Psychedelic Retreats ‘Significantly Improved’ Mental Health For Military Veterans With PTSD And Depression, Study Finds

A new study of military veterans who attended psychedelics retreats finds that psilocybin and ayahuasca both yielded significant improvements in participants’ mental health, including reductions in symptoms of PTSD, depression and anxiety as well as improved sleep, quality of life and post-deployment reintegration.

The report, published in the journal Brain and Behavior, describes the research as “the first study to investigate psychedelic retreats as a holistic therapy for veterans’ mental health alongside community reintegration.”

“Psilocybin and ayahuasca retreats significantly improved veterans’ mental well-being, quality of life, PTSD, anxiety, depression, sleep, concussion, and post-deployment reintegration,” it says, adding that the retreats “could provide a treatment framework to aid veterans’ recovery by addressing psychological well-being, communal factors, and reintegration into civilian life.”

The study followed 55 veterans who self-enrolled in psychedelic retreats using psilocybin or ayahuasca following a program by Heroic Hearts Project, a nonprofit that connects veterans with psychedelic therapy in jurisdictions where it’s legal.

“For psilocybin, the substance was taken as a tea brewed from dried psilocybin mushrooms with individualized doses determined by the retreat staff between 1.5 and 3.5 g for Session 1 and between 3 and 5 g for Session 2,” the report says. “One gram boosters of psilocybin were offered one hour from the initial dose.”

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Rock band with more than 1 million Spotify listeners reveals it’s entirely AI-generated — down to the musicians themselves

A fresh new rock band that quickly shot to Spotify’s top ranks announced that it’s actually wholly generated by artificial intelligence, just one month after its celebrated debut album earned it one million listeners.

The ’60s-inspired rock-and-roll band, the Velvet Sundown, revealed on Saturday that nothing about it is real after fans of the up-and-coming artists noticed there were virtually no traces of any people associated with it online.

Its debut album, “Floating on Echoes,” was released on June 5 to mass appeal online.

The most popular song in the album, pro-peace folk rock song “Dust on the Wind,” clinched the No. 1 spot for Spotify’s daily “Viral 50” chart in Britain, Norway and Sweden between June 29 and July 1.

All the while, the one million monthly listeners who started following the Velvet Sundown had no idea they were just listening to a mass of artificial intelligence made by fake musicians.

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Democrat State Senator From Nebraska Defends Illegal Alien and Accused Murderer, Calling ICE the ‘Gestapo’

Democrat State Senator Megan Hunt of Nebraska recently went on a profanity laden diatribe on Twitter/X, in which she seemingly defends an illegal alien accused of murder and other crimes, while referring to ICE as the ‘gestapo.’

It’s absolutely stunning to see the lengths Democrats are willing to go to in order to defend dangerous criminals who are in the country illegally.

Twitchy reported:

This was no ‘Nebraska man,’ and he was no innocent person just seeking a new life in America. His name has not been publicly released yet, but El Salvador confirmed that the gang member is on their ‘Most Wanted’ list and has been charged in his home country with multiple counts of aggravated homicide as well as being affiliated with terrorist organizations. One of the kingpin’s top MS-13 associates, also wanted for murder in El Salvador, was shantched up in the raid as well.

All of America should be cheering for arrests like this, but the Democrats just can’t help themselves.

After the news broke, one Nebraska resident noted that State Senator Megan Hunt is opposed to arresting and deporting such nefarious criminals. Not only that, but she is actively trying to disrupt ICE operations.

How does this further the interests of the people of Nebraska?

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Butler, PA, One Year Later: Alleged Would-Be Trump Assassin’s Motive Remains a Mystery

Investigators and journalists appear to remain at a loss as to what motivated 20-year-old Thomas Crooks to allegedly try to kill Donald Trump as the first anniversary of the assassination attempt on then-former president and candidate Donald Trump approaches on July 13.

That mystery prevailed even in an extensive CBS’s report this week, which the network described as the “most comprehensive portrait” of Crooks to date — based on interviews “with more than two dozen friends, professors, law enforcement officials and others, as well as open records requests to half a dozen agencies and a review of thousands of documents.”

Despite all the legwork, CBS concluded:

He left no manifesto, no explanation for why he tried to kill the former and future president. In the year since the shooting, investigators and those who knew him have been trying to piece together what led him to climb that roof in Butler, with frustratingly few answers.

It is not the only news outlet left wondering.

Fox News  and even the newspaper closest to the alleged shooter, the Butler Eagle, came to the same conclusion — that Crooks was leading a secretive double life that provided no clues as to motive up until the time of the assassination attempt.

The fact that Crooks kept to himself wouldn’t even have raised an alarm, the CBS report suggests, because he’d consistently done so his entire life.

What’s left is a mysterious portrait of a bright community college student who went from planning a career in engineering to dying on a rooftop after allegedly firing shots at Trump, wounding him in the ear, killing one rally-goer and critically wounding two others in the spray of gunfire.

The network spoke to Tristan Radcliffe, who had known Crooks since kindergarten and saw him almost daily but never received an invitation to the family’s home.

Radcliffe told the network that really didn’t bother him, saying,  “He always seemed like he focused on his work more, you know, like he came off smart.”

Crooks enrolled in the Community College of Allegheny County in 2022 after his high SAT scores put him in the 99th percentile nationally, the network reported. He told an advisor he was saving up for a four-year engineering program. One former engineering professor there called him a “star student.”

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During 2020 Podcast Interview, Zohran Mamdani Said the NYPD Shouldn’t Respond to Incidents of Domestic Violence

While being interviewed on a podcast in 2020, New York City communist and Democrat nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani said that the NYPD should not respond to incidents of domestic violence, while also claiming that the city’s police force often unfairly targets people of color.

If Mamdani is somehow elected mayor of the city, how exactly is he going to work with the NYPD after being on record saying such things?

The thinking Mamdani expressed here is the same mentality behind the left’s push to defund the police, one of the dumbest and most dangerous political moves in recent history.

The Washington Free Beacon broke the story:

Zohran Mamdani Called To Stop Sending Cops to People ‘Going Through Domestic Violence’

Socialist New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani said during a 2020 podcast appearance that he did not believe calling the police was an appropriate response to domestic violence, an issue which the New York Police Department (NYPD) dealt with more than 100,000 times in 2024.

Mamdani made the previously unreported comments as part of a wide-ranging denunciation of the NYPD during an appearance on the Immigrantly podcast in July 2020.

“If somebody is jaywalking, if somebody is surviving, going through domestic violence—there are so many different, different situations that would be far better handled by people trained to deal with those specific situations, as opposed to an individual with a gun,” Mamdani said.

The revelation comes as Mamdani runs on a mayoral platform that would replace police with “crisis responders” in “mental health” cases. Mamdani’s policy memo does not define such cases, and his campaign representatives did not respond to repeated requests for comment on whether he would prevent the police from responding to reports of domestic violence.

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Heavy AI use at work has a surprising relationship to burnout, new study finds

The adoption of AI tools in the workplace is making employees more productive, but new research from freelance work marketplace Upwork suggests it might also be hurting their mental health. 

Following a survey of 2,500 workers (including executives, full-time employees, and freelancers) across multiple countries, the research showed that the most devoted users of AI tools, including agents, are also 88% more likely to experience burnout and twice as likely to quit, compared to their colleagues who use the technology less frequently.

The vast majority of freelancers (88%) who responded to the survey, in contrast, said their use of AI has positively impacted their careers, without the psychological downsides reported by their full-time, salaried counterparts.

Among all respondents, 90% said they’ve come to view AI more as a fellow coworker than merely a tool. Interpersonal workplace dynamics are shifting as a result, according to the report: for example, 85% of respondents said they’re more polite to AI than to their fellow human workers, while 67% report feeling a higher level of trust towards AI than towards their human coworkers.

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Pennsylvania Man Convicted of Gruesome Beheading of Federal Employee Father, Posting Video of Decapitated Head on YouTube

In a shocking case that captured national attention, Justin D. Mohn, a 33-year-old resident of Levittown, Pennsylvania, was found guilty of murdering his father and posting a video of himself holding the severed head on YouTube.

Mohn was found guilty of murder on Friday and sentenced to two life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Mohn shot his 68-year-old father, Michael F. Mohn, with a pistol at his home in January 2024. He then decapitated the body and uploaded a 14-minute video to YouTube displaying his father’s severed head.

In the video, Mohn ranted about various issues, including the government, immigration, border control, fiscal policy, urban crime, and the war in Ukraine. He called his father a “traitor” and urged others to join him in overthrowing the U.S. government.

“This is the head of Mike Mohn, a federal employee of over 20 years and my father. He is now in hell for eternity as a traitor to his country,” the killer said in the video.

Mohn continued, “It is said those who commit treason and betray others occupy the lowest pits of hell for all time. The federal government of America has declared war on America’s citizens and the American states. America is rotting from the inside out as far-left woke mobs rampage our once-prosperous cities, turning them into lawless zones.”

He went on to call for a “revolution” against the “Biden regime.”

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Watchdog finds Border Patrol failed to screen possible terror-linked aliens, lacks a uniform policy

The Department of Homeland Security watchdog found that at least one Border Patrol office failed to adequately screen aliens with possible links to terrorism because the agency did not have a consistent policy under the Biden administration. 

A review conducted by Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s Office found that the Border Patrol Office in San Diego did not have a set policy to deal with so-called Special Interest Aliens (SIAs), which are defined by the department as “a non-U.S. person who, based on an analysis of travel patterns, potentially poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests.” 

The finding from the DHS watchdog is only the latest evidence of significant deficiencies in the past administration’s handling of the southern border, especially when it came to proper vetting and tracking of immigrants. 

The inspector general found that despite other Border Patrol offices on the southern border successfully developing screening policies for SIAs, the San Diego office failed to do so. 

No agency-wide policy was in place

The watchdog squarely blamed the wider Customs and Border Protection agency for the failure because it had not promulgated a uniform policy for the screening of such aliens. 

“In July 2023, CBP’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) San Diego Field Office and the U.S. Border Patrol (Border Patrol) Yuma and El Centro sectors had a process to identify and provide additional screening of SIAs, yet San Diego sector did not,” the inspector general wrote. “This inconsistency occurred because CBP did not have an agency-wide policy stating whether to identify aliens from certain countries as SIAs,” the watchdog added. 

Because San Diego lacked a sufficient vetting process, the inspector general found “aliens from countries with links to terrorism entered at least one CBP region that did not provide additional screening.”

You can read the report below: 

File

OIG-25-29-Jul25-REDACTED.pdf

No country-specific screening published

The inspector general initiated its review to evaluate Customs and Border Protection’s screening of “Central Asian aliens” who entered the country via “smuggling networks” from June to October 2023, the report says. 

It is unclear what countries the watchdog is referring to because the specific characteristics of the aliens are redacted. However, several countries in Central Asia are home to terrorist activity, including Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. 

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Democrats Collude With Judges To Keep Allowing Noncitizens To Vote In U.S. Elections

Abattle appears to be looming between President Donald Trump and the entire upper echelon of the national Democratic Party over Trump’s election Executive Order (EO) 14248. The order was signed on March 25, 2025, and entitled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” EO 14248 addresses key election integrity deficiencies involving voter eligibility, ballot fraud, foreign interference, and accountability for wrongdoing. It also implements sorely needed mechanisms to assess the accuracy of voter rolls and the security of voting machines.

EO 14248 was immediately challenged by the “Who’s Who?” of the Democrat Party. Nineteen attorneys general filed a complaint in Massachusetts, while four top Democrat Party organizations filed their complaint in Washington, D.C., along with three civic groups. All similarly challenge certain parts of the election EO with only slightly different arguments.

Constitutional Arguments

At issue is the president’s constitutional power regarding elections. The complainants argue that elections are under the exclusive jurisdiction of the states according to a selective reading of Art. I Sec. IV of U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs fail to acknowledge the second sentence: “but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing [sp.] Senators.”

Thus, Congress, not the states, has ultimate jurisdiction over federal elections. That clause birthed the National Voting Rights Act (1965), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA, 1993) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA, 2002). Despite the clear, plain text of the U.S. Constitution, the attorneys general boldly state twice in their brief that their states will not adhere to those laws because: “Plaintiff States intend to administer federal elections according to State laws …”

Article II, Section II explains the general power of the president in providing: “… he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed …” Thus, the president has unquestioned authority to order that the Executive Branch take any steps necessary to ensure federal and state laws regarding any matter is upheld. That is precisely what EO 14248 does. The EO contains nine key sections, each of which issues Executive Branch orders, carefully crafted with references to federal laws, that the orders help to enforce for United States elections.

Proof of Citizenship

The complaints against the EO allege only theoretical harm since EO 14248 has never actually harmed anyone. With merely speculative claims about the future, the plaintiffs cannot truly meet the legal requirements of a cognizable, particularized injury necessary to establish the proper standing to bring a claim. Nevertheless, Washington, D.C. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a temporary injunction on two provisions involving proof of citizenship. Immediately, several media assets reported that a judge blocked the entire order even though the injunction was temporary and involved only two of roughly 40 total provisions in the order.

The judicial decision temporarily enjoins the president from ordering federal agencies to assess citizenship prior to providing the Federal Voter Registration Form to enrollees of public assistance programs. It also enjoined the president from ordering the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), to amend the National Mail Voter Registration form to include proof of citizenship. Thus, the form can temporarily continue to be used to register potential voters who attest to being citizens of the United States whether they are citizens or not.

This  decision does not square well with federal law which states: “It shall be unlawful for any alien to vote in any [federal] election …” 18 U.S.Code § 611(a) and that: “Whoever knowingly makes any false statement or claim that he is a citizen of the United States in order to register to vote or to vote in any Federal, State, or local election … Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned…” 18 U.S. Code § 1015(f).

The executive order simply requires federal agencies to enhance their procedures to enforce federal law pursuant to the president’s constitutional power. To help justify this rather overreaching decision, Judge Kollar-Kotelly stated:  “As a consequence, the Democratic Party Plaintiffs and the members they represent face nationwide irreparable harms that this court must remedy.” In other words, Democrats are greatly harmed if they must abide by the law and cannot continue to try and register individuals who are not qualified to vote.

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MEDIA MALPRACTICE: CNN and MSNBC Didn’t Cover the Recent Attempted Murder of ICE Agents in Texas

Media bias is expressed in a number of ways, often by putting political spin on a particular issue. Sometimes however, it happens when news organizations just don’t report on an issue at all.

This is exactly what happened with CNN and MSNBC when it comes to the recent attempted murder of ICE agents in Texas. CNN and MSNBC simply didn’t cover the story.

Can you imagine them skipping the attempted murder of a group favored by the left? It simply wouldn’t happen. In fact, in any such case, both networks would probably cover the story for days.

FOX News reports:

CNN, MSNBC skip on-air coverage of July 4 armed attack on ICE agents at Texas facility

Americans who rely on watching CNN or MSNBC for information would be in the dark about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents being ambushed at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, on Independence Day.

A heavily armed group lured two unarmed ICE agents into a parking lot on the evening of July 4 by firing a barrage of fireworks at their door and spray-painting graffiti on their personal cars with the words “traitor” and “Ice Pig,” which agents could see from the cameras inside.

At around the same time, a police officer responded to their 911 call for two men firing rounds from a nearby tree line, and an officer was hit in the neck, which forced the agents to take cover. Police also found seven suspects in black military fatigues wandering in a field 300 yards away, some of whom were covered in mud from trying to escape on foot. They also had weapons, vests and radios.

But CNN and MSNBC didn’t devote any airtime to the incident, Mediaite was first to report.

“Should that not strike you as unusual, imagine this scenario: 11 members of a right-wing militia group open fire on an FBI field office on a major holiday, and a responding police officer is shot in the neck,” Isaac Schorr wrote for Mediaite.

For CNN, MSNBC and other liberal news outlets, everything is motivated by whether a story is helpful or hurtful to their preferred side. It goes beyond politics though, especially where human lives are concerned. These liberal outlets put their politics above people’s lives. It’s sickening.

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