02 U.S. Politics

While the signals from Iran continue to be conflicting and often changing from one moment to the next, the U.S. stock market seems to have adapted to this uncertainty.

The Strait of Hormuz remains unopened, mostly, and the President does not seem hard-pressed to settle on a ceasefire or resume “offensive” actions.

There continues to be troubling signs for the world economy should the Strait of Hormuz continue to remain unopened, especially for Europe, but so far, the U.S. has yet to feel the pinch, save for at the gas pump.

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The woman behind the Virginia special election to effectively eliminate 4 GOP U.S. House seats is now under FBI investigation. Virginia’s State Senator L. Louise Lucas saw her offices raided, along with other businesses connected to her.

So far, only anonymous sources are cited as claiming this is connected to a corruption investigation directly linked to her. She is considered the main driver of the Virginia gerrymander election plan that is currently under legal scrutiny.

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Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) publicly confessed to working with foreign governments to undermine U.S. policy in Cuba.

She declared, “I was in conversations with the ambassadors from Mexico and some other places, other countries in Latin America trying to figure out how to get oil there. I’ve called these sanctions an economic bombing of the infrastructure of Cuba.”

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There is a growing realization by many that the U.S. Supercarrier is no longer the decisive military advantage it once was. Now, more analysts are coming down on the side that claims the supercarrier’s days are gone or soon will be.

The rise of drones and supersonic missiles alone have significantly raised the price of carrier defense. The question is this, if the supercarrier era is in the fall of its reign, how far away is its winter? And what does that mean for U.S. power going forward?

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Democrat Gov. Tim Walz is facing mounting scrutiny after Vice President JD Vance confirmed that federal authorities are investigating whether Minnesota officials failed to properly respond to massive fraud allegations tied to taxpayer-funded programs across the state.

The investigation follows a sweeping federal operation carried out across the Minneapolis area late last month.

FBI agents and federal investigators executed more than 20 search warrants targeting businesses connected to child care services, autism treatment programs, and other publicly funded operations.

Federal officials say the probe centers on allegations involving fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements, abuse of state and federal child care assistance programs, and broader misuse of taxpayer dollars.

Trump administration officials have suggested the total amount under investigation could ultimately reach into the billions.

“[Minnesota is] under investigation by our great vice president,” President Donald Trump said Wednesday.

“They’re finding a lot.”

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Just days after a recent Supreme Court ruling against unconstitutional race-based gerrymandering, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that it will enforce the decision nationwide.

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon told Just the News, “This is the law of the land now, and eventually every jurisdiction in the United States is going to have to comply with race-free line-drawing.”

Last week, Supreme Court justices ruled 6–3 in Louisiana v. Callais that the state’s newly redrawn congressional map relied “too heavily on race” in creating a second majority-black district in the state.

That decision is expected to affect states with maps drawn to heavily favor Democrats, including California, New York, Colorado, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, and Virginia.

Many of these states have enacted their own Voting Rights Acts, which explicitly use race as a predominant factor in determining districts.

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The Department of Justice is still searching for answers about what happened in the 2020 presidential election.

The DOJ has filed a subpoena seeking the names of every election worker involved in the 2020 presidential election.

The subpoena also requests information about all volunteers who assisted Fulton County election staffers.

NBC News had the full scoop on the DOJ’s move and covered the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections’ response:

The Justice Department is seeking the names and contact information of election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, who worked during the 2020 presidential election, according to legal filings.

The Justice Department filed a subpoena in April to try to force the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections to release the names, addresses and contact information for 2020 election staff members and volunteers. The grand jury subpoena was made public Monday as the Fulton County board urged a judge to quash it. The New York Times was first to report the subpoena.

The subpoena marks an expanded effort by the Justice Department to investigate the 2020 election, which President Donald Trump has continued to focus on since he lost there.

Reached for comment, Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts said that “the federal government once again is attempting to misuse criminal process.”

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Turning Point USA Frontlines reporter Savanah Hernandez has filed a civil lawsuit against Christopher, DeYanna, and Paige Ostroushko after they were caught on video violently attacking her at an anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis, while the journalist was covering the event.

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Minnesota, accuses the Ostroushko family of assault and battery stemming from the April 11 protest outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis. According to the complaint, Hernandez was “viciously and repeatedly attacked” while reporting on demonstrations connected to what organizers called “National F*ck ICE Day.”

Hernandez announced the civil suit on X, writing, “I promised to use every legal avenue to hold the Ostroushkos responsible and will be working with @MurdockJDF as we continue to pursue justice.”

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“My prediction is by the end of 2028, it’s more likely than not that we have an AI system where you would be able to say to it: ‘Make a better version of yourself.’ And it just goes off and does that completely autonomously,” Jack Clark, who heads The Anthropic Institute, told Axios.

Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, says his institute is seeing signs of “AI contributing to speeding up the research and development of AI itself,” a process known as recursive self-improvement. 

Clark adds, “It’s always been the case that humans outside the technology need to come up with the ideas that they then put back into it. What happens if we have a technology that can generate ideas within itself for how to improve itself? That’s a new concept.”

Too fast, too soon. The speed with which AI systems are evolving is far outstripping our ability to gauge the impact on humans and society. Lots of good things can happen in medicine, biology, and other sciences where AI is already making a big impact. The speed and autonomy of artificial intelligence models promise an abundant future.

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President Trump threatened Iran on Wednesday with new attacks, warning they would be at a “higher level and intensity” than previous rounds of bombing, if it declined to agree to a peace deal, which he said was “perhaps, a big assumption.”

His latest remarks, in a Truth Social post, came 13 hours after he said in a previous post that he was pausing Project Freedom, a U.S. military operation to guide vessels through the Strait of Hormuz that lasted one day and drew a violent reaction by Iran, to see if a peace deal could be reached amid “great progress” in negotiations.

“Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption, the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday. “If they don’t agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.”

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On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” Border Czar Tom Homan said that “about 60% of everybody we’re arresting is a criminal. The other 40% are not. I think that’s a good percentage.”

Homan said, [relevant remarks begin around 4:20] “[L]ook, we’re going to arrest non-criminals, even though President Trump is prioritizing public safety threats, national security threats. If you look at the numbers right now, about 60% of everybody we’re arresting is a criminal. The other 40% are not. I think that’s a good percentage. I think that’s a better percentage than 40% criminal and 60% non-criminal. But everybody’s on the table.”

He continued, “And here is what Kathy Hochul (D) is going to get in New York: When you force us into the community to find the bad guy — and we will find them — many times they’re with others, others that may be in the country illegally, but not a target — not a criminal threat, not a national security threat. They may have been here for 20 years. But guess what? They’re coming too, because they’re in the country illegally. We’re not going to tell ICE to turn a blind eye to the oath they took or ignore the laws passed by Congress that we get appropriated to enforce.”

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“We gonna have to resist with every fiber in our body. We gonna have to take this system on at every election.”

Democratic Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson compared the ongoing redistricting efforts in Southern states to a “second Civil War” as his state considers congressional map changes that could potentially eliminate his district. This follows the Supreme Court’s ruling that creating congressional districts based on the racial composition of its resident is unconstitutional.

“This is equivalent to a second Civil War,” Thompson said during an appearance on Al Sharpton’s MS NOW “PoliticsNation.”

“We’re gonna have to get our act together,” he added. “We gonna have to resist with every fiber in our body. We gonna have to take this system on at every election.”

Thompson later shared a clip of his remarks on social media, writing, “I don’t care what they say; we are committed to fighting this redistricting no matter what. There are more at stake than meets the eye, and we’ve come too far to ever turn around!”

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President Donald Trump called for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to be charged for the attempt against his life at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last month.

“This lunatic, Hakeem ‘Low IQ’ Jeffries, should be charged with INCITING VIOLENCE! The Radical Left Democrats actually want to Destroy our Country,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

He attached a photo of Jeffries calling for “Maximum warfare” three days before the shooting, emblazoning the phrase over a picture of Trump.

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The Biden administration’s Department of Justice and FBI were aware that the Southern Poverty Law Center was paying “informants” in the KKK — and according to former Obama official Norm Eisen, that apparently means donors have nothing to be upset about.

The SPLC (which has spent years demonizing conservatives, including The Federalist) was indicted by a federal grand jury last month for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The SPLC allegedly funneled millions of dollars it received via donations to pay “a covert network of informants” who were part of “violent extremist groups” such as groups like the KKK. The press release for the indictment alleges that SPLC did not disclose to its donors that “some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement that SPLC was “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”

But during a virtual press conference Wednesday held by Democracy Defenders Fund, Eisen suggested the SPLC defrauding donors by funding the KKK could not have been wrong because Biden’s justice agencies were aware of it.

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The Biden administration’s Department of Justice and FBI were aware that the Southern Poverty Law Center was paying “informants” in the KKK — and according to former Obama official Norm Eisen, that apparently means donors have nothing to be upset about.

The SPLC (which has spent years demonizing conservatives, including The Federalist) was indicted by a federal grand jury last month for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The SPLC allegedly funneled millions of dollars it received via donations to pay “a covert network of informants” who were part of “violent extremist groups” such as groups like the KKK. The press release for the indictment alleges that SPLC did not disclose to its donors that “some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement that SPLC was “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”

But during a virtual press conference Wednesday held by Democracy Defenders Fund, Eisen suggested the SPLC defrauding donors by funding the KKK could not have been wrong because Biden’s justice agencies were aware of it.

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Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was connected with several prominent people including politicians, actors and academics. Epstein was convicted of having sex with a girl.

Rick Friedman/Rick Friedman Photography/Corbis via Getty Images

  • A US judge ordered the release of a suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein.
  • The note was said to have been found by Nicholas Tartaglione, his former jail cellmate.
  • The judge did not vouch for the note’s authenticity, nor assess its chain of custody.

A federal judge on Wednesday released a document described as a suicide note purportedly written by the late Jeffrey Epstein and including the line: “It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye.”

Epstein, the disgraced financier and accused sex trafficker, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell ‌in August 2019 in what was ruled a suicide.