INDIA-PAKISTAN CONFLICT GOES FROM HOT TO WHITE HOT AFTER MISSILE STRIKE – India launched a missile strike into rival nation Pakistan, killing 31 people and injuring 57 others, Pakistan claims. The conflict is over the contested region of Kashmir that both countries claim as being rightfully theirs. Pakistan has called the attacks an “act of war” and has instructed its military to prepare to act in kind. Both nations have nuclear weapons, so the stakes for this potential conflict are near-catastrophic. Read the full blurb report
FEATURES
AFTER “FAR RIGHT” WIN SUPPRESSED BY EU, ROMANIA DELIVERS AN EVEN BIGGER “FAR RIGHT” VICTORY – The current flag bearer of the de facto “Romania First” party, George Simeon, has finished first in the first round of Romania’s Presidential elections. He won the first round with 41% of the vote to second place Nicusor Dan. He finished with 21% of the total vote. Simeon appears set to win by an even bigger margin of victory than his party leader predecessor, Calin Georgescu, did in December of 2024. That election was cancelled by the EU, and Georgescu banned from running for public office. Read the full blurb report
MERZ FINALLY PREVAILS IN SECOND GERMAN PARLIAMENT VOTE – After having failed an historic first vote to officially win Germany’s Chancellorship, Conservative leader Friedrich Merz finally secured the majority vote needed in the second round of voting.
In the first round of voting, Merz’ coalition of 328 failed to deliver the necessary 316 majority vote needed. He received only 310 votes. The historic first vote failure is seen as a sign that Merz will be beginning his chancellorship with a shaky coalition. Read the full blurb report
HEADLINES
HOUTHIS CRY NO MAS TO U.S., BUT NOT TO ISRAEL –It appears the Houthis are done with Trump, or so they think. They’re hoping for a ceasefire that allows them to continue to fight Israel, even if it means no longer attacking ships going through the Red Sea.
A ceasefire deal between Yemen’s Houthis and the United Staes does not include sparing Israel, the group said on Wednesday (May 7), suggesting its shipping attacks that have disrupted global trade and challenged world powers will not come to a complete halt.
President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the US would stop bombing the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen, saying that the group had agreed to stop attacking US ships…
CHINA, U.S., HEADED TO TRADE TALKS IN THE ALPS – Switzerland will be the home of high-level trade talks between the U.S. and China. These talks will most likely be the opening salvos in a series of talks that will eventually end with a trade deal of substance, or so it is “hoped.”
Senior US and Chinese officials will travel to Switzerland later this week to kickstart stalled trade talks following President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff rollout, according to statements from both countries.
The talks mark the first official public engagement between the world’s two largest economies to resolve a trade war escalated by Trump shortly after his return to office in January.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer will attend the talks in Europe for the United States, their offices said.
Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that Russia is “asking for too much” to end its war with Ukraine, underscoring new frustrations in the Trump White House over its efforts to court Moscow on peace talks…
MALI JUNTA MAKES IT OFFICIAL, DEMOCRACY IS DEAD – Until further notice, in the interest of public order, all political activity will cease, for the good of the whole, the Mali Junta declares.
Mali’s junta on Wednesday suspended political parties’ activities “until further notice for reasons of public order”, as the opposition protests against the military government’s ramped-up crackdown on dissent.
Judicial Watch sues IRS for records on possible targeting of J6 protesters – justthenews.com Source Link Excerpt:
Judicial Watch said Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the IRS over possible targeting of Jan. 6th protesters.
The watchdog group group filed the Freedom of Information Act suit on April 25 to obtain records regarding potentially improper targeting of Jan. 6th Capitol rioters, their supporters, and related nonprofits…
Russia says it will help Taliban fight Islamic State in Afghanistan – Reuters Source Link Excerpt:
Russia will help the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan fight against the Afghan branch of Islamic State, Moscow’s special representative for the country was quoted as saying on Friday…
US appeals court blocks Trump’s attempt to revoke legal status of parolees living in US – Jurist.org Source Link Excerpt:
The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans living in the US. The ruling follows a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of individual beneficiaries, sponsors of humanitarian parole processes, and affected parolees…
Voter ID and vote-by-mail reform bills move to Pa. House – Pennsylvania Capital-Star Source Link Excerpt:
Pennsylvania lawmakers will consider a package of election reforms including a voter ID requirement and changes to the commonwealth’s vote-by-mail law after a House committee passed the long-debated measures…
New York State Senate committee approves anti-trans sports bill – Gay City News Source Link Excerpt:
The New York State Senate’s Education Committee approved an anti-trans sports bill on May 6 that would stop the state education commissioner from implementing trans-inclusive sports policies, drawing immediate criticism from LGBTQ advocates…
House Democrats are launching a longshot procedural move to prevent safety net cuts– www.politico.com Source Link Excerpt:
House Democratic leaders said Tuesday they would launch a longshot effort to force a vote on a bill preventing cuts to key federal safety-net programs…
Trump puts the U.N. on notice: Don’t expect the gravy train to keep rolling – Washington Times Source Link Excerpt:
The United Nations is not exactly known for its thrifty ways. Despite facing periodic pressure to reduce its budget, the world body spends trillions of dollars annually, and much of that funding comes from the United States. Thanks to President Trump, that’s about to change…
WASHINGTON: The US trade deficit widened to a record high in March as businesses boosted imports of goods ahead of tariffs, which dragged gross domestic product into negative terrain in the first quarter for the first time in three years.
The trade gap jumped 14 per cent to a record US$140.5 billion from a revised US$123.2 billion in February, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) said on Tuesday (May 6).
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the trade deficit rising to US$137.0 billion from the previously reported US$122.7 billion in February.
President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, including raising duties on Chinese imports to a staggering 145 per cent, fueled a rush by businesses to bring in merchandise to avoid higher costs.
A right-wing Israeli minister says victory for Israel won’t come until Gaza is “entirely destroyed” and Palestinians are forced out into other countries.
Israeli Finance Minister Bazalel Smotrich made the statement during a Tuesday appearance at a conference on Jewish settlements in the West Bank. While Smotrich is a senior Israeli official, his statement does not represent the official policy of the Israeli government.
“Within a year we will be able to declare victory in Gaza,” he told attendees. “Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to… the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries,” Smotrich said, according to the Agence France-Presse.
“Israel does not intend to withdraw from territories the IDF captures, not even as part of a deal to release hostages,” he added.
This admonition came to my mind this week as I was reminded of the devastation caused by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s decision to pull the plug on a decades-old program funding pregnancy care centers in the Keystone State.
Shapiro canceled the contract of Real Alternatives, an award-winning organization which admirably served pregnant women and their children throughout the Commonwealth.
For one pregnancy center that I am aware of, that meant a loss of $100,000.
Can you imagine how many women can be served with that amount of money? It is a significant loss, not only of treasure, but of service to the community.
The House unanimously passed a bill on May 5 aimed at ending Beijing’s persecution of the spiritual group Falun Gong.
The bill, the Falun Gong Protection Act (H.R.1540), passed with broad bipartisan support and includes provisions to sanction individuals implicated in the forced harvesting of organs of Falun Gong practitioners.
The sanctions would draw from a list of foreign nationals that the president would supply to the relevant congressional committee within 180 days of the bill’s enactment into the law. The prescribed penalties include a civil fine of $250,000 along with criminal punishment of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison.
The sanctions would block an offender from entering the United States, invalidate their visa, and stop any immigration benefits the individual might otherwise enjoy.
(Conservative Treehouse) — The Washington Post (but of course, CIA outlet) is reporting on a downsizing effort within the CIA to eliminate approximately 1,200 jobs. The number represents approximately 5 percent of the workforce, although the actual number of CIA employees is classified (national security, dontchaknow).
Within the report, Director John Ratcliffe is noted as shifting the focus of America’s leading spy agency to use more “human intelligence.” That phrase, “human intelligence,” is IC silo code speak for shifting away from “analysts” (political operatives) and engaging in more factual intelligence information.
According to the report, DNI Tulsi Gabbard has also reduced the employment level within the Director of National Intelligence office by approximately 25 percent (current payroll estimate of 2,000 employees). The general narrative within the WaPo reporting is that “national security” is being compromised by large downsizing of spy agency employment.
All U.S. federal funding destined for “dangerous” gain-of-function biological research in China, Iran and a host other countries was banned Monday via an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
The move came as part of Trump’s call for improvements in the safety and security of biological research in the U.S. and globally.
The president has long championed the theory SARS-CoV-2 – more commonly known as coronavirus – leaked from the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology in China as a combined result of gain-of-function research and poor security measures sparked a lab leak.
HEGSETH: ‘LESS GENERALS, MORE GIs’: When it comes to the number of generals and admirals in the U.S. military, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has determined there are too many stars in the firmament.
On Monday, Hegseth issued a memorandum titled General/Flag Officer Reductions to senior Pentagon leadership, ordering the removal of “redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership by reducing excess general and flag officer positions.”
“That’s the official title. My title is ‘Less Generals, More GI’s,’” Hegseth said in a companion video posted on X. “We’re going to shift resources from bloated headquarters elements to our war fighters.” Hegseth called the plan “historic” and the “most comprehensive review since the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986,” which he said was “a generational change in combat command structures.”
“Let’s take a bit of a trip down memory lane in history,” Hegseth said in the video. “When we were fighting across the globe during World War II, we had a force that was 12-million-strong. For that 12-million-man element, we had 17 four-and-five-star generals. Today, we have 2.1 million service members and 44 four-star and flag officers. So, it used to be a ratio of one general to 6,000 troops. Today, it’s one general to 1,400.”
The U.S. Department of Education informed Harvard University on Monday that it was freezing billions of dollars in future research grants and other aid until the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college concedes to a number of demands from the Trump administration, a senior department official said.
The move represents the latest salvo from a Trump administration willing to use the power of the federal purse to force institutions, from law firms to universities, to make sweeping policy changes or else lose billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts.
In a letter to Harvard, U.S. Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon said the university must address concerns about antisemitism on campus, school policies that consider a student’s race and complaints from the administration the university has abandoned its pursuit of “academic excellence” while employing relatively few conservative faculty members.
“This letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek grants from the federal government, since none will be provided,” McMahon wrote.
Harvard University will receive no new federal grants until it meets a series of demands from President Donald Trump’s administration, the Education Department announced Monday.
The action was laid out in a letter to Harvard’s president and amounts to a major escalation of Trump’s battle with the Ivy League school. The administration previously froze $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard, and Trump is pushing to strip the school of its tax-exempt status.
In a press call, an Education Department official said Harvard will receive no new federal grants until it “demonstrates responsible management of the university” and satisfies federal demands on a range of subjects. It applies to federal research grants and not federal financial aid students receive to help cover tuition and fees.
Republicans tried to push Democrats to increase penalties for soliciting 16- and 17-year-olds for sex or prostitution. That crime is a misdemeanor punishable by between two days to a year in jail. Solicitation involves asking for or arranging sex in exchange for money or something valuable; a host of other sex crimes involving minors of any age are felonies, including paying for and having sex with a minor. This time, Republicans had the backing of freshman Democratic Assemblymember Maggy Krell, of Sacramento, who authored Assembly Bill 379. Krell objected on Tuesday when her colleagues removed the provision on soliciting older minors, saying fellow Democrats had forced her to agree to it on the threat the Public Safety committee would refuse to hold a hearing otherwise (Cal Matters).
A Japanese official issued a veiled threat amid trade talks with the Trump administration, then said the threat was merely a hypothetical conversation.
As with most foreign countries that do business with the United States, Japan has been in talks with Trump administration officials after President Donald Trump announced tariffs on imports. Some have called the tariffs a disaster for Japan.
On Friday, Japan’s finance minister said that Japan’s status as the largest holder of Treasury securities could be a tool in the talks, in what the Financial Times called a “rare baring of teeth by America’s closest ally in Asia.”
Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato was asked whether Japan would continue to hold its position of not selling its Treasury notes. The U.S. Treasury issues notes to cover the cost of borrowing to keep the country operating.
In a historic first, conservative leader Friedrich Merz ’s bid to become Germany’s 10th chancellor since World War II failed by six votes in parliament on Tuesday, a stunning defeat as he had been widely expected to win smoothly.
A candidate for chancellor has never failed to win on the first ballot since the end of the war. The loss triggered a stock market slide: the DAX, the index of major German companies, was down 1.8 per cent following the vote.
Merz needed a majority of 316 out of 630 votes. He only received 310 votes — well short of the 328 seats held by his coalition, which is also one of the slimmest postwar majorities. Because the vote was held by secret ballot, it was not immediately clear — and might never be known — who had defected from Merz’s camp.
Merz’s coalition is led by his center-right Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. They are joined by the center-left Social Democrats, outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party. The parties were now to regroup to discuss the next step but it was also unclear how long the process could take.
Taliban took in $3.4 billion in revenue over past year, boosting cash supply in wake of Biden admin’s Afghan withdrawal
Taliban parades U.S. military vehicles August 14, 2024 (@pagahindu/X)
The Taliban took in $3.4 billion in revenue over the last year, boosting its cash supply by 14 percent amid the return of Afghanistan as a central safe haven for terrorist organizations across the Middle East, according to a U.S. government watchdog group.
The repercussions of the Biden administration’s disastrous 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan continue to reverberate across the war-torn country, with multiple al Qaeda affiliates accessing American-supplied “weapons seized from the former Afghan National Army,” according to a new oversight report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
A Pakistani cleric has launched a scathing attack on his own government and has delcared that any war with India will be unislamic, in a video that has been widely circulated. In the video, Abdul Aziz Ghazi, a controversial cleric of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, criticises the Pakistani government, calling it a “cruel, useless system”.
In a video going viral on social media, Abdul Aziz Ghazi can be heard asking his audience whether they would stand with Pakistan in the event of a war with India. He question is met with an unexpected silence. Noting the lack of response from the crowd, the cleric commented, “There are very few [hands]. This means many are enlightened now. The matter is, war between Pakistan and India is not an Islamic war.”
Abdul Aziz Ghazi goes on to denounce the Pakistan military, accusing it of widespread repression, claiming authorities in Pakistan have grown more oppressive- a bold and controversial take for someone associated with Lal Masjid, a place once synonymous with radical calls.