenties, asking them every three years of feelings about their gender. Results showed at the start of the research, around one-in-10 children (11 percent) expressed 'gender non-contentedness' to varying degrees."

However, by age 25 only 4% said they "often" or even "sometimes" were discontent with gender.

"The results of the current study might help adolescents to realize that it is normal to have some doubts about one's identity and one's gender identity during this age period and that this is also relatively common," the study found.

Under the openly radical push by Joe Biden and his administration, the transgender ideology has exploded in popularity over the last few years.

Multiple federal moves have insisted that transgender "rights" supersede even the U.S. Constitution and that chemicals to alter physical characteristics and even surgical mutilations of healthy bodies is normal, even beneficial.

The study prompted Patrick Brown, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, to tell the Mail, "This study provides even more reason to be skeptical towards aggressive steps to facilitate gender transition in childhood and adolescence. The fact that rates of satisfaction are lower even just a few years later suggests that for the vast majority of people, prudence and caution, rather than a rush towards permanent surgeries or hormone therapies, will be the best approach for teenagers struggling to make sense of the world and their place in it."

He noted the evidence suggests policies that ban gender transition for children "make a great deal of sense."

The researchers, from the University of Groningen, noted their analysis of 2,770 people did not focus specifically on those in treatment for dysphoria.

The study asked participants to respond to: "I wish to be of the opposite sex" at six points over 15 years. The results, documented in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, confirmed 78% had the same feelings about their gender over the 15 years.

Nineteen percent became more content and only 2% were "less comfortable," the report said.

The study found, too, "Gender non-contentedness, while being relatively common during early adolescence, in general decreases with age and appears to be associated with a poorer self-concept and mental health throughout development."

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(BLOOMBERG) -- A disease caused by a rare “flesh-eating bacteria” that can kill people within 48 hours is spreading in Japan after the country relaxed Covid-era restrictions.

Cases of streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSS) reached 977 this year by June 2, higher than the record 941 cases reported for all of last year, according to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, which has been tracking incidences of the disease since 1999.

Group A Streptococcus (GAS) typically causes swelling and sore throat in children known as “strep throat,” but some types of the bacteria can lead to symptoms developing rapidly, including limb pain and swelling, fever, low blood pressure, that can be followed by necrosis, breathing problems, organ failure and death. People over 50 are more prone to the disease.

Read the full story ›

Editor’s note: Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, a WND reporter who lives with his wife and children in northern Israel, offers this first-hand account of what it’s like to experience Hezbollah’s rockets raining down on your small town.

I am a Torah-observant Jew living in Katsrin, a small town of 9,000 residents in the eastern Golan located less than 10 miles from the Syrian border. On Oct. 7, I finished my Simchat Torah/ Shabbat prayers, and as I walked home, I was surprised to see the park full of people I did not recognize. As a Torah-observant Jew, I turn off my computer and cell phone on the Sabbath. When I inquired who the people were, I was immediately told about the attacks in the south and that Kiryat Shmona, about 25 miles to the northwest, was under heavy rocket attack by Hezbollah. Many of the residents came to take shelter in Katsrin.

All of Israel was traumatized, but being in a remote corner of our tiny country, I felt isolated and assured my wife that we were in the safest place in Israel. As the war in Gaza progressed, my statement seemed to be true. Horror stories were pouring out of the Gaza border towns as the southern region prepared for all-out war.

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We packed a few "go-bags" as preparation. Early in the conflict, we had a Red Alert siren that proved to be a false alarm. Kiryat Shmona was targeted regularly, leading to its 20,000 residents being evacuated. I was embarrassed when people expressed concern for my family's safety. My quiet town remained blessedly quiet. The only signs of war were the nearly nonstop roar of warplanes flying low overhead on their way to pay a visit to Hezbollah.

I continued to assure my wife, but news reports warned that as the war in Gaza began to wind down, the focus would turn north. The Red Alert warnings were no longer benign. The now-almost weekly siren was accompanied by distant booms that arrived simultaneously, giving us no time to run to the nearby bomb shelters. When the town was first built soon after the 1967 Six-Day War, Syria was a significant threat, and bomb shelters were located every 50 yards. But there was no time to run to the bomb shelters. We were told by the civil authority to shelter in place. The first houses were built of thick reinforced concrete with this in mind. When the siren sounded, we ran for the center of the first floor as the first barrage hit.

The scene of a rocket impact in the southern city of Netivot, Israel, following a barrage fired from the Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024. (Israel Fire and Rescue Services)

And then, one Friday in April, the news was abuzz with warnings that Iran might attack Israel sometime in the next day or two. I was relieved when Shabbat passed without any alarms. But a friend called me late Saturday night and told me to check the news. Iran had launched 170 drones, over 30 cruise missiles and more than 120 ballistic missiles toward Israel. We were told the attack would take several hours to cover the more than 1,000 miles. So my family slept in the living room, wearing heavy shoes and emergency supplies at hand. At 3:00 am, sirens woke us, but no rockets fell. We were told that the Golan had been targeted by drones which had all been shot down before approaching our city. We managed to fall asleep, but one hour later, another siren sounded, accompanied by nearby rockets. They began as distant booms, but were walked in as the barrage continued. The last dozen or so rockets landed very close, rattling the windows violently. I later discovered that a few had landed inside the city. Thank God, no one was wounded and no houses were hit.

Footage from the Netivot area shows a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip narrowly missing a group of Israelis working outside the southern city, as more than 20 projectiles are intercepted by the Iron Dome over the area. Hamas has claimed responsibility for the barrage pic.twitter.com/BJWXSSNOdI

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) January 16, 2024

The weekly barrages were now targeting Katsrin. Despite the IDF’s Iron Dome, houses in Katsrin were being hit. The rockets began to zero in on our tiny city. About three weeks ago, Israel was hit by a countrywide heat wave. The Golan is lush, but the greenery turns brown in the summer. Hezbollah rocket attacks sparked massive brushfires, burning more than 13,000 acres in my area. Civilian volunteers joined firefighters, but nevertheless the fires burned large swaths of the countryside. We were hard-pressed to extinguish them. Hezbollah continued to target Kiryat Shmona and Tsfat, setting off huge brushfires in those areas as well. It was unclear whether the fires were an intentional aspect of Hezbollah’s battle plan. Still, even if not, they were devastating and dangerous, perhaps even more so than the rockets themselves.

Like many of the residents of Katsrin, I shop for Shabbat on Thursday. The weekly visit to the local supermarket highlights my social life. I waited in line to pay at around three in the afternoon when the sirens sounded. The staff directed the people to a large shelter in the back of the store, but as I began to make my way, a young bearded man ran past me, shouting, "My kids are in the car." I ran after him, hoping to help. A large portable bomb shelter had been placed in the parking lot for such a circumstance. As the siren wailed, I ran around the parking lot, helping young mothers gather their small children. After 15 minutes, the staff announced the "all-clear." But as we began to breathe deeply and return to our shopping, the siren sounded again. More sirens followed. We remained in the shelter for almost two hours, listening to the rockets fall around us. We finally emerged to a city where the sky was full of smoke.

In total, Hezbollah fired more than 150 rockets and 30 explosive drones, with about 50 landing in the Golan. Two rockets made direct hits on houses in Katsrin, wounding two people with shrapnel. We could not open our windows for several days without filling the house with a smoky smell.

A large fire has erupted in the city of Safed following the massive barrage of rockets. pic.twitter.com/ofZUuEZPi5

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) June 13, 2024

My kids took it all in stride, though I wonder what lasting effects the war will have on them. My wife puts on a brave face, but I can tell that below the surface, standing by while rockets fall on our home is difficult for her. And to be honest, it is more difficult for me than actual combat. In the IDF, I was armed and part of a fighting force. As a soldier, I did not feel helpless. And I did not have to watch as my family was targeted by rockets.

I acknowledge that my experiences are trite when compared to what the people of Gaza are experiencing. But the Palestinians have a zero-cost Iron Dome that is 100% effective: Don’t fire rockets into our cities or cross the border to murder and rape Jews. The Palestinians hate us because we believe in life. Oct. 7 happened because Israel was about to make peace with Saudi Arabia. Hamas was in charge of Gaza because Israel pulled out, forcibly expelling 10,000 Jews in the hope of peaceful coexistence. Hamas was able to carry out the attack because Israel allowed Gazans to enter for work and medical treatment.

I have been to Gaza. I was there in 1992 to consider moving there. Security was a major part of the life for the Jews in Gush Katif. However, the region had a thriving agri-economy that employed thousands of Arabs and several resorts in the Mediterranean. It was not an open-air prison for the Arabs, though Jews were confined and restricted. It became an open-air prison for the Palestinians when the Jews were expelled and Hamas took over.

The Palestinians are not the enemy. They are the knife in the hand of the enemy. They have been fed lies, and told that the Jews are invaders even though the Quran specifically notes that Israel is the land of the Jews. The Palestinians have been told they are the historical rulers and that they can drive the Jews out.

These are all lies. But I am calm, knowing that Israel will win this war. We will win because it is not a war over land. The Palestinians do not want this land. And Jews have never stopped praying for this land.

We will win this war simply because we have nowhere else to go.

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(THE COLLEGE FIX) -- A late 2022 headline from the Associated Press reads “Across vast Muslim world, LGBTQ people remain marginalized.”

The Guardian reports that in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, and Yemen, sodomy is a capital offense … while in Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Qatar, Somalia, and Syria the act will land you in jail.

And in the Gaza Strip and West Bank — “Palestine” for all intents and purposes — Reason notes LGBTQ individuals “face an extraordinary level of persecution, persecution that may result in a years-long prison sentence or even death.”

Read the full story ›

(JNS) -- Right-wing ministers in the Israeli government lashed out on Sunday after the Israel Defense Forces announced it would observe daily 11-hour “humanitarian pauses” in its operation against Hamas terrorists along a route in southern Gaza to increase aid shipments into the area.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir criticized the move, claiming it runs contrary to decisions made by the Security Cabinet.

To increase the volume of humanitarian aid entering Gaza and following additional related discussions with the U.N. and international organizations, a local, tactical pause of military activity for humanitarian purposes will take place from 08:00 until 19:00 every day until… pic.twitter.com/QLXNFZsTYZ

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) June 16, 2024

“The one who decided on a ‘tactical truce’ to introduce humanitarian aid, especially at a time when the best of our soldiers are falling in battle, is evil and a fool who should not continue in his position,” he tweeted.

Read the full story ›

(JNS) -- Eleven Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip over the past 48 hours, the military announced on Sunday. One additional soldier passed away from wounds sustained during fighting last week, according to the IDF.

Eight soldiers were killed early on Saturday morning when their “Namer” armored personnel carrier was destroyed during an operation in Tel Sultan in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, according to IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

TEARS. TEARS. TEARS. TEARS. TEARS.
We mourn for IDF soldiers Itay Amar, 19; Stanislav Kostarev, 21; Or Blumovitz, 20; Oz Yeshaya Gruber, 20; Eliyahu Moshe Zimbalist, 21; Eitan Koplovich, 28; and Elon Weiss, 49. All were killed this Shabbat while fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza pic.twitter.com/8uGLsWoQjM

— Dov Lipman (@DovLipman) June 16, 2024

The casualties were identified as Cpt. Wassem Mahmoud, 23, from Beit Jann; Sgt. Eliyahu Moshe Zimbalist, 21, from Beit Shemesh; Sgt. Itay Amar, 19, from Kochav Yair; Sgt. Stanislav Kostarev, 21, from Ashdod; Sgt. Or Blumovitz, 20, from Pardes Hanna-Karkur; Sgt. Oz Yeshaya Gruber, 20, from Tal Menashe; and Sgt. Yakir Ya’akov Levi, 21, from Hafetz Haim. The final name was released on Sunday: Sgt. Shalom Menachem, 21, of the Combat Engineering Corps’ 601st Battalion, from Beit El.

Read the full story ›

By Will Kessler
Daily Caller News Foundation

The Biden administration’s recent sanctions against Russia mark another instance of the U.S. leveraging the dollar’s global reserve status to further its foreign policy aims  — but the strategy could result in economic chaos and worsening inflation for Americans, experts told the Daily Caller New Foundation.

The Treasury Department put fresh sanctions on Russia on Wednesday to stem the flow of money and goods that can fuel the country’s war against Ukraine, leading Russia to announce an immediate suspension of dollar trades on the Moscow Stock Exchange, according to Reuters. Russia’s continued pullback from the dollar is just the latest example of U.S. adversaries growing opposition to the current world reserve currency, and if the dollar is ever widely abandoned around the world, it could usher in huge levels of inflation and force the U.S. to deal with its mounting national debt, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.

“If the Biden administration were intentionally trying to destroy the dollar, I’m not sure what they’d do differently,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF. “His spendthrift agenda has resulted in the dollar losing one-fifth of its value in less than four years, and his international policies have done even more harm by eroding the dollar’s reserve currency status. By freezing and then eventually stealing dollars owned by foreigners, Biden sent a clear message to the world that the dollar is no longer a safe asset.”

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The Biden administration’s weaponization of the financial system against Russia has been particularly pronounced since the country launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with the U.S. and its allies removing many Russian banks from the worldwide financial messaging system SWIFT and freezing hundreds of billions in Russian foreign reserves.

“A Rubicon was crossed in the form of policy choices made in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022,” Peter Earle, economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the DCNF. “Those decisions included seizing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Russian FX reserves (Russian holdings of US dollars) and ejecting most major Russian financial institutions out of the SWIFT messaging system.”

“In taking those actions, Russia was effectively kicked out of the U.S. dollar system,” Earle continued. “It was a turning point as it has put adversaries — and allies — of the United States on notice that the dollar, which has for seventy years been the default currency for international trade and settlement, can be weaponized, and thus that dependence upon the dollar comes with a heretofore unconsidered risk.”

The US, under Biden, has also continued to impose harsh sanctions on Iran in connection with the funding of terrorism. The Biden administration used $6 billion in seized assets in August 2023 as leverage for the exchange of five American prisoners.

Saudi Arabia became a full participant in Project mBridge, an effort dominated by China to create a central bank digital currency that could replace the dollar in the exchange of oil on the world stage, according to Reuters. The addition of Saudi Arabia to the program puts the project in the “minimum viable product” stage for wider use.

“Russia’s suspension of trading in dollars on the Moscow exchange is just the latest domino to fall, and it won’t be the last,” Antoni told the DCNF. “As de-dollarization snowballs, foreigners won’t want dollars anymore, and they’ll start exchanging the currency for American goods and services. It’s no exaggeration to say that this will mean 70 years’ worth of trade deficits pouring back to our shores.”

Further de-dollarization, depending on the speed at which it occurs, could cause another surge of inflation, which has already wreaked havoc on the finances of average Americans under Biden, with prices rising 19.3% since January 2021. Inflation has failed to fall below 3% since it peaked under Biden at 9% in June 2022, most recently measuring 3.3% in May.

“If you think the last three years have had bad inflation, just wait until those trillions of dollars currently held by foreigners come home and start bidding up prices,” Antoni continued. “It will embolden our adversaries and impoverish Americans. We’re in the opening stages, and it’s unclear if there’s enough time to stop it.”

A group of countries posing themselves as an alternative to the U.S. and its’ allies in the G7, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), have expressed their opposition to the dollar as the global reserve currency. In June, Russia announced that it had begun the development of a payment platform that will allow BRICS countries to bypass the dollar, providing countries that fear the weaponization of the currency by the U.S. another avenue for foreign exchange, according to Business Insider.

“The dollar’s status as the dominant international reserve currency affords the US what Valery Giscard d’Estaing famously called an exorbitant privilege,” Desmond Lachman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. “By that, he meant that the US government could finance its budget deficit at relatively low interest rates by having the Fed print dollars that foreigners would hold. It also allowed the country to live beyond its means by consistently importing more goods and services than it exported. This is something that the US should not want to lose.”

The U.S. trade deficit widened to around $74.6 billion in April, the largest loss since October 2022. The federal government currently holds around $34.7 trillion in debt as of June 12, up from around $27.8 trillion when Biden first took office, according to the Treasury Department.

“If foreigners start selling dollars, we could have a dollar crisis in the sense that the dollar would get into a downward spiral,” Lachman told the DCNF. “That would be bad news for consumers in that it would tend to fuel inflation by substantially increasing our import costs.

“It would also lead to higher interest rates,” Lachman continued. “I do not expect that this will happen soon since the currencies of the dollar’s main competitors (the Euro, the Chinese renminbi, and the Japanese yen) all have serious problems of their own.”

The share of U.S. dollars in foreign exchange reserves has been gradually declining for the past several years, falling from over 70% in 2000 down to close to 55% in recent years, according to the International Monetary Fund.

“Global use of the dollar has been a major source of demand for US government securities — Treasury bills, bonds, and notes, as well as Agency paper,” Earle told the DCNF. “Falling demand for dollars would, in short order, translate to falling demand for those government issues, which would both restrict the amount of debt that could be sold and result in higher yields on the outstanding debt.

“With less of a market for US debt and presumably no less of an appetite for government spending, taxes would have to rise and/or inflation to be used to make ends meet,” Earle continued. “Both of those mean higher costs of living and consequently a declining quality of life.”

The White House did not respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

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(Photo by Joe Kovacs)

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Pravin R. Jethwa
Real Clear Wire

President Biden has been consistent over the past two years in ruling out the dispatch of U.S. troops to fight Russia in Ukraine.

In his State of Union address on March 7, he publicly reiterated once again that “there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine, and I’m determined to keep it that way.”

But Biden is being increasingly boxed in by some of America’s closest allies to cross the line.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in particular, has repeatedly called for Western powers to not rule out the sending of NATO troops into Ukraine, which predictably baited Vladimir Putin to climb yet another rung up the nuclear escalation ladder.

Yet, despite Macron’s belligerence, no American president will lightly risk an all-out nuclear confrontation with Russia. Admitting Ukraine into NATO now or sending U.S. troops to fight there would mean, Biden warned last year, “We’re at war with Russia.”

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Biden’s position is historically consistent with nuclear weapons policy of all U.S. presidents since the late 1940s, when the Soviet Union first acquired atomic arms and subsequently the means to retaliate against the United States and its Western allies.

Since then, mutual deterrence has become an inescapable fact of life in U.S.-Russia relations which largely prevails to this day.

This is not to say that atomic weapons prevented Moscow or Washington from stumbling into dangerous crises during the Cold War years. Their sheer destructiveness and mutual awareness of the dangers, however, prevented U.S.-Soviet confrontations over Berlin, Cuba, and the Middle East from escalating into World War III — a succession of crises that in any other era would undoubtedly have culminated in great power war.

The absence of superpower war, importantly, was also brought about by the evolution of tacit and sometimes explicit “rules” of crisis management and prevention in superpower relations. These included, especially in Europe, the establishment of respective U.S. and Soviet-led alliances and spheres of influence which clearly demarcated both alliances’ core strategic and geopolitical interests.

Techniques for crisis management, in addition, were quickly learned and operationalized in both Moscow and Washington in the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. These included the careful deployment of military forces for signalling and bargaining purposes, control of escalation alerts, the setting up of the hotline to maintain top-level communications between the Kremlin and the White House, and, above all, the limiting of objectives and demands upon the adversary – the ‘golden ladder’ rule - to enable crisis resolution.

The combination of crisis management and diplomatic practices, buttressed by the commencement of strategic arms control negotiations towards the end of the Johnson administration, the Nixon-Kissinger policy of détente and persistent high-level diplomacy, and, more broadly, a shared learning of nuclear dangers culminating in the Reagan-Gorbachev declaration that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” contributed over time to stabilizing the U.S.-Soviet Cold War rivalry.

Yet in the final analysis, it was the very existence of nuclear weapons – or what President Kennedy’s national security adviser McGeorge Bundy later called “existential deterrence” – that had a decisive bearing on preventing U.S.-Soviet confrontations from escalating to war when the strategic chips were down over Hungary in 1956, Berlin in 1961, Cuba in 1962, and the Yom Kippur war in 1973.

In addition to nuclear deterrence, the most crucial of the crisis prevention measures – and the one that historically underpinned Cold War peace in Europe for over four decades – was not to encroach directly upon a nuclear-armed adversary’s borders or geopolitical space and thereby overthrow the balance of power.

Yet arguably, overthrowing the European balance is precisely what NATO’s successive waves of enlargement over a 25-year period has accomplished vis-à-vis Russia, thereby destabilising what was largely a settled European security order inherited from the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s and the era of “long peace”.

With the near breakdown in relations between the Western powers and Russia, accidental military encounters in or around Ukraine between the two sides or deep strikes against Russia’s nuclear warning and command and control nodes, could in some circumstances outrun political decision-making in allied capitals or in Moscow and rapidly lead to a cascade of military alerts and pre-emptive pressures between NATO and Russian forces deployed, primed and operating in close proximity in a hot war zone.

Although the nuclear threat has thus far prevented the Ukraine war from escalating into a U.S.-Russia fight, U.S. and Russian policymakers will quickly need to re-discover the benefits of persistent high-level diplomacy, strategic restraint, i.e., not backing a nuclear-armed adversary into a corner and operationalize some mix of crisis management practices such as those that prevented an all-out war during the Cold War years.

Given the current fracture in U.S.-Russian relations, the alternative is nuclear escalation by sheer mischance.

Pravin R. Jethwa is a writer on defense and international security based in London.

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Jason Isaac
Real Clear Wire

Apparently, you can litigate anything these days, and it’s gotten far more insidious than suing McDonald’s over hot coffee being, you know, hot. A new climate activist group called Our Children’s Trust is suing state and federal government agencies on behalf of individual children, claiming that fossil fuel regulators are negligently ruining their future.

That children should feel entitled to come of age under a specific set of favorable environmental and political circumstances — and to demand punishment for individuals they disagree with — isn’t just a testament to the egocentrism dominating the 21st Century. It also exposes our culture’s deeply warped understanding of climate science, which, surprisingly to many of us, actually shows global warming has no meaningful negative effects on our lives or our environment.

In fact, we have fossil fuels to thank for the twenty-first century for being the best time in human history to be alive. Unfortunately, it’s the best-kept secret in our world today.

If we really want to earn “our children’s trust,” we should teach them the truth instead of foisting crippling and needless anxiety on an entire generation.

Contrary to the attention-grabbing clips of forests burning and shock-inducing statistics about record-high temperatures, modern climate science suggests that warming is likely to remain mild and manageable while our resilience continues to improve. In fact, despite average global temperatures increasing about 1° Fahrenheit and our population quadrupling in the last century, climate-related disasters claim 99% fewer lives. Our resistance to severe weather events (which actually have remained consistent or even declined in recent decades) is actually growing at a faster rate than non-weather-related natural disasters like volcanoes and earthquakes. The alarmists want you to believe a changing climate is jeopardizing human lives; however, the opposite is true.

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Our environment is also better than ever. The U.S. has cut air pollution by nearly 80% in the last 50 years and ranks number one in the world for access to clean drinking water. In fact, those infamous greenhouse gases may actually help the planet. Mild increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide create a “global greening” effect that stimulates plant growth, which both helps natural ecosystems and makes agricultural production more efficient.

Meanwhile, this is the best time in human history to be alive, thanks largely to widespread access to affordable, reliable energy. Children today have a far greater chance of living a long, healthy, fruitful life than ever before. Around the world, in both developing and developed nations, poverty has plummeted and people are enjoying the tangible, life-improving benefits of lower infant and child mortality, better nutrition, improved education, lower infectious disease rates, more economic opportunity, gender equality, and longer lives. It’s no coincidence that global quality of life spiked and has continued to improve consistently since the Industrial Revolution — or that communities without access to electricity are still plagued by poverty, danger, and disease.

For a group claiming to seek “Our Children’s Trust,” this activist group seems to be deliberately abusing children’s trust.

With nearly any factoid we could wonder about immediately accessible on our smartphones, how could we have possibly gotten it so wrong about climate change? The jury is out on whether the cultural cancer of climate alarmism is the result of a deliberate plot for political power by global elites or simple negligence by a society that accepts the claims of those in authority (or simply those who pop up in our Tik Tok algorithm) at face value.

I suspect it’s a combination of both. “Indoctrination” has become a political buzzword, and while there’s no denying there are bad actors out there in schools and governments with agendas to push at all costs, the real problem with the public’s view of climate change is far subtler — which means it’s also harder to root out.

The problem is that no political issue, including this one, is black and white, but few feel they have the time to educate themselves on the nuances and confounding variables of hundred- or even thousand-page research reports. It’s easier to accept grossly oversimplified top-line takeaways as gospel and reduce them to even less accurate headlines and soundbites. I’ve seen the consequences firsthand working with state education leaders on science curriculum standards. Few are truly setting out to put misleading or incomplete information in our classrooms, but the misinformation is pervasive and there’s simply so much information to sift through to get to the real nuggets of truth.

But we need to do better — for our children’s sake.

Jason Isaac is the CEO and founder of American Energy Institute and former Texas Representative .

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Matthew Van Wagenen & Arnel P. David
Real Clear Wire

An axis of aggressors has embarked on a new strategy to defeat the West: relentless attacks with inexpensive weapons, produced at scale, to provoke a global response. Western militaries, which cling to outdated and excessively expensive weapon systems and platforms (that take too long to develop and replenish, and regularly exceed their budgets), are being systematically bled dry.

In simple financial terms, the West is on the wrong side of the cost curve. Imagine the defense industry as a normal business. In economics, a cost curve illustrates the relationship between production costs and quantity. Successful businesses achieve economies of scale, reducing costs through efficiency. But the West's defense enterprise is operating on the wrong side of this curve. Production costs are high, and output is low, pushing Western nations into diseconomies of scale.

The recent aerial attack on Israel and the war in Ukraine expose this vulnerability. Iran’s 300 plus airborne weapons that targeted Israel amounted to less than $200 million dollars whereas the Western response exceeds billions of dollars. In Ukraine, multi-million dollar weapons platforms are destroyed by uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) that range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, and Russia’s prized Black Sea Fleet has been devastated by inexpensive maritime drones. Defense analysts estimate the cost ratio is easily 100:1.

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A Call to Action

A new revolution in military spending is underway. It is a radical change in the way nations procure and integrate military capabilities.  The innovation and changes in Ukraine has been described by General Mark Milley as “the most significant fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in history.” Consequently, this is not a military issue alone; it is a societal one. In democracies like the United States, we the people are responsible for our common defense. We cannot afford to ignore this unsustainable cost mismatch. Every defense dollar matters when there are competing demands for resources to address aging populations, health care, migration challenges, and myriad other social services.

Traditional procurement models in the West, to include the U.S. and NATO, are no longer fit for purpose. They are failing. Decades-long development cycles are obsolete in a world of rapidly evolving threats and disruptive technological change. Let’s say an adversarial nation has a four year cycle to produce a capability and, in the West, it takes ten years. In this scenario, in twenty years’ time the adversary-to-West ratio for innovation and capability development is 5:2. This all but guarantees that our adversaries will field a greater range of innovative capabilities, potentially leading to overmatch.

Rapid technological advancements are outpacing the military's long-term development programs, rendering them obsolete as cheaper, more effective alternatives emerge. Program managers, those with the responsibility, authority, and personnel to deliver programs (e.g., ships, planes, software), lack both the incentive and the means to adapt to this fast-changing landscape. The ingrained culture of preserving existing programs stifles innovation and adaptability. It is unlikely a program manager will kill their program for the greater good. Likewise, the political representatives of states where these programs sit will lobby heavily to keep these programs (i.e., jobs) alive irrespective of any negative strategic impact.

To overcome this, the military and the broader defense enterprise must urgently rethink their approach. Early and aggressive testing, integration, and prototyping of innovative warfare concepts are essential to gain an edge in modern conflicts. SpaceX’s rapid trial and error prototyping to develop rockets and OpenAI’s early release and testing of ChatGPT are examples of this approach to develop capability faster.  Waiting for "perfect" solutions, or clinging to lengthy development cycles, leads to unpreparedness on the ever-evolving battlefield. Keeping this approach is akin to relying on horse cavalry in the era of mechanized warfare.

A Glimmer of Hope

There is movement in the right direction. Nations like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Norway, and Finland are leading the way. Their "drone wall" initiative leverages affordable, networked sensors to safeguard their sovereignty. They will do this by keeping costs down to achieve economies of scale.

The U.S. Department of Defense is also taking steps in the right direction with its Replicator initiative. Thousands of drones have been delivered, demonstrating a shift toward rapid, warfighter-centric innovation. This could be the necessary spark to ignite essential change.

Other promising initiatives in NATO are the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) and the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF). Both complementary initiatives provide access to deep tech start-up communities, but the challenge for these programs will be transition. How do they transition capability into warfighters’ hands to be relevant going forward? As expressed above, it cannot take decades.

The Path Forward

To survive, the West must revolutionize its military procurement and production processes. We need a laser focus on swift prototyping and deployment of cutting-edge technologies. These systems must be affordable, easily updated, interoperable, and adaptable to new threats. The era of billion-dollar projects that risk obsolescence must end. A more diverse approach is not just needed, it is compulsory if we want to win wars and preserve peace.

The conflict in Ukraine serves as a stark warning. Clinging to expensive, slow-moving defense systems will leave the West vulnerable. We must out-innovate, not outspend, our adversaries. Our Alliance, made up of free and democratic nations, must unleash the creative capital present within our societies to find cost wise off-sets that can be immediately integrated into our collective defense system.

The future of warfare demands a fusion of accessible technology, rapid innovation, and scalable production. The West must adapt or face the consequences of falling behind an axis of aggressors who are united in their pursuit of strategic advantage and wish to see the West decline.

Matthew Van Wagenen is a major general in the U.S. Army currently serving as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (DCOS OPS) in the NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).

Arnel P. David is a colonel in the U.S. Army currently serving as the director of the Strategic Initiatives Group (SIG) in the NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).

The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect any entity or organization of the U.S. Government or NATO.

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Adam Andrzejewski
Real Clear Wire

Topline: Billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars flow into Harvard University, Brown University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, but that didn’t stop the three schools from supplementing their funds with nearly $10 million in combined foreign gifts from the “State of Palestine.”

Key facts: A new report from OpenTheBooks.com revealed that between 2017 and 2023, IUP accepted $7.3 million from Palestine, Harvard got $1.6 million, Brown took in $643,000.

OpenTheBooks’ auditors previously reported the significant amount taxpayers spend to subsidize  Ivy League schools. Harvard received $3.3 billion in federal grants and contracts from 2018 to 2022, and Brown received $1.2 billion. IUP is a public school operating with Pennsylvania state money.

Neither the U.S. nor the United Nations acknowledges the existence of the “State of Palestine.” Brown, Harvard and IUP have decided to play by their own rules, even though they accept U.S. taxpayer money.

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Brown used some of its Palestinian funds to hire Beshara Doumani as its first professor of “Palestinian Studies.” The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis  reports that the department’s lectures center around “antisemitic conspiracy theories and gross misinformation about Jewish history and identity.”

During the period, Doumani was granted leave to run the West Bank’s Birzeit University, whose employee union praised Hamas terrorists for standing “boldly in the face of colonial fascism” when slaughtering innocent Israelis on Oct. 7 and Hamas is the largest student group on campus.

This April, Brown was one of the first and only universities to give in to pro-Palestine student protestors’ demands of considering divestment from Israel.

Most of IUP’s gifts went to pay tuition and fees for Palestinian students in the school’s business PhD and MBA programs at Arab American University in the West Bank.

Harvard’s Palestinian funds were unrestricted, so there are no federal records of how the money was spent.

Harvard’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights has run programs with Birzeit University, including courses like “The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health.”

Background: The Palestinian “gifts” are just one piece of the larger influence the Middle East wields over U.S. higher education.

In the last 40 years, $1 on every $4 of foreign gifts and grants to American universities has come from four Middle Eastern nations: Qatar ($5.2 billion), Saudi Arabia ($3 billion), United Arab Emirates ($1.3 billion) and Kuwait ($860 million).

Summary: U.S. taxpayer money should be supporting institutions that advance our national values, not those that accept money from groups terrorizing our country’s allies, and sowing antisemitism on college campuses.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

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IDF soldiers during operational activity in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza on Monday, May 20, 2024. (IDF photo)

(ANTIWAR) – The Biden administration is concerned that the violence on the Israel-Lebanon border could soon escalate into a full-blown war and that Israel is rushing into the conflict without a clear strategy, Axios reported on Wednesday.

US officials told Axios that the administration has cautioned Israel against the idea of a “limited war,” warning that Iran could intervene and militants in Iraq and Syria could join the fighting.

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The report said the White House believes a ceasefire in Gaza is the only thing that could reduce tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border. However, Israeli officials have previously threatened to escalate in Lebanon if a truce is reached in Gaza.

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Muslim migrants head out of Slovenia toward Europe. More than 1.3 million made their way to the wealthy welfare state of Germany, welcomed by the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

(REMIX) – German business leaders are coming out against the ruling left-liberal government, and one of the biggest, the CEO of Deutsche Börse AG, a multinational corporation that operates the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, one of the biggest stock exchanges in the world, is now labeling the current government’s policy as “a disaster” on a range of issues, including migration and economic policy.

Theodor Weimer issued the scathing rebuke against the ruling government at an event organized by the Bavarian Economic Advisory Council. During his speech at the Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich, Weimer said, “I have now had my 18th meeting with our Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Economic Affairs Robert Habeck, and I can tell you, it’s a sheer catastrophe.”

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The 64-year-old Weimer, who has a bird’s-eye view of the German economy through his role as the boss of the largest stock exchange in the country, said that his talks with international investors gave him “direct knowledge” of their opinions on Germany. He noted that “I know half of the DAX CEOs. I know bosses personally and on a first-name basis. And I get around a lot. I don’t want to spoil things tonight, but.our reputation in the world has never been as bad as it is now.”

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(UPI) – The U.S. State Department Friday designated the Nordic Resistance Movement and three of its leaders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Three of the alleged leaders of the group also were designated,

The State Department said Fredrik Vejdeland has been in the group's national leadership for 20 years and is the head of the group's national council. Par Oberg is an NRM national council member and heads the group's parliamentary branch.

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Leif Robert Eklund is on the NRM's national council and coordinates various Swedish NRM divisions, according to the State Department.

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Royal family watches Trooping of the Color parade

(NEW YORK POST) – On a typical rainy morning in London, Kate Middleton was a ray of sunshine on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, all smiles, and waving at the crowd of onlookers during the annual Trooping the Colour — her first public appearance since revealing her cancer battle.

The band fittingly played “Over the Rainbow” just before Middleton stepped out with her family. She stood in between her husband, Prince William, and King Charles, as they watched the traditional military flyover, with Princess Charlotte in front of her and sons Prince George, 10, and Prince Louis, 6, close by.

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The positioning seemed intentional, and touching, since last year Prince William was standing next to his father. Having King Charles and Middleton stand next to one another was a “gesture of solidarity and support,” royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told The Sun.

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(ZEROHEDGE) – Canada was the world's top uranium producer for years until Kazakhstan dethroned it in 2009. Fast forward to 2022, and Canada held the second spot, pumping out 15% of the global supply. By 2023, Canada became the top uranium supplier to the US, delivering 27% of total deliveries. With uranium prices soaring in the last several years, primarily because of the 'Next AI Trade' theme (laid out for pro subs), Canada's uranium mining boom could lead it to reclaim the top spot.

A new report from Bloomberg highlights that Canada's Saskatchewan province is the epicenter of the country's uranium mining boom: "What Saskatchewan has, though, is uranium. Lots of uranium. The bedrock is so loaded with it that the area around just one stretch of the lake, it is believed, could generate enough nuclear energy to power more than 40 million homes for a quarter century."

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Cameco and Cameco/Orano operate several active mines in the commodity-heavy region, and there are also a number of new mines under development.

Read the full story ›

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Tim Gallaudet
Real Clear Wire

This World Ocean Day, conservation groups, scientists and average citizens across the globe will take part in activities to focus attention on the many threats to the marine environment. While serving with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) between 2017-2021, I championed a wide range of activities to combat these threats, such as reducing marine plastic pollution, curing coral disease, countering illegal fishing, conserving coral reefs, protecting endangered species, restoring habitat, as well as adding new and expanding existing marine protected areas. While we made much progress, more is needed if we want to hand off a healthy ocean to future generations.

As with our ocean, there is another at-risk resource that requires our attention. America’s military Veteran community is suffering from high suicide rates and other mental health challenges caused by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which have resulted from two decades of nonstop war. While the Veterans Administration has made great progress by establishing the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program, some reports indicate that Veteran suicide rates may be as high as 24 per day. That number is unacceptable, and more must be done to reduce it.

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How can we confront these two challenges in tandem for the greater good?

Former members of the military can be power tools in protecting the planet. NOAA recognized this several years ago, enlisting Veterans for habitat conservation on the Gulf Coast, across California, in Washington and in Oregon.

Similarly, Veterans Service Organizations (VSO) can gain by adding environmental elements to the portfolio of activities they offer to the groups they support.

Another example of blending these two important causes is the American nonprofit Force Blue, for which I am on the board of directors. The idea to support ocean conservation while helping Veterans grew out of a scuba diving trip to the Cayman Islands in 2015 by co-founders Jim Ritterhoff and Rudy Reyes.

For Ritterhoff, an experienced recreational diver who had been diving on coral reefs for decades, the dives were routine. But for Reyes, a former reconnaissance marine — who had struggled with PTS and depression since returning home from multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan — the experience was life-changing.

Like most special operations Veterans, Reyes did not view diving as an activity to enjoy. Diving for him meant hauling 200 pounds of gear underwater to destroy dangerous targets in the dead of night. The coral reefs and marine life of the Cayman Islands transformed him. Ritterhoff, who was familiar with the threats to ocean health around the globe, saw the ultimate win-win opportunity.

Involving Veterans like Reyes in conservation would serve to restore their mental, emotional, and physical health, as well as help the marine environment. Efforts like Force Blue offer an important lesson for marine conservation organizations everywhere.

We can already see this in successful efforts to restore, conserve or study such diverse habitats as coral reefs in Florida and Puerto Rico, kelp forests in California, and submerged aquatic vegetation in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Renewing the sense of purpose and belonging in Veterans through experiences with nature can create a new generation of conservation leaders.

Now Florida Congressman Darren Soto (D-FL) has introduced the Don Young Veterans Advancing Conservation Act, which will establish a grant program at NOAA for training and employing Veterans in the marine conservation field. Named after the late Alaskan Congressman and Veteran supporter, the bill will create pathways for Veterans to conduct activities such as coral reef restoration, marine debris removal, and hurricane recovery. This legislation has wide bipartisan support in the House of Representatives and could be a much-needed mechanism to unify Congress were the Senate to take up a similar measure.

A rising tide of support for ocean sustainability is occurring worldwide, evidenced by the doubling in funding for it to nearly $2 billion over the last decade. As governments, philanthropies, nonprofits, and private companies seek to contribute more, it can only help if they bring on board those who swore an oath to fight for an equally important purpose. By involving more Veterans in marine conservation, we can give these warriors a cause — and we can give a critical cause its “warriors.”

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet (U.S. Navy, ret.), Ph.D., is the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for Force Blue, former acting and Deputy Administrator of NOAA, acting Under Secretary and Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and Oceanographer of the Navy.

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Oliver McPherson-Smith
Real Clear Wire

The Inflation Reduction Act’s consumer tax credit for electric vehicles (EVs) is a fiscal blowout and a gift to Chinese mineral companies. If that isn’t bad enough, it also swindles American taxpayers into paying up to $821 per ton of avoided emissions, which is several multiples above the Biden Administration’s own estimates of the cost of carbon. At that staggering price, the scheme is a spectacularly inefficient way to reduce emissions.

Through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, taxpayers subsidize the purchase of new electric vehicles by up to $7,500. But how many tons of carbon emissions does that actually stop from reaching the atmosphere? Compared to a conventional vehicle, the International Energy Agency estimates that using an EV avoids the equivalent of around 22.24 tons of carbon dioxide across its lifecycle. This means that the EV tax credit costs around $337 to avoid each ton of carbon emissions.

However, the true cost is actually higher because proper accounting should exclude EV consumers who would buy electric vehicles regardless of the tax credit. Because the tax credit doesn’t sway those consumers, the associated avoided emissions shouldn’t be attributed to the credit. The credit has the same $7,500 value, but the scheme is actually avoiding fewer carbon emissions, so the price per ton is higher.

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According to a 2021 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 70% of consumers who claimed the federal EV tax credit would have done so in its absence, which would imply a $1,123 implicit cost of carbon. Since then, the Inflation Reduction Act introduced new conditions on the tax credit, including limits on eligibility for high-income buyers. Even if one generously assumes that the remaining pool of very motivated buyers is only half the size — meaning only 35% would purchase an EV without it — then the implicit cost of carbon is still $519 per ton.

The federal splurge on carbon gets a further boost thanks to President Biden’s onerous fuel efficiency standards. Mandating higher fuel efficiency means that a shift from a conventional vehicle to an EV has less of an effect in terms of avoided emissions. In May 2022, the Department of Transportation mandated that new cars on the roads in 2026 be 33% more fuel efficient than the 2021 standards. When consumers choose EVs over these more efficient gas-fueled vehicles, the implicit price of carbon within the EV credit jumps to $775. As the Biden Administration progressively ratchets these efficiency standards higher, so too goes the implicit price on carbon. By 2031, federal taxpayers will be forking over the equivalent of $821 for each ton of carbon the EV tax credit prevents from reaching the atmosphere.

Frittering away more than $800 for a ton of carbon is a rip-off that not even the most unscrupulous used car salesman could dream up. Compare this figure to recent estimates of the “social cost of carbon,” which the federal government uses to quantify the impact of emissions when making regulatory decisions. While the Trump Administration estimated it to be between $1 to $7 per ton, the Biden Administration blew the roof off in 2023 by raising that cost to $190. That progressive overstatement now looks like a steal.

Even within the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax and spend circus, the EV tax credit is a spectacularly wasteful way to reduce carbon emissions. For example, the natural gas tax, which solely punishes the oil and gas industry under a thin guise of environmentalism, levies a fee equivalent to $36 per ton of carbon. Meanwhile, the tax credit for vacuuming emissions out of the air is worth up to $180 per ton. These dramatically different prices, even within a single act of Congress, underscore the practical futility of calculating an efficient price on carbon for a carbon tax or tariff.

Progressives like to measure the success of their policies by how much taxpayer money they can burn through, and the White House periodically reminds taxpayers that the Inflation Reduction Act is the largest single climate spending spree in human history. What they don’t mention is that the American public is being ripped off at the car lot with a climate lemon of a tax credit.

Oliver McPherson-Smith, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center for Energy & Environment at the America First Policy Institute and a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Dan Vallone
Real Clear Wire

In Americans’ political memory, few peacetime moments carry the motivating power of Sputnik. As NASA put it back in 2007, “History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I.” Shocked by the Soviet’s capabilities, Americans mobilized industry, academia, civil society, and government to dominate the space race, land on the moon, and, ultimately, win the Cold War.

Its perceived narrative power explains Sputnik’s frequent appearance in national security debates. In recent years, advocates have harnessed Sputnik to argue America faces grave risks from adversaries outpacing us in the race for 5G, hypersonic missile capabilities, space, and in industrial strategy in general. Earlier this year, national security commentators argued America is confronting a “Sputnik moment” with the disclosure that Russia is pursuing a nuclear, space-based anti satellite weapon system. In each of these instances, however, the American public demonstrated nowhere near the level of alarm triggered by Sputnik.

What explains this Sputnik gap? Are defense experts wrong about the magnitude of threat posed by recent adversarial developments? In some cases, yes. 5G technology, for example, is not analogous to Soviet rocket capabilities. But in other instances, such as the risk that China overtakes America in defense industrial development, the parallels seem much stronger. Yet even here, Sputnik is the wrong story for today.

Sputnik is the wrong story because the conditions that enabled America’s Sputnik moment no longer hold true. Sputnik is not a story about an adversary jumping ahead of America technologically, it is a story about American institutions, primarily the media and government, cultivating a shared understanding of the risks presented by such a development. This shared understanding is the critical piece: alerted to the grave dangers Sputnik presented, Americans across the political spectrum demanded action and both political parties competed to demonstrate leadership against the threat.

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There were three conditions that caused this shared sense of meaning to develop. The first was the information environment. In 1957, most Americans got their news from a fairly narrow set of sources, with CBS, NBC, and ABC dominating the information marketplace, especially with respect to national events. This made it more likely that Americans would have simultaneous, shared awareness of events–as noted in a 1958 Pentagon memo, a survey taken right after Sputnik showed 95 percent of Americans were aware of the satellite.

The second condition was the state of institutional trust. When Sputnik blasted into space, Americans, by and large, trusted the government. This meant that political events, such as Congressional hearings by the Senate Armed Services Preparedness Subcommittee launched after Sputnik, or leaked information from the Gaither report, a top-secret analysis of strategies for protecting the American population from potential Soviet nuclear attacks, could meaningfully influence public opinion.

The final condition was the national security context. Sputnik came just eight years after the Soviets detonated an atomic bomb, four years after President Eisenhower signed an armistice agreement in the Korean War, and less than a year after the Soviets brutally suppressed the Hungarian revolution. While Americans’ views towards the Soviet Union were far from monolithic, the public had a tangible sense for the Soviet’s capacity for violence.

These conditions enabled the Sputnik moment. Contrary to popular imagination, as noted by Douglas Brinkley in American Moonshot, there was relatively little outcry over Sputnik from the American public at first. But the chorus of fears and concerns about the state of America’s space and rocket programs, raised by political elites and covered extensively by America’s dominant news media, turned what might have started as curiosity into fear. That fear, set against over a decade of Soviet aggression, coalesced into a powerful shared understanding that the moment demanded resolute action.

Today, the conditions are dramatically different. Americans’ information environment is wildly diverse, deeply fragmented across ideological lines, and increasingly network-based (i.e., social media, group chats, etc.). Institutional trust is near record lows and highly polarized. And there is no foreign threat where Americans feel concern that is as visceral and widely shared as what they felt towards the Soviet Union in 1957.

This last point requires some additional explanation. It’s true that a majority of Americans today see China as the greatest threat to the country, but few feel national security is a top concern right now. This suggests that while Americans recognize China possesses the most concerning military and economic capabilities of any potential adversary, they do not feel the threat is imminent.

Consider that in President Eisenhower’s 1958 State of the Union (SOTU) address, he led off by noting “many Americans are troubled by recent world developments which they believe may threaten our nation's safety…all know these dangers are real”. The Soviet threat was central to his entire message to the American people. In contrast, no foreign threat has catalyzed anywhere near as significant a response in recent years. President Biden mentioned China only briefly in his 2024 SOTU, for example. He gave greater attention to the threat from Russia, but here, although Americans broadly see Russia as a threat, there are internal divisions within the Republican party over the need to confront Russian aggression. .

So long as these conditions remain, and they do not seem likely to change anytime soon, America will not have a Sputnik moment. But we need a Sputnik response. Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, recently published a report arguing China’s defense spending could be nearly on par with that of the US when taking into consideration purchasing power parity. Russia is gaining ground in Ukraine and growing increasingly menacing in its posture towards NATO. And American forces are regularly confronting drone and missile attacks in the Middle East. The magnitude and diversity of threats requires a transformational response comparable to what happened with Sputnik.

In 1958 this included creating NASA, passing the National Defense Education Act, and empowering the Secretary of Defense with greater authority to direct program funding. A contemporary Sputnik response would likely involve significant increases to the defense budget, upgrades to the nation’s science, technology, and manufacturing infrastructure, and a more tangible, public-facing effort to dominate our adversaries in space. This last piece is critical–an effective Sputnik response is one that not just delivers the capabilities America needs, but also makes Americans feel part of a story of success.

The good news is that America does not need a Sputnik moment to have a Sputnik response. Contrary to what one might think at this point, the intent of this article is not to lament the condition of American society. America is in so many ways a much stronger nation than we were seventy years ago. We have the most capable military in the world; we’re leading on artificial intelligence, the most transformational technology of our time; and however significant our internal divisions are, we are more cohesive, resilient, and dynamic than any of our adversaries. The key to harnessing these strengths is to build a shared understanding of the risks facing the nation using methods that fit the information and trust landscape today.

In a fragmented media and information environment, top-down communications do not work. We need campaigns that engage Americans as individuals, both online and in-real life, and invite them into the conversation. This is not about a single viral moment, but a steady build of individual and small-group moments that lead to demands for action.

In order to address people’s skepticism of institutional information, we need to work through trusted, non-governmental intermediaries such as local civic and business leaders, the myriad of places online people turn to for group chats and conversions, and new membership groups that are growing across the country. Importantly, the intent is not to have messengers push a specific narrative, but rather to have credible leaders pose questions, share information, and encourage their communities to discuss and eventually move towards actions. Perhaps now more than ever, Americans do not want to be told what to think, they want to arrive at a conclusion themselves.

Finally, as more Americans feel connected to national security conversations, we need to build pathways to transform public will into political influence. The end game for this movement is to compel policymakers across the ideological spectrum to see the political necessity of major investments in our national defense. This kind of multi-channel, networked campaign does not currently exist, but is needed to spur a modern-day Sputnik response.

Sputnik will always remain an inspirational story. It reflects much of what makes America exceptional, from the relentless pursuit of technological innovation to our profound belief in the transformational powers of education and self-improvement. But inspirational stories, when they no longer match the current context, can distract us from doing what works today to engage the American people. We do not need a single event to focus our attention, we need millions of conversations about the risks America faces, why they matter to us, and what we can do to overcome them.

Dan Vallone is founding principal at Polarization Risk Advisory LLC, where he advises clients on how to navigate risks from polarization and on how to communicate effectively in an era of media fragmentation and polarization. An Army veteran, Dan has led a variety of public-opinion studies on Americans’ attitudes towards the military. He writes regularly on issues of polarization and social cohesion in America and on methods for connecting the American people with the military. Dan is also currently a visiting fellow with the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. 

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Brett Schaefer
Real Clear Wire

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Heino Klinck
Real Clear Wire

Soon, President Biden will meet with seven of our most important allies and partners at the upcoming G7 summit in Italy, June 13-15. This meeting comes at a pivotal moment: wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East show little signs of stopping, China is becoming more aggressive in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and beyond, and the global economy is still suffering from slow growth and inflation. Having just returned from Europe, I encountered a palpable sense of anxiety about America’s current leadership in the world given the widespread failure of deterrence and continued economic malaise. During trying times like these, the United States needs to be seen as standing with like-minded allies to confront common challenges, not just as a leader, but also as an equal partner.

Japan, as the only Asian G7 member, will attend the G-7 summit in Italy’s Puglia region. In addition to the multilateral discussions, it can be expected that President Biden will have a bilateral meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio.

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This will not be the first time these two leaders have met this year. On April 10^th, Prime Minister Kishida visited Washington for a rare state visit with President Biden, a testament to the continued significance of our alliance. The meeting concluded with the launch of a new Forum on Defense Industrial Cooperation, Acquisition, and Sustainment led by the Pentagon and Japan’s Ministry of Defense. Shortly after in May, this new initiative produced an agreement between the two governments to collaborate on the Glide Phase Interceptor Cooperative Development. This was an unmistakable sign of our collective resolve to pursue regional deterrence and missile defense together.

Moreover, the Government of Japan (GoJ) has taken numerous steps recently to align its foreign and defense policies with the U.S., arguably more than any other country:

• Japan has committed to doubling its defense budget to 2% of its GDP, which equates to approximately $100 billion annually to bolster Self-Defense Forces and enhance its capabilities in line with U.S. strategic interests.
• In response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Japan has imposed sanctions in coordination with the U.S. demonstrating its commitment to upholding international law and security. Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Japan has committed nearly $12 billion in aid to Ukraine.
• Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) amounted to $21 billion in 2022, focusing on global health, climate change, and sustainable development, aligning with U.S. goals to promote global stability and development.
• Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy aligns with U.S. efforts to ensure regional stability and counter China’s influence, reflecting shared strategic objectives.

General Mark Milley, the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lauded this shift from GoJ, saying that “having a powerful Japan, a militarily capable Japan that has a close alliance with the United States and other countries, will go a long way to deterring war” with China. And in the context of China’s increasingly belligerent behaviors, like its recent military exercises meant to intimidate Taiwan, this should be a welcome relief for Washington who knows it cannot do everything on its own to deal with Beijing.

Despite the unprecedented forward-leaning actions taken by the GoJ to align with the U.S., often at the expense of domestic opposition to increased defense spending, there are distractions that are impacting the alliance emanating from Washington, DC.

During a recent campaign fundraiser, President Biden likened Japan to Russia and China for being “xenophobic,” a comment that Japan justifiably called “unfortunate.” On the heels of a state visit and during an era of Great Power Competition, one can only wonder how POTUS could compare Japan with the countries of a new arc of authoritarianism.

Political posturing in the U.S. during an election year also distracts from our critical alliance. During a campaign event, the president opposed the proposed merger between Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel by saying that U.S. Steel must “remain an American steel company that is domestically owned and operated.” On the same day as Kishida’s arrival for the state visit, the Federal Trade Commission announced they opened an investigation into the proposed acquisition. All this while the Congress was debating the future of TikTok in the United States, an unfortunate while hopefully unintentional parallel.

It is important for Washington to strike the proper balance of international relations and domestic politicking. While much has been accomplished with Japan, we cannot take the relationship for granted at a time when we need more help than ever to counter China. Distractions like the President’s rhetorical gaffes or politicizing commercial deals only serve our adversaries’ objectives.

As Secretary Austin just said at the Shangri-La conclave, America’s “greatest global strategic advantage” is our alliances.  We should not put that at risk for domestic political gain.

Heino Klinck was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia, 2019-21.

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

By Nancy Flanders
Live Action News

A woman in India has reportedly committed suicide after being coerced into an abortion.

According to police, Sandu Kavya Sri, age 20, married her husband Sandu Srikantah two years ago, and together they welcomed a daughter, who is now 10 months old. Kavya Sri became pregnant a second time and was five months along when at the end of May, her husband took her for an ultrasound that revealed their second child was also a girl. She then decided to stay with her parents, but was pressured by her husband and his parents to undergo an abortion, because the child was not a boy.

Kavya Sri’s father, Errapothu Raja, told police that Srikantah and his parents took Kavya to the hospital multiple times while pressuring her to abort her baby. After the abortion was eventually carried out, Kavya Sri attempted to kill herself, and though her husband and parents found her and rushed her to a private hospital, she died while undergoing treatment there.

Research has long found a connection between induced abortion and depression. Though abortion advocates often cite the flawed Turnaway Study to argue that women are damaged when they are denied abortions, research shows that whether a baby is wanted or unwanted, women still have much higher risks of depression and suicidal ideation after abortion.

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Jade Rees, a 21-year-old single mother in the UK, killed herself by hanging after her abortion. She had previously attempted to overdose twice in 48 hours. The Daily Mail reported, “Miss Rees left handwritten notes addressed to her parents and two-year-old son, explaining the struggle she had faced since the devastating procedure, in which she stressed that her little boy ‘means everything to me’.”

In 2022, it was reported that a woman in India hanged herself following 14 abortions, which a man she was in a relationship with coerced her to undergo.

A woman named Spring attempted suicide three times following her abortion. “Life after the abortion was awful,” she said. “I had instant remorse, guilt, and shame. I had a very difficult time functioning in everyday life. I had nightmares about the experience regularly. I fell into an extreme depression, and I was suicidal.”

Amy had an abortion after becoming pregnant from rape, because she was told it was the best thing for her to do. However, she was “heartbroken” following the abortion and began drinking heavily and abusing prescription drugs, both of which are behaviors that post-abortive women are more likely to experience. Amy also became suicidal. “I drank so much and took such a lot of painkillers in order that I wouldn’t wake up… ” she said. “Maybe if I even went to hell, that would be better than where I was at that time.”

Danielle, Nichole, and Jeanene also all attempted suicide after having an abortion, and sadly, teenager Ashli Blake and actress Charlotte Dawson both died by suicide after their abortions.

Research has shown that women who became pregnant and had abortions were six times more likely to commit suicide than women who had carried their pregnancies to term. In addition, women who aborted were three times more likely to commit suicide than women who had not been pregnant. Rather than increasing a woman’s chances of suicide, carrying a baby to term actually decreases them.

Another study had similar results, finding that women who had abortions were more likely to die within 10 years after their abortions than women who carried to term — with suicide being a common cause of death.

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

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A new study has suggested COVID shots, which already are known to cause serious side effects including heart ailments that can be fatal, also triggered a decline in male fertility.

A study done by researchers in Denmark analyzed fertility levels from thousands of men ages 18-45, with half in the 18-24 age group, and revealed COVID mRNA shots "have caused widespread harm to fertility rates."

"During the study, the researchers examined the quality of semen in potential donors in Denmark between 2017 and 2022," explained a report in Slay News.

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Of those accepted as donors, about one-third of the total, "The study revealed that motile sperm concentration dropped by 16 percent," a drop seen only during 2019-2022 when mRNA shots were being delivered.

The report said 587 of the donors during that time "saw their parameters worsen," while 425 didn't.

Also down for many study participants was total motile sperm count, which concerned the study organizers as that "has potential implications for human fertility, because sperm motility is correlated with the probability of conception," the report said.

In fact, the report said TMSC was down 22% among the entire donor pool.

Study authors said, "Such a sharp decline in sperm motility to occur over a relatively short length of time suggests that external factors were likely to have played a role. In this context, we note that the observed decline in sperm motility roughly corresponds to the onset of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic."

They noted lifestyle changes, including the now-proven ineffective lockdowns, also may have played a role in the changes.

The report also confirmed that a separate study "found alarming changes in motility which were closely correlated to the COVID mRNA injections."

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By Jason Hopkins
Daily Caller News Foundation

Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson framed the current migrant housing situation as “unsustainable” while defending his office’s decision to evict migrants out of taxpayer-funded shelters.

Chicago began enforcing a 60-day limit for most adults in March, and approximately 121 people are set to be evicted by June 18,  WTTW, a local outlet, reported. The mayor claimed during a Wednesday press conference that Congress needs to help address the issue and pointed the finger at “Trump Republicans” for the city’s current migrant crisis.

“It is an unsustainable mission because we don’t have support from Congress,” Johnson said. “Congress, of course, refuses to respond to President Biden’s leadership and they refused to enact real substantive immigration reform policy, because that’s really what we need. But you have Trump Republicans that are more interested in obeying a convicted convict — a felon,” the mayor said.

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The city has welcomed in more than 43,000 migrants since August 2022 and has so far spent around $150 million to feed and house them, according to the Chicago Tribune. Many of the noncitizens are from Venezuela and have largely been bussed into the city by GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as he has sought to relieve his own state from the immigration crisis.

A memo published by the city under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel states that  law enforcement are prohibited from working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and pledges city officials will never ask anyone about, or deny services because of, their immigration status.

City leaders in 2023 attempted to issue a referendum allowing voters to determine whether the city should keep its sanctuary city status, according to Fox32. However, Johnson and his allies in the city council used a procedural maneuver to block the referendum from moving forward, preventing residents from having a chance to vote on the measure.

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By Jason Hopkins
Daily Caller News Foundation

Texas law enforcement has already nabbed the number one fugitive on its “10 Most Wanted Illegal Immigrants” list just days after it launched.

The Texas Department of Public Safety apprehended Victor Hugo Chox Gonzalez, a 38-year-old Mexican national wanted for aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child by sexual contact, on Thursday, according to an announcement by the agency. Following his arrest by DPS special agents, Gonzalez was booked into the Tarrant County Jail.

Gonzalez has a long criminal history in Tarrant County, according to Texas authorities.

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He was deported from the U.S. in 2016 after being convicted of a DUI with a chid in the car and assaulting a family member, the press release reads. He was also arrested for assault in 2021, and a warrant was issued for his arrest in 2023 for aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child by sexual contact.

The arrest marks a win for GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who touted the launch of the “most wanted” criminal illegal immigrant list earlier this month.

“When President Joe Biden took office, he dismantled every effective border policy his predecessor put into place,” Abbott said on June 5. “As a result, we have seen record high levels of illegal immigration, including dangerous criminals and terrorists who are a threat to the public safety of our state and our nation.”

“These illegal immigrants will now be spotlighted on our 10 Most Wanted Criminal Illegal Immigrants List,” Abbott continued. “Texas is a law-and-order state, and with the help of our fellow Texans, we will ensure that the illegal immigrants on this list are taken off our streets and put behind bars to keep our communities safe.”

Gonzalez is one of two illegal immigrants on the top 10 list that are now in custody, according to Texas law enforcement.

The other individual, Servando Trejo Duran, Jr., was on the run for murder with a deadly weapon, according to the list. The other illegal immigrants featured have been convicted or charged with a litany of heinous crimes, many of them pertaining to sexual abuse or sexual assault of children.

Launched in partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety, the new program is designed to locate and arrest individuals who are living in the U.S. unlawfully and are repeat offenders of dangerous crimes committed in Texas, according to the governor’s press release. The initiative also offers cash rewards to any person who offers information that leads to the apprehension of the most wanted illegal immigrants.

The list is the latest in Abbott’s effort to crackdown on illegal immigration. The Republican governor launched Operation Lone Star in 2021, which is an initiative that has deployed Texas National Guard troops to the border and bussed tens of thousands of illegal migrants into various sanctuary cities across the country.

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(JNS) -- IDF reserve soldiers have been recorded using a trebuchet, a type of catapult once used as a medieval siege weapon, to ignite bushes and dry vegetation near IDF posts on the northern border.

This tactic, which went viral on Thursday after the soldiers apparently shared it on social media, is aimed at preventing Hezbollah fighters from using the dense foliage as cover in the area.

The IDF uses a catapult (trébuchet) on the border with Lebanon pic.twitter.com/YT4hgQ872U

— OSINTNic (@OSINTNic) June 12, 2024

The thickets close to the border fence make it difficult for soldiers to locate Hezbollah cells hiding in the region. At the start of the conflict, reserve soldiers attempted to use Molotov cocktails to set the bushes on fire, thereby exposing the area so that the cells would have no place to hide. Lebanese sources have also reported the use of phosphorus bombs, which cause fires, and incendiary drones.

Read the full story ›

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is interviewed by Jalal Chahda of Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, Wednesday, June 12, 2024.

(JNS) -- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Defense are being criticized widely for interviews with terrorism-tied outlets over the Shavuot holiday.

On Wednesday, Sabrina Singh, deputy Pentagon press secretary, fielded a question during a briefing about tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese border from Al Mayadeen, a Lebanese outlet with ties to Hezbollah. She also took a follow-up question from the publication.

“The Pentagon is answering questions put to it directly by Al Mayadeen, a Hezbollah propaganda outlet. What the hell is any U.S. government spokesperson doing talking to Hezbollah?” wrote Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and director of its Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East.

Read the full story ›

(JNS) -- Two Israelis sustained light wounds on Thursday when rocket shrapnel fell in Katzrin, the largest Israeli community in the Golan Heights.

The victims, who were both said to be in their 20s, were treated by Magen David Adom medics and paramedics before being evacuated to Ziv Medical Center in the nearby city of Safed, the medical emergency response group tweeted.

A large fire has erupted in the city of Safed following the massive barrage of rockets. pic.twitter.com/ofZUuEZPi5

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) June 13, 2024

Hezbollah terrorists in Southern Lebanon fired more than 100 rockets in the latest barrage, with direct hits and major damage reported across the Golan and Galilee.

Read the full story ›

A young woman attending a concert in Israel flees as Hamas terrorists open fire on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.

The civilized world was horrified last Oct. 7, and after, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israeli territory and butchered some 1,200 civilians, often by horrific methods such as burning whole families alive.

Not, apparently, Palestinians, though.

In fact, a poll cited by Palestinian Media Watch reveals that only 9% of Palestinians think Hamas committed war crimes.

And 67% support the atrocities that happened that day.

The numbers come from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. Palestinians were questioned between May 26 and June 1, 2024. The poll includes Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

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The PMW report explained, "For those who still delude themselves into thinking that Palestinians are moderate, think again. For president, Palestinians overwhelmingly prefer the Hamas leader (46%) over the PA/Fatah leader (5%). Fatah is only preferred when their candidate is the terrorist Marwan Barghouti, a convicted murderer, who is serving 5 life sentences."

The report continued, "This must be an eye-opener for Americans and Europeans who are pressuring Israel to accept the Palestinian Authority as a peace partner. The PA represents no one. The Palestinian population is not interested in peace. Mahmoud Abbas only represents himself. And if they ever have a future election, they are certain to elect a terrorist as president and Hamas to rule the parliament."

Muslim terrorists with Hamas fire a barrage of rockets against Israel on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023

The numbers show 67% say the Oct. 7 offensive was correct, 64% are "satisfied" with Hamas' work in the war and while 9% said Hamas committed war crimes, 97% said the same of the victim, Israel.

Further, 67% of respondents said Hamas will win the war against Israel.

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A woman in the United Kingdom has been banned from Newcastle United Football Club's games. And she's been investigated by police.

All for social media posts deemed "malicious communications."

Those would be her adherence to science: that "trans women are men."

A report from the Christian Institute explains it is Linzi Smith who is challenging, legally, the football club's decision to revoke her membership and impose a two-season ban.

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And the Northumbria police agency decision to investigate her for her statement that men who say they are women still are men.

She is backed by the Free Speech Union and told the Daily Telegraph publication, "I've been made to look like a criminal. I can't even go looking for a new job at the minute because I'm frightened of how I might be perceived."

She pointed out the attacks are all because she holds beliefs others won't tolerate.

Her solicitor, Paul Conrathe, said, of the issue with police, that the agency is abandoning impartiality on a social issue.

"By marching at Pride, wearing rainbow lanyards and driving rainbow painted police cars the police have plainly breached their statutory duty of impartiality," he explained, noting the support "for highly controversial and contested gender ideology – the belief that a person can have a gender that is different to their biological sex."

The Telegraph report noted Smith has taken her case to the High Court in the United Kingdom following a secretive four-month investigation into her beliefs.

While police ended up not charging her, the football club did punish her for her beliefs, the report said.

"I'm angry with what the police have done to me," she told the publication. "I’ve never been arrested, I’ve never been in trouble, I’ve always been law abiding."

A letter sent to police in her dispute, which is a parallel action to her case against the football team, describes how police use of "emblems, lanyards or symbols," and publicly advocating by "marching" in Pride parades, exhibits bias.

"The defendants are engaging in activities, which may reasonably be regarded as signaling support for one side of a deeply contested social issue; and indeed one of the most divisive or toxic issues in contemporary society," her letter explains.

She describes herself as a "gender critical lesbian" and alleges gender ideology has damaged women's rights by allowing men to call themselves women to infiltrate the community of women.

She said, "The police are bullying and intimidating people for this very reason. And publicly shaming seems to make no difference, so the only effective course of action is to bring this judicial review. We need the police to realize that by posturing and making political statements, they are making people like me feel like I can’t rely on the law because I’m going against their agenda."

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Jennifer Master, right, with Andrey Kozlov's mother, Yevgenia, at a demonstration for the Israeli hostages. (Courtesy: Instagram/bringhomenow)

(JNS) -- While Israeli security officials have requested that the four hostages rescued by the Israel Defense Forces on Saturday keep their experiences secret, some details have nevertheless emerged.

The four—Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40—appeared to be in good health when first seen on camera on June 8, the day of the raid.

But two days later, Dr. Itay Pessach of the Sheba Medical Center revealed they were in a “state of severe malnutrition.”

Read the full story ›

Almog Meir Jan and his mother, Orit, at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan's Tel Hashomer neighborhood. (IDF photo)

(JNS) -- “I am very cheerful and full of joy. For the first time since October 7, I feel that I can breathe again,” Aviram Meir, the uncle of Almog Meir Jan, told JNS on Thursday.

Meir Jan was rescued during “Operation Arnon” last Saturday along with Noa Argamani, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv from two separate locations in Nuseirat Camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Hamas terrorists abducted al four from the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im during the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre.

Read the full story ›

Joe Biden speaks with Border Patrol agents as he receives a briefing on technology used in monitoring and securing the border, Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024, at the U.S.-Mexico border in Brownsville, Texas. (Official White House photo by Adam Schultz)

By Jason Hopkins
Daily Caller News Foundation

Several organizations sued the Biden administration over an executive order that aims to suspend the flow of illegal immigration into the country.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on Wednesday to strike down President Joe Biden’s executive order, which pauses new asylum requests after 2,500 daily average illegal crossings over the span of a week, following through on a pledge the organization made the day Biden announced his order. The ACLU was joined by other immigration advocacy organizations, such as the National Immigrant Justice Center and the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, on behalf of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.

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The lawsuit names Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as a defendant, every agency within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and several other top federal immigration agency chiefs.

“We were left with no alternative but to sue,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “The administration lacks unilateral authority to override Congress and bar asylum based on how one enters the country, a point the courts made crystal clear when the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried a near-identical ban.” 

Biden’s executive order was announced last week. The order will in effect until two weeks after there has been a seven-day average of fewer than 1,500 encounters along the southern border.

Border Patrol has encountered nearly seven million illegal immigrants between ports of entry duringBiden’s time in office, and poll numbers consistently show low approval marks for his handling of immigration.

“The Biden administration’s actions effectively shut the door on countless individuals fleeing violence and persecution. Anti-asylum policies are cruel, ineffective, and unlawfully undermine the fundamental right to seek asylum in the United States,” Arthur Spitzer, senior counsel of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, said in a statement.

The executive order will “effectively shut off any access to asylum protections for the vast majority of people arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border” and is “flatly inconsistent with the asylum statute that Congress enacted,” the ACLU wrote in its press release.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller New Foundation.

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken talks to reporters in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, June 11, 2024.

(JNS) -- Hamas’s official response to Israel’s hostages-for-ceasefire proposal included modifications that are not workable, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.

“Hamas has proposed numerous changes to the proposal that was on the table. … Some of the changes are workable, some are not,” Blinken said in a press conference alongside Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Doha.

“A deal was on the table that was virtually identical to the proposal that Hamas made on May 6—a deal that the entire world is behind, a deal Israel has accepted. Hamas could have answered with a single word: ‘Yes,’” the secretary said.

Read the full story ›

(FOX WEATHER) -- GRINDAVIK, Iceland -- Videos recorded from the ground and the air show a surge of thick lava from a volcano that erupted in Iceland in May, covering a road that leads to and from the evacuated town of Grindavík.

The incredible videos, recorded by Marco Di Marco, show the red-hot lava slowly creeping over Grindavikurvegur, which remains closed due to the eruption and lava flow.

NATURE'S FURY: Red-hot lava from Iceland volcano smothers and closes down major road. Details on the massive molten rock that's creeping closer to small towns and popular tourist destinations. https://t.co/FpvKyJ0V4M pic.twitter.com/IAv0EiC02g

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 12, 2024

The Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said this is the third time lava has flowed over the road since the series of eruptions began at the end of 2023.

Read the full story ›

Joe Biden's motorcade drives along the U.S.-Mexico border on the way to the Brownsville Border Patrol Station, Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas.

The catastrophe Joe Biden created at the southern border when he took office and trashed literally all of President Donald Trump's security measures, such as the border wall and the "Remain in Mexico" practice for asylum seekers, is well known.

Millions of illegal aliens have descended on America, demanding housing, education programs, health care and more. It's cost American taxpayers billions of dollars and some cities, like Denver, are dropping some services to residents because of the costs.

So, as that's one of the top worries for Americans, and it is an election year, Biden announced a new plan to vet newcomers, and limit some entries, although not many.

It's not working, according to a report at Twitchy, which cited federal reports that eight terror suspects have been arrested – after they were "vetted" by Biden's program.

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A Fox News correspondent explained according to a federal source, "ICE, 'in conjunction w/ the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, arrested 8 Tajikistan nationals w/ suspected ISIS ties in NYC, LA, and Philly in recent days. I'm told all 8 crossed the southern border illegally, received 'full vetting,' and had no initial derogatory information that flagged. I'm told derogatory info-potential national security concerns flagged later on, apparently after release into the US. Source was unable to say when and where they crossed illegally into the US. All are now in ICE custody pending removal proceedings and at active federal investigation."

He credited Jennie S. Taer at the New York Post.

At least one was caught on an FBI wiretap, "talking about bombs."

BREAKING: Per federal source familiar, ICE, in conjunction w/ the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, arrested 8 Tajikistan nationals w/ suspected ISIS ties in NYC, LA, and Philly in recent days. I'm told all 8 crossed the southern border illegally, received "full vetting", and had…

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) June 11, 2024

The FBI explained, "Over the last few days, ICE agents arrested several non-citizens pursuant to immigration authorities. The actions were carried out in close coordination with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces. The individuals arrested are detained in ICE custody pending removal proceedings. As the FBI and DHS have recently described in public, and partner bulletins, the U.S. has been in a heightened threat environment."

The Twitchy report noted DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas "tried to assure Americans that everybody who crosses into the country is fully vetted. Does that make you feel better? It shouldn't."

The report charged that Biden "intentionally" left the barn door open and "now they are trying to reel some of them back in with the election a few months away."

BREAKING: Eight foreign nationals with possible ties to ISIS-K were arrested in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, @CBSNews has learned. The Tajikistani nationals entered the U.S. this year through the southern border and were vetted and allowed to remain in the country. pic.twitter.com/hJngO4tkj5

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) June 11, 2024

The report noted "even the networks" were covering the issue, and there were questions about Biden's responsibility to protect the nation:

Why are congressional Republicans not impeaching Biden over this and all the other border security lapses on his watch? https://t.co/UBZc2GPBbc

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) June 12, 2024

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Secretary Antony J. Blinken speaks to families and supporters of the hostages held by Hamas outside a hotel in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, May 1, 2024.

(JNS) -- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with King Abdullah II and spoke at the conference “Call for Action: Urgent Humanitarian Response for Gaza,” during which he announced another $404 million in U.S. aid to Palestinians, in Sweimeh, Jordan.

Blinken both criticized Israel for not doing enough to help struggling Palestinian civilians and took Arab states to task for not providing enough aid.

Some of the countries that have “expressed great concern over the suffering of Palestinian people in Gaza—including countries with the capacity to give a lot—have provided very little or nothing at all,” Blinken charged at the conference. “It is time for everyone—everyone—to step up.”

Read the full story ›

By Jake Smith
Daily Caller News Foundation

The Biden administration made bold promises for its floating aid pier in Gaza, but left out one key detail that some officials are concerned will threaten the entire operation.

The $230 million pier was constructed in May to serve as a channel for aid via the Mediterranean Sea, so that more aid could be delivered to war-torn Gaza in addition to what’s being transported through land crossings. But shipping officials told the Wall Street Journal that means the pier was doomed from the start — as it was never meant to work in the choppy waters of the Mediterranean.

“We know the weather, and we know the rhythm of the waves and the wind at any time of year, and we could have told it was not going to work,” Miki Peleg, general manager of EDT Offshore, a cargo company that was contracted by the U.S. military to help with pier operations, told the WSJ.

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The Mediterranean Sea is often at a sea state level four, meaning that waves are typically between three and five feet, according to military guidance policies cited by the WSJ. The floating aid pier can only be operated at a sea state 3, however, with shorter and more moderate waves — anything higher than that level could threaten the pier’s stability.

Worse, the pier was hastily constructed to begin with — Biden only told the Pentagon of his plan for the pier days before he announced it in March, forcing the U.S. military to scramble to get it assembled, U.S. officials told the WSJ.

The variable state of the Mediterranean has already upset operations since the pier was constructed less than a month ago. A spate of bad weather and high waves in late May broke the pier apart, forcing the U.S. military — which has been tasked with overseeing pier stability — to tow it north and conduct repairs.

The repaired pier was anchored back on the shores of Gaza on Friday, and aid delivery operations restarted the following day. However, operations were halted a day later due to weather conditions, and resumed Tuesday.

“Let’s see how long this lasts,” one defense official told the WSJ shortly after the pier was re-anchored.

Separately, U.S. defense officials expressed concern that the U.S. military would have trouble coordinating with Israeli forces and organizations on the ground in Gaza responsible for facilitating the aid, according to the WSJ. Operational details hadn’t fully been worked out until days before it was constructed — one aid group began delivering to the pier despite having not been approved to do so.

Defense experts and former U.S. officials previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the pier was a “terrible idea” and urged the Biden administration to seek more effective methods to get aid to the Palestinians. The pier only accounts for a fraction of aid delivery to Gaza, with truck convoys through land crossings proving much more effective.

“It was never a sound plan to begin with,” a former CIA official Michael DiMino told the DCNF. “I don’t think that there should be any effort to try to continue this, or salvage it, or fix it.”

The Department of Defense referred the DCNF to the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). CENTCOM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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'The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,' circa 1600, by German artist Pieter Schoubroeck

A key Russian expert and adviser to President Vladimir Putin is calling for a "nuclear escalation," citing the biblical documentation about how God rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah.

The startling demand for massive destruction is coming from Sergey Karaganov, a Russian political scientist who heads that nation's Foreign and Defense Policy security institution.

He's also dean of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs and the High School of Economics in Moscow.

He is considered a close ally of Putin.

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At a security forum, he insisted, "We understand very well that moving up the ladder of nuclear escalation can save many lives because it can bring our adversaries to their senses. Perhaps it's too early to resort to nuclear escalation, but we need to move in this direction."

He said the move is needed "to cool down our adversaries."

In a video posted by Russian Media Monitor, he said, "They've lost their minds, especially the Europeans. For the third time in the last 100 years, they are crawling into war. The Americans are a lot more cautious. They've trained Ukrainians and are pushing them forward. But Europeans are crawling into war."

Then he brought God into his argument for cataclysm.

"If we don’t climb up the ladder of escalation, more decisively, won't we anger even God Almighty?" he said.

"In the past, God Almighty has shown us the way, when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah by raining fire upon them for their disobedience and depravity."

He said it was a lesson humanity learned.

"After that humanity remembered it for many years and behaved cautiously.

"Now humanity has forgotten Sodom and Gomorrah, so maybe we should remember that rain (of fire) and try once more to bring humanity to its senses."

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Hamas terrorists use GoPro video to document themselves entering homes and shooting Israelis inside in October 2023.

By Jake Smith
Daily Caller News Foundation

The top leader of Hamas wanted to use Palestinian civilian deaths in the ongoing Gaza war to create leverage against Israel, according to messages reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

Yahya Sinwar, believed to be the architect of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against Israel, has become a key player in the ongoing war in Gaza and the terrorist group’s refusal to accept a ceasefire deal. Messages sent by Sinwar throughout the war reveal that he believed Hamas should continue fighting as long as possible, as the civilians left dead in the war were “necessary sacrifices” in fostering criticism against Israel and creating international pressure on the Israeli government to end the war, the WSJ reported on Tuesday.

“We have the Israelis right where we want them,” Sinwar told Hamas officials in a recent message, as reviewed by the WSJ.

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Sinwar has been involved with Hamas for decades, eventually taking command of the group in Gaza in 2017 and threatening to “break the neck” of anyone who stood in the way, including Palestinian coalitions in the region that the terrorist group had seized control from nearly two decades ago, according to the WSJ.

“We make the headlines only with blood,” Sinwar said in an interview in 2018, according to the WSJ. “No blood, no news.”

Israel has been searching for Sinwar since he disappeared after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks against Israel, which he helped plan and execute. Part of the reason Sinwar wanted to attack Israel was because he believed it would revitalize the global importance of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Arab and Hamas officials with close knowledge of Sinwar’s beliefs told the WSJ.

The chaos of the Oct. 7 attacks apparently caught Sinwar off-guard, as he relayed in a message early in the war that “things went out of control,” according to the WSJ. Sinwar scolded Hamas officials in one December message for having secret talks with Palestinian leaders over a postwar plan, calling their discussions “shameful and outrageous.”

“As long as fighters are still standing and we have not lost the war, such contacts should be immediately terminated,” Sinwar said, according to the WSJ. “We have the capabilities to continue fighting for months.”

Ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel through international mediators continued into 2024, and by February Israel had set an ultimatum that it would invade southern Gaza if a deal wasn’t reached by March. Sinwar told Hamas officials in a message not to accept a temporary ceasefire deal — which was what was on the table at the time — and instead urged them to only accept a permanent ceasefire, claiming that the high civilian death toll would turn the heat up on Israel, according to the WSJ.

A temporary ceasefire deal was not reached, and fighting continued as Israel expanded operations toward the southern region of Gaza. When Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh’s children were killed in an Israeli airstrike in April, Sinwar wrote in a letter that their deaths and the deaths of the Palestinians would “infuse life into the veins of this nation, prompting it to rise to its glory and honor,” according to the WSJ.

Gaza’s health ministry estimates that over 30,000 civilians and fighters in Gaza have been killed since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7, though that number has often been called into question as the health ministry is run by Hamas. The United Nations’ Security Council (UNSC) passed a U.S.-led resolution on Monday calling for a permanent ceasefire in the conflict.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that it is now on Sinwar to decide whether or not Hamas will accept the deal. Sinwar had not made any public statements on the deal as of Tuesday.

“We have to move forward on the same path we started,” Sinwar wrote in a recent message to partners, according to the WSJ.

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A scrap of papyrus that has been in storage in a German museum for decades has been analyzed, and reportedly documents a miracle by Jesus when he was a child.

It is a report in the Daily Mail that reveals the nearly 2,000-year-old particle of papyrus explains the "vivication of the sparrows" story.

That tale is referred to as the "second miracle,' the report explains, and is on the particle that had been stored, unnoticed, at Hamburg State and University Library in Hamburg, Germany, possibly since the early 1900s.

The report explained the "clumsiness" of the handwriting led researchers to think it was part of a writing exercise, but now it is considered the earliest surviving copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

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That is an assembly of stories about Jesus as a youth, but is not part of the Bible as the church fathers who organized the 66 books chosen for the Bible viewed it as inauthentic.

Further, the Bible, for the most part, focuses on Jesus' ministry as an adult, containing only a few references to a childhood, including one where he was left behind at the Temple and, found later by Joseph and Mary, asked them whether they knew he would be "about my Father's business."

The Mail report explained the IGT story has Jesus, 5, playing in a stream and molding 12 sparrows out of clay.

"When his father, Joseph, notices what he is doing, he scolds Jesus and asks why he would be molding clay on the Sabbath – a Holy day of rest and worship," the report explains.

"In response, '[Jesus] orders the clay figures to 'take flight as living birds,' which they do,'" Gabriel Nocchi Macedo, a professor from the University of Liège, Belgium, told DailyMail.com.

Lagos Berkes, a lecturer at the Faculty of Theology at Humboldt-Unversitat explained in a statement the document "was thought to be part of an everyday document, such as a private letter or a shopping list, because the handwriting seems so clumsy."

"We first noticed the word 'Jesus' in the text. Then, by comparing it with numerous other digitized papyri, we deciphered it letter by letter and quickly realized that it could not be an everyday document," he said.

The IGT, is believed to date to the 2nd century, and contained stories about Jesus ages 5-12.

The papyrus is only two inches by four, and has 13 lines of text.

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Russia abstains as the United Nations Security Council adopts the U.S.-backed ceasefire Resolution 2735, on Monday, June 10, 2024. (U.N. photo by Eskinder Debebe)

(JNS) -- The United Nations Security Council on Monday adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution aimed at reaching a three-phase ceasefire deal to end the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

The resolution was passed by 14 of the 15 permanent Security Council members, with Russia abstaining. Moscow claimed that the parameters of the deal the resolution endorses had not been sufficiently clarified.

Noting that Israel has accepted the ceasefire proposal, the resolution calls for Hamas to do the same, and for both slides to “implement its terms without delay and without condition.”

Read the full story ›

Footage of Israeli hostages rescued on Saturday, June 8, 2024

(JNS) -- The Israel Police on Monday night released dramatic footage of Saturday’s dramatic Israeli rescue operation in Nuseirat in central Gaza.

תיעוד ממצלמות הקסדה - לוחמי הימ״מ ולוחמי היחידה המבצעית של השב"כ מחלצים את החטופים תחת אש כבדה וחיסול מחבלים pic.twitter.com/BNgAHOzOJD

— משטרת ישראל (@IL_police) June 10, 2024

Noa Argamani, 26; Almog Meir Jan, 21; Andrey Kozlov, 27; and Shlomi Ziv, 40, were rescued during a daring daytime mission in the heart of a crowded residential neighborhood. All four Israelis were kidnapped by Hamas from the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on Oct. 7.

Ch. Insp. Arnon Zamora, of the Border Police’s “Yamam” National Counter-Terrorism Unit was mortally wounded during the operation.

Read the full story ›

"The only existential threat humanity faces, even things more frightening than a nuclear war, is global warming," President Joe Biden insisted recently.

In stark contrast, during a recent interview with Sean Hannity, former President Donald Trump stated: "The only global warming that matters to me is nuclear global warming." Trump added: "I love this country. I don’t want to see this country get into a nuclear war and be so badly damaged. What we say won’t matter. This won’t matter. This place won’t matter, nothing will matter because practically nothing is going to be here anymore. … The only global warming that matters to me is nuclear global warming because that’s the real deal.":

Many people believe Biden has been provoking Vladimir Putin ever since becoming president, especially by provoking the Russian invasion of Ukraine and then doing nothing but escalate the situation – with a variety of people now talking about U.S. "boots on the ground" in Ukraine.

Last October, when Russia stated it was considering revoking a global nuclear test ban, instead of communicating with Russia, Biden decided to break the treaty and explode a nuclear device underground. The very next month, Russia responded by withdrawing from the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified in 2000. This has caused concerns about a new nuclear arms race with Russia.

Biden’s latest and greatest debacle in escalating warfare is to tell Ukraine it can use U.S. armaments to attack sites inside Russia. Germany followed suit. In response, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, "the United States could face 'fatal consequences' for allowing Ukraine to use American weapons to strike targets on Russian soil." Furthermore, he stated, "I would like to warn American leaders against miscalculations that could have fatal consequences. For unknown reasons, they underestimate the seriousness of the rebuff they may receive." Ryabkov added, "I am urging these officials who seemingly are not bothered by anything to take some time away from playing computer games, which is apparently what they are doing, given their light-hearted approach to serious issues, and take a closer look at what Putin said, particularly at a press conference following talks in Tashkent."

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So, what did Putin say? "This constant escalation," Putin warned, "can lead to serious consequences. … If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the United States behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons? It is hard to say: Do they want a global conflict? … Representatives of countries that are NATO members, particularly in Europe, should be aware of what they are playing with."

"'Countries with small territory and dense populations' should be particularly careful," Putin warned.

Russia has already stated that "the use of long-range weapons to strike Russia would rely on Western intelligence data," implying NATO military personnel are involved.

Likewise, the Kremlin has also said it knows Poland has already allowed Ukraine to attack Russia with weapons from that nation.

Biden is widely seen as a bumbling Cold War politician. Indeed, in the words of Robert Gates, who was Secretary of Defense for both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Joe Biden has "been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."

While some think Putin is fighting to protect his national sovereignty, Biden insists Putin is "a killer with no soul."

If America goes with "killer with no soul," what might Putin do? He may have given his answer, as reflected in a recent Fox News’ headline, which reads, "Putin warns the West that Russia is 'ready' for nuclear war: 'Weapons exist in order to use them.'"

Indeed, in a TASS news agency report published last week, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev stated that Russia can supply weapons to any U.S. enemy, the same way Washington does with Ukraine. "This marks quite a significant change in our foreign policy. This is what the Yankees and their drooling European dogs think: We have the right to send any weapons to Ukraine – the enemy of our country [Russia] – but no country can help Russia. … Now let the U.S. and its allies feel the direct impact of the use of Russian weapons by third parties. … If the U.S. is their enemy, then they are our friends."

To whom would Putin give arms? Iran? Cuba? Would these countries hit America with a nuclear device? What if Iran hit Washington, D.C. with a nuclear device, or New York, or both? Would the U.S. respond by striking Iran? Would the U.S. strike Russia? These are real concerns.

Biden responded by launching two Minuteman III ICBM training launches in one week – June 4 and June 6.

Russia has responded with target drill seaborne missile strikes by their Baltic fleet. And now Russia is sending Russian warships to the Caribbean Sea for drills.

It's becoming increasingly clear that world leaders need to sit down at a table and have some serious discussions. At a May 28 news conference, Putin stated, "It wasn’t us who stopped the talks. We were told, 'that's it, we will no longer have talks with you.' … We have never refused to talk on this basis, and we are ready to continue the negotiating process."

Obviously, Trump's concerns about nuclear war "global warming" far outweighs Biden’s total obsession with an immeasurable 1.5 degree C temperature increase in the earth.

In three and a half years, Biden has taken America backwards to another 1979 Iran hostage scenario, except this time with Hamas holding U.S. citizens and others hostage, and has taken us backwards to another 1962 Cuban missile crisis with Russia doing military exercises in the Caribbean and threatening to give nuclear weapons to U.S. enemies.

Instead of recreating crises, presidents are called to learn from history. As President John F. Kennedy said on June 11, 1963: "We all inhabit this small planet, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal."

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(JNS) -- The Biden administration has talked about negotiating a unilateral deal for the release of five Americans held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, NBC News reported on Monday.

The talks wouldn’t include Israel and would take place via Qatari mediators, two current senior U.S. officials and two former ones told NBC.

One of the current officials called it a “very real option.”

Read the full story ›

Former captive Shlomi Ziv in a first embrace with his sister, Revital Nasi (left), and cousin Liat Ariel. (Courtesy of the Hostage and Missing Families Forum)

(JNS) -- “It’s a miracle,” Liat Ariel told JNS on Monday.

Ariel’s cousin Shlomi Ziv, along with Noa Argamani, Almog Meir and Andrey Kozlov, was rescued by Israeli forces in a daring daylight raid on Saturday after spending 246 days in Hamas captivity in Gaza.

Border Police Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora was mortally wounded during the rescue mission.

Prime Minister @netanyahu with all 4 Hostages rescued by the @IDF in the heroic operation this morning. pic.twitter.com/nrb4SKuLrh

— Yaari Cohen (@YaariCohen) June 8, 2024

Read the full story ›

A Chinese fighter pilot gazes outside his cockpit.

By Jake Smith
Daily Caller News Foundation

A top U.S. naval commander outlined a “hellscape” American response if China decides to invade Taiwan in an interview with the Washington Post published Monday.

The U.S. maintains a position of “strategic ambiguity” when it comes to Taiwan, not committing to whether it would militarily defend the island in the event of a Chinese incursion. But Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo, the new chief of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), told the Post in an interview that there is a plan to deter China by ensuring that Beijing understands the “utterly miserable” consequences it could suffer if it does launch an incursion.

“[China wants] to offer the world a short, sharp war so that it is a fait accompli before the world can get their act together,” Paparo told the Post. “My job is to ensure that between now and 2027 and beyond, the U.S. military and the allies are capable of prevailing.”

China views Taiwan as a rogue territory that needs to be reunited with the mainland and condemns other countries that view the island as independent. Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the country’s military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.

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The U.S. strategy in stopping China from launching an invasion is called “Hellscape,” Paparo told the Post. As soon as Chinese forces start moving toward Taiwan, the U.S. military would launch thousands of unmanned surface ships, aerial drones and submarines to surround the island. This would give the U.S., Taiwan and its regional partners enough time to coalesce for a bigger response, Paparo said.

Operations Specialist 3rd Class Brianna Vasquez-Ragan, from Phoenix, monitors surface contacts from the combat information center aboard Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold as the ship transits the Taiwan Strait conducting routine underway operations, July 28, 2021. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Deanna C. Gonzales)

“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” Paparo told the Post. “So that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.”

Asked for further details, Paparo was tight-lipped. “I can’t tell you what’s in it. But it’s real and it’s deliverable,” he told the Post.

The Department of Defense announced in March it was committing over $1 billion to its Replicator program, which will build a hive of unmanned aerial drones and surface ships for defenses. The Replicator program is taking cues from the Russia-Ukraine war, Paparo told the Post, as Ukrainian forces have broken new ground in using drone technology to stave off Russian forces.

The U.S. has also poured billions into Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific’s own defenses, most recently signing off on $8 billion in aid for America’s allies in the region in April.

It’s unclear whether the Pentagon would be able to deliver on the Replicator program in time for a possible Chinese invasion, however, according to the Post. And deliveries of military equipment to Taiwan have been long delayed.

For its part, China has been laser-focused on bolstering its military prowess and has increased armed demonstrations around Taiwan in recent years — Paparo told the Post that China’s annual defense budget is likely around $2.1 trillion, three times higher than what Beijing publicly claims. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) allocated around $840 billion for defense spending in fiscal year 2024.

China has developed a new hypersonic missile with a “high probability” of evading U.S. countermeasures, according to leaked Pentagon documents from 2023. Beijing has also expanded its cyberwarfare efforts, having penetrated U.S. infrastructure systems such as water or power plants; these breaches could exploit U.S. systems in the event of a Taiwan incursion.

Paparo told the Post that he believes China is operating on a “revanchist, revisionist and expansionist” strategy, musing that it is likely too late to convince Beijing to pursue other options.

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By Jake Smith
Daily Caller News Foundation

Conservatives are set to secure wins throughout Europe in the union-wide elections that ended on Sunday, according to initial projections cited by multiple reports.

All 27 members of the European Union (EU) held parliamentary elections from Thursday to Sunday. Right-wing parties and politicians are poised to take a considerable number of seats in elections, taking back some power from the majority centrist parties and highlighting a political shift toward conservative policies across Europe, according to the New York Times.

“The world around us is in turmoil. Forces from the outside and from the inside are trying to destabilise our societies, and they are trying to weaken Europe. We will never let that happen,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said on Sunday, according to the Guardian. “These election results show that the majority of Europeans want a strong Europe.”

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Initial projections from exit polling indicate that conservative parties performed fairly well across the union and will represent a larger share of the 720-seat assembly, according to initial projections from the NYT. The centrist parties are likely to retain the majority at over 400 seats but still were left reeling from the projected losses, which were worse than in last year’s elections.

Right-wing parties shined particularly in France and Germany, according to the NYT. French President Emmanuel Macron’s party, the liberal-leaning Renaissance party, suffered a stunning defeat to the  National Rally party in the elections, prompting Macron to dissolve the National Assembly and call for snap elections, per initial projections.

Marine Le Pen, head of the National Rally party, said she was “ready to turn the country around” after the victory over the weekend, per the Associated Press.

“We’re ready for it. After the legislative elections of 2022, which designated the National Rally Party as the main parliamentary opponent, these European elections confirm our movement as the major force for change in France,” she told a crowd of supporters in Paris, according to the AP.

In Germany, the right-wing party trounced German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ left-wing Social Democrat party, which was expected to win only 14% of the vote — less than the 15.8% the party secured in 2019 and lesser still their standing in Germany’s most recent national election in 2021, according to initial projections cited by the AP. The environmentalist-focused Green Party did even worse, gaining only 12% of the vote compared to 20% five years ago.

The new momentum for conservative parties in Europe underscores voters’ primary concerns for the union, according to The Washington Post. Issues like climate change were less of a concern to voters than in previous years, while immigration and the economy remained primary concerns.

Most countries were still counting final votes as of Sunday night.

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(JNS) -- The Associated Press released a report on Friday undercutting its own reporting of Hamas’s claim that more than two-thirds of the Palestinian casualties in Gaza have been women and children.

According to the AP’s new analysis of Hamas’s figures, the terror group’s “detailed reports” of casualty statistics reveal a much lower number of likely civilian casualties than Hamas claims.

“Among those fully identified, the records show a steady decline in the overall proportion of women and children who have been killed: from 64% in late October, to 62% as of early January, to 57% by the end of March, to 54% by the end of April,” the report says. “Yet throughout the war, the ministry has claimed that roughly two-thirds of the dead were women and children.”

Read the full story ›

(Photo by Joe Kovacs)

(CHRISTIAN POST) -- A former BBC journalist and deselected Liberal Democrat candidate, David Campanale, has filed a lawsuit against his party, alleging discrimination due to his Christian faith, sparking significant controversy within the political sphere in the United Kingdom.

Campanale claims he was prevented from contesting as a member of parliament in Sutton and Cheam, a significant electoral battleground, because of deep-seated hostility from party members toward his religious views. The legal battle and public outcry have raised questions about religious freedom and discrimination within political parties in the U.K.

Campanale’s civil claim includes serious allegations against the current Liberal Democrat candidate, Luke Taylor, accusing him of leading a campaign that marginalized Campanale for his Christian beliefs, the Telegraph reported.

Read the full story ›

The five women who excluded Caitlin Clark from the 2024 Olympics (upper left) are Seimone Augustus, Dawn Staley (center), Jennifer Rizzotti (upper right), Delisha Milton-Jones (lower left), and Bethany Donaphin (lower right).

By Jim Hoft
The Gateway Pundit

On Saturday, it was announced that women’s basketball sensation Caitlin Clark would not be included on the US Women’s Basketball team in the 2024 Olympics.

The greatest collegiate player in history, who broke nearly every men’s and women’s basketball scoring and assist records while at the University of Iowa, was excluded from the Olympic team.

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Pot-smoking Brittney Griner, who has only played in one game and scored 11 points this year, made the team.

OUTRAGEOUS: Caitlin Clark Makes More 3s in WNBA in 24′ than Anyone on Olympic Team, Yet Brittney Griner with 11 Points Total YTD Makes Team

41-year-old Diana Taurasi made the team again. She has already participated in FIVE Olympic Games.

NO CURRENT PLAYER selected for this on the Olympic team has scored more 3-pointers this year in the WNBA than Caitlin Clark.

And only one woman on the Olympic team has more assists than Clark this WNBA Season.

Caitlin Clark is also in the top 8 in scoring.

Caitlin Clark is beating most of the selected players in most categories.

And NO ONE can consistently fill arenas like Caitlin Clark at home and away.

Earlier today JoeHoft.com identified the five women behind this insane and outrageous decision!

REVEALED: Here Are the Five Women Who Made the Insane Decision to Keep Caitlin Clark Off of the 2024 Olympic Team – Was This a Racist Decision or Just Jealousy?

Caitlin Clark was asked about the Olympic Committee's decision and she showed nothing but class - as she always does.

This is just heartbreaking.

Clueless Reporter Chloe Peterson: Caitlin, what was your reaction when you saw the USA team yesterday, the roster come out?

Caitlin Clark: I think I'm excited for the girls that are on the team. I know it's the most competitive team in the world, and I know it could have gone either way. Me being on the team, me not being on the team. I'm excited for them. I'm going to be rooting them on to win gold. I was a kid that grew up watching the Olympics. So it'll be fun to watch them.

Chloe Peterson: What was your level of disappointment not hearing your name on the roster.

Caitlin Clark: Honestly, no disappointment. I think it just gives you something to work for. That's a dream. Hopefully, one day I can be there. I think it's just a little more motivation. You remember that. And hopefully in four years, when four years comes back around, I can be there.

Hat Tip Catturd2

When it comes to not making the Olympic team, Caitlin Clark has nothing but praise for the 12 who made it: “it’s the toughest team to make.”

Clip: pic.twitter.com/LX59YA5Bzf

— Chloe Peterson (@chloepeterson67) June 9, 2024

Caitlin didn't deserve this. Americans don't deserve this.

This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit.com.

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(FOX NEWS) -- Vice President Harris mourned the Palestinians who were killed in a successful Israeli hostage rescue operation this weekend during an address delivered Saturday.

The Israeli operation retrieved four hostages who were taken into Gaza by Hamas on Oct. 7. Harris, speaking before the Michigan Democratic Party, celebrated their retrieval but spent more time lamenting the deaths of Palestinians killed in the operation, many of whom Israel has described as terrorists.

"Before I begin, I just say a few words about the morning which I know weighs heavily on all of our hearts," she said.

Read the full story ›

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

(JNS) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress on July 24, congressional leaders announced on Thursday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) extended the invitation late last month, and now the date has been set.

In a statement published by McConnell’s office on Thursday, the four men said the invitation “symbolizes the U.S. and Israel’s enduring relationship and will offer Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu the opportunity to share the Israeli government’s vision for defending their democracy, combatting terror, and establishing just and lasting peace in the region.”

Read the full story ›

Benny Gantz

(JNS) -- War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz on Sunday night announced his National Unity Party’s departure from the government set up in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and the ensuing Gaza war.

Speaking at a press conference in Ramat Gan, Gantz said, “It was an easy decision to enter the government, but the decision to leave was very difficult.”

"Don't let our people be torn apart."

Politician Benny Gantz accused Israel's PM Netanyahu of mismanaging the war in Gaza as he quit the war Cabinet and called for new elections. pic.twitter.com/8hOp2W8S7I

— DW News (@dwnews) June 9, 2024

“Unfortunately, Netanyahu is stopping us from reaching a true victory,” continued Gantz. “Therefore, we are now leaving, today, the unity government. With a heavy heart, but wholeheartedly.”

Read the full story ›

1st Lt. Amber English of Colorado Springs, Colorado, set an Olympic record in women's skeet shooting to win a gold medal at the Olympics in Tokyo on July 26, 2021. (U.S. Army photo)

By Owen Klinsky
Daily Caller News Foundation

More than three thousand Olympians are expected to bring portable air-conditioning units to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris this summer, derailing France’s efforts to go green by not providing AC in the Athletes’ Village, the Washington Post reported.

The International Olympic Committee’s decision to substitute air-conditioning for a less reliable but more environmentally friendly geothermal cooling system is central to their strategy to cut the carbon footprint of the Paris Games by half, Reuters reported. However, many visiting nations, concerned lack of AC will result in reduced sleep and poor athletic performance, are opting to import portable AC units, according to the Washington Post.

‘Should We Do That Before or After We Get Rid of Fossil Fuels?’ @SenJohnKennedy Confronts Olympic Skier Over Tweets Calling To ‘Abolish the Police’. pic.twitter.com/0U9jqgpKDQ

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 20, 2024

“We will bring them. And we will take them back to Greece,” Alexandra Palli, president of the Greek Olympic committee for environmental sustainability, told the Washington Post when referencing Greece’s plans to provide portable air conditioning to their athletes. “They need support. Because what they do is very difficult anyway.”

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While the scale of portable-AC-adoption is unclear, a survey from the Washington Post found that all eight nations who replied out of the 20 surveyed planned to use AC in some capacity. Those nations include the majority of the G7, specifically the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Germany, and Italy.

The high cost of portable units could mean they are inaccessible to poorer countries.

“We don’t have deep pockets,” said Uganda Olympic Committee (UOC) president Donald Rukare, before citing a prior international sports competition in which the UOC was unable to provide their athletes with portable units “because we didn’t have the money.”

Ultimately this disparity raises questions over Olympic fairness as air conditioning is seen as crucial to athletic performance, particularly in sports like fencing where an athlete’s equipment can rust or be damaged by humid conditions, The Washington Post reported.

The 2024 Summer Olympics begin July 26 and are expected to attract 15 million tourists to the French capital.

The IOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Vladimir Putin depicted in artwork taking a selfie with Barack Obama dozing in the background inside the Oval Office.

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Patrick Drennan
Real Clear Wire

The European Union has denounced Russia's removal of buoys marking the Russian border with NATO country Estonia on the Narva River. A total of 24 out of 50 buoys placed to mark sailing routes were removed in the early hours, Estonian officials said. A plan to change the maritime borders with Finland and Lithuania was also on a Russian military website before it was taken down.

European authorities were not surprised. Redrawing maps and international borders is something Russia has been doing for decades.

In 1992 Russia forcibly invaded the eastern part of Moldova and created the Russian enclave of Transnistria- a state without internationally recognised borders.

In 2015 South Ossetian troops and their Russian allies had worked through the night, sinking new border-marking poles across fields outside a hamlet called Tamarasheni in the hills of central Georgia. The Russians granted the local farmers 72 hours for an emergency harvest then ordered them to leave—forever. “They took 10 hectares [about 25 acres ] this time,” said farmer Levan Kipshidze, tallying the latest chunk of Georgia swallowed up by Russia.

After Russia seized the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014 Putin declared  it a "sovereign and independent state". However, after a sham referendum, Putin then stated it was a part of Russia and has been pictured as such on Russian maps. This set the template for the annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts of Ukraine and their geographical inclusion into the state of Russia.

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In May 2023, Putin displayed a 400-year-old map that he claims to show that Ukraine isn't a real country, not noticing it has '"Ukraine or land of the Cossaks" written on it.

In March 2024, Former Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev presented a map showing most of Eastern Ukraine belonging to Russia. Also, Medvedev’s map shows changed borders of other countries, including Poland and Romania.

Putin clearly seeks legitimacy for his violent invasions of nearby states. He recently talked about creating a ”buffer zone” in Ukraine. Just another disputed area on a map.

What about the upcoming Swiss Peace conference?

The Ukraine Peace Conference, planned for June 15-16, is to take place in Bürgenstock Switzerland. The conference plans to bring together representatives from up to 80 countries. Ukraine has put forward its 10-point peace plan to counter an earlier 2022 proposal put forward by Russia. In the Russian proposal Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea were to remain in Russian control and the Ukrainian army was to be size-limited. The two plans are widely divergent.

Putin was at first angry about the Swiss plan, mainly because Russia has not been invited. However, the long-time opportunist now sees a chance to spread misinformation - false information which is deliberately intended to deceive.  So out of nowhere,  anonymous Russian officials declare that Russia is amenable to peace talks.

What are Putin’s goals?

Firstly, it is challenge to Ukraine’s greatest supporter, American President Joe Biden, who cannot be seen to evade the prospect of ending this unpopular war. Ukrainian President Zelensky says Biden must attend, but the U.S. is more likely to send an emissary like Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Secondly, Russia wants to world to recognize the borders based on the current battlefield lines. Russia wants the Central Asian states, particularly Uzbekistan, and China to back his demands.

China has much more opaque interests, such as keeping Russia a vassal state, dependent on its exports and military equipment. It is unlikely to attend, other than as an observer. China’s 12-point peace plan is conspicuously commerce oriented.

Finally, Russia will agree to consider the outcome. It will delay the process for months - at least until it gets new administrations elected in friendly Western countries. Russia has sponsored far-right political parties in France and Italy, and Hungary continues to rally against the Ukrainian peace plan. Of course Russia would like a new administration elected in the United States.

Putin does not want a documented peace deal with clear border markings. He wants grey zones, which can be disputed, and through which Russia can continue its aggressive land grabs.

Patrick Drennan is a journalist based in New Zealand, with a degree in American history and economics.

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