Cody Balmer, the suspect charged with setting fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, was allegedly motivated by anger at Gov. Josh Shapiro‘s (D-PA) position on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Balmer, 38, allegedly had plans to beat the governor with a sledgehammer if he found him. He called 911 shortly after the arson attack, telling the operator he “will not take part in [Shapiro’s] plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,” according to a police affidavit obtained byPennLive.
This image provided by Commonwealth Media Services shows damage after a fire at the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion while Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family slept inside on Sunday, April 13, 2025, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Commonwealth Media Services via AP)
Harvard Refuses to Comply With Trump’s Antisemitism Measures and Gets Hit With $2.3 Billion Funding Freeze– gellerreport.com Source Link Excerpt:
Harvard refused to comply with the Trump administration’s demands to change its governance structure to stop antisemitism on campus.
The Trump administration has been conducting probes at elite universities over their handling of antisemitism on their campuses. It has already reduced some of its funding for schools like Princeton, where students participated in protests last year.
College campuses and most especially the Ivies have become hotbeds of radicalism – terrorist hatcheries.
The federal government says it’s freezing more than $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard University, after the institution said Monday it won’t comply with the Trump administration’s demands to limit activism on campus.
In a letter to Harvard Friday, the administration called for broad government and leadership reforms, “merit-based” admissions and hiring policies, and an audit of the study body, faculty and leadership on their views about diversity.
The demands, which are an update from an earlier letter, also call for a ban on face masks — a measure that appears to target pro-Palestinian protesters — and pressure the university to stop recognizing or funding “any student group or club that endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment.”
Council on American-Islamic Relations calls charges an ‘attack on free speech’
A dozen pro-Hamas student activists who broke into and occupied the Stanford University president’s office last year officially have been charged with two felony counts.
The charges include vandalism and “felony conspiracy to trespass,” according to The Stanford Daily.
The Los Angeles Times reports the charges “appear to represent the most serious prosecution en masse to date in California of those arrested during demonstrations and encampments that roiled campuses last spring.”
During the takeover, activists had “barricaded doors with bike locks, chains, ladders and chairs,” “covered security cameras with tin foil,” broken windows and furniture, and scattered fake blood (pictured), all which caused approximately a quarter million dollars worth of damage.
According to law enforcement’s Statement of Facts on the case, activists’ cell phone data showed “detailed communication about the planning and commission of the occupation and vandalism.”
NPR routinely demonstrates wokeness with an anti-Israel bias. Saturday’s All Things Considered story by youth-politics reporter Elena Moore from the frontlines of the Israel-Hamas campus wars. She lamented how students are afraid of expressing pro-Hamas sympathies on progressive college campuses: “For some students who protested war in Gaza, fear and silence is a new campus reality.”
This, after NPR either ignoring or “both-siding” threats to Jewish students from those same now-suddenly terrified “pro-Palestinian” campus activists, since Hamas attacked Israeli civilians in October 2023.
Moore focused on the pseudonymous “Sam.” NPR loves playing up how dystopian America is right now by granting anonymity to all kinds of radicals. If you named “Sam,” one might be able to find her chanting pro-Hamas slogans or pro-Hamas signs about ending Israel or cheering October 7. Moore isn’t focusing on how much free speech there is in Gaza — where anti-Hamas protesters can end up dead.
Last spring, Cornell University was home to a student encampment, where dozens slept in tents on the quad to protest Israel’s war in Gaza. The demonstrationlasted more than two weeks.
“It’s actually one of my most beautiful memories in Ithaca,” said a Ph.D. candidate at the school currently studying on a visa. She asked to be identified by the nickname Sam due to concerns over how she could be treated by immigration authorities if targeted for deportation.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Suspected U.S. airstrikes around Yemen’s rebel-held capital killed at least six people and wounded 26 overnight, the Houthis said Monday as they also claimed shooting down another American MQ-9 Reaper drone.
Since its start nearly a month ago, the intense campaign of U.S. airstrikes under President Donald Trump targeting the rebels over their attacks on shipping in Mideast waters — related to the Israel-Hamas war — has killed over 120 people, according to casualty figures released Monday by the Houthis’ Health Ministry.
Footage aired by the Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel showed firefighters spraying water on a raging fire they described as being sparked by the airstrikes. Rubble littered a street as rescuers carried one person away from the site, which the rebels claimed was a ceramics factory in the Bani Matar neighborhood of Sanaa, the capital.
At least 100 Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza– www.euronews.com Source Link Excerpt:
At least 100 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Thursday, including 27, or more sheltering at a school in the north of the strip, according to Palestinian medical authorities.
The attacks come as Israel heightens its offensive in what it said is a campaign intended to ramp up pressure on Hamas and eventually expelling the Gaza-based group.
The bodies of 14 children and five women were recovered from the school in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City. The death toll may continue to rise as some of the 70 wounded sustained critical injuries, according to the spokesperson of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, Zaher al-Wahidi.
Pro-Hamas activists targeted Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) again. This time, they attacked the charity center in his hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, where he was once mayor of the tiny Pittsburgh-area borough and still resides with his young family.
The Free Store 15104, which Fetterman’s wife Gisele Barreto Fetterman runs, was defaced overnight with pro-terrorism messages telling “Genocide John” and “Genocide Gisele” that they have “Blood On [Their] Hands.”
People defaced the FreeStore in Braddock last night.
Since 10/7/23, I’m used to the vandalism at our home or my office.
But Gisele and volunteers distribute food, clothing and formula at no cost to our community—and they shouldn’t have to put up with this. pic.twitter.com/3hQCOGj2AO
— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) April 3, 2025
Israel announces plan to seize ‘large areas’ in Gaza – latest updates | Israel-Gaza war– www.theguardian.com Source Link Excerpt:
Airstrikes continued on Gaza on Wednesday morning after the Israeli defense minister announced that Israel intended to expand its war. In a statement, Israel Katz said the offensive was “expanding to crush and clean the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure and capture large areas that will be added to the security zones of the state of Israel.”
The move has been condemned by the Hostages Families Forum, who said it appeared that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government were making the return of 59 hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas “a secondary task” that had been “pushed to the bottom of the priority list.”
I wish success to the IDF soldiers who are fighting bravely and powerfully in Gaza for the return of the kidnapped and the defeat of Hamas. The goal of Operation “Strength and Sword” is first and foremost to increase pressure for the release of all the hostages in the face of Hamas’ refusal.
Expanding the operation this morning will increase the pressure on the Hamas murderers and also on the population in Gaza and advance the achievement of the sacred and important goal for all of us. I call on the residents of Gaza to act now to remove Hamas and return all the hostages. This is the only way to end the war.
House Intelligence Committee Democrats Demand Independent Review of Signal Chat Leak– slaynews.com Source Link Excerpt:
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are demanding that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard conduct an independent review of the recent Signal chat leak.
It comes after an anti-Trump journalist was inadvertently added to a Signal chat about a military attack, WPRI-TV reported.
Ranking member Jim Himes (D-CT) sent a letter to Gabbard Monday demanding a written response.
The issue occurred because National Security Advisor Mike Waltz accidentally added an Atlantic journalist to the Signal chat with officials.
The left-wing “news” outlet subsequently published the messages.
They were discussing a strike on Houthi terrorists.
White House desperately wants you to forget national security fail– www.dailykos.com Source Link Excerpt:
The Trump administration is attempting to shut down growing concerns over the war plans leak, even as congressional requests for independent investigations have begun to surface.
Senior members of the Trump administration—including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz—discussed confidential war plans in a Signal group chat, in which journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally included.
“As the president has made it very clear, Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team, and this case has been closed here at the White House as far as we are concerned,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday.
Leavitt, who has a history of lying, said that “steps have been made” to ensure that another leak doesn’t happen in the future but gave no details on what those purported steps were.
Fresh US strikes extend air campaign targeting Yemen’s Houthis | News– www.aljazeera.com Source Link Excerpt:
Houthis claim to down US drone. President Donald Trump declares Yemeni rebel group ‘decimated’ by air strike campaign.
The United States military launched a series of air attacks on Yemen overnight, targeting Houthi rebels.
Strikes hit an area near the capital, Sanaa, as well as the northern province of Saada early on Tuesday as the US extended a bombing campaign against targets in Yemen that began in mid-March and has killed dozens of people.
The Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV reported that US forces launched 15 raids on the northern province of Saada, including the city of Saada and the districts of Majz and Sahar. Mount Nabi Shuaib, in the Bani Matar district of Sanaa province, was also reported to have been targeted.
Thousands flee Gaza’s Rafah after Israel issues new evacuation orders– www.euronews.com Source Link Excerpt:
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said 140,000 people are impacted by the Israeli military’s latest displacement orders, which indicate it could soon launch another major ground operation in Gaza’s southernmost city.
Thousand of Palestinians fled Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah on Monday after the Israeli military issued new sweeping evacuation orders, indicating it could soon launch another major ground operation.
At least 140,000 people were affected by the evacuation order, according to Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees.
“People are treated like pinballs with constant military orders playing with their fate and lives,” Lazzarini wrote on the social platform X.
Signs ‘threatening’ deportation of Harvard pro-Hamas students put up, students ‘distressed’– www.thecollegefix.com Source Link Excerpt:
Caused ‘fear’ among many ‘already feeling deeply vulnerable’
This past week, Harvard Law School officials removed a pair stickers adhered to a pole near the campus’ main plaza which “threatened” the deportation of pro-Hamas students.
The first sticker read “Don’t be Mahmood [sic] Khalil,” a reference to the Columbia University grad student recently detained by ICE for, The Crimsonclaims, “serving as a negotiator on behalf of participants in Columbia’s pro-Palestine encampment.”
The sticker also included “Be a racist if you want, Just keep it to yourself #JFB (Jews fight back).”
The group Dissent Collective snapped a photo (pictured) of the sticker, which by that time had the phrase “Free Palestine” scrawled into it. A second sticker reading “I am a green card holder who loves America. I will never be deported. Are You?” soon was placed over the original.