THE OTHER MIDDLE-EAST WAR: Pakistan and Afghanistan Continue to Strike Each Other’s Border Posts as Conflict Enters Its Fifth Day
Source: The Gateway Pundit · Bias: Far Right
Summary
Bad blood between neighbors leading to war.
The post THE OTHER MIDDLE-EAST WAR: Pakistan and Afghanistan Continue to Strike Each Other’s Border Posts as Conflict Enters Its Fifth Day appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
THE OTHER MIDDLE-EAST WAR: Pakistan and Afghanistan Continue to Strike Each Other’s Border Posts as Conflict Enters Its Fifth Day
Far Right
Bad blood between neighbors leading to war.
The post THE OTHER MIDDLE-EAST WAR: Pakistan and Afghanistan Continue to Strike Each Other’s Border Posts as Conflict Enters Its Fifth Day appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
By now, basketball fans know that LeBron James has informed the Los Angeles Lakers that he will not be re-signing with them in free agency this offseason, and will instead find a new team to end his legendary NBA career with.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller kept up his attacks on birthright citizenship with a far-fetched hypothetical on Friday, and critics lined up to ridicule it.Days after the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship in a 6-3 ruling that struck down President Donald Trump's executive order, Miller posted on X that if you believe a foreign government could sail a hospital ship to the edge of US waters, "deliver a hundred babies to foreign moms, then promptly sail back," and that each child "is American for life, you don't believe in nationhood at all." The rant echoed the birth-tourism case he made on Fox News, where he floated a "hard look" at barring pregnant women from the country.Miller's post predictably led to quick backlash. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger asked sarcastically, "What about our hospital ship that we sent to Greenland? It happened right?" Bulwark journalist Sam Stein quipped, "Well. When you put it that way." Internet personality Damin Toell pointed out that under the 1898 Wong Kim Ark precedent, and still after this week's ruling, babies born aboard foreign government ships in US waters are already exempt from birthright citizenship.Others flipped Miller's logic back on him.National security journalist Marcy Wheeler called his "perverted little fantasy" no more real "than it was for the century and a half since birthright citizenship was codified." Academic Alonso Gurmendi argued that "any citizenship rule can be made to sound absurd like this." And journalist Zaid Jilani went furthest, sarcastically asking: "What if a mom catapults over the US Mexico border and from 500 feet in the air pops a baby out, ties a parachute to it and lets it fall gently to the ground. Does that baby deserve citizenship, lib?"The administration has vowed to keep fighting, though some analysts say the ruling nearly went the other way. Independent estimates put actual birth tourism at a tiny fraction of U.S. births.
A political civil war is rocking the very core of the Democratic Party. On one side are upstart rebels — Jihadi-loving socialists who hate America and want to drag it down to destruction. On the other side are traditional moderate Democrats, Jihadi-loving socialists who hate America and want to drag it down to destruction, but ...
Iran's entire regime made a red carpet entrance to the first of three funeral ceremonies for late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — except the dead ayatollah's own son and successor.
Investigations into president and corruption charges will get heavy scrutiny if Democrats win majority in midtermsDonald Trump’s presidency is facing investigations and corruption charges from a key House Democrat and ex-prosecutors, involving political and personal abuses of power, which legal experts predict will get heavy scrutiny if Democrats win the House majority in the midterms.Legal critics call the scandals dogging the president “target rich” for investigations that Democrats will have a “field day” investigating if they win the House majority. Critics cite, for instance, Trump’s damaging the rule of law by weaponizing the Department of Justice (DoJ) to exact revenge on political foes and protect himself from federal investigations, plus Trump moves to profit in radical ways from his presidency with lucrative and new cryptocurrency ventures. Continue reading...
The Trump administration concluded a recent mineral deal with Kazakhstan that, not surprisingly, enriches not only President Donald Trump’s own family but that of his secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick. Trump’s two eldest sons, part owners of Dominari Securities, are set to profit from the Kazakh tungsten deal. So is Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm run by Lutnick’s two sons.As The New York Times pointed out in its investigation of the scheme, “Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.”The phrases “self-enrichment” and “few precedents” are interesting ways of characterizing this latest instance of the administration’s corruption. Isn’t self-enrichment a good thing, in the sense of profiting from your own hard work? By contrast, the article doesn’t mention the word “corruption” at all. Perhaps the Times is worried about getting hit by yet another Trump legal challenge (in October last year, Trump refiled a $15 billion defamation suit against the paper for its coverage of his 2024 presidential campaign).There are indeed several precedents in American history for what Trump is doing. These previous corruption scandals—Credit Mobilier, Whiskey Ring, Teapot Dome—wrecked the reputations of presidents and cast long shadows over American politics. They also helped to produce the kind of safeguards that Trump is now destroying.Foreign policy is a tool by which the administration levies a toll on any entity that has the temerity to be a country other than the United States. As with much of Trump’s disrespect for norms, his corruption has been massive and largely in full view. The two outstanding questions are: Will Trump and company ever be held accountable for their graft and will this corruption have an enduring impact on political institutions in the United States?Tracking the DamageIf scandalous behavior unfolds in full view of everyone, is it still a scandal? “Scandal” suggests something hidden, something whispered about, something revealed. Trump’s actions are full frontal. They are both brazen and matter-of-fact.According to the Trump administration and its extended family, the money skimmed off the top of economic transactions is just smart politics. The administration has endeavored to negotiate every peace deal, trade agreement, investment arrangement, and mineral pact in such a way as to deliver Trump, his family, and their circle of close supporters a good chunk of change.This is Trump’s interpretation of the American dream: Folks would be downright foolish not to profit from their position. All the great tycoons made their money, from railroads to AI, by being in the right place at the right time with the right amount of ruthlessness. In Trump’s case, however, he is using taxpayer money to cover the risk. And most the time, given the terms of the arrangement, there is hardly any risk because Trump is using his presidential power to game the system. That’s what he really means by the “art of the deal.” Trump only deals from a marked deck of cards.The Center for American Progress runs Trump’s Take, which estimates that the president has received a little over $2.6 billion in cash and gifts since he took office in January 2025.The graft is not secret, though sometimes the actual amounts involved are obscured by layers of complex finance. Trump’s recent mandatory financial disclosure offers some details. But thanks to a number of websites, it’s become quite easy to track in real time the growing amount of Trump’s slice of the pie.The Center for American Progress runs Trump’s Take, which estimates that the president has received a little over $2.6 billion in cash and gifts since he took office in January 2025. Much of this money has come from various crypto schemes, including the Trump meme coin, but also such dubious ventures as the documentary about Melania Trump and a number of legal settlements (more colloquially known as shakedowns). Corruption Counter puts the value at $2.2 billion and includes such recent items as the $100 million savings for Trump from the recent effort to bar the Internal Revenue Service from auditing the president. (Courts blocked the overall $1.8 billion “settlement fund,” but the Justice Department is upholding the IRS amnesty.)If you want to keep track just of the crypto deals, the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee maintain the Trump Family Digital Grift Wealth Tracker. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) keeps his own list, which highlights the insider trading around the Iran War and a defense contract with Dell after the president invested in the company. David Kirkpatrick, at The New Yorker, has been keeping a running total of Trump’s ballooning assets. In January, he updated his total to $4 billion, which details, among other things, the Gulf money flowing into Trump pockets.
July 4th events for America's milestone birthday are being threatened by a brutal heat wave. And, Russia has struck Ukraine's capital, killing several people in what it calls retaliatory attacks.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) committed to block House floor proceedings unless House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) inserts the SAVE Act into a must-pass piece of legislation, Punchbowl News reported on Friday.Luna has pressed for the SAVE America Act – a bill that mandates voter ID and citizenship checks while adding new restrictions on mail-in ballots – to be folded into the annual defense policy bill."We should be doing all of the above," Luna told Punchbowl News for its report published Friday. "Why not try? It's crazy."Luna has already disrupted leadership's plans once – she helped defeat a rule that would have inserted SAVE Act language directly into the defense bill, despite House GOP leaders having spent three years working to keep unrelated amendments out of it.Meanwhile, Senate Republicans have grown frustrated with inter-party disputes. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Punchbowl that Republicans "need to be very careful" about how they message the standoff, arguing that Democrats – not Republicans – are the ones blocking the SAVE Act's passage.“The message we need to convey to our supporters – it’s not Republicans that are preventing the SAVE America Act from being passed. It’s Democrats,” Johnson told Punchbowl News.
