ATIP records show Edmonton mayor deferred to NCCM during campaign against police chief’s Israel trip

As antisemitic hate crimes continue to surge across Canada, newly released access-to-information records reveal Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack was actively coordinating with and relaying the concerns of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) and affiliated activist groups during the controversy surrounding Edmonton Police Chief Warren Driechel’s trip to Israel.

The records raise an uncomfortable question: Why was city hall treating the NCCM coalition as its primary stakeholder while appearing to give far less weight to Edmonton’s Jewish community?

The controversy began after Driechel participated in a professional development trip to Israel alongside other North American police leaders. The trip focused on public safety, emergency management, cybersecurity and counter-terrorism.

Almost immediately, the NCCM, the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities and more than two dozen affiliated organizations launched a campaign against the chief, demanding answers and ultimately suggesting that, absent satisfactory responses, Driechel should resign.

Behind the scenes, the newly released records show Mayor Knack repeatedly directing police leadership toward NCCM.

“The best starting point for organizations to engage with is the letter sent by NCCM which lists out many organizations,” Knack wrote to the police chief and police commission chair.

Knack did not merely pass along the coalition’s concerns. He endorsed them.

“I think the three questions that community have raised are reasonable questions to be answers,” he wrote, referring directly to the demands contained in the NCCM-led coalition letter.

The mayor also offered city hall’s assistance in arranging a meeting between the activists, the chief and police leadership.

“Finally, NCCM would like to meet with Council and both of you all together. Our office is more than willing to help coordinate,” Knack wrote, adding that “this would be hosted by NCCM” and that “they would be leading the meeting.”

Knack went even further, recommending NCCM-connected figures as advisors to police leadership.

“Both were formally involved with the Edmonton and/or National parts of NCCM and have been taking calls and meetings non-stop since Tuesday and would have some excellent insight if there is interest,” he wrote.

The contrast with the treatment of Edmonton’s Jewish community is striking.

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CBC demands blind trust from viewers in bizarre Instagram video

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s news division released a video urging Canadians to “trust” its reporting, saying Canadians will “never ever” have to determine what is “real and what’s fake” in its coverage.

Critics online weren’t convinced, with many on X pointing to CBC coverage of major political flashpoints, including the reported discovery of unmarked graves near Kamloops in 2021 and the 2022 Freedom Convoy, as well as what they describe as “lies of omission” in covering some international stories while overlooking others of a similar nature.

“You will never ever have to wonder what is real or what is fake if it comes from CBC News,” Brodie Fenlon, General Manager and Editor in Chief of CBC News, said in a video posted to Instagram. “At CBC, our journalism is fact-checked, it’s verified. We don’t put anything out into the world unless we know it to be true, or if we haven’t verified it, then we’ll tell you that.”

The video continues, stressing that the state broadcaster, which receives approximately $1.38 billion annually from the federal government, is made by humans and meets a “really high bar” of standards.

“We’re accountable for our journalism, and in the rare cases where we get something wrong, we’ll own it. We’ll tell you what we got wrong and how we fixed it,” Fenlon said. “You will never ever have to wonder what is real or what is fake if it comes from CBC News. That’s the invitation. Choose news, not noise.”

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BETRAYAL: House Bucks Trump, Passes Ukraine Aid Package with $9 BILLION to Ukraine and Sanctions on Russia – Here Are the 18 Republicans Who Voted Yes

The House of Representatives passed a bill approving an additional $9 billion in aid to Ukraine and placing harsh sanctions on Russia. 

Meanwhile, Trump is pushing for both Russia and Ukraine to make compromises, and Zelensky calls for face-to-face negotiations with Putin in a letter sent to the Russian President.

Trump addressed the letter on Monday, saying, “I think it would be great if they met” and calling on them to “get it done.”

When asked later about what compromises he wants to see made, the President declined to say but said that “they’re going to make both make compromises,” which he suggested.

“I’ve been very strong on the fact that they’ve got to get that over with,” he said. “I want them each to make certain compromises. I think they’re going to do that.”

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63 Arrested, Crypto Millions Frozen As FBI, DOJ Team Up With Meta, Coinbase And Starlink To Bust Scammers

More than 1 million scam-related online accounts were taken down, and millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency were frozen, as part of a crackdown on Southeast Asian scam networks.

The crackdown operations, conducted by U.S. and international agencies led by the Department of Justice (DOJ), began on May 18, when the DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force brought together the FBI, Royal Thai Police, and law enforcement agencies from Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand to identify and disrupt criminal scam networks.

Meta, Microsoft, Starlink, and Coinbase were part of joint operations held in Washington and Bangkok, Meta said in a June 3 statement.

“More than a million online assets were disrupted as a result of the operation – including 1.4 million accounts, pages, and groups across Facebook and Instagram, 20,000 Microsoft accounts, and thousands of Starlink kits – and the Royal Thai Police has arrested 63 individuals involved in scam operations,” Meta said.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase “froze more than $3 million in cryptocurrency assets tied to criminal networks.” In addition, Starlink “terminated connectivity for thousands of Starlink kits that were attributed to unlawful use,” it said.

Criminal syndicates behind the fraud have exploited millions of people globally via romance scams and investment fraud, and through utilizing forced labor. This makes coordinated disruption critical to protecting people, Meta said.

FBI Director Kash Patel thanked Meta for the company’s assistance in a June 3 post on X, and said the operation was “just the beginning!”

The DOJ said that the joint initiative interrupted malicious network connections hosted by scammers. Moreover, servers and hosting infrastructure associated with the scam networks in Southeast Asia were decommissioned.

Many scam centers are run from Laos, Cambodia, and Burma along the border with Thailand, across several industrial-scale compounds.

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Canada’s Senate rejects amendment to Bill C-9 that would ban ‘residential school denialism’

Canadian senators voted down a recent proposed amendment to anti-Christian “hate speech” legislation, Bill C-9, which would have criminalized “residential school denialism.”

On Wednesday, senators voted 41–32 against adopting an amendment sponsored by Sen. Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Nunavut), who claimed that residential school attendees such as herself faced harms, as well as other changes to the bill. There were two abstentions.

Karetak-Lindell’s amendment would have changed Canada’s Criminal Code to say that any person who willfully promotes hatred against indigenous peoples by “condoning, denying or downplaying” alleged abuses linked to Canada’s residential school system outside of a private conversation could face prosecution or even a summary conviction, which could then lead to potential jail time.

The new amendment to Bill C-9 would have needed a House of Commons ratification if the Senate passed the bill as it stands in the third reading.

The news of the Senate’s vote-down of the amendment received praised from Conservative MP Andrew Lawton.

“The Senate has REJECTED the Senate Human Rights Committee’s amendments to Bill C-9, including the criminalization of residential school ‘downplaying’,” he wrote in an X post.

It is not yet clear what this means for Bill C-9, but the recent vote likely means that the bill will be further stalled from becoming law.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Bill C-9, which is before Canada’s Senate, would criminalize religious expression and belief when quoting parts of the Bible, including passages about homosexuality and gender.

Bill C-9 has been blasted by constitutional experts as allowing empowered police and the government to go after those deemed to have violated a person’s “feelings” in a “hateful” way. The bill was introduced by Justice Minister Sean Fraser last year.

Specifically, Bill C-9 would remove Section 319(3)(b) of Canada’s Criminal Code. This section provides protection to good-faith expression of a person’s religious views, which are based on religious texts such as the Holy Bible.

Bill C-9 has been blasted by some of Canada’s premiers.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith recently said that she does not want to see authorities “monitoring” church services in her province in light of Bill C-9.

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The Left’s New Favorite Christian Politician Has a Theology Problem

There’s been a ton of talk about James Talarico, the Democrats’ nominee for the Senate seat in Texas, and how he claims that Christianity is a left-wing faith. The left so desperately wants it to be true, even as so many leftists reject Christianity.

A couple of mainstream media outlets are hyping up Talarico as a new kind of Christian politician. What they’re inadvertently doing is revealing how out of touch with true Christianity Talarico actually is.

If you want an idea of how far out of the mainstream Talarico’s theology is, check out the first few paragraphs of a profile of the candidate’s pastor in the New York Times:

On a recent Sunday morning at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, Jim Rigby asked his congregation to share what came to mind when he mentioned the Apostle Paul, the major Christian figure to whom 13 books in the Bible are attributed. They cheerfully complied:

“Villain!”

“Homophobic!”

“He’s a jerk.”

Paul’s attributed writings include passages seen as encouraging wives to submit to their husbands and instructing them to be quiet in church, and others condemning same-sex sexual behavior as sinful.

Mr. Rigby acknowledged the trouble. But in a sermon that also cited the Bhagavad Gita and the Buddha, he nudged his congregation to reconsider the apostle, one of the most important in the early Christian church. “Aristotle and Plato, they were creeps, too, in modern times,” Mr. Rigby said. “But do we want to learn from our ancestors or not?”

That fourth paragraph gives a lot away. We expect the Times to approach everything from the left, so of course, it would judge the Apostle Paul to be on the “wrong side of history,” to use that phrase the left loves so much.

But the article tells us much more about the faith environment Talarico grew up in. His pastor:

…does not use male pronouns for God, for example, because it is a kind of “violence” to imply to a girl that her brother is more like God than she is, he said in an interview after the service. He does not use the word “Lord,” because it conjures a wealthy, European, male God, he said. For that matter, he added, he does not much care for the word “God.” He uses it on occasion, he said, but he tries to use synonyms, because “it’s going to mean something different to everybody.”

In his sermon that morning, he had referred to “the creative impulse of the universe,” which “can be called God, but it doesn’t have to be called God.”

This is the environment that shaped Talarico’s views on faith, scripture, and theology. No wonder he doesn’t sound like any mainstream Christian.

The Atlantic gives the game away with a ballsy headline: “Texans Will Decide if Jesus Was a Lefty.” In this piece, Elizabeth Bruenig repeats the lie that podcasters Joshua Haymes and Brooks Potteiger called for Talarico’s death, when, as I wrote in March (see the link below), the two men were using the biblical language of killing Talarico’s sin nature and arguing that he should be, in Paul’s words, “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20).

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Arizona Attorney General Shot Down by AZ Supreme Court in Lawfare Case Against 2020 Trump Electors – Plans to Seek New Grand Jury Indictment

The Arizona Supreme Court has denied Arizona Attorney General’s bid to revive her lawfare against 2020 electors in Arizona after an appeals court dismissed the case, saying Mayes misled and improperly improperly a grand jury. 

In April, 18 individuals, including Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, RNC attorney Christina Bobb, conservative attorney John Eastman, and Trump campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, were indicted by Kris Mayes’ grand jury for challenging the stolen 2020 election and casting an alternative slate of electors for President Trump.

The charges include nine counts of conspiracy, fraudulent schemes and artifices, fraudulent schemes and practices, and forgery. “Defendants and unindicted coconspirators schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency to keep Unindicted Coconspirator 1 in office against the will of Arizona’s voters,” Mayes’s indictment alleged. President Trump was named “Unindicted Coconspirator 1.”

But her case fell apart after a far-left judge allowed the defendants to argue that the charges were politically motivated. The same judge later recused himself after he was busted bashing white men and making demands that other judges in Arizona support Kamala Harris against her conservative critics.

A judge later ruled that state prosecutors improperly presented the case to a grand jury and failed to inform jurors of the Electoral Count Act, which dictates the rules of electoral vote counting and exonerates the defendants. An appeals court sided with the lower court judge, refusing even to consider the case in September.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Mayes sought to revive her case by appealing to the state’s high court last November.

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Brooke Rollins Details How Trump Admin Is Cracking Down on Food Stamp Fraud

Agriculture Department Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday during a hearing explained how the Trump administration is working to combat food stamp fraud.

Rollins wrote, “@USDA has NEVER had access to State SNAP data. Not until this Administration demanded it. That’s why every figure from years past is meaningless. From the 29 states that DID share data, we’ve already identified at least $3 billion a year in fraud. Extrapolated nationwide: more than $10 billion. This isn’t ‘erroneous payments.’ This is FRAUD — and yes, @RepAngieCraig, I know the difference. Do you?”

Rollins shared a clip of her exchange with Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-MN) in which the secretary explains that much of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamp, data they receive from states such as California and Minnesota cannot be trusted.

“The lowest fraud rate of any program in America is the SNAP program. You can’t be serious when you say that,” Rollins said.

She then said, “@RepShontelBrown just said the quiet part out loud: Democrats want as many people on welfare as possible. It’s remarkable.”

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A Regional Crisis or a Protracted International Disorder?

On May 31, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam gave a televised address in which he condemned Israel’s invasion and intensified attacks on southern Lebanon as a dangerous escalation, warning that a “scorched-earth policy” will never bring security to Tel Aviv: “Israel must understand that with its scorched-earth policy, collective punishment, and the bulldozing of villages and towns, it will gain neither security nor stability.”

As Salam said, this process is now advancing. “Israel is practicing mass displacement that amounts to collective punishment. It no longer targets only specific locations or areas, but has adopted a policy of comprehensive destruction of cities, towns, and all aspects of life within them.”

Tactical wins, strategic devastation

Israel’s Obliteration Doctrine is a lethal mix of scorched earth policy, collective punishment and civilian victimization, coupled with massive indiscriminate bombardment and systematic use of artificial intelligence (AI), as I have demonstrated in The Obliteration Doctrine (2025) and The Fall of Israel (2024).

This doctrine often goes hand in hand with ecocide, which Israel has committed in Gaza and is committing in Lebanon. The net effect is ethnic cleansing and, given continued and unhindered escalation, genocidal atrocities.

Whether Prime Minister Netanyahu, former PM Naftali Bennett or former head of the Israeli defense forces Gadi Eisenkot will win the 2026 Israeli legislative election is effectively immaterial. With or without Netanyahu, the Obliteration Doctrine will prevail.

Netanyahu brought to power the most far-right Messianic government in Israeli history. Naftali Bennett is a millionaire politician and the ex-leader of a religious Zionist far-right party. Ironically, the more “moderate” of the three is the ex-military chief Gadi Eisenkot who first tested the Obliteration Doctrine in Dahiya, a Shia enclave in Beirut in 2006.

The greatest threat to Israel’s long-term future is not external enemies alone, but the transformation of military escalation into a permanent governing principle. Once security policy becomes inseparable from territorial expansion, ethnic cleansing and perpetual warfare, the consequences extend far beyond the battlefield.

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Pentagon Cuts the Faith-Code Maze From 200-Plus to 31

The Pentagon just cut its list of religious affiliation codes for service members from over 200 down to 31. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the reform in March as part of a broader effort to refocus the Chaplain Corps.

Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata later released the memo making the change official. The old system had sprawled into a giant administrative junk drawer, stuffed with codes many troops never used and chaplains didn’t need to serve the force. From Just the News:

Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata released the memo, stating the change will “streamline the DoW collection of religious preferences for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy,” according to Military.com.

“The new list will provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices,” Tata said. 

Hegseth said the previous system had grown to “well over 200 faith codes,” called it “impractical and unusable,” and noted many codes were never used at all. He also said 82% of religious service members use only six of the codes. From Religion News Service:

Hegseth has been explicit about his Christian faith. He worships at a church run by a self-described Christian nationalist and has held Christian worship services at the Pentagon. He has pushed social media messages that mix war preparations with Bible verses as well as official statements that champion a disputed, faith-focused version of U.S. history.

In 2017, during the first Trump administration, when the military expanded the number of recognized religious faiths it said it was doing so to provide “more accurate demographic data for religious groups,” to enable “better planning for religious support to the force” and to provide “a better assessment of the capabilities and requirements of each Military Service’s Chaplain Corps.”

The reform renames the old “faith and belief coding system” as “religious affiliation codes” and returns the list to a simpler purpose: providing chaplains clear information so they can support troops in line with their stated faith background and practice.

The new list keeps broad religious categories that cover the faith service members report most often. The list includes Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, agnostics, and major Christian groups such as Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, and others.

The dropped codes include atheism, Asatru, Eckankar, New Age churches, paganism, spiritualism, Troth, Unitarian Universalism, and several Wiccan groups.

It’s time to cue the usual panic choir, warming up somewhere between “theocracy” and “how dare the database stop flattering my boutique label.”

There’s an argument that the change could make smaller faith groups less visible in the military system, where Hegseth’s chaplain reforms are part of a wider Christian emphasis at the Pentagon.

Those concerns deserve a hearing, but the policy doesn’t ban any service member from worshipping, seeking accommodation, speaking with a chaplain, or holding any belief.

A code list isn’t the First Amendment.

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