June 19, 2026

02 U.S. Politics

Blurb:

Rep. Eric Swalwell, a leading Democratic candidate for California governor, on Tuesday denounced online claims that he had inappropriate relationships with young congressional staff members.

“It’s false,” he told reporters after an evening town hall at the Scottish Rite Masonic Center in Sacramento.

When asked, Swalwell said he never behaved inappropriately with female staff members or had a sexual relationship with a staff member or an intern.

Swalwell, 45, added

Blurb:

ROME — Pope Leo XIV said Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization was “truly unacceptable” and said any attacks on civilian infrastructure violate international law.

In some of his strongest comments yet against the war, Leo urged Americans and other people of good will to contact their political leaders and congressional representatives to demand they reject war and work for peace.

“Today as we all know there was this threat against all the people of Iran. This is truly unacceptable,” he said as he left his country house in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome.

He was referring to Trump’s threat that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran fails to meet his latest deadline to strike a deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Blurb:

As Virginia voters take part in a closely contested redistricting referendum, Gov. Abigail Spanberger is heading toward the final tally with historically low approval numbers.

For the first time since the 1990s, a sitting Virginia governor is polling below historical norms.

According to Washington Post polling, Spanberger’s approval rating stands at 47%—13 points lower than the average approval rating for Virginia governors and below a majority.

Blurb:

Far-left activists shouted through bullhorns on Easter Sunday as part of their ongoing harassment campaign against a St. Paul, Minnesota, church that allegedly employs an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official as a minister. The Easter Sunday campaign concluded in one arrest, although a judge already threw out the charges.

Anti-ICE protesters have targeted Cities Church in the Twin Cities since January, when a mob, joined by former CNN personality Don Lemon, disrupted the church worship service at the Baptist church. The activists disrupted the service because they alleged an assistant pastor is also a local ICE official who is overseeing efforts to remove violent illegal immigrants from the area.

Blurb:

The left won’t hesitate to bend over backwards for a man who was killed after he resisted arrest and took enough fentanyl to kill a horse. You would expect, at the very least, that they would honor an innocent woman killed after obtaining refuge in this country as a result of the war in Ukraine. The problem with doing that, though, is that they would have to admit leftist “restorative justice” policies allowed a psycho with a painfully long rap sheet to enter back into society, where he then, subsequently, killed an innocent woman riding on the bus. So, rather than do the morally superior thing, the mayor of Providence has called to take down the mural honoring this victim, because he claims it is divisive.

Blurb:

“We are also aware of reports that Ms. Castillo expressed hesitancy to undergo euthanasia in her final hours, but that these indications were ignored.”

The Trump administration is set to investigate the euthanasia death of 25-year-old Noelia Castillo, who was a sexual-assault survivor. After she was placed in a group home as a teenager she was gang raped by African migrants, leading her to try to take her own life by jumping from a building. She ended up paralyzed and eventually sought suicide. Her family tried to stop her and when that failed they took legal action.

The State Department directed the US Embassy in Madrid to probe how Spanish law enforcement handled repeated sexual attacks against Castillo before her death, according to a report from the New York Post citing a leaked diplomatic cable. “We are deeply concerned by allegations that Ms. Castillo was repeatedly sexually assaulted while under state care and that no perpetrators have been brought to justice,” the cable read.

“We are also aware of reports that Ms. Castillo expressed hesitancy to undergo euthanasia in her final hours, but that these indications were ignored,” the cable added. “This case raises serious concerns about the application of Spain’s euthanasia law, particularly in cases involving psychiatric conditions and non-terminal suffering.”

Blurb:

 

This is a spectacular screw-up—and it implicates the The New York Times newsroom top to bottom. A The New York Times headline ignorantly called NATO the “North American Treaty Organization,” triggering widespread online ridicule and criticism of editorial standards. The error spread quickly on social media, with users calling it embarrassing and questioning newsroom competence. The paper acknowledged the mistake and said a correction would appear in the next print edition.

Blurb:

Critical minerals are mined all over the world but the majority of the supply ends up passing through China. For a broad range of key metals and minerals, China is either the largest miner, the dominant refiner, or both. This is true for rare earths, lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, and many other metals and minerals that are essential to defense, energy and high-tech applications.

It is less about where ores are dug out of the ground and more about where they are turned into usable components. In other words, Chinese processing plants are essentially the gatekeepers of global supply.

Blurb:

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a measure into law Monday that gives him along with other Florida leaders the ability to label groups as domestic or foreign terrorist organizations and expel state university students who support them.

The law, criticized by free speech advocates, allows a top official at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to designate a group as a domestic or foreign terrorist organization, with the governor and three other members of the Florida Cabinet approving or rejecting the designation. Besides the governor, the Cabinet is made up of the state attorney general, the chief financial officer and the agriculture commissioner, all of whom are elected separately.

Blurb:

The US vice-president JD Vance has just repeatedly criticised allegedly unprecedented and “disgraceful” foreign interference in the Hungarian parliamentary election, while effectively strongly endorsing Viktor Orbán to win the vote on Sunday in what critics will no doubt see as his very own interference with the country’s electoral process.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and US vice-president JD Vance hold a joint press conference in Budapest, Hungary. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/AP

Without skipping a beat, he smoothly moved from lambasting European “bureaucrats” for “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference” he has ever seen (14:09) and accusing them of trying to “destroy the economy of Hungary” to saying he is “here to help him in this election campaign” and that and he was expecting him to win the vote on Sunday (14:26).

Lavishing praise on the embattled prime minister, he argued that he sees in Orbán someone who “ferociously advocated” for his country, “stands up for the values of western civilisation” (14:04), and is generally right on all sorts of things from energy (14:01) to Ukraine (14:05, 14:15).

Blurb:

 

To make America great again, this country must stop all gender transitions for children. Not only is this morally reprehensible, but it is the antithesis of media care. Despite this being common sense, sense is not so common among the left. This is why the federal government did what needed to be done. Many hospitals acquiesced not because it was the right thing to do, but because they feared losing federal funding. One Minnesota hospital, however, was not phased by this pressure and has decided to resume these Frankenstein procedures, despite the government mandates.

Blurb:

Some of the legal experts who have battled the abortion ideology and its related industry across the United States for years are warning that in the wake of Dobbs, which returned regulation of the industry to individual states, some of those are now moving into territory that is causing alarms.

That would be the move toward infanticide.

Officials at the American Center for Law and Justice have posted a warning about the “troubling trend.”

“In the wake of Dobbs and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the abortion debate obviously didn’t end – it intensified and shifted to the state level. Now, radical-Left state legislatures are emboldened, believing they have a license to advance bills that, under the guise of ‘reproductive freedom,’ are quietly dismantling protections for babies – even after birth.”

Blurb:

Israel has passed a law making the death penalty by hanging the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis.

The UK, Germany, France and Italy said the move was “de facto discriminatory” and “Israel risks undermining its commitments to democratic principles”.

A joint statement called the death penalty “an inhumane and degrading form of punishment without any deterrent effect”.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper posted the statement on X, adding: “The death penalty is wrong and we oppose it around the world.”

Blurb:

In case you were still wondering why the Democrats were so militant about funding Ukraine and why Democrats and RINOs are now targeting Orban.

Watch Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, lay out explosive charges that Ukrainian funds were funneled through Europe to influence U.S. elections and benefit Democrats.This major scandal has serious legal and national security implications, raising urgent questions about foreign money, campaign integrity, and the handling of U.S. taxpayer funds tied to the Ukraine war.

WATCH:

Blurb:

The University of Pennsylvania must provide the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission a list of employees who belong to Jewish groups, including their names and contact information, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

The decision comes after Penn resisted a 2025 subpoena stemming from a charge that the university engaged in repeated harassment of Jewish employees, as detailed in Judge Gerald Pappert’s memorandum.

Penn has rejected the discrimination charge and claims that the EEOC’s subpoena is unconstitutional.

Blurb:

“Even without therapy, many people around the world have experienced changes in their patterns of attraction and behavior.”

Dr. Paul Sullins, Senior Research Associate at the Ruth Institute, recently published “Sex Differences in Reported Effectiveness and Psychosocial Effects of Therapy-Assisted Sexual Orientation Change.”

His analysis shows:

  1. All the individuals in this sample had reduced their same sex behavior to “slight” or none.
  2. Although most sought out supportive therapy, 41% changed their same sex sexual behavior with no sexual reorientation therapy.
  3. Therapy affected men and women differently. Women were more likely to have strongly reduced same sex attraction than men, 88% v. 39%.
  4. Therapy to change sexual orientation sometimes brings relief from other psychologically troubling issues, most notably reductions in depression for women and reductions in self-harm for men.

Blurb:

Pro-abortion to the gills, the Guttmacher Institute this week reported that there were a whopping  22% fewer abortions in Iowa in 2025 than there were in 2024. The welcomed drop (to pro-lifers) in abortions was from 3,380 to 3,050.

2025 was the first full year Iowa’s “Fetal Heartbeat Act”–Senate File 579– was in effect.

“The data include numbers from Iowans who got abortions at one of the state’s brick-and-mortar clinics and through telehealth appointments, including those who received abortion pills from out-of-state medical providers in states with shield laws,” according to Natalie Krebs of Iowa Public Radio.

Blurb:

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte has referred New York’s anti-Trump Democrat Attorney General Letitia James to federal prosecutors over two cases involving possible homeowner’s insurance fraud, according to a report.

Pulte sent referral letters on Wednesday to federal prosecutors in Florida and Illinois.

The referral alleges that James made false statements on insurance-related applications tied to properties in those states.

Blurb:


Kansas lawmakers overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of the CARE Act, protecting pregnancy resource centers from abortion mandates and preserving their freedom to offer life-affirming care to women and families.


The Kansas Legislature last week overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of House Bill 2635, which expands protections for pregnancy resource centers and limits certain forms of state regulation over their services.

 

Blurb:

The 2025 Oregon assisted suicide report stated that 637 lethal poison prescriptions were written under the Oregon assisted suicide law which was up from 609 in 2024 and 566 in 2023.

Tom Jeanne, M.D., MPH, the deputy state health officer and epidemiologist at OHA’s Public Health Division stated that:

“What we’ve been seeing over the last several years is a steady overall increase in prescriptions and deaths among Death with Dignity Act participants,”

Blurb:

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said a large swath of the country’s farmers will be unaffected this planting season, despite the rising fertilizer costs stemming from the Iran war.

“The good news is that about 80% of our farmers, actually, last fall locked in their fertilizer,” Rollins said to reporters outside the White House on Monday. “So as we’re moving into planting season, it’s only about 20% to 25% of our farmers that didn’t lock that in. We are working directly to ensure that we can get them what they need and it won’t bankrupt them.”

As the war moves into its second month, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz has led not only to higher oil prices but also higher fertilizer prices, as Persian Gulf-based companies face difficulty exporting their supplies through the closed-off strait.

Blurb:

The final round of polls in Peru ahead of Sunday’s upcoming presidential election indicate that conservative former first lady and former Senator Keiko Fujimori is slated to win in the first round of the vote.

Peru, a country that has had nine presidents in the last ten years, will hold presidential and legislative elections on April 12 — the first such electoral event since 2021. The presidential race follows a series of impeachments that began with the removal of Marxist former President Pedro Castillo in December 2022, followed by the impeachment of Dina Boluarte in October 2025 and the ouster of interim President Jose Jerí in February.

Blurb:

Who could have predicted that California’s massive minimum wage hike would have “negative consequences?” Well, RedState certainly did, along with everyone else who wasn’t a hard-left progressive.

The law, which mandated a $20 per hour minimum wage for fast food workers at franchises that have more than 60 locations in the Golden State, went into effect in April 2024. But wait, there’s more! The law created the Fast Food Council — and gave it the green light to impose further wage increases yearly until 2029, when the council’s authority runs out.

What are the effects of the law, AB 1228? UC Santa Cruz Economics Lecturer Stephen Owen decided to find out, and surprise, surprise:

“Based on what we’ve found, I think this legislation is a classic case of ‘no good deed goes unpunished,’” Owen said. “There are unintended consequences and knock-on effects, and overall, I think the results have definitely not been as positive as policymakers had been expecting.”

Blurb:

Baruch Hashem. Forever united. Haters going to hate the good. That’s what real friends — real allies — do for each other. Juxta this to France who has been secretly aiding Iran and stabbing us in the back.

As details emerge about the extraordinary rescue of the American pilot deep inside Iran, the Telegraph reports how Israel assisted with during the operation.

Blurb:

WASHINGTON, April 6 (Reuters)—The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for the Justice Department to move forward with dismissing a criminal case in which Steve Bannon, an influential ally of President Donald Trump, was convicted after defying a congressional subpoena.

Bannon was convicted by a jury in Washington in 2022 on two counts of contempt of Congress for failing to provide documents or testimony to a Democratic-led House of Representatives panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lower court’s decision to uphold Bannon’s conviction.

lurb:

President Trump gave the Iranian regime until 8 pm tonight to agree to a ceasefire deal. He made it very clear that Iran is either going to disarm and open the Strait of Hormuz, or he will bomb the regime into submission.

Of course, the Left is melting down over this, calling the legitimate targeting of infrastructure “war crimes,” while they spent the past three years turning a blind eye to the actual war crimes committed by Hamas and the past 47 ignoring the terrorism Iran has carried out around the globe.