President Donald Trump condemned Elon Musk’s newly-formed third party on Sunday while speaking to reporters in New Jersey.

Musk posted on X Saturday that he had just launched the “America Party” to restore “freedom” to Americans. When a reporter asked Trump for his reaction, the president immediately said it was a “ridiculous” move by Musk.

WATCH:

“I think it’s ridiculous to start a third party. We have a tremendous success with the Republican party. The Democrats have lost their way, but it’s always been a two-party system,” Trump said. “And I think starting a third party just adds to confusion. It really seems to have been developed for two parties. Third parties have never worked. So he can have fun with it but I think it’s ridiculous.”

Trump also railed against Musk and his creation of the new party in a Sunday Truth Social post following his comments to reporters.

“I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks. He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States – The System seems not designed for them,” the president wrote. “The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS, and we have enough of that with the Radical Left Democrats, who have lost their confidence and their minds!”

Musk started to repeatedly raise the notion of forming the “America Party” to appeal to disaffected fiscal conservatives and libertarians due to his frustration with Republican lawmakers backing Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill — which the president signed into law on Friday.

However, political experts argue that it would be better for Musk to spend his billions to buy influence within the Republican Party’s existing structure instead of challenging America’s established two-party duopoly.

“Third parties are like honeybees — they sting and then they die,” Georgetown political historian Michael Kazin told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Musk posted an X poll on Friday asking if Americans “want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system” by forming “the America Party.”

Nearly two-thirds of X users voted in favor of the new party, while slightly over one third voted against it, prompting him to announce the creation of the “America Party” on Saturday.

CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings also warned Musk on Sunday that the “America Party” could split right-leaning Americans and help Democrats win elections.

“My humble advice to Elon, who I admire very much, actually, is that you may be dividing the forces of people who want to save Western civilization to the benefit of the people who don’t,” Jennings said. “And so, to the extent that this effort would divide conservatives and Republicans against each other, that wouldn’t be helpful, because it would leave the country to people who want unfettered immigration, who don’t share your fiscal views, and so on and so forth.”

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos is coming under fire for his perceived anti-Trump coverage of the catastrophic flash floods that killed dozens in Texas on Saturday, reporting “significant staffing shortfalls” at federal weather stations.

During his “This Week” broadcast on Sunday, Stephanopoulos said to his correspondent Mireya Villarreal on the scene in Kerr County, Texas: “We’re also learning there were significant staffing shortfalls to the National Weather Services offices in the region.”

Easily debunked pic.twitter.com/YgqzkfckJA

— Immortal Patriot (@BasedImmortal) July 6, 2025

Villarreal replied: “You know, George, as of right now, the local county officials really didn’t want to address that just yet. What they are telling us is they expected between four and six inches of rain. That is what weather experts told them. The National Weather Service as well.

“They also knew that in remote locations, they might get anywhere from eight to ten inches. But this amount of rain, in such a short amount of time, it was very difficult to navigate. And when the Department of Homeland Security secretary was here just yesterday, she acknowledged this was an issue. She was going to take these concerns to the White House as well and try and see if there was anything they could do to revamp the system. She says the president is committed to it.”

Cullen Linebarger at the Gateway Pundit noted of Stephanopoulos’ staffing claim: “This would be disturbing news if true. But unsurprisingly, it turns out Stephanopoulos was spreading an easily debunked lie so that he could make Trump look like a villain again.”

Is the news we hear every day actually broadcasting messages from God? The answer is an absolute yes! Find out how!

According to the NBC-TV affiliate in Dallas, there were actually “extra staffers” on duty: “NWS Meteorologist Jason Runyen said the National Weather Service office in New Braunfels, which delivers forecasts for Austin, San Antonio and the surrounding areas, had extra staff on duty during the storms.

“Where the office would typically have two forecasters on duty during clear weather, they had up to five on staff.

“‘There were extra people in here that night, and that’s typical in every weather service office – you staff up for an event and bring people in on overtime and hold people over,’ Runyen said.”

Abigail Jackson, the White House deputy press secretary, blasted Stephanopoulos’ claim as “absolute fake news,” as she shared a news report from Wired, headlined: “Meteorologists say the National Weather Service did its job in Texas.”

This is absolute fake news and even Wired knows it. https://t.co/ZzGl0IWr36 pic.twitter.com/oUs7mNTP52

— Abigail Jackson (@ATJackson47) July 6, 2025

This is not the first time Stephanopoulos has been accused of major factual errors. In fact, ABC News was forced to pay President Trump $15 million last December after the anchor had claimed multiple times on air that Trump was “liable for rape” in former columnist E. Jean Carroll’s case against the president.

During a March segment of his morning show, ABC’s “This Week,” Stephanopoulos got into a heated exchange with the Republican lawmaker, with Mace calling him out for “shaming her.” At the time, Stephanopoulos questioned Mace about Trump being found liable for defamation and battery in Carroll’s case against him, refusing to listen to Mace as she repeated that she was a victim of rape herself.

Wow, this is what George Stephanopolous does. “Welcome to our show Nancy, now how do you justify your support of a rapist?” Good for Nancy Mace for refusing to allow him to get away with shaming her. pic.twitter.com/xiPlDItVOo

— JKash MAGA Queen (@JKash000) March 10, 2024

“You’re idiots! Stephanopoulos is an idiot, and so are his producers,” Megyn Kelly of SiriusXM Radio said at the time. “Because let me tell you, in all my years at Fox, never mind my short stint at NBC, the producers have a couple of main jobs. One is to arm the anchor with facts. Fail. OK, fail there. And two is to protect the anchor. You protect the anchor. So if the anchor is out there saying something colossally stupid, usually if you have a great producer, they’ll get in your ear to say, ‘No, it’s this. No, it’s that. Be careful.'”

Kelly added about Stephanopoulos: “He’s been there a long time. It doesn’t make him any more respectable. He’s a partisan hack. He started off as a partisan hack, and he remains one. He’s just too ballless to own his partisan nature, wants us to believe that he’s straight and narrow now, notwithstanding all those years helping Bill Clinton.”

The death toll from the flooding across Central Texas climbed Sunday to nearly 70.

Follow Joe on X @JoeKovacsNews

‘Do not give up. Miracles can happen’: Texas lieutenant governor says ‘we stand on the rock of our faith’ through flooding disaster

‘He’s too ballless’: Watch Megyn Kelly torch Stephanopoulos and ABC ‘idiots’ over $15 million blunder

A new, explosive report is alleging the same Deep State forces that brought Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency are responsible for the meteoric rise of Zohran Mamdani, the socialist who is now the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor.

The analysis Sunday by Ethan White at Gazetteller.com says: “Barack Obama was never just a president. He was a weapon – carefully installed, heavily protected, and strategically unleashed to dismantle the American Republic from within.

“Now, on July 6, 2025, the fruits of his deception are visible for anyone who dares to see through the smokescreen of media propaganda and elite manipulation.

“And the clearest product of his globalist-engineered legacy is Zohran Mamdani – a foreign-born, socialist radical openly advocating the destruction of capitalism, national identity, and constitutional law.”

The report says while President Donald Trump is still working to “undo the devastation” from the Obama years, “Mamdani emerges as the next key agent in the Deep State’s unrelenting war against America.

“Make no mistake – this is a continuation of the same covert operation. What Obama began in secret, Mamdani now carries forward openly. And that’s the most dangerous part.”

Is the news we hear every day actually broadcasting messages from God? The answer is an absolute yes! Find out how!

White then probes into Obama’s pre-presidential background, claiming the politician “was groomed for decades by Marxists, foreign ideologues, and anti-American globalists.”

“His ‘father figure,’ Frank Marshall Davis, was a card-carrying Communist. His stepfather in Indonesia raised him in Islam. His early years were spent absorbing foreign ideologies, not American principles. By the time he returned to the U.S., he was already radicalized and fully embedded in anti-Western thought.”

White says Obama’s entry into U.S. politics was orchestrated with the help of George Soros’ network and elite think tanks such as the Brookings Institution to polish, script and market him like a corporate product.

“He wasn’t elected – he was installed,” says White. “His ties to the New Party, an offshoot of the Democratic Socialists of America, were buried. His sealed college records, the suspicious gaps in his personal history, and the sudden erasure of his Pakistani travel logs are not coincidences. They are redactions. And redactions only exist to hide truths too explosive for public exposure.

“Obama’s presidency was a Trojan horse operation. Under the guise of “hope and change,” he launched a campaign of systematic erosion – weaponizing federal agencies (IRS, FBI, DOJ), expanding surveillance, empowering Iran, defunding the military, and feeding racial division. He wasn’t leading America. He was softening it for conquest – economic, cultural, and spiritual.”

White then fast-forwards to 2025, writing: “Zohran Mamdani – born in Uganda, raised in post-colonial Africa, shaped by South African leftist movements – is now being positioned to assume the mayorship of New York City. That’s not a random rise. It’s a continuation of the Obama blueprint. But Mamdani is different in one key way: he no longer needs to pretend.”

He noted while Obama carefully hid his Marxist roots, Mamdani is out in the open with his support for socialism.

“He’s not interested in preserving the system. He wants to torch it,” White states. “He’s the next phase of the global elite’s endgame for America – raw, weaponized, and unleashed at full speed.”

“At a 2021 Young Democratic Socialists of America event, Mamdani said it plainly: the mission is ‘not simply to raise class consciousness, but to win socialism.’ That’s not reform. That’s replacement. He’s not trying to adjust capitalism – he’s trying to eliminate it.”

White continues:

Mamdani doesn’t believe in racial equality. He believes in weaponizing race to divide and conquer. He supports taxing white people more. He promotes freezing rents to bankrupt landlords. He wants government-run grocery stores, forced wealth seizure, and the complete abolition of billionaires – while ignoring the elite billionaires who fund his rise.

Obama built the framework. Mamdani is enforcing it. And the collapse is no longer hypothetical.

If Mamdani wins the New York City mayoral race this fall – which the mainstream media has already practically declared – brace for a violent acceleration of collapse. Private investment is drying up. Real estate moguls are already eyeing exits to Florida. Banks are issuing warnings about frozen capital.

Rent control and public housing mandates are driving landlords into default. Police morale is crumbling. NYPD sources have already leaked internal memos warning of a ‘mass resignation wave’ if Mamdani is elected.

This isn’t failure. It’s sabotage. And it’s working exactly as planned.

The global elites behind Mamdani and Obama don’t care about outcomes. They want collapse. Their agenda is depopulation, total surveillance, economic sterilization, and cultural annihilation.

They push radicals like Mamdani into power not because he’s competent – but because he will obey. Obey Soros. Obey Klaus Schwab. Obey the unelected World Government syndicate that is now being openly discussed under the cover of ‘climate treaties’ and ‘U.N. emergency frameworks.’

This is why they fear President Donald J. Trump. This is why they rigged elections, buried truths, and unleashed lawfare operations to stop him. He’s not just a political threat – he’s a systemic disruption to their entire engineered collapse.

Trump doesn’t bend to Soros. He doesn’t bow to Davos. He doesn’t accept the Obama legacy. He dismantles it. That’s why they spent eight years undermining him and are now doing everything to stop his second term from restoring the Republic.

And while the elites flood cities like New York with ideological bombs like Mamdani, Trump continues to rally patriots, rebuild sovereign economies, and expose the networks behind the curtain. On July 4, 2025, just two days ago, he reminded the nation in Philadelphia: ‘We are one nation under God – not under Schwab, Soros, or Beijing.’

White says we’re currently in the “final stage of a long, slow, and deliberate sabotage operation.”

“From Obama’s whispered socialist lies to Mamdani’s loud, unapologetic war against American capitalism, we are watching a timeline unfold that was written years ago in backrooms filled with elites who despise everything America stands for.

“Mamdani isn’t just another radical. He’s a signal. A siren. Obama was the blueprint. Mamdani is the execution. And if we don’t stop it now, there may not be a second chance.”

As WorldNetDaily reported in 2011, Donald Trump, five years before he was elected president, was among the major names in America suggesting Obama’s presidency could be “illegal” if legitimate proof were not provided demonstrating the commander in chief is indeed a “natural born citizen” of the U.S.

“To be honest with you, I want him to have a birth certificate,” Trump told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News at the time, “because [otherwise] that would mean that his presidency was, I guess you’d have to say, illegal. You have to be born in the United States. I hope that he was born in the United States. I hope – but I want to get rid of the word hope, I want to know for sure – I hope that he was born in the United States and I hope this doesn’t become a big issue.”

“He spent millions of dollars trying to get away from this issue. Millions of dollars in legal fees trying to get away from this issue. I brought it up just routinely. All of a sudden a lot of facts are emerging, and I’m starting to wonder myself whether he was born in this country,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends.”

Follow Joe on X @JoeKovacsNews

Donald Trump: Obama presidency possibly illegal

U.S. always questioned Obama citizenship

Just who is really Obama’s father?

President Donald J. Trump’s energy plans to promote oil and gas production can reset the world stage, and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is on board. This month he signed into law a bill that prioritizes production of fossil fuels and nuclear power, rather than wind and solar power, in his state.

The new law, Act 462 (formerly HB 692), sponsored by Rep. Jacob Landry (no relation to Gov. Landry), requires the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources to focus on production of domestic fuel, rather than energy sources that rely on foreign countries for materials. The law extends the definition of green energy to nuclear power and natural gas.

This law is so obvious that it is surprising that it needs to be passed at all, especially in Louisiana, which has no requirement to produce electricity from wind and solar power. Rates, at 13 cents per kilowatt hour, are below the U.S. average, but they have risen steadily from 9 cents per kilowatt hour in 2020.

The top 10 states for residential electricity prices (except Alaska, which has few residents spread out over a large geographic area) all have requirements to use wind and solar power to generate electricity. They would do well to copy Louisiana’s new law. Their lower electricity prices would benefit their residents and attract additional manufacturing, generating increased employment.

This month’s Middle Eastern conflict between Israel and Iran shows the wisdom of President Trump’s energy dominance agenda. Energy dominance means producing enough oil and natural gas to replace OPEC countries as the global price setter. The price of oil went up from $65 to $75 a barrel, then back down to $65. No longer is the U.S. at the mercy of OPEC, as it was in the 1970s.

With a U.S. energy dominance agenda, no longer must the U.S.—or the world—depend on corrupt governments as sources of oil, gas, and critical minerals, or renewables and electric vehicles. This has vast geopolitical implications.

Lower U.S. electricity prices will reduce manufacturing costs in America, attracting foreign investment and creating jobs. In emerging economies, more support for fossil fueled power plants will lower energy prices.

The U.S. has approximately 1.7 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil and over 4 quadrillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas resources. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent proposed increasing US production by 3 million barrels per year, potentially driving prices below $50 a barrel.

This represents a major change from the policies of President Joe Biden, who discouraged oil production by reducing federal land available for leases and banning offshore development. When he wanted additional oil in 2022, he asked Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to pump more.

With increased output, the North American energy platform, with its heavy crude from Canada and Mexico and its light crude and refineries in the U.S. will be able to set prices.

Sales of U.S. oil and natural gas give U.S. allies an alternative to Russian products and cut into Russian sales. Russian oil and natural gas revenues in 2024, the vast majority from oil, amounted to $120 billion, about 30 per cent of its total revenues, substantially lower than levels of 50 per cent between 2011 and 2014.

This will be even more important when fighting in Ukraine ends, with possible removal of Russian sanctions. President Trump would be able to pressure countries to use American oil rather than Russian oil, potentially using tariffs to encourage buyers.

President Trump is also taking on China, which controls 38 per cent of the reserves of global rare earth elements; 60 per cent of rare earth mining; 85 per cent of rare earth processing, and 90 per cent of rare earth permanent magnet manufacturing. This enables the production of 80 per cent of solar components, global battery production, and cobalt refining capacity.

Similarly, the new Louisiana law specifically calls for “minimizing reliance on foreign nations for critical materials or manufacturing by prioritizing infrastructure necessary to deliver energy to Louisiana customers.”

Cheaper energy caused by additional U.S. production and loans for fossil-fuel power plants would also benefit people in emerging economies, especially Africa and Latin America, without reliable electricity and cheap fuel. Lower oil prices empower countries with poor electricity distribution, lowering costs of diesel generators, used by businesses and households.

The federal government is shifting to energy dominance, but states can still stand in the way. Louisiana’s new law provides a model for other states to follow.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the U.S. Department of Transportation, directs the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation.

When B-2 bombers took off from Missouri to attack targets across Iran, President Trump was leveraging more than America’s military might – America’s energy dominance was on full display.

America’s shale revolution and ascension to the world’s largest oil and natural gas producer has made one fact abundantly clear: energy security is national security. No longer are geopolitical and national security decisions held hostage to the threat of energy price spikes. Because of oil from Texas and natural gas from Appalachia, Americans aren’t facing the energy supply shocks that were once guaranteed to follow rising Middle East tensions.

Home to the nation’s largest natural gas field with the Marcellus and Utica shales, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia produce a third of America’s natural gas. That’s energy that keeps the lights on in our homes, the heat flowing in the winter, and power steady and reliable for factories, hospitals, military bases, and critical infrastructure across America. But it does much more. Appalachian natural gas is a big part of what makes America strong, self-reliant, and free.

Throughout history, energy security has meant physical security. When we have the energy we need, produced right here at home, we reduce our dependence on unstable or hostile nations. We insulate ourselves from supply disruptions and price shocks triggered by global conflicts. And we make sure that in times of crisis, from natural disasters to national emergencies, we have the fuel to respond, rebuild, and defend.

Our abundant, reliable natural gas underpins the strength of our Armed Forces and the resilience of our economy. Employing millions of our own people, energy powers the manufacturing of steel, ammunition, vehicles, and the technologies that support our troops. It safeguards critical operations from cyber and physical threats by ensuring reliable, secure power supplies.

And as artificial intelligence rapidly transforms industries, it’s natural gas that remains the only fuel fully capable of meeting the intense, always-on energy requirements these technologies depend on.

In short, energy security protects American lives and the American way of life.

But here’s the challenge: While we produce more than enough clean-burning, affordable natural gas to meet our needs and support allies overseas, we can’t move enough of it to where it’s needed most. And electrical grid operators face mounting strain as power-hungry technologies accelerate demand.

The missing links? Pipelines and new gas-fired generation. Without more infrastructure to safely and efficiently transport and use domestic energy, we leave ourselves exposed to higher costs, supply vulnerabilities, and reliance on foreign adversaries.

New England is perhaps the most staggering example of energy insecurity here at home, sitting just a few hours drive from the largest gas producing region in the country, yet forced to rely on expensive, unreliable foreign fuel because politics have clouded smart energy policies for decades. Now, those same political leaders are quietly backing down and conceding what we’ve known all along: pipelines from Appalachia are key to their energy security.

Meanwhile, our country’s global competitors and adversaries aren’t waiting. Russia and China – they understand the power of energy in projecting strength and influence. America must do the same, led by the innovators in Appalachia who drove the shale revolution just over 20 years ago.

Now is the time for action. Washington is working to cut the red tape that’s stalled progress, but it’s up to us in the states to unleash the full potential of Appalachian energy. Thank you to those elected leaders who are already leading the charge, but we need all of our policy officials to champion building the natural gas infrastructure that will secure affordable energy for families, strengthen our physical and economic security, and help ensure that America remains the most powerful, resilient, and free nation on the planet.

Let Appalachia’s natural gas power our future and protect the freedoms we hold dear.

The American eschatological impulse to war is to achieve a definite victorious outcome, even when the costly extra effort is not warranted by the political outcome. This is typified by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s demand for “unconditional surrender” of the Axis during the Second World War (even as his ignorant successor Harry Truman then abandoned the fruits of victory by surrendering Eastern Europe to the USSR). This is because Washington’s wars are preventive wars of choice, not preemption, and therefore its taxpayers need the theatre of moral justification.

U.S. President Donald Trump approximates political scientist Hans Morgenthau’s “pragmatic statesman,” most importantly by avoiding the sunk cost fallacy. U.S. leaders are often entrapped by their own justifications for continuing wars, as George W. Bush was by the need to vindicate the sacrifices of U.S. military service personnel in Iraq. This misperception typified the stalemated quagmires of the Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. Even where previous leaders showed comparable wisdom, as former U.S. President George Bush did in February 1991 by abruptly imposing a cease-fire at the end of the 100 hour land campaign of Operation Desert Storm, younger members of their administrations could not resist seeking a resumption of the attempt to achieve “total victory” a few years later (2003 in the case of Iraq). Frequently, Presidents distracted by higher priority domestic policy goals, like President Lyndon Johnson, unsure how to end international crises, will instead allow them to simmer.

What Trump does well, for which he is often accused of amateurish ignorance by leftish media, is quickly pivot away from bad bargaining positions. He preserves this freedom of action by ensuring the maintenance of his popularity beyond his core MAGA constituency, within the broader Republican base. The swift B-2 delivered GBU-57 pinprick and sudden ceasefire, immediately deflated his MAGA critics opposed to involvement in foreign wars. Trump’s strength is that as an outsider to the legislature, he is independent of the usual power brokers, political factions or corporate interests offering post-tenure seats on governing boards. Trump is not impressed by neo-conservative appreciations of the situation in the Near East, such as by Abram Shulsky’s Office of Special Projects, in a way that amplified their influence in the CIA’s analysis for the 2003 invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush. Israel’s preference would have been for the U.S. to become engaged in a protracted bombing campaign of Iran, akin to the failed and expensive Operation Rolling Thunder operation over Vietnam. While Israeli intelligence has a superlative capacity for target identification and assassination, it rates poorly in its understanding and its ability to predict sociological developments in the Muslim, and particularly Arab, world.

Trump is consequently far more agile and credible in his deal making than former President Joseph Biden, especially in the Middle East: while the prevailing wisdom is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chain-ganged Trump into the 12-Day War with Iran, its ending on terms and in costs most favourable to Washington rather than Tel Aviv, belie that claim. In fact, during Trump’s First Term (2017-2021), his tariff dispute with China likely saved the globe from a Fourth World War. Usually power transition wars occur when dissatisfied challengers reach 80 percent of the status quo hegemon’s nominal GDP, and Trump’s policies reinforced Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s economic micro-mismanagement that has stagnated China’s manufacturing and shrunk its employment. None of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama could have as easily refused the powerful interests of the American international business establishment. Because Trump better empathizes with President Vladimir Putin’s strategic mind-set in dealing with Russia’s woke crisis of modernity, he was far more successful that Barack Obama in isolating Moscow from supporting Iran or China.

Trump was correct that he had a better intelligence appreciation of the progress and implications of Iran’s nuclear program than the U.S. intelligence community. Since the U.S. no longer runs deeply infiltrated agents and relies instead on intercepting signals intelligence and other forms of remote sensing, it cannot know the private intent of foreign leaders. The technical indicators used to measure intent are also known to the Iranians and can therefore be manipulated by them. Besides, there is the fundamental epistemological issue that the senior Iranian leadership is itself unaware of what it will do at each juncture. The CIA has an excellent grasp of sociology and geopolitics, and so was able to predict the Sino-Soviet split, and the 1971 breakup of Pakistan, the latter over a decade prior. However, the intelligence community has a poor historical record of making predictions off of personality profiles of foreign leaders whose high emotional quotients have been tempered by brutally competitive politics. Trump’s instinct that the Iranians would likely cross the nuclear weaponization threshold given Tehran’s anticipation of an Israeli strike after the collapse of Hezbollah and Syria, was the unverifiably correct one. We can never know the counterfactual since any decision can be countermanded at the last second.

Trump bluffed the ceasefire, but it worked because both Tel Aviv and Tehran realized that their futures were filled with uncertainties. Any unilateral cessation of bombing of Iran by Israel, even if only because it ran out of ordinance, would have looked like defeat to its regional adversaries. Israel generally does poorly in attrition conflicts, because of costs, casualties and political disillusionment at home, and because time grants its adversaries time to overcome their poor governance and organize their greater resources. It consequently relies on decisive military action for its political effect, as in the attacks into Egypt in 1949, 1956, 1967, 1968-1970, and 1973. Israel’s self-interest in compelling the U.S. to protect it by having the latter switch to targeting Iran’s offensive missile capability striking its cities, was outweighed by the fact that Netanyahu was less certain of Trump’s deference to him or Israel, than any previous U.S. president he faced.

Trump’s equivalent treatment of Israel and Iran in his unilateral ceasefire announcement preserved Tehran’s dignity sufficient for it to comply and not lose face. Trump beat down Israeli triumphalism in as wise a fashion as George H.W. Bush’s termination of the 1991 Gulf War, which gave him the appearance of an arbiter rather than a close ally of Israel. The effectiveness of Israeli and U.S. bombing reminded Iran that it is a poorly governed developing country rather than an Islamic bulwark, in the traditional Western manner of demonstrating how easy it is to split a corrupt regime from the people it claims to be serving.

Iran abandoned their optimal escalation strategy of closing the Straits of Hormuz and the attritional missile bombardment of Israel, which could have lasted for several months, because Trump had successfully isolated both Moscow, and especially Beijing over their tariffs dispute. With the latter’s assistance, Tehran would have gradually improved its missile guidance technology, costing the U.S. dearly in missile interceptors for Israel and the Persian Gulf. Although Israel was ready to shift from industrial and regime facilities, to targets affecting the population, it was unclear which population would outlast the other. An extended campaign would have led to a purge of Iran’s incompetent IRGC, and supplanting by, and optimization of its military leadership. Iran actually underestimated the difficulty of a Western re-opening of the Straits of Hormuz, which is completely beyond the capabilities of even a combined European and Pacific Rim fleets, and would have taken six months to assemble and consolidate the landing of a U.S. amphibious force. However, without China, Tehran would have been unable to halt an eventual U.S. landing, and Beijing would have worried about the Straits in the hands of an unfriendly U.S.

Trump found the cost-effective saddle point between domestic, allied, neutral and adversarial points of tolerance and interest. By ending the conflict before Israel and Iran began to inflict and accumulate significant non-combatant losses, he solved their collective action problem of how to achieve war termination. By ending the conflict before Israel began making public threats of using nuclear weapons, and a public demonstration of the political utility of nuclear weapons, he preserved the global consensus against nuclear proliferation. The swiftness of Trump’s ceasefire also preserved the neutrality of nuclear-armed Pakistan, of Iran-friendly India, Turkey and Yemen, and prompted any reactions by much of the under-developed South, which has linked the Iran issue to Israel’s policies in Gaza.

Criticisms of Trump’s ceasefire before follow-on strikes on Fordow and more certain destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons assembly timeline, now an estimated delay of a few months, are unfounded because they miss the point of his strategy. The B-2 strikes were meant to demystify Iran’s capabilities, demonstrate the versatility of U.S. technology, and legitimize future U.S. bombardment, which is vital for enforcing the ceasefire on Iran. It is notable that Trump touted the ceasefire as between Israel and Iran, not the U.S. Had the U.S. airstrikes continued with the ephemeral and undefinable goal of completely destroying Iran’s proliferation capacity, rising marginal costs would have risen, chasing increasingly marginal, unconfirmed and likely decoyed targets, with an ever-increasing probability of an air defense formula leading to the loss of a stealth aircraft. Trump achieved the B-2 strike within the Constitutional rights of a President, and preserved the compellent power of the U.S. Air Force, with zero U.S. casualties.

As in the case of the neutralization and denuclearization of Iraq from 1991 to 1998, most of the effects of Trump’s strategy will be achieved after the ceasefire. Once established, Tehran will find it difficult to unilaterally breach the ceasefire because of opposition from its domestic population, which despite the bombast of Iranian victory demonstrations in the streets of Tehran, was a deep humiliation for the current theocratic regime. Iran’s allies, particularly Moscow and Beijing, are also likely to counsel restraint given the demonstrated incompetence of Tehran’s IRGC-dominated security apparatus, and because neither is positioned to provide the significant arms inflow required to re-establish Iran’s air defense network.

Washington’s strategy for “normalizing” Tehran’s revolutionary and emancipatory foreign policy, into the restrained and negotiable interests of an acknowledged regional power, depends on containment of Iran while creating the conditions for an entirely natural and domestic political liberalization. Trump is likely to defer and give full force to the human rights branches of international organizations, and to back them up with selective sanctioning of individuals, many of whom in the elite have family members in the West, particularly Canada. This attempt at an inconspicuous regime change will undoubtedly come under the contradictory pressure of ensuring that Iran does not resume nuclear research or manufacturing.

The U.S. is almost certain to back IAEA calls for a resumption of the monitoring regime to include the inspection of suspected dispersal sites, which Tehran will initially resist. With the strong backing of European (alienated because of Iranian arms used against Ukraine) and Pacific Rim allies, and the deference of Moscow and Beijing, the U.S. will demand the right to operate drones unmolested over Iran. Equipped with sniffers for fission decay products, electro-magnetic frequency detectors for centrifuge operations, and even devices attached for soil sampling, this will considerably circumvent the drama experienced by Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction inspectors in 1991 and 1992. Iran’s intimations of leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty will be used to characterize Tehran in the United Nations as seeking to promote instability, and will be the basis for neutralizing international support for the regime.

This will gradually evolve into regional or temporary No-Fly Zones and occasional and brief actions by the U.S. air assets against offending air defense sensors and launchers. By striking Fordow, Trump set a precedent of the prompt bombing of Iran without warning or providing Congressional or United Nations Security Council notice. This may be expanded to include inspection and tagging of Iran’s ballistic missile, anti-ship missile, and sea mine stocks, and submarine arsenal. Protocols with Beijing, Moscow, and Islamabad on limiting arms transfers to Iran are conceivable.

The success of these ordinance-specific regimes will increase in conjunction with a gradually liberalizing Iranian regime, whose principal political agents must be provided with sufficient positive incentives and advantages that these step-level arrangements become irreversible. The successful case of Iraq, notwithstanding all of the hand-wringing within the U.S. memory of that expensive campaign, demonstrates that stable democracy in the Middle East is an attainable and valuable goal. Very few Iraqis fantasize about a return to a Saddam Hussein-like strongman.

Dr. Julian Spencer-Churchill is associate professor of international relations at Concordia University, and author of Militarization and War (2007) and of Strategic Nuclear Sharing (2014). He has published extensively on Pakistan security issues and arms control and completed research contracts at the Office of Treaty Verification at the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, and the then Ballistic Missile Defense Office (BMDO). He has also conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Egypt, and Taiwan, and is a consultant. He is a former Operations Officer, 3 Field Engineer Regiment, from the latter end of the Cold War to shortly after 9/11. He is currently collaborating with the Combat Modelling group at the Trevor Dupuy Institute.

Buried in the 940-page “big, beautiful” budget blueprint is an unprecedented tax credit that, if approved, will be a long-sought victory for the private school choice movement in its drive to expand and break into Democratic states that for decades have blocked its path.

The tax credit program, which would provide scholarships to K-12 students to pay for private schooling, would mark a significant shift in federal education policy. The scholarships would be the first major federal initiative designed to propel the nationwide growth of private school choice, a largely conservative and Christian movement championed by President Trump and suburban Republicans alike. It comes just as the Trump administration dismantles large parts of the U.S. Department of Education that support public schools attended by the vast majority of 50 million students.

The private school choice movement, which started in 1990 to give families more options aligned with their values and children’s learning needs, remains a small piece of the education landscape. It supports about 1.2 million students in private and home schools in 35 states, primarily in the South and West. Advocates expect that the proposed federal program would jump-start a new round of expansion by providing scholarships to families to make private school more affordable.

Beyond boosting participation, the program is also a wedge to crack into states controlled by Democrats. These blue-state lawmakers, backed by teachers’ unions, have long resisted private school choice as a threat to public school enrollment. The granting of scholarships, advocates say, would plant a seed of interest among families in Democratic enclaves at a time when enrollment and academic performance have been steadily declining at public schools.

“In terms of the number of students served and the geographic scope, it would be the most important piece of school choice legislation ever,” said Patrick Wolf, a prominent scholar of the movement at the University of Arkansas. “Advocates hope it will provide a proof of concept in blue states and show that if a few thousand kids get scholarships the public school system won’t crater.”

But the potential of the scholarship program to meet the advocates’ goals has been weakened this week in the Senate. The program was included in the massive budget bill because, as a standalone measure, it wouldn’t survive a filibuster by Senate Democrats. The budget bill can be passed by a simple Senate majority, provided it only addresses fiscal matters.

The Senate parliamentarian, however, objected to the scholarship program, ruling, to the dismay of Republicans, that it seeks to impose a policy on the states. In response, Republicans had to amend the initiative to allow states to decide whether to participate, a change that could hamper the movement’s efforts to breach liberal jurisdictions.

Unprecedented Tax Credit

Teachers’ unions, Democrats, and rural Republicans have their own reasons for criticizing one of the most ambitious efforts by conservatives to change how American students are educated. The tax credit will incentivize individuals to make donations, capped at $1,700 a year, for scholarships by giving them a generous tax credit equal to the size of the contribution, a one-to-one payback that is unprecedented federal policy, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). While a $1,700 contribution to a hospital or veterans’ group will result in a $600 tax break at best, according to the budget bill, the same sized donation to support private school choice produces a $1,700 tax cut, says Carl Davis, ITEP research director.

“This is also unprecedented in how Congress is choosing to cherry pick one cause and privilege it over all others,” Davis said.

Making the scholarships available to almost everyone, including most well-off families, is also spurring criticism. At a time of heightened concern over the $36 trillion national debt, the tax credits would reduce federal revenue while giving some scholarships to students who don’t need help with private school tuition. In Washington D.C., for example, a family earning up to $464,000 would qualify, according to an Urban Institute report.

The private school choice movement originally targeted low-income urban kids stuck in bad public schools – Milwaukee was the first – drawing some liberal support. But advocates recently embraced universal programs for all, now operating in a dozen states, partly for strategic reasons. By bringing higher-income families into the fold, Professor Wolf says, the movement gains a more powerful constituency to fend off attempts to slash choice programs. What’s more, high-quality private schools that have shunned choice scholarship students might begin to admit them, including those from low-income families.

The program originated as a $10 billion annual tax credit to be shared among states in the standalone Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA), a significant sum considering that the biggest Department of Education K-12 program, Title I for disadvantaged students, costs $18 billion. A House committee reduced the cap to $5 billion before the Senate eliminated the cap altogether while also significantly lowering the maximum size of individual annual contributions to $1,700. The program would begin in 2027.

“We’re all disappointed that the bill is not as good as it was when it went into the committee,” said Jim Blew, co-founder of the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute and former assistant secretary in the Department of Education under Betsy DeVos. “If the Senate version is the final, it’s a big win for families that want to choose a better school for their children.”

A Blue State Workaround 

The tax credit is partly a workaround of the blue wall of opposition to private school choice. Some 15 mostly Democratic states have never passed or have overturned measures that use public funds to pay for students’ private education. The battles have been heated, with state teachers’ unions typically leading the resistance to protect public school funding. In Colorado, the state education association helped defeat a ballot measure last year that it feared would lead to the establishment of a voucher program. Voters in Nebraska shot down an existing voucher program in 2024. Illinois is the only state in which the legislature ended a private school choice program. In the big blue states of California and New York, choice advocates have made little headway.

If the federal program becomes law, however, some Democratic states may come under pressure to opt in, partly because it doesn’t draw on local tax dollars. It’s free money.

“Leaders of blue states would have to explain to their citizens why they rejected free federal education dollars, instead leaving all that money for red states,” said Wolf. “That’s a tough sell.”

Scholarship granting organizations (SGOs), which will collect donations and turn them into scholarships, are the lynchpin of the program. They will be given an extraordinary amount of freedom in how they operate. A Catholic, Evangelical Christian, Jewish or Muslim based organization can give awards only to Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Jews or Muslims, respectively. They can prefer richer families, or poorer families. Or conservative or progressive families, or urban or rural. They can also be neutral, handing out scholarships through a lottery.

The only significant rules governing scholarship granting organizations require them to verify that families receiving scholarships earn no more than 300% of the median income in their area, a relatively high limit that includes 90% of all U.S. households, according to the Urban Institute. The organizations also must ensure the scholarships are used only for qualified expenses, including tuition, curricular and instructional materials, tutoring, testing fees, and educational therapy.

Blew, the former DOE official who helped draft the original version of ECCA, says giving districts such leeway would empower the reformers to respond to local needs. “The freedom is a good thing. It allows them to design programs that make sense in their communities, rather than imposing a model on SGOs that won’t meet everyone’s needs,” Blew said.

The Senate, however, added a key restriction on the organizations that could affect who gets scholarships. The earlier House version allowed almost any group to create an SGO, an approach supported by advocates. But the Senate gave states the authority to approve of the entities that will hand out scholarships, opening the door to influential interest groups of all political stripes.

In anticipation of the proposal’s passage, religious groups are leading the charge to take advantage of the scholarships, which makes sense since they run three-quarters of the 30,000 private schools in the U.S. About half of the religious schools are Catholic, a denomination that has seen a sharp 13% enrollment decline in its schools in the last decade. This helps explain why Catholics are mobilizing to capture the scholarship money to benefit their students and schools.

In California, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the church’s public policy voice, is laying the groundwork to start one or more scholarship granting organization. The bishop’s top priority is to ensure they are “authentically” Catholic and carry out the church’s mission, which means scholarships will only go to Catholic students – with disadvantaged kids first in line – who attend a Catholic school, says Samara Palko, director of education at the conference. The scholarships could attract new students at a time of declining enrollment and closures in California, she says, and help Catholic schools bolster their tradition of high academic performance.

“What’s going to sustain our schools is our success in advancing educational excellence and this proposal could help with that,” said Palko, a former Catholic school principal.

As other religious groups follow suit, some leaders in the movement are raising concerns. By allowing SGOs to dictate where students go to school, the program could become little more than a private school subsidy that undermines the fundamental premise of school choice – namely that families should have flexibility in determining which schools their kids attend – according to a movement leader who asked not to be named in talking about this sensitive topic.

By comparison, in states with existing private school choice scholarships, families are in the driver’s seat, and this won’t change if the federal program becomes law. Students on state scholarships are free to attend any type of private school, and using the same funding, switch to an entirely different kind of school if things don’t work out. The funding travels with the student. Under the federal program, however, such freedom may not exist. If there isn’t a Jewish or neutral SGO in a state, for instance, then a Jewish student looking for a scholarship to go to a Jewish school may be out of luck.

“Many people in the movement think the tax credit is a really important piece of school choice legislation,” said the anonymous source. “Others fear it will become just a private school subsidy program.”

Scholarships for Wealthier Families 

Which families benefit the most from the federal scholarships is another point of contention. Although Catholics and other groups plan to prioritize low-income families in keeping with historical practices of the movement, wealthier students are now reaping most of the benefits in some state school choice programs.

Arizona is one of the states that recently enacted universal or near-universal choice programs, making scholarships available to all families. In a recent study that compared participation rates in the Arizona program with families’ socioeconomic status, researchers at the Brookings Instituion found a “clear trend:” As poverty rates rose in the groupings, participation dropped. The highest participation – 75 scholarship recipients per 1,000 children under the age of 18 – was in the group with the lowest poverty level. Inversely, the group with the highest poverty level had the lowest participation.

What’s less clear is how LGBTQ students, a mostly unprotected class, would fare in the federal program. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, applies to private schools that accept federal funds. While the Biden administration tried to extend Title IX to cover sexual orientation and gender identity, the Trump administration has rejected that interpretation.

Under either interpretation, religious schools have an escape hatch. They can simply declare themselves exempt from Title IX by saying it conflicts with their religious tenets, according to Department of Education policy. This suggests that religious schools that accept federal scholarships could legally turn away LGBTQ students.

“I worry that the proposal opens the door to many types of discrimination that we shouldn’t tolerate, especially from schools that receive federal support,” said Jon Valant, a senior fellow at Brookings and a co-author of the Arizona study. “LGBTQ students and kids of LGBTQ parents, for example, are at risk of being excluded simply because the schools that get scholarship funds might not want to include them.”

In Indiana, Chalkbeat said it found 27 private schools that suggested or declared outright that LGBTQ students weren’t welcome. In Arkansas, Cornerstone Christian Academy’s student handbook says that students who practice a “sexually immoral lifestyle” including “homosexuality, transgenderism, etc.” can’t attend. In Maine, Christian schools are now asking a court for an exemption from state law that requires them to accept all students, including LGBTQ students.

In Florida, a report in the Orlando Sentinel that 83 Christian schools refused to admit or could expel LGBTQ students set off a scandal in the state with the largest private school choice program in the country. Doug Tuthill of Step Up for Students, a nonprofit that administers the choice scholarships for Florida, was alarmed by the report of widespread discrimination and conducted his own investigation.

A supporter of LGBTQ rights, Tuthill visited more than 20 Christian schools around the state and found a more nuanced story. Although leaders of these schools consider homosexuality a sin, he says, their faith also requires them to welcome all types of sinners, as does the practical reality of having to fill seats. What really concerned them was the on-campus sexual activity of students of any orientation, a position that some of the schools publicly clarified. Other Christian schools in Florida, such as the Foundation Academy, are proud of their acceptance of LGBTQ students and say so on their websites.

“There were a few instances where parents who were activists in the gay rights movement were asked to leave a school because it was creating tension,” said Tuthill, the chief vision officer at Step Up. “But I saw little to no evidence that concerns me that kids are being discriminated against in Florida based on how they self-identify. What the schools care about is that students conform to the behavior that is expected of them.”

Critics of the movement have won many state battles over the years, and this one hinges on Republicans’ approval of the budget bill. Whether or not it reaches President Trump’s desk by July 4, as he demands, advocates are optimistic that at some point soon the tax credit program will be signed into law, opening a new chapter in the contentious story of private school choice.

Topline: A weekly allowance or a lemonade stand are great ways to teach young kids how to manage their money. A loan from the Small Business Administration is not.

Yet according to the Department of Government Efficiency, the SBA issued 5,593 loans in 2020 and 2021 worth $312 million to businesses whose listed owners were 11 years old or younger. Either America’s children have suddenly become expert entrepreneurs or, more likely, another round of fraud from the Covid-19 pandemic has been uncovered.

DOGE also claimed that the SBA gave 3,095 loans worth $333 million to borrowers who were listed as 115 years or older, bringing the total age-related fraud to $645 million.

Key facts: An SBA spokesperson confirmed to the fact-checking site Snopes that “According to our preliminary analysis, SBA can confirm that over 5,500 loans, totaling about $312M, were distributed to businesses whose only listed owner was 11 years old or younger at the time of the disbursement.”

The White House did not offer additional context to Snopes or FOX News, and it’s unclear how the loans were actually used. Isabel Casillas Guzman, the SBA administrator at the time when the loans were paid, also did not return Snopes’ request for comment.

Snopes noted that it’s possible the loans were paid to adult borrowers, but the recipients appear as children in the government database because of poor recordkeeping.

Either way, the mistake is serious. The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee recently claimed that at least $79 billion of fraud during the pandemic was “readily preventable,” but government officials were not verifying Social Security numbers before paying out loans.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Background: Though DOGE provided taxpayers with a great service by announcing the potential fraud publicly, full transparency would require the government to release records showing the loans so DOGE’s claims can be independently verified.

That’s a common theme with DOGE’s efforts to fight government waste. After DOGE announced it had cancelled 7 million active Social Security numbers for people 120 years or older, OpenTheBooks filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a list of Social Security disbursements by age group. The Social Security Administration claimed that no records exist.

OpenTheBooks also analyzed every program cancelled by DOGE as of May 27 and found that the average person can only verify the dollar figures for 42% of the contracts and 27% of the grants. That doesn’t necessarily mean DOGE’s dollar figures are mistaken, but it means that public sites like USAspending.gov that record government spending data are insufficient for full transparency because they do not update in real time.

Summary: Whether or not 11-year-olds actually received loans from the SBA, it’s clear that government recordkeeping and fraud prevention measures need a serious overhaul.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

A judge acquitted a Baltimore man on charges of first-degree assault after he attacked two elderly pro-life men over two years ago. He had previously been found guilty on several other second-degree assault charges.

Key Takeaways:

• In May of 2023, Patrick Brice attacked 84-year-old Mark Schaefer and 73-year-old Mark Crosby outside a Baltimore Planned Parenthood.
• Both men were injured, but Crosby particularly so, suffering a shattered eye socket and plate bone in his cheek, two fractured fingers, severe head trauma, and temporary blindness in one eye.
• Brice was arrested in 2024, and in February of 2025, was found guilty of two counts of second-degree assault and reckless endangerment. A jury failed to reach a verdict on another charge of first-degree felony assault, relating to the attack on Crosby, and acquitted the first-degree felony assault charge for the attack on Schaefer.
• Circuit Judge Yvette M. Bryant acquitted Brice on the first-degree felony assault charge, saying he might have been provoked and that there was no proof he intended to cause serious injury.

The Details:

The Baltimore Banner reported that Bryant acknowledged that Crosby suffered serious, permanent injury. Yet she also argued that his medical records somehow proved they weren’t too bad, saying he occasionally ignored directions from medical staff. She also criticized Crosby for his behavior on the witness stand, saying he was too argumentative with both prosecutors and defense attorneys, which therefore made him unreliable.

“This is sort of the experience today in testifying: ‘I’m in control,’” Bryant said. “He seems to be a person who’s at the ready.”

Considering it was Brice, and not Crosby, on trial, Bryant’s complaints seemed irrelevant to the issue at hand, and she appeared to be blaming the victim. After studying the surveillance footage, she said Crosby might not just have run to help Schaefer, but to intentionally join the fight.

She also said that while nothing justified Brice’s attack, she didn’t agree that it was unprovoked.

Assistant State’s Attorney Ashley Sudberry, however, argued otherwise. “It was intentional,” Sudberry said. “It was not justified. This is not about what the defendant thinks in hindsight.”

Brice’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Matthew Connell, tried to downplay the severity of what Brice did, describing it as “hasty and impulsive,” and attempted to justify it by saying that Brice “wasn’t thinking.”

The Backstory:

When the attack took place, Schaefer and Crosby were praying outside the Planned Parenthood facility. Brice, allegedly an escort for Planned Parenthood, attacked them.

According to one witness, the attack was unprovoked.

“He didn’t like their opinion or what was being said. The gentleman just took it into his own hands,” one witness said. “He speared the one gentleman over that flowerpot into the window and knocked him out. He was out cold for several minutes.”

According to one pro-life advocate who was present on the scene, John Roswell, Brice even told one of the other escorts to hold his drink before attacking the men.

Brice first went after Schaefer, knocking him to the ground. Surveillance footage did not capture any audio, but it can clearly be seen that Schaefer made no move in Brice’s direction before he was attacked.

That footage was later released by the Baltimore Police Department in an effort to identify the assailant, later revealed to be Brice.

71 years of Democrat leadership in Baltimore, Maryland is precisely why this monster was let out without bail. Their policies agree with what he did to two elderly men.

This monster is 29 year old Patrick Brice. He brutally attacks 2 elderly men praying outside of a Planned… pic.twitter.com/9aLxgf3jwE

— Just Jen R (@JustJenRX) June 29, 2025

After Schaefer is thrown to the ground in the video, Crosby is seen running in Brice’s direction. Again, while there is no audio, his arms are not raised and he does not appear to attempt to strike Brice at any time.

Brice, however, knocks Crosby to the ground, punches him, and — as Crosby is lying motionless on sidewalk — kicks him in the face.

Brice will be sentenced in August, but in the meantime, remains free on his own recognizance.

The Bottom Line:

Despite being the victim of a horrific crime, Crosby being treated as if he could have somehow done something to deserve the appalling attack. “He should be in jail right now,” Crosby previously said. “It’s just truly amazing: I feel like I’m the criminal.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings warned Elon Musk on Sunday that his newly launched third party could divide the right and help Democrats win.

Musk posted on X Saturday that he had just created the “America Party,” asserting it would restore “freedom” to Americans. Jennings said on “State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash” that the effort could backfire by splitting conservatives and Republicans who otherwise share core goals.

WATCH:

“It’s harder than it looks to start a political party. And, you know, we’ll see where they go with it. My humble advice to Elon, who I admire very much, actually, is that you may be dividing the forces of people who want to save Western civilization to the benefit of the people who don’t,” Jennings said. “And so, to the extent that this effort would divide conservatives and Republicans against each other, that wouldn’t be helpful, because it would leave the country to people who want unfettered immigration, who don’t share your fiscal views, and so on and so forth.”

“So, we’ll see where it goes. I sort of hope everybody puts the band back together the way they had it back in 2024, because when everybody was working together, things worked quite well,” he added.

Musk began to repeatedly float the idea of creating the “America Party” to cater to disaffected fiscal conservatives and libertarians after becoming frustrated by Republican lawmakers’ support for President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill — which the president signed into law on Friday.

However, political experts said that Musk’s billions would be better spent buying him influence within the GOP’s existing party structure instead of challenging America’s entrenched two-party duopoly.

“Third parties are like honeybees — they sting and then they die,” Georgetown political historian Michael Kazin told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Musk posted a poll to X on Friday asking whether Americans “want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system” by forming “the America Party.”

Nearly two-thirds of X users voted in support of the new party, while slightly over one third voted against it, leading him to announce the formation of the “America Party” the following day.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The war over what America First means will soon move to a new theater: a battle over the fate of the Office of Director of National Intelligence.

Overseeing all 18 of the U.S. intelligence agencies, the office was created in the wake of 9/11 to serve as a sort of orchestra conductor for the intelligence community, integrating operations and mediating feuds between shadowy three-letter agencies. Intended to be a small coordinating office, the ODNI has become sprawling and bureaucratic in the decades since. Republicans now broadly agree that it must be reformed.

At issue though is how the agency will change, and perhaps more importantly, who will accrue more power as a result. It is a fraught question for a GOP already suspicious of “weaponized” intel agencies.

Two MAGA heavyweights will shape the outcome.

Tulsi Gabbard, a skeptic of foreign intervention and President Trump’s current director of national intelligence, has already cut the ODNI workforce by 25% and finalized plans for additional reforms. Sources familiar with that effort tell RealClearPolitics that Gabbard is moving quickly but methodically not only to change the agency but to “set the example for all IC elements to emulate.”

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, the hawkish chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced legislation last week to shrink the size of the agency. The ODNI workforce would be capped at just 650 employees. Certain responsibilities would also be transferred, in coordination with the director, to other intel agencies. Notably this includes the ODNI center focused on counterproliferation and biosecurity, which would be subsumed by the CIA. The end goal: “A lean organization,” Cotton said in a statement announcing the bill, “not the overstaffed and bureaucratic behemoth that it is today, where coordinators coordinate with other coordinators.”

And so, the latest MAGA turf war – this one over the size and scope of the intelligence agencies – begins.

“They don’t want to reform the ODNI the way that Tulsi Gabbard and President Trump want to reform it,” said one senior intelligence official who complained that the Cotton bill would “just give the CIA more power.”

“This long predates Tulsi Gabbard being DNI. [Cotton] has been on the committee for 10 years now. It is a long time coming,” countered a Senate aide. The timing of the legislation has nothing to do with current leadership, the aide told RealClearPolitics. Cotton is preparing for the coming debate over the Intelligence Authorization Act, the aide added, and preparing to keep a public pledge.

During Gabbard’s confirmation hearing, Cotton noted in committee that the ODNI is now larger than many of the agencies it was established to manage and has staff in the thousands. Said the chairman, “I promise that is going to change.” For her part, the director vowed in that same hearing to cut out “redundancies and bloating.”

Asked where the president stands on the question, a White House official told RCP that Trump’s relationship with both Gabbard and the intelligence community “remains strong” before adding that “there are no plans to merge ODNI with CIA or have CIA take over ODNI.”

The official said that the president continues to meet regularly with his national security team, “which includes the ODNI,” adding also that “reports that seem to suggest there is a rift between ODNI and POTUS have no basis to it and are just turning things into something it is not.”

All of it is the latest in an ongoing experiment. The agency is comparatively new. It was established in 2004 after a sprawling intelligence community failed to prevent the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Petty rivalries between three letter agencies, particularly between the CIA and FBI, had hampered intelligence sharing.

“There was some resentment throughout the intelligence community but more broadly, throughout Washington, DC, that the CIA had blown it on WMDs in Iraq and had blown it on 9/11 to a large degree, and therefore, didn’t warrant being the great leader of the intelligence community,” said Loch Johnson, professor at the University of Georgia whom the New York Times once dubbed “the dean of American Intelligence Scholars.”

A director was needed to oversee and integrate all the intelligence agencies, Johnson said, recalling the debate at that time. “And that made some sense,” he told RCP, “except for one problem: The office was never given the tools that it needed to get the integration job done.” Without the authority to hire and fire or oversee budgets, he concluded, the agency often struggles to wrangle a vast intelligence apparatus.

“Prior DNIs were the head of the IC only on paper and were routinely accustomed to yielding IC actions and decisions to the preferences of the CIA and other agencies,” John Ratcliffe said of the office he led during Trump’s first term, during an interview for the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

The responsibility of reforming the ODNI now falls to Gabbard. When Elon Musk was marching through the administration in search of waste, fraud, and abuse, she was cutting staff and eliminating entire departments at the ODNI, such as the Intelligence Community Human Capital office which she dismissed as a “slush fund” for diversity, equity, and inclusion. “Find another agency who has reduced 25% of their workforce in less than 5 months,” the intel official bristled.

Gabbard will soon release her plan to overhaul the office further. The topline of that reorganization, RealClearPolitics is first to report, includes manpower, money, process, and structure.

The revamp comes amidst a quiet debate on the right. Some have advocated elevating the ODNI as a counterweight to the CIA, which conservatives complain has become too political. Others insist that both are bloated and ripe for reductions. For his part, Ratcliffe concluded that during his tenure, he was only able to “begin reversing that capitulation” of the office “because President Trump made it repeatedly clear to the entire national security apparatus that he expected all intelligence matters to go through the DNI.”

Ratcliffe now serves as CIA director. Gabbard, meanwhile, has appeared embattled and out of step with the president.

Trump seemed to disregard analysis from Gabbard last month: “I don’t care what she said,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One when asked about her March assessment that Iran had not restarted its nuclear program. (Less noticed in the press, however, was her testimony that Iranian “enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”)

This rebuke came after the president was reportedly left fuming at an unauthorized video she posted to social media when the White House was still considering whether to strike Iranian nuclear facilities; Gabbard warned in the three-minute video that nameless “warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tension between nuclear powers.”

Gabbard was not present during a huddle Trump held at Camp David with his national security team, a fact that led allies and critics alike to speculate that she had been sidelined because of her anti-interventionist views. A senior intel official later told RCP that she had not been snubbed; Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, was instead away training in Oklahoma.

The administration has dismissed the idea that there are any rifts among the president’s national security team. Steven Cheung, White House communications director, told RCP last month that assertions otherwise were simply “efforts by the legacy media to sow internal division.”

And when the headlines implied that Gabbard seemed like she was in the barrel, Vice President JD Vance told RCP, unprompted, that that the opposite was true. “She’s an essential member of our national security team,” Vance said of Gabbard, who shares his skepticism of foreign wars, “and we’re grateful for her tireless work to keep America safe from foreign threats.”

Gabbard, a former Democrat who represented Hawaii in Congress for four terms, would normally have been an unorthodox pick to be the top intelligence official in a Republican administration. But she shares Trump’s rejection of “forever wars” and skepticism of intel agencies. Those characteristics seemed to make her straight out of central casting for a non-interventionist president eager to realign the right on foreign policy. They have also invited controversy.

Citing “the sheer volume of unrelenting attacks against her,” a senior administration official told RCP that “You can tell Tulsi touched the third rail.” This was not unexpected, they said, adding, “Of course, the deep state was going to fight back against being reduced and their power being decentralized.”

A doctor in Seoul, South Korea, has been arrested and charged with murder after a baby was allegedly born alive and left to die following a botched late abortion.

Key Takeaways:

• A Korean abortionist has been charged with murder after committing a botched abortion on a woman who was 36 weeks pregnant.
• Though the country has decriminalized abortion, there are few laws regulating what is currently allowed.
• Though the outrage at the infanticide is appropriate, all abortions should also be condemned.

The Details:

According to the Korea Times, both the abortionist, Shim, and the facility owner, Yoon, have been arrested and charged after leaving the baby to die after it was born alive following an abortion. An investigation into the incident found that the baby was alive both “before and after” the abortion procedure. The mother was reportedly 36 weeks pregnant, which means the child would have been fully developed and likely able to survive had he received proper treatment and care.

Investigators also learned that “hundreds” of other abortions had taken place at the facility.

Abortion in South Korea remains a legal gray area; though the Constitutional Court ruled in 2019 that the country’s abortion prohibition was unconstitutional, since that time there have been no clear laws or regulations surrounding abortion, which means it is considered legal up to the point of birth. In this instance, it was the act of infanticide — leaving the child born alive to then die — which led to the murder charge.

The Korea Medical Association, the country’s largest group of physicians, condemned the incident, noting “a fetus at 36 weeks of pregnancy is a baby who could survive well if born, and terminating a pregnancy at this stage is tantamount to murder.”

The Bottom Line:

Many are outraged — and rightly so — that a baby born at 36 weeks could be callously left to die. But that same outrage should be extended to every child who is killed by abortion. A preborn baby’s worth is not gained through age, development, or location in or out of the womb. Instead, that worth and dignity are inherent from the very moment of conception.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) uncovered widespread instances of unaccompanied migrant children placed with unvetted sponsors with criminal backgrounds during the Biden administration, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Children who had no parents or legal guardians that were handed over to unvetted sponsors suffered from sexual abuse, forced labor, and neglectful living conditions, ICE stated in a press release in June. The findings stem from a months-long investigation by the agency to ensure the children were safe.

“In February 2025, the Department of Homeland Security and its federal and state partners launched a national child welfare initiative to locate and verify these at-risk kids’ safety,” according to the DHS announcement.

Agents found numerous instances where sponsors had previously been charged with serious crimes such as “hit-and-run, aggravated assault, larceny, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, prostitution and even attempted murder,” according to the release.

In some of the most extreme cases, girls were found to be “pregnant with children fathered by their alleged sponsors,” with some minor being forced into labor, the release stated. Some sponsors also had images of child sex abuse material.

ICE and DHS did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Children’s safety and security is nonnegotiable. The previous administration’s failure to implement meaningful safeguards has allowed vulnerable kids to fall into the hands of criminals. Our special agents are working tirelessly to locate these alien children, ensure their protection, and hold accountable those who have abused the system,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson Laszlo Baksay said in a prepared statement.

ICE agents are “doing what should’ve been done all along: protecting children,” Baksay continued, adding that this “is the responsibility of any government, Republican or Democrat, but it was the Trump administration that insisted on rigorous sponsor screening and biometric verification.”

Currently under the Trump administration, zero illegal immigrants were released from the southern border into the U.S. in May. Activity along the U.S.-Mexico has fallen to historic lows, with only 6,070 encounters being documented in June 2025.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The Supreme Court should resolve the “chaos” caused by lower court judges continuing to order reinstatements of fired executive officials, the Trump administration argued in a Wednesday filing.

President Donald Trump asked the justices to immediately let him fire three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and to finally resolve questions surrounding the president’s ability to remove officials without cause by adding the case to their fall docket.

“The ongoing dysfunction at the agency has put career employees in the untenable position of deciding which Commissioners’ directives to follow, has distracted the agency from its mission of protecting consumer safety, and has done serious harm to the President’s policy agenda,” the application explains. “Put simply, the district court’s decision and the court of appeals’ refusal to stay it have left the CPSC at loggerheads with the President and with itself.”

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision on Tuesday preventing the president from removing the three CPSC members.

Two days after the district court ordered the members’ reinstatement, the officials “annulled a host of agency decisions,” the application notes.

The lower court’s decision also challenges the Supreme Court’s authority, the administration argues, noting the justices’ allowed them to move forward with firing officials in a similar case in May.

In Trump v. Wilcox, the Supreme Court granted Trump’s emergency request to dismiss National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) members, finding the government “faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.”

While the Trump v. Wilcox decision “did not definitively resolve the merits,” it is still “binding precedent,” the administration said.

“This Court should step in to stop lower courts from treating Wilcox like the proverbial excursion ticket—good for one day and trip only,” the administration argued.

District court judges also blocked removals of Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) and the United States Institute of Peace officials after the Wilcox decision, though their orders were paused by the D.C. Circuit Court of appeals.

“Those decisions have subjected the President to ongoing intrusions on his exercise of executive power, have exposed agencies to the disruption of repeated removals and reinstatements, and have required federal courts to continue to resolve emergency applications concerning the removal of executive officer,” the administration wrote. “This Court should grant certiorari before judgment now, hear argument in the fall, and put a speedy end to the disruption being caused by uncertainty about the scope of Humphrey’s Executor.“

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Liberal commentators are pushing to make the Democratic Party the pro-pornography party, citing free speech and the party’s liberal sexual history.

Elie Mystal published an article in The Nation Wednesday titled “Democrats Should Become the Pro-Porn Party,” claiming the tactic could help his party regain the younger male electorate and asserts his belief that porn is not, and should not be, taboo. Trump overwhelmingly won the support of men under 50 in 2024, prompting Democrats to launch a massive campaign to regain their vote that’s been far from convincing.

“Now, to be clear, pornography is viewed and enjoyed by all sorts of people, male and female, gay and straight, trans and cis,” Mystal wrote. “Indeed, one of the highest, best uses of porn (I can’t believe I just wrote that) is that it helps young people figure out what they’re actually into. Sex-positive porn enjoyers are not a political demographic the Democrats generally have a problem with.”

Porn, especially digital porn, has made its way on to the screens of young children, with the average age of exposure now dropping to 8 years old, according to the Daily Caller.

Journalist Taylor Lorenz, known for revealing the identity of the conservative Twitter account Libs of TikTok and allegedly doxxing other users before Elon Musk bought Twitter, applauded Mystal’s stance in an X post on Wednesday.

YES PLEASE!!!!!!! I’m screaming to the void about this. So grateful for your piece

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) July 2, 2025

Mystal argued that pornography is a First Amendment issue, and an issue Republicans push to restrict.

“That’s because pornography is an actual free speech issue,” Mystal wrote. “So is smut. So is obscenity. These are forms of free speech that conservatives and Republicans in the government are constantly trying to regulate… Liberals are the people who are supposed to be at the vanguard of free expression when it comes to sexy time.”

Mystal has appeared on shows such as “The View,” “Breakfast Club” and “Morning Joe.” His views span from “eliminating” all voter registration laws to claiming the United States was an “apartheid country” before the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed.

Democrats are working overtime to regain the ground they’ve lost with young men, even going as far as paying $20 million to conduct a study to understand their plummeting popularity among the demographic. They also enlisted the help of liberal female Gen Z influencers, including a “plus size, queer Mexican woman,” to save young men from voting for Republicans.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

In a time when Americans face mounting student debt, stagnant wages and increasing job competition, a little-known government program continues to certify hundreds of thousands of permanent jobs for foreign workers, even when qualified U.S. citizens are available, willing and able.

The labor certification process known as “PERM” (Program Electronic Review Management) allows employers to sponsor foreign nationals for green cards only if no qualified U.S. worker is available. According to federal law, employers must first complete a good-faith test of the U.S. labor market, which includes specific recruitment steps such as two Sunday newspaper ads, internal postings and three additional recruitment methods from a Department of Labor-approved list.

But in practice, employers can exploit the outdated list of approved recruitment methods by avoiding major online platforms and even their own company career sites. Instead, they often use limited-access alternatives such as obscure job boards, local or ethnic newspapers, or short-duration radio ads that technically satisfy the rules on paper, but drastically reduce the chances that qualified U.S. workers will ever see or apply for the position.

In 2024, the Department of Labor processed 116,427 PERM applications to hire foreign workers, approving nearly 88% of them. Only 5.4% (6,364) were denied. This means tens of thousands of U.S. jobs were certified for foreign workers without a transparent or fair recruitment process. The Department of Labor publishes quarterly data on employer applications to sponsor foreign workers, including both H-1B and PERM filings, which offers insight into the hiring and immigration practices of U.S. employers and their immigration attorneys.

An analysis of PERM filings from 2020 to 2024 reveals how major U.S. technology companies use the green card sponsorship process to secure foreign labor for high-paying roles, often without conducting genuine or competitive hiring searches. The data show consistent reliance on minimal recruitment efforts, including outdated tactics like requiring U.S. applicants to submit paper resumes by mail.

These methods, previously flagged by the Department of Justice as barriers to American workers, were often used even by large tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Workday.

For example, PERM-required job ads published in the May 9, 2021, print edition of the Mercury News instructed jobseekers to apply via postal mail, despite the fact that these companies already had digital hiring systems in place.

Similar tactics triggered a high-profile federal investigation involving Facebook – now Meta. In 2021, the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor reached a settlement with Facebook after alleging it had intentionally implemented PERM recruitment in a way to deter U.S. applicants. According to the complaint, Facebook did not post PERM roles on its public careers page and it required submission of resumes by physical mail, methods the DOJ concluded discouraged American workers from applying:

“Facebook created a separate hiring process for PERM positions that intentionally discouraged U.S. workers from applying. For example, while Facebook typically accepts applications online, it required that applications for PERM positions be submitted by mail only.”

“Facebook used recruitment methods for PERM positions that were less effective than those it used for other positions, intentionally deterring U.S. workers from applying to positions that the company sought to fill with temporary visa holders.”

As part of its settlement, Facebook was required to change its PERM practices, posting jobs on its public website, accepting electronic applications and using the same hiring processes for PERM roles as for other jobs. The company also agreed to federal oversight, employee training and regular reporting on its hiring activity.

Since then, industry reports on the platform Blind show that Meta has seen a rise in PERM denials, suggesting that when forced to conduct fair recruitment, companies do in fact encounter qualified American candidates.

The evidence is overwhelming that companies like Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Google and others, despite consistently lobbying for more foreign-worker visas on the basis of a so-called “talent shortage,” are fully capable of finding qualified Americans when they are actually required to recruit them.

Indeed, when employers go to such lengths to avoid recruiting qualified U.S. workers, even under a program like PERM that explicitly requires a good-faith labor market test, their own actions contradict claims of a shortage. The evidence suggests it is not that they can’t find qualified Americans, it’s that they are deliberately avoiding them.

If this is happening in a program like PERM, which includes at least some legal safeguards and penalties, the risks are far greater under programs like H-1B and STEM OPT, which contain no such protections for U.S. workers. Without enforcement or accountability, these visa channels allow companies to bypass the domestic workforce entirely, undermining both the integrity of the labor market and the future of American employment.

As Texans continue to deal with Saturday’s flash flooding that has claimed dozens of lives, the lieutenant governor of the Lone Star State is urging citizens not to give up hope for those missing.

“Do not give up,” said Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on “Fox & Friends Weekend.” “Miracles can happen.”

The death toll Sunday morning rose to 59, with 27 girls missing from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along the banks of the Guadalupe River in Hunt, Texas.

Five girls staying at the camp have been confirmed dead. There were 750 attendees when floodwaters rose 26 feet in abut 45 minutes, slamming into the camp.

“The miracles that have happened,” Patrick continued, “it’s hard for me to talk about that because I’m also taking to the families of those who are missing. And right now they’re focused on that. Miracles are tough. They expect and they hope and they pray. We stand on the rock of our faith through now.”

“But there have been dramatic stories … Camp Mystic where camp counselors smashed a window open, we know this story from the girl who was telling her parents because they drove her back to Dallas.

“And they went out the window in their nightgowns. They walked in bare feet in neck-high water. These are little girls. They swam for about 10 or 15 minutes. Can you imagine? In the darkness and the rushing waters, and trees coming by you and rocks coming by you? And then they get to a spot on the land. They don’t even know how they got to the next spot. And the helicopter came picked them up.

“Incredible stories of a young man saved his fiancée and her children and his mother. But he cut his arm through the glass that he broke. And we don’t know what happened to him. But he said to the family, ‘I can’t go on. You have to go.’ We’re are gonna have a book of stories of incredible heroic actions.”

JUST NOW: Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick talks about the miracles currently happening in Kerr County, TX where search and rescue personnel are still actively looking for 27 missing people, many of which are children. 50+ now dead.

“Don’t give up..miracles can happen!” pic.twitter.com/x2gXAKwbk9

— Fire Newz (@FireNewz) July 6, 2025

Patrick noted, “Of all of these camps along this river, Camp Mystic was in the worst spot where the water came and hit it [from] multiple directions coming down. And that’s where the 27 are missing.”

He also praised the efforts of those involved in search and rescue, saying, “They will not give up. They will keep working beyond their shift.”

This video of the Guadalupe was shot in Kerrville, Tx from the Center Bridge. Watch how fast these flood waters were traveling & washing everything in front of it out.
It goes from low & barley flowing to over the top of the bridge in around 35 minutes.
I sped the video up to… pic.twitter.com/NcQe4UAQBa

— Clyp Keeper (@DGrayTexas45) July 6, 2025

In a post on X, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott detailed the destruction of Camp Mystic, saying: “It, and the river running beside it, were horrendously ravaged in ways unlike I’ve seen in any natural disaster.”

“The height the rushing water reached to the top of cabins was shocking.”

“We won’t stop until we find every girl who was in those cabins,” Abbott stressed.

President Donald Trump on Sunday said on Truth Social: “I just signed a Major Disaster Declaration for Kerr County, Texas, to ensure that our Brave First Responders immediately have the resources they need.

“These families are enduring an unimaginable tragedy, with many lives lost, and many still missing. The Trump Administration continues to work closely with State and Local Leaders.

“Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was on the ground yesterday with Governor Greg Abbott, who is working hard to help the people of his Great State. Our incredible U.S. Coast Guard, together with State First Responders, have saved more than 850 lives. GOD BLESS THE FAMILIES, AND GOD BLESS TEXAS!”

LORD, HEAR OUR PRAYERS#TexasFlood pic.twitter.com/hOG1L7umdr

— USMarine4Life (@WarVeteranUSMC) July 5, 2025

Trump has agreed to send “all available resources” to Texas in the wake of the flooding.

“The president’s been engaged since everything started happening,” James Blair, White House deputy chief of staff, said on “Fox & Friends Weekend.”

“The federal government led by President Trump is there for the state of Texas,” Blair said. “He has agreed to send all available resources that are requested down to Texas.”

Here in Kerville, Texas on the banks of the Guadalupe River after the devastating flood that hit yesterday. @GoingRoguewLara #HillCountryFloods #PrayForTexas pic.twitter.com/GeuEqN6dRk

— Lara Logan (@laralogan) July 6, 2025

Is the news we hear every day actually broadcasting messages from God? The answer is an absolute yes! Find out how!

Follow Joe on X @JoeKovacsNews

Democrat policies and new regulations hiked California’s gas prices on Tuesday, and a slew of green energy initiatives has led to refinery closures and lofty gas prices in the Golden State that may soon spiral into a full-blown crisis.

California is teetering on the brink of a gas crisis due primarily to Democrats’ green energy policies, as multiple major refineries prepare to shutter in the coming years and more stringent regulations on the oil and gas industries take effect. Democratic leadership and regulators enacted adjustments to California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program on Tuesday, resulting in a gas price increase that may be the beginning of further pain at the pump for the state’s consumers.

“Not every Californian is a millionaire like our governor is … and these regulations are bearing down on the average Californian and making California unaffordable,” Republican California Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “I’m addressing the cost of gasoline in California and trying to do everything I can to repeal the regulations that are causing it to go up, while at the same time alerting Californians of the impending cost of gasoline.”

I just filed a public records request to expose how Newsom’s deceptive 65-cent gas price hike was crafted in secret.

We believe the real goal is to jack up gas prices so high that Californians are forced to buy EVs.

The public deserves the truth. #FixCalifornia pic.twitter.com/UVpzs1Qt7k

— Brian W. Jones (@SenBrianJones) May 21, 2025

California has the highest tax on gasoline in the nation, and its cap-and-trade program for emissions has also been connected to high energy prices in the state. The combination of these stringent regulations and the forthcoming closures of the Phillips 66 and Valero refineries in the state could result in gas shooting up to $8 per gallon as soon as 2026, according to one study from the University of Southern California.

Moreover, state regulators have suggested increasing state involvement in refinery management, including the possibility of what critics have derided as state-owned refineries to address the possible surge in gas prices.

Though gas prices have been hitting a four-year low across the U.S. ahead of Independence Day, Californians paid an average of about $4.57 per gallon as of Thursday, about $1.40 more than the national average, according to AAA gas price data. Prices increased in California by a few cents on Tuesday as adjustments to the state’s LCFS came into effect.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom set a goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2045, and he has fought to enact numerous green energy initiatives in his state, including an aggressive electric vehicle (EV) agenda.

California regulators planned to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles in the state and numerous others by 2035 before President Donald Trump signed Congressional resolutions to block the de facto EV mandate. California and ten other Democrat-led states immediately sued the Trump administration after the president terminated the Golden State’s de facto national EV mandate.

“The founding fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they ever thought the government would be in the business of dictating the type of transportation that Americans can choose,” Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) told the DCNF previously about California’s EV mandate. “The public is behind President Trump and the effort to preserve our ability to choose the types of cars that best suit our needs as consumers.”

Jones suspects the possible gas crisis is part of a broader effort by some Democrats to steer consumers to ditch conventional cars, noting that his office filled out a records request for emails between Newsom’s administration and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

“The goal here is to show by their communications that they are purposefully trying to drive up the price of gasoline so that people are forced into EVs, public transportation or bicycles,” Jones told the DCNF.

The records request Jones filed has gone unanswered, the lawmaker told the DCNF, who noted that he has demanded an audit on the LCFS to find out if CARB comprehensively estimated the policy’s economic impacts or “concealed or downplayed costs.” CARB and Newsom’s office did not confirm to the DCNF whether or not they responded to the records request, though Newsom’s office referred the DCNF to several press releases that address some of Jones’ claims and noted that gas prices in the state are at a three-year low for July.

CARB initially cited estimates that the amendments to the LCFS could spike gas prices by 47 cents per gallon in 2024, according to multiple reports. The agency later walked back that projection in June, citing estimations that prices may only experience a per gallon hike of only five or six cents.

Newsom’s office also recently released a statement referencing a gasoline cost increase projection of eight cents per gallon. Jones described this shift in estimates as a “defensive scramble,” and cited a different estimate forecasting that the regulation shift could spike gasoline prices by as much as 65 cents per gallon in the near term.

Jones argued that if California Democrats plan to drive up fuel costs to force consumers to adopt EVs or ditch gasoline vehicles, it would be impossible to implement anyways. The state’s electrical grid is increasingly reliant on green energy technology, and “wind and solar is not going to cut it here in California,” Jones said. Building more EV infrastructure and charging the EVs would take power the state does not have, Jones argued.

“I’m focused on raising awareness and holding Governor Newsom, legislative Democrats, and unelected bureaucrats accountable for these costly and ineffective policies,” Jones said, railing against “unelected” regulators that have implemented strict energy policies that may necessitate a net-zero transition. “They’re out of control.”

Notably, California imports mass amounts of oil despite being “a very oil rich state,” Jones said. “We have plenty of oil in the ground, we just need to extract it,” he continued.

Citing the over 40,000 signatures on his petition to repeal the recent regulation change, Jones argued that he is witnessing an ideological shift in California.

“After Republicans and the media exposed the truth, Californians were outraged … [and they] are waking up. They’re starting to see that the reason for sky-high gas prices is irresponsible policies pushed by the majority party,” Jones said, referencing Newsom’s policies that seem to be driving up gas prices for the sake of “arbitrary climate targets.”

CARB did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

According to the Associated Press, at least 32 people are dead, including 14 Christian children attending a summer camp.

“Rescuers scoured flooded riverbanks littered with mangled trees Saturday and turned over rocks in the search for more than two dozen children from a girls’ camp and many others missing after a wall of water blasted down a river in the Texas Hill Country. The storm killed at least 32 people, including 14 children,” the AP reported.

Since Thursday, reports of up to 15 inches of rain have fallen in Kerr County, Texas.

Timelapse flooding of the Llano River on July 4th pic.twitter.com/59Tnn6NZG7

— Rob Dew (@DewsNewz) July 5, 2025

Some children who were at Camp Mystic have gone missing and are still unaccounted for.

Camp Mystic is an all-girls Christian summer camp.

Rescue efforts were underway on Friday.

HEROS rescuing children in the #GuadalupeRiver floods…
Praying HARD they find and rescue all the missing children, as many camp cabins were washed away. #CampMystic #KerrCounty #Floods pic.twitter.com/DSmpsyOTLx

— Muhammad Arshad (@arshadtx) July 4, 2025

Leftists celebrated the dead Christian children because they lived in a state that voted for President Trump.

“The people in Texas voted for government services controlled by Donald Trump and Greg Abbott. That is exactly what they getting,” one leftist said.

“Texas deserves every flood god has spoken and it hates Texas,” another said while laughing at the dead Christian children.

“Cry harder. Texas deserves it,” a leftist said.

BREAKING – Democrats are now celebrating the tragic flash flooding in Kerr County, Texas, that claimed the lives of several innocent children, saying the state “deserves what they’re getting.” pic.twitter.com/OR045OPttz

— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) July 5, 2025

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said more than 850 people have been rescued from the floods.

BREAKING: @GregAbbott_TX revealed that they have RESCUED over 850 people!

Praying that they are all found! pic.twitter.com/isdRMBBGWu

— Gunther Eagleman (@GuntherEagleman) July 5, 2025

[Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit.com]

I’ve had an epiphany. President Donald Trump always aims for the stars. We need to do more than just defeat Zohran Mamdani, the New York City Democrat mayoral candidate.

President Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the DOJ need to start the process to DEPORT HIM.

I’ve studied the topic of “denaturalization.” This is when the U.S. government revokes the citizenship of immigrants (naturalized citizens) who lied to enter our country.

It can be done. We can deport Zohran Mamdani. It’s time to start the process.

Say it with me, “DEPORT MAMDANI!”

It’s been done many times in the past. “Denaturalization” happens when an immigrant who has been naturalized (i.e., become a citizen) is proven to have lied during his or her citizenship process, or hid criminal convictions, or didn’t disclose membership in a communist or terrorist organization.

Mamdani was born in Uganda. He came to America at age 7. He was naturalized and became a citizen in 2018.

I have no “inside info.” These are only my opinions and gut instincts, but I guarantee you Mamdani:

A) Lied during his citizenship about his true views about America.

B) Is a communist out to destroy America and all the things that make us great.

C) Is a racist who hates white Americans.

D) Is a Jew-hater who promotes hate speech.

E) Is a supporter of a terrorist organization – Hamas.

That’s five different and substantial grounds to denaturalize and deport Mamdani out of this country.

Now maybe Trump has a different agenda. Maybe he wants Mamdani to win the NYC mayor’s race. After all, this guy is a gift from Heaven for the GOP. His views are so radical, and offensive, and frightening to the average normal American, his election as mayor of NYC could very well propel the GOP to not only a 2026 congressional midterm victory but another GOP presidential landslide in 2028.

In other words, when Americans see how crazy this Jew-hating, pro-Hamas communist is, they will run for the exits. And that could be the fuel to fire up the GOP base and add millions of new voters to our side.

That’s one way of looking at this situation.

Then there’s this scenario. This guy is dangerous. He is here for one reason – to destroy our country, capitalism and everything we hold dear. And once he wins for mayor of the largest city in America, there is no way to know if his crazy, radical, extreme brand of communism, covered up by a big smile and a friendly personality, can lead to much bigger things.

See Barack Hussein Obama.

I’m a believer in never letting a fire get started in the first place. After all, one spark from a homeless person’s campfire, or from a bitter illegal alien, or from an intentional arsonist, led to the great Pacific Palisades, California, fire of last January – burning thousands of homes to the ground. You never know where a spark will lead.

Here’s a guy who believes in very dangerous, un-American things, including:

Outright communism – he actually publicly supports “seizing the means of production” (i.e., government stealing your business, property and assets).

Taxing white people more than black or brown people. He said this publicly.

Global intifada – meaning Muslim domination of the world and our country, and Shariah law replacing the U.S. Constitution.

Government-run supermarkets – a communist idea already tried in the Soviet Union, which led to starvation.

Pro Hamas – the group that murdered thousands of Jews, and raped Jews, and cut Jewish babies’ heads off on Oct. 7 when they attacked innocent Israeli civilians.

That’s just a few of Mamdani’s “greatest hits.”

The man is crazy, radical, extreme and dangerous. He is also a foreigner who doesn’t belong in the USA with crazy views like that.

I guarantee you Mamdani lied on his citizenship questionnaire and in his citizenship interview. He never disclosed his communist views, racist white-hating views, Jew-hating views, pro-Hamas views, or support of global intifada.

If he had exposed and explained his radical un-American views, he would A) never have been allowed into our country and B) certainly never have been naturalized and allowed to become a citizen.

These are clear-cut grounds for denaturalization, expulsion and deportation back to Uganda – where he clearly belongs.

This is how to send a powerful message:

America is for people who love and value and appreciate this country and our values. Don’t come here to change or ruin or destroy our country. If you hate America, Americans, white people, Jews, the U.S. Constitution and capitalism, you’re not welcome.

And here’s the really important question: The world is full of socialist and communist countries – Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, many Middle Eastern Muslim countries, many African countries, to name a few. So, why do people like Mamdani want to come here and change our country, ruin our country, destroy what Americans love and enjoy and want? Why not go to communist countries?

Let’s send Mamdani packing back to Uganda. The thing is, I’m betting they don’t want him either.

Read Hanne’s The Herland Report.

Former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss and probably the most feared man by the elite establishment in Britain, Tommy Robinson, have recently explained how far into the abyss of Marxist totalitarianism the United Kingdom has fallen.

“What has happened is an orthodoxy has taken over British institutions in the same way as it has taken over European institutions. That orthodoxy believes in mass migration, multiculturalism, toleration of Islamism. We have seen appalling coverups of grooming gangs in Britain with girls as young as 12 are being systematically raped and no national inquiry. There is a group of people who have essentially taken over our institutions with a particular worldview and they don’t want to be challenged, which is why we’re seeing free speech being suppressed, because they don’t want people to know just how badly wrong it is going,” says former conservative Prime Minister, Liz Truss in a recent interview with “The Rubin Report.”

“It is the elite 1 percent who run a Fascist system of state-control, censorship and discrimination,” says the heavily persecuted journalist Tommy Robinson, author of “Manifesto” and the producer of world-famous documentaries about the weaponization of the government against its own citizens, such as “Silenced,” “The Rape of Britain,” and “Panodrama.”

In essence, free speech is now forbidden for indigenous British citizens who are shut up in prison cages if they voice even the slightest complain in social media against the ruling pro-Islam, liberal narrative of population replacement and mass non-Western immigration. As an effect of practicing the Marxist multicultural ideology, native Brits are discriminated against while non-Western criminals avoid accountability. For example, as Muslim grooming gangs have raped thousands of British girls, it has been the role of the police, the elite-owned media and government officials to remain silent about it, so as not to seem “racist against Islam.”

The chronic display of weakness when facing non-Western criminal elements pushing their way into society has emboldened radical Muslims. The staggering fear of the Islamic mafia that now controls British towns is so immense that the political elite treat them with silk gloves, all smiles, hoping to avoid uprisings and trouble. Muslims march, “screaming, ‘We’ll find some Jews. We want their blood.’ The police did nothing. Let that sink in,” says Robinson, who is fully aware that even touching these subjects will instantly label him “racist, islamophobe, homophobe, misogynist” and all the other derogatory terms applied to those who do not submit to the left-wing Marxist narrative.

“They’re getting our young girls hooked on heroin and then prostituting them in in pedophile gangs. The government knows, the police knows, religious leaders know. They control the drugs; the violence in every town and city is controlled by the Muslim community in the U.K. now. They are the mafia. This is what Americans really need to get ready for,” Robinson recently said on the Patrick Bet David Podcast.

“Our entire prison system is controlled by Islamic jihadist gangs. Yours in America will be soon, as well. America needs to wake the hell up. I don’t think anyone understands what’s happening. They’re going to convert your youth. And when they convert your youth through the prison system or on the streets, they’re going to turn them so quickly and so fast against America.”

Robinson has been organizing protests and informing the public since 2009, reportedly gathering over 100,000 in London rallies. By regular people, Robinson is referred to as the bravest man in Britain, a true patriot, a treasure to the U.K., a national hero, a non-racist who is hailed by blacks, Indians and across the multicultural layers of regular citizens of Britain. But he is vehemently hated by the politically correct establishment and constantly smeared by the British media, exposing elite authoritarianism.

“I think all of these problems are connected,” says Truss to “The Rubin Report.” “Mass migration is putting pressure on housing costs, which means that Brits are not able to start a family. They are not able to buy a home because it is too expensive. That creates a population crisis, which then creates demand for more migration. You’ve also got a left-wing ideology in terms of net zero, which is making British energy very expensive. Our energy costs in Britain are four times what they are in the United States,” she says. “All these things are compounded. People feel that things are getting worse and they cannot even say what is wrong. They can’t even complain about the grooming gangs because they are literally fearful of getting arrested.”

The Bible is an amazingly prophetic book. Its divinely inspired authors prophesied the details and timing of the first coming of the Messiah. They named the names of important rulers centuries before their birth. And they predicted the worldwide scattering and regathering of the Jewish people. But the vast majority of major world events, including major world events in the Middle East, are not prophesied in the Bible.

That’s because the Bible is not primarily a book of predictions, like a glorified version of Nostradamus. Instead, the Bible has been given to us to teach us who God is, to teach us who we are and to teach us how to come into right relationship with Him.

That is the heart and soul of the Scriptures. And that is why we make a mistake when we try to find a biblical reference for every cataclysmic event that takes place on the planet.

Yet time and again, we make that same mistake, most recently trying to connect Israel’s Twelve Day War with Iran to the ancient biblical prophecies of Gog-Magog in Ezekiel 38-39. In hindsight, we can see that there is no connection at the present time, even though the biblical text referenced Persia (= Iran).

But even without hindsight, as I pointed out in a June 16 video, Israel’s conflict with Iran was clearly not what Ezekiel spoke of, if no other reason than this: Israel in the Gog-Magog prophecy is described as “a land of unwalled villages … a peaceful and unsuspecting people – all of them living without walls and without gates and bars” (Ezekiel 38:11).

Under no possible circumstances could Israel today be described like this. To the contrary, the people of Israel today are anything but “peaceful and unsuspecting people.” They live with 24/7 vigilance, knowing that at any moment, they could hear the wailing of sirens warning them of incoming missile fire, as they scurry to the nearest bomb shelter. And hardly a week goes by without news of a local terror attack being carried out or thwarted.

Personally, I do believe that Ezekiel 38-39 refers to a future war and is not meant to be taken allegorically or symbolically.

I also believe that the modern State of Israel is part of the ongoing fulfillment of prophecy. (See our 5-minute animated video, “Is God a Zionist?”)

And I believe that Jesus will return to Jerusalem, which is why the Scriptures speak of a final conflict that will involve that very city (see Zechariah 14).

But, to repeat, we make a big mistake when we try to connect every major world event, including those involving Israel, to specific biblical prophecies.

That’s why, as momentous as the Six Day War of 1967 was, it was not specifically predicted in the Bible. The same can be said of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the bloody Intifadas that have taken place, and the horrific massacre of Oct. 7, 2023.

None of them was specifically predicted in advance by the inspired authors of the Bible.

More broadly, neither World War I nor World War II was specifically predicted in the Bible, as momentous as they were. Still, there were Bible teachers who identified Mussolini with the antichrist and Hitler with the false prophet (or beast) of the book of Revelation.

This is certainly understandable, but it is not fruitful, nor is it accurate.

When I came to faith in late 1971, there was tremendous excitement about the return of Jesus. Surely He is coming back any minute!

We were told that all the prophecies were lining up, especially with Jerusalem back in Jewish hands, and that we were clearly experiencing the predicted end-time apostasy as reflected in the rebellious days of the counterculture revolution. The end was near!

I was 16 back then. I am 70 today, and our youngest grandchild is 18.

The end was not as near as we thought.

At the same time, those were momentous, pivotal years in American and world history. And it is highly significant from a biblical point of view that Jerusalem is again in Jewish hands.

We can also see that, worldwide, since the 1960s, there has been a massive increase in the worldwide outpouring of the Spirit – something that is prophesied in Scripture – as well as a great increase in the global harvest of souls. (Interestingly, but just for the record, there has actually been a decrease in the number of atheists during this same time period.)

Like many other believers, my dream is to see Jesus return in my lifetime, however likely or unlikely that may be. And every single day, I look to the Scriptures for wisdom and guidance and direction and inspiration. The Bible truly is the living, breathing, eternal Word of God!

But let us not try to turn the Bible into a sensationalistic collection of fascinating prophecies. To do so is to diminish the power and purpose of the Scriptures.

It’s the 249th birthday of the United States. And as Americans begin to prepare for our nation’s grand semiquincentennial celebration next year, it is worth reengaging with the document whose enactment marks our national birthday: the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration is sometimes championed by right-libertarians and left-liberals alike as a paean to individualism and a refutation of communitarianism of any kind. As one X user put it on Thursday: “The 4th of July represents the triumph of American individualism over the tribalistic collectivism of Europe.”

But this is anything but the case.

We will turn to lead draftsman Thomas Jefferson’s famous words about “self-evident” truths in a moment. But first consider the majority of the text of the Declaration: a stirring enumeration of specific grievances by the American colonists against the British crown. In the Declaration’s own words: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”

One might read these words in a vacuum and conclude that the Declaration indeed commenced a revolution in the true sense of the term: a seismic act of rebellion, however noble or righteous, to overthrow the established political order. And true enough, that may well have been the subjective intention of Jefferson, a political liberal and devotee of the European Enlightenment.

But the Declaration also attracted many other signers. And some of those signers, such as the more conservative John Adams, took a more favorable view of the incipient America’s inherited traditions and customs. These men thought that King George III had vitiated their rights as Englishmen under the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights that passed Parliament the following year.

It is for this reason that Edmund Burke, the famed conservative British statesman best known for his strident opposition to the French Revolution, was known to be sympathetic to the colonists’ cause. As my Edmund Burke Foundation colleague Ofir Haivry argued in a 2020 American Affairs essay, it is likely that these more conservative Declaration signers, such as Adams, shared Burke’s own view that “the Americans had an established national character and political culture”; and “the Americans in 1776 rebelled in an attempt to defend and restore these traditions.”

The American Founding is complex; the Founders themselves were intellectually heterodox. But suffice it to say the Founding was not a simplistic renouncement of the “tribalistic collectivism” of Britain. There is of course some truth to those who would emphasize the revolutionary nature of the minutemen and soldiers of George Washington’s Continental Army. But the overall sounder historical conception is that 1776 commenced a process to restore and improve upon the colonists’ inherited political order. The final result was the U.S. Constitution of 1787.

Let’s next consider the most famous line of the Declaration: the proclamation that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We ought to take this claim at face value: Many of the Declaration’s signers did hold such genuine, moral human equality to be “self-evident.”

But is such a claim self-evident to everyone – at all times, in all places, and within all cultures?

The obvious answer is that it is not. Genuine, moral human equality is certainly not self-evident to Taliban-supporting Islamist goat herders in Afghanistan. It has not been self-evident to any number of sub-Saharan African tribal warlords of recent decades. Nor is it self-evident to the atheists of the Chinese Communist Party politburo, who brutally oppress non-Han Chinese ethnic minorities such as the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang.

Rather, the only reason that Jefferson – and John Locke in England a century prior – could confidently assert such moral “self-evidence” is because they were living and thinking within a certain overarching milieu. And that milieu is Western civilization’s biblical inheritance – and, specifically, the world-transforming claim in Genesis 1:27, toward the very beginning of the Bible, that “God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him.”

It is very difficult – perhaps impossible – to see how the Declaration of 1776, the 14th Amendment of 1868, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or any other American moral ode to or legal codification of equality, would have been possible absent the strong biblical undergird that has characterized our nation since the colonial era.

Political and biblical inheritance are thus far more responsible for the modern-day United States than revolution, liberal rationalism or hyper-individualism.

Adams famously said that Independence Day “ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” Indeed, each year we should all celebrate this great nation we are blessed to call home. But let’s also not mistake what it is we are actually celebrating.

The Trump administration took another bold step to protect parental rights and the innocence of children by issuing a policy affirming that funds from a multi-million dollar federal sexual education program cannot be used to promote radical gender ideology.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a statement Wednesday clarifying that the mission of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP) is to provide “medically accurate and age-appropriate programming” aimed at reducing teen pregnancy , adding that program funds “may not be used to indoctrinate America’s children with radical ideologies or other inappropriate material.” Grant recipients who do not comply with the outlined use of TPPP funds and create off-topic program materials, such as content that encourages anal and oral sex, masturbation, sexually themed roleplay, foreplay techniques and gender ideology, will not be funded, according to an HHS document.

“HHS is committed to ensuring a flourishing and healthy American youth, including through reducing teen pregnancy,” said Dr. Dorothy Fink, acting assistant secretary for health in a press release. “Prioritizing parental involvement in the education of children on the most sensitive topics creates a healthy environment for children to engage with medically accurate and age-appropriate material.”

SCOOP A Planned Parenthood office partnered with a Pennsylvania school district to run an after school program where students and young adults, ages 14 to 21, paint naked “transgender” bodies and participate in ‘Condom Olympics’ all with FULL approval from the school board. pic.twitter.com/eZZDCnLF3V

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 31, 2025

The HHS statement also noted program funds cannot be used to “promote anti-American ideologies such as discriminatory equity ideology,” and that grant recipients should provide parents, in accordance with the recent Supreme Court ruling giving parents the right to opt out LGBT school lessons, advanced notice and the ability to opt out of programming that might “burden their religious exercise.”

TPPP was established by the Obama administration in 2010 and diverted funding from abstinence-only sex education to organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, who provide Comprehensive Sexual Education (CHSE), a type of education that normalizes gender ideology for children as young as 5.

Planned Parenthood delivered CHSE to more than 1.3 million participants during the 2023-2024 fiscal year, according to its latest annual report, dubbing itself as America’s “largest” sex education provider.

Over the past decade, Planned Parenthood affiliates have received millions of federal dollars to create, study and implement CSE through the TPPP program. During the most recent round of TPPP grants Planned Parenthood affiliates were given $7,029,840 in annual funding from the federal government, totaling $35,149,200 over the grant’s 5 year duration.

For example, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts was awarded $1 million of annual funding to implement its “Get Real” CSE curriculum in schools and evaluate its effectiveness. The Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI) has reviewed the Get Real curriculum, which costs as much as $1599 to purchase, and describes it on its website as “problematic” for its explicit sexual content aimed at children as young as 11.

“PP’s 6th-grade curriculum (students as young as 11 years old) teaches children how to enthusiastically consent to sexual activity, promotes solo and mutual masturbation, directs teachers to lead children through inappropriate sexual role-playing scenarios, and more,” MFI’s website says.

Dr. Kurt Miceli, Medical Director at the medical watchdog organization Do No Harm, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Trump administration should “be applauded” for this move.

“The Trump administration should be applauded for this move to protect minors from radical ideological indoctrination presented under the guise of healthcare. The American taxpayer has no business funding programs that push harmful gender or DEI ideology on children,” Miceli told the DCNF.

“Both of those ideologies should be removed from all government programs, especially those intended to support vulnerable children and teenagers,” stated Miceli.

“We’re putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice that if you let men take over women’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms, you will be investigated for violations of Title IX and risk your federal funding.” –President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/MUd6FAetWr

— President Donald J. Trump (@POTUS) February 6, 2025

Through a public record request the DCNF uncovered that Planned Parenthood was promoting gender ideology in schools through sexual education initiatives.

Anticipating an upcoming loss of TPPP funding, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against HHS in May 2025, which described the new requirements as being “at odds” with its existing programming. Planned Parenthood’s request that the rules be declared “unlawful” was denied by a Washington D.C. District Court judge on June 26, 2025, and Planned Parenthood appealed the ruling the following day.

Planned Parenthood did not respond to a request for comment.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.