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39 Bipartisan State And Territory Attorneys General Push Congress To Ban Intoxicating Hemp Products

A bipartisan coalition of 39 state and territory attorneys general is calling on Congress to clarify the federal definition of hemp and impose regulations preventing the sale of intoxicating cannabinoid products.

In a letter sent to the Republican chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations and Agriculture Committees on Friday, members of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) expressed concerns with provisions of the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized hemp, which they said has been “wrongly exploited by bad actors to sell recreational synthetic THC products across the country.”

They’re asking that lawmakers leverage the appropriations process, or the next iteration of the Farm Bill, to enact policy changes that “leave no doubt that these harmful products are illegal and that their sale and manufacture are criminal acts.”

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin (R), Connecticut Attorney General William Tong (D), Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) led the letter, underscoring the bipartisan sentiment driving the call for congressional action.

“Intoxicating hemp-derived THC products have inundated communities throughout our states due to a grievously mistaken interpretation of the 2018 Farm Bill’s definition of ‘hemp’ that companies are leveraging to pursue profits at the expense of public safety and health,” they wrote. “Many of these products—created by manufacturers by manipulating hemp to produce synthetic THC—are more intoxicating and psychoactive than marijuana a Schedule I controlled substance and are often marketed to minors.”

While the debate over revising federal hemp laws has been a consistent talking point this year, with attempts in both chambers to enact a ban on products containing THC, so far such restrictions have only been implemented at the state level.

“Unless Congress acts, this gross distortion of the 2018 Farm Bill’s hemp provision will continue to fuel the rapid growth of an under-regulated industry that threatens public health and safety and undermines law enforcement nationwide,” the letter says.

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WSJ: Trump Offered to Build White House Ballroom for Obama in 2010

President Donald Trump offered to build a White House ballroom for President Barack Obama in 2010 — but the Obama administration never took up his offer, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The Journal reported:

For at least 15 years, Trump had tried and failed to build a grand ballroom at the White House that could host extravagant dinners for world leaders, lawmakers and celebrities. In early 2010, President Barack Obama’s top strategist David Axelrod got a call from Trump, then a real-estate developer and reality television star. They were connected via MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, who had closer ties with Trump at the time.

“He said, ‘You have these state dinners in sh—y little tents,” Axelrod recalled in an interview. “He said, ‘I build ballrooms. I build the most beautiful ballrooms in the world. You can come to Florida and see for yourself.’ ”

Trump offered to build a modular ballroom at the White House that could be deconstructed. “I was thinking, we’re in the middle of a recession, I’m not sure about this,” Axelrod said. Axelrod suggested that Trump get in touch with Obama’s social secretary about the ballroom. They didn’t connect.

The Journal noted that Trump had approached the ballroom the way he had approached other building projects in the past — discovering how to control the regulatory process, or finding loopholes, to allow construction.

The ballroom is being built with funding from private donors, with costs reaching an estimated $350 million.

The Washington Post editorial page defended Trump’s ballroom project, noting that even Obama and Biden administration alimni had admitted the need for an indoor space — as opposed to the current arrangement, which forces esteemed guests to walk across the grass and to use portable toilets outdoors at large gatherings.

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ExxonMobil Sues California Over Climate Regulations

Energy giant ExxonMobil filed a lawsuit on Oct. 24 against California officials—including Lauren Sanchez, chair of the California Air Resources Board, and Attorney General Robert A. Bonta—accusing the state’s climate disclosure regulations of harming the company.

The complaint, filed in the District Court for the Eastern District of California, is about two climate laws approved by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October 2023: SB 253 and SB 261.

SB 253 requires businesses with total annual revenues of more than $1 billion that operate in California to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, while SB 261 requires businesses with more than $500 million in annual revenues operating in the state to develop a report on their climate-related financial risks.

The bills are scheduled to come into effect in 2026.

“Both bills require ExxonMobil to espouse California’s preferred framing for issues of immense public concern,” the company said in its lawsuit.

The bills require the company to “serve as a mouthpiece for ideas with which it disagrees,” it said, while using frameworks that place “disproportionate blame” of emissions and climate risks on companies like ExxonMobil just for “being large.”

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CIA provided contradictory intel on Hamas during Trump-brokered peace deal, envoys reveal

As U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Middle East adviser Jared Kushner worked to secure a historic ceasefire between Israel and Hamas earlier this month, they faced an unexpected obstacle: conflicting intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

In a revealing interview with “60 Minutes,” Witkoff disclosed that while mediators from Qatar, Turkey and Egypt assured them Hamas was open to negotiations, the CIA delivered daily briefings insisting the militant group would reject the deal. The discrepancy raises critical questions about the reliability of U.S. intelligence and its role in high-stakes diplomacy.

The Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan faced skepticism from regional players and international observers. Yet Kushner and Witkoff, leveraging personal relationships with Arab leaders, believed Hamas could be persuaded to accept key concessions—including a hostage release and ceasefire.

According to Witkoff, while Qatar’s emir, Turkey’s president and Egypt’s leadership privately signaled Hamas’ willingness to engage, the CIA’s assessments painted a starkly different picture.

“We were getting, because of our relationships… we were hearing that Hamas was positive on the deal,” Witkoff told “60 Minutes.” “And yet I was reading intelligence reports every day and getting briefings from the CIA three times a day and those intelligence briefings were suggesting that Hamas was going to say no.”

The contradiction forced Kushner and Witkoff to make a crucial judgment call: trust their diplomatic sources or defer to the CIA’s warnings.

Did the CIA mislead or misinterpret?

The White House defended the intelligence community’s role, with an official telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided “critical support” throughout negotiations.

“It is the responsibility of the intelligence community to provide full scopes of assessments to the negotiating team to ensure they have the full range of information and can achieve the best possible outcome—as they did,” the official said.

But according to BrightU.AI‘s Enoch, Witkoff’s account suggests the CIA’s assessments may have been flawed—or deliberately skewed. The implications extend beyond Hamas, reinforcing long-standing concerns about intelligence politicization, particularly regarding Russia, Iran and other geopolitical flashpoints.

A pattern of distrust in U.S. intelligence

This incident adds to a growing list of credibility issues surrounding U.S. intelligence agencies. President Donald Trump famously clashed with the CIA, accusing it of undermining his policies. Sens. Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard have also voiced skepticism about intelligence assessments on Russia and Syria.

The Hamas episode underscores a recurring dilemma: when intelligence contradicts firsthand diplomatic feedback, which should policymakers trust?

Ultimately, Kushner and Witkoff’s gamble paid off. Hamas accepted the ceasefire, freeing hostages and opening the door to further negotiations. But the revelation that the CIA’s intelligence directly contradicted mediators’ assurances raises troubling questions. Was the CIA misinformed—or was it pushing an agenda? And if intelligence agencies can be so wrong on Hamas, how reliable are their assessments on Iran, Russia or China?

For now, the Trump administration celebrates a rare diplomatic victory. But the deeper lesson may be that in an era of intelligence wars and geopolitical deception, sometimes the best intelligence comes not from classified briefings—but from trusted allies on the ground.

As the U.S. navigates future conflicts, the balance between intelligence analysis and real-world diplomacy will remain fraught. The Hamas case serves as a stark reminder that truth in foreign policy is often elusive—and sometimes, the most reliable intelligence comes from those who refuse to take “official assessments” at face value.

Watch the video below where Trump was lauded for the historic peace deal in Gaza.

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‘Science Is on Our Side’: Critics Fire Back at AP Report on ‘Wave of Anti-Science Bills’

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement and allied organizations are supporting “a wave of anti-science bills” in state legislatures across the U.S. — and some of the organizations may be profiting from their MAHA advocacy, The Associated Press reported.

During the current legislative session, lawmakers have introduced more than 420 bills that “strip away public health protections,” including measures that target vaccines, milk safety and fluoride, according to the AP’s four reports, published Monday.

The bills, which the AP said stem from “conspiracy-driven ideas,” are supported by Trump administration officials, including U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom the AP accused of “elevating anti-science ideas nationally.”

Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), told The Defender that the AP’s characterization of these bills as “anti-science” is irresponsible. She said:

“AP irresponsibly characterizes anything that does not track the ‘scientific consensus’ as ‘anti-science.’ Science only develops by challenging consensus and dogma and marshalling empirical evidence to support the claims.

“AP parrots corporate science as if it were true, without checking or comparing the evidence of new claims against those of the so-called consensus. AP has devolved into pure propaganda.”

The AP said several organizations “connected to Kennedy,” including CHD, support these state-level legislative efforts. State legislatures have enacted or adopted about 30 of the bills in 12 states.

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Massive Purchases of Riot Gear Suggest Antifa Backed by Major Dark-Money Organization

For years, Antifa has positioned itself as a decentralized, grassroots movement. 

Its members appear in the streets clad in black, hiding their identities behind masks and face coverings, equipped with gas masks, goggles, and even tactical-grade e-masks. 

While defenders dismiss this as spontaneous activism, recent findings suggest something much more organized and financed than the public has been led to believe.

After digging into the purchasing patterns of these materials, a troubling trend emerges. 

Suppliers report bulk orders, sometimes exceeding 1,000 items in a single month and in some instances exceeding 10,000. 

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Report: State Department Officially Dismantled ‘Disinformation’ Agency

The State Department has officially canceled the Global Engagement Center (GEC) as part of President Donald Trump’s mission to shut down the “censorship industrial complex,” according to a report.

Paul Sperry, a senior investigative reporter for RealClearInvestigations, wrote that the State Department officially closed the Global Engagement Center.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in April that the State Department would close the GEC.

“Today, it is my pleasure to announce the State Department is taking a crucial step toward keeping the president’s promise to liberate American speech by abolishing forever the body formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC),” Rubio wrote in an op-ed for the Federalist, stating that to protect free speech the “censorship industrial complex must be dismantled.”

Rubio contended in the op-ed that then-President Barack Obama transformed the GEC, which was meant to target international terrorism, to cover any and all “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.”

He wrote at the time:

This pivot was no accident. Obama’s man in charge at GEC, Rick Stengel, touted his efforts to protect “democracy” while redefining it so that “democracy” came to mean silencing the part of the electorate he doesn’t like.

In 2019, Stengel directly equated President Trump’s campaign with foreign and terrorist propaganda, writing, “Trump employed the same techniques of disinformation as the Russians and much the same scare tactics as ISIS.” That same year, Stengel wrote an entire article about, “why America needs a hate speech law.”

The secretary of state said the GEC was an “enthusiastic partner” in the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), which monitored alleged disinformation during the 2020 election.

“The EIP pretty much exclusively singled out accounts and narratives associated with President Trump and his supporters and, in fact, directly flagged President Trump’s tweets, along with his family members and friends of the administration,” Rubio noted.

“With its multimillion-dollar budget, paid for by American taxpayers, GEC funneled grants to organizations around the world dedicated to pushing speech restrictions under the guise of fighting ‘disinformation,’” Rubio continued.

Rubio stated that one recipient of American taxpayer dollars was the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which ranked outlets based on the likeliness that they would spread disinformation.

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Democrat Senator Mark Kelly Makes Veiled Threat of Prosecution to ‘Young Service Members’ for Following President Trump’s Orders to Attack Drug Boats in Caribbean

In an interview on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, senior Arizona Democrat Senator Mark Kelly threatened ‘young service members’ with prosecution for following President Donald Trump’s orders to attack drug boats in the Caribbean Sea.

Kelly made the threat in comments to host Martha Raddatz, saying the Trump administration was “putting young service members at great, legal jeopardy.”

ABC transcript excerpt:

RADDATZ: OK, I want to talk about Venezuela. The Pentagon is now sending a carrier strike group. You know the massive amount of firepower on a carrier strike group. What is your take on what is happening with these suspected drug boats. Is it legal?

KELLY: It’s questionable. And the White House and the Department of Defense could not give us a logical explanation on how this is legal. They were tying themselves in knots trying to explain this. We had a lot of questions for them, both Democrats and Republicans. It was not a good meeting. It did not go well. They have a secret list of 20 something — 24 organizations that they have now authorized to use — use kinetic action against without the normal approach that we have for law enforcement. Hey, we don’t want drugs in this country, especially fentanyl. But all these drugs, we — we should be working really hard to interdict them and prosecute the individuals that are smuggling drugs, not putting young service members at great, legal jeopardy.

Note: ABC omitted Kelly’s word “jeopardy” from the transcript even though it was clearly audible in the broadcast.

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Chinese Communist Party Making Millions in UK Gov’t Contracts for Migrant Hotels: Report

A report from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) has found that the Chinese Communist Party is directly profiting from Britain’s migrant hotel scheme to house supposed asylum seekers, many of whom break into the country illegally via the English Channel from the beaches of France.

According to the IPAC audit of the Sino-British economic relationship, the CCP, or entities and people under its control, currently hold £190 billion in UK assets, including schools, national infrastructure such as Heathrow airport, wind farms, power networks, billions of shares in FTSE-listed companies, and properties, including migrant hotels.

Among the Chinese-owned assets listed in the report include three migrant hotels in Britain that have collectively been awarded millions in Home Office contracts, The Sunday Times reported.

One of the firms, Kew Green Hotels, a £300 million business which owns and operates over 60 hotels, is entirely owned by the Communist Party through Beijing’s China Tourism Group Corporation.

It currently owns Holiday Inns in Kent and Cheshire, both of which faced anti-migrant hotel protests in August following nationwide outrage over the government scheme and concern for the safety of communities following the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl by an Ethiopian hotel migrant in Epping.

The report estimated that the two migrant hotels, both of which are block booked by the state to house alleged asylum seekers, have earned the Chinese firm around £15 million through Home Office contracts.

Another Chinese cutout, Campanile, an asset of the Shanghai city government, also owns a hotel in Cardiff, which has been housing supposed asylum seekers for the British government since 2022.

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Robbing Russia? Is von der Leyen Stupid or Insane?

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever stubbornly refuses to go along with the latest absurd idea from the EU bureaucracy: seizing Russia’s assets in Belgium to offer them to Ukraine. Politico scolds him, claiming he is “harder to convince than Trump” (the ultimate embodiment of evil, apparently).
Confiscating Russia’s sovereign assets in Belgium would indeed be an act of sheer folly. Even during the Second World War, no such step was taken. After Pearl Harbor, for example, President Roosevelt froze Japanese assets — he did not steal them. Never in history have non-belligerent countries seized the central-bank assets of a belligerent state during wartime in order to finance the reconstruction of a third country (source).

  1. A Direct Violation of International Law

The United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States (Article 21) guarantees the protection of central bank assets when used for non-commercial purposes. Article 5 is unequivocal: “A State enjoys, for itself and its property, immunity from the jurisdiction of the courts of another State.”

The Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA) require that any “countermeasure” be proportionate, reversible, and aimed at resolving a dispute — not destroying an economy.

Finally, the aim has never truly been the “reconstruction of Ukraine,” despite the protestations of the pale apparatchiks in the Berlaymont — headquarters of Ms. von der Leyen’s European Commission. The actual objective is to fund Ukraine’s war effort. In plain terms: a de facto act of war by little Belgium against imperial Russia. Even the authors most favourable to confiscation acknowledge that such assets could only, under international law, be used for reconstruction — never to finance warfare (Csongor István Nagy, International Investment Law Enables the Use of Frozen Russian Assets to Compensate for War Damage in Ukraine, Harvard International Law Journal, 15 November 2023).

  1. The Mother of All Financial Crises

All international financial transactions rely on trust, since there is no sovereign arbiter above states. Shattering that trust would unleash a financial crisis that would devastate Europe and the global financial system. Europeans fail to grasp that between their current comfort and poverty lie merely two or three disastrous decisions — precisely the sort the EU excels at making. Our fellow citizens behave as though supermarket abundance were part of the laws of nature, an eternal constant. But when you’ve been living on credit for fifty years, caution is essential. Europe is a leaking financial submarine, and von der Leyen proposes that we throw the hatches wide open — apparently to “breathe easier.”

Every state on the planet would instantly understand that the theft of Russian assets paves the way for the theft of their own, under whatever pretext might be found. One can picture the delight of the Berlaymont’s creatures fantasising about seizing the assets of China, India, the United States, and others, in the name of “insufficient climate efforts,” for instance. Two hundred countries, two hundred portfolios — a banquet for crazed bureaucrats.

The BRICS central banks would pull their reserves out of Western institutions within a week. The euro would become toxic as a reserve currency, and would collapse — for it is not backed by genuine industrial might, but merely by the fading remnants of the rule of law.

Europe is already financially drained after its economic suicide, pompously named the “Green Deal.” Desperate to keep their crumbling system alive a few months more, the EU’s bureaucrats are ready to seize anything within reach. But the rest of the world is not blind. It sees. It understands.

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