Posts on Thursday, June 18, 2026

Georgia State Senate candidate Ruwa Romman has won the Democrat nomination following a runoff race on Tuesday. Romman had advanced to the runoff after a tight primary race where she faced civil rights attorney Rahul Garabadu, in which neither candidate cracked 50%. With 99 percent of the vote counted as of 9:03 am on Wednesday, Romman had received 60.1 percent of the vote in the race for District 7, while Garabadu received 39.9 percent. Romman became the first Muslim woman in the Georgia State House and Palestinian American elected to a state office in 2022 and is now a step closer to the State Senate.

President Donald Trump is going full speed ahead with his disastrous Iran deal, and that’s not good news for Americans, Israelis, Iranians, or anyone else. Fox News reported Wednesday that the Trump administration finally disclosed the details, which include “plans for immediate waivers on Iranian oil exports, a framework for at least $300 billion in reconstruction and economic development, and a 60-day negotiation period aimed at securing a final agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.” Trump himself boosted the deal before the press on the same day, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on his right and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on his left. Trump was in a particularly jovial mood and

Senate Majority Leader John Thune admitted some Senate Republicans hate President Donald Trump too much to support the SAVE America Act, multiple sources familiar with the comments told the Daily Caller. Thune admitted during a closed-door GOP lunch on Wednesday that some Republican senators oppose President Donald Trump so strongly that they will never vote for the SAVE America Act, regardless of the legislation’s merits, according to several sources familiar with the matter. The discussion quickly escalated into a heated exchange between Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee, the bill’s chief Senate sponsor, and several of his GOP colleagues. Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Thune both challenged Lee’s push

When a burning cross was found at a Chicago park last week, the media and Democrats already apparently knew who was responsible. “A large burning cross — a historic symbol of hate and intimidation against Black Americans — was discovered in a Chicago park where former President Barack Obama famously delivered his acceptance speech when he was elected the nation’s first Black president,” The Associated Press (AP) reported on June 10.Given the framing, readers may have been under the impression that police were searching for a white supremacist, a racist, and, given how the left has broadly painted Republicans as both of those things, a Republican.

In October 1806, in the small German university town of Jena, the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel witnessed Napoleon Bonaparte on horseback passing in the street. Napoleon’s French armies had just destroyed the Prussian military, and he was on his way to Berlin as conqueror. Hegel said he saw history on horseback. He called Napoleon “the soul of the world,” by which he meant Napoleon was the unconscious embodiment and the manifestation of the “Spirit” of historical progress — the man Fate had chosen to usher in a new age. For Hegel, Napoleon destroyed the old age of the aristocracy and ushered in the new one of nation states.

The shooting portion of the Iran “War” lasted about 40 days—far shorter than Barack Obama’s 2011 congressionally unauthorized seven-month bombing campaign against Libya. Bill Clinton’s unauthorized 78 days of bombing Serbia in 1999 hit bridges, schools, hospitals, monuments, and power plants—far more indiscriminate targeting than anything in the Iran War so far. No one yet knows the ultimate verdict on the war, given all the economic, military, political, and strategic variables still in play. A memorandum of understanding released this week might end the war, or result in further American strikes—depending on the degree of Iranian concessions and compliance. But in this confusing, ongoing drama, many fabrications and distortions still circulate.

In February 2023, a few months after ChatGPT's public release, the media watchdog NewsGuard announced a new tool for artificial intelligence companies. The company, which rates the credibility of news outlets on a 100-point scale, had been selling its data to advertisers with the goal of steering them away from "unreliable" sources. Now it would license the same data to AI companies in a "machine-readable" format, ideal for training chatbots to avoid "misinformation." NewsGuard—whose cofounder, Steven Brill, suggested in 2020 that the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story was a "hoax"—said its ratings could help models "identify trustworthy news and information sources." It encouraged AI companies to use the data

Former Vice-President Al Gore emerged out of hiding to tout his so-called ‘prescience’ regarding global warming and it quickly backfired. On Wednesday, Gore sat down with ABC ‘News’ to reflect on the 20th anniversary of his environmental propaganda film “An Inconvenient Truth” and the current state of the planet. As TGP readers know, Gore made a series of wild predictions about global warming in the film and in public that have not come to fruition. These included announcing in 2006 that the Arctic sea ice would completely disappear in ten years. It’s now 2026, and plenty of Arctic ice remains.

French President Emmanuel Macron is wrong to laugh off President Donald Trump’s latest threat to slap a 100% tariff on French wine and champagne if Paris doesn’t nix its 3% “digital tax” on top tech companies — and not just because it angers Washington. The French figure it’s a clever way to ding those annoying American tech bros — the French openly call it the “GAFAM tax” because it slams Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. That’s what it was designed to do, by targeting companies with sales of at least $860 million worldwide and $28 million in France — levels no European tech firm comes close to hitting. Which is to say:

President Donald Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., taught Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) a lesson after the latter used fake news to lie about the Memorandum of Understanding, which the United States and Iran signed.Trump responded to a post on X from Benjamin Domenech, an opinion editor for the Daily Wire, in which he shared a quote from Cruz stating that it was “not remotely in America’s interest for us to pay to rebuild” Iran. In response to Cruz’s quote, Trump stated that the U.S. was “not giving” Iran a cent, and added that using fake news to lie about the deal “is the opposite of MAGA.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich praised President Donald Trump’s agreement with Iran, saying that the deal represents a major foreign policy achievement and a realistic alternative to either appeasing Tehran or committing U.S. troops to another large-scale Middle East conflict.In a post published on his website, Gingrich said Trump had assembled a broad international coalition while using economic and military pressure to push Iran away from its previous position. He dismissed criticism of the agreement from both the right and left, arguing that many opponents had attacked the deal before seeing its details.

There is something oddly fitting about a controversy surrounding J. K. Rowling unfolding like a plotline from one of her own books. Not the magic. Not the wands. Not the dragons. The disappearing act. For years, Rowling has occupied a unique place in Western culture. She is simultaneously one of the most successful authors in human history and one of the most controversial public figures in modern publishing. Since speaking out on issues involving sex and gender, Rowling has become a lightning rod in the culture wars, drawing fierce criticism from activists, celebrities, and even some members of the Harry Potter community she helped create.

As I troll the internet looking for gun-related content, I see a lot of stories where there are arrests featuring both guns and drugs. In fact, every sizeable arrest features guns to some degree or another.And today was no different. This time, I've got a story out of Arkansas featuring both.Now, let's keep in mind that federal law prohibits people from lawfully owning guns if they use an illicit substance, and this isn't a case of people with a prescription for pot, which means it's illicit. It prevents felons from owning guns, machine guns are prohibited without certain strict criteria being met, and through it all, these guys had guns.

President Trump settled a $100 million lawsuit against his niece, Mary Trump, whom he accused of engaging “in an insidious plot” with The New York Times to leak confidential information for its Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 investigation into his tax and financial records. Both parties announced the settlement in a joint filing Tuesday, according to court documents.The parties are pleased to report that they have reached a settlement and anticipate being able to stipulate to the dismissal of this action with prejudice in the ensuing weeks, following completion of certain conditions precedent,” the letter reads.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted unanimously on Wednesday to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 3.5% to 3.75%, leaving borrowing costs unchanged for a fourth straight meeting. The decision came on the final day of the June 16-17 meeting and marked the first policy vote under new Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh, who was appointed earlier this year. Officials also released updated economic projections showing a more hawkish outlook, with the median expectation for the federal funds rate at the end of 2026 now higher than previously forecast.

How many times have you heard that data centers are water hogs and are pushing up electricity costs? What if neither is true? Take the scary claims about water. The World Resources Institute says that “recent estimates project that by 2028, AI-related data centers in the U.S. could require up to 32 billion gallons of water annually. This is enough to support roughly 360,000 households’ indoor water use.” (Emphasis in original.) On its own, that sounds like a scary number. But our friends at Unleash Prosperity did something few reporting on this issue have bothered to do:

The Trump administration is promoting a new agreement with Iran as a diplomatic breakthrough. White House talking points emphasize Iranian commitments to forgo nuclear weapons, international verification, regional stability and economic incentives tied to compliance. Yet many of the details that have emerged so far raise more questions than answers.Administration officials point to Iran's reported commitment, in writing, not to pursue nuclear weapons. But Iran has already made that commitment before. The country has been a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty since 1970. The challenge has never been the language on paper; it has been enforcement.

If you didn't have "Hillary Clinton agrees with anything President Trump has ever done" on your Bingo card for today, then you've got a lot of company. And yet, that sure seems to be what has happened. Mrs. Clinton has offered some words of praise for President Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza, calling it "the only game in town.""Unexpected" is the biggest understatement since Napoleon Bonaparte described his loss at Waterloo as a "bit of a setback." But reality is a harsh mistress, and while there's probably room for criticism in President Trump's 20-point plan, it's still the best option; not the best plan imaginable, but the best plan possible.