July Social Security direct payment worth $994 goes out in 25 days
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The July 2026 Supplemental Security Income payments, worth up to $994, will be sent to recipients in 25 days. SSI payments are typically issued on the first day of each month. The program supports people with limited income who are blind, age 65 or older, or have another qualifying disability. The amount beneficiaries receive varies […]
A Gold Star family was left “devastated and embittered” after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who at one point “appeared” interested in helping the family get to the bottom of the 2012 death of their family member, “ghosted” them, The Washington Post reported Saturday.While in Afghanistan, Cmdr. Job Price, a Navy SEAL commander, was found dead in his quarters with a gunshot wound to the head. An investigator into Price’s death found “irregularities in the evidence,” the Post reported, but ultimately ruled out the possibility of foul play.Unsatisfied with the findings of the report, Price’s family pressed for answers and managed to contact Hegseth during his time as a Fox News host in 2022, two years before he would be tapped by President Donald Trump to serve in his administration.“Those pictures are damning for the Navy,” Hegseth wrote to Matt Cubbler, a family friend of Price’s, referencing photographs from the investigation into Price’s death, per text messages obtained by the Post.“Nobody – nobody – would be caressing their pillow while taking their own life. I agree, it does not add up at all to suicide.”And yet, despite the newfound optimism of Price’s family and friends that the case might be given a second look, Hegseth’s "enthusiasm seemed to wane after a few weeks,” the Post reported.In April of 2023, in what would be one of his final messages to Cubbler, Hegseth again expressed a willingness to help Price’s family and friends.“I hope I can help another way at some point,” Hegseth wrote in a text message to Cubbler, according to the Post.“Eventually, though, he stopped responding,” the Post’s report reads.“And despite his role now, leading the Pentagon in an avowedly pro-military administration, members of the Price family say they have received no indication that the case will be reopened. The lack of follow-through, they say, feels like ‘being ghosted’ by someone who styled himself as an advocate for troops and their families.”
The first round of June Social Security payments for retirees, now capped at $5,181, will be issued in four days. When will payments arrive? Retirees born on or before the 10th of a month will receive this payment on June 10. The second round will go out on June 17 to those born between the […]
If there is a single idea that President Donald Trump holds with conviction, it is that the 2020 election was stolen.Millions of Americans agree with him. How it was stolen, and by whom, is still being investigated six years later. That is a problem, because another national election arrives this fall, and Americans deserve an answer as to whether the way we now conduct elections can actually produce honest results.Normal legislative remedies have failed. Congress has not passed the SAVE Act to ensure that only citizens vote, nor does it appear likely it will. It has done nothing about mass mail-in balloting or the vulnerabilities of electronic voting systems. Yet these are precisely the parts of the system that millions of Americans no longer trust — and for good reason.The notion that the federal government has no role in federal elections is plainly wrong.Consider what happened this past April. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell summoned the chief executives of America’s largest banks to an unannounced meeting, alarmed by a new artificial-intelligence model capable of finding and exploiting security flaws faster than any human defender could patch them. If the men charged with protecting the nation’s financial system feel compelled to convene Wall Street on short notice over what artificial intelligence now makes possible, our election systems — built with similar computer technology but with far less security — are open to the same threat and worse.Our electronic voting systemsFor most of American history, Americans voted on paper ballots, counted by human beings, watched by other human beings. Electronic voting promised speed and accuracy. What it delivered is elections that take weeks instead of a day, accuracy that is openly in doubt, and a counting process that has lost the transparency a republic requires. Citing proprietary software, the major vendors have become black boxes. The public is told to trust the output. Oversight is inadequate, and skepticism is the rational response.The deeper problem is the very idea that voting and tabulation should be done electronically. The major suppliers — Election Systems & Software, Dominion Voting Systems (now Liberty Vote), and Hart InterCivic — all record and tabulate American votes on networked digital equipment running proprietary software. The vulnerability is, in part, that many of the electronic components are made in communist China. But even if all the components were made in the United States, they are not immune to a remote intrusion, a firmware exploit, or a software supply-chain attack. The vulnerability is the architecture itself: an opaque, software-driven counting process exposed, directly or indirectly, to any determined bad actor, most especially a nation-state adversary. That is not a vulnerability at the margin. It is a structural compromise of the most sensitive function of self-government.This is not theoretical. The People’s Liberation Army fields a cyber force approaching one million men, and American critical infrastructure is one of its principal targets. In 2019, federal officials seized a Chinese-built power transformer destined for Colorado; analysis at Sandia National Laboratory revealed what appeared to be a hardware back door enabling remote disablement. In 2023, Microsoft identified Volt Typhoon, a Chinese campaign pre-positioning malware inside U.S. critical infrastructure to enable sabotage. To imagine that our election systems are immune to the same treatment is folly, more so now that the aforementioned use of artificial intelligence has become another weapon in the adversary’s arsenal.Some will point to the recent Reuters account of a federal examination of Dominion machines seized from Puerto Rico, in which investigators reportedly found no Venezuelan code and only one chip sourced from China. They will conclude that the foreign-component concern has been overstated. But that misses the point entirely. The question is not whether a particular batch of machines, examined on one occasion, contained components from a designated adversary. The question is whether a computerized voting system, however sourced and however audited, can be defended against the cyber capabilities of a nation-state intelligence service.The honest answer is no. The same Chinese cyber force that pre-positioned malware in our power grid, water systems, and ports does not require a chip stamped in Shenzhen to reach an American voting machine. It requires only that the machine exist, be connected to a network at some point in its life, and run software that can be updated. All three conditions are met.RELATED: John Cornyn’s defeat could be the end of the GOP establishment Antranik Tavitian/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesNew evidenceDirector of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified the Jan. 15, 2020, National Intelligence Council memorandum “Vulnerabilities in U.S.
President Trump shrugged off frustration among New Yorkers that tickets to see the New York Knicks play in the NBA Finals in person are so expensive. The cheapest tickets to Game 3 of the NBA Finals, which will be played Monday at Madison Square Garden, are going for more than $8,000 on secondary ticket markets.…
President Donald Trump, on Thursday, announced that he plans to nominate Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche to head the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for a full term. The same day, Trump also told reporters that he has no plans to nominate Acting National Intelligence Director Bill Pulte as a permanent replacement for Tulsi Gabbard. Trump's Pulte appointment is drawing widespread criticism, as he has no intel experience. But according to law professor and former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, Trump views "incompetence" as a plus — not a minus — in his administration.Trump, McQuade laments in an opinion column for MS NOW, chooses "incompetent" or inexperienced appointees on purpose because they are less likely to question his policies. "Pulte was, and remains, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency — hardly the background one would expect for the leader of America's 18 intelligence agencies," the former DOJ prosecutor writes. "That's particularly true during a time when America is at war with Iran, a hostile foreign adversary whom the U.S. government considers a state sponsor of terrorism…. Pulte replaces Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned from the post last month amid disagreements over the threat posed by Iran."McQuade continues, "Gabbard's resume was thin, but at least she had experience in the military and in Congress. Pulte appears to lack any national security expertise at all. In fact, his only apparent qualification is unflinching loyalty to the president and an eagerness to weaponize the government against Trump's perceived foes."McQuade notes that she was working in DOJ in 2001 when Congress — in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks — created the director of national intelligence (DNI) position, which requires one to oversee "the nation's collection, analysis, and dissemination of information relating to terrorist plots, cyberattacks, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and malign foreign influence.""Why would a president want to fill such a sensitive and important position with someone who lacks any bona fide credentials?" McQuade writes. "Perhaps the appointment reflects what historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat calls 'engineered incompetence.' When a leader appoints an individual to an office that is above their station, the official becomes beholden to the leader — who, in turn, gains absolute control. Knowing they are in over their head, the official is less likely to assert independent judgment or to object when the leader acts in his self-interest instead of the public good."McQuade adds, "Engineered incompetence explains how a Fox News host, (Pete Hegseth), gets appointed secretary of defense and promptly shares sensitive attack plans over a Signal chat…. Effective leaders value candid advice, even when it means hearing things that conflict with their policy preferences. A leader who ignores unpleasant news is one who is unprepared to make clear-eyed choices on behalf of the people he was elected to serve. With a loyalist like Pulte leading the president's daily intelligence brief, the engineered incompetence itself poses a grave risk to our national security."
Turkey is trying to connect underground fuel pipelines as part of a $28 billion infrastructure expansion by NATO to enhance the alliance’s fuel security, according to people familiar with the matter.
