02 U.S. Politics

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US president’s remarks follow report saying he encouraged Kyiv to step up strikes inside Russian territory.

United States President Donald Trump has said Ukraine should not target Moscow after he reportedly asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy if Kyiv could strike the Russian capital if he provided long-range weaponry.

Trump made the comments after The Financial Times on Tuesday reported that the US president had encouraged Zelenskyy to step up strikes deep inside Russian territory during their phone call on July 4.

The report, which cited two unnamed people familiar with the discussion, said Trump had also asked his Ukrainian counterpart whether he could hit Moscow and St Petersburg if supplied with weapons with enough range.

In response to a question on Tuesday about whether Zelenskyy should target Moscow, Trump told reporters at the White House that he should not.

Trump also told reporters that “we’re not looking” at providing Kyiv with longer-range missiles.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to confirm the discussion in a statement provided to multiple media outlets, but said it had been taken out of context.

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On Monday night’s episode of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, viewers were treated to a familiar ritual in left-wing media: the exploitation of tragedy to advance a partisan agenda. This time, the devastating floods in Texas served not as a moment of national unity, but as a launchpad for attacking political opponents with science as the supposed casualty.

Maddow’s conversation with meteorologist Eric Holthaus was less an interview and more a political indictment dressed up as weather commentary. Holthaus, a frequent contributor to progressive publications like The Guardian, wasted no time blaming the Trump administration for climate-related disasters, claiming it had “systematically undercut science.”

Missing from the conversation? Any acknowledgment that disaster preparedness and environmental policy were shared responsibilities across local, state, and federal levels, something that the large state of Texas had often struggled to meet.

Maddow’s leading question was a perfect example of that (click “expand” to read):

MADDOW: The rescue and recovery operations in Texas are still underway. It is heartbreaking. It’s also, I think, increasingly infuriating that we’re in this situation. Is it fair to say that we are taking action as a country to basically lessen our readiness, to lessen our ability to protect people and warn people in the face of this kind of disaster?

HOLTHAUS: Yeah. I mean, unfortunately that’s exactly right. I think that what the Trump administration has been doing is systematically undercutting science. I mean, let’s take a step back. Here we are in the middle of the most severe problem our species has ever faced in climate change. And that problem is accelerating. Emissions are accelerating, and this administration has really decided to just say, “nope, we’re not going to pay attention to that and we’ll hope that everyone can, you know, fend for themselves.” And it’s really, really infuriating as someone who’s been covering this beat for 20 years now. I have little kids, you know, like I wake up at night and am just worried for, you know, when’s– where’s the next flood going to be? We haven’t entered hurricane season yet and it’s just it’s going to be bad and it’s heartbreaking.

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Kristi Noem’s appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this Sunday was a textbook example of how to dismantle media bias with poise and facts. Faced with a predictably hostile Kristen Welker, Noem didn’t just hold her ground—she flipped the script. In a setting designed to put Trump administration officials on the defensive, Noem calmly exposed the hollowness of NBC’s narrative and reminded viewers what real leadership looks like under pressure.

The interview focused on the Trump administration’s rapid response to the devastating Texas floods and recent high-profile immigration enforcement actions. True to form, NBC leaned on anonymous sources to push a tired smear—this time suggesting Noem had personally delayed FEMA aid by requiring her approval for contracts over $100,000. But Noem dismantled that narrative without breaking a sweat.

“Those claims are absolutely false,” she said. “Within just an hour or two after the flooding, we had resources from Homeland Security on the ground. The Coast Guard was deployed immediately and rescued countless Texans. Border Patrol tactical teams were there. FEMA arrived within hours. Call centers were fully staffed. This was the fastest FEMA deployment in years—maybe decades.”

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One year ago Sunday, presidential candidate Donald Trump turned his head to point to a graphic at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Milliseconds later, gunshots — or, if you’re MSNBC, “popping noises” — rang out. Trump recoiled and was immediately buried by a pile of Secret Service agents.

For 59 seconds, Americans watching the livestreamed rally wondered if the former president was hurt or even alive. Screams from rallygoers punctuated the televised audio feed; as we would later learn, three attendees had been shot. A beloved wife and daughter were realizing that Corey Comperatore, a firefighter from Buffalo Township, had been fatally shot while shielding them from the gunfire.

You know what happened next. Despite the best efforts of the Secret Service, Trump stood up and pumped his fist, shouting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” It was immediately clear the image of the bloodied, defiant president would be the single most iconic moment of his political career.

Within hours, Trump would arrive at the Republican National Convention, where his announcement of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate would cement the tone of the third Trump campaign. This was no compromising choice designed to appease the old guard of the Republican Party; Trump was all in.

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Propaganda and psychological manipulation to push more government control always depend upon how people react without reason as crisis events are presented devoid of historic context. Most people’s historic perspective begins when they were born, so recent events loom large in their memories as things never being worse. While past events are unknown, they aren’t perceived as significant or softened by time. This explains why this works with younger people and less and less those with the wisdom of age — those who have seen it all before.

Thus, when the national socialist media reports on what are regularly occurring weather events, or crime, fear is instilled, and people ripe for leftist authoritarian manipulation call for even more government control.

Just a little historical perspective of the hype of past weather events easily destroys this almost subliminal manipulation, because the fear of global cooling, global warming, or climate change is built upon ignorance of the past. So, we’re going to counteract the effect with a little bit of research of the recent past — the last 100 years or so — and report on the way these were headlined back then, see if these sound vaguely familiar.

Since it’s summer and the weather gets seasonally hot this time of year, you can be sure to see sensational, front page headlines designed for an emotional response such as the following from the New York Times:

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This week, Townhall covered how a pediatrician was fired after she posted a comment on social media claiming that supporters of President Donald Trump who died in the Texas floods got “what they voted for.”

Dr. Christina B. Propst, a Houston-based doctor, wrote on Facebook, “May all visitors, children, non-MAGA voters and pets be safe and dry.”

“Kerr County MAGA voted to gut FEMA. They deny climate change. May they get what they voted for. Bless their hearts,” she added.

To be clear: this is a doctor who works with children. There are many children who died in these floods after they were swept away in their cabins at a Christian summer camp. Many others are unaccounted for.

Now, Propst said she is taking “full responsibility” for what she said. Sort of.

In a statement shared by KPRC, Propst claimed that she made the comment “before we knew that so many precious lives were lost to the terrible tragedy in Central Texas.”

“I understand my comment caused immense pain to those suffering indescribable grief and for that I am truly sorry. I would like to make clear that my regrettable comment was in no way a response to the tragic loss of human life. But the words written were mine and regardless of how they are being presented, that is a fact that I deeply regret,” she continued, before attacking how her comment was construed.

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A Texas father reportedly punched out a window to save his family during the recent flash floods, but in the process he severed an artery in his arm and ended up dying a hero’s death.

Julian Ryan was at his home along the Guadalupe River with his fiancée, Christina Wilson, and their children during the early hours of July 4, when “trees were thrown like toothpicks, and water quickly rose, leaving families with little time to comprehend what was happening,” KHOU reported.

As the water level quickly rose, 27-year-old Ryan’s quick thinking and leadership saved the lives of his family, and his mother as well.

Wilson said that within 20 minutes, the water level was up to their knees in the house.

“It just started pouring in, and we had to fight the door to get it closed to make sure not too much got in,” Ryan’s fiancée explained. “We went back to the room and started calling 911.”

Ryan finally made the difficult decision to punch out the window in an effort to get everyone to safety.

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Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem praised the rapid response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to the Texas flash floods on both NBC News and Fox News Sunday morning.

Noem defended the speed at which her department deployed resources, despite claims that it took longer to send them due to her new policy requiring all FEMA contracts and grants above $100,000 be approved by her.

“Within just an hour or two after the flooding, we had resources from the Department of Homeland Security there helping those individuals in Texas,” Noem told Kristen Welker, host of “Meet the Press.”

According to Noem, the policy is widely used throughout the DHS “for accountability purposes.”

“I want that accountability in place because it’s the taxpayer dollars, and we need to know that when those dollars are going out to help communities, it’s actually getting there,” Noem said.

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The search for more than 160 people still missing after last week’s catastrophic floods in Texas has been complicated by more rainfall.

Flash flood warnings were in place in central Texas on Sunday after the rapid rise of the Lampasas River, as first responders searched along the Guadalupe River in the state’s Hill Country for the remaining victims of the 100-year Fourth of July holiday weekend weather event that has killed at least 129 people.

Local officials in Kerrville, an area hit hard by last week’s floods, went door to door shortly after midnight on Sunday to warn residents about the risks, in addition to pushing alerts to their phones, amid criticism for the lack of warnings that were delivered last week.

Search-and-rescue efforts were expected to continue on Monday, depending on conditions, Ingram Fire Department spokesman Brian Lochte told the Associated Press.

“We’re working with a few crews and airboats and SAR (search-and-rescue) boats just in case,” Lochte said.

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After a tragedy like the flash flood in central Texas that has now killed hundreds of people, there are always questions about what happened, what could have been done differently, and if such a tragic event could be prevented in the future.

Any president visiting the site where such a loss of life occurred should be prepared for those types of questions. They aren’t unusual or out of line.

A reporter asked Donald Trump, “Several families we’ve heard from are obviously upset because they say that those warnings, those alerts, didn’t go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved. What do you say to those families?”

The question was especially appropriate because the reporter who asked it was CBS Texas. A local reporter asked a question of the president that was very important to the families.

Trump immediately got defensive and melted down by answering, “Well, I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances. This was, I guess as Kristi said, a one in 500, once-in-1,000-year event. And I just have admiration for the job that everybody did. There’s this admiration. Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you. I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.”

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You have to have a record-low IQ to blame the Texas flood on Trump. Not only is that completely outrageous, but it’s also a slap in the face to all the victims of the disaster. But Jasmine Crockett doesn’t care — she’d rather exploit this calamity to push her anti-Trump agenda for reasons that are anything but moral.

Did she think this video was helpful for anyone? Because I truly think she did…

First, she began her rant with “in my mind,” though it’s unclear which mind she means—especially since she’s nothing more than a mindless buffoon. But that’s beside the point. The emphasis is on “my,” as she’s proven her biggest concern is only herself.

What does this even have to do with her? Is she going to provide any proof that the Trump Administration is against “us”? And who exactly is “us,” and why is she making this about herself? Nonetheless, while she claims her heart goes out to all the victims, she’s showing that she won’t stop at anything to make this about “us”—and by “us,” she means one person, which is herself.

People like her can’t put their differences aside even for a moment, not even when innocent people and families have lost their lives. She can’t stop blaming Trump, even during one of the state’s worst floods in recent memory, and that helps no one, least of all herself.

But she doesn’t care about any of that. Her point—weak as it was—was simply to promote her foolish politics and try to prove a thing or two about a thing or two. In the process, she only made herself look even worse—something most people didn’t think was possible.

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Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner led President Donald Trump’s cabinet in a prayer Tuesday for the victims of the Texas flooding.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on social media platform X, “Before the press were brought into the room, @SecretaryTurner led the President, Vice President, and entire Cabinet in a spontaneous and powerful prayer for the people of Texas.

“This was a truly beautiful moment,” she added.

Turner, who served as a Baptist pastor and state legislator in Texas, opened his prayer, saying, “Father, we’re humbled by your grace, we’re humbled by your mercy. Lord God, we surrender to you. Jesus, you are the great redeemer.

“As we think about the families in Texas, Lord God, we don’t understand. We don’t know how to explain it. We don’t know why, but we know who — we know who to trust,” he affirmed.

“Lord God, we lift up the families that are mourning, that are grieving, those families that are hurting. Father God, we pray for a peace that surpasses all understanding,” Turner continued.

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A flash flood threat has been issued in Ruidoso, New Mexico, as the area continues to experience heavy rainfall on Tuesday, resulting in flooding in the area that was burned out by the 2024 South Fork fire, with residents told to seek higher ground.

In a post on X, ABC News Chief Meteorologist Ginger Zee wrote:

NEW MEXICO: flash flood emergency once again includes Ruidoso. The National Weather Service says that between 1.5 to 2.5 inches of rain has fallen so far, with up to an additional half inch of rain possible.

“Ruidoso has been plagued by flash flooding events since the South Fork Fire left a major burn scar in the area in 2024,” she added. “Several significant flash flood events hit the area last year following the fire, and flash floods have hit the area again in recent weeks. It’s now monsoon season for the region, which brings a greater chance for thunderstorms and downpours.”

“While 1-2″ may not seem like a lot of rain, recent wildfire burn scar areas are especially prone to dangerous flash flooding and could also trigger debris flows and mudslides,” Zee’s post included. “The threshold for triggering flash flooding decreases with burned soil/ground. Lower rainfall totals could still trigger big flash flooding, and it can unfold very quickly. @danpeckwx.”

The National Weather Service reported that flood waters had reached homes and roads as videos surfaced on X showing the massive amount of water that had hit the area in a short amount of time, Weather.com reported.

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One commenter called the graphic below an “absolutely bleak” reality, and he couldn’t be more right:

As the author of the tweet noted, it’s a “subcontinental flood” of foreigners…but not from Europe, which wouldn’t be so bad because that “subcontinental flood” would at least be comprised of people who largely share our value system, heritage, and culture. This “subcontinental flood” is pouring in from the third world, bringing along all its poverty, dysfunction, incivility, and depravity with it.

Gruesome halal butchery practices that inflict as much pain as possible on the animals going in your neighbor’s backyard? Welcome to Minnesota Nice!

Young children being sold off into marriage with pedophilic men? Here’s what one comprehensive study found:

 

[Child marriage] was higher among girls than among boys (6.8 vs. 5.7 per 1,000), and was lower among white non-Hispanic children (5.0 per 1,000) than among almost every other racial or ethnic group studied; it was especially high among children of American Indian or Chinese descent (10.3 and 14.2, respectively). Immigrant children were more likely than U.S.-born children to have been married; prevalence among children from Mexico, Central America and the Middle East was 2-4 times that of children born in the United States.

 

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A community farm on a vacant lot in Quezon City, Philippines, March 2021.Ezra Acayan/Getty Via Grist

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Your city is probably fighting climate change in more ways than you realize. Perhaps your mayor is on a mission to plant more trees, or they’ve set efficiency standards for buildings, requiring better windows and insulation. Maybe they’ve even electrified your public transportation, reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

Ten years after the Paris Agreement, nations are still nowhere near ambitious enough in their commitments to reduce emissions and avoid the worst consequences of climate change. More than that, they haven’t shown enough follow-through on the goals they did set. Instead, it’s been cities and other local governments that have taken the lead.

According to a new report by the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, along with C40—a global network of nearly 100 mayors prioritizing climate action, collectively representing nearly 600 million people—three-quarters of the cities in the latter group are slashing their per capita emissions faster than their national governments. As global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, per capita emissions across C40 cities fell 7.5 percent on average between 2015 and 2024.

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Texas has long been the leading U.S. state for flood damage, hence the Stevie Ray Vaughan song “It’s Flooding Down in Texas.” The Guadalupe is not a large river, normally no more than about 25 yards wide from dense cypress-lined shore to shore and normally plodding along at 500 to 2,000 cubic feet per second (cfs), or even lower in drought years.

In the mid- and late 1970s, I often paddled the Guadalupe with fellow University of Texas at Austin students in old surplus Grumman canoes. Our favorite stretch was a 17-mile run with a few Class II rapids and one Class III (Hueco Falls). On one trip, I don’t recall if we missed the weather warnings (before our current era of multimedia saturation, if you missed the TV news at 6 and 10, or didn’t read the daily newspaper, you were in the dark) or if we discounted them in our youthful eagerness to get out of Austin and have some fun despite the probable rain.

We had not been on the river long when the sky erupted in a torrential downpour — a hard, pelting “frog floater” with lightning cracks and rapidly rising water. The Class II rapids were washed out but the splash and driving rain were flooding the canoes, making them impossible to maneuver. We couldn’t bail fast enough and soon flipped. The current was so strong that we couldn’t swim the boats to the washed out “shores.” So we just hung on to the upside-down canoes in our PFDs, floating fast along with the increasing tree debris. Twice we managed to find an eddy and bail out, resumed paddling and then flipped again. That’s how we spent most of the trip — floating like flotsam — until the take out, requiring a hard eddy turn before a low-water bridge, difficult enough in normal conditions. The tunnels in low-water crossings are potential death traps, often filled with tree debris forming a weir that will trap and drown people. With a water-logged canoe and the swift current, we couldn’t make the turn — both of us leapt out of my canoe on top of the low-water dam as the empty canoe floated through beneath us. (Our partner’s canoe snagged some trees before the bridge.) I don’t recall the exact max flow that day, but I’m sure it was under 10,000 cfs. We considered this a once-in-a-lifetime “Deliverance” trip.

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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.

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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.

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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.
<b>Iran’s supreme leader makes first public appearance since Iran-Israel war started</b>- <i> www.washingtonexaminer.com</i>

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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.”