World, US, Culture, Market, and Sci-Tech News Aggregation from MSM and Independent News
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It’s been a week since the Maine Senate primary, with the Bernie Sanders-backed Graham Platner easily winning the nomination over two other Democrats, including Schumer-backed Gov. Janet Mills, who had suspended her campaign in April but reminded folks after the sexting scandal broke that she was still on the ballot and that the votes would count.
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Democrats are decrying last week’s FBI raid on the headquarters of an Ohio “voting rights” group as a political witch hunt, an “intimidation” investigation by a Trump administration fixated on probing election fraud.
But buried in the breathless corporate media coverage is the fact that the Soros-funded Ohio Organizing Collaborative has a track record of voter registration fraud and ties to a for-profit political canvassing company with a history of suspect voter registration activities.
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A majority of law professors feel that they cannot express their opinions on controversial topics for fear of backlash from students, other faculty, or administrators, according to a new report released by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
The report, based on surveys with 1,959 law school faculty members, shows an academic environment in which law school faculty endorse First Amendment principles, but struggle to practice them. FIRE is a free speech advocacy group known for its legal work, College Free Speech Rankings, and university faculty polling — but this new report represents the group’s first foray into law school faculty polling.
Nearly 70 percent of respondents said they wanted protection under the First Amendment for speech that listeners may find “deeply offensive.” But 56 percent admitted to withholding controversial opinions to avoid campus backlash.
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Oh, Trump is now speaking with reporters, sitting next to the Emir of Qatar.
As we suspected (9:43), he confirms he had a “very good” meeting with Zelenskyy this morning and will meet with him again later today.
“Look, Russia should make a deal. Russia’s lost tremendous amounts of people, and so has Ukraine. Last month, they lost 35,000 soldiers between the two; it’s on a monthly basis. They averaged 25,000 people, mostly soldiers, young,beautiful people, and it’s crazy what’s going on there.
But we had a meeting, and we’ll see… I spoke with President Putin on Sunday.”
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Trump and Starmer have both spoken at the G7 Summit in France today.
The US president told reporters that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon and that if that does happen, “all hell will rain down on them”.
Trump said: “The only thing that really matters to me is Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. If they do, they’ll suffer unbelievable consequences. The consequences are the ultimate consequences.
“The biggest thing is they will not have a nuclear weapon. They will not develop, purchase, buy or require a nuclear weapon. If they do, all hell will rain down on them.”
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VLADIMIR Putin suffered fresh humiliation today as Ukraine drones blitzed Moscow’s main oil refinery.
A swarm breached newly-strengthened air defences in the Russian capital in a strike that coincided with the G7 summit in France.
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Donald Trump would never have been president without rural America. One of the greatest contradictions, or some would say con jobs, in American history was pulled off as a New York City creature passed himself off as relatable and sharing the concerns of rural America.
To anyone with a discerning eye, it was clear that Trump didn’t understand or care about rural America. Even rural Americans would admit this fact on occasion, but they liked Trump because he talked about them, and he played on their mistrust of elites by selling himself as an outsider who had been inside enough to confirm their suspicions about “the swamp.”
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s jobs may be at stake if they continue to oppose President Donald Trump’s Iran deal, a senior White House official warned.
The threat emerged in a report published Sunday by the right-leaning Israeli daily Israel Hayom, which detailed a bitter internal White House battle over the emerging memorandum of understanding with Tehran.
“The debate has been settled. Those who oppose it may pay a personal price,” a senior US official told the outlet.
According to the report, Vice President JD Vance, envoy Steve Witkoff, and Trump envoy Jared Kushner have driven the push for a deal, arguing the Iranian regime is unlikely to collapse soon and that Gulf states — particularly Qatar — have pressed hard for an agreement.
Rubio and Hegseth argued the opposite: that Iran is buckling under economic pressure and Washington should tighten the screws, not ease them. The two men had been the public faces of that harder line — touting “Project Freedom,” a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force, only for Trump to shelve it hours after they publicly praised it.
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President Donald Trump on Monday told allies the US would not need “much help” in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, as he attended a G7 summit meeting of leading powers in France, dominated by questions over his deal with Iran to end the Middle East war.
Trump arrived in the spa resort of Evian-les-Bains for the summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, flush from celebrating his 80th birthday by watching MMA cage fighting at the White House the previous night.
But allies have a list of questions for Trump about his deal, impatiently waiting for the Strait to reopen and global energy prices to fall.
Macron faces a delicate balancing act in hosting the often unpredictable US leader. The New York Post newspaper reported that Trump is threatening to slap a 100% tariff on French wine and champagne unless Paris removes a digital services tax.
The Strait of Hormuz will be “completely open” from Friday after demining is completed, Trump said at the start of bilateral talks with Macron ahead of the summit opening.
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After Karmelo Anthony was convicted of murdering Austin Metcalf, his parents are making their interview rounds — and BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock believes what they’re saying is completely “delusional.”
“My son is no murderer. My son didn’t intend to hurt anyone. My son was defending himself, and that’s what hurts so bad,” Anthony’s mother said in an interview on CBS News Texas.
Anthony told the interviewer that she asked the jury to “have mercy” on her son but that she knew “they had their minds made up already.”
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A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore displays and interpretive materials removed from National Park sites as part of an effort to eliminate controversial diversity, equity and inclusion-related content.
US District Judge Angel Kelley ruled Friday that the administration must reinstall exhibits and displays that were removed following an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last year. The order directed federal agencies to eliminate content deemed to inappropriately disparage Americans and to remove divisive interpretations of U.S. history.
The lawsuit was brought by a coalition of park advocacy organizations that accused the Interior Department and National Park Service of attempting to “erase history and undermine science” by removing exhibits from parks across the country.
In a 63-page decision, Kelley concluded that the administration’s actions amounted to censorship and threatened the credibility of the National Park System.
“The Government’s stewardship of these park sites thus carries a responsibility to present history in full rather than in favored fragments. Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded these principles,” Kelley wrote.
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We’re more than halfway through June, and the parade of LGBT “pride” propaganda across professional sports continues at full speed.
Most recently, the MLB came under fire for issuing a warning to multiple players on the San Francisco Giants who wrote Bible verses on their hats.
The same hats had already been very conspicuously altered to include the month’s ubiquitous rainbow imagery, but adding a small nod to the Creator was apparently too much for league execs.
Per the Daily Caller:
Staying true to their faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, numerous San Francisco pitchers wrote verses from the Bible on their caps. Starting pitcher Landen Roupp, one of the hurlers, talked following the contest about why he scrawled the verse, stating that it was the representation of “God’s covenant.”
“It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that he makes to us that, you know, his faithfulness and his mercy,” said Roupp to the media, per OutKick. “That’s just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that, and I’m thankful we live in a country where, you know, we have the freedom to believe what we want … and express what we want.
“There’s no hate at all. It’s just what I stand for, and what I stand in. I believe in God,” added Roupp.
Here’s a sampling of the backlash the MLB received in response:
The three Giants players on Friday night. God bless them. pic.twitter.com/HioJXpkskU
— Josh Howerton (@howertonjosh) June 16, 2026
Bullies with a veneer of “inclusion” pic.twitter.com/BobFFb3YLq
— goodcop (@podcastcop) June 16, 2026
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are playing for the Giants… in the midst of Sodom and Gomorrah…! pic.twitter.com/fASRoaDqGH
— Michael P. Mahler (@ItTakesFaith) June 16, 2026
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Republicans have competitive primary runoffs to decide U.S. Senate nominees in Georgia and Alabama. The Georgia winner will face Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in the fall, while the Alabama victor will be a heavy favorite to be the solidly Republican state’s next senator. The GOP also has very close gubernatorial nomination contests in Georgia and Oklahoma. In Georgia, the primary runoff looks to be on a knife’s edge, while the Oklahoma primary looks certain to go to a runoff — but which two candidates will advance? Democrats have a competitive primary for mayor in the District of Columbia. The contest has two leading candidates, with the winner almost certain to become the dark-blue city’s next leader (Decision Desk).
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Public domain U.S. Congress image via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and resized for WLTR coverage.
The Democratic advantage heading into the 2026 midterms just took a major dive.
A fresh Economist/YouGov poll still shows Democrats ahead on the generic congressional ballot, but the cushion they enjoyed earlier this cycle is shrinking fast.
That is the kind of trend line that ruins a party’s year.
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“I will pay the fines for any @MLB Christian player who wears a Bible verse on their uniform. @MLB is ANTI-CHRISTIAN,” Schneider declared Tuesday in a social media post.
Schneider was reacting to a Sports Illustrated story reporting on the league’s rebuke:
“Three Giants pitchers were issued a warning from Major League Baseball after they appeared in Friday’s game against the Cubs with Bible verses written on their Pride Night caps. The league notified the players that similar behavior would not be tolerated in the future.
“Right-handed pitcher Landen Roupp started Friday’s game on the mound. Etched on his cap throughout the game was ‘Gen 9:12-16’ in white lettering. The writing was a reference to the Bible verse Genesis 9:12-16.”
Two San Francisco relief pitchers, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker, also wore Bible verses on their caps.
The next day, the Giants issued a statement apologizing to the LGBTQ+ community because the Bible verses angered them:
“We understand that the choices by individual players have caused pain and anger to many in the LGBTQ+ community and we are sorry for that.”
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Both sides say the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries about one-fifth of the world’s trade in oil and liquefied natural gas, will be open from Friday.
On Tuesday, Iranian state television reported operations to lift its maritime blockade, while stressing that vessels must still coordinate with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Trump said earlier that tankers were starting to move out of the strait, and Reuters reported that the US – which had imposed its own blockade on Iranian ports – had been overseeing scores of secretive ship-to-ship oil transfers to keep Gulf energy exports flowing.
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Republicans are calling on federal authorities to impose stringent regulations on the abortion drug mifepristone, citing the dangers posed by the drug’s largely unregulated use to Americans’ drinking water. A coalition of 15 red state attorneys general is urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to add mifepristone to the agency’s Contaminant Candidate List, which would likely trigger safety studies and potentially stricter regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The latest state to join the effort was Indiana.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) said in a press release this week that the use of the abortion drug is “causing pain and suffering to women. … Obviously, this starts with the individuals persuaded by Planned Parenthood and Big Pharma to use mifepristone to abort their pregnancies, but increasingly it extends to other women who might ingest the drug from their local water supplies.” Rokita noted that when a woman ingests mifepristone, whether via the drug in pill form or via mifepristone contaminating drinking water, the chemicals block the natural production of the hormone progesterone and erodes an unborn baby’s uterine environment. “The baby, in effect, is starved to death in the womb,” the Hoosier State A.G.’s office said.
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(LifeSiteNews) — Major League Baseball (MLB) has issued a warning to three Christian San Francisco Giants pitchers who inscribed a Genesis chapter 9 citation on their team’s specially issued “Pride Night” ball caps last Friday.
As it turns out, so-called “Pride Night,” which is purported to be promoting tolerance, is actually about intolerance for Christians.
“The writing on the cap violates our rules and consistent with normal practice we have warned the players about future violations,” Pat Courtney, MLB’s chief communications officer told the LGBT sports site, Outsports.
Outsports suggested that MLB didn’t go far enough for fans “who wanted baseball to issue a fine for the uniform infractions.”
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DEI is not dead. It survives because the left embedded it deep inside institutions, habits, grant programs, training regimes, and professional language. Even when the label changes, the ideology keeps moving.
One of President Donald Trump’s first actions in his second term was an executive order directing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to eliminate illegal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The order put immediate pressure on organizations that built their funding models around DEI and what they call “victim-centered” ideology.
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When Pope Leo XIV last week completed his seven-day trip to Spain by visiting the Canary Islands, where thousands of migrants have died attempting to reach Europe, one would expect the usual boilerplate language typical of the Catholic hierarchy of late. This would include that Western nations need to treat immigrants with respect and dignity (hint: unreservedly welcoming them in and putting them on the fast track to citizenship) and that immigrants have the right to leave their nations of origin. There was certainly some of that, similar to his predecessor, Francis.
But what was surprisingly welcome was that the pope tempered that language with exhortations and warnings to those same migrants, a message that has been often frustratingly absent from the Catholic Church’s public commentary regarding one of the greatest crises facing the West. It’s language that many of the Catholic faithful — and the broader world that, to various degrees, still looks to the papacy as a moral compass — desperately yearned to hear, especially given that Catholic teaching is actually quite nuanced and moderate on the topic of immigration and borders. One hopes the rest of the Catholic hierarchy were paying attention.
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Monday on CNN’s “OutFront,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) claimed President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran were the “height of incompetence.”
Host Erin Burnett said, “I got to start with this new reporting coming out of Axios, that U.S. intelligence has raised serious doubts about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concessions. And that Director Ratcliffe of the CIA, that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have all expressed concerns about the agreement. What’s your reaction to that?”
Kelly said, “I’m not surprised to hear that. I haven’t verified that. I haven’t seen the intelligence you’re talking about. But, you know, as I listen to, you know, how you describe this, agreement, this one and a half page MoU that is going to be signed and then 60 days of negotiation. I mean, the word that comes to mind to me is incompetence.”
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The FBI disrupted an alleged plot to attack a UFC event in Washington, D.C. and possibly the White House using explosive drones. Multiple suspects were arrested across several states before any attack was carried out. The investigation is ongoing.
One of the goals of the far left plot was to target “capitalists” and pro-Israel politicians.
This is the American left.
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Iran’s decision to hold a July funeral for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a high-stakes bet that any emerging peace deal with the United States will hold, potentially creating a “target-rich” gathering of Tehran’s most isolated leaders, a counterterrorism expert warned Sunday.
The multi-day state funeral, announced by Iranian state media on June 13, is scheduled to begin in Tehran on July 4 and end with Khamenei’s burial in the holy city of Mashhad on July 9, Reuters reported.