WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday (Mar 17) said the United States had been informed by most of its NATO allies that they did not want to get involved with the country’s military operation in Iran, a move he described as a “very foolish mistake.”
But Trump gave no indication that he plans to punish NATO allies for their stances, as he took questions from reporters in the Oval Office during the St. Patrick’s Day visit of Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin.
Trump said NATO countries were supportive of the joint US-Israeli war, which has now entered its third week, even as they did not want to get involved.
“I think NATO is making a very foolish mistake,” Trump said. “Everyone agrees with us, but they don’t want to help. And we, you know, we as the United States have to remember that because we think it’s pretty shocking,” he added.
Baroness Monckton’s amendment (424) to overturn the extreme abortion up to birth clause 208 was rejected by Peers who voted 185 to 148 against it; and Baroness Stroud’s amendment (425) to reinstate in-person consultations with a medical professional prior to an abortion taking place at home was also rejected by Peers who voted 191 to 119 against it.
Amendment to overturn abortion up to birth clause rejected
Earlier this evening, Peers rejected amendment 424, which Baroness Monckton, along with other female Members of the House of Lords, tabled at Report Stage, that would have removed clause 208 from the Crime and Policing Bill.
Farm worker rights icon Cesar Chavez, who led the battle to unionize agricultural labor, is being accused of sexual abuse involving underage girls.
A report in The New York Times cited accounts from multiple women, several of whom were underage at the time, who were either intimidated or forced to have sex with Chavez.
The report led to calls for the legacy of the liberal icon to be reconsidered.
Paid activists in Los Angeles, California have been caught on hidden camera repeatedly offering cash, cigarettes, and marijuana to homeless people in exchange for signing ballot petitions and registering to vote— blatantly illegal activities.
James O’Keefe and undercover journalists with O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) posed as homeless individuals across the street from the Weingart Center for the Homeless in L.A.’s Skid Row to obtain the footage.
Independent journalists Cam Higby and Jonathan Choe were also on the ground in LA’s skid row as part of an investigation for the newly formed Citizen Justice League.
Russia has dispatched two tankers carrying oil and gas to Cuba as the island grapples with a deepening energy crisis exacerbated by a U.S. oil blockade, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.
The ships would be providing the Caribbean island nation with its first energy shipments in three months. Fuel shortages have pushed Cuba into one of its most severe economic crises in decades, with widespread blackouts and disruptions to basic services.
The Hong Kong-flagged tanker Sea Horse, which is believed to be loaded with around 27,000 tons of gas, is expected to arrive in Cuba in the coming days after diverting its course last month, Samir Madani, co-founder of maritime intelligence company TankerTrackers, told the FT.
A second vessel, the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin, is carrying between 725,000 and 728,000 barrels of oil and is due to reach Cuba in early April, he said.
Attacks on a town along Sudan’s border with Chad have killed at least 17 people and injured 123, Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said
CAIRO — The latest heavy fighting between warring parties along Sudan ’s border with Chad has killed 17 people and many wounded, a medical group said.
The attacks on Monday in Tina left 66 people in serious condition, Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF, said in a post on X late Tuesday.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) has introduced a bill that would regulate the Pentagon’s use of artificial intelligence technology.
The rise of AI has sparked national debate over its use in several different areas. But when it comes to military use, the national conversation has intensified amid concerns that the technology could be misused.
The bill seeks to codify two existing Defense Department guidelines into law: that AI cannot autonomously decide to kill a target and that the technology cannot be used to help the military conduct mass surveillance on Americans. It would also ban the use of the technology for launching or detonating a nuclear weapon.
“We’re unhealthy as a political system, and so we focus more on things like Greenland than we do on the use of AI in matters of legal force. And it’s our responsibility to legislate this,” Slotkin told NBC News.
The first two tenants of the bill were at the center of the U.S. military’s acrimonious split with AI giant Anthropic in recent weeks. While the Pentagon has insisted that it regards conducting mass surveillance of Americans as illegal already and that its policy mandates that a human be responsible for lethal decisions, Anthropic worried that loopholes could allow for that surveillance anyway and that future administrations could revoke those guidelines.
The feud boiled over into President Donald Trump’s decreeing that all federal agencies have six months to stop using Anthropic models and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s declaring the company a supply chain risk, despite the fact that the technology has still helped the U.S. identify military targets in its ongoing war with Iran.
HAVANA — The Trump administration made clear Tuesday that it sees Cuba as the next country where the U.S. can play out its desires on the world stage.
A day after Cuba’s third nationwide blackout in four months as the socialist island’s economy suffers under U.S. sanctions, President Donald Trump said, “Cuba right now is in very bad shape.”
“And we’ll be doing something with Cuba very soon,” the president added.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is determined to continue missing opportunities, but wants you to know that it’s not his fault. In the latest scene of this farce, last week Thune swore that he would bring the SAVE Act to the Senate floor for a vote (like he already promised to do at the end of February) … but, since he doesn’t have 60 votes, he would be “very, very surprised” if it passed.
The word “saboteur” comes to mind.
The Republicans could easily end the “zombie” filibuster — a piece of Senate paraphernalia of no nostalgic or traditional importance — by lowering cloture (the procedure to end debate and actually vote on a bill) from 60 to a simple 51 majority with Vice President Vance ready to break any ties.
But it’s even easier than that. Several weeks ago, in Human Events, Connie Hair (Rep. Louie Gohmert’s chief of staff for more than ten years) wrote concerning the Senate misheva over SAVE:
The Senate’s Standing Rules have been dissected ad nauseam since the House took S.1383, a bill already passed by the Senate, gutted its text, replaced it entirely with the SAVE America Act, and returned it as a privileged message. That procedural posture matters. There is no need to “nuke” the filibuster lowering the cloture threshold from 60 votes to 51 to call up the bill (emphasis mine). Under the Senate’s existing rules, the message can be called up for debate. After the two-speech rule is exhausted or there is no one left wishing to speak, the bill is voted up or down by simple majority.
The Trump administration Department of Justice says women and babies whose lives and safety are threatened by popular abortion pills should have to wait until after U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s review of the popular abortion drug mifepristone to get relief.
The DOJ is redirecting its demands for a court-mandated pause on abortion pill lawsuits from the landmark Louisiana v. FDA case to take aim at Texas and Florida for challenging the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone and subsequent expansions. It is under the Biden administration’s 2023 radical mifepristone permissions that anyone in any state can order mail-order pregnancy-ending pills and complete at-home abortions without medical oversight.
A Minneapolis health clinic run by Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) sister received millions of dollars in taxpayer funding during the time the congresswoman served in both state and federal office, according to reports examining the funding history of the facility.
People’s Center Clinics & Services, located in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, received $2.2 million in state funding through Minnesota’s 2017 capital budget, a measure Omar publicly supported while serving in the Minnesota House of Representatives.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is back in the news after publicly commenting on “hostility” toward federal judges.
The remarks came on Tuesday when the chief justice was interviewed by Senior District Judge Lee Rosenthal at a Rice University event. During her line of questioning, Rosenthal noted Roberts’ past acknowledgement that public criticism “comes with the territory” of being a judge. She then asked him how he handles such critiques of the Supreme Court or his judicial opinions.
The Bush 43 appointee began his answer by recognizing that judges aren’t “flawless” and that criticisms of their work “can very much be healthy.” What’s garnering attention is the next part in which he said that “the problem” that occasionally arises is when “the criticism … move[s] from a focus on legal analysis to personalities.”
“You see, from all over … [there’s] not just any one political perspective on it, that it’s more directed in a personal way, and that, frankly, can be actually quite dangerous,” Roberts said. “Judges around the country work very hard to get it right, and if they don’t, their opinions are subject to criticism. But personally directed hostility is dangerous, and it’s got to stop.”
An Indiana trial court made a deeply troubling decision that abortion may be part of the right to religious exercise under Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”). The March 5 decision reveals several problems with our current legal system, our understanding of what religion is, and how far we have come from the culture of the American founding era.
The lawsuit was filed by a couple of anonymous plaintiffs and a group called “Hoosier Jews for Choice,” who all allege that the Indiana law — which makes it a crime for doctors in the state to perform abortions in most cases — violates the plaintiffs’ religious exercise rights under the state’s RFRA.
At the outset, there are simply narrative problems left unchallenged by the court. For example, one of the plaintiffs “believes that, at least prior to viability, a fetus is a part of the body of the mother.” This is factually incorrect and is not a religious belief at all. Whether one calls an unborn child a “fetus” or a “zygote” or an “embryo,” it is scientifically not a part of the mother’s body up until some arbitrary point in time, such as “viability,” when it becomes something other than part of the mother’s body. From the moment of conception, the unborn child has DNA distinct from that of its mother. Religion does not entitle people to their own set of facts in this way.
Further, this argument leads to a disturbing slippery slope. There is no rational reason to proclaim that a “pre-viable” baby before a certain age is “a part of the body of the mother” and then becomes its own person separate from the mother at a later stage of pregnancy. This is completely arbitrary. If the court accepts this claim as a legitimate religious belief, I see no good reason why a different “religious” individual could not claim a religious belief that a nursing infant still attached to and dependent on his mother is also “a part of the body of the mother.” Is there a potential religious exercise right to kill a nursing newborn?
“This man had American blood on his hands. His network specifically targeted current and former U.S. officials, including President Donald Trump.”
The Israeli Defense Forces announced on Wednesday that Iran’s Minister of Intelligence, Esmaeil Khatib, has been killed in a targeted strike that took place in Tehran. This comes amid the US-Israeli Operation Epic Fury in the Middle Eastern country.
A senior Israeli official told Fox News that Khatib had previously survived an attack that resulted in the deaths of dozens of Iranian leaders. The official said, “This man had American blood on his hands. His network specifically targeted current and former U.S. officials, including President Donald Trump.”
On Tuesday, California agreed to a settlement with the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, and other plaintiffs, and will pay over $1.3 million to cover the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.
The settlement arose from a lawsuit that was filed against California’s Marketing Firearms to Minors Law, which crossed into First Amendment territory by banning firearm advertisements.
Breitbart News quoted Ninth Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee’s September 2023 majority opinion against the law, where he wrote “…that [the Marketing Firearms to Minors Law] does not directly and materially advance California’s substantial interests in reducing gun violence and the unlawful use of firearms by minors. There was no evidence in the record that a minor in California has ever unlawfully bought a gun, let alone because of an ad.”
RELATED VIDEO — Walters: Gavin Newsom Proves Democrats Have Been Captured by Their Most Radical Elements:
Lee added, “California cannot straitjacket the First Amendment by, on the one hand, allowing minors to possess and use firearms and then, on the other hand, banning truthful advertisements about that lawful use of firearms.”
Late last year, my colleague Elizabeth Stauffer reported that “ultra-conservative” candidate José Antonio Kast had won a landslide victory in Chile’s presidential election.
And by “ultra-conservative,” what is really meant is running for office by promising to take actions that normal people want and need. Kast, a Roman Catholic and lawyer, had a campaign centered on restoring order, cracking down on crime and illegal immigration, and revitalizing Chile’s market-oriented economic model through spending cuts and pro-business reforms.
How is Kast doing at this point? Less than a week after his inauguration, construction of a border wall between Chile and Peru began.
Less than a week after his inauguration, Chile’s arch-conservative president on Monday began overseeing preparations to build a border barrier — part of his flagship campaign promise to block immigrants from crossing illegally.
From Chile’s northern frontier area of Chacalluta, where legions of immigrants have slipped across the Peruvian border into one of the region’s most prosperous nations, Kast vowed to implement what he calls his “Border Shield” plan. Among other steps, it involves the construction of a physical barrier at the nation’s northern border made up of ditches and fences and patrolled by drones and the military forces.
…Kast assured the public that “for all of Chile, this is a milestone.”
“We have taken clear and concrete decisions to close our border to illegal immigration, drug trafficking and organized crime,” he said. “We want to implement this without any delay.”
Joe Kent, Director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, has resigned from the Trump administration.
Kent said he “cannot in good conscience” back Trump’s war in Iran.
Iran “posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent posted on social media Tuesday.
Kent is a former political candidate with connections to right-wing extremists who was confirmed to his post last July on a 52-44 vote.
Take a look:
After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.
I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this… pic.twitter.com/prtu86DpEr
After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.
I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
I support the values and the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term. Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.
In your first administration, you understood better than any modern President how to decisively apply military power without getting us drawn into never-ending wars. You demonstrated this by killing Qasam Solamani and by defeating ISIS.
Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again.
As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.
I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for. The time for bold action is now. You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards.
It was an honor to serve in your administration and to serve our great nation.
If you pay any modicum of attention to the news, you’re surely aware that there are a host of global issues which are affecting Americans locally.
(If you’ve had to fill up your car in the last week, you’re already painfully aware of this, with or without paying attention to the news.)
While those headlines will typically command the most attention, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about stateside.
In fact, there’s a massive, looming issue that could shape the near-term future of this country coming up: the midterm elections.
Votes are obviously going to be incredibly important with respect to how the midterms turn out — which means the act of voting itself will be under a ferocious microscope ahead of November.
And now, that microscope has focused on deep-blue California.
CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS FRAUD CASH FOR BALLOTS PART I: Homeless Bribed with Cash & Drugs In Exchange For Registering To Vote & Signing Election Petitions Caught On Tape Undercover On Skid Row In California.
Two top Iranian leaders have been killed as the United States and Israel continue their joint operation against the Iranian regime.
Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of the Basij Force, have been eliminated, the Israeli Defense Forces announced Tuesday.
“Under Soleimani, the Basij unit led the main repression operations in Iran, employing severe violence, widespread arrests, and the use of force against civilian demonstrators,” according to the IDF.
Larijani was closely associated with the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and was one of the nation’s top security officials. The former supreme leader tasked Larijani and several other officials with ensuring the regime would survive if he were killed, The New York Times reports.
“Throughout the years, Larijani was considered one of the most veteran and senior figures within the Iranian regime leadership,” according to the IDF.
?Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and the regime’s effective leader, has been eliminated.
Throughout the years, Larijani was considered one of the most veteran and senior figures within the Iranian regime leadership, and was a close associate… pic.twitter.com/kBIgSSGBm0
About 3,800 workers are on strike at Swift Beef Company, one of the largest beef processing plants in the United States. Workers at the plant, who belong to the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, overwhelmingly voted to strike after negotiations with the facility’s parent company, JBS USA, stalled. The strike draws immediate national attention because the Greeley plant represents a major part of the American beef supply chain.
Like nearly all job disputes, there are two sides to the argument: JBS USA leaders said the company offered competitive pay and benefits, while the union members were concerned about wages, workplace safety, and job conditions inside the plant.
JBS USA operates as the American division of the global meat company JBS S.A., which runs one of the largest beef processing operations in the world. This disagreement now places one of the country’s largest slaughter facilities in the middle of a labor standoff.
Most ranchers can still get cattle to market because the national herd is smaller, and that could give JBS some leverage in negotiations, since other slaughterhouses can absorb the Greeley plant’s work, Greiman said.
Feedlots hold clues to consumer costs
Yet an extended strike at Greeley could disrupt the industry, particularly in Colorado and neighboring states, said Jennifer Martin at Colorado State University’s animal sciences department.
“The feedlots, the people who have the cattle right now — the longer they sit kind of in a holding pattern, the more expensive they become to feed,” said Martin. “For consumers, it means that prices will likely go up.”
Training versions of AI models on classified data is expected to make them more accurate and effective in certain tasks, according to a US defense official who spoke on background with MIT Technology Review. The news comes as demand for more powerful models is high: The Pentagon has reached agreements with OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI to operate their models in classified settings and is implementing a new agenda to become an “an ‘AI-first’ warfighting force” as the conflict with Iran escalates. (The Pentagon did not comment on its AI training plans as of publication time.)
Training would be done in a secure data center that’s accredited to host classified government projects, and where a copy of an AI model is paired with classified data, according to two people familiar with how such operations work. Though the Department of Defense would remain the owner of the data, personnel from AI companies might in rare cases access the data if they have appropriate security clearance, the official said.
Diesel fuel, the lifeblood of U.S. industry, crossed an alarming and historic benchmark Tuesday.
Amid the Iran War and the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the U.S. average retail diesel prices have crossed $5 a gallon, the highest since December 2022.
This marks only the second time diesel prices have hit the historic 5-dollar benchmark, according to Reuters. Tuesday’s new average of $5.04 is now a record high, according to analysts at GasBuddy.
Meanwhile, gas prices across the country have surged 74 cents a gallon. This reportedly marks nearly a 30% increase over the past month, the highest monthly spike since Hurricane Katrina.
“The problem is, is we’re so strained financially coming into this issue,” explained Littleton, a third-generation farmer from Gibson County in the state’s northwest.
“We have had a couple of record losses over the last couple of years, so everyone’s kind of grabbing at straws anyway, and then to have input prices increase yet again, it just really couldn’t happen at a worse time.”
Littleton, who cultivates corn, soybeans, and wheat, is one of thousands of farmers nationwide who will pay significantly more this spring for the essential nutrients their crops require.
Nitrogen-based fertilizer is particularly crucial for corn, typically the largest crop in the U.S., which feeds the nation’s livestock and is converted into fuel for most U.S. vehicles.
This action has caused a significant slowdown in shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical choke point for 20 per cent of the world’s oil and natural gas.
