Graham Platner, a Democratic Party contender for Maine’s U.S. Senate seat, has officially won his party’s nomination to run against incumbent Senator Susan Collins (R-ME).
02 U.S. Politics
In the name of combatting burner phones, the Federal Communications Division (FCC) is pushing telecoms to hand over all customer IDs. The move challenges the implicit right to privacy from government intrusion found in the Fourth Amendment.
A recent Gallup poll shows support for people “changing one’s gender” has dropped from 46% in 2021 to 38% in 2026. 60% of Democrats still support the idea while only 5% of Republicans do.
Inflation rises to a 3-year high on spiking gas prices, squeezing Americans financially– abcnews.com
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WASHINGTON — Spiking gas prices pushed inflation to its highest level in three years last month, a headache for the Federal Reserve and a potential political challenge for the Trump administration as midterm elections near.
Consumer prices rose 4.2% in May from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Wednesday, up from 3.8% in April and the third straight increase. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.5% last month, after big gains of 0.6% in April and 0.9% in March.
Rising inflation has soured many Americans on the economy, as the cost of gas, groceries, and other necessities hammer many Americans financially.
Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 2.9% in March from a year earlier, up from 2.8% in April. On a monthly basis, core prices increased a modest 0.2%.
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Senior officials in Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s administration allegedly hired outside investigators to monitor and intimidate whistleblowers who raised concerns about widespread fraud in state social services programs, according to a congressional report released Monday.
The more than 200-page report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform alleges that officials within the Democrat governor’s administration retaliated against employees who attempted to expose fraud.
The efforts to silence whistleblowers came while state leaders failed for years to act on repeated warnings about questionable payments and abuse of taxpayer-funded programs.
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Monday, during an appearance on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Trump border czar Tom Homan dismissed efforts by New York State and New York City officials to thwart Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts.
Despite pledges of “zero cooperation,” Homan said there would be an influx of agents in New York City.
“So New York is saying abolish ICE and zero cooperation,” “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade said. “The governor and mayor are teaming up to make sure that the progress you were making with Eric Adams is going to just disappear. So what’s going to be your approach to New York. You’re going to stay away now?”
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Five commuters were stabbed at New York’s Penn Station late Sunday night in what is being described as a ‘random attack’ by a ‘deranged man.’
That suspect, fortunately, is in custody. For all the good it will do with NYC’s revolving-door ‘justice system,’ that is.
The bloody crime has raised concerns about security, as President Trump will be above Penn Station tonight for Game Three between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs.
Those five people were taken to the hospital, and one reportedly has serious injuries.
5 stabbed in bloody attack inside Penn Station – suspect in custody https://t.co/JFCyNrMUBy pic.twitter.com/bsyTYd0K42
— New York Post (@nypost) June 8, 2026
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O’Keefe Media Group released a photo Tuesday that it said showed multiple California ballots inside a Los Angeles County library safe days after polls closed in the state’s primary elections.
The image was reportedly taken Friday inside Stevenson Ranch Library near Santa Clarita, three days after voters went to the polls.
James O’Keefe said the photo was sent to his organization from inside the library and allegedly showed ballots stored in the same safe used by the facility for other items, including cash.
“Multiple CA Ballots Found Inside LA County Library.
We have just received this picture from within Stevenson Ranch Library near Santa Clarita, CA. The photo allegedly shows multiple ballots inside of the libraries own safe, this is where the library keeps other things such as cash.
This picture was taken last Friday. We are hopeful these ballots made it to the right processing centers.
If you have any tips about election fraud in CA or Los Angeles email us at [email protected] or text our Signal at 9144919395.
Our journalists are standing by!”
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Public domain DVIDS/U.S. Army photo by Keith Garner showing an AH-64 Apache firing during a live-fire exercise.
President Trump is putting Iran on notice after Tehran dragged out negotiations and the region lurched into another round of strikes.
The warning came after an American Apache helicopter was downed near the Strait of Hormuz, according to the New York Post.
Trump’s message was blunt: Iran waited too long.
Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore – They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action. The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!! They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would… pic.twitter.com/wW9ULVRoMC
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 10, 2026
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- Kennedy Center removes Trump’s name from website after judge’s ruling The Washington Post
- Trump’s name removed from Kennedy Center website branding CNN
- The Kennedy Center drops ‘Trump’ branding as Bill Maher’s Twain Award guests are revealed AP News
- Only Comedians Willing to Honor Bill Maher Revealed The Daily Beast
- Trump Says He, Not Congress, Is in Charge of Kennedy Center in Reversal Bloomberg.com
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Manhattan’s average one-bedroom apartment now costs more than $5,000 a month, and critics say the real culprit is not landlord greed. It is government failure.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani rolled out his housing proposal, “Block by Block: The Housing Plan for a New Era,” on May 20, promising to build 200,000 “affordable” rent-controlled homes and preserve another 200,000 existing units over the next decade.
The price tag is just as sweeping as the promise: $22 billion in taxpayer money over five years.
But critics warn the plan looks less like a solution and more like a government takeover of the housing market, with City Hall doubling down on the same policies that helped create the crisis in the first place.
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Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the law that allows the government to spy on foreign targets overseas, including their communications with Americans — has a looming deadline.
Supporters call it essential to national security. Critics call it “Big Brother.”
‘FISA needs serious reform. Full stop.’
The House Freedom Caucus launched a #DontSpyOnMe campaign, demanding, in accordance with the Fourth Amendment, a warrant before the government can query Americans’ data in Section 702 collection.
Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), one of the effort’s loudest voices, was blunt on X: “The government has no right to your private communications without a warrant. FISA needs serious reform. Full stop.”
“The Freedom Caucus is America First more than anyone else, as far as I’m concerned,” Self added.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) General Counsel James Percival has directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to impose strict penalties, including deportation, on illegal aliens who vote in American elections.
According to a DHS press release, the Immigration and Nationality Act directs the removal of aliens who illegally vote or make a false claim to US citizenship.
🇺🇸 DHS told ICE to deport any undocumented immigrant who votes in a U.S. election.
The directive, signed Monday, ties directly to Trump’s executive order on election integrity.
Illegal voting and false citizenship claims are now being treated as deportable offenses under the… pic.twitter.com/HGSGkmewQR
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 9, 2026
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There are moments in history when a nation reveals what it truly believes about human dignity.
Right now, in the United States, unborn children are legally torn apart limb by limb in the womb through procedures sanitized by clinical language and hidden behind political slogans. Tiny arms are ripped from sockets. Legs are severed. Organs are crushed. Skull fragments are extracted piece by piece. This is not a scene from a horror film. It is happening in abortion facilities across America under the protection of the law.
That is why the Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act of 2026 matters. Introduced in late April by Florida Rep. Kat Cammack and Missouri Rep. Bob Onder in the House, alongside South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds and Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the Senate, the bill would prohibit one of the most barbaric abortion procedures still practiced in modern medicine.
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Iran says it has launched a missile attack at an airbase in Jordan hosting US forces, after also targeting Kuwait and Bahrain. The Revolutionary Guards said missiles have targeted the Muwaffaq Salti airbase, which is known to host US F-35 fighter jets and other aircraft.
Neither Jordan nor the US has acknowledged any attack, but if confirmed it would likely be the first time that Iran has targeted Jordan since the start of the ceasefire in April.
The US strikes on Iran followed the downing of a US Apache helicopter over the strait of Hormuz, from which two crew members were rescued in a stable condition. In a post on social media Trump said the US “must” respond to the helicopter crash.
Here is the latest:
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The US launched multiple waves of strikes on Iran in response to a military helicopter crash off the strait of Hormuz that Donald Trump said Iran had downed. The Associated Press reported that the Apache helicopter that crashed went down after colliding with an Iranian drone, but it was not clear whether the collision was intentional.
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US strikes were reported across Iran’s southern coast, on the strait of Hormuz. After more than three hours of military action, US central command (Centcom) said strikes were “completed”, adding that the US remained ready to defend against “unjustified Iranian aggression.”
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Soon after, Iran launched retaliatory attacks against the US, according to the countries state media, which said American bases in the region and the US fifth fleet in Bahrain were targeted with drones. Kuwait and Bahrain issued air raid alerts and reported that air defences were active in repelling attacks. Iran also claimed it had targeted a US base in Jordan with long range missiles.
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Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said no attack would go “unanswered”, soon after the US launched strikes on Iran. Posting an image of the strait of Hormuz with the label, “Forever Persian Gulf”, Araghchi says that “despite its defeats on the battlefield, the U.S. opted to test our determination.”
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Five hours before the airstrikes, Trump had posted on social media that the US “must” respond to the helicopter crash, from which two crew members were rescued in stable condition. Before his social media post, however, Trump appeared to downplay the crash, telling the Wall Street Journal in a phone interview that it “wasn’t a big deal” and that “the pilot is fine.”
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Iranian state media reported that no air military operations have taken place in the strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours, according to Reuters.
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Lebanon’s health ministry said 11 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Tyre on Tuesday. The state-run National News Agency (NNA) had reported the first strike taking place not long before Israel’s military issued an evacuation warning for the entire city and surrounding areas ahead of strikes there.
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Republican House lawmakers have introduced legislation to stop sexual predators from obtaining children through the use of surrogacy, after a homosexual registered sex offender purchased a baby boy in Pennsylvania.
Last year, LifeSiteNews covered the case of Brandon Mitchell, a Tier 1 sex offender in Pennsylvania, convicted of “sexual abuse of children” and “possession of child pornography.” A high school chemistry teacher at the time, Mitchell was arrested in 2016 for numerous “sexually explicit solicitations and conversations” with a 16-year-old student after he was found to have sent 20 explicit photos and a sexually explicit video of himself.
Despite this record, Mitchell and his “husband” Logan Riley shared a video of them celebrating holidays with the surrogate-born boy through the first year of his life.
Now, Rep. Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) has introduced HR 9131, the Protecting Kids From Creeps Act, which punishes surrogacy agencies that fail to conduct background checks on clients; and HR 9132, the Preventing International Surrogacy Exploitation Act, which forbids foreign nationals from using American-based surrogacy services.
“These bills put children first (which should always be the case, and some seem to be forgetting that), and help prevent predators / foreign actors from obtaining children in our Nation for personal gain, profit, or other nefarious reasons,” Perry declared.
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After weeks in which President Donald Trump has expressed cautious optimism about peace talks with Iran, the United States retaliated against an Iranian downing of an American aircraft, raising questions about the administration’s Iran exit plan and how it will work with Congress going forward.
On Tuesday, the United States struck Iran in retaliation for the downing of an Army Apache helicopter. U.S. Central Command described the “self-defense strikes” as “a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.”
Trump tied the strike into Iran’s hesitancy to accept American peace offers.
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Congressional Republicans returned to the Capitol on Monday, and CNN’s Manu Raju has been tracking them down to ask if they have any proof to support Trump’s claim that the primary election in California was rigged.
When Raju asked the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson said:
I, look, I don’t… Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream, it is impossible to prove, but I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here, and that’s a concern. We need people to believe in the integrity of our election system. It is critical to maintain a constitutional republic. We’re gonna keep working to pass the Save America Act because it requires, as you know, proof of citizenship and a photo ID to vote.
That, those are also 90%-plus issues in public opinion, and 70% of Democrats understand that’s, that’s necessary. We have to have free and fair elections-
Johnson seemed to be claiming that there is no proof that the California primary election was rigged because Democrats in the state are “diabolical.”
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Social Security’s trustees said in their annual report released Tuesday that the New Deal program will be unable to pay out full benefits by the end of 2032—a quarter earlier than projected last year—in the absence of congressional action, a finding that advocates said underscores the destructive impact of President Donald Trump’s policy agenda and the need to make the rich finally pay their fair share into the system.
“This is the first Social Security trustees report that begins to take Donald Trump’s second term policies into account: A tax bill that largely benefited the wealthy, economy-wrecking tariffs, a needless war with Iran, and hostility to immigrants,” said Nancy Altman, the president of Social Security Works. “All of these have reduced the amount of money going into Social Security, weakening the system’s finances.”
Iran War Live Updates: Trump Says Iran Downed U.S. Helicopter and Vows to Retaliate– www.nytimes.com
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The president said Iranian forces had shot down a U.S. Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz and the United States “must, of necessity, respond to this attack.” There was no immediate comment from Tehran.
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Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) endorsed South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson (R) in the Palmetto State’s GOP gubernatorial primary after she lost the initial primary Tuesday. “I want you to know that I’m going to endorse Alan Wilson for governor,” Mace told supporters after polls closed. “I want a law-and-order governor, and that law-and-order governor is going to…
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Los Angeles’ hotel industry is losing jobs at its fastest pace in a decade outside of the pandemic, raising fresh concerns about the economic fallout from some of the most aggressive minimum wage mandates in the nation.
A new analysis of federal labor data found that Los Angeles County hotels and motels saw their workforce shrink by 1.7% in December 2025 compared to the same month a year earlier, as businesses grappled with rapidly rising labor costs imposed by city and county officials.
The decline comes as Los Angeles prepares to host a series of major international events, including the 2028 Summer Olympics, while hotel operators warn that mounting costs are threatening the industry’s ability to expand and meet future demand.
Wage Mandates Coincide with Sharp Employment Decline
According to an analysis by the Employment Policies Institute (EPI) of newly released U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the contraction represents the steepest year-over-year decline in Los Angeles County’s hotel industry in a decade, excluding pandemic-related disruptions.
The losses followed a series of government-mandated wage increases.
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A Collin County, Texas, jury found Karmelo Anthony guilty of murder on Tuesday for the fatal stabbing of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf during a high school track meet in Frisco in April 2025. The jury rejected Anthony’s claim that he acted in self-defense.
The jury returned the verdict after roughly three hours of deliberation. Reports indicate the jurors did not opt for a lesser manslaughter conviction.
The New York Post provided a brief recap of the events that led to Metcalf’s death:
The violent confrontation erupted in the bleachers of Kuykendall Stadium when Anthony refused to leave the tent reserved for the Memorial High School track team during a rain delay.
Anthony was repeatedly asked to leave the tent multiple times, and Metcalf began to argue with him.
The argument escalated further when Anthony said to Metcalf “touch me and see what happens,” while keeping his hand hidden in his backpack, implying that he had a weapon, according to FOX4.
Metcalf pushed him and Anthony fatally stabbed him in the chest with a knife.
Witnesses for the state testified that Anthony acted as the aggressor.
Anthony was caught on video stating, “I’m not alleged, I did it.”
“He put his hands on me.”
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The buzziest bit of the new artificial-intelligence bill from Reps. Jay Obernolte, a California Republican, and Lori Trahan, a Massachusetts Democrat, is probably the section that would let Washington preempt state rules on AI development for three years. For me, the more interesting part is its bet on auditing as a middle path between Silicon Valley self-regulation and an FDA-style premarket approval regime for frontier models.
Earlier this year, several dozen AI policy folks signed onto a proposal, “Frontier AI Auditing: Toward Rigorous Third-Party Assessment of Safety and Security Practices at Leading AI Companies” that “outlines a vision for frontier AI auditing, which we define as rigorous third-party verification of frontier AI developers’ safety and security claims, and evaluation of their systems and practices against relevant standards, based on deep, secure access to non-public information.”
What does that mean? For starters, an audit is not a permission slip. Rather than making a company clear a government gate before shipping, as the FDA does with drugs, an independent reviewer with access to the confidential innards of an AI company would check the latest model against a set standard. Think of it as how an accountant signs off on a public company’s books. Private firms do the examining while a public body stays in the background. Maybe it sets the rules, accredits the examiners, and holds the enforcement hammer.
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Karmelo Anthony has been found guilty of first degree murder in the fatal stabbing of Austin Metcalf during a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas, last year. The Collin County jury reached the verdict Tuesday afternoon, rejecting Anthony’s claim of self-defense after deliberating for less than three hours.
An angry mob of Anthony supporters gathered outside the courthouse, chanting “we want justice!”
Fights broke out, with police swiftly making arrests to keep the peace.
“Deputies have made their presence clear, that they’re not going to tolerate any form of chaos,” Fox News reported.
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The Southern Poverty Law Center spent decades branding conservative and Christian groups as hate. On Tuesday its own leadership was the one answering questions under oath.
SPLC interim CEO and President Bryan Fair testified before the House Judiciary Committee at a hearing titled “The Southern Poverty Law Center: Manufacturing Hate, Part II.”
The hearing landed less than two months after a federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, returned an indictment charging the SPLC organization with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.
After the mail-in-vote save eliminated a Republican in the LA Mayor’s race, Republican Steve Hilton looked to be heading for a similar fate. Perhaps the growing suspicion of the legitimacy of that election led California to quickly certify the Republican as the second candidate in the run-off election.