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The Supreme Court told the Trump administration on Monday that the midterms will be run on the same mail-ballot machinery that has been driving half the country crazy since 2020. Standardized envelopes, unique barcodes, and a list of who is actually supposed to receive a ballot? Not this year. Maybe later.

That is the practical meaning of the unsigned emergency order. The justices left standing the nationwide blocks on the Postal Service’s Ballot Mail for Federal Elections rule. Fox News and The Gateway Pundit both reported the denial of the stay. Alabama, North Carolina, and Wisconsin have already started stuffing envelopes. The rest of the country will follow under the old rules.

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The New York Post went looking for the new face of homeschooling and found it in San Francisco’s Nob Hill, not a church basement in Oklahoma. The write-up even bothered to note that the trend “bucks the stereotypes of rural Bible thumpers.” Cute.

The people who spent a decade sneering at Christian families for pulling their children out of government schools have now discovered the same exit ramp. They just brought a chatbot along for the ride for their “robot-powered homeschools.”

Mrugesha Sathappan, 32, and her husband Kartik, 34, an investor in alternative-education firms through Families Fund, are teaching their preschool-age son at home with custom AI games for phonics and STEM, short bursts of formal work, and child-led trips to museums, parks, and tech offices. She says she wants eyes on the values her three children actually absorb.

“Being adaptable, being kind, being useful,” she told the Post.

Their boy will sit and devour 15 to 20 books at a stretch. He got interested in rockets, so they bought a kit that can fly 500 feet. “You can’t really do when you’re in school,” Kartik said.

That last line is the whole story. California’s classrooms became warehouses for ideology, boredom, and other people’s children. Once the people who can afford $30,000 private tuition looked closely, a lot of them decided the building was the problem.

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There is no place in the world like California. It possesses such incredible natural beauty, but at the same time it is being run by a bunch of absolute lunatics. If it was an independent nation, it would have the fifth largest economy in the entire world, but it also has the largest homeless population in the U.S. by a very wide margin. In California you can find the world’s tallest tree (the Hyperion Coast Redwood), the world’s largest tree by volume (the General Sherman Giant Sequoia), and the world’s oldest living tree (the Methuselah Bristlecone Pine, which is over 4,850 years old).

Of course it also has the highest top marginal individual income tax rate in the United States at 13.3% (reaching 14.4% when including the state’s payroll tax).

I lived in California for a number of years when I was a kid, and I would still love to go back and visit some of the less populated areas of the state that are simply breathtaking.

But I certainly wouldn’t want to live there, because the control freaks that run the state have ruined it.

Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, Ro Khanna and Eric Swalwell are all from California.

Sadly, the men and women that have been chosen to represent the state of California are an accurate reflection of the population of the state.

Just about every day, there are more stories in the news about Californians that have gone absolutely nuts.

For example, here is a story about a 37-year-old California man that just flipped out and stabbed his own father to death…

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Remember the Lindsay Clancy juror who said the holdout on the jury was a black man?

Welp, she’s continuing her media tour on CBS Saturday Mornings:

We knew that this was a turning point and this would be something that could change something. To make it better for other women in the future, for other families, you know, justice for those children is this never happening again.

Umm, lady, you are quite literally incriminating yourself here.

More American homeowners now owe substantially more on their mortgages than what their properties are worth, as a key measure of housing-market distress moves in the wrong direction.

The share of US homeowners who are “seriously underwater” on their mortgages climbed to 3.2% in the second quarter, up from 2.7% a year earlier, according to a new state-by-state analysis from real estate data firm ATTOM.

That means the combined balance of loans secured against the property is at least 25% greater than what the home itself is estimated to be worth

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani and state Attorney General Tish James are fighting to let noncitizen immigrants soak up every possible dime of welfare with no risk to their visa status because . . . well, because.

The deranged duo is joining 21 other state AGs in suing the Trump administration for tightening up the “public charge” rules that require new Americans to stand on their own two feet.

Immigrants, the administration holds, should not become “primarily dependent” on the government for survival — a principle that’s guided American attitudes on this issue since forever.

As evidence that Trump is upending a century of “law and history,” Mamdani and James quote the Emma Lazarus poem “The New Colossus,” which “welcome[ed] ‘your tired, your poor, your huddled masses’” as supposedly showing that this nation has always been a global soup kitchen.

Hogwash.

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In comments that most people missed on Friday, President Donald Trump suggested that he’s open to letting Chinese automakers build cars on US soil.

The new cars unloaded from the BYD Changzhou ship at the Zarate Port on the Parana River in Zarate, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina taken on Jan. 19, 2026. Tomas Cuesta / AFP via Getty Images

Speaking with Fox News, Trump said that while he wouldn’t allow Chinese cars to operate in the United States because the US market would be overrun – he might be open to manufacturing them here.

“We don’t allow his cars into the United States, and I never did,” he said, referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, noting that then-President Joe Biden had kept his policies on Chinese cars.

“If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I’d be okay with that. Japan does it, but they hire our people. The big thing is they hire our people,” he continued, adding “What I don’t want is them to build in Mexico and just … build it inexpensively and ship it across the border.”

As The Epoch Times notes further, a regulation imposed by the Biden administration in early 2025 effectively bans all Chinese automakers from selling or building passenger vehicles in the United States. Washington also maintains more than 100 percent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.

Trump’s remarks came ahead of Xi’s planned visit to the United States later this month. The president said on July 23 that he would discuss artificial intelligence with the Chinese leader during the visit. The two leaders last met during Trump’s visit to Beijing in May, where Trump formally invited Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, to the White House.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission paid $10.7 million to store its electronic data at a Maryland facility that was allegedly certified by a company that does not exist.

AiNET Corp. and its former CEO Deepak Jain recently agreed to pay $1.8 million to settle allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by knowingly defrauding the government. The settlement does not contain an admission of guilt.

Key facts: When the SEC began looking for a new data center in 2012, it required applicants to have a Tier III certification. That means the data center is fully operational even when undergoing maintenance.

Jain submitted paperwork to the SEC showing that AiNET had been certified by the company Uptime Council. No such company exists.

The Department of Justice later alleged that Jain wrote the certification letters himself, and that nobody had ever inspected AiNET’s data center. Jain allegedly purchased a web domain for Uptime Council to make it appear like a legitimate business.

The name also closely resembled the Uptime Institute, a legitimate company that certifies data center infrastructure.

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Rep Bryan Steil says he hopes Congress can get election integrity measures done before the November midterms

Congressional Republicans have a plan to pass key portions of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act before the end of this year.

The election integrity bill backed by President Donald Trump and fiercely opposed by Democrats has stalled in Congress, where Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has been reluctant to call it up for a vote, given that it’s all but assured to fail.

At least several Democrats would be needed to reach the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster. But left-wing lawmakers in the House and Senate have panned the legislation as an attempt to sow doubt in U.S. elections at best and voter suppression at worst.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is now pushing Republicans to pass the bill’s main mandates via the budget reconciliation process, which allows the party in power to pass sweeping fiscal policy without input from the minority due to its sidelining of the Senate filibuster. Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., chairman of the Committee on House Administration, is tasked with overseeing how that part of the bill gets done.

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Some on the left and the right argue America should give up its preeminent place as the world’s sole superpower. China and Russia, they argue, should be given an equal share of the global stage. Is that in America’s best interest? Is it in the world’s best interest? Jeremy Boreing, social commentator and host of The Jeremy Boreing Show, answers these critical questions.
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While the stock market implodes on or ahead of schedule, as predicted, I had another revelation last night that anyone with a first-grade understanding of math could have also arrived yet. We can’t afford this $5,000 dividend check idea.

I mean, we can’t really afford anything as a country right now, but it is arguably the worst moment in history to randomly hand out $5,000 to citizens for no reason.

I would love $5,000. You would love $5,000. I have yet to encounter the American who opens his mailbox, finds a check for five grand from the United States Treasury and screams, “Goddammit, not this again.”

But unfortunately, there is a very small problem with President Trump’s latest proposal to send every adult American a $5,000 “Trump dividend” if Republicans retain control of Congress in November: we don’t have the f*cking money.

Trump unveiled the idea at the Republican convention in Dallas, promising a $5,000 payment to every adult U.S. citizen if Republicans win the House and Senate. With roughly 240 million adult citizens, Reuters estimates the program would cost approximately $1.2 trillion. Trump’s explanation for how we can afford this is essentially that America is now swimming in money. “We’re taking in trillions, trillions of dollars,” he said while discussing the proposal.

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America’s economy may still be growing, but beneath the headline numbers, some of the country’s biggest companies and financial institutions are seeing a troubling sign.

Take Walmart. Few companies have a better window into the American consumer, with more than 150 million (1) U.S. customers visiting its stores and websites each week. So, when its executives notice shoppers changing their behavior, it’s worth paying attention.

Walmart CEO John Furner recently identified one particular source of pressure.

“That’s really the stress point, is the price of fuel,” Furner said (2), adding, “Hopefully, we see some relief on energy prices.”

Walmart CFO John David Rainey has pointed to an even more tangible sign of the squeeze: Customers were filling their gas tanks with fewer than 10 gallons per visit on average.

“That’s an indication of stress,” Rainey said (3).

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Foreigners account for a massive share of thefts, sexual violence, and robberies on Paris public transport in 2025, according to new government data.

According to compilations from the SSMSI data files, foreigners accounted in 2025 for 87 percent of simple thefts on Île-de-France public transport, 60 percent of robberies, and 38 percent of physical assault.

In addition, foreigners account for 61 percent of sexual violence cases on Paris public transport and its surrounding regions.

National figures for foreigners committing crimes on public transport are lower but still high, approximately 76 percent of simple-theft suspects are foreigners and 71 percent of all theft suspects are foreigners.

Some groups are highly overrepresented among foreigners.

Maghrebi nationals, for instance, account for about 40 percent of theft suspects in transport nationwide, while making up roughly 2 percent of the national population, according to data analyst Marc Vanguard.

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More than two-thirds of Americans do not socialize at all on an average day, while their screen time has soared in the past 10 years, according to bombshell survey findings.

A top psychologist told The Post that Gen Z has been particularly impacted by the lack of social engagement.

“They struggle to form social connections as easily,” said William Chopik, associate professor of psychology and a data scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

A man relaxing on a couch while using his smartphone.
More than two-thirds of Americans do zero socializing on an average day.DimaBerlin – stock.adobe.com

Only 30% of Americans overall engaged in socializing or communicating on an average day in 2025, down from 38% in 2015, according to figures from the American Time Use Survey.

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You cannot make this up.

Rejected Houston Democrat Rep. Al Green, the same cane-waving, State-of-the-Union heckler Texas voters already fired, has filed yet another dead-on-arrival impeachment resolution against President Donald Trump. The “crime” this time? Doing what the American people hired him to do: enforce the nation’s immigration laws.

Green lost his Democratic primary runoff in May to freshman Rep. Christian Menefee by a landslide, roughly 69 percent to 31 percent.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, the 78-year-old was booted after more than two decades in Congress. President Trump then dunked on the “lunatic” who spent years screaming and waving a cane at him instead of legislating.

That should have been the end of the circus. It wasn’t.

On August 24, the lame-duck Houston Democrat dropped H.Res. 1486, impeaching Trump for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The resolution accuses the president of running ICE and Customs and Border Protection as “vicious, quota-driven, unaccountable paramilitary police forces.”

The latest stunt marks Green’s eighth impeachment effort against President Trump, according to the Houston Chronicle. His previous attempts either died in committee or were overwhelmingly rejected.

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Legislation giving a judge the discretion to waive fines and fees for low-income people who can’t afford them was signed into law Sept. 9.

House Bill 133, sponsored by Rep. Claire Snyder-Hall, D-Rehoboth Beach, gives courts the discretion to waive fines and fees, in whole or in part, in appropriate circumstances. It also creates a presumption that fines and fees will not be imposed when a defendant shows evidence of certain conditions, including receiving public assistance benefits such as Medicaid, SNAP or veterans’ benefits, or being represented by the Office of Defense Services. It also creates a hearing process for anyone already sentenced to pay a fine or fee.

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Who is teaching the teachers? Critical theorists, DEI peddlers, and all manner of indoctrinators who have weaponized the American education system to further their ideological and cultural goals.

That’s my conclusion after reading a study released Wednesday by the American Enterprise Institute’s Daniel Buck.

Buck reviewed the syllabi of many of America’s top graduate schools of education and found that they were not only ideologically uniform, but that they were mostly “advancing dogmas grounded in progressive and critical theory frameworks rather than exposing prospective teachers to intellectually diverse ideas and training them in pragmatic instruction and classroom management methods.”

Most Americans have caught on to the reality that our nation’s top schools are overwhelmingly bastions of the Left. But many still don’t realize just how much the ideological bent of these schools affects nearly every major institution across the Western world.

What happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus. Instead, the political and cultural milieu that’s fostered there is spread everywhere else, by design. And nowhere is that impact more pernicious than in K-12 classrooms.

Buck stressed that among the institutions he was able to review there was a heavy emphasis on “immutable characteristics and activism” rather than “preparing teachers for the realities of the classroom.”

For instance, teachers are being taught to “queer education” rather than teach math. Future teachers are being told that special needs education requires an “anti-capitalist politic” and “collective liberation.”

“That these critical texts appear so frequently, often without any degree of traditional or practical balance, presents to the outsider a concerning picture about the state of these institutions,” Buck wrote.

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Consul General Wang Baodong attends a YES Friends Club event and a China-US interschool memorandum-signing ceremony with Chicago Public Schools. Photo courtesy of the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Chicago.

The Chinese Communist Party has pursued a decades-long, multilayered strategy to embed its influence in American education, adapting each time federal investigations closed one channel.

At the university level, Confucius Institutes, Chinese government-funded language and culture centers, peaked at 118 in 2017. In August 2020, the Trump administration designated their US coordinating office a Chinese “foreign mission,” and Congress cut off Pentagon funding to host universities. By 2023, fewer than five remained.

However, the K-12 version of the program, Confucius Classrooms, was never subjected to the same pressure. The State Department reported in 2020 that there were about 500, more than the number of university-level institutes at their peak. No equivalent disclosure law or funding threat targeted school districts. A 2023 investigation by Parents Defending Education found that 143 school districts, including 20 near military bases, were still running Confucius Classroom-style programs.

The same pattern has resurfaced in a new form: the Young Envoys Scholarship (YES) program, administered by the China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE). The organization states on its Chinese-language website that it is guided by Marxism-Leninism and Xi Jinping Thought and that it “integrates the Party’s work into the entire process of the association’s operations.”

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With no reactors under construction, the restarts offer the most immediate options to grow nuclear power in the U.S. Opposition to the restarts, and nuclear power in general continues, but it’s lost the clout it once had to block and delay projects.

he Trump administration has announced it is loaning NextEra Energy as much as $1.9 billion to support the restart of a nuclear power plant in Iowa.

The project is one of three projects underway to restart nuclear power plants that have been shut down. Besides support for two of those restarts, the Trump administration in its announcement last week said it has provided support for the development of new nuclear power plants and advanced reactor technology.

While opponents of nuclear energy had the clout to block or delay nuclear power development and construction of plants, President Donald Trump’s expansion of nuclear energy hasn’t been met with much pushback, and it’s generally enjoyed bipartisan support, suggesting that a decades-long opposition to nuclear energy may be fading into history.

Shift in opinions

The shift in public opinion toward increasing support for nuclear energy began during the Biden administration, according to multiple polls.

Nuclear energy as a share of total U.S. electricity generation grew from 2.4% in 1971 to 20.1% in 1992, and it’s hovered around that figure ever since. Only three commercial reactors have gone into service in the last 30 years, the latest being two new units at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, which came online in 2023 and 2024.

The 1979 partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, in Pennsylvania, and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster near Pripyat, Ukraine, eroded public confidence in nuclear energy’s safety.

In 2011, the Fukushima disaster released large amounts of radioactive materia into the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean. Though it caused no deaths, like the Three Mile Island incident, the accident helped buoy opponents’ arguments that nuclear energy is unsafe.

However, nuclear has seen public opinion growing more favorable in the several years as concerns about climate change make carbon-free electricity attractive, and the intermittency of wind and solar continue to drive up electricity prices and lower grid resilience.

A Gallup poll from April found that the percentage of Americans who think more emphasis should be placed on producing domestic energy from natural gas, wind and solar declined, while the percentage who feel the same about nuclear energy increased.

The 2026 National Nuclear Energy Public Opinion Survey released in May found that 77% of respondents favor nuclear energy, a record high. That was up from 49% in 1983. A 2025 Pew Research Center poll also found growing support for nuclear power.

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Americans are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI), but they become less comfortable when it makes decisions for them, according to a new survey.

Seventy-two percent of American adults have used at least one AI product, up from 50% from November 2024, according to the National AI Opinion Monitor, a project led by Rutgers University researchers that tracks public opinion on AI. More than a quarter of Americans use AI every day, although a less than one-in-ten would allow it to make final decisions for them without supervision.

More than a majority of Americans want stricter government oversight of AI, although experts believe there is a big difference between wanting regulation and knowing how to regulate AI.

“Americans wanting a human in the loop for major life decisions isn’t all that surprising. In fact, it’s human nature. People naturally are going to want agency over high-stakes choices like hiring, loans, or medical care,” James Czerniawski, the head of emerging technology policy for the Consumer Choice Center, told the DCNF.

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Democrats are using every means possible to keep pushing the can down the road to buy time, but there is no time left to return integrity to America’s elections.

The SAVE America Act, which would have cleaned the rolls and secured the elections, passed the House and is dead in the Senate. House and Senate recesses used up the calendar. Trump then tried to do by executive order what the Senate refused to do by statute: requiring proof of citizenship, a reliable federal voter list, and limits on mailed ballots.

Election officials in fraud-prone areas, however, refuse to produce the ballots and the rolls. They call it privacy, and say doing so would expose illegal aliens to ICE! The real reason is to conceal their own conduct.

Activist federal district judges blocked those executive orders that would have counted this year.

With midterms rapidly approaching, Trump could declare a national emergency, as he has teased, on election integrity. If he does not, November runs on the same black-box machines with source code no outsider may examine, the same dirty rolls, and mass-mailed ballots that are an open invitation to fraud.

I have extensive education, training, and experience in law enforcement and criminal investigation, including conspiracy, fraud, forgery, identity theft, and related economic and computer crimes. I know how those crimes are committed.

As president of a large city police officers’ association and a statewide criminal investigators’ association, I worked with the California Legislature on matters of interest to those groups. After retiring, I spent ten years, including 2020, working on election nights at an Associated Press data center that collects returns from state and local counting centers.

Officials and the legacy press dismissed my work—and the work of other independent investigators—as conspiracy theory. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s claim that the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history” is still treated as fact. I worked that night. I had never seen swing-state feeds go down together and return with a 180-degree switch between winning and losing candidates. I disagree.

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Mexican authorities said they arrested an American who allegedly was bringing ammunition into Mexico for a drug cartel.

The woman had 5,400 rounds of ammunition with her when she was detained, Mexican authorities said, according to the New York Post.

The name of the woman was given variously as “Yanet ‘N’” and Yanet Dowden.

The second name was based on a report from the Mexican newspaper Excelsior, which said an Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation & Reentry identification card calling the suspect “Yanet Dowden” was found on the suspect.

The card said she was a “Level II correctional officer.”

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NBC Boston spearheaded a harassment campaign against the lone black juror holdout in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial – and now he has been doxxed.

The Gateway Pundit will not share the juror’s name.

Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children to death in January 2023.

The young children, Cora (5), Callan (8 months), and Dawson (3), were found dead in the Clancy, Massachusetts, home’s basement.

Lindsay Clancy admitted to killing her three children; however, her defense team argued that she should not be found guilty by reason of insanity.

Last Friday, Judge Sullivan declared a mistrial after the jury was deadlocked because one lone juror refused to buckle under pressure.

It was revealed on CBS Mornings last week that the one holdout juror is a black man.

CBS Mornings host Gayle King was in shock: “Well, I have to sit with that for just a second.”

Later Friday, NBC Boston reported that they obtained the lone juror’s court records, interviewed family members, and repeatedly contacted his landlord.

NBC Boston launched a harassment campaign against the lone juror even though Judge Sullivan sealed the court list identifying the jurors.

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LG smart TVs have been caught secretly collecting disturbing amounts of information from inside their owners’ homes, including recording conversations and scanning private Wi-Fi networks for other connected devices.

An investigation by computer hardware experts at Gamers Nexus found that LG televisions can monitor what users watch, map devices connected to their home networks, and use built-in microphones to capture audio.

Even more alarmingly, researchers found that some of the surveillance can continue while the television appears to be switched off in standby mode.

The investigation also found that data can continue to be collected while the television is disconnected from the internet, with information stored locally until the connection is restored.

With polling favoring Democrats to win a House majority in the fall and two months till US midterms Nov. 3 (where BofA’s Michael Hartnett expects a market rout in case of a Democratic sweep), Dems have begun to preview priorities should they win back the gavel.

Earlier this week, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who won a crowded primary in August for Florida’s 20th congressional district, vowed if re-elected to help Democrats block Trump’s agreement over Venezuelan oil production. Lobbyists are already beginning prepwork in anticipation of industry executives being subject to congressional probes or subpoenas, Politico reported.

Winning back the House would give Democrats the ability to govern committee schedules, set investigative agendas, and leverage subpoenas. In the energy sphere, it is unlikely that we we see as hefty a climate focus as in the 117th Congress. Any clean energy focus will be instead from an affordability lens, i.e. how an “all of the above” energy approach helps lower electricity costs. Trump energy dealmaking, in particular equity stakes in companies, will also get attention from Democrats.

Below, courtesy of Bridge DiCosmo and James Lucier of Capital Alpha Partners, we look at some of the likely oversight targets for a Democratic House:

Oil companies and profit margins likely back in the spotlight.

When Democrats last had control of the House in the 117th Congress from January 2021-23, the House Oversight environment subcommittee under then-chair Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) held at least three hearings in which executives of ExxonMobil, BP America, Chevron, and Shell were called to testify. Much of the scrutiny then was around climate disinformation. This time around, Trump’s ties with the oil sector are likely to be front and center of oversight investigations, with a focus on how companies have benefited from Trump administration regulatory rollbacks. We may see an uptick in Democratic support for windfall profits tax proposals like S.4111, introduced earlier this year by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R), though they won’t go anywhere.

Clean energy focus may center on Trump agencies’ efforts to block wind and solar, and pull grant funds.

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California has discovered a miracle. High school transcripts glow. Straight-A applicants to the University of California have roughly doubled in a decade. And the kids still cannot do the math.

That is not a punchline. It is the state’s operating system.

According to UC data reviewed by the New York Post, students applying to the University of California with a 4.0 or better jumped from 52,989 in 2015 to 103,138 for the class of 2025. The spike sharpened during the COVID years, when classrooms went online and standards went wherever the administration needed them to go. The vast majority of those applicants are California residents.

The report cards say excellence. The placement exams say fifth grade.

State testing does not play along with the fairy tale. On the Smarter Balanced exam for 2024-2025, only 57 percent of California 11th graders met the English standard. Math sat at 30.5 percent. Those numbers ticked up from the 2021-2022 floor of 54.8 percent and 27 percent. They remain worse than before the lockdowns. A diploma and a 4.0 now describe a feeling, not a skill.

Teachers Were Told Not to Fail the Product

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Tom Homan, the border czar appointed by President Donald Trump, is rejecting claims U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be hunting for illegal aliens at polling stations during the midterm elections.

“I want to put that to bed,” Homan told Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News on “The Sunday Briefing.”

“There is no plan to sweep polling places looking for illegal aliens.”

He continued: “I have not seen any operational plans or any discussions on any immigration-enforcement operations at polling places. This is another fear tactic.”

“This is another attack on ICE and this administration. They don’t want ICE near the polling places, they don’t want to vote for voter ID, they don’t want observers. What do they got to hide to begin with? There is no plan for immigration-enforcement action at polling places. It’s just another attempt to smear ICE and smear the president.”

The city of Denver and a coalition of civil-rights organizations on Thursday sued the Trump administration to block ICE at the polls, claiming argues any such measure would violate a Civil War-era statute criminalizing the positioning of troops at voting locations.

“The specter of armed officers at polling places threatens the freedom of this upcoming election,” the coalition said. “It places voters in fear that they will be confronted by armed federal immigration enforcement officers if they choose to cast a ballot.”

Homan told Heinrich: “There is no sensitive-location policy.”

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A Long Island man stabbed a 65-year-old guy in the neck during a meeting in the basement of a Suffolk County church last week, police said.

Daniel Escobar, 33, of Bay Shore is accused of attacking the victim in a scuffle in the basement of First United Methodist Church in Amityville around 8:30 p.m. Friday, then fleeing, according to cops.

Daniel Escobar (right) in handcuffs and leg shackles, accompanied by another handcuffed man, being led to his arraignment.
Daniel Escobar (right, with another shackled man) is charged with stabbing a guy in a church basement in Amityville.Dennis A. Clark for NY Post

Escobar was tracked down and taken into custody shortly after 10:20 p.m. the same day, authorities said.

The victim was taken to a local hospital with serious injuries, police said.

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Meanwhile, in the Democrat hellhole of Chicago…

A 15-year-old girl has been charged with first-degree murder for fatally pushing an Amazon worker from a moving train in Chicago.

29-year-old Kyle Bickham died after he was pushed onto the electrified third rail and was hit by a train near 69th Street earlier this week.

The unidentified teen was charged with first-degree murder, mob action, aggravated battery to a transit employee, and other charges.

WBBM reported:

A 15-year-old girl who police say pushed a man out of a Chicago Transit Authority Red Line train earlier this week will remain in jail.

Chicago police say they arrested the teenage girl just on Friday, four days after they say she pushed that victim off the train. She was charged with felony counts of first-degree murder, mob action, murder by other forcible felony, and aggravated battery to a transit employee.

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A black man has been arrested and charged with murder in the death of Tasia Fortune, a black woman who was found hanging from a tree sparking unfounded claims of a potential lynching case, fueled by leftwing media and Democratic politicians.

The tragic scene unfolded when Fortune, a 29-year-old mother of four, was found hanging from a tree on August 3rd in Jackson, Mississippi. Now, her murder is being politicized and used by sick people to further the Democrats’ agenda.

Early in the investigation, CNN was quick to paint the incident as racial terror, with CNN’s Omar Jimenez reporting that “the raw imagery of a Black person hanging from a tree in the American South evokes a very painful history.” Meanwhile, as the Gateway Pundit reported, Jimenez omitted the fact that a person of interest, Tasia’s black boyfriend, who has since been cleared in the case, was already in custody.

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From the start, the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has been a story of unintended consequences. Contrary to President Donald Trump’s hopes for a quick victory, the conflict has morphed into a sustained crisis, one that has driven up oil prices, driven down tourism in the Middle East, and reshaped the region’s geopolitical map.

Now, a new unintended consequence has emerged: the return of piracy to Somalia’s coasts. This shift, which comes after a decade of quiet, threatens some of the world’s most important shipping lanes and the interests of the United States and its allies.

Pirates have attacked at least 15 vessels in the region this year, a sharp uptick from the five attacks that occurred last year, according to data from the International Maritime Organization. The renewed criminal activity has led to extended hostage situations, including one ongoing seizure of an oil tanker and its crew.

A controversial operation to free the MV LATUF, carried out by Somali forces and the Turkish navy late last month, raised questions about whether a ransom was paid. The government of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia, says it has evidence of phone contacts between Somali government officials and the pirates, which undermines the official story from both Ankara and Mogadishu. The vessel was carrying Turkish weapons and satellite and communication equipment bound for a Turkish training facility in Mogadishu.

Global piracy dropped in the first half of 2026 to its lowest level since 1992 – only 38 incidents, compared to 90 in the same period of 2025 and 60 in 2024. But data from the International Chamber of Commerce shows that, by the end of last month, six commercial ships were still being held, with more than 90 seafarers on board.

When ransom money funds the pirates

The pirates recently received a new ransom estimated at around $1.7 million for the release of the hijacked ship MV Sward off the coast of Puntland, along with its crew of Syrian and Indian sailors, after a crisis that lasted more than four months.

On 26 April, about ten armed Somali men in three speedboats intercepted the ship near the town of Garaad. The vessel flies the flag of St. Kitts and Nevis and is managed by Turkey-linked companies. It was only six nautical miles from the coast. The ship had left the Egyptian port of Adabiya/Suez heading to Mombasa in Kenya with a cargo of cement or fertilizer.

According to a well-informed maritime source in Puntland, this incident shows the pirates going back to their classic method: using the hijacked ship as a mother vessel to carry out more attacks, including the hijacking of Iranian fishing boats.

Before the war on Iran, the threat from piracy to international shipping had dropped significantly. Now that the pirates are active again, the international community needs to rethink how military forces are deployed in the Middle East and the Red Sea to close the security gap the pirates are exploiting – a gap that stretches from Somalia’s eastern coast through the Gulf of Aden to the route linking the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

Dr. Ian Ralby, a maritime security expert at Auxilium Worldwide, says the Houthis are playing a key role in the return of piracy. He points to the transfer of know-how and technology from them to Somali pirates, which could increase their ability to disrupt shipping.

Ralby says the main beneficiaries are the pirates themselves. But he does not rule out that other groups, including the Houthis and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, may find an indirect interest in the ongoing chaos. He also notes that the attacks have reached the waters off Yemen, widening the threat and increasing pressure on naval forces and coast guards.

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Fox News stars and friends of Andrew Wimsatt expressed sadness and shock on social media Thursday at the news of his brutal murder in Austin, Texas.

Host Greg Gutfeld wrote on X, “This person was murdered this week in Austin Texas. He was one of the sweetest most helpful persons I’ve ever met. Supremely gentle. Willing to do just about anything for another person. And he was stabbed to death on a street at 11 am in the morning. For no reason other than a maniac was free to roam the streets. Rest in peace Andrew. We won’t forget you.”

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An unimaginably horrific crime occurred on Monday in Austin, Texas, area and not enough people are talking about it. And it’s a crime Texas voters might want to be thinking about when they make their way to the ballot box this November to choose a new senator.

A 62-year-old man had just visited his mother in a nursing home in Round Rock and taken her for a walk in a local park. After he got her settled back in at the home, he returned to the park on his own and sat down on a bench, minding his own business.

This is when, according to police, a complete stranger walked up behind the man, wrapped an arm around him, and proceeded to stab him repeatedly in the neck. Surveillance video reportedly shows the victim desperately trying to fight back before being overpowered by the suspect.

And then it got even worse.

According to the arrest affidavit, the attacker allegedly forced the man to the ground, knelt over him, and began moving the knife back and forth across his neck in a sawing motion. Some are describing it as an attempted beheading.

The victim was Andrew James Wimsatt, a 62-year-old engineer and longtime transportation researcher. A passerby later found him near the Chandler Creek Trail and called 911, but it was far too late to save Wimsatt.

Police arrested 26-year-old Benedict Ogbodiegwu Jr. and charged him with first-degree murder. There is no indication suspect knew the victim.

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The push follows President Donald Trump’s executive orders renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario

Pennsylvania state Rep. David Maloney, a Republican, is asking President Donald Trump to rename Lake Erie to “Lake Pennsylvania” following similar renaming efforts by the president.

Maloney is preparing a resolution calling on Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and lawmakers on Capitol Hill to take steps to rename Lake Erie to “Lake Pennsylvania,” arguing that the change is needed to reflect the lake’s modern identity.

“This is Pennsylvania’s only Great Lake. Its modern economy and identity are increasingly tied to the boaters, anglers, families and tourists who come to enjoy it,” Maloney said in a statement. “Ohio has plenty of shoreline. New York already has two Great Lakes. Canada has four others.”

“Pennsylvania has one. Let’s call it Lake Pennsylvania!” he added.

Lake Erie is the smallest of the Great Lakes by volume as well as the shallowest, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The lake has about 12 million people in its watershed, with 10.5 million people in the U.S. and 1.9 million people in Canada.

This comes after Trump signed an executive order last month to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” a rebranding that Canada does not recognize and has firmly rejected.

“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement.

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With DOGE disbanded more than a year ago, and tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court, the US is no longer even pretending that there is any hope to normalize spending, or any kind of happy ending to the US debt trajectory.

At 2pm today the US Treasury published the latest, August, monthly budget deficit data, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that things are looking ever worse.

Total US receipts were $360 billion, a modest improvement from the $344 billion a year ago, with individual income taxes accounting for $179 billion, or half of the total, and the bulk of the balance coming from Social Insurance and Retirement receipts of $141 billion.

On the spending side, things were ugly: total outlays were $527 billion, a modest improvement to the $689.1 billion a year ago, but much of that had to do with the calendar impact of tariffs.

Putting receipts and spending in context, a chart of the trailing 6 months of government revenue and spending shows that the two trendlines are rapidly diverging, with spending on pace to surpass the covid all time high, even as government revenue remains stuck in a much more narrow range.

The difference between the two, is of course, the US budget deficit, which in August was $166.8 billion, an improvement from July’s massive $432 billion deficit, which however was the result of some calendar discrepancies between the two months. What matters more is that fir the first 11 months of fiscal 2026 (with just one month left in the fiscal year), the total US deficit is now $1.97 trillion, identical with last year, although since 2025 saw a big drop in the final month of the year, we are confident that 2026 will be about $200bn worse than the previous year when all is said and done, and be the 3rd worst year for the US deficit on record, with just the crisis years of 2020 and 2021 worse.

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After July’s rebound to pre-war levels, a re-escalation in the MidEast (and soaring fuel costs) sent confidence back towards YTD lows. Preliminary September data was expected to show UMich headline sentiment sliding further.

‘Slide’ is not exactly how we would describe preliminary September confidence data’s collapse (headline from 51.7 to 47.8 vs 51.0 exp). The current conditions gauge fell to 50.9 from 51.9 in the previous month, while the expectations index plunged to 45.8 from 51.5 – just off record lows.

Democrats and Republicans alike posted sizable declines, while independents were little changed from August.

“Opinions of the government’s economic policy worsened about 10% this month and remain substantially below February 2026, just prior to the Iran conflict,’’ Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in a statement.

“Notably, even Republicans, who generally supported economic policy under the current administration, have exhibited a marked decline in favorability.’’

Year-ahead inflation expectations jumped from 4.0% last month to 4.6% this month, the highest reading since June.

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President Trump on Wednesday told reporters to expect more US attacks on Iranian tankers, as the war over the Hormuz Strait continues to escalate in piecemeal tit-for-tat fashion.

“The attacks are made by us. We’ve knocked out nine of their ships. I would say that the attacks are caused by us, and you’re going to see a lot more,” the president told reporters on Wednesday, adding that many of the Iranian tankers are “donezo” – as global oil prices continue to climb.

The region has now seen over six months of war since Trump launched an operation that he and White House officials at first suggested would just be ‘days’ – and then insisted (repeatedly) would be a ‘four to six week’ campaign.

All along the White House has kept moving the goal posts, amid lack of overall strategic vision and failure to articulate what exactly enough of a ‘victory’ to establish a military exit would look like.

Speaking of drastically moving the goal post, the below was another key media exchange with Trump on Wednesday:

Q: Do you expect negotiations with Iran to restart at some point?

Trump: Uhhhhhh… we’re not looking for it to be honest with you. This war will end immediately after our election.

This as The Wall Street Journal has issued a report saying Trump’s top advisors are now warning him that the Iran conflict could last through the rest of his term.

Trump has called it ‘small potatoes’ – but he may now have his very own forever war

Top White House advisers have raised privately with President Trump the prospect that the Iran war could drag on through the remainder of his term, U.S. officials said, a message at odds with Trump’s public assurances of a swift victory.

In the Oval Office and Situation Room, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others have discussed with the president that Tehran could continue to resist U.S. pressure under the blockade and other military tactics, potentially extending the conflict past Inauguration Day in January 2029, the officials said.

…oh to have been a fly on the wall during that little meeting.

According to more snippets from the WSJ report:

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Veteran commodities strategist Jeff Currie has spent the summer warning that scarcity in physical commodity markets is becoming a persistent source of inflationary pressure and giving way to a commodities supercycle.

After appearing on CNBC on Thursday, he joined Bloomberg Television on Friday morning to amp up that message, warning that tightening crude products supplies make $5-a-gallon US gasoline highly likely by November.

Crude is the signal, and now we think about products … they are the noise,” Currie said.

Currie, the founder and chief executive of Real Macro and former Goldman commodities head, also warned that scarcity and currency debasement were driving the next phase of the energy shock, with shortages spreading from refined products into crude oil.

Currie described the probability of average US gasoline prices reaching $5 a gallon by the midterm elections as “extremely high.”

Currie warned that refiners shifting production between diesel and gasoline would eventually exhaust their operational flexibility, limiting their ability to relieve shortages. US diesel prices could reach $7 to $9 a gallon, he added.

The latest AAA data show the national average price of diesel in the US has topped $6 a gallon.

US Diesel Crack Spread

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Following fuel-driven jump in Producer Prices, consensus was for a concomitant jump MoM in Consumer prices this morning, after last month’s decline as energy prices have rebounded (though we warned that amid all the interventionist-y chatter, nothing would surprise us less than ‘cool’ print to offset the PPI scare).

And analysts were right with headline CPI rising 0.4% MoM (exactly as expected) – biggest MoM since May – but prices rose 3.5% YoY (in line with expectations and flat to the prir month)…

Core Services accelerated…

…BUT Fuel prices dominated the rise in headline CPI…

Headline CPI rose 0.4% MoM in August, after rising 0.1% in July. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.4%.

  • The index for energy increased 2.1 percent over the month: The index for gasoline rose 3.9% in August, accounting for over one third of the monthly all items increase.
  • The shelter index rose 0.3 percent in August after rising 0.1 percent in July.
  • The index for food increased 0.1 percent over the month, as the index for food away from home increased 0.3 percent.

Just like we saw yesterday with PPI, the rebound in crude (and refined product) prices snapped CPI’s Energy component notably higher…

Energy helping on a 6m annualized basis but hurting on a 3m annualized basis…

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Bill Clinton‘s White House was warned that Osama bin Laden wanted to crash a bomb-packed plane into an American city three years before the hijackers struck, explosive CIA files reveal.

The warning was a part of a September 10, 1998 report prepared for senior Clinton officials cleared to read the then-president’s most secret morning intelligence digest, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Headlined ‘Bin Laden’s Location and Intentions,’ it offered no date or target, but made clear the terror chief had Washington, DC, in his sights. Bin Laden’s terrorists would crash an airplane into the Pentagon three years later.

Other papers show analysts told the White House in July 1998 that a bin Laden strike on the US was ‘plausible,’ and in October 2000 that he remained ‘committed’ to hitting American targets, though spies ‘cannot pinpoint targets or timing.’

The revelation surfaced as Clinton was at Ground Zero for the 25th anniversary, standing among the very families whose loved ones died in the attack the memo foreshadowed.

In 2001, bin Laden was featured in at least 18 separate editions of Bush’s daily intelligence digest, seven of them landing on the former president’s desk weeks before the towers fell.

One July 24, 2001 memo even flagged that an ‘expected imminent’ bin Laden operation had been postponed, while cautioning that other attacks could still be in motion.

The 71 documents were released by the CIA to mark a quarter-century since nearly 3,000 people were murdered in New York City, the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.

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An illegal alien released under the Biden administration has been accused of executing a California woman in cold blood at a shopping center after she tried to run away from him.

Law enforcement said the suspect had been stalking the 38-year-old victim for months, according to a news release from the Department of Homeland Security.

The agency cited a report from KCRA-TV that detailed how the illegal alien from India, Rohit Rohit, 22, approached the victim at her car in Sacramento Tuesday.

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Trump’s top immigration official claims an internal investigation found that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar ‘married her brother’ and could be facing deportation.

‘We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States,’ Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said of the Minnesota Democrat. ‘We know he lives now in London.’

He was speaking about the second man Omar married, who the Daily Mail has previously reported is Ahmed Elmi. Both are originally from Somalia.

She allegedly was still married to her first husband, Ahmed Hirsi, at the time of the second marriage, the congresswoman has told friends who relayed the account to the Daily Mail. 

Omar has long denied the allegations. She has since remarried a third time and is wed to political consultant Tim Mynett.

Mullin told conservative pundit Benny Johnson that Omar’s actions amounted to ‘possible illegal activity’ and the investigation is ‘ongoing,’ breaking a standard where officials typically do not discuss active investigations.

‘We’re investigating,’ he said before threatening to deport her should the investigation warrant such a dramatic action.

‘There’s no expiration to that,’ he said of the potential charges. ‘If we can prove it that, maybe you shouldn’t have been here in the first place, we’ll deport you.’

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The price of diesel is hitting record highs just when many U.S. farmers need it to power combines, tractors and other equipment to harvest two of the nation’s largest commodities, soybeans and corn.

The spike adds to an already tough year for these farmers, who also faced higher costs for fertilizer, seeds and equipment.

Diesel hit a record price in the U.S. on Sept. 4, soaring to an average of $5.85 a gallon for the first time as the six-month war with Iran disrupted the world’s flow of fuel. It has gone even higher since then, going for an average price of $6.05 a gallon on Friday, according to AAA.

“Those prices hurt,” said Paul Mitchell, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And it’s not just the harvesting. It’s the hauling of everything, moving the grain or the silage from the field to the farm and then from the farm to wherever they’re selling it.”

Jason Kurtz, a corn and soybean farmer near Forest City, Missouri, said he was paying twice as much for diesel this year. His combine uses 200 gallons (760 liters) of fuel a day; he expected to run it for 30 days. He also needed diesel for a tractor and trucks.

“We have to harvest,” he said in an interview at his farm about 90 miles (145 kilometers) outside Kansas City on Tuesday. “We have to run the machines. We have to use the diesel, so it cuts into our bottom line.”

Kurtz, 49, said his finances were “already tight” this year after he also had to pay more for fertilizer and chemicals.

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A quaint Maryland suburb is being plagued by a rotten stench so overpowering residents say they are unable to leave their homes.

Dundalk residents gathered at an explosive town hall meeting on Thursday night where they passionately voiced their anger about the strong sewage odor coming from a Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The situation had become so concerning that locals also said they were unable to eat the region’s famous crabs as they are fished from the putrid-smelling water.

‘The stench is so bad. Imagine the worst possible backup you’ve had in your bathroom, that’s what it smells like in our neighborhoods,’ local man John Zaganas told WBALTV 11.

‘It was in my throat so bad the other day that we could not even sit outside,’ another exasperated resident said during the meeting, which descended into a shouting match in parts.

The smell has been blamed on various operational failures at the treatment plant stretching back to May, according to a Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) inspection report.

This included excess sludge stored in large lagoon tanks that have not been processed properly and high pollutant discharge levels that may be adding to the stench.

‘They just don’t care about us. It’s been going on for years now, and it hasn’t been every day, but it’s enough to where it’s scary down here now. I don’t know what we’re breathing in, and I don’t know what we’re gonna get from it,’ Zaganas said.

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On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, CIA Director John Ratcliffe released 71 President’s Daily Brief documents spanning from February 1998 through the morning of September 12, 2001. This is the largest public dump of 9/11-related presidential intelligence the Agency has ever made.

The collection, which includes more than 100 pages of heavily redacted documents, was framed by Ratcliffe as “an act of exceptional transparency” and “consistent with President Donald Trump’s historic transparency initiative.”

Ratcliffe continued: “25 years ago, the 9/11 attacks struck a blow to our Nation, but they did not break us. Generations of CIA officers have since dedicated their careers to securing justice for our fallen Americans and ensuring al-Qa’ida would never again harm our country. In the years that followed, numerous CIA officers made the ultimate sacrifice in the Global War on Terror. We honor their memory and service through our commitment to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat those who wish to cause us harm.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin voiced some troubling accusations about Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, left.

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin voiced some troubling accusations about Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, left. (Stephen Maturen / Getty Images; Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)

The allegation that Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota married her brother has been stated as fact by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

Mullin spoke to podcaster Benny Johnson at the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas.

“Something’s gonna happen. This is an ongoing investigation,” Mullin said.

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The children of bloodthirsty Somali dictator Siad Barre, whose rule left as many as 200,000 people dead, are quietly living in the US — alongside victims of his regime.

The Post located the despot’s “right-hand man” son Ayanle and daughter Deka Mohamed Siad, in Columbus, Ohio, where they lead unassuming suburban lives.

However, among the wider Somali community, their presence is a painful reminder of the regime and some are calling for US authorities to investigate.

Bloodthirsty Somali dictator Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991, following two decades of oppression.Corbis via Getty Images

“Siad Barre and his men committed so many war crimes so I was shocked to see his son [Ayanle] in the mosque enjoying his freedom,” Ali-Guban Mohamed, 64, told The Post.

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On the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, former President George W. Bush took the chance to reflect on his actions in the time that followed that day.

He was spectacularly wrong about Islam then, and he is now.

Bush sat down Thursday with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas. While the full interview can be viewed on YouTube, one particular moment stuck out for a comment made by Bush about Islam, perpetuating the lie that this religion is peaceful.

It was posted to social media platform X by conservative media outlet The Blaze.

Rice asked Bush to speak about what happened following that day, to which he responded boldly, but incorrectly, declaring how he set the tone for the country.

“I also made it clear that Islam was a religion of peace, not a religion of war, and that these people subverted their religion.”

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Ocean City Manager Terry McGean says the local government officials are aware of a proposed zoning amendment that could pave the way for Amazon’s construction of an unmanned, “power feed equipment facility” at the municipal airport.

But until an existing lease with the city is amended, he said, the only development authorized at the airport is a cable landing.

Power feed equipment, which is usually contained in a cable landing station, sends high voltage electricity to a subsea lineup of booster stations that amplify the signals being transmitted.

“Currently the lease that Globalinx has for the airport only allows for underground cable and a manhole. Therefore, the lease would have to be amended to allow for an above-ground structure,” he said in an email last week. “Ocean City is aware that a zoning amendment is under consideration but to date there have not been any requests made to amend the lease.”

Last week, Amazon Web Services said it was taking a new approach for the transatlantic cables landing in Ocean City – skip the cable landing station currently proposed for Route 611 and pursue a power feed equipment facility directly on airport property. To allow the construction, the company’s legal counsel has submitted a proposed code amendment to Worcester County.

“If the zoning amendment passes and we receive a request to amend the lease, assuming the council wishes to consider that request, it would be placed on an agenda for consideration at that time,” McGean said. “Until that occurs, we have no position.”

 

Three detained in Tuesday morning stop on Coastal Highway

Federal immigration officers arrested three people during a targeted vehicle stop Tuesday morning in midtown Ocean City, with ICE saying all three were in the United States illegally.

The arrests unfolded around 8:45 a.m. near southbound Coastal Highway and 41st Street, where this reporter witnessed several unmarked vehicles with flashing blue lights surrounding another vehicle in the left-turn lane.

Traffic was forced around the vehicles as agents detained a woman wearing a white shirt and placed her inside one of them. Several agents wore tactical gear, including hats or helmets, and at least some wore vests marked “ERO,” an abbreviation for Enforcement and Removal Operations.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement later identified the woman as Telma Yolanda Lopez Cristobal, a Guatemalan national who was the target of the operation. ICE said she entered the United States illegally at an unknown date and time.

“During the vehicle stop, ICE officers discovered two other illegal aliens in the car,” the agency said in a written statement Tuesday to OC Today-Dispatch.

ICE identified the other two people arrested as Pabla Parada Valdez, a Mexican national, and Marvin Edilzar De Leon Matias, a Guatemalan national.

The agency did not say why Lopez Cristobal had been targeted or whether any of the three had criminal convictions or outstanding removal orders.

ICE said all three remained in its custody pending the outcome of removal proceedings.

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In the long run, a party that stumbles from one vacuous trendy issue to another for its core identity is doomed to collapse.

Successful American political parties cannot offer narrowly crafted, closely argued programs. Moreover, unlike ideology-based European parties, American parties with their heterogeneous electoral supporters must win majorities to gain office, and this requires coalition building.

That reality acknowledged, the current Democrat party’s offerings far exceed the usual hodgepodge of appeals. What, for example, links facilitating sex change operations for minors and increasing taxes on billionaires? Or “free” government-funded medical care (“Medicare for All”) and defunding the police? How is “affordability” related to enacting the “Green New Deal,” a policy that invariably increases energy costs? Can government lower prices while simultaneously boosting everyone’s wages? Why defend open borders and sanctuary cities when the resulting cheap labor will drive down wages for American workers? Will millions vote Democrat to allow men to play on women’s sports teams, legalize deadly addictive drugs, condemn Israeli “genocide” in Gaza? This “platform” is an incoherent collection of bumper stickers-like slogans.

Many of these appeals are also unpopular and have zero chance of implementation. Do Americans really want to pack the Supreme Court to advance some vague agenda or replace it altogether? What about supporting a political party that displays a lukewarm enthusiasm for patriotic symbols like the flag and the glories of American history? American political parties typically resemble budget-breaking Santa Clauses, but the Democrat party’s current version of Old Saint Nick promises toys few want, will not work as advertised, and are dangerous.

Nor is altering the English language a winning election strategy though it is alluringly cheap to accomplish. Using “sex workers” versus the supposedly offensive “hooker” is hardly a winning election strategy. Or “birthing person,” to replace “mother.” Such often comic wordplay only conflates terminology with reality and fools nobody.

Particularly desperate is chasing electoral advantage by invoking “socialism.” No doubt, few Americans correctly understand “socialism” other than lots of “free stuff.” More importantly, implementing genuine socialism necessarily requires deeply unpopular measures such as public ownership of key industries, government-controlled media, eliminating private banks and similar draconian government controls over people’s private lives.

Even further afield from the party’s historic identity is playing footsie with Muslim extremism, especially Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, despite his anti-American and Anti-Israeli baggage. This is in Michigan, the home of the United Auto Workers, a traditional core Democrat constituency, and one hardly disposed towards Islam. Apparently, the Democrat “Big Tent” here excludes the old faithful in favor of a religion deeply antithetical to American values.

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FREE ALBUM SUNDAY

The Route 346 Emporium is offering FREE albums by the thousands today. We brought in a trailer load of big band, orchestra and jazz albums that I simply do not have room for so I’m giving them away for free.

First come, first serve. I;m open from 12 to 3 today. 32993 Old Ocean City Rd. Parsonsburg, Md. 21849.

Families of 9/11 victims confronted former presidents George Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden at the Ground Zero NYC memorial, accusing them of protecting Saudi Arabia instead of the families of those killed 25 years ago.

Terry Strada, the widow of 9/11 victim Tom Strada, drew cheers from the crowd as she accused the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of fomenting ‘anti-American terrorism’ and sending its agents to support the hijackers.

‘And still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder,’ she said.

Vice President JD Vance and all the living former presidents, including Bill Clinton, sat feet away as she spoke at the memorial service.

‘For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,’ she said. ‘They broke promises both public and private. It has been one betrayal after another.’

Strada said Donald Trump ‘can still change that,’ urging him to ‘tell the Saudis to stop lying’ and make clear they cannot be friends with the USA while denying their role in the attacks.

She then addressed Vance directly, thanking him for attending and asking him to ‘carry that message back’ and stand with the families and survivors.

Another relative, who lost his aunt Lisa Marie Terry in the attacks, told the crowd that ‘for 25 years the Deep State has hidden the truth’ and issued a direct plea: ‘President Trump, you’re our last hope. Release the unredacted files that implicate Saudi Arabia while what’s left of the victims’ families are still alive to see it.’

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The fact remains that Democrat-run states and cities make it impossible to verify someone’s identity, on purpose, and make it easy for an illegal alien to vote should they want to take that risk…

The Department of Justice announced on Friday that five individuals in battleground states had been arrested and charged with illegal voting in the 2022 or 2024 election as the Trump administration seeks to secure the nation’s voting process.

“The integrity of our elections, which are fundamental to democracy, should be of utmost importance to every American,” said Attorney General Todd Blanche. “It is a cherished right for eligible American citizens, and only eligible American citizens, to vote for their representatives in government. Election fraud is a serious crime, and it is the duty of the Department of Justice to treat it as such.”

The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations were part of the sweep.

In Pennsylvania, Thomas Holtzman and his wife Marisol Guzman were indicted by a federal grand jury due to Guzman allegedly voting as an alien in the 2024 election. Guzman was charged with voting as an alien. Holtzman, a U.S. citizen, was charged with false statement of citizenship in order to vote and aiding and abetting and fraudulent registration and aiding and abetting.

Also in Pennsylvania, Katya Rodriguez, an illegal alien from Mexico living in Harrisburg, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges related to illegally voting as an alien in the 2024 election.

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North Carolina state trooper fatally shot his sheriff captain love rival, investigators claim.

Highway Patrol Sgt Nekime Matu Oxendine, 44, was charged this week over the killing of Cumberland County Sheriff’s Capt Adam Bean, 42, earlier this year.

Bean was killed outside of a Hope Mills home in March, with cops arriving on the scene to find a woman performing CPR on him. He was later pronounced dead.

According to a probable cause statement obtained by Law and Crime, that woman, 43, had been in long-term relationships with the two men.

She is said to have first dated Oxendine before leaving him for Bean, until they broke things off last December and she returned to Oxendine, the statement said.

The outlet reported that the night of the shooting, Bean had texted the woman saying he wished to speak with her but she turned him down.

‘F*** it, I’ll come to you,’ he then texted her to which she responded ‘Please don’t,’ the probable cause statement said.

Bean arrived at the address and ‘appeared irate and questioned why Oxendine’s vehicle was parked outside,’ it added.

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Benedict Ogbodiegwu Jr. Credit: Williamson County Sheriff’s Office

An incredibly bloody and horrific crime occurred earlier this week in Texas that could have been avoided had authorities done their job.

As FOX 7 Austin reported, 62-year-old Andrew James Wimsatt, an accomplished civil engineer who published several notableworks, was seen in video footage obtained from a neighborhood HOA sitting on a park bench in Round Rock at roughly 10:55 a.m. on September 7.

Then his life ended a few minutes later.

The footage goes on to show a black male with a knife in his hand sneaking up behind Wimsatt. The black person proceeds to stab Wimsatt multiple times in the neck while wrapping his arm around him.

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For the last five years, the War Department has largely overlooked whistleblower warnings about the adverse effects of the COVID-19 shot on military personnel, which include rising cancer rates and even death. This total disregard by the Biden administration has long raised concerns regarding the health and safety of those who serve.

In light of this, Dr. Theresa Long, an Army doctor board-certified in aerospace medicine, has recently been appointed as the senior medical military adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Her role includes examining whether COVID-19 shots contributed to the deaths of more than 2,500 military personnel.

The previous administration may have attempted to conceal the health conditions initially identified in the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), even in the face of a “notable rise in several serious medical diagnoses,” including cancer.

The advance puts Iran-backed forces closer to controlling a second critical chokepoint as oil prices surge past $100 a barrel

Iran-backed Houthi forces seized Yemen’s strategic port city of Mocha on Thursday and pushed toward positions overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, opening a potentially dangerous new front for global trade as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains severely constrained.

The advance threatens the southern gateway to the Red Sea just as Saudi Arabia has increasingly relied on that route to bypass Hormuz — putting pressure on critical shipping lanes on both sides of the Arabian Peninsula and raising the risk of further disruptions to oil and commercial traffic through a key global trade choke point.

“Now you have Iran on one side of the Arabian Peninsula controlling Hormuz, and now the Houthis controlling Bab el-Mandeb on the other side of the peninsula,” Hisham Al-Omeisy, senior Yemen advisor at the European Institute of Peace, told Fox News Digital. “Which basically is going to drive prices — oil prices, goods and everything else — up exponentially.”

On background, a senior administration official told Fox News Digital: “The United States is focused on protecting our core national security interests — such as ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea — while empowering our regional partners to take the lead in managing and resolving regional security challenges. We are in continuous dialogue with Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Yemen Government regarding regional stability.”

Yemeni government sources said Thursay the Houthis captured Mocha and reached the Hanish Islands, while Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces withdrew south toward Dhubab, which sits directly on the Bab el-Mandeb opposite the strategic island of Perim. Control of Dhubab and Perim would be critical to gaining a stronger hold over the strait, Yemeni government sources told Reuters on Sept. 10.

Bab el-Mandeb is only about 18 miles wide at its narrowest point and connects the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden with the Red Sea and, farther north, the Suez Canal. It is a major artery for goods moving between Asia and Europe as well as energy shipments.

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Maryland Fishing Report

Woman on a boat holding a striped fish

At the Ocean City Inlet, anglers are catching sheepshead and tautog close to the jetty rocks while fishing with live sand fleas.

Recreational crabbers will most likely be talking about the late 2026 crabbing season for quite a while. Catches of crabs up to 8 inches and full baskets are plenty to talk about.

Fishing for white perch can be an elusive quest at times and fishing grass shrimp near deep water docks, piers, and structure tends to be the best way to target them.

Read more about this week in Maryland fishing.

Former Anthropic insider Jacob Coxon is doubling down on his warning that artificial intelligence could become an extinction-level threat to humanity within just a few years — insisting his doomsday prediction is no publicity stunt.

“There is a substantial probability that this technology could kill everyone,” Coxon told NBC News’ Tom Llamas on Wednesday after resigning from the AI giant this week.

“This isn’t hyperbole,” he said. “It’s not a marketing stunt.”

Former AI researcher Jacob Coxon talks to NBC News' Tom Llamas on Wednesday. Coxon spoke about why he resigned from Anthropic and his concerns that AI advancements could "kill us all" by the end of the decade.
Former AI researcher Jacob Coxon talks to NBC News’ Tom Llamas on Wednesday. Coxon spoke about why he resigned from Anthropic and his concerns that AI advancements could “kill us all” by the end of the decade.NBC News

Coxon, who spent three years doing research across Anthropic and OpenAI, has sounded the alarm in a blitz of television interviews following his resignation, arguing that rapidly advancing AI could soon become capable of improving itself with diminishing human involvement.

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Republicans are groaning over President Donald Trump‘s campaign promise to award voters $5,000 if Republicans win the midterms in November, with some likening it to a ‘bribe.’

‘If Republicans win both the House and the Senate, because of our tremendous economic success, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States for $5,000,’ Trump declared Wednesday evening at a Republican rally in Dallas.

Trump did not delve into the details of the plan, only noting that dividend payments would be awarded to American citizens and would need to be spent within the US.

The stunning pledge floored some of the president’s most devout supporters.

‘For the record, I am hugely in favor of winning the midterms, and love much about this admin, but am strongly against bread and circus bribes,’ Palantir co-founder and GOP donor Joe Lonsdale reacted.

At $5,000 per citizen, the payments would dwarf those given out during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Estimates vary, but the plan could cost between $1 and $1.3 trillion, a massive figure that would surely increase the national debt, blow out the federal budget and potentially lead to further inflation.

‘I would like to know how they would plan to pay for … back of envelope … well over $1 trillion,’ Texas Republican Congressman Chip Roy wrote on X.

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Donald Trump’s tech guru has called for AI giant Anthropic to be investigated amid explosive warnings about the safety of the technology.

David Sacks, chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, called for the company’s planned IPO to be paused until claims made by a whistleblower can be probed.

Researcher Jacob Coxon sensationally resigned from Anthropic this week and accused the company and its rival OpenAI of not doing enough to address the potential dangers of the technology.

n posts on X, Coxon warned that the companies were ‘racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives’ and said researchers working in the field believe AI could potentially ‘kill all humans’ by the end of the decade.

He has also described AI as potentially ‘the most dangerous technology that humanity has ever created,’ warning that the race to develop increasingly capable systems could outpace efforts to make them safe.

It comes as investors prepare for what could become one of the biggest stock-market listings in history, with Anthropic reportedly targeting a valuation of around $2 trillion or more when it goes public, potentially as soon as October.

That figure would be more than double Anthropic’s latest private valuation of about $965 billion, making the IPO an important test of whether investors are still willing to pour money into the AI boom at sky-high prices.

Sacks, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, wrote on X on Tuesday: ‘Surely Anthropic’s IPO must be paused until the claims of this ‘whistleblower’ can be investigated.’

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The Route 346 Emporium 32993 Old Ocean City Rd Parsonsburg is now open on Saturday’s 10-4 and Sunday’s 12-3. We’ve discounted tens of thousands of albums and furniture to move in new inventory so come get them while the deals are hot.

Among men between 20 and 54, colorectal cancer was leading cause of alcohol-linked cancer deaths

Annual U.S. cancer deaths tied to alcohol consumption more than doubled over a three-decade period, according to a recent study led by researchers at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

The findings, published in The Lancet Regional Health — Americas and presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Chicago, revealed that alcohol-attributable cancer deaths jumped from 11,361 in 1990 to 23,126 in 2023.

Researchers analyzed more than 30 years of data from the Global Burden of Disease study to track the trends.

While alcohol has long been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, surveys show that awareness of its link to cancer remains limited.

“The most surprising finding was the breadth of alcohol’s potential impact across cancer types,” Chinmay Jani, M.D., corresponding author of the study and chief fellow in hematology and oncology at Sylvester, told Fox News Digital.

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Existing home sales tumbled for the 3rd straight month in August, falling 2.0% MoM, sparking its biggest annual decline since January…

This implied an annualized rate of 3.98 million in August, marking one of only two times since the fall of 2024 that sales have dipped below 4 million

“Mortgage rates and home sales move in opposite directions, so it’s not surprising to see a mild dip in home buying activity due to high mortgage rates,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.

Still, home prices are rising, and existing home sales are actually up 1.6% year-to-date through the first eight months of the year…” Yun noted.

“Homebuying demand, despite higher interest rates, is no doubt being supported by rising wages, which grew 3.1% in August, along with 643,000 net new jobs added since the start of the year. Job creation and wage growth typically drive housing demand.”

The median sales price rose 1.6% from a year ago to $429,100, extending a streak of annual price increases dating back to mid-2023.

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In a relatively unusual turn around, US producer prices hit today ahead of tomorrow’s CPI. Interestingly Consumer prices get all the headlines, it is PPI that offers the most read-throughs for Core PCE – The (old) Fed’s favorite inflation gauge).

Headline producer pries were expected to rebound significantly from July’s flatline as oil prices rebounded on re-escalations in the MidEast, and they printed right in line, up 04.% MoM in August (with July’s revised up to +0.1% MoM. That lifted the annual PPI gain to +5.4% YoY (hotter than expected)…

Energy has flipped from deflation to re-inflation…

PPI final demand good rose 1.1% MoM, the most since May, while PPI final demand services rose 0.1%, the lowest since May.

Here are the details behind the breakdown:

Final demand goods: The index for final demand goods advanced 1.1% in August following two consecutive decreases.

  • Over three-fourths of the broad-based rise can be attributed to prices for final demand energy, which moved up 4.2%.The indexes for final demand goods less foods and energy and for final demand foods increased 0.4% and 0.1%, respectively.

Product detail: Over a third of the August increase in the index for final demand goods can be traced to prices for diesel fuel, which jumped 24.1%. The indexes for gasoline, jet fuel, home heating oil, candy and nuts, and tobacco products also advanced. In contrast, prices for residential electric power fell 0.5 percent. The indexes for fresh sausage and for aluminum mill shapes also decreased.

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