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Zelensky Sanctions His Ex-Spokeswoman Yulia Mendel, Who Revealed to the World the ‘Open Secret’ of His Drug Abuse

Sanctioned and included in the Ukrainian ‘kill list’, Mendel is in the crosshairs of Kiev.

Yesterday (13), it arose that Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky sanctioned his former spokeswoman, Yulia Mendel.

Mendel has left Ukraine, and gone public with a torrent of detrimental information about her former boss, including the fact that Zelensky profits from the continuation of the war, and – what’s even worse – she dared talk about the ‘open secret’ of his drug abuse.

Reuters reported:

“Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky imposed sanctions on a former press secretary on Sunday, accusing her and nine others of spreading Russian propaganda and of supporting Russia’s aggressive policy toward Ukraine.

Yulia Mendel — who worked with Zelenskiy from 2019 to 2021, before Russia’s invasion — responded with a message on Facebook saying it was unconstitutional to impose sanctions on Ukrainian citizens. She did not comment on the specific accusations.

[…] The sanctions — announced by Zelensky in a decree — would last for 10 years and included asset freezes and restrictions on trade, the document read.”

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Coordinated Sabotage Hits Dutch Rail Network at 20+ Sites, Sparking Chaos as Questions Mount Over Security

The Netherlands woke to transport chaos Tuesday after suspected coordinated sabotage crippled major railway routes, exposing just how easily critical infrastructure can be thrown into disarray while Dutch and European leaders increasingly focus their attention on threats from abroad.

According to reports from the Dutch media, objects deliberately fastened to railway tracks triggered safety systems across central and northern Netherlands, bringing trains to a standstill and leaving commuters stranded. ProRail, which manages the country’s rail infrastructure, said the evidence left little doubt that somebody had intentionally interfered with the network.

Workers began discovering sections of pipe attached to rails at around 5:30 a.m. Reports initially identified roughly 20 affected locations, while later accounts said security systems had been disrupted at more than 30 points.

The method wasn’t particularly sophisticated, but the consequences were enormous. By fooling track circuits into detecting trains where none existed, the objects automatically turned signals red and shut affected sections of railway.

Near Steenwijk, the situation became more dangerous when a train actually struck one of the pipes. Nobody was injured, according to ProRail, but deliberately putting material onto active railway lines clearly carried risks extending far beyond delayed commuters.

“We have been to these places and carried out investigations and found materials that were intentionally put there,” ProRail spokeswoman Joke van der Cruysen told NOS. “So we can say the railway has been sabotaged.”

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Anonymous Donor Paid to Cremate Thomas Crooks Just 10 Days After He Tried to Assassinate President Trump in Butler

The family couldn’t pay. Someone else did. And two years later, nobody will say who.

An anonymous donor paid to cremate Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who climbed a rooftop in Butler, Pennsylvania, and tried to murder Donald Trump, just ten days after the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt.

The New York Post reviewed documents turned over to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) as part of his ongoing probe into the Butler attack. Buried at the end of an FBI interview summary with the gunman’s father, Matthew Crooks, is a short, stunning note:

“Anonymous donor paid for cremation.”

The information, according to the records, came from a lawyer for the Crooks family.

There is currently no public evidence that the anonymous donor had any connection to Crooks’ attack, and the identity of the individual or organization reportedly footing the bill remains unknown.

But the revelation is especially striking because the rapid disposal of Crooks’ remains was already the subject of controversy on Capitol Hill.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported in August 2024, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), who served on the House task force investigating the assassination attempt, revealed that Crooks’ body had been cremated only ten days after the shooting.

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Federal Records Reveal Major New Details About Trump’s Would-Be Assassin Thomas Crooks, Including a Very Surprising Alias He Used While Buying Gun Parts

Stunning new details have emerged regarding Thomas Crooks, President Trump’s would-be assassin in Butler, Pennsylvania, two years ago.

On Tuesday, Fox News reviewed federal records turned over to the Senate, which will raise questions about why such information regarding Crooks has not come out before.

For instance, Thomas Crooks’s father, Matthew Crooks, then took an early retirement shortly after the shooting, while his mother, Mary Crooks, went on leave from work to “process the situation.”

This did not seem to be a family with significant financial means, especially since they could not afford a funeral for their son. So, something appears to be missing.

The New York Post also reviewed records which show Crooks adopted the pseudonym “Bob Dole” while ordering large numbers of Amazon packages, including “parts, tools, and items to increase the capacity of his rifle.”

He started doing this due to paranoia he picked up after his father’s Citizens Bank checking account was hacked and multiple fraudulent BetMGM charges were made on his account. It’s unclear why Thomas Crooks chose “Bob Dole” as his go-to online disguise.

Thomas Crooks also ignored his dad’s warning that simply using a pseudonym would not necessarily protect the buyer from being hacked. The charge, after all, is still being made to a bank account under his name.

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Rep. Thomas Massie Introduces Resolution To Impeach Pete Hegseth Over Iran War, Civilian Casualties

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on Tuesday introduced a resolution to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, referred to by the Trump administration as the Secretary of War, for “high crimes and misdemeanors” over the war with Iran and other unauthorized conflicts, military operations, and large numbers of civilian casualties that he has overseen.

Massie unveiled eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth, which he read on the House floor, and a vote is expected Thursday. Among the charges, Massie said that Hegseth is in violation of the 1973 War Powers Act by continuing the war with Iran without congressional authorization, which is outlined in the first three articles of impeachment.

“By engaging in hostilities in Iran for more than 90 days without congressional authorization, Secretary Hegseth is breaking the law and must be held accountable,” Massie said in a press release on the impeachment effort.

“Secretary Hegseth’s constitutional violations extend beyond the illegal war in Iran. He is abusing the power of his office to ignore congressional war powers resolutions, to kidnap foreign leaders, and to intimidate critics of the Trump administration by retaliating against them for exercising free speech. If we are to remain true to our oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States,’ Congress must not turn a blind eye to Secretary Hegseth’s unconstitutional and illegal actions,” Massie added.

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ICE Pepper-Sprays and Punches U.S. Citizen Teens on Their Way to Enlist in the Marines — Pair Allegedly Stopped to Film Immigration Arrest Outside Texas Elementary School

Left-wing media and activists are exploding Monday over video and interviews out of Alamo, Texas, claiming Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents “brutally attacked” two American teenagers who say they were driving to turn in paperwork to join the Marines.

But at this point, we do not know the full story.

According to reporting first aired by Telemundo and then amplified by The New Republic and The Daily Beast, the two U.S. citizen teens stopped last week near Santos Livas Elementary School in Alamo while ICE agents were arresting parents outside the school.

According to the reports, the teens said they were on their way to submit paperwork to enlist in the United States Marine Corps when they stopped to record an ICE operation near an elementary school in Alamo, Texas.

One of the teenagers was identified as 17-year-old Luis Ochoa.

Video recorded by TikTok user @big.t.33 appears to show federal agents removing one teen from a vehicle and striking him while he was on the ground. The reports also claim that the teens were pepper-sprayed during the confrontation.

Ochoa reportedly fled to a nearby fast-food restaurant to seek help. He said agents later detained him despite his repeated claims that he was a U.S. citizen.

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Ukraine Allegedly Spends $190 Million Daily on War

They are just making up numbers at this point. Ukraine’s parliamentary Budget Committee chair Roksolana Pidlasa now says that one day of war costs Ukraine $190 million, up from $140 million per day in 2024. They present these figures as if somebody can open a spreadsheet in Kyiv and calculate what this catastrophe costs down to the dollar. The $190 million is essentially a budgetary accounting figure. It does not remotely represent the TRUE cost of this war.

Even Pidlasa admits the number excludes weapons supplied in kind by Ukraine’s foreign partners. That alone should tell you how meaningless it is to call $190 million the “cost” of one day of war. Over the first eight months of 2026, Ukraine reportedly spent nearly $42 billion on national security and defense while raising only about $39 billion from its own revenues and domestic government bonds. The state can no longer finance even the portion of this war that it previously funded itself. Yet the weapons arriving from Europe and elsewhere can sit outside that headline calculation.

Do the elementary arithmetic and $190 million every day becomes roughly $69.4 billion annually. But even THAT is not the cost of the war. The IMF says Ukraine’s fiscal deficit excluding budget support grants is running around 21% of GDP in 2026 and is financeable only because of enormous external donor support. The European Union agreed to a €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan for 2026-2027, with €45 billion scheduled for 2026 alone, including €28.3 billion for defense procurement and €16.7 billion for budget support. The IMF now calculates Ukraine’s financing gap at $140.3 billion over 2026-2029. We are no longer discussing a nation capable of independently financing the government and the war simultaneously. We are discussing a state being financially sustained from abroad.

Then there is the destruction nobody can accurately price while the bombs are still falling. The World Bank, European Commission, United Nations, and Ukrainian government estimated in February that reconstruction and recovery would require nearly $588 BILLION over the coming decade. That was based on damage measured only through December 31, 2025. Direct physical damage had already surpassed $195 billion. Transport reconstruction needs exceeded $96 billion, energy approached $91 billion, housing nearly $90 billion, commerce and industry exceeded $63 billion, and agriculture surpassed $55 billion. Fourteen percent of Ukraine’s housing stock had already been damaged or destroyed, affecting more than three million households.

And those numbers were obsolete the moment they were published because THE WAR NEVER STOPPED. You cannot continuously destroy a nation’s productive capacity and pretend that yesterday’s reconstruction estimate represents tomorrow’s bill.

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Trump calls AI risks a ‘hoax,’ says there is a ‘SICK conspiracy’ against AI and data centers

President Donald Trump said Monday that he would be a sufficient guardrail against rogue artificial intelligence, claiming that any efforts to limit the technology is part of a “SICK conspiracy.”

Trump was pushing back against calls by tech leaders such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk to have greater government oversight of AI. Many tech leaders generally say their goal is to develop the technology in ways that promote safety, address legal liability, feed economic growth, advance science and preserve national security.

The president maintained that his presence in the Oval Office should assuage any fears about AI, which has become a source of controversy after a series of hacks in recent months that showed AI agents could be working to deceive humans.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump posted on social media.

Trump specifically said that the administration has already stopped the AI company Anthropic “from doing bad, or potentially bad” things. Anthropic has endured an uncomfortable relationship with the Trump administration, with the Pentagon trying to label the company a security risk and the government issuing a temporary ban of one of its more advanced models.

The president went even further in a Monday afternoon post that asked “when, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy?”

The president then added that the potential threat that AI could pose to humanity was a hoax, despite clear warnings by many of the experts closest to the most advanced models.

“AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX,” posted Trump.

Trump’s refusal to regulate comes as AI execs warn of threats

Amodei, the Anthropic CEO, published a 3,800-word essay on Saturday that called for slower development of AI. Microsoft on Monday published its own code of conduct to ensure that humans control AI. The actions come after a series of warnings by AI experts about the technologies’ capabilities and the July 2026 cyberattack by OpenAI models on the AI company Hugging Face.

Amodei cited “AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI” and the cyberattack by the swarm of OpenAI agents as reasons to slow the pace of development.

“Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet,” Amodei wrote, adding that the damages could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars or more “without the necessary guardrails.”

Altman of OpenAI seconded that perspective in a weekend post on social media.

“Pacing will be well worth this cost; no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring,” Altman said. “Where we will need the help of our government is for international coordination.”

Trump sees AI regulation as helping China

The president has opposed such efforts to constrain AI and claims that doing so could cause China to eclipse America on AI.

“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Trump said.

The president has long resisted efforts for greater government oversight of AI, embracing his philosophy going back to 2016 of “I alone can fix it.” He returned to the White House last year by revoking a Biden administration executive order on AI oversight and only providing a fuller order of his own more than 16 months later this past June.

The prospect of slower AI buildout led stocks to slip in Monday morning trading, as demand for advanced computer chips and construction materials for data centers could fall. But Trump’s frustration comes as AI has also emerged as a political liability ahead of November’s midterm elections, with many voters opposing the construction of additional data centers and expressing worries that AI could lead to job losses and undermine the education of children.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters on Monday that he expects Trump will have the AI companies potentially meet at the White House this week or next week, saying that the sit-down has yet to be scheduled.

“There will be a deliberate discussion about the responsibility of the companies to maintain safety, and what role, if any, the government has to play in that,” said Johnson, adding that legislatures can tend to respond problematically with “red tape and hyper regulation” and that the loss of competitive edge on AI would be a national security concern.

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“I Wouldn’t Do That to People” – Gavin Newsom Says He Won’t Run for President if Kamala Harris Runs During Fly Fishing Outing with Jake Tapper

California Governor Gavin Newsom dismissed speculation of a 2028 bid for the White House in a CNN interview on Monday. 

Holding fly rods, knee-deep in the Bitterroot River in Montana, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Newsom discussed the 2028 election, with Newsom saying he “would never” have usurped Biden in the 2024 election and he wouldn’t challenge Kamala if she tries to run again.

Newsom was calmly dismissing his White House ambitions while fly fishing in Montana with Jake Tapper, in an obvious appeal to voters.

“I wouldn’t run if she ran,” he said, adding that he “wouldn’t do that to her” or “waste everyone’s time.”

“Electorally, it’s a gift from God for everybody else. They’d enjoy the hell out of it, mutually assured destruction. It services no greater good,” he said of a primary race with the ex-VP and himself.

Tapper noted that “she had a shot, and you’ve never run, and she’s run twice,” which Newsom agreed with, calling it a “good” case to make.

However, Newsom said, “I wouldn’t do that to people,” noting the “pure crossover” between his and her base of supporters, friends, and donors.

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Vance: 870K suspected COVID-loan fraudsters barred from future federal assistance

Vice President JD Vance announced Monday that the federal government will suspend roughly 870,000 individuals suspected of defrauding pandemic-era small business programs, permanently barring them from receiving future government-backed loans.

Speaking at an FBI field office in Kansas City, Missouri, Vance described the administrative crackdown as a blunt message of accountability, stating that borrowers who stole from taxpayers would no longer be eligible to borrow money or participate in programs administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

The sweeping suspensions stem from a multi-agency operation that flagged an estimated $39 billion in suspected fraudulent activity across 45 states and U.S. territories.

The announcement was made alongside key administration officials, including Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler. It accompanied a broader Justice Department campaign targeting fraud in emergency aid initiatives like the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) scheme.

Officials revealed that recent enforcement drives have resulted in criminal charges against nearly 80 individuals for schemes involving fake businesses, falsified payrolls, and identity theft, alongside dozens of guilty pleas and sentences connected to hundreds of millions in intended losses.

Authorities emphasized that barring these individuals from federal assistance — including disaster loans and SBA contracting programs — is a crucial first step toward curbing systemic abuse.

The enforcement surge highlights ongoing efforts to claw back billions of dollars distributed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic under highly relaxed safeguard protocols.

Oversight watchdogs, including the SBA’s Inspector General, have previously estimated that total fraudulent disbursements across pandemic emergency relief channels exceed $200 billion.

Justice Department officials attributed the continued wave of prosecutions years after the programs closed to expanded staffing, increased federal resources and improved cross-agency data sharing, assuring the public that federal investigators will continue pursuing fraudulent networks both domestically and abroad.

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