Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Trump says he’s lifting a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey because ‘everybody’s been bugging me’ about it

President Donald Trump says he plans to remove a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey.

DOONBEG, Ireland (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Sunday at the close of a golf tournament in Ireland that he plans to remove a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey.

Trump said during the trophy ceremony for the Irish Open that he had been asked about the issue by everyone, including Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin and even some of the golfers. Irish Open winner Shane Lowry was among them, Trump said.

“Everybody’s been bugging me” to do it, the Republican president said. “And I said, ‘On behalf of the United States of America, I am going to take the tariffs off’” of Irish whiskey.

Irish whiskey currently faces the standard tariff imposed by Trump on most imports from the European Union, which was reduced from 15% to 10% in July.

Trump announced in April that he was lifting certain tariffs on U.K. whiskey, which includes Scotch and spirits made in Northern Ireland, creating an imbalance with Ireland.

Trump’s surprise announcement was met with loud whistling and cheers from the crowd of spectators. Details on how soon the tariff would be lifted were not immediately available.

Chris Swonger, president & CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, called Trump’s announcement “another positive step toward reducing barriers to spirits trade” and said everyone would benefit from it during the coming holidays.

“As U.S. hospitality businesses enter the critical holiday season, this action will provide a welcome boost for retailers, restaurants, consumers and the American economy,” Swonger said.

In May, the Irish Whiskey Association called for the tariffs to be removed, arguing that such a step would help many U.S. companies with Irish products in their portfolios and avoid uncertainty for consumers.

Trump said on April 30 that he gave the United Kingdom a tariff break on whiskey after King Charles III and Queen Camilla visited the White House. “The King and Queen got me to do something that nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking!” Trump posted on social media.

The Scotch Whisky Association said July 24 that the zero-tariff policy had come into effect.

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Woodbury Republican Registrar Alleges Democrat Counterpart Altered Election System Results, Leading To “Hostile Workplace” Dispute

Woodbury’s Republican registrar says she will not run another election with her Democrat counterpart after he allegedly altered official returns in the state’s election system right before the window to fix them closed.

Lisa Amatruda, Woodbury’s Republican Registrar of Voters, put the allegations in writing on September 11. Her letter to Republican Town Committee (RTC) Chairman Paul Luchetti and the Woodbury RTC details a chain-of-custody complaint regarding the Democrat Registrar of Voters, Daniel Lonegan.

On August 11, Woodbury ran two primaries. Amatruda wrote that when they left the Senior Community Center that night, candidate totals on both ballots had been counted, reviewed, and verified as correct. Democrat Registrar Daniel Lonegan and the head moderator then entered those results into the Secretary of the State’s Elections Management System (EMS). However, Amatruda spotted one problem: absentee totals were placed in the wrong column. Because the return had already been submitted, the Secretary of the State (SOTS) had to unlock the system before a correction could be made. That did not happen that night.

On August 12, Lonegan and the moderator filed an amendment for each primary and fixed the absentee columns. Amatruda checked the four candidate totals again and confirmed everything was correct. She assumed the rest of the process was just standard housekeeping.

It was not.

On August 27, a friend sent Amatruda a Facebook screenshot indicating that she and the moderator were being sued.

During meetings on August 28 and 29, Amatruda learned for the first time that Lonegan had logged back into the EMS by himself on August 13 and August 20. They discovered at least 13 amendments to the moderator’s returns, affecting both results pages and statistics pages. These statistics cover how ballots were cast—including poll tabulators, early voting, and absentee hand counts—which are kept in fields separate from candidate totals. Amatruda stated that Lonegan admitted to the changes, explaining that he had signed in using the head moderator’s credentials, called it a mistake, and could not explain why the results themselves were touched instead of only completing the statistics fields.

By then, Amatruda wrote, what the EMS showed—and therefore what appeared on the Secretary of the State’s website—was no longer correct. Lonegan asked the SOTS to unlock the return on August 29. On August 31, elections officials stated that they were past the open window, and follow-up communications confirmed the returns could no longer be changed.

Amatruda’s core point is one she believes Hartford will try to bury: she is not claiming the winners flipped. Instead, she is claiming that official, state-facing returns were altered after the fact by a single registrar working alone under another official’s login, and those records were left uncorrected.

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Popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs linked to potentially deadly brain disorder

Researchers are warning about a rare but potentially life-threatening brain condition that may be linked to popular GLP-1 weight-loss medications.

A new study, published in Clinical Nutrition, identified 15 reported cases of Wernicke encephalopathy, a neurological disorder caused by severe vitamin B1 deficiency, in people taking GLP-1 receptor agonists.

Most of the reported cases involved semaglutide, sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, or tirzepatide, sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound.

Researchers found 15 cases through the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), published medical literature and their own medical center.

Most patients reported gastrointestinal symptoms or nutritional issues, including weight loss, vomiting, loss of appetite or malnutrition, the study noted.

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Trump Says He Likes Flock Cameras for Law Enforcement – “I Sort of Like Them”

President Trump on Sunday told reporters that he likes the controversial license plate-reading Flock cameras on roads across the country. 

Concerns have been raised by Americans about the right to privacy and unwarranted surveillance on ordinary motorists, tracking their every move and storing the information in a database.

Several Republican lawmakers and state officials have also expressed opposition to the technology.

When asked about the cameras on Sunday, Trump said, “I sort of like them because of that,” noting that law enforcement uses them to apprehend suspects.

“I sort of like them because of that, because of law enforcement, but some people don’t,” Trump said.

“They think it’s an infringement, but I like them.”

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China Stops And Interrogates Crews Of 200 Commercial Ships In Philippine Sea — Analysts Warn Of ‘Status Quo Change’ Near Taiwan

China’s Coast Guard is conducting an unprecedented campaign of maritime coercion in the Philippine Sea. Analysts have confirmed that the Chinese Coast Guard has been stopping and interrogating the crews of nearly 200 commercial vessels in the area.

Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) of Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote about this unprecedented maritime coercion by China in its August 2026 issue. The issue was written just in time as the operations started to take place in mid-June this year, shortly after Japan and the Philippines jointly announced that they were going to discuss ways to delimit their overlapping exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the Philippine Sea, east of Taiwan.

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and the Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in May 2026 upgraded ties between Japan and the Philippines including possible sale of Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s destroyers to the Philippines as well as sharing of classified military information between both sides. Beijing swiftly responded to the two countries’ joint move by deploying large numbers of Coast Guard vessels and survey ships to the Philippine Sea in a series of “unprecedented” operations, according to AMTI.

AMTI notes that even within China’s own EEZ, the Coast Guard has no authority to stop and question vessels in this manner. The Philippine Sea is far beyond the limits of any plausible jurisdictional claim by China.

The region in which China is conducting these surveys is strategically located near Taiwan, and outside the boundary line being discussed by the Japan-Philippines negotiations. Moreover, the type of data that China is collecting can have dual-use values — while appearing to be related to safety of navigation it can also be used for military targeting and even for the routing of attack submarines.

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Trump-Appointed D.C. Judge Blocks President Trump’s USPS Mail-In Ballot Safeguards After Democrat Lawsuit — Claims Postal Service “Lacked Authority”

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Sunday blocked the U.S. Postal Service’s new mail-in ballot rule, the one designed to stop untracked, unverified absentee ballots from flooding the midterms, after Democrat committees, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, LULAC, and the NAACP sued to kill it.

As reported right here on The Gateway Pundit back in May, Judge Nichols originally smashed the Democrats’ desperate, multi-headed lawsuits, brought by Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and left-wing activist groups, ruling they had absolutely zero standing to challenge President Trump’s March 31 Executive Order.

We celebrated this as a massive win for basic ballot security. Now, with the election breathing down our necks, Nichols has completely reversed course and sided with the very same activists he previously dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols granted preliminary injunctions against the Postal Service’s Final Rule on “Ballot Mail for Federal Elections.”

He ruled that key parts of the rule were ultra vires: Congress never gave USPS the power to force states to enroll mail voters in a federal portal, build state-specific absentee lists, and refuse outbound ballots that don’t match the list.

According to the court’s memorandum opinion, the rule created a Federal Ballot Mail Portal, required state and local election officials to submit voter and ballot information to USPS, established state-specific participation lists, and allowed the Postal Service to reject outbound federal ballot mail that failed to meet the new requirements.

Judge Nichols wrote that the Postal Reorganization Act authorizes USPS to collect, handle, transport, and deliver mail.

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U.S. Secretly Removed Accused Pedophile Diplomat From Britain: Report

American authorities allegedly removed a U.S. diplomat serving in London from the country in a secret operation after he was accused of possessing child porn.

A report from The Sun — Britain’s top circulation newspaper — has claimed that U.S. secret agents carried out a clandestine operation on UK soil without informing local police, seizing an American diplomat from his London flat, taking him to a U.S. air base, and returning him to the United States.

The diplomat was reportedly under investigation after allegedly receiving indecent images of children from his brother. According to the report, American agents received a court order in the U.S. before carrying out the raid on the diplomat’s apartment in Putney, London, on August 25th. An investigation of the flat is said to have confirmed that the diplomat was in possession of the child pornography in question.

The move to remove the unnamed man back to the United States has riled feathers in London given that American officials have no authority to carry out policing operations in the United Kingdom.

A British government source is quoted by The Sun saying: “They should have told Scotland Yard when they carried out the raid, and certainly when they found material. Instead, we think they have taken him to a US airbase and flown him 4,000-plus miles to where his brother was being investigated. We think it was a dawn raid before they then took him to the base in a US military convoy.

“If there are child-abuse crimes, there are possibly other crimes he could have committed. There are fears the Yanks are trying to keep this in-house and it’s a cover-up. And we now don’t know if we’ll ever get him back to face British justice.”

An American diplomatic source reportedly defended the action, saying that the United States “acted decisively” and that if it had not acted swiftly, “there could have been delays and diplomacy that could have gone on for weeks or months.”

It is not the first time that American officials have avoided the British judicial system for crimes allegedly committed in the UK. London has previously raised the alarm over the case of a U.S. fighter pilot, Captain Jacob Wulfson, who strangled a woman in Cambridge. Rather than facing trial in England, Capt. Wulfson was tried on a U.S. air base.

He was acquitted of sexual assault and aggravated sexual contact, but was found guilty of strangulation, for which he received a six-month sentence. Downing Street said that it was “very concerning” that he avoided prosecution in Britain.

Commenting on the latest report, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said: “We are aware of allegations concerning an individual assigned to the U.S. Embassy in London. The United States government expects all personnel to adhere to the highest standards of conduct, and we take these allegations seriously.

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SCOTUS Directs NYC to Offer Defense of Its Stun Gun Ban

The Supreme Court wants to hear from the city of New York after the Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and several individual plaintiffs asked the Court to accept their lawsuit challenging the Big Apple’s ban on stun guns. The request from the High Court doesn’t guarantee that the justices will grant cert in Calce v. New York, but it does indicate that one or more justices are interested in the lawsuit. 

Back in 2016, SCOTUS issued a per curiam opinion in Caetano v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts that rejected the state’s arguments in favor its own stun gun ban. The Court reminded the First Circuit that the Second Amendment doesn’t only protect those arms that existed in 1791, but modern arms as well. SCOTUS didn’t directly strike down the stun gun ban, but it did negate the argument used to uphold it. …………………

While Massachusetts ended its outright prohibition shortly thereafter, New York City has kept its ban on the books. A district court judge and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals have upheld the ban, arguing that the plaintiffs failed to “provide any evidence that stun guns and tasers are in common use.”

The cert petition filed with the Court not only questions the Second Circuit’s opinion on the validity of the stun gun ban, but how the Court reached its conclusion. Does a challenger to a ban on a type of arm have to first demonstrate that the arm is “in common use” to establish that the ban implicates the Second Amendment’s plain text? Or is it up to the defenders of the ban to demonstrate that the arm is not in common use for lawful purposes? 

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CIA ‘Proxy’: Unravelling Saudi Arabia’s True 9/11 Role

In the leadup to 9/11’s silver anniversary, it was widely reported a forthcoming New York District Court civil case brought against notorious Saudi government operative Omar Bayoumi would deliver “smoking gun” proof tying Riyadh directly to the attacks. Compelling evidence Saudi Arabian intelligence not only managed several hijackers as agents, but did so as a “proxy” for the CIA, has lain unexamined in plain sight for years. Yet, the Agency’s sinister shadowplay remains eerily absent from media consideration, despite mounting recognition of Riyadh’s role.

Bayoumi has long-been accused by major news outlets and US officials of maintaining an intimate and suspicious relationship with hijackers Nawaf Hazmi and Khalid Mihdhar, immediately upon their arrival to the US in January 2000. A subsequent FBI investigation, dubbed Operation Encore, ruled there was a “50/50 chance” Bayoumi – and the House of Saud by extension – had detailed advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. This explosive finding was not publicly divulged until March 2022.

However, the media remained steadfastly silent a year later when a bombshell filing from the Office of Military Commissions – the legal body overseeing prosecutions of 9/11 defendants – was released. The document summarises classified government discovery disclosures, and private interviews conducted with anonymous high-ranking US intelligence officials. Its contents shed unprecedented light on how the CIA recruited at least Hazmi and Mihdhar if not others who participated in the 9/11 attacks, “via a liaison relationship” with Riyadh’s General Intelligence Directorate (GID).

The same document elucidates how the 9/11 Commission was deliberately sabotaged by its chief Philip Zelikow, who personally endeavoured “to blunt” inquiries “into Saudi involvement with the hijackers.” Concurrently, senior FBI officials tasked with investigating the attacks were prohibited from interviewing Saudi nationals, despite “many” leads pointing directly to Riyadh’s Washington DC embassy. No wonder – probing those connections would’ve amply revealed how the GID was acting as a “cutout” for the CIA, in all its clandestine dealings with the 9/11 hijackers.

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