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Waste of the Day: Senators Earmarked Cash for Their Former Schools

Topline: Nearly every university relies on donations from its former students, but those with alumni in the Senate can solicit money straight from taxpayers’ wallets.

Twenty-four U.S. senators requested earmarks in the 2026 federal budget for the colleges they attended as students, totaling $614 million, according to Open the Books’ audit of congressional disclosures.

Some of the earmarks have been removed during congressional debate, but others will make their way into the final appropriations bill Congress must pass before Jan. 31 to avoid another government shutdown.

Key facts: The 125 earmarks are spread across 21 states.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stands out with $165 million in requests, far more than any other senator. McConnell once supported a complete ban on earmarks but has recently become one of the GOP’s most pork-hungry senators, with 60 requests filed this year.

McConnell asked for four earmarks worth $100 million for the University of Louisville, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1964, and three earmarks worth $65 million for the University of Kentucky, where he graduated law school. Some of the money would be used to build “state-of-the art” research facilities and buy “high-end” lab equipment.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) requested the second most money with $60 million for the University of Kansas and its hospital.

Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV) asked for nine separate earmarks totaling $57.5 million for Marshall University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree and Master of Business Administration.

Justice, once the richest man in West Virginia according to Forbes, previously donated $5 million of his own money to Marshall University. Today he has a net worth of “less than zero,” per Forbes, because of crippling debt and liabilities.

He has spent the last few years funneling government funds to Marshall University instead of using his personal wealth. As governor of West Virginia, he gave the school $45 million for a cybersecurity program and $14 million for a baseball stadium.

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Four-Decade Study in Denmark Shows Higher Suicide Rates Among Transgender People

A study in Denmark that spanned 40 years and included 6.6 million people found that those who identified as transgender have significantly higher rates of suicide and attempted suicide than others in the population. These results are similar to what research has found here, though the U.S. doesn’t collect the same level of data as Denmark which makes large-scale population studies like this impossible.

The Danish study included 3,759 people who identified as transgender. Among them, there were 92 suicide attempts and 12 suicides between 1980 and 2021. While these numbers seem small, they suggest that the rate of suicide attempts among those who identify as trans is 7.7 times higher than the rate of suicide attempts in the broader Danish population and the rate of suicide deaths is 3.5 times higher.

In addition, the researchers believe these numbers are an undercount because the records they used don’t always capture a person’s gender identity. The authors note that they only had data on gender identity for those who sought gender affirming care at a hospital or applied for a legal change of gender. Such data suggest that 0.6% of Denmark’s population identifies as transgender, but researchers believe the true number is much higher, which would mean the suicide rate would also be much higher.

The study can’t explain why trans people are at higher risk of suicide, but it seems clear that living in a society that is often unaccepting is a contributing factor. Previous research has found that 60% of transgender individuals in Denmark have experienced harassment and bullying and that 30% have experienced violence. Trans people in that country have also said they face discrimination in the healthcare system.

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HEAVENLY SPIES? Pope Leo XIV Urges Italian Secret Agents To Work Ethically, Not to Blackmail Politicians, Journalists or the Church

The Italian 007’s got a Papal warning.

Whether or not you agree with Pope Leo XIV in the multiple statements he has issued lately, one thing seems certain: he deals more and more in issues outside the scope of his mission as Pontifex.

Leo meddles in US immigration policies – with the usual leftist slant; he urges Donald J. Trump not to depose Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro by force – but only smother him with economic sanctions; and now he chastises the Italian secret service agents.

Yes, you read it right.

Maybe, like me, you wonder why Leo doesn’t take care of spiritual welfare of the Christendom, instead of going around ‘blessing the ice’ for Global Warming Cultists, and ‘thrashing ICE’ with the demented pro-immigration mob.

Leo met Friday (12) with officers from Italian intelligence services – and ‘warned them not to use confidential information for blackmailing or other nefarious purposes’.

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Where Is Your Line In The Sand On Digital ID?

Mandatory digital ID is almost here. For years The Free Thought Project and various other independent media outlets; including but not limited to some of our colleagues such as The Conscious Resistance Network, The Last American Vagabond, James Corbett, Jason Bermas, Josh Sigurdson of World Alternative Media, Whitney Webb’s Unlimited Hangout and many more have sounded the alarm on the encroaching dangers of digital ID.

From exposing the technocratic agenda of the scamdemic era attempting to assert digital identity as a “human right” in an effort to snare much of society into a mass surveillance grid.

To the United Nations push to implement digital identity as a part of their Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 16) amid attempts to consolidate power for global governance.

And the latest attempts of the Trump administration exploiting concerns of election security as a means of ushering in digital ID domestically.

It is clear that efforts to implement this dystopian technocratic agenda are moving forward with full speed.

Earlier this year, California joined a growing list of over a dozen states offering digital drivers licenses through digital wallets such as Apple and Google.

Just recently, the popular children’s gaming platform Roblox rolled out a new mandatory facial recognition system to verify the ages of its over 36 million users.

Meanwhile, the state of Alaska recently began advancing plans of enhancing its own digital identity biometric data collection system.

In recent years one of the primary methods in which politicians have attempted to enact digital ID or similar measures has been through exploiting concerns of child safety online, thereby pushing for a series of free speech infringing, censorship inducing, age verification laws utilizing artificial intelligence and facial recognition biometrics among other things to implement such agendas.

At the same time these initiatives are sweeping their way through the country, there are currently nearly two dozen pieces of legislation individually moving their way through Congress with each one seeking to serve as the next attempt to further entrap the American people in this surveillance panopticon.

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Australia Police Refuse to Comment on Motive of Hanukkah Terror Attack, Father and Son Identified as Suspects

Australian police said that they will not be commenting yet on the motive behind the terror attack allegedly committed by a father and son duo.

According to New South Wales Police, the death toll of the terrorist attack on a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday has risen to 16. A total of 42 people were hospitalised or received care elsewhere, two of whom have since died. Included among the dead are a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Five people remain in critical condition, and four police officers are in serious condition after sustaining gunshot wounds.

NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon disclosed that the two suspected shooters were a 50-year-old man and his 24-year-old son, Naveed Akram, who is said to be in police custody after being critically injured.  The father was killed at the scene.

Police have so far refused to disclose any information about their ethnicity or nationality. Lanyon also said that police will not be disclosing any information as to the motive for the attack for now.

“We’re still very early in the investigation, we’re happy to provide information,” Lanyon said. “I want to give our investigators the opportunity to investigate thoroughly without speculation. We heard a lot information was coming forward. I want to make sure it’s accurate… our investigation will be thorough.”

The police chief did disclose that the 50-year-old man had a license for a firearm for approximately 10 years despite Australia’s strict gun control laws. Lanyon also said that police were aware of the 24-year-old suspected shooter, but did not have any indication that he was planning an attack.

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School Board In Maine Upholds Trans Team Ban As Well As Bathroom Ban

According to Campus Reform, “In a bold move aligning with federal directives, the Regional School Unit 24 school board in Sullivan, Maine, voted to reaffirm a policy that limits bathroom access and athletic participation to students’ biological sex.”

This demonstrates that utilizing the power of the federal government to ensure normalcy and basic rights is effective.

“The decision, originally made in October, echoes President Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” and places RSU 24 among a growing number of districts nationwide reinforcing sex-based distinctions in public education.”

WABI is reporting that around 100 community members filled a meeting on Tuesday night with people both for and against this common-sense policy.

“Despite ongoing legal threats from the Maine Human Rights Commission, the board stood firm and secured legal representation to defend its stance.”

“Superintendent Michael Eastman acknowledged the intensity of the debate but said the board remains committed to careful consideration and communication as it moves forward.”

This is a critical move in the fight for normality and common sense in America.

“At RSU 73, a similar legal fight is playing out over transgender students’ ability to access spaces and activities restricted to members of the opposite biological sex. The school board there is paying defense attorneys upwards of $275 an hour, according to documents reviewed by WGME.”

Sadly, this is an issue that has to be debated, as until recently, it was common sense that there are two genders and they should have separate spaces.

The federal government should continue to ensure basic rights for Men and Women are not violated by the  Trans community.

This is a civil rights issue of our time, and it’s something the Trump administration is right to enforce.

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German chancellor with Nazi family past likens Putin to Hitler

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose grandfather was a member of the Nazi Party, has compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler.

Merz’s maternal grandfather, Josef Paul Sauvigny, served as mayor of Brilon in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia from 1917 to 1937. Initially a member of the conservative Center Party, Sauvigny joined Hitler’s NSDAP after the Nazis came to power in the early 1930s.

Speaking at a Christian Democratic Union conference in Munich on Sunday, Merz accused Putin of seeking to restore the borders of the Soviet Union.

“If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop. Just as the Sudetenland was not enough (for Hitler) in 1938, Putin will not stop either,” Merz said, referring to the moment when Britain and France allowed Nazi Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia.

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Immigration Gone Wild

A border abandoned and laws ignored have turned public frustration into a sweeping backlash that now threatens even legal immigration.

It is hard now even for Democrats to defend illegal immigration, given that the Biden administration allowed in more than 10 million entrants. Among them were an estimated 500,000 criminals. No one believes that was wise or should ever be repeated.

Worse, the message went out that there would be few, if any, deportations and no real ICE kinetic activity beyond the border.

The world’s poor, sick, both law-abiding and criminal, young and old, understood that anyone could now enter the U.S. at will. Deterrence and legality were lost.

In its place, the message went out that if it was permissible to cross the border unlawfully, then, by extension, it would be seen as equally fine to reside illegally as well—and perhaps further to ignore laws, on the theory that the host had sanctioned all such exemptions.

During the lockdown hysteria, some 8,000-8,500 U.S. soldiers were expelled from the military for refusing the experimental mRNA vaccine. State employees nationwide were being fired for refusing the government vaccines. Nevertheless, illegal aliens would have no such mandates or worries. They simply walked in without worries over vaccinations and current COVID status and surmised correctly that illegal aliens were part of a Biden-administration-protected and privileged category.

Indeed, between 2021 and 2025, in one of the most bizarre episodes in U.S. immigration history, the border simply disappeared. There were to be no background checks, no health audits, and no identification of the greatest influx in any four-year period in U.S. history.

No one knew why. All had their explanations.

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Democrat Judge Kicked Out of Office After Getting Caught in Series of Outrageous Lies Including About Her Military Service

A judge in Louisiana lost her seat on the bench after making up a series of massive lies during her 2020 election campaign.

As The Daily Mail reported, Baton Rouge Judge Tiffany Foxworth-Roberts was removed from her position by the Louisiana Supreme Court in a 4-3 vote. She is the first judge to be removed from office in the Pelican State in 16 years.

Foxworth-Roberts is a Democrat who was elected in 2020 by only 27 votes.

One Louisiana Supreme Court judge slammed Foxworth-Roberts’ “tortured explanations and excuses” while she was under investigation.

“Rather than take responsibility for her conduct, (Foxworth-Roberts) has persisted with tortured explanations and excuses,’ Justice Jay McCallum wrote. “Therefore, her conduct has done little, if anything, to show remorse or contrition.”

The biggest lie she uttered centered around her time in uniform. She claimed in a campaign ad to have served in combat in Desert Storm and has risen to the rank of Army Captain.

But there’s just one problem: Foxworth-Roberts not only never saw combat, but she was never deployed overseas at all.

The Mail reported:

In ads she ran while campaigning for the bench, Foxworth-Roberts wore military attire and claimed to have risen to the rank of Army Captain, and in one ad she said she was ‘no stranger to being on the front lines during the call of duty.’

But during the investigation into her claims, Foxworth-Roberts initially would not approve the release of her military records, and when they were eventually released, it was found that she never served in combat, and had never been deployed overseas.

Despite being found to have fabricated her combat record, Foxworth-Roberts reportedly argued that she played a role in Operation Desert Storm because she worked with veterans of the war at the Walter Reed Medical Center.

In addition to lying about her military service, Foxworth-Roberts submitted an insurance claim that stated $40,000 had been stolen from her after someone supposedly broke into her car back in 2020.

The crime actually happened outside her home, and the goods she reported stolen from the police were different than the ones reported to the insurance company.

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U.S. Intelligence Warns: More Than 2,000 Afghan Residents May Have Terrorist Links

The Director of National Intelligence of the United States, Tulsi Gabbard, raised alarms after revealing that more than 2,000 Afghan nationals currently residing in the country may have potential ties to terrorist organizations.

This announcement comes amid a thorough security review of approximately 190,000 Afghans who arrived in the United States following the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2021, under the operation known as Welcome Allies.

U.S. intelligence agencies have launched a reevaluation process to thoroughly investigate the backgrounds of these individuals, with the goal of determining whether they pose a threat to national security.

Gabbard explained that part of the concern lies in the possibility that some of these Afghans “may be spreading radical Islamist ideologies within the United States,” and she argued that this scrutiny is essential to protect both the safety of the American people and the “fundamental freedoms” enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

The measure also follows recent violent incidents, including a shooting that occurred in late November in Washington, D.C., in which an Afghan national—identified by English-language media as Rahmanullah Lakanwal—opened fire on members of the National Guard, killing one and seriously injuring another.

This incident reignited the debate over the effectiveness of the “vetting” process (background checks) applied to evacuees after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Additionally, officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have indicated that thousands of investigations involving Afghans admitted into the country have been reopened, and that visa processes and asylum applications for Afghan nationals have been temporarily suspended while the detailed review is completed.

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