Trump administration seizes on New Jersey voting error to demand noncitizen data – The Straits Times
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02b U.S. Politics – Progressive
Why conservatives cling to conspiracies long after they’re debunked– www.dailykos.com
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After director Christopher Nolan’s new film “The Odyssey” saw great success at the box office last weekend, it became clear that the campaign against the film’s diverse cast, led by racist multibillionaire Elon Musk, failed.
You’d think that the right would move on from this battle, choosing instead to tilt at another windmill. But a strange post from a right-wing influencer called “Mr. Obvious” shows that conservatives are going down a different path.
Instead of accepting defeat, Mr. Obvious claimed that the success of “The Odyssey” was a mirage, alleging that producers were “FAKING ticket sales” and buying up seats “to make the movie look like a success.”
None of this is really happening, but the lurid fantasy is a microcosm of a conservative phenomenon that has existed for a long time.
The right thrives on conspiracy culture. Since the era of the John Birch Society during the Cold War, conspiracies have been a core feature of the conservative movement. There’s a clear timeline from worrying about fluoridated water being a communist plot all the way up to President Donald Trump’s insistence of a Democratic scheme to attack Christmas.
Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline, will serve out his Senate term– www.politico.com
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Darline Graham Nordone, Lindsey Graham’s younger sister and close confidant, will serve the remainder of the late senator’s term in Washington.
“It’s my honor to ask his little sister Darline Graham to finish his work for him now,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said Monday, formally appointing Nordone after recounting stories of Graham’s legacy.
President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune both publicly expressed support for McMaster choosing Nordone as a tribute to Graham.
Her appointment as an interim caretaker triggers a wide-open race ahead of the Aug. 11 primary. Several Republicans are already weighing bids to take over Graham’s place as the GOP Senate nominee.
“It is such a privilege to get to finish some of his important work, and I promise to work hard over the next several months to support the president and carry forward the efforts of my brother on behalf of the citizens of South Carolina and the United States,” Nordone said at the press conference alongside McMaster. She added that the decision is one that “Lindsey would have wanted.”
Graham helped raise Nordone after their parents passed away early in her childhood. The siblings had shared a close relationship since, and she appeared alongside the late senator on the campaign trail on several occasions — including at his presidential campaign launch in the summer of 2015.
Nordone’s appointment came together quickly over the last 36 hours, according to McMaster’s top political adviser and former chief of staff Trey Walker.
McMaster was notified of Graham’s death around 11 p.m. Saturday, hours before the late senator’s office publicly shared the news, Walker told POLITICO.
The first thing the governor did on Sunday morning was call Nordone to express his condolences. Then, as the day progressed and he fielded calls about next steps, he rang her again around 10 a.m. with a question: Would she like to serve out the remainder of her brother’s term in Washington?
Nordone and McMaster know each other well. Nordone helms the state’s Commission for the Blind, is “very familiar at the state house” and interfaces “a lot” with the governor’s office, Walker said.
With Nordone’s buy-in, the next call the governor placed was to the White House.
“How fitting a tribute to Lindsey would it be … to appoint Darline, his sister, to finish Lindsey’s work this time and to put that beautiful bookend on the story of his service?” Walker said, describing how McMaster laid out his thinking to Trump. The president, whose blessing is key in deeply conservative South Carolina, was “very receptive” to the idea, Walker noted.
Trump then made that approval clear on Truth Social on Monday morning when he said her appointment would be a “fabulous tribute” to the late senator.
The White House and McMaster’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
South Carolina Republicans expect Nordone to only serve as a caretaker to finish Graham’s term, though Nordone hasn’t signaled herself whether she will or will not mount her own bid to serve a full six-year term in Washington.
The jockeying for the Aug. 11 primary has already begun in the deep-red state where an open Senate seat is a rare opportunity for up-and-coming politicians to come across.
Republicans both in South Carolina and Washington point to Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.) as a possible top contender, as someone who has deep ties to Columbia and to Trump’s White House. Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, who unsuccessfully ran for governor earlier this year, is also seen as a top contender because of her high name recognition and her ability to reengage her statewide campaign infrastructure.
Others, like Mace and Norman have more clearly signaled their intent to mount their own bids for Graham’s seat, but no candidates have officially announced a formalized run.
Trump, who could have an outsized role in boosting Graham’s elected successor, has yet to make any public statements about his preferences for a candidate to fill the full term.
Several terrorist U.S. troops killed during IRGC strike in Jordan’s Rukban area – Pars Today
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Senators explore separate stopgap spending bill as House moves ahead– www.politico.com
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Senate Republicans are looking at going their own way on government funding, as House Republicans try to move a stopgap spending bill this week to fund the government until after the midterm elections.
GOP lawmakers in the Senate have had conversations with Democrats on moving a stopgap spending bill while also talking with the White House about anomalies, according to a person granted anonymity to disclose private discussions.
Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, said she has had conversations with Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) about a Senate version of a stopgap spending bill along with potential “anomalies,” which are specific exceptions or exemptions to the flat funding of a continuing resolution usually noted to prevent disruptions to key services.
Murray wants to see if the House can get their legislation across the floor.
“Let’s see what happens in the House,” she said in an interview Monday.
Murray warned that chamber’s measure likely won’t have her support if it makes it through the House and over to the Senate.
“I understand there’s some real flaws with it. I am happy to look at a bipartisan CR, but I understand there’s some real problems on the House side,” she said.
Pentagon concealing true casualty numbers in Iran war – NYT — RT World News– www.rt.com
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Dozens of soldiers were injured in previously unreported strikes last week, the New York Times says
The Pentagon has withheld information about dozens of service members injured during the war with Iran, The New York Times reported on Monday, citing US officials.
On Friday, Iran struck a US military site in Jordan, killing two soldiers, wounding four, and leaving one missing. According to the Times, however, dozens of service members were injured throughout the week in three other strikes against US forces in the country. Several helicopters were also reportedly damaged in the attacks.
An official told CNN that “it can take several days or even weeks” for an injury to be logged into the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS), an official database. A total of 427 service members have been injured in the war with Iran, the Times said, citing official figures.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell argued that “providing real-time information on non-fatal casualties to the media is the same as providing that information directly to our adversaries.”
U.S. strikes unlikely to move Iran, intelligence reports say – The Washington Post
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CBS Airs Most of Trump Speech Despite Backlash Over Election Integrity Coverage– www.newsbusters.org
CBS Airs Most of Trump Speech Despite Backlash Over Election Integrity Coverage– www.newsbusters.org
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EXCERPT:
When CBS made waves Thursday as the only broadcast network to not only carry (most of) President Trump’s address on election integrity, it was only a matter of time Status founder and deranged partisan Oliver Darcy would take to his newsletter site and cry about it. So, that missive came down on Monday as he whined it went against what they had told Democrats hours earlier and further “inject[ed] politics into the way people evaluate the network[.]”
Darcy was dripping with hate, right from the subhead: “The Bari Weiss-led network privately indicated it would snub Donald Trump’s primetime address last week, Status has learned, only to reverse course at the last minute and air the speech.”
Darcy began by pointing out Tony Dokoupil ended Thursday’s CBS Evening News by encouraging those wanting to hear the speech to check out their streaming platform, CBS News 24/7. Ostensibly, that would mean CBS itself wouldn’t be carrying it.
Many Christian voters in the US see Trump as ‘chosen’ by God to lead | Donald Trump News– www.aljazeera.com
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Many white evangelical Christians view Donald Trump as chosen by God to lead despite not seeing him as personally devout. A recent study suggests 60 percent of them believe Trump has pushed the US closer to Christian principles, blurring the line between church and state.
For the full segment, watch Al Jazeera’s ‘This is America’.
China Defends Widely Criticized ‘Ethnic Unity’ Law – The New York Times
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Washington — President Trump has been trying to force Iran to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz for months, turning to everything from airstrikes and naval blockades to negotiations and threats to destroy a “whole civilization.”
But restoring oil tanker traffic in the vital Middle East shipping corridor to prewar flows likely will require a much bigger armada of U.S. warships if not tens of thousands of American troops on Iranian soil, experts say. Despite on-and-off fighting, Iran can still target vessels in the slim Persian Gulf waterway with drones and missiles that have been hidden in a country a third the size of the continental United States.
“Iran has been preparing for this type of asymmetric conflict for decades now,” said Jason H. Campbell, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and a former Pentagon official. “I think they’re starting to demonstrate why no other U.S. president since Reagan has elected to engage at this level of conflict with Iran, because they have that ability to completely disrupt the Strait of Hormuz.”
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The Palmetto State will let primary voters nominate Graham’s successor. Maine, on the other hand, is letting a party convention pick Graham Platner’s replacement.
(Michelle Liu / AP)
The sudden death of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a onetime Republican “maverick” who abandoned most of his pretenses toward independent political thinking in the service of Donald Trump’s presidency, has upended the politics of the state and nation that he served for 32 years in state and federal office.
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The white supremacist group Patriot Front brazenly marched in Washington, D.C., on Independence Day. Their faces covered in white ski masks and their eyes obscured by sunglasses, the identically dressed group of men celebrated our country’s 250th anniversary by waving the pro-slavery Confederate flag, chanting about wanting to “reclaim America,” and carrying signs and banners promoting their pro-white racist ideology.
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On Monday, MS NOW celebrated their 30th anniversary with a new ad that played at the end of Morning Joe. The 15-second advertisement celebrated the network’s so-called “journalism” that supposedly “strengthens our democracy.”
Notably, amid changes to the network programming, the promotion heavily featured the nighttime duo of Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow, two hosts who have showcased some unhinged moments in the age of Trump and whose programming was anything but impartial.
Broken up with short soundbites from O’Donnell and Maddow, the advertisement’s narrator read:
Celebrating 30 years… Delivering journalism that informs, empowers, and strengthens our democracy.
MS NOW has a new ad celebrating its 30th anniversary:
“Celebrating 30 years … Delivering journalism that informs, empowers, and strengthens our democracy.” pic.twitter.com/V3m8ptDFor— Nick (@nspin310) July 13, 2026
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TEHRAN — The elaborate funeral rites for Iran’s slain supreme leader that drew huge crowds of mourners offered a show of strength by the country’s surviving leadership as key senior officials boldly emerged into public view for the first time since the war. And in its posture toward the United States, Tehran also now seems emboldened.
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When Lorenzo Salgado Araujo arrived at a Houston hospital after being shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Tuesday, he was admitted as a John Doe.
The federal agents may not have known his name when they set out to the predominantly Latino East End neighborhood to apprehend immigrants that day, but they were extremely aware of who Salgado was as they stripped him of any form of identification and his belongings after shooting him. That move kept his family from claiming his body, according to news reports.
“That is Soviet gestapo tactics when you want to hide a crime or victim,” Juan Proaño, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said in a conversation with Daily Kos. The organization is supporting the Salgado family in their quest for answers.
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President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in flight on Air Force One on July 8, 2026.Alex Brandon/AP
Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.
The New York Times said that at least four of its journalists received subpoenas on Friday from the Justice Department following their report on concerns over insufficient security on the new, Qatari-donated Air Force One.
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A Somali flag ceremony in Columbus, Ohio, has sparked a widespread backlash as citizens questioned why city officials were honoring a foreign nation just days before America’s Independence Day.
The event was held for Somali Independence Day, which is celebrated on July 1.
The holiday marks the 1960 formation of the Republic of Somalia after liberation from colonial rule.
Columbus has one of the largest Somali populations in the United States.
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California Democrats are advancing a new bill that would establish two Muslim holy days as state holidays while authorizing the state to develop a new model curriculum for students to “acknowledge and celebrate” these Islamic observances in the classroom.
Funny how the Democrats are militant about separation of church and state but mosque and state? Not so much.
The Islamization of California is happening!
The bill, AB 2017, passed the State Assembly with a 64-1 vote
Democrats need to go in November! https://t.co/paVcp7sN4U
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More than 500 people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a result of the ongoing Ebola outbreak, as experts say cuts to international aid have hampered the country from containing the virus.
There have been 1,561 recorded cases of Ebola, including 506 deaths, since the disease’s outbreak was declared on May 15, according to DRC’s Ministry of Health. The World Health Organization deemed the first month of the Ebola outbreak the worst on record, and slowing the virus’s spread has been complicated by the lack of treatments for Bundibugyo, the strain behind the most recent Ebola outbreak.
The International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian aid organization, previously said severe cuts to global aid weakened frontline healthcare and preparedness systems, leaving the Congo with a more fragile health system now than during the 2018-2020 outbreak that killed more than 2,000 individuals.
“The warning signs are flashing red,” Bob Kitchen, vice president of emergencies at IRC, said in a statement. “Increased conflict and cuts to global aid funding have dismantled defenses at exactly the wrong moment. The lesson from every previous outbreak is clear: delays cost lives. The risks are growing and the resources are shrinking; that is the brutal arithmetic facing global aid today.”
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The recent wave of primary victories by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates has the media celebrating a web of grassroots populism and a supposed “working-class uprising.” But look past the revolutionary rhetoric, and you’ll find a much more sinister reality: Modern American socialism isn’t being driven by the proletariat; it is being bankrolled by a cabal of deep-pocketed, ultra-wealthy leftists.
Historically, socialism has never been about uplifting the poor; it is an insider game designed to consolidate state control while shielding the wealth of the ruling class and ransacking the middle class along the way. To pave the way for this scam, these trust-fund radicals must first destroy the independent American family.
To do that, they have weaponized a nasty little phrase in our modern, grievance-obsessed culture. Whenever a person achieves success, buys a home, or launches a business, the bitter arbiters of online misery waste no time throwing an insult disguised as an observation: “You’re just doing well because your parents had money to help you.”
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Jason Stanley, left-wing professor and author of How Fascism Works, fled to Canada to escape President Trump, yet somehow feels compelled to appear on TV to bash his abandoned home. He made another appearance on PBS on Amanpour & Co just in time to mark America’s 250th anniversary, in order to declare his previous home is a Nazi state under Trump and Republican control.
Stanley is a frequent guest on the (formerly) tax-funded circuit of PBS and National Public Radio, and he brought his tired “fascist” gimmick to the program.
Host Christiane Amanpour: Now, controversy continues to swell around President Trump’s immigration agenda as he pushes through a series of sweeping changes from recent Supreme Court rulings terminating protected status for Haitians and Syrians to fast-tracking refugee status for white South Africans. Outrage has spread across the country….
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Ocasio-Cortez’s backing of el Sayed comes after a swing of several midterm primaries showed momentum growing against the Democratic establishment, with voters in states such as New York and Colorado picking either socialist or anti-establishment challengers over mainstream Democrats. The move also bucks the primary goals of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), whose preferred candidate in the Michigan Senate race is the more centrist Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI).
“Despite our ideological differences and whatever disagreements there are in the party, every single one of us sees this moment as existential,” Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Times, who first reported the endorsement. “And I think many people are willing to put aside differences in order to give us the best chance at winning. And I think that Abdul gives us that right now.”
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Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
We’re watching a modern-day French Revolutionary-like takeover of the Democratic Party. We could call it the Reign of Terror or the Democratic guillotine.
What I mean by that, in 1793 and ’94, when the French Revolution was well on its way to fruition, a group of radicals called Jacobins, led by the Robespierre brothers, hijacked that revolution and decided that they were going to go far, far to the left of the effort to abolish the monarchy and rename the days of the week, the months, start with a year zero concept, go out and attack private property, and execute people.
Now, I don’t think the democratic socialists are going to do that, but their takeover is similar to the Jacobin takeover. And what is their agenda? Their agenda is a radical Green New Deal, war on fossil fuels, open borders, no deportations, no deportations even for criminally convicted.
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I started my career as a high school history teacher back in 1985. I taught my students about the Holocaust every year and was fortunate enough one summer to be selected for a special National Endowment for the Humanities seminar for teachers, led by Professor Lawrence Langer, a leading Holocaust scholar. Professor Langer came up with the term the “choiceless choice” to describe the no-win situations Jews were put in during the Holocaust, when there was simply no real choice to be made in the face of the genocidal Nazis. The idea has stuck with me for four decades.
It came to mind again when I read a recent Washington Post article following the Supreme Court’s adverse ruling in our case, BPJ v. West Virginia, on June 30, in which Julian Mark writes, “Critics, including some trans rights advocates, say the movement has rushed to tee up causes that the court’s 6-3 conservative majority is not ready to embrace.” While elements of the article were thoughtful, it is based on a flawed premise that warrants exploration.
First of all, the idea that “the [LGBTQ+] movement has rushed to tee up [trans] causes” is completely off the mark. There have been 2,446 bills designed to limit the rights of LGBTQ+ people introduced into state legislatures since 2022 — at least one in every single one of our 50 states — and 255 of them have become law in 27 states. The large majority of these laws are aimed at trans people. The LGBTQ+ movement didn’t “tee up” these laws: the opponents of the LGBTQ+ movement did, because they saw a political advantage to be won by picking on a small and relatively powerless minority and cynically exploited it. In other words, we didn’t pick this fight. We didn’t “tee up” trans issues. Our opponents did.
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Former lawyer Melat Kiros, 29, has criticised the Democrats for their support of Israel during its genocidal war on Gaza.
Published On 1 Jul 20261 Jul 2026
Democratic socialist Melat Kiros has defeated 15-term United States Representative Diana DeGette in the Democratic primary in a Denver-area district in Colorado, according to US media projections, the latest victory of a leftist over an establishment Democrat.
The race on Tuesday was called by multiple media outlets after 78 percent of the votes were counted and Kiros had a nearly 7,000-vote lead over DeGette.