September 24, 2026

02 U.S. Politics

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Excerpt from townhall.com

I couldn’t even get through this piece by Thomas Friedman. For a man who is supposedly a soothsayer on international affairs, made famous by his 2005 “The World Is Flat” bestseller, he falls into logical fallacies about the conflict. You don’t need to be an expert to know that Hamas is a genocidal terror group that does not wish for a peaceful co-existence with Israel. Hamas is immensely popular among Palestinian civilians, who also supported the heinous October 7 attacks in near-equal numbers. Given what we know, how can this man say Israel needs a Palestinian partner to achieve what he thinks is a legitimate victory in this conflict?

Via NYT:

It is unfortunate that President Biden chose to announce his pause of some weapons sales to Israel while on a political campaign swing through Wisconsin. I use that word — “unfortunate” — not because I don’t understand why Biden did so, but because the move has enabled Benjamin Netanyahu to deflect attention from the fact that the most dangerous leader threatening Israel today is not Biden but Bibi.

Netanyahu’s policies have not and will not produce a sustainable victory in Gaza, cannot secure Israel against its greatest existential threat — Iran — and are endangering world Jewry and undermining America’s broader Middle East strategic needs and goals.

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Excerpt from www.motherjones.com

The world’s big banks have handed nearly $7 trillion in funding to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris agreement on carbon emissions, according to research.

In 2016, after talks in Paris, 196 countries signed an agreement to limit global heating as a result of carbon emissions to at most 2°C above preindustrial levels, with an ideal limit of 1.5°C to prevent the worst impacts of a drastically changed climate.

Many countries have since promised to reduce carbon emissions, but the latest research shows private interests continued to funnel money to oil, gas, and coal companies, which have used it to expand their operations.

Eight in 10 of the world’s most eminent climate scientists now foresee at least 2.5°C of global heating, according to the results of a Guardian survey published last week—an outcome expected to lead to devastating consequences for civilization.

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Excerpt from www.washingtonexaminer.com

For almost a decade, Mar-a-Lago has been the destination for Republicans aligning themselves with former President Donald Trump.

From House speakers to congressional candidates, politicians have made the pilgrimage with the goal of currying favor with the man who will lead the party for a third presidential cycle in a row.

But with Trump stuck in New York City for his hush money trial, Republicans have found a new place to flock: the courtroom where the former president, charged with falsifying business records, will be cooped up for the next several weeks.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who led a lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results, appeared there two weeks ago, closer to the start of his trial, while Trump has been joined by congressional allies from Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) to Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) over the last few days.

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Excerpt from thefederalist.com

A recurring theme in The New York Times’ 2024 campaign coverage in recent weeks is that President Biden’s poll numbers suck relative to Donald Trump’s because voters clearly don’t remember the “chaos” of the Trump years.

The paper’s most recent attempt at making “fetch” happen was in an article published Friday, with reference to a new Times survey showing Trump with a substantial lead in all but one of the six swing states that will decide the election.

“Two of the biggest U.S. news events in decades, the Covid pandemic and the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, are seldom the first thing on people’s minds when it comes to their memories of the Trump administration, for example…,” the Times said. “When asked to describe the one thing they remembered most from Donald J. Trump’s presidency, only 5 percent of respondents referred to Jan. 6, and only 4 percent to Covid.”

A new NY Times/Sienna College poll finds support for Donald Trump is growing in key battleground states including Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. That growing support appears to be coming from young black and Hispanic voters.

In those same swing states, the non-white vote for Trump was only at 13 percent. So far, that figure is now at 19 percent, and trends show that number should only go up. Trump has a polling lead among likely voters in all but one of

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Excerpt from thepostmillennial.com

Trump leads Biden in swing states with gains among young black, Hispanic voters: NYT poll

Black and Hispanic voters shifting more pro-Trump have contributed to new polls showing that Donald Trump is leading in five swing states against incumbent President Joe Biden.

On Monday, a New York Times/Siena College poll from the five swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona and an inaugural Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena poll in Pennsylvania revealed that black and Hispanic voting blocs have shifted toward Trump, playing a large part in him leading in five of them.

“Trump’s strength is largely thanks to gains among young, Black and Hispanic voters,” wrote Nate Cohn, an NYT chief political analyst.

A Nassau County, NY order that banned transgendered “women” and “girls” from playing in girls’ school sports was struck down by County Judge Francis Ricigliano. The judge claimed he struck down the ruling because the county executive had no authority to create the order.

He claimed the County Executive, Bruce Blakeman, had no authority to effectively create legislation. He stated “In doing so, this Court finds the County Executive acted beyond the scope of his authority as the Chief Executive Officer of Nassau County,”

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Excerpt from townhall.com

On Friday, a judge struck down an executive order in a New York County that prohibited so-called “transgender” athletes from competing in women’s sports.

To recap, Townhall previously reported how Nassau County, New York banned girls’ sports leagues that permit so-called “transgender” athletes to compete against females. The move was done through an executive order signed by County Executive Bruce Blakeman. Shortly after, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) sent a cease-and-desist letter to the county over the order.

In response to the cease-and-desist letter, Blakeman announced that the county would sue James.

According to Fox News, Judge Francis Ricigliano ruled that Blakeman did not have the authority to issue the order banning transgenders from women’s sports (via Fox News):

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The EU’s new rules, called the Digital Identity Regulation (eIADAS 2.0) are set to start to take effect on May 20. The rules are intended to create an infrastructure that would support digital IDs that will be offered for citizens in the EU to access the internet. Internet companies are expected to be fully compliant by 2026. It is not, as of now, required of citizens, but some rights group argue it sets the stage to do so at a later date.

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Excerpt from www.blacklistednews.com

EU’s Controversial Digital ID Regulations Set for 2024, Mandating Big Tech Compliance by 2026

The EU’s new digital ID rules, the Digital Identity Regulation (eIDAS 2.0), are about to come into force on May 20, mandating compliance from Big Tech and member countries in supporting the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet.

However, work is not complete on the EUDI Wallet, as several pilots are planned for 2025 to consolidate the process of the implementation of the rules.

According to the framework, the European Council passed recently, which has now been officially published, the deadline for the digital ID wallet to be recognized and made available is 2026. For now, it will be used in several scenarios, including accessing government services and age verification, reports note.

As things stand now, that deadline means that while the wallet scheme must become fully functional by that time, it will not be obligatory for citizens of the EU’s 27 members, and protection against discrimination is promised to those choosing not to opt in.

 

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Excerpt from m.economictimes.com

Though the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, called Seti, began in the mid-20th Century, researchers could not get anything substantial as they failed to get radio signals from other planets. But it did not deter them. Now, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA and the European Space Agency are gearing up to send spacecraft on groundbreaking missions to uncover evidence of extraterrestrial life.

According to ‘The US Sun’, the US space agency will launch Europa Clipper on October 10, 2024, which will place a spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter. Jupiter’s Europa is a moon roughly the same size as Earth’s own. The spacecraft will study the environment of the place and study its similarity with those of the Earth, if any.

 

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Excerpt from www.louderwithcrowder.com

 

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Middle school girls’ track in West Virginia has been embroiled in controversy. Now a lawsuit alleges that a trans competitor, one who was born a boy but now claims to be a girl, has been sexually harassing his/her female opponents, making crude and sexual comments. Things that would get her/him run out of school if they had been said by a boy who still claims to be a boy.

Before we go any further, Joe Biden, who critics say took steps to destroy girls’ sports by amending Title IX to include boys who claim they are girls, tells you all to support girls’ sports.

Last month, five middle school athletes took a brave stance when they refused to compete against Becky Pepper-Jackson, the boy who claims to be a girl at the center of this story. They were rewarded for this brave stance by being BANNED from future competitions by an activist coach who, and this conjecture, we are assuming gets liberal with accusing others of “transphobia.”

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Excerpt from www.westernjournal.com

In a stunning display of irony and contradiction that borders on the absurd, an associate dean tasked with upholding gender equality at Columbia University cut off and muted a fellow professor during a faculty senate meeting earlier this month when the latter professor warned her colleagues that the Ivy League school had been infiltrated by outsiders with “known ties to terrorist organizations.”

And yes, these are groups that literally support terrorists and who are known for their oppressive attitudes towards women.

The irony of a gender equality dean silencing warnings about groups with known oppressive attitudes towards women was not lost on anyone who observed the incident, which took place via Zoom on May 3, mere hours after Hamilton Hall was overrun by a mob of Hamas-supporting students.

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Excerpt from www.lifenews.com

Diana Johnson and Stella Creasy have tabled amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill that would make extreme changes to our abortion laws.

How would they change the law?

Both amendments would make it more likely that healthy babies are aborted at home for any reason, up to birth.

Diana Johnson’s amendment (NC1) would remove offences that make it illegal for a woman to perform her own abortion at any point right through to birth.

Stella Creasy’s amendment (NC40) would remove key deterrents against performing an abortion at any point right through to birth.

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Excerpt from thefederalist.com

Since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, pro-abortion states have begun devising measures to shelter abortionists whose operations were hampered by states that chose to protect unborn life. These so-called “abortion shield laws” — many of which are likely unconstitutional — will defeat any ability for pro-life states and their citizens to hold abortionists accountable for violating their health and safety standards. Diligently enforced, shield laws invite a new war between the states over not just the lives of unborn children, but also our system of government.

The extradition clause of the Constitution requires that “[a] Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.” In short, a state cannot turn down another state’s request to extradite fugitives within its borders.

Shield laws, such as those in New York and Massachusetts, hug the edges of the extradition clause by prohibiting the surrender of non-fugitives. Accordingly, a person who promotes abortions while physically present within a pro-abortion state cannot be handed over to a pro-life state in which the abortion has occurred. After all, he has not actually fled from the pro-life state. As The New York Times points out, such laws de facto protect those who prescribe abortion pills through telemedicine to women out-of-state.

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Excerpt from www.lifenews.com

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is backing an Indiana high school student’s legal challenge of how her school shut down her pro-life club because it was accused of “being too ‘political.’”

“Students don’t forfeit their free speech when they walk into the school building. All students have the constitutional right to express their ideas without fear of being silenced by school officials and having their clubs derecognized,” ADF stated in a May 8 news release.

In April, ADF joined legal firm Charitable Allies’ appeal of a federal court’s decision that had sided with the public school in the case, E.D. v. Noblesville School District.

In 2021, a freshman student at Noblesville High School (NHS) in Indiana started a pro-life club aimed at “[raising] awareness and [generating] discussion about the abortion issue while also doing something about it through volunteering,” according to the news release.

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Excerpt from conservativeroof.com

During two distinct occasions on Friday, Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito raised concerns about the current state of America. They both highlighted the perilous decline of freedom of speech and criticized Washington, D.C., as a hotbed of cancel culture, describing it as “hideous.”

Justice Thomas addressed a gathering of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Point Clear, Alabama, while Justice Alito gave a commencement speech at Franciscan University of Steubenville, a Catholic institution in Ohio. Both conservative judges depicted a grim scenario but also urged for proactive measures and provided words of encouragement.

During the event in Alabama, Justice Thomas was asked to comment by the moderator, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, to share his thoughts on working “in a world that seems meanspirited.”

“I think there’s challenges to that,” Justice Thomas said. “We’re in a world and we—certainly my wife and I the last two or three years it’s been—just the nastiness and the lies, it’s just incredible.”

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Excerpt from thepostmillennial.com

A New York elementary school that forced a 10-year-old student with severe asthma and anxiety to wear a mask during the Covid-19 pandemic despite her a medical exemption will be going to court to defend itself from her lawsuit.

An appeals court recently sided with Children’s Health Defense, who sued the Franklin Square Union Free School District on behalf of the child, identified as Sarah Doe, and her mother. The judges agreed to reverse the dismissal of the suit by a district court last year and ruled that the case must move forward.

According to the Defender, while the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit maintained that the plaintiffs had no constitutional claim, the judges determined that the district court’s dismissal of the claim that the school violated the Americans with Disabilities Act was wrong.

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Excerpt from www.washingtonexaminer.com

A federal court in California approved a $62 million settlement recently in a class action alleging that Google violated the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of users by tracking their location and storing that information even though users had disabled the relevant account setting. As a Google user, you might be asking how to receive your portion of that fund.

The answer is that you won’t see a cent of it. The settlement instead will pay the entire fund (after the lawyers’ fees and costs are paid) to groups engaged in extreme left-wing advocacy work or work that is not targeted to benefit the class of Google users.

Courts have allowed this practice, known as cy pres, to proliferate despite ever easier and more inexpensive ways of paying small amounts to individual class members. This is one of the many ways that our legal system funds the Left, but it is even more insidious because it takes money that belongs to individual people, without their consent, and directs it to organizations and causes that are contrary to their values and interests.

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Excerpt from www.nytimes.com

Damon Landor is a Rastafarian. His faith requires him to let his hair grow long. When he started a five-month prison term for drug possession in Louisiana, his dreadlocks fell nearly to his knees.

Mr. Landor was wary of the state’s prison system, and he kept a copy of a 2017 judicial decision with him. That ruling, from a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, said that Rastafarian inmates in Louisiana must be allowed to keep their dreadlocks under a 2000 federal law protecting prisoners’ religious freedom.

The first four months of Mr. Landor’s incarceration were uneventful. Then he was transferred to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport, La. He presented a copy of the 2017 decision to a guard, who threw it in the trash.

After consulting the warden, two guards handcuffed Mr. Landor to a chair, held him down and shaved his head to the scalp.

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Excerpt from lidblog.com

 

Joe Biden is pulling out all the stops to make his failing economy sound just a bit better. His latest move is to dump soaring coffee prices from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) because it is just one more metric that is driving his data to look bad.

By dumping the soaring coffee prices, Biden’s Department of Labor can make his economic data sound better.

But coffee is a major part of what most Americans buy each month — and often daily — in their day-to-day lives. Dumping coffee is removing a key expense that 73 percent of the country spend.

Grocery prices have soared 30 percent. Gas prices are also soaring.

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Excerpt from amgreatness.com

A new study reveals that the current youngest generation, Generation Z, is facing greater financial struggles due to low income and a higher debt-to-income ratio than Millennials did at the same point in their youth.

As reported by Breitbart, the study from consumer credit reporting agency TransUnion surveyed 614 members of Gen Z, also known as “Zoomers,” between the ages of 22 and 24, comparing their findings to a similar survey of 623 Millennials who were between the ages of 22 and 24 ten years ago.

In the fourth quarter of 2013, Millennials on average were making an income of roughly $39,394; when adjusted for inflation, the income of the average Millennial around that time was $51,852. By contrast, Zoomers in the fourth quarter of 2023 were making an average income of $45,493, over $7,000 less than what Millennials made ten years ago. In 2013, Millennials had an average debt-to-income (DTI) ratio of 11.76%; Zoomers today have a DTI ratio of 16.05%.

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Excerpt from www.constructionbriefing.com

Ten novel schemes with a value near or more than US$1 billion join a list of 40 megaprojects designated for direct federal funding or assistance.

The infrastructure projects will be backed by the Biden administration’s US$2 trillion Investing in America agenda, which includes grants and levies allocated from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), and the CHIPS and Science Act.

The projects have been bundled into a programme at OFCCP called the Mega Construction Project (Megaproject) Program. Launched in March 2023, the Megaproject Program “aims to foster equal opportunity in the construction trades’ workforce and expand access to the millions of good jobs being created by large federal or federally assisted construction projects,” according to the DOL.

While several of the projects added to the list are significant in size, the programme’s definition of “megaprojects” is generous. To qualify, builds have to be valued at $35 million or more and that take more than one year to complete.

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Excerpt from thefederalist.com

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s paralegal testified on Friday that his office deleted from their evidence three pages of phone records between convicted liar Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson without notifying former President Donald Trump’s legal team, according to reports.

Trump attorney Emil Bove questioned paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider on Friday about three pages of 2018 phone records between Davidson and Cohen that Bragg’s office had deleted, according to CNN. Additional phone records between Daniels manager Gina Rodriguez and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard regarding Daniels’ claim about her alleged affair were also deleted, according to The Epoch Times.

The altered call records were submitted into evidence, but Bragg’s office did not tell Trump’s team that three pages were missing, The Epoch Times reported.

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Excerpt from thehill.com

 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday threw cold water on the prospects of reaching a deal to speed up the nation’s energy projects, saying that reaching a Senate deal on permitting reform would be “virtually impossible.”

Lawmakers have been working for nearly two years to come up with such an agreement, which would speed up the process by which energy and other infrastructure projects are approved.

But Schumer expressed doubt that it would actually get done this year.

“I’m happy to listen, but I’ve told Joe Manchin it’s going to be virtually impossible to get something done,” Schumer said, referring to the Democratic senator from West Virginia who is retiring at the end of this Congress.

Lawmakers have long been at an impasse on permitting reform.

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Excerpt from www.theblaze.com

 

Confusion reigns on Capitol Hill. What is the American policy on Israel, and what is the Democratic Party’s policy? Where did the money Congress sent for the war on Hamas go? Who placed a hold on what, and who’s in charge, anyway?

President Joe Biden — first elected to the Senate over half a century ago — is more than old enough to know that when you set out to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one, but his last week in office is a master class in tangling, confusing, and ticking off all manner of supporters and allies. While Democrats on the ground have been in open civil war for months, the politicians in D.C. have largely held it together. That fragile hold is coming apart, in no small part because of the president’s own decisions.

The week began with Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was marked with more national attention after Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage and amidst anti-Israel campus unrest. The president used the day to call America’s relationship with Israel “ironclad,” and the White House was eager to promote this. Congress had committed billions in both offensive and defensive aid to Israel as part of its massive foreign aid package (and to increase Republican support). In Washington by and large, things seemed normal.

By Wednesday night, it was all on its head. The president announced in an interview with CNN he’d be stopping certain weapons shipments to Israel in retaliation for its continued offensive operations. Congress went into a tizzy.

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Excerpt from www.washingtonexaminer.com

Ronald Reagan’s classic 1980 challenge to voters, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” could be the end of President Joe Biden should former President Donald Trump pull it out in the election debates.

When Reagan used it in the only debate with former President Jimmy Carter, most people facing high inflation said “no,” and Reagan won the presidency in an electoral landslide.

This year, voters have faced inflation and sustained high prices, and the question asked in a new Rasmussen Reports survey found that people agree with those in 1980.

In the results shared with Secrets on Monday morning, 54% said they are not better off than they were when Biden beat Trump. Just 39% said they are, and that number was pushed up by partisan Democrats.