“When the Liberals tell you that digital identity will make your life easier. Remember, there is no such thing as a free lunch.”
If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) follows through on her planned trip to Taiwan, the US military will beef up security in case a ‘mishap, misstep or misunderstanding’ endangers her safety, AP reports.
While the trip is still an uncertainty, officials say that the military would ‘increase its movement of forces and assets in the Indo-Pacific region,’ though they declined to go into further detail – aside from noting that fighter jets, ships, surveillance assets and other military systems would be used ‘to provide overlapping rings of protection’ for her flight, and any time she spent on the ground.
To that end, the USS Ronald Reagan and its escorts left Singapore on Monday sailing northeast, according to ship tracking information reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP). Source: ZeroHedge
President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – are currently working on setting up a new global reserve currency.
“The issue of creating an international reserve currency based on a basket of currencies of our countries is being worked out,” he said at the BRICS business forum.
According to the Russian president, the member states are also developing reliable alternative mechanisms for international payments. Source: Russia Today
A major new study published this week suggests that a longstanding theory of mental depression has little to no evidence to support it.
The study, conducted by an international team of scientists and published in Molecular Psychiatry, argued that the “serotonin hypothesis of depression” is bolstered by “no consistent evidence” despite its popularity among psychiatrists for decades.
That hypothesis has held that depression is caused by what many psychiatrists have termed a “chemical imbalance” in the brain of those who suffer from it. The researchers said a broad review of multiple studies failed to establish that claim. Source: Just the News
A Washington state sheriff Friday advised residents in his county that if agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) come to their homes without a search warrant asking to inspect their firearms, they can tell them to leave their property.
Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer said in a press statement that agents are “making surprise home visits of persons who have purchased two or more firearms at one time. To my knowledge, these ATF visits have not occurred in Washington State yet.”
Mr. Songer told The Washington Times he became concerned about the Second Amendment rights of the residents of Klickitat County after viewing a doorbell video that showed a firearms owner who ATF agents coerced, without a warrant, to inspect his firearms. Source: Washington Times
Russia’s ongoing struggle to defeat Ukraine has altered the scale and timeline surrounding China’s Taiwan invasion strategy, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said Wednesday.
Beijing is “unsettled” by Russia’s “strategic failure” in Ukraine and now believes it requires “overwhelming force” to conquer Taiwan, CIA Director William Burns said during an interview at the Aspen Security Forum. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, more than 10,000 have died as of June 24, many of whom have been civilians, BBC News reported.
After the Kremlin launched a multi-pronged attack on Ukraine, poor planning, overconfidence and fierce resistance contributed to heavy Russian casualties and a failure to capture any major cities in the early days of the war, Defense One reported. Meanwhile, international sanctions have been levied against Russia’s economy and the Ukrainian war effort has been bolstered by an influx of money and military hardware from the U.S. and other allied countries, such as the United Kingdom. Source: Daily Caller
The word “gender” is mentioned 29 times in the House-passed version of the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which also formally establishes a full-time, funded, stationed, and resourced “Gender Advisor Workforce.”
H.R. 7900, which easily passed the House by a margin of more than three-to-one (329-101), ensures all-gender coverage of artificial reproductive services, examines differences in recruitment and home ownership by gender – and even conducts gender-based services to foreign military and counts the number of people evacuated from Afghanistan by gender:
House Democrats on Tuesday blocked a Republican resolution that would have condemned the violence seen by radical pro-abortion activists at churches and pro-life pregnancy centers in recent months.
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked in May, churches and pregnancy centers saw an onslaught of attacks from radical pro-abortion activists. For example, an individual reportedly lit and threw a Molotov cocktail into Wisconsin Family Action’s facility. Further, the radical pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge admitted to vandalizing and threatening four churches in Washington.
The violence at churches and pregnancy centers continued after the Supreme Court officially overturned the landmark abortion case. There have reportedly been more than 50 instances of arson or vandalism in such locations after the Court’s decision was finalized and more than 100 since the opinion was leaked. Source: Breitbart
In the final hours of the Trump presidency, the U.S. Justice Department raised privacy concerns to thwart the release of hundreds of pages of documents that Donald Trump had declassified to expose FBI abuses during the Russia collusion probe, and the agency then defied a subsequent order to release the materials after redactions were made, according to interviews and documents.
The previously untold story of how highly anticipated declassified material never became public is contained in a memo obtained by Just the News from the National Archives that was written by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows just hours before Trump left office on noon of Jan. 20, 2021.
Meadows’ memo confirmed prior reporting by Just the News that Trump on Jan. 19, 2021 declassified a binder of hundreds of pages of sensitive FBI documents that show how the bureau used informants and FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign and misled both a federal court and Congress about flaws in the evidence they offered to get approval for the investigation. Source: Just the News
Police in Boulder City, Nevada say they are headed to the Hoover Dam after reports of an explosion Tuesday morning. Videos posted on social media showed what appeared to be a fire or explosion in a building near the base of the dam.
A huge plume of black smoke swirled above the building.
Calls to police at the dam and Bureau of Land Management officials for information were not immediately returned. Source: Washington Times
Retirees on fixed incomes and Social Security could get a double whammy from inflation because benefits, which rise with the cost of living, might push them into a higher tax bracket.
The Senior Citizens League, a nonpartisan group that researches issues important to older Americans, estimated seniors could see a 10.5% increase in their monthly checks next year as part of a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, due to red-hot inflation, according to a Fox Business report.
That sounds pretty nice but the amount of Social Security benefits exempted from tax hasn’t changed since 1984, so retirees owe tax on benefits if their income and payments total more than $25,000 for a single person or $32,000 for a married couple. Source: Washington Times
After snubbing Israel for two days in favor of paying homage to the Palestinian Authority, President Biden left the Holy Land for Saudi Arabia on Friday, where the tables were turned, and the Saudis snubbed the President of the United States.
Before traveling to Israel, Biden’s office informed Israel that the standard ceremony at Ben Gurion International Airport honoring visiting dignitaries would be curtailed. Handshakes were also going to be proscribed due to COVID concerns, and pundits conjectured that the ‘shake-less’ Israel visit was in preparation for a Presidential snub of the Saudis who had fallen in disfavor due to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi in 2018. Biden refused to call Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for several weeks after he took office as per his campaign promise to turn the Saudi allies into a “pariah.” But a trip to Saudi Arabia was scheduled after a visit to Israel. This change of heart was due to the record high gasoline cost at the US pumps. Biden had already called the Saudis to increase oil production, but they had not returned his call. Just a few weeks before his first trip to the region, Biden announced that he would not meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on his visit to Saudi Arabia. The president was going to meet with the Saudi prince, but there would be no handshake. Source: Israel365