Posts on Wednesday, June 25, 2025
A federal judge in Texas granted a temporary reprieve to two small money services operations that had argued that a new Trump administration policy intended to ensnare drug traffickers was instead driving them out of business. The ruling, handed down late Tuesday, marked the third time a court had rejected a new Treasury Department rule that calls for increased scrutiny of financial service businesses along the southern border, which are already highly regulated. The government in March required businesses in certain ZIP codes in Texas and California to report any transaction larger than $200, along with personal identifying information about the customer.
Fresh off striking Iranian nuclear facilities together with Israel, US President Donald Trump on Thursday demanded the end of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing criminal trial.
“BREAKING NEWS… I was shocked to hear that the State of Israel, which has just had one of its Greatest Moments in History, and is strongly led by Bibi Netanyahu, is continuing its ridiculous Witch Hunt against their Great War Time Prime Minister!” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social.
The unprecedented intervention in the Israeli justice system by an American president came as the cross-examination of Netanyahu, which began earlier this month, was due to resume after being halted while court
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have engineered a strain of Escherichia coli that relies on small molecules from waste polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles to survive. The synthetic metabolic process they designed converts nearly 100% of PET-derived substrates into the world’s most commonly used painkiller, acetaminophen,(Snip) Conventional pharmaceutical manufacturing has an enormous carbon footprint—55% more emission intensive than that of the automotive industry—but this new method leaves virtually no carbon emissions.
A New York state lawmaker called out Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., over her upbringing after she referred to herself as a tough "Bronx girl" during an internet spat in which she traded jabs with President Donald Trump. State Assemblyman Matt Slater, a Republican, called out the progressive firebrand, who represents portions of the Bronx and Queens, and shared an image of her during her freshman year in suburban Yorktown High School, almost an hour north of the Bronx.
"If you’re a BX girl then why are you in my Yorktown yearbook? Give it up already," Slater tweeted.
Previously unseen damage is also visible near tunnel entrances at Iran's Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre after it was hit by the US. Meanwhile, there are signs work is already underway to fill in craters at the Natanz enrichment complex in the wake of US strikes.
A leaked US intelligence document has cast doubt on the overall impact of the strikes. Media coverage of its conclusions prompted an angry response from President Donald Trump.
Other new satellite images reveal previously unseen damage at a university in north-east Tehran and an area adjacent to a major airport west of the capital.
Neera Tanden, former head of Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, admitted that she authorized autopen signatures without knowledge of who issued the final approval in a closed-door hearing before the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday, according to Fox News.
In her role as staff secretary, before she was moved to the Domestic Policy Council, Tanden “was responsible for handling the the flow of documents to and from the President,” sending decision memos to “Biden’s inner circle” and affixing the president’s autopen signature to the documents when she received approval. Tanden was not privy to any of the decision-making process or who was giving the final approval. She rarely interacted with Biden.
President Donald Trump announced that Israeli officials believe the U.S. airstrike targeting an Iranian nuclear site over the weekend has made it “totally inoperable” and set the regime back for years.
“The devastating U.S. strike on Fordow destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility totally inoperable,” Trump told a NATO conference in the Netherlands, reading the statement from the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission
The agency assesses “that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons for many years to come.”
I used to work in and around Hollywood, so I know how the game is played and how stars are "made." The majority of supposed "discoveries" are acts that have been trotted out and poll-tested for years, even decades. Teen heartthrob, singer, and actor Bobby Sherman is among the last of true Hollywood discoveries. Sherman was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in the 1960s.[snip] His face was printed on lunchboxes, cereal boxes and posters that hung on the bedroom walls of his adoring fans. He landed at No. 8 in TV Guide’s list of “TV’s 25 Greatest Teen Idols.”
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s plan to create a network of city-owned grocery stores to drive down food costs is facing pushback from the industry, with the head of a Manhattan-based grocery chain threatening to sell or close the business if Mamdani is elected. John Catsimatidis, the CEO of grocery chain Gristedes, found fault with Mamdani’s plan, saying the business couldn't compete in the market if there are city-run supermarkets. "If the city of New York is going socialist, I will definitely close, or sell, or move or franchise the Gristedes locations," Catsimatidis told FOX Business. He will
LA County official allegedly urged gang
members to defend territory from ICE,
triggering FBI probe replies
members to defend territory from ICE,
triggering FBI probe replies
A Los Angeles County official is allegedly being investigated by the FBI after she posted a video to social media calling on gang members to defend their territory from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Cynthia Gonzalez, the vice mayor of Cudahy in southeast Los Angeles County, allegedly shared a video on social media late last week in which she appeared to encourage 18th Street and Florencia 13 gang members to protect their turf from ICE agents. "Not for nothing, but I want to know where all the cholos are at in Los Angeles," Gonzalez said in the video. "18th Street, Florencia — Where's the leadership at? Because you guys
This is a fair question from Matt Continetti, who recites some of the relevant quotations before posing it. I'll add to the list. President Bill Clinton described a nuclearlzed Iran as intolerable and signed the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000, "which authorize[d] him to take punitive action against individuals or organizations known to be providing material aid to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in Iran." President George W. Bush intoned in 2008 that "permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations."
Emissary Steve Witkoff Outlines Details
of U.S. Total Destruction of Iran Nuclear Capabilities replies
of U.S. Total Destruction of Iran Nuclear Capabilities replies
When Mary McCord’s friend, Laura Ingraham, asks Steve Witkoff about the leaked classified intelligence reports shaped to say the Iran nuclear hits did not do much damage, Witkoff gives details of the damage created.
As noted by Witkoff in the lead up to this review, the fighting is over, Iran is defeated. WATCH (prompted): (Video)The scope of intelligence community control over information, including information from new and traditional media, is so extensive, I would challenge everyone to be exceptionally cautious about the background motives of all media personalities.
A NATO Summit press conference fell silent during a touching moment between President Donald Trump and a BBC Ukrainian reporter when he expressed concern for her after she revealed that her husband was living in Ukraine.
It happened during a NATO leaders' summit event in The Hague, Netherlands when Trump took questions from members of the foreign press, ranging from the recent successful strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities to a question from the BBC reporter about if the US intended to "sell anti-aircraft missile systems" to Ukraine amid the ongoing war between Russia and her home country.
"Are you yourself living now in Ukraine?" Trump inquired.
President Trump may be a second-term president now, but he hasn’t lost his penchant for surprising critics and supporters alike. No one could be sure what he would do about the Israel-Iran war. Had he played a role in setting it up, by duping the Iranians into believing he wanted to strike a “deal” to arrest their nuclear-weapons program? Or was he negotiating in good faith and blindsided by Israel? Would he involve America in the war or not? And if he did, would regime change in Tehran be his goal?
The latest intelligence from both Iran and Israel proves that President Donald Trump was right about the airstrikes obliterating the Iranians' nuclear facilities, and CNN, which reported otherwise, is wrong.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shared a report on Wednesday on X from the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, which stated that "The devastating US strike on Fordo destroyed the site's critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable."
"We assess that the American strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran's military nuclear program, has set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years," it added.
As I watched yet another failed effort by the Democrats to impeach Trump, my first reaction was, “Wow, some Democrats are catching on that this radical behavior is a very bad idea.” It seems that their far-left outrages of the past few years have driven them so far off the normalcy spectrum that voters tossed them aside in huge numbers last November in order to say that no more deeply disturbing perverseness and anti-Americanism will be tolerated. Trump won in a massive victory when the voters rejected delusionary thinking in an anti-trans, anti-perversion, pro-America keel-hauling of the Democrat party.
In 1866, Ohio congressman and future president James Garfield championed the creation of a federal Department of Education to address high illiteracy levels among former slaves and an influx of European immigrants.
As part of the post-Civil War Reconstruction effort, the former Confederate states were required to guarantee education for all in their rewritten constitutions. The new federal agency would monitor and enforce compliance, according to a brief history of the Department of Education published by The Conference Board think tank.
For a brief window this week, President Donald Trump was out of the running for a Nobel Peace Prize, after a Ukrainian lawmaker withdrew his nomination on Monday for not ending the war there, and before Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., nominated him on Tuesday for the ceasefire between Israel and Iran.
You can imagine the guffaws and hair-pulling from the Trump-is-Hitler crowd at the thought that anyone would see him as a suitable candidate for this prize. But as much as we’d love to watch their heads explode as he walked up to accept the award, we think Trump should
Sheriff Grady Judd says detectives in Polk County seized 64 pounds of fentanyl and arrested eight people in what the sheriff's office calls the largest fentanyl seizure in the county's history.
The backstory:
Judd says the first of two undercover investigations began in July 2024, and the cases involved Mexico's two largest cartels: Jalisco and Sinaloa. Six suspected Jalisco members and two Sinaloa members have been arrested.
A total of 29 pounds of fentanyl were seized from Jalisco and another 35 pounds were seized from Sinaloa, according to Judd – enough to kill 14.5 million people.
The sheriff's office says the 64 pounds of fentanyl carried a total value of $4.5 million.
The Iranian foreign ministry admitted that their nuclear facilities were “badly damaged” by U.S. strikes over the weekend after reports surfaced about a low-confidence U.S. intelligence assessment suggesting otherwise.
Numerous outlets reported Wednesday on an early intelligence assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency suggesting the U.S. strikes only set Iran’s nuclear program back a few months. The White House strongly disputed the intelligence assessment and criticized the leakers within the intelligence apparatus.
“This alleged ‘assessment’ is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.
The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) is among the nonprofits behind the lawsuit filed last week by the Southeastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), a progressive Lutheran denomination with about 2.8 million members.
Filed by the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) at Georgetown Law, the American Immigration Council (AIC), and TIRRC with the ELCA Southeastern Synod as the primary plaintiff in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, the lawsuit targets Senate Bill (SB) 392.
Signed by Governor Bill Lee last month, the law establishes the criminal offense of human smuggling
Mayor Freddie O’Connell told The New York Times on Monday that his administration’s decision not to comply with federal immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump will take a different strategy from other Democratic elected officials, with the mayor claiming himself to be uninterested in the “rhetorical check boxes” employed by national figures.
O’Connell’s administration is currently subject to a congressional investigation over his actions in response to a federal operation that saw nearly 200 illegal immigrants detained last month, which included the creation of a “Belonging Fund,” which his office announced as a partnership between the city and various nonprofits,
Enjoying a surge of support from progressive and younger voters, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani is a big step closer to becoming the first Muslim mayor of the nation's most populous city. While the Associated Press had yet to project a winner in New York City's Democratic Party mayoral primary Tuesday night, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo saw the writing on the wall, telling supporters at an election night gathering that Mamdani "won."
Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assembly member from Queens who is originally from Uganda, topped the former three-term governor and nine other candidates in a crowded primary field in an election that was determined by ranked-choice voting.
Trump administration officials on Tuesday slammed a leaked preliminary intelligence assessment of the damage done to Iran’s nuclear facilities by weekend US airstrikes that the president has touted as a massive success.
The classified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) bomb damage assessment — deemed a “low confidence” estimation of the effectiveness of Saturday’s strikes on the Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz sites — reportedly determined that Iran could bring its nuclear program back online as quickly as within one to two months, according to Fox News.
On the high end, estimates indicate that Iran could restart uranium enrichment within a year, according to those who viewed the DIA report.
The message started by congratulating Donald Trump on his “decisive action in Iran” and then got even more flattering, gushing about reaching the precipice of achieving “something NO American president in decades could have done.”
This wasn’t an ardent supporter swooning or the president taking to social media to sing his own praises in his familiar ALL CAPS style. This was NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte heaping direct praise on Trump as he flew to a two-day NATO summit in the Netherlands.
Iran executed three more prisoners Wednesday over allegedly spying for Israel, its state-run IRNA news agency reported, the latest hangings connected to its war with Israel.
The hangings happened in Urmia Prison in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province, which is the country’s most northwest province.
IRNA cited Iran’s judiciary for the news, saying the men had been accused of bringing “assassination equipment” into the country.
Iran has carried out several hangings during its war with Israel, sparking fears from activists that it could conduct a wave of executions after the conflict ended.
Just as China has been attempting to redraw maritime boundaries in the South China Sea —renaming reefs, building artificial islands and militarizing waters in defiance of international rulings — it is now exporting a similar playbook to land borders. These moves are about more than maps. They are about creating a norm of impunity, where might makes right and ambiguity is weaponized.
Over the past two decades, China has transformed contested reefs, shoals and rocks into militarily fortified islands, backed by creative "historical" narratives, domestic law, and a selective reading of international norms.
It was never a question of if Karmelo Anthony was responsible for the stabbing death of fellow teen Austin Metcalf at a Frisco, Texas, high school track meet back in April. Anthony himself admitted to carrying out the deadly act at Kuykendall Stadium, apparently telling police, "I'm not alleged, I did it!"
You have to love how passionate President Trump is about pursuing peace and building a better world—no equivocation, no double-talk. Friend and foe alike, he calls balls and strikes. And in this latest Israel–Iran crisis, he’s put his signature, clear-cut leadership on full display.
Over the past 12 days, a dramatic escalation erupted between Israel and Iran. Israel struck Iranian nuclear facilities—Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan—using U.S. B‑2 bombers and Tomahawks, claiming the sites were “completely and totally obliterated.” Iran retaliated with missile attacks, including a controversial strike on a U.S. base in Qatar and rockets that reportedly killed 28 civilians in Beersheba. Casualties across both nations reached grim totals—
Florida is about to make a bold statement in the ongoing national debate over illegal immigration, and it’s not just talk — it’s action.
The Sunshine State is rolling out a new approach that’s as tough as it is practical: setting up a string of detention centers specifically for illegal immigrants with criminal records. The centerpiece of this initiative is a facility tucked deep in the Everglades, built on the bones of an abandoned airfield, and already earning an unforgettable nickname from state officials: “Alligator Alcatraz.”
The name isn’t just for show.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier made it clear that this is no ordinary detention center.
Orlando Diaz Cebada is not a good guy.
Known in Mexico as "El Leches," he's a member of the Los Pochos gang, which traffics drugs for the infamous Sinaloa Cartel. He's also an alleged murderer.
On April 23, 2024, Mexican authorities issued an arrest warrant for Diaz Cebada for aggravated homicide. According to the warrant, he beat a Mexican law enforcement official to death. Given his alleged gang ties, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that probably wasn't a first.
He fled to the United States, entered illegally, and was deported on May 22, 2024.
Need a little afternoon pick-me-up? Look no further than this clip of United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins absolutely destroying Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) at a Senate hearing this morning, and for good reason.
Collins testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, and when it was Murray's turn to talk, she tried to play a game of "gotcha" on the topic of the VA discriminating against certain people. Her source? The Guardian, a liberal rag published in the United Kingdom that has one of the worst cases of TDS you'll ever witness.
Here's some quick background: The Guardian posted this article last week,
Russia’s war in Ukraine has drained Western ammunition stocks. Despite years of claimed weapons ramp-ups, NATO’s arms manufacturing is still not refilling those stocks apace, let alone making it to Ukraine in needed mass. The West has come to recognize that these shortages are due to the offshoring of explosives production. But a flurry of new investment incentive schemes from NATO members into defense industries is not yielding results that compare with Russia’s alarming success at arming itself, even beset with sanctions. Western arms makers are scrambling to buy up or expand factory space to fill in for, particularly, Chinese explosive chemical imports.
Saturday’s Operation Midnight Hammer, bombing Iran’s three most significant nuclear sites, proves that all the talk of America’s decline is merely wishful thinking from our adversaries. Just days before the bombing, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, proclaimed that the U.S. is on a path of “inevitable” decline, similar to other fallen empires throughout history. This same narrative — that “the East is rising while the West is declining” — has been propagated by Xi since 2020. Yet, the bombing of Iran demonstrates that America is far from declining.
The United States stands unrivaled in its
As I write this column late on June 24, Israel and Ayatollah Iran have stopped their latest battle of long-range missiles and bombs.
A tentative ceasefire holds, a ceasefire more or less personally imposed by U.S. president Donald Trump.
The predicate for Trump's ability to demand a ceasefire? The U.S. Air Force 509th Bomb Wing's jaw-dropping raid on and likely destruction of Iran's most critical nuclear weapons facilities — located in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
Early in what Trump calls the 12 Day War, Israeli attacks destroyed Iranian air-space defenses, giving Israel air superiority over Iran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the conclusion of Operation Rising Lion against Iran as a watershed moment in Israel’s national security, declaring it a “historic victory,” stating that “we sent Iran’s nuclear program down the drain,” and warning that any effort by Tehran to restore it would be met with “the same determination and strength.”
In a national address delivered Tuesday, Prime Minister Netanyahu stated, “In the 12 days of Operation Rising Lion, we achieved a historic victory. This victory will stand for generations. We removed two immediate existential threats—the threat of destruction by nuclear bombs and the threat of destruction by 20,000 ballistic missiles.”
There were hints last week that something was up between the Trump administration and Harvard. Harvard won in court last Friday and instead of attacking the judge, as Trump tends to do, he posted this positive statement suggesting a deal with Harvard was imminent. If a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be “mindbogglingly” HISTORIC, and very good for our Country. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Did that mean a legal settlement in the two cases Harvard has filed against the Trump administration? Maybe but not necessarily according to the Harvard Crimson.
Little-known Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani upset former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo for the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City on Tuesday night. The governor conceded the race shortly after 10 p.m., though ranked-choice voting totals have yet to be tabulated.
Self-described democratic socialist Mamdani led Cuomo by more than seven percentage points late Tuesday night, with almost 90 percent of the votes counted. Mamdani had 43.5 percent of the vote, with the former governor trailing at 36.3 percent when he conceded.
“Tonight was not our night,” Cuomo said in his remarks. “Tonight was Assemblyman Mamdani’s night.”