China’s Xi Accused the U.S. of Trying to Trick Him Into Invading Taiwan, but Said He Won’t Take the Bait, Report Says

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, accused the US of trying to trick China into invading Taiwan but said his country wouldn’t take the bait, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The FT said Xi made the accusation in April last year during a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Xi has issued the same warning to officials in his own country, one person told the FT, but this is first known case of him making the claim to a foreign leader, the outlet said.

During the meeting, according to a press statement released at the time, Xi said Taiwan was at the “core” of China’s interests, adding: “If anyone expects China to compromise and concede on the Taiwan question, they are having a pipe dream and would shoot themselves in the foot.”

Xi’s accusation against the US wasn’t featured in the statement. (Read more from “China’s Xi Accused the U.S. of Trying to Trick Him Into Invading Taiwan, but Said He Won’t Take the Bait, Report Says” HERE)

Foreign Media Raises Concerns About Biden’s Health Ahead of 2024 Election

Concerns about President Joe Biden’s health have become a focal point for several foreign media outlets, casting doubt on his fitness as he prepares for the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Reports from various international sources suggest growing unease among U.S. voters about Biden’s age and cognitive abilities.

Recent editorials and news stories have highlighted Biden’s public missteps, including tripping, forgetting names, and appearing disoriented. These incidents have sparked widespread debate about his capacity to serve another term. A June editorial from the U.K.’s The Independent stated, “Biden isn’t the man he used to be,” warning of a potential collapse of trust in the White House if concerns about his health are ignored.

The Hindustan Times from India published a story on Monday describing Biden’s “inability to function well,” citing frequent gaffes and struggles with recalling simple words. Similarly, Le Monde in France emphasized the “worrying episodes” related to Biden’s memory lapses.

At a recent Group of Seven (G7) summit, Biden’s behavior drew particular attention. Footage showed him wandering away during a group photo, only to be redirected by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. This incident led to headlines like Sky News Australia’s “Joe Biden’s ‘unusual behavior’ at the G7 leaves leaders ‘alarmed’ and ‘bemused.’”

Biden and his administration have consistently downplayed these concerns, portraying his age as an asset due to his extensive political experience. During campaign stops, Biden’s team has emphasized his legislative successes and portrayed his age as a symbol of wisdom and resilience. Despite these efforts, a New York Times/Siena poll from March indicated that over 70% of voters believe Biden’s age makes him “ineffective” or incapable of handling the presidency’s responsibilities.

The international skepticism isn’t confined to media reports. A Pew Global Research survey released on June 11 found that confidence in Biden’s ability to conduct foreign policy has significantly declined in 14 countries, including key allies like Israel, Japan, the U.K., and Australia. Less than half of respondents in these nations believe Biden is managing global conflicts, such as the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas situation, effectively.

The upcoming debate between Biden and former President Donald Trump, scheduled for June 27 in Atlanta, Georgia, is expected to intensify the focus on Biden’s health. The Telegraph noted that both candidates are leveraging age as a weapon in their campaigns, with Biden’s frequent lapses becoming a point of attack for his opponents.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

State Bar Association Issues Warning to Lawyers Who Speak Out Against Trump’s Prosecution

The Connecticut Bar Association (CBA) issued a warning Friday to public officials who speak out against former President Donald Trump’s prosecution.

During his Manhattan trial, Trump often read aloud remarks against his prosecution made by lawyers and media pundits outside the courtroom in avoidance of violating his gag order. Leadership from the CBA railed against “unsubstantiated and reckless” defenses of Trump by lawyers, saying in the statement that “such statements can promote acts of violence against those serving the public as employees of the judicial branch.”

“Words matter. Reckless words attacking the integrity of our judicial system matter even more,” the statement reads. “In the wake of the recent trial and conviction of former President Donald Trump, public officials have issued statements claiming that the trial was a ‘sham,’ a ‘hoax,’ and ‘rigged’; our justice system is ‘corrupt and rigged’; the judge was ‘corrupt’ and ‘highly unethical’; and, that the jury was ‘partisan’ and ‘precooked.’ Others claimed the trial was ‘America’s first communist show trial’—a reference to historic purges of high-ranking communist officials that were used to eliminate political threats.”

The CBA leadership acknowledged that “free speech includes criticism.” The statement, however, claimed that “headlines’ grabbing, baseless allegations” made by public officials against Trump’s prosecution “have no place in the public discourse.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, a repeated critic of Trump’s Manhattan indictment brought by Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, responded to the CBA’s warning Saturday. He called the CBA’s rebuke “chilling” and said Trump’s conviction in New York was “a flagrant example of such weaponization of the legal system and should be denounced by all lawyers.” (Read more from “State Bar Association Issues Warning to Lawyers Who Speak Out Against Trump’s Prosecution” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

More Data Confirms Biden’s Not-So-Secret 2024 Advantage, and Republicans Need to Take It Seriously

Looking purely at the recent polling, Donald Trump must be considered current favorite to win November’s national election. We’ve explored how his felony convictions in New York City have not altered this overall trajectory, which has appeared to favor the challenger for months now. The oddsmakers and political forecasters seem to agree with this assessment, pegging the 45th president as likelier than not to become the 47th president in various published models. For what it’s worth, I don’t put a ton of stock into these models, especially with four-plus months left to go, but they’re still worth mentioning. As of this writing, Trump leads Biden (in RealClearPolitics five-candidate field averages) by nearly five points in Arizona, six points in Georgia, five points in Nevada, five points in North Carolina, and two points in Pennsylvania. Michigan and Wisconsin are almost exactly tied. Beyond these ‘big seven’ battlegrounds, Democrats have at least some cause for concern about an expanding map. I’m still rather skeptical about Trump’s chances in either of these states when all is said and done, but these are averages from late last week, not just single snapshots, as the election year summer gets underway:

Let’s put it this way: If Democrats are really sweating Minnesota or Virginia on election night, there’s a very good chance Trump will be re-elected. Based on the head-to-head polling, the incumbent’s approval rating, and broad voter sentiments, betting on a Trump victory makes sense. However. I will once again return to a fixation I’ve been writing about for months, based on some fresh data. As I’ve been pointing out, Biden enjoys the built-in advantage of ‘high propensity’ voters favoring his party by a meaningful margin. The Americans who are absolutely guaranteed to vote now lean decidedly blue. Democrats also have a well-established and lavishly-funded turnout and ballot operation that will wring every last vote out of their machine, fueled by people for whom voting (often early, by mail) is basically a religious rite. Republicans, by contrast, are generally skeptical of non-traditional voting methods, and their coalition is increasingly reliant upon ‘low propensity,’ or haphazard (sometimes at best) voters participating. Advantage: Democrats. Public opinion data also shows that many would-be voters are deeply disenchanted with their choices this year:

This is relevant because it speaks to the battle over the key “double disapprovers,” among whom Biden won handily in 2020. Polling this year shows this demographic more evenly split, some with Trump leading. But there’s a decent chance that a lot of these unsatisfied millions just stay home this fall. If turnout is relatively low, the importance of cranking out the base will rise for each major party. And Democrats are just better at that than Republicans are these days. The New York Times has published new data fortifying the high vs. low propensity voter dynamic I’ve been harping on so much. The more engaged the voter, the more likely she or he is to be a Democrat:

(Read more from “More Data Confirms Biden’s Not-So-Secret 2024 Advantage, and Republicans Need to Take It Seriously” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

WATCH: Biden Yells Gibberish At Press

In recent weeks, there’s been plenty of video evidence speaking to concerns for President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline in real time as he runs for reelection. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre earlier on Monday got snappy with the press as she gaslit the American people over such concerns, the same day that the president had another troubling moment.

Also on Monday, Biden met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. As members of the press tried to get questions in while they were being escorted out, Biden emitted some very strange noises. He then laughed hysterically as if he’d just told the funniest joke in the world.

Reporters can be heard yelling questions about if Biden “is worried” about something, and it appears he too mentions being “worried,” but that’s really the only intelligible word.

(Read more from “WATCH: Biden Yells Gibberish At Press” HERE)

Putin ‘Stashing Years of Food in Secret Nuclear Bunker’

Food to feed up to 300 people ‘for several years’ has allegedly been sent to the bunker in the remote Altai Mountains.

The chilling claim comes amid deep tension between Russia and the West over Ukraine, as Putin on Friday warned that NATO leaders are pushing him ‘to the point of no return’ over a nuclear Third World War.

A source – who claims to be involved in loading the food – told Pozdnyakov Telegram channel that ‘boxes with dry rations, cereals, and canned food’ are being shifted on a gargantuan scale to the remote Siberian location.

Nearby is a Putin escape named Altai Yard where earlier reports indicate the Kremlin dictator constructed a giant underground nuclear bunker.

Of the food, the source was quoted as saying: ‘I have never seen anything like it – imported, expensive, not ours [Russian]. The products are brought to a warehouse in the mountainous region, and then a presumed Putin security team takes charge. (Read more from “Putin ‘Stashing Years of Food in Secret Nuclear Bunker’” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

Illegal Alien From Central America Charged in the Gruesome Murder of Mother of Five

A migrant from El Salvador has been busted for the brutal 2023 rape and murder of mom of five Rachel Morin on a Maryland hiking trail, cops said.

Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 23, was tracked down in Tulsa, Oklahoma Friday, after police matched his DNA to the gruesome crime scene, Harford County Sherriff Jeffrey Gahler told reporters Saturday. . .

According to police, Martinez-Hernandez has connections to Salvadoran street gangs and had a violent history that included at least one other homicide. . .

The accused killer illegally crossed into the US in February 2023 after he vicously murdered another young woman.

Martinez-Hernandez was in the US for six months before he allegedly targeted Morin while she was walking alone on the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail in Bel Air. (Read more from “Illegal Alien From Central America Charged in the Gruesome Murder of Mother of Five” HERE)

Supreme Court Rules Bump Stock Ban Unlawful

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday to overturn a Trump-era policy banning bump stocks for semi-automatic firearms, arguing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (ATF) exceeded its authority.

The Trump administration’s ATF created the regulation 14 months after the deadliest U.S. mass shooting took place in 2017 at a country music festival in Las Vegas. The regulation reversed previous ATF policy that stated a semi-automatic firearm with a bump stock does not constitute a fully automatic firearm or machine gun. The Trump administration, alongside others, argued bump stocks “illegally convert semi-automatic rifles … into fully automatic machine guns,” The Federalist’s founder Sean Davis explained.

Upon implementation of the rule, anyone who owned bump stocks had 90 days to either destroy them or surrender them to the government in what represented “the most sweeping federal gun control effort since the so-called assault weapons ban, which was passed in 1994 and expired in 2003,” Davis wrote.

The high court struck down the rule, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing for the majority.

Michael Cargill, who was forced to surrender two bump stocks after the ban went into effect, argued the ATF lacked the statutory authority under the Administrative Procedure Act to create the rule because under federal law, bump stocks are not “machineguns.” The Supreme Court affirmed that the ATF lacked the authority to create the rule since. A Court of Appeals similarly affirmed this decision prior to the case heading to the Supreme Court. (Read more from “Supreme Court Rules Bump Stock Ban Unlawful” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

Medical Organizations Urge End to Transgender Surgeries for Kids

Last week, pediatricians, doctors, and medical organizations from across the country joined forces, urging all U.S. medical personnel to stop experimentation and abuse of children under the guise of transgender treatment.

The “Doctors Protecting Children Declaration,” authored by the American College of Pediatricians (ACPEDS), was a collaborative effort relying on the expertise of hundreds of doctors, researchers, health-care workers, and leaders who “for years have been sounding the alarm on the harmful protocols that continue to be promoted by the medical organizations within the United States,” said ACPEDS Executive Director Jill Simons, MD, at a June 6 press conference.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, Endocrine Society, Pediatric Endocrine Society, American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry need to “follow the science” their European colleagues are finally acknowledging “and immediately stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex,” Simons said. “[We are] defying the claims made by these medical organizations in the U.S. that those of us who are concerned are a minority, and that their protocols are consensus. They are not consensus and we are speaking in a loud unified voice, ‘Enough.’” . . .

Representing thousands of health-care workers in more than 50 countries, the declaration comes on the heels of the April release of the nearly 400-page Cass Review, an extensive and independent review of gender services for children commissioned by the British National Health Service. The findings were glaring: no evidence of positive mental health outcomes for children who socially “transitioned;” social transitioning led to increased medical interventions; puberty blockers reduced bone density in youth and led to no improvements in gender dysphoria or body satisfaction; most long-term negative outcomes are yet to be seen.

In spite of this and the recently leaked WPATH files exposing the dangerous pseudoscience base for gender medicine, some U.S. medical organizations have not changed course, Simons said. With “clearly laid out evidence that these procedures are harmful and not helpful,” Simons and her colleagues had expected gender-transition practitioners to take a step back from current protocols, but instead they have “doubled down and said they’re going to continue with what they’re doing.” (Read more from “Medical Organizations Urge End to Transgender Surgeries for Kids” HERE)

Watch: Joe Biden Appears to Freeze, Obama Escorts Him Off Stage During Star-Studded Fundraiser; White House Rattled as Videos of Biden’s Alleged Cognitive Decline Go Viral

By Breitbart. President Joe Biden appeared to freeze while on stage during a star-studded fundraiser on Saturday night and was seen being led off the stage by former President Barack Obama.

Biden and Obama attended the Los Angeles fundraiser, along with celebrities such as George Clooney, Julia Roberts, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, Jack Black, and Jason Bateman, among many others. Before the fundraiser, it was reported that the Biden campaign had raised more than $28 million. . .

Video footage on social media showed Biden and Obama standing on the stage as the curtains were drawn open, revealing musicians playing behind them. Biden can be seen facing the side of the stage while clapping his hands, before turning to face the audience in front of the stage. . .

Obama can be seen giving a few small waves to the crowd before taking Biden’s arm to indicate they should walk off the stage. As the two are walking off stage, Obama is seen keeping his hand on Biden’s back.

(Read more from “Watch: Joe Biden Appears to Freeze, Obama Escorts Him Off Stage During Star-Studded Fundraiser” HERE)

____________________________________________________

White House Rattled as Videos of Biden’s Alleged Cognitive Decline Go Viral

By Breitbart. The White House has reportedly grown weary of videos that appear to show President Joe Biden experiencing a cognitive decline and right-leaning media reporting on them.

A report from the Daily Beast attempted to debunk a series of clips that appeared to show the president experiencing cognitive decline, saying they were either misrepresented or deceptively edited. The outlet did not address the fact that the president has exhibited public gaffes and memory lapses for several months now. From the report:

In a statement to The Daily Beast, the White House fumed at the so-called “cheap fake,” which it contends is a sign of failing journalistic ethics at a number of conservative publications.

The practice of deceptively editing and circulating clips of political opponents is increasingly being used in recent weeks by Republican lawmakers and conservative publications, especially to highlight problems relating to Biden’s age.

The Daily Beast and the White House took particular issue with one video that appeared to show Biden freezing on stage during a Hollywood fundraiser depending on the angle of the clip being shown. They also took issue with another video of the president in Italy wherein some influencers on social media said the president pooped his pants even though he was just stopping himself from sitting down too early. (Read more from “White House Rattled as Videos of Biden’s Alleged Cognitive Decline Go Viral” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr