The bill, as amended by the Senate, passed in the House on Thursday with a vote of 218 to 214.
President Donald Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful” bill into law on Independence Day, marking a large legislative victory for his first year back in office.
The signing ceremony was held at the White House, where the president called the bill “the greatest victory yet” and the “single most popular bill ever signed.” He commended lawmakers who got the bill done, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who gifted Trump the gavel used to enact the Big Beautiful Bill.
Tucker Carlson, who seems fully dedicated to the anti-Israel movement now, provided yet another platform for the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism (Iran) to lie to the world. One of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s denials is disprovable with a simple internet search — yes, Iran has repeatedly called for Donald Trump’s assassination.
Carlson rarely seems to do any research that would enable him to call out his interviewees’ lies, allowing multiple guests in recent months to make preposterous claims that the barest journalistic prep would have warned him are false claims. In this case, he was so focused on trying to claim Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is lying to trick Americans into fighting a regime that has been at war with us for four decades that he let Pezeshkian make a mendacious semi-denial. Ignore the fact that Iran’s grand ayatollah just issued a fatwa saying Trump must receive the punishment of death.
Netanyahu said in June about Iran, “They want to kill [Trump]. He’s enemy number one.” And if Tucker weren’t an antisemite more interested in irritating other conservatives than in fact-checking foreign dictators’ claims, he’d know that Iran’s desire to see Trump dead isn’t a big secret — Iran has been posting online about it for years.
“Has Iran ever backed an assassination attempt against Donald Trump?” Carlson asked. Predictably, Pezeshhkian lied without an outright denial, while cleverly manipulating Carlson by using one of Tucker’s favorite phrases: “This is actually what Netanyahu is trying to insinuate and to make your people or the president of your country to believe. But this is wrong because Netanyahu, who has his own agenda, wants to drag the U.S. into forever wars as I said and to bring insecurity and instability and onwards to the whole region.” Pezeshkian also denied Iranian sleeper cells in America, about which the Department of Homeland Security is raising alarms.
US President Donald Trump on Friday signed into law a major spending and tax bill, which includes key parts of his second-term agenda. The legislation, dubbed the “big, beautiful bill” by Trump, was passed by the US House of Representatives on Thursday just before the July 4 deadline.The House passed the bill on Thursday with a narrow 218-214 vote, following its approval in the Senate on Tuesday, where it passed by a 51-50 margin. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.“Our Country is going to explode with Massive Growth, even more than it already has since I was Re-Elected,” Trump posted on Truth Social shortly after Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote to send the bill back to the House.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday made his first public appearance since the 12-day war between Israel and Iran began, attending a mourning ceremony on the eve of Ashoura.
Khamenei’s absence during the war suggested the Iranian leader, who has final say on all state matters, had been in seclusion in a bunker — something not acknowledged by state media. State TV in Iran showed him waving and nodding to the chanting crowd, which rose to its feet as he entered and sat at a mosque next to his office and residence in the capital, Tehran.
There was no immediate report on any public statement made. Iranian officials such as the parliament speaker were present. Such events are always held under heavy security.
After the United States inserted itself into the war by bombing three key nuclear sites in Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump sent warnings via social media to the 86-year-old Khamenei that the U.S. knew where he was but had no plans to kill him, “at least for now.”
On June 26, shortly after a ceasefire began, Khamenei made his first public statement in days, saying in a prerecorded statement that Tehran had delivered a “slap to America’s face” by striking a U.S. air base in Qatar, and warning against further attacks by the U.S. or Israel on Iran.
Trump replied, in remarks to reporters and on social media: “Look, you’re a man of great faith. A man who’s highly respected in his country. You have to tell the truth. You got beat to hell.”
Camp Mystic, a Christian girls’ camp perched on the banks of the Guadalupe River in Texas, was a place of laughter, prayer and adventure just days ago.
But just before daybreak on Friday, the Fourth of July public holiday, the river rose 26ft (8m) in about 45 minutes amid a torrential downpour.
Many of the girls were sleeping in low-lying cabins less than 500ft (150m) from the riverbank.
Many of those bunk beds are now mud-caked and toppled, the detritus of a summer camp cut tragically short.
Destroyed personal belongings are scattered across soaked interiors where children once gathered for Bible study and campfire songs.
So far 78 fatalities have been confirmed from the floods in central Texas. At least 68, including 28 children, were in Kerr County, where Camp Mystic was located.
Among the dead is the camp’s longtime director, Richard “Dick” Eastland, and several young campers. Ten girls and a counsellor from the camp are still missing.
The BRICS bloc of developing nations at their summit in Brazil on Sunday condemned the increase of tariffs and attacks on Iran, but refrained from naming US President Donald Trump.
The group’s declaration, which also took aim at Israeli military actions in the Middle East, spared its founding member Russia from criticism and mentioned war-torn Ukraine only once.
The bloc issued a declaration in which they raised “serious concerns” about the rise of tariffs which it said were “inconsistent with WTO (World Trade Organisation) rules.” In an indirect swipe at the US, they said those restrictions ”threaten to reduce global trade, disrupt global supply chains and introduce uncertainty.”
Lula also criticised NATO’s decision to hike defence spending up to 5% of member states’ GDP. He said it was “always easier to invest in war than peace.”
The declaration also criticised the attacks on Iran without mentioning the US or Israel, the two nations who conducted them.
BRICS leaders expressed “grave concern” for the humanitarian situation in Gaza, called for the release of all hostages, a return to the negotiating table and reaffirmed their commitment to the two-state solution.
The group’s 31-page declaration mentions Ukraine just once, while condemning “in the strongest terms” recent Ukrainian attacks on Russia.
The Irish government is reportedly set to reject demands from the European Union to implement hate speech legislation after Dublin abandoned plans to do so last year.
In September of last year, the Irish government scrapped plans to criminalise so-called hate speech in its Criminal Justice Bill, which would have allowed the state to send someone to prison for up to five years for “incitement to hatred against persons on account of their protected characteristics”.
The move to abandon the controversial section of the bill came as Justice Minister Helen McEntee admitted that it did “not have a consensus” among the Irish population.
In response, the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, warned that Dublin may face legal action from Brussels for failing to meet the bloc’s stringent speech standards.
The commission said in May that Ireland “still fails to transpose the provisions related to criminalising the public incitement to violence or hatred against a group or a member of such group based on certain characteristics, as well as the conducts of condoning, denial and gross trivialisation of international crimes and the Holocaust”.
… On the one side, you had the Normans, led by their Duke, William. Normans — aka Northmen — were partially Franco-fied Vikings, invited to settle in France in 911 at the behest of the West Frankish king, Charles the Simple.
On the other side, you had the English — descended from Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from northern Germany — led by the just-crowned King Harold Godwinson.
OK, so now you can give your flip answer. Here’s mine: those armies were whiter than an all-albino Osmonds tribute band.
But not to the BBC, whose new miniseries — “King and Conqueror” — features “a diverse group of actors” telling the story of Harold and William’s fight for the English throne.
“Adding diversity to a high medieval period setting follows the BBC’s ‘colour-blind’ casting of non-white stars as Tudor courtiers in another upcoming historical drama,” according to The Telegraph.
That isn’t color-blind casting — it’s historical revisionism, full stop. They’re remaking history to suit a particular agenda. It’s the same agenda introduced by Tony Blair’s New Labour government a quarter century ago to remake the British electorate.
Today’s report also goes right back to a conversation with my wife last week.
