World, US, Culture, Market, and Sci-Tech News Aggregation from MSM and Independent News
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the end of “Operation Epic Fury,” claiming the offensive part of the war with Iran is over.
Rubio claimed in a White House press briefing, “The operation, Epic Fury, is concluded. We achieved the objections of that operation. This is the first step toward reopening the strait,” he added. “We are doing it not only because we were asked, but because we are the only ones that can.”
The U.S. is allegedly paying a CCP-connected firm to help identify potential stealth risks from embedding Chinese technology into the U.S. military. This claim is coming from the Washington Times; they cite anonymous military tech analysts within the industry.
A former CCP agent told CBN News he was part of an operation to identify and silence former Chinese citizens in America who spoke out against the party. He told CBN they use threats, entrapment, and even kidnapping.
He claimed, “The United Front is something that’s being defined by the Chinese Communist Party as one of its ‘secret’ or ‘magic’ weapons. And essentially its task is two things: On the one hand, expand the circle of friends of the Chinese Communist Party. So, co-opting or influencing, politicians, media, academia, and entrepreneurs. But on the other hand, its task is also to crack down on critics, to silence them, to divide them.”
Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is under investigation for suspicion on fraud by the state of Minnesota. She failed to meet a deadline to turn over documents related to that investigation.
A 15-year-old teen boy from Louisiana was running out of options in his fight against cancer. A viral video brought his plea to President Trump, who promptly moved to get the boy the special treatment he needs to continue his fight for life.
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Over the past decade, the Left has cultivated a censorship industrial complex of “experts” on “extremism” who try to bully Big Tech and corporate America into blacklisting conservatives over hot-button cultural issues such as LGBTQ+ orthodoxy and parental rights.
While the censorship industrial complex has suffered setbacks, it enjoys a persistent influence—notably at Anthropic, the major AI company behind the chatbot Claude.
Anthropic openly touts its relationship with four branches of the censorship industrial complex, and each of them has ties to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The SPLC, the left-wing smear factory that pioneered the censorship strategy, now faces federal charges for allegedly lying to banks while attempting to conceal payments to members of the Ku Klux Klan, but Anthropic is not reconsidering its work with the SPLC’s allies.
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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have both expressed a need for China to leverage its tight relations with Tehran to reopen the strategic Strait of Hormuz for “their own interests”.
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California has finally won its drawn-out battle against fossil fuels.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democrat politicians, eco-activists, and the elite media have long made the oil firms the enemy and made them a target of regulatory attack. A few examples:
Well, the state may have won the war…as the last California-bound oil tanker to pass through the Strait of Hormuz since war erupted is now offloading its shipment at the Port of Long Beach.
The New Corolla loaded up in Iraq on Feb. 24 — just days before U.S. and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran, plunging the region into turmoil and sparking a double blockade of commercial shipping.
In two weeks, the Hong Kong-flagged tanker will have fully unloaded at the Marathon Petroleum terminal and departed again for distant waters. After that, California must figure out how to replace some 200,000 barrels of oil a day that will no longer be arriving from the Persian Gulf.
California’s own supply of crude oil has been declining since the 1980s, due to aging fields and a geology that makes drilling particularly costly. The state’s gasoline refining capacity is also falling off, increasing reliance on imports and highlighting California’s status as an isolated energy island without gas pipelines to bring in supply from other states.
Today’s cover: Last oil tanker out of Hormuz arrives at California port — with no sign of next shipment. https://t.co/9UrbcdmnRq
Subscribe for home delivery: https://t.co/okw0bmjSRS pic.twitter.com/E5ZN7gg4px
— California Post (@californiapost) May 4, 2026
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Indiana’s May 5 primary election tested President Donald Trump’s influence after he endorsed several state Senate candidates seeking to unseat Republican incumbents who had previously broken ranks with him by opposing a redistricting map.
At least six out of the eight Indiana Senate challengers endorsed by Trump won their respective primary elections on Tuesday, most with significant leads.
A ‘big night for MAGA in Indiana.’
Twenty-one GOP state senators voted with their Democrat colleagues in December to block a new congressional map that would have created two more Republican-leaning districts and potentially strengthened the GOP’s control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The effort failed in a 31-19 vote, despite Trump’s warnings that he would target Republicans in the upcoming primary election who voted against it.
Republicans who voted against the redistricting effort and who were seeking re-election in the May primary included:
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The biotech entrepreneur secured a comfortable victory over small business owner Casey Putsch in Tuesday’s primary, advancing to the general election in the key Rust Belt state of Ohio.Ramaswamy will now face Acton, the former director of the Ohio Department of Public Health, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. The race is expected to be closely watched nationally.
In his victory speech, Ramaswamy thanked voters, saying, “for getting us to this point,” and added that, “the real destination is in November.”US President Donald Trump earlier endorsed Ramaswamy and praised him in a post, calling him “something special. he is young, strong, and smart!”
In a longer message, Trump said, “Vivek Ramaswamy is running for Governor of the Great State of Ohio… I know Vivek well, competed against him, and he is something special. He is Young, Strong, and Smart! Vivek is also a very good person, who truly loves our Country… Vivek Ramaswamy will be a great governor of Ohio, and has my complete and total endorsement – he will never let you down!”
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There’s no doubt that the fraud revelations that rocked Minnesota in late 2025, and into 2026, marked a mind-blowing scandal.
What do you mean Minnesota’s leadership somehow missed blatant — and costly — fraud happening right under their noses? That’s preposterous!
And yet, if you are a particularly disillusioned cynic, your response to the entire scandal might’ve been, “It’s a deep blue state run by Democrats. What did you expect?”
Well, Ohio is decidedly not a deep blue state — let’s call it nominally red or purple, for now — and yet the state and its Republican governor apparently missed some massive red flags that strongly suggested fraud in the Buckeye State.
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‘Allowing biological males into spaces designed for women raises serious concerns about privacy, fairness, and compliance under federal law,’ department leader says
The U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into the supposedly women-only Smith College on Monday in response to a complaint alleging discrimination on “the basis of sex by admitting males who identify as women.”
“An all-women’s college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey stated in a news release.
“Allowing biological males into spaces designed for women raises serious concerns about privacy, fairness, and compliance under federal law. The Trump Administration will continue to uphold the law and fight to restore common sense,” Richey stated.
The department also sent a letter to Defending Education, a conservative watchdog group, informing it of the investigation.
BREAKING: @usedgov is actively investigating @DefendingEd’s Title IX complaint against Smith College over policies that allow biological males into women’s spaces and admissions.
The complaint argues these policies undermine sex-based protections. pic.twitter.com/wD5H3kGep6
— Nicki Neily (@nickineily) May 4, 2026
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Donald Trump told a room full of children that Iran was “two weeks away” from killing them during a rant on the war before going on to mock their dreams and aspirations.
The bizarre moment came during a string of inappropriate comments as he veered off script during a White House sports event.
Surrounded by children and professional athletes in the Oval Office, Trump quickly passed over great sporting accomplishments in the United States, such as America 250 this summer and the World Cup’s ticket numbers, to war.
He said: “We have to make a journey down to Iran to take their nuclear weapon.
“They would’ve had a nuclear weapon within two weeks.
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2022, has long since worn out her welcome.
Indeed, add Justice Samuel Alito to the list of people fed up with former President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court DEI appointment.
Alito issued a scathing opinion that featured five insults rarely hurled by one justice toward another.
For context, in a landmark decision handed down on Wednesday, the Supreme Court invalidated racial gerrymandering.
In the case of Louisiana v. Callais, et al. (“Callais”), a 6-3 majority ruled that the 1965 Voting Rights Act does not require Louisiana to add a new majority-black district to its newest congressional map, and that the Voting Rights Act, in fact, prohibits such districts designed to produce electoral outcomes based on skin color.
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In Texas, Pearland’s new mayor, Quentin Wiltz, won a close election on Saturday, but his victory has sparked heated debate on social media.
Wiltz said he knows there is a divide in Pearland, but added it’s a chasm he hopes to bridge when he becomes the city’s next mayor.
He recognized the historic nature of his win: he will be Pearland’s first Black mayor and the first Democrat in decades.
“This election was important because the mayor’s race is at large. So every person who showed up mattered,” Wiltz told ABC13. “My message hasn’t changed. It’s always, will, and continues to be about the people. The people that I serve, the people that I know, the people that I meet. Because that’s what I think public office is about.”
Wiltz won the election by 263 votes out of 11,743 cast. He is hopeful about the growing city’s future despite its infrastructure and budget challenges, and he wants to hear from residents.
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In a social media post, U.S. Southern Command said its commander, Gen. Francis L. Donovan, ordered a “lethal kinetic strike” on a boat it alleged was operated by “Designated Terrorist Organizations” and “was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” but without providing evidence. It also included unclassified video of the strike.
The attack came a day after U.S. forces struck an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea, killing two people.
The Trump administration’s campaign of blowing up alleged drug-trafficking vessels in Latin American waters has persisted since early September and have killed at least 190 people in total, according to the Pentagon.
Despite the Iran war, the strikes have ramped up again in recent weeks, showing that the administration’s aggressive measures to stop what it calls “narcoterrorism” in the Western Hemisphere are not letting up. The military has not provided evidence that any of the vessels were carrying drugs.
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The Turning Point USA chapter on UVU campus has been targeted by these left-wing groups.
It has been revealed that left-wing groups at Utah Valley University have been celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk, targeting the campus Turning Point USA chapter, and called on activists to obstruct the federal immigration enforcement. UVU is where Charlie Kirk lost his life to a killer on Sept. 10, 2025.
A report from The Cougar Chronicle, a student-run newspaper at Brigham Young University, reveals screenshots from Discord chats and materials showing a network of left-wing students that have often engaged in extremism.
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a left-wing group on campus was formed called “The Civil Disobedience Club” (CDC). The Chronicle was able to obtain screenshots of messages shared in the group chat reveling in Kirk’s assassination.
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On Thursday, the State Senate will begin considering HCR 26, the Prenatal Development Education Resolution. HCR 26 is the first step to making sure students in Louisiana learn, through scientifically-accurate information and video, about the amazing process of a baby’s development in the womb.
On Monday April 13th, the Louisiana House of Representatives passed HCR 28, the Prenatal Human Development Education Resolution.
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By now, it’s probably hard to find anyone in the United States with a political pulse who hasn’t heard about last week’s indictment of former FBI director James Comey. It asserts that Comey threatened “to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon” Donald Trump by posting “a photograph on the internet social media site Instagram which depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out ‘86 47.’”
Trump, the nation’s 47th president, contends that “86” is a “mob term for kill him.” More benignly, restaurant workers use it to refer to running out of an item or getting rid of a dish from a menu. There’s even a restaurant in Palm Desert, California, called Kitchen 86. As professor Mary Anne Franks remarked, the “86 47” shell arrangement is “a very ambiguous statement at best.”
True threats of violence aren’t constitutionally protected. The US Supreme Court defines them as “statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.” The Court has explained that “[t]he ‘true’ in [true threats] distinguishes what is at issue from jests, ‘hyperbole,’ or other statements that when taken in context do not convey a real possibility that violence will follow.”
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As climate change intensifies, scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about how animals will cope with a more unpredictable world. One way to gain insight is by studying how animals have already responded to natural climate fluctuations. But for long-lived, social animals like humans and other primates, gathering this kind of evidence takes time.
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Virginia Democrats are clearly panicking. Rachael Bade, co-host of The Huddle, elaborated on what former Democratic Party operative and fellow co-host Dan Turrentine mentioned this week about the fate of the Old Dominion’s new congressional map. It grants Democrats a 10-1 advantage, but the state Supreme Court refused to dismiss the challenge to the map, setting the stage for serious intra-party battles.
The legal warnings were reportedly repeated endlessly, but to no effect. Now, Democratic leaders at both the Virginia and national levels could face a heavy setback if the maps are invalidated. Bade outlined the criteria the court could use to strike down the maps. Sure, the map might get approved, but if the Virginia Supreme Court sides with just one of these points, the map is cooked:
AND THE KNIVES ARE OUT FOR SOME BIG NAMES. Per Dan’s reporting, Governor ABIGAIL SPANBERGER’s staff is quietly sniping at state Senate majority leader SCOTT SUROVELL and state Senate kingmaker LOUISE LUCAS — two lawmakers who pushed back hardest on the legal warnings last fall.
[…]
If this effort goes down, those quotes won’t age well. “People are lining up behind the scenes to go public, I think, very quickly if this does not go through,” Dan foreshadowed.
BUT HERE’S THE THING — Pointing fingers won’t let Spanberger off the hook, which we discussed at length on the show. Yes, she may have privately raised concerns about the effort early on. But she’s the one in the ads. She’s the face of this thing. As our other co-host SEAN SPICER put it bluntly: “She ate the political cookie on this one.”
The other name in the crosshairs if this goes down? House Minority Leader HAKEEM JEFFRIES. Dan is already hearing from some Virginia Dems who say the Democratic leader pushed too hard despite legal concerns. (Though, let’s be fair to Jeffries — he would have been slammed by the party if he hadn’t leaned in, and his team would likely wear such criticism as a badge of honor.)
