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Abrego Garcia’s Legal Team Demands That Federal Attorneys Pay the Price

Illegal alien Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s attorneys filed a motion in court Wednesday, arguing that the Trump administration’s lawyers should be held in contempt of court for violating court orders.

After the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia to an El Salvadorian prison in March, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis ruled that the administration must return him to the states on the grounds that he’d been mistakenly deported.

Days later on April 10, the Supreme Court effectively upheld Xinis’ ruling, prompting the district court judge to double down.

The Trump administration subsequently fought back by repeatedly arguing that it no longer had jurisdiction over Abrego Garcia, as he was in El Salvador.

But then in early June, the administration suddenly found a way to return the “Maryland dad” to the states to face criminal charges.

This — his sudden return– was what triggered the June 11 complaint.

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Schumer indicates Democrats are not slowing on amendments to ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ amid vote-a-rama

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday night indicated that Democrats do not intend to stop introducing amendments to President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” even as it slows the process down.

The Senate is currently conducting its vote-a-rama on the legislation, which allows senators to offer an unlimited number of amendments to the policy bill that they must proceed to vote on. Once the amendments are added or rejected, the chamber will vote on the entire legislative package as a whole, which is expected to take place early Tuesday morning.

Schumer did not indicate how many more amendments will be introduced before the final vote, but said Democrats want to introduce “as many amendments as we can.” 

“We need to show the American people in every way how bad this bill is for them,” Schumer told reporters. “They don’t like these amendments. The public is on our side in almost every amendment we do. Why would we want to stop offering amendments when they show the contrast between the parties? We want to do as many amendments as we can.”

If the Senate is able to pass their version of the bill, it will go back to the House, where it is expected to meet some resistance and likely be further changed. At that point, it would have to go back again to the Senate for approval before going to the Oval Office for final approval. 

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Denmark Plans Sweeping Ban on Online Deepfakes to Combat “Misinformation”

Denmark is preparing legislation that would outlaw the sharing of deepfake content online, a move that could open the door to unprecedented restrictions on digital expression.

Deepfakes, which can involve photos, videos, or audio recordings manipulated by artificial intelligence, are designed to convincingly fabricate actions or statements that never occurred.

While governments cite misinformation concerns, broad bans risk stifling creativity, political commentary, and legitimate speech.

The Danish Ministry of Culture announced Thursday that lawmakers from many parties are backing the effort to clamp down on the distribution of AI-generated imitations of people’s appearances or voices.

The forthcoming proposal, according to officials, aims to block the spread of deepfakes by making it illegal to share such material. Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt argued that “it was high time that we now create a safeguard against the spread of misinformation and at the same time send a clear signal to the tech giants.”

But these assurances do little to address the chilling effect such measures could have on free expression.

Authorities describe the planned rules as among the most comprehensive attempts yet to confront deepfakes and their potential to mislead the public.

The United States last year introduced legislation criminalizing the non-consensual sharing of intimate deepfakes, while South Korea has imposed tougher punishments for similar offenses and tightened regulations on social media platforms.

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Trump administration sues Los Angeles over sanctuary policies that ‘impede’ ICE operations

The Trump administration is suing the city of Los Angeles, alleging that the policies interfere with federal immigration authorities from doing their jobs.

“Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News in an exclusive statement.

“Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level – it ends under President Trump,” Bondi added.

The lawsuit says that the city is discriminating against federal authorities by treating ICE differently than other types of law enforcement.

The Department of Justice argues that the Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution prohibits this, so they are asking a judge to block the enforcement of the policies.

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Trump Working on “Temporary Pass” for Illegals in Certain Industries

A “temporary pass” to allow farmers and hospitality businesses to retain some illegal workers is currently in the works, according to President Donald Trump.

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox News on Sunday, the President said he was trying to be both “the strongest immigration guy that there’s even been” and also the “strongest farmers [and hotels] guy.”

“What we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers, where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge,” the President explained.

“The farmer knows he’s not going to hire a murderer. But you know, when you go into a farm and he’s had somebody working with him for nine years, doing this kind of work—which is hard work to do, and a lot of people aren’t going to do it—and you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away, it’s a problem.”

The President continued: “We’re going to work it so that some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control, as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away.”

Bartiromo asked the President whether the new move was a response to the “clumsy” execution of his mass-deportation policy, which has meant “people were afraid to go to work.” The President responded that his policy was “unbelievable,” and that it was President Biden’s immigration policies that were clumsy.

President Trump indicated at the beginning of June that he was considering a temporary pass for workers in certain industries, and during a cabinet meeting in April, he said that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said there should be a pathway for “certain people” who farmers want to “stay in for a while and work with the farmers and then come back and go through a legal process.”

Meanwhile, Border Czar Tom Homan has said that immigration raids on farms, hotels and restaurants will continue.

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Trump Says He Gave Iran Permission to Bomb U.S. Base in Qatar and…Well, Mostly Crickets?

When political scientist Seth Masket shared this story on Bluesky yesterday, I couldn’t believe it was real. The right-wing Washington Times reported that at a press conference at the NATO Summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, Trump revealed that he had given Iran permission to bomb the U.S.’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar in retaliation for the American bombing of their nuclear sites. 

“They said, ‘We’re going to shoot them. Is one o’clock OK?’ I said it’s fine,” Trump said. “And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn’t get hurt, except for the gunners.”

I poked around for other major coverage of this extraordinary admission, and landed only on a transcript of the press conference. And yes, amid a characteristically meandering monologue, Trump actually said that he let a foreign adversary bomb an American military installation. But this story has pretty much come and gone with virtually no attention and certainly none of the outrage commensurate with what Trump said.

Let’s consider what Trump’s verbal diarrhea here could mean. Suppose he is (for once) telling the truth. Wouldn’t that represent the most shocking dereliction of duty one could imagine for the commander-in-chief? (A high crime or misdemeanor, perhaps?) Is he saying he let Iran get its retaliation out of its system with what he called “a very weak response” to bring an end to hostilities? Perhaps Trump simply was rambling incoherently as he basked in his new “daddy” glow at NATO.

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Police unveil ‘revolutionary’ new handheld gadget that captures even slightest bruising on domestic abuse victims for use as evidence

‘Groundbreaking’ new technology will allow police to properly capture bruising on domestic violence victims using a handheld gadget.

Britain’s biggest force is today unveiling the device which will allow frontline officers to gather forensic-grade material that can be used as evidence in court within minutes of first contact.

Project Archway uses cross-polarisation to eliminate glare on the skin and enhance visual contrasts to identify bruises invisible to the naked eye.

Previously, officers often faced challenges in capturing visible evidence of bruising – particularly on darker skin tones and during the early stages of injury.

But the technology, developed in-house by the Metropolitan Police, is closing this gap and the force said it is already improving outcomes for victims.

A 33-use pilot in south London resulted in charges for 45 per cent of the cases.

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A Translation Guide To Progressive Slavespeak

I propose that we accompany physical detox with a verbal detox: we need to purge our bloated vocabulary of several concepts that are poisoning our understanding of ourselves and the world.

These concepts have been elaborated by people who would describe themselves as “self-aware,” “progressive,” and “liberated,” but they are actually terms more fit for a society of slaves than a society of free persons. Indeed, these concepts, at least as they are typically employed by “progressives,” could be described, without exaggeration, as a species of slavespeak. By this, I simply mean that they are used disingenuously, to rationalise political oppression and slavery.

Let’s name them and shame them, one by one:

  1. Misinformation/disinformation: On its face, this means false or misleading information that could be harmful to citizens. But in slavespeak, while it parades under this apparently innocent meaning, it actually means information that some individuals find disagreeable or inconvenient, and therefore want censored or banished from the public square.
  2. Far right: On its face, this means political positions that border on the insane, the pathological, and the irrational, and have violent and oppressive tendencies, with affinities to Nazism, white supremacism, and other dodgy political movements. In slavespeak, “far right” retains these connotations, but the term is applied arbitrarily to any position that disrupts the official narrative of the political Establishment.
  3. Xenophobia: Xenophobia usually means blanket dislike or prejudice against foreigners. But in slavespeak, xenophobia is applied to anyone who affirms the value of national ties or national identity, defends the idea that immigrants should adapt to the their host culture, or dissents from open border policies.
  4. Hate speech: On its face, this means speech that targets particular groups in society with vitriolic language and insults of various sorts, seeking to portray such groups as intrinsically detestable. In slavespeak, hate speech just means any strongly worded discourse that dares to speak critically of any protected cohort of society or its behaviour or opinions. So heated political discourse is treated as insidious hate speech, especially discourse that threatens the reigning ideology.
  5. Tolerance: On its face, this means a disposition to peacefully put up with people, behaviour, or opinions one finds abhorrent or offensive. In slavespeak, tolerance means the uncritical celebration of every conceivable lifestyle under the sun, the anaesthesisation of one’s critical faculties. So verbally expressing disapproval or criticism toward a way of life, which used to be permitted by freedom of expression, is now condemned as intolerance.

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Prophecy, not politics, may also shape America’s clash with Iran

When most people contemplate the future of America’s conflict with Iran, they hunt for clues in grainy satellite photos, statements from military analysts and President Trump’s social media posts.

But when scholar Diana Butler Bass considers what could happen next, her thoughts turn toward another group she says is now thinking more about prophecy than politics.

She recalls warnings from her childhood about the rise of an Antichrist, stories about weeping mothers clutching their empty blankets after their babies were suddenly “Raptured” to heaven and paintings of an angry Jesus leading armies of angels to an Armageddon-like, final battle in modern-day Israel.

Those stories terrified and thrilled Bass when she heard them growing up in a White evangelical church in the 1970s. It was a time when the end always seemed near, and books like the bestseller “The Late Great Planet Earth” warned Christians to gird their loins for a period of Great Tribulation and prepare for Jesus’ triumphant return to Jerusalem.

Bass, a prominent, progressive religious author who hosts a popular Substack newsletter called “The Cottage,” no longer believes those stories. Yet when she considers why the US struck three nuclear facilities in Iran this month and what could happen next, she now offers a prophecy of her own: Bombing Iran will reinforce Trump’s status as God’s “Chosen One” and Israel as His chosen nation among many of the President’s White evangelical supporters.

Many of these supporters dismiss the dangers of a larger war, she tells CNN, because such a clash would mean the world is approaching the “end times” — a series of cataclysmic events ushering in the Second Coming of Christ and the rise of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies.

“There’s almost a kind of spiritual eagerness for a war in the Middle East,” says Bass, describing attitudes among some White evangelicals. “They believe a war is going to set off a series of events that will result in Jesus returning.”

Trump’s decision to bomb Iran has so far been examined almost exclusively through the lens of politics or military strategy. Yet there is a religious dimension to his decision – and what could happen next – that’s been underexplored.

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US Approves $510 Million Arms Deal for Israel

The Trump administration has approved a new arms deal for Israel that will provide the country with $510 million worth of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMS), kits that turn bombs into precision-guided weapons, as the US continues to provide military aid to support the genocidal war in Gaza.

According to the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the State Department notified Congress of the sale of 3,845 JDAMS for 2,000-pound BLU-109 bombs and 3,280 JDAMS for 500-pound MK 82 bombs. The deal also includes US “government and contractor engineering, logistics, and technical support services; and other related elements of logistics and program support.”

The DSCA said Boeing is the principal contractor for the deal. The notification of the potential deal begins a time period when US lawmakers could potentially block the sale, but there’s little opposition to US military support for Israel within Congress, despite the many war crimes the US is implicated in by providing Israel with weapons.

Fragments of bombs with US-provided JDAM kits have been found at the scene of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza that have massacred many civilians. In 2023, Human Rights Watch said it identified JDAM fragments that were found in two airstrikes on homes in central Gaza that killed 43 civilians, including 19 children, and 14 women.

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