Tulsi Gabbard’s Permanent Replacement Confirmed By Senate, Sets Up Possible Vote On Warrantless Spying Tool

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The Senate confirmed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton Tuesday to serve as the next director of national intelligence (DNI), which may revive the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The upper chamber voted to confirm Clayton, making him the permanent replacement for former DNI Tulsi Gabbard. Republican senators initially planned to accelerate Clayton’s confirmation processafter Congress failed to reauthorize Section 702, though President Donald Trump requested that the process be delayed to confirm another attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Clayton’s confirmation may allow the Senate to vote on reauthorizing Section 702. Democrats would likely back its reauthorization since U.S. Federal Housing Director Bill Pulte would no longer be serving as acting DNI.

Senators moved at an unusual speed to confirm Clayton as they faced pressure to reauthorize Section 702, which permits the government to collect Americans’ data without a warrant. The House failed to pass a temporary extension of Section 702 in a 198 to 218 vote on June 11, with 19 Republicans joining most Democrats in voting against it.

Democrats opposed the reauthorization of Section 702 as retaliation against Trump tapping Pulte to temporarily serve as acting DNI.

Trump requested on June 17 that the Senate postpone Clayton’s confirmation until Jamie McDonald was approved to be the next attorney for the Southern District of New York. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton initially planned to move forward with the confirmation process on June 17, but then postponed the hearing. (Read more from “Tulsi Gabbard’s Permanent Replacement Confirmed By Senate, Sets Up Possible Vote On Warrantless Spying Tool” HERE)

Food Prices up 33% as US Battles Highest Grocery Price Spike in 50 Years — with No Relief in Sight

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Food prices in the US have shot up by 33% over the last seven years, the biggest jump in grocery prices in half a century — with no relief in sight.

While rampant inflation was to blame for the biggest surge during the pandemic, prices have continued to soar since, with ground beef best demonstrating the out-of-control market as it hit $6.82 a pound in June, a 79% increase from 2019, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The fact that prices have remained stubbornly high for years means that they are not something Americans can simply weather through, but a new normal for shoppers, said Scott D. Martin, a partner at the Kingsview Wealth Management firm.

“While inflation has cooled from its peak, grocery prices have not returned to where consumers remember them,” Martin told The Post.

“Food prices have effectively reset to a permanently higher level after years of supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, transportation costs, and broad inflationary pressures,” he added.

The new normal was clearly laid out in the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ records over the last 14 years. (Read more from “Food Prices up 33% as US Battles Highest Grocery Price Spike in 50 Years — with No Relief in Sight” HERE)

Trump Eulogizes Lindsey Graham, ‘He Never Saw A War He Didn’t Like’

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President Donald Trump delivered a somber eulogy for late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday, praising his close friend’s decades in U.S. politics and the military. Trump jested at one point during his lengthy remarks that Graham, one of the most prominent hawks in the GOP, “never saw a war that he didn’t like.” . . .

Trump continued, before eventually pivoting to foreign policy:

Well, not everybody — but it sounds good, “not everybody.” He was a tough cookie. Okay, I have to veer from this for a second — he was that tough cookie, darling, but he was beautiful. But he was also ready with a joke and a gleam in his eye.

After being lectured on the excruciating details of patent law by a fellow senator during a flight, Lindsey declared that he had discovered a new form of enhanced interrogation and torture for the Guantanamo Bay area. He said, “This is really bad stuff — and boring.”

And while he was an incredibly hard worker, he was not exactly an early riser, as many of you know. When Senator Tim Scott — a great gentleman in his own right, I can tell you — invited him to a prayer breakfast at 8:30 a.m., he told him, “Tim, if Jesus Himself comes back before 10 a.m., I ain’t going.”

Yet, while he was always quick to laugh, no one ever doubted the gravity of his mission. Above all, Lindsey Graham believed in a strong America. He wanted a strong America. He had unwavering faith in the righteousness of American power and prayer. He was extremely hawkish — I’ll tell you, he never saw a war he didn’t like. Only his true friends would understand that, but he wanted it for the good of our country. He felt in his bones that our destiny is to win, and that his job was to do everything he could to ensure our enemies would lose.

It was this conviction that led him to serve 33 years in uniform in the Air Force, Air Force Reserves, and Air National Guard — even while he was in office. And it was this conviction that took him, as a senator, to almost every country on earth, confronting America’s adversaries and standing up for America’s friends. He had tremendous friendships all over the world. It’s a testament to his towering impact that among those mourning him here today are leaders, presidents, and prime ministers from all over the globe. They’re sitting right here before you.

Lindsey met countless world leaders, yet wherever he went, he was always the same Lindsey Graham. When he met Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in a tent in the desert, he told him, “I expected something out of the Arabian Nights — this looks more like a Winnebago.” That was not a good statement to make at the time.

(Read more from “Trump Eulogizes Lindsey Graham, ‘He Never Saw A War He Didn’t Like’” HERE)

Ukrainian-Israeli Fraudster Sentenced for Multi-Million Dollar Fake Brokerage Scheme

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Yaroslav Shilkloper, 50, a dual citizen of Ukraine and Israel, was sentenced today to four years in prison for his participation in a conspiracy that utilized a sophisticated phony brokerage-business to scam U.S. citizens out of millions of dollars. Shilkloper was also ordered to pay a $250,000 fine and $1.43 million in restitution to his victims.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Shilkloper and his co-conspirators defrauded victims in the United States of more than $3 million dollars by promising high rates of return on investments made through their “K6 Investing,” “Neotron Holding LTD.,” and “Goldex Technology” companies. As part of the scheme, the defendant provided access to a digital platform that allowed victims to see what they believed were real-time investment performance data. The victims’ money, however, was never invested, but instead diverted and laundered through a series of bank accounts in Ukraine, Georgia, Hungary, Israel, Czech Republic, and elsewhere, all controlled by Shilkloper and his co-conspirators. When victims attempted to withdraw their money, they were prevented from doing so, threatened with legal action, or manipulated into sending more money to the fraud ring.

Shilkloper is the first of three defendants charged in the case to be sentenced. He was extradited from Poland after being arrested there in 2023. Today’s U.S. forfeiture order adds to the $2.8 million already previously returned to the victims as a result of forfeiture proceedings against Shilkloper and co-conspirators in the Republic of Georgia.

Photo credit: Flickr

Report: President Trump Pushing RFK Jr. to Pursue Reducing Childhood Vaccines

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President Donald Trump is reportedly pushing Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to pursue cutting childhood vaccines — something the commander-in-chief has brought attention to throughout his second term — according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

The outlet cited people “familiar with the matter,” who asserted that Trump asked Kennedy in May “why he wasn’t doing more to probe the alleged connection between vaccines and autism.” The report claims Kennedy was “taken aback,” as he had supposedly been instructed to cool it on vaccines ahead of the midterm elections. That sentiment was contradicted by Trump’s call for Kennedy to prioritize it, per this report.

“The president steers nearly every conversation with his health secretary back to the issue, some of the people said,” WSJ reported, adding that Trump, specifically, wants Kennedy to reduce the number of vaccines for children, ultimately updating the federal guidance. This goal is connected to Trump’s determination to see the autism rate, which has grown exponentially in the past 25 years, drop among children. As of 2020, the autism rate among 8-year-olds was 1 in 36, and it has since gotten worse. Last year, Kennedy announced a series of studies to help identify “precisely what environmental toxins” are causing autism, noting that the rate rose to 1 in 31 children having autism.

The epidemic is real,” Kennedy said at the time.

“Instead of listening to this canard of epidemic denial, all you have to do is start reading a little science, because the answer is very clear, and this is catastrophic for our country,” Kennedy continued, adding, “This is added to already astronomical healthcare costs. And then there’s an individual injury. These are kids that — this is a preventable disease. We know it’s an environmental exposure. It has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics.” (Read more from “Report: President Trump Pushing RFK Jr. to Pursue Reducing Childhood Vaccines” HERE)

Trump DOJ Reaches Settlement with Pro-Life Christian Father of 11 Targeted by Biden Administration

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Christian father of 11 Paul Vaughn has reached a seven-figure settlement with the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) after being targeted by the Biden DOJ for his pro-life beliefs, his attorneys announced.

Vaughn was one of nearly two dozen pro-life activists targeted by the pro-abortion Biden administration and its weaponization of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The Biden DOJ brought charges against Vaughn and ten other activists for a peaceful sit-in at a Tennessee abortion clinic in 2021, and Vaughn was ultimately sentenced to three years of supervised release, avoiding prison time. Vaughn was one of more than 20 pro-life activists President Donald Trump pardoned when he began his second term.

In Vaughn’s case, the FBI conducted a predawn raid on his family’s home at gunpoint and arrested him in front of his wife and children, according to his attorneys.

“This family did nothing wrong. Paul prayed and sang. He bore witness to his faith and for that, the full weight of the federal government was brought crashing down on his front door before the sun rose,” said Steve Crampton, senior counsel at Thomas More Society.

“What was done to Paul and his family was a profound injustice, and we are grateful that this settlement acknowledges that. We also commend the Trump Department of Justice for having the courage to look at what its predecessor did, call it what it was—an abuse of power—and change course. No American should ever again have to fear an FBI raid for praying and offering hope to women in need,” Crampton continued. (Read more from “Trump DOJ Reaches Settlement with Pro-Life Christian Father of 11 Targeted by Biden Administration” HERE)

Photo credit: Thomas More Society

A Biblical Disease is Back with a Vengeance in Florida — Experts Warn which Animal is to Blame

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Nine-banded armadillos are a common sight across the southern US. . .

They are, for the most part, harmless. But experts say the adorable armored creatures may be the culprit behind a rising number of cases of an ancient disease. . .

Well, “ancient” is only partly true — leprosy, aka Hansen’s Disease, is a 4,000-year-old illness, but it infects as many as 200,000 around the world today.

In the US, there are a few hundred cases a year and numbers are climbing. Florida has some of the highest rates of infection in the country, with 17 so far this year.

Cases have been steadily climbing here, too: Florida had just eight cases in 2022 but 23 in 2023, 20 in 2024 and 26 last year. Central Florida appears to be a hot spot, with 40 of the 74 cases reported from 2019 to 2022 (55%) located in Brevard County, WJXT4 reports. . .

This disease is caused by a bacteria called Mycobacterium leprae. It grows slowly, so it could take someone up to 20 years to develop symptoms after the initial infection. (Read more from “A Biblical Disease is Back with a Vengeance in Florida — Experts Warn which Animal is to Blame” HERE)

Anthony Fauci’s Own Diary Proves what a Despicable Villain He Truly is

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As COVID cases and deaths began to soar in the spring of 2020, America desperately needed a trustworthy public-health leader. Instead, we got Dr. Anthony Fauci — and now his diary entries from that time are showing just how incredibly unworthy of the nation’s trust he truly was.

Time and again, his private notes contradict what he was telling the world at the very same time, and the stories he’s spun up since to protect his unearned reputation.

For starters, he insisted time and again that the “lab leak hypothesis” was a wacky conspiracy theory, that the virus had jumped naturally from animals to humans, presumably at the “wet market” in Wuhan, China.

Yet the diaries reveal that he knew early on that it had not come from the wet market, and was confronted with scientists he’d selected who argued with strong evidence that “lab leak” was the truth — and that the bug was likely bio-engineered in the Wuhan Institute Virology.

We also now know that he himself referred to research at WIV that he had funded with federal cash as “GOF,” meaning “gain of function,” altering viruses to make them more deadly or contagious to humans — though he later testified time and time again under questioning by Sen. Rand Paul that he’d never funded such work. (Read more from “Anthony Fauci’s Own Diary Proves what a Despicable Villain He Truly is” HERE)

An Ancient Biblical Prophecy is Unfolding in Dead Sea

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An ancient biblical prophecy linked to the end of the world may be beginning to unfold at the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the West Bank to the west, and Israel to the southwest. It sits in the Jordan Rift Valley and is the lowest land elevation on Earth.

Freshwater pools filled with plants and aquatic life have emerged beside the famously barren body of water, about 12 miles east of Jerusalem. . .

The dramatic change mirrors visions recorded by the prophets Ezekiel and Zechariah more than 2,500 years ago, which described living waters flowing east from Jerusalem and bringing life to the Dead Sea.

The visions say the deadly waters will eventually be healed, allowing fruit trees to flourish and fishermen to spread their nets along the shore.

Believers have claimed that the changes could represent an early glimpse of a prophecy connected to catastrophic wars, the return of Christ and humanity’s final judgment. (Read more from “An Ancient Biblical Prophecy is Unfolding in Dead Sea” HERE)

Confused Biden Admitted He Discovered Classified Materials ‘Downstairs’ in Bumbling Chat with Ghostwriter: ‘So many pauses and ums’

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Joe Biden appeared confused, struggled to remember facts and lost his train of thought during a series of meandering conversations with his ghostwriter roughly four years before he was elected president.

The former commander-in-chief also repeatedly made reference to retaining classified information in the discussions with his biographer Mark Zwonitzer, according to newly-released audio tapes.

The heavily-redacted recordings of Biden working on his 2017 memoir with Zwonitzer were released Monday to the House Judiciary Committee and the conservative Oversight Project nonprofit after a two-year-long court battle.

“We now know what has been long assumed: the autopen scandal extends far back beyond just when Joe Biden ‘ran’ for president from his basement,” Oversight Project President Mike Howell said in a statement.

“These tapes have so many pauses and ‘ums’ that it sounds like Biden is buffering like a dial-up Internet connection,” Howell added. (Read more from “Confused Biden Admitted He Discovered Classified Materials ‘Downstairs’ in Bumbling Chat with Ghostwriter: ‘So many pauses and ums’” HERE)