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THAT SHOULD DO IT: Chicago Officials Put Signs in Subway Cars That Say ‘Violence Will Not be Tolerated’ 

Officials from the city of Chicago, including the transit authority, recently made a big to-do about putting up signs in subway cars that say ‘violence will not be tolerated.’

This should work perfectly, right? Criminals will see the signs and change their behavior in order to follow the rules, right?

Of course, this assumes that potentially violent criminals on Chicago’s public transit system can read, which isn’t a safe bet.

FOX 32 in Chicago reports:

New CTA campaign aims to deter violent crime on buses, trains

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Chicago Transit Authority are launching a new public awareness campaign warning that prosecutors will seek pretrial detention for people accused of committing violent crimes on public transit.

The initiative will place more than 7,000 signs on CTA buses and trains that say, “Violence on the CTA will not be tolerated. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office will prosecute and seek pretrial detention for all violent offenses on public transit.”

“In order to have a safe and thriving city, we need to have a safe public transportation system,” Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke said in a statement.

“The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office is committed to doing everything we can to make our public transportation system the safest in the nation. We are putting up these signs to show how seriously we take these cases and to reinforce the consequences offenders will face for bringing violence onto the CTA.”

CTA Acting President Nora Leerhsen said the campaign is intended to reassure both riders and transit employees.

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Nancy Sinatra Calls to ‘Eliminate All Guns’ After ‘Mass Shooting’ That Wasn’t a Mass Shooting

Singer and actress Nancy Sinatra, the daughter of Frank Sinatra, called to “eliminate all guns” after reports of a “mass shooting” in Seattle that turned out not to be a “mass shooting” at all.

Nancy reacted to a post by an X user that said: “With the mass shooting at Seattle Center, it might be good to mention that Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban reduced mass shooting deaths by nearly half – but after George W Bush & Republicans let it expire, mass shooting deaths more than doubled – because it’s the f*cking guns.”

Nancy’s response: “Eliminate the guns. The founding fathers did not know about automatic weapons.”

Breitbart News reported the Seattle shooting, noting that it was actually a shootout between at least two people that occurred during the Bite of Seattle food festival on Sunday. Three people were killed in the shootout and four others injured and police detained a 15-year-old in connection with the incident.

NBC News noted that a second suspect was killed in the shootout and police are seeking a possible third suspect. Multiple handguns were recovered at the scene. The guns included one that Democrats refer to as a “ghost gun” and another that was outfitted with a “Glock switch.”

A total of 14 rounds were fired during the shootout.

Mike Blooberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety ranks Washington the No. 9 state in the Union for gun control stringency. Some of Washington’s gun controls include an “assault weapons” ban, a ban on “Glock switches,” a ban on bump stocks, a red flag law, a concealed carry permit requirement, a gun storage law, and universal background checks for handgun sales.

None of Washington’s gun controls prevented the shootout.

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Mississauga Centre PC MPP Natalia Kusendova-Bashta billed taxpayers $4,258 for six Toronto hotel stays

Mississauga Centre PC MPP Natalia Kusendova-Bashta billed taxpayers $4,258 for six hotel stays in downtown Toronto despite representing a riding within commuting distance of Queen’s Park.

Expense disclosures from the Ontario Legislature show Kusendova-Bashta claimed $4,258 under the Legislature’s “Special Circumstance Accommodation in Toronto” policy through six separate hotel claims between 2023 and 2025.

Ontario’s expense rules allow MPPs who live within 50 kilometres of Queen’s Park to claim overnight accommodations only in exceptional circumstances, such as severe weather or other emergencies that make returning home impractical. Mississauga Centre is well within commuting distance of the Legislature.

Kusendova-Bashta’s claims are part of the broader Ford government hotel expense scandal that saw Toronto-area Progressive Conservative MPPs collectively bill taxpayers more than $100,000 for Toronto hotel stays under the “special circumstances” allowance.

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Sure, Roasting Fauci Is Fun, but There’s No Do-Over for the Biden Years

As I wrote in Tuesday’s Morning Briefing, conservative Americans are once again finding out that we were right about everything they called us crazy for during the Wuhan Chinese Bat Flu pandemic. Never in recorded history have “conspiracy theorists” been on a roll like the one we’re experiencing right now. I’m beginning to think that the planet might change its shape if we decide to go the Flat-Earther route. We’re that good these days.

Our current “You shoulda listened to us,” moment is courtesy of Satan’s Garden Gnome, alleged Doctor Anthony Fauci. We’ve been finding out how wrong he was for years but, thanks to his personal diary entries that we’re seeing for the first time, we have evidence of Anthony Fauci proving that Anthony Fauci is a liar. 

We also now have evidence that Fauci was far more concerned with his own perverse pandemic-fueled celebrity than with anyone’s health. His diary entries about his growing fame (infamy for those of us on this side of the aisle) read as if he were working himself into a sexual frenzy after every television appearance. Anthony Fauci most definitely had an Anthony Fauci fetish. 

Being proven right is always a good feeling, and watching Fauci being berated by Republican senators while pleading the Fifth (which Matt covered here) was entertaining for a minute or two, but it’s not sufficient payback for what we endured during the interminable slog of the pandemic. The cold, harsh reality is that it never will be. 

Yes, the public exposure of the unhinged nature of Fauci’s ego is newsworthy. And, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, there is some entertainment value in watching him squirm a little. However, unless you get extraordinary satisfaction from pointing at the television and saying, “I told you so,” there’s not a lot of satisfying “there” there. 

I am not an attorney, so I will not be indulging in any legal speculation about what might happen to Fauci. From a layman’s perspective, it seems that a presidential pardon that’s backdated to the Mesozoic Era probably covers a lot. If there is some workaround that can be used to nail this vile human being, I hope it’s found soon. I don’t want to just see Fauci in an orange jumpsuit, I want to bring back town squares and pillories and put him on display for his crimes. 

That sentiment may not be brimming with Christian charity, but I think we all know that I’m rather imperfect in that regard. There’s also the fact that I only attack people with words, and I’m honest about it. I’ve never fear-mongered with lies that got elderly people sent to assisted living death beds. Once a person has a body count, he or she is deserving of some ill will. (I believe that’s Confucius.)

My reaction to these Fauci revelations is the same as last year when the lefties started admitting that Joe Biden had pudding for brains during his presidency. The validation wasn’t much of a balm for the steaming piles of misery those four years heaped upon us. OK, it wasn’t any kind of balm at all, especially given the fact that Joe Biden has never been held accountable for any of his awfulness in the half century-plus that he poisoned American politics. 

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Sen. Rand Paul: Congress Will Vote on Holding Fauci in Contempt After He Invoked Fifth Amendment Over 100 Times

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said there will be a panel vote to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt after the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) refused to answer any question during his testimony on Wednesday, instead repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment.

“That’s a vote that will happen in committee next week. It will be in contempt of Congress,” Paul told reporters after the hearing, which featured Fauci refusing to answer one question from lawmakers.

“We believe that with his… immunity from criminal liability, that he didn’t need to hide behind the Fifth Amendment and that maybe the Fifth Amendment doesn’t attach when you have a pardon in place,” Paul explained, noting it will be a legal question.

“That’ll be a legal question, but the question on contempt will be voted on, and then there’s a question of whether or not the Department of Justice will take that up,” he added.

Fauci made clear during his opening statement that he would not respond to any lawmaker questions. And after his own line of questions, which Fauci refused to answer, Paul said that there would be repercussions.

“The chairman has denied your assertion of privilege and directed you to answer, but you nonetheless refuse and stand on privilege despite the existence of the pardon. The committee will have to consider after this hearing what appropriate action should be taken against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so,” Paul said.

He added, “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today.”

Other lawmakers on the committee also pointed out that Fauci, whom former President Joe Biden pardoned, had nothing to hide.

“Let’s just get one thing straight: You don’t have any rights under the Fifth Amendment because you’ve been pardoned, as you very well know, as the Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said. “Brown vs. Walker, 1896. When he has been pardoned, he may not stand upon his privilege. You know that, your lawyers sitting behind you now shifting nervously in their chairs, they know it.”

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Fauci Admits To Working Against Trump’s 2020 Re-Election Bid In Shocking Diary

Anthony Fauci’s newly released diary entries, made public by Sen. Rand Paul, reveal that Fauci privately viewed efforts to fast-track COVID-19 treatments and vaccines before the 2020 election as politically motivated — and show he recorded personally intervening to support FDA officials resisting pressure for emergency authorizations.

The entries were first highlighted by Justin Hart of the Rational Ground Substack.

The entries, spanning five months in 2020, detail Fauci’s concerns about what he repeatedly described as an effort to deliver President Donald Trump an “October surprise” ahead of Election Day. They also identify the administration officials he believed were applying pressure and document a call in which Fauci wrote that he and other top federal health officials assured the FDA’s top vaccine regulator they would support him if he refused to approve a vaccine prematurely.

The diary centers on several key figures. Peter Marks led the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the office responsible for reviewing vaccine applications. Then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn oversaw Marks. Fauci also references then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, NIH Director Francis Collins, Fauci deputy Cliff Lane and Larry Horowitz, whom he identifies as someone working closely with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

One of the earliest entries, dated June 20, 2020, focuses not on White House political aides but on then-White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx.

Fauci wrote that he had become increasingly frustrated with Birx, accusing her of wanting to bypass traditional clinical trials in favor of emergency authorizations.

“Deb has ststed [sic] that we should noit [sic] do clinical trials since ‘I want to see every infected person in a nursing home get plasma early on and steroids later. Forget the trial, we need to do this on EUAs. She says the same thing about vaccine trials. Clearly, she is trying to provide Trump with his October surprise. I may need to blow the whistle on her.”

The diary entry suggests Fauci believed months before the election that accelerating vaccine approvals was being driven by politics rather than science, and that he was already considering publicly opposing the effort.

By late July, Fauci recorded similar concerns about Meadows.

In a July 26 entry, Fauci wrote that after watching Meadows on television, he believed the chief of staff was “trying to get an ‘October Surprise’” and warned of an effort to push an early vaccine approval.

The following day, after briefing Trump in the Oval Office on vaccines and therapeutics, Fauci wrote that the president acknowledged a vaccine might not be ready before Election Day, though “he was not happy about it.”

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Rearmament: UK Govt Pushes For New Generation of Explosives Factories to Fix Post-Cold War Deindustrialisation

The British government is seeking to build “at least six new munitions and energetics factories” after the Ukraine War experience showed how fast ammunition is used in a near-peer conflict, and how long it takes to make more when the industrial base no longer exists.

The Ministry of Defence has announced a funding package to support 22 unnamed companies to underwrite their costs in building “at least six” new factories to produce what the industry calls energetics, which might better be known as explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics. The selected businesses will receive up to £300,000 each to “develop proposals for the creation of new factories producing energetic materials used in munitions”, and the winners in the competition will receive contracts “worth up to £5 million each” to get the ground broken on building the new facilities.

According to the government’s statement, the project is intended to move — at least by Whitehall standards — at a very brisk pace. The proposals are due to be made by the end of the summer, and construction of new munitions factories should begin before the end of 2026. The rush to build is part of a century-long story of corporate amnesia in which London has repeatedly destroyed its own armaments factories to save money in peacetime, only to be surprised, yet again, when war returns.

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Fauci’s Attorney Kicked Out Of Hearing For Yelling During Questioning

Dr. Anthony Fauci arrived on Capitol Hill under subpoena Wednesday and almost immediately stopped answering questions.

The former face of America’s COVID response repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment as Sen. Rand Paul pressed him over pandemic-era decisions, NIH-funded research and the still-disputed origins of the virus.

The hearing grew even more tense when video circulating online appeared to show Fauci’s attorney being removed after interrupting during Paul’s questioning.

Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee he would not answer questions because he believed Republicans were trying to expose him to criminal prosecution.

In a lengthy opening statement, Fauci accused Paul of dragging him before the committee for political reasons.

“The sole reason (Sen. Paul) is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said.

He continued: “His obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution has compelled me to conclude that this proceeding is nothing more than a politically motivated effort to trap me into making statements that could later be twisted or distorted into a basis for criminal charges.”

Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has battled Fauci for years over COVID origins and government-funded research, did not back down.

As questioning began, Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions about the National Institutes of Health, U.S.-funded research and decisions made during the pandemic.

At one point, Paul highlighted just how far Fauci’s refusal to answer had gone.

“Let the record reflect that the witness has refused to answer whether there’s a folder in front of him based on his Fifth Amendment right.”

The exchange was a political earthquake for a man who spent the pandemic demanding that Americans trust federal health officials without hesitation.

In one tense moment, Paul kicked Fauci’s lead attorney out of the hearing, later remarking, “Let the record state that Dr. Fauci will still have the advice of the other half-a-dozen attorneys he brought along today.”

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D.C. Circuit Court Hands Trump Win In Battle Over Mail-In Voting Order

A federal appellate court handed President Trump a decisive win on Tuesday in an ongoing legal battle over his mail-in voting executive order.

In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals shot down Democrats’ lawfare against Trump’s March elections order. That directive, as summarized by the court, “directs the Department of Homeland Security, the United States Postal Service, and other agencies to begin developing new rules and procedures for mail voting in the upcoming midterm and future elections.”

The Democrat plaintiffs filed their lawsuit a day after the order was issued. They subsequently asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia a week later to issue a preliminary injunction blocking its enforcement.

The district court rejected that request.

In affirming the lower court’s ruling, the D.C. Circuit panel noted that “while Plaintiffs have identified a number of serious questions concerning the lawfulness of proposed actions if implemented on the threshold of the upcoming federal election, this case likely is unripe for review in its present posture.” In other words, the case is unreviewable at this time because the named agencies haven’t implemented their official rules as required by the president’s order.

“In particular, Plaintiffs’ request for preliminary relief ‘is premised on the threatened impact’ of the Executive Order after it is implemented and if in violation of federal law,” the court ruled. “In addition, the Executive Order, which is not self-executing, directs the agencies to act only to ‘the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law, including but not limited to the Privacy Act of 1974,’ and so requires compliance with the very legal limitations about which Plaintiffs are concerned.”

The appellate court said that plaintiffs may seek relief “[i]f the defendant agencies take steps to implement the Executive Order in a manner that violates federal law or the Constitution.” The panel was comprised of Judges Patricia Millett (Obama appointee), Robert Wilkins (Obama appointee), and Gregory Katsas (Trump appointee).

The ruling was handed down a day after the Trump administration filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court to pause a Massachusetts-based judge’s injunction against the mail-in voting order. Similar to the D.C. Circuit, the Justice Department argued that “the injunction is especially indefensible because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who oversees emergency applications from the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, has given respondents until 4 p.m. ET on Aug. 3 to file a response to the government’s application.

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UK Hands ‘Skilled’ Visa Powers To Islamic Bookshops Selling JIHAD Texts, Wife-beating Guides

The UK Home Office has granted a string of Islamic bookshops the power to sponsor Skilled Worker visas, allowing them to bring migrants into Britain even as those same stores sell texts by Muslim Brotherhood ideologues that promote antisemitism, the overthrow of secular governments through jihad, and guidance on beating wives.

An investigation has revealed that these shops have issued dozens of certificates of sponsorship. One Birmingham bookshop alone has issued up to 16 since 2021. An east London outlet has sponsored as many as 18. A Leicester-area operation and two further east London businesses, including one in Tower Hamlets, have each been linked to up to 10.

Among the titles on their shelves is Milestones by Sayyid Qutb, the influential Muslim Brotherhood thinker executed in Egypt in 1966. The book argues for the toppling of all secular governments through “physical power and jihad” and their replacement with sharia regimes.

Several shops also stock Qutb’s In the Shade of the Qur’an, which contends that Jewish people “try to destroy all values and all that is sacred to mankind” and possess a “wicked nature.”

Works by Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna appear alongside writings by Bilal Philips, a cleric already barred from the UK by the Home Office. Philips’s The Fundamentals of Tawheed includes guidance on wife-beating and states that “un-Islamic government must be sincerely hated and despised.”

UK Prison Service inspectors flagged the latter text as extremist material in 2016 and ordered it removed from prison chaplaincies.

None of these publications are illegal under current UK law, and some are available on mainstream platforms. There is no suggestion the shops themselves have broken the law. Yet the Home Office has still handed them official sponsorship licences under the Skilled Worker route.

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