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Democrat councilwoman BLOCKS arrest of migrant who beat up her pregnant daughter

Police bodycam footage captured the chaotic moment a Massachusetts councilwoman attempted to block the arrest of a migrant who allegedly beat up her pregnant daughter.

The intense encounter took place on May 8 in Worcester – about 50 minutes outside of Boston – when ICE agents confronted a crowd of about 25 ‘unruly’ activists as they tried to arrest Rosane Ferreira de Oliveira.

De Oliveira, a 40-year-old Brazilian national, entered the US illegally in August 2022. 

While agents attempted to apprehend de Oliveira, who is accused of assaulting her pregnant 16-year-old daughter, Democrat City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj was seen grabbing ICE officers and shouting at them to ‘get out of our neighborhood.’

Following the dramatic incident, authorities said Haxhiaj  ‘incited aggression towards the police’ and ‘eventually assaulted both Worcester police and federal law enforcement officers on scene.’ 

The Worcester Police Patrolman’s Union also noted that the councilwoman’s ‘behavior also emboldened others to act in this manner,’ as many bystanders were seen filming the moment and also screaming at officers. 

Officials have called for an ethics investigation to take place following the ordeal, as Massachusetts US Attorney Leah Foley warned that her office will look into anyone who tries to interfere with ICE operations, including elected officials. 

‘This conduct poses significant public and officer safety risks. It is conduct that should be vilified rather than glorified,’ Foley said.

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Former State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller Admits Israel Has Committed War Crimes in Gaza

Former State Department spokesman Matthew Miller has said that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, an admission that comes after he spent his time in the Biden administration providing cover for Israeli atrocities in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Miller made the comments on a Sky News podcast when asked if he thought Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. “I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” he said.

From the podium at the State Department, Miller repeatedly claimed that there wasn’t enough proof to conclude that Israel was committing war crimes despite the overwhelming evidence, and justified continued US support for the slaughter of Palestinians.

“At the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion, you’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government. The United States government had not concluded they have committed war crimes,” Miller said.

Miller admitted that he believed Israel committed war crimes while he was in the State Department, but “qualified” his answer, claiming it wasn’t clear whether it was Israeli state policy to commit war crimes or if they had been committed only by individual members of the military.

But Miller also admitted there hasn’t been any accountability for the war crimes committed by the Israeli military. “We have not yet seen them hold sufficient numbers of the military accountable, and I think it’s an open question whether they’re going to,” he said.

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Greta Thunberg Seeks Spotlight In Gaza After Abandoning Climate Crusade

What does an autistic 22-year-old living most of her life in 1st world decadence with her rich celebrity parents know about climate science?  Or the complexities of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians?  Not a damn thing, really, which is why it’s confounding that such a person seems to continually garner a steady spotlight from the establishment media when it comes to environmental and geopolitical causes. 

How did Greta Thunberg become the poster child for global progressive activism when she is provably ignorant on every conceivable level?  Is it simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time?  Or, did someone call in a major favor?  Thunberg is, at the very least, no stranger to opportunism and self promotion. 

She has dealt with a series of embarrassing failures on the climate change front, including being forced to erase a 2018 Twitter post in which she predicted climate catastrophe by 2023.  Her theatrical arrests at protest events across Europe have done little to attract the kind of media frenzy she obviously craves, and so, it would appear that global warming is no longer a crusade she feels compelled to undertake.  There’s no more clout to be chased.

Instead, Greta has identified the ripest progressive bandwagon of the day and jumped aboard – Namely the war in Gaza.

Wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh and pontificating about “genocide”, the career activist has traveled with a protest group on an aid ship to Gaza.  The sailing boat Madleen, operated by Freedom Flotilla Coalition, departed from the Sicilian port of Catania in southern Italy.  It will try to reach the shores of the Gaza Strip in an effort to bring in some aid and raise “international awareness” over the ongoing humanitarian crisis, the activists said at a press conference on Sunday.

One can argue the finer points of how the war in Gaza is being handled (by Hamas or by Israel), but few people want to hear about this debate from Greta Thunberg.

In mid-May, Israel eased its blockade of Gaza after nearly three months, allowing a limited amount of humanitarian aid into the territory.  Though Thunberg’s group claims their goal is to “break the blockade” it’s unlikely that she would be attempting this kind of promotional stunt if conditions had not already loosened. 

The political left’s obsession with the Gaza war is strange considering the majority of Palestinians are fundamentalists that violently oppose nearly every progressive ideal from women’s rights to gay pride.  However, the situation is much like the George Floyd incident in that it provides a dramatic backdrop, a tool for absorbing certain groups into the leftist fold to be used as fodder for the deconstruction of the west.

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British Attacks on Free Speech Prove the Value of the First Amendment

Political activists occasionally propose a new constitutional convention, which would gather delegates from the states to craft amendments to the nation’s founding document. It’s a long and convoluted process, but the Constitution itself provides the blueprint. Article V allows such a confab if two-thirds of Congress or two-thirds of the state legislatures call for one.

These days, conservatives are the driving force for the idea, as they see it as a means to put further limits on the federal government. Sometimes, progressives propose such a thing. Their goals are to enshrine various social programs and social-justice concepts. Yet anyone who has watched the moronic sausage-making in Congress and state legislatures should be wary of opening Pandora’s Box.

I’d be happy enough if both political tribes tried to uphold the Constitution as it is currently drafted. It’s a brilliant document that limits the power of the government to infringe on our rights. Without the first 10—the Bill of Rights—this would be a markedly different nation.

For a sense of where we might be without it, I’d recommend looking at Great Britain and its approach to the speech concepts detailed on our First Amendment. Our nation was spawned from the British, so we share a culture and history. Yet, without a specific constitutional dictate, that nation has taken a disturbing approach that rightly offends American sensibilities.

As Tablet magazine reported, “74-year-old Scottish grandmother Rose Docherty was arrested on video by four police officers for silently holding a sign in proximity to a Glasgow abortion clinic reading ‘Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want.'” Thousands of Brits are detained, questioned, and prosecuted, it notes, for online posts of the type that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow here. The chilling effect is profound.

This isn’t as awful as what happens in authoritarian countries such as Russia, where the government’s critics have a habit of accidentally falling out of windows. But that’s thin gruel. Britain and the European Union are supposed to be free countries. Their speech codes are intended to battle disinformation/misinformation, but empowering the government to be the arbiter of such vague concepts only destroys everyone’s freedoms.

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A Lot More Older Americans Are Now Using Marijuana, Federally Funded Study Shows

A new federally funded report published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) finds that use of marijuana by U.S. adults 65 and older has increased considerably in recent years amid broader legal access for medical and recreational use.

Cannabis consumption had already been on the rise over the past couple of decades, the research letter says, with reported past-year consumption rising from 1.0 percent in 2005 to 4.2 percent in 2o18. The new findings, which draw on the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, show that past-month use has now climbed to 4.8 percent in 2021 and to 7.0 percent in 2023.

The growth in prevalence over the past few years was seen among nearly all demographic subsets, but it was especially strong among people who listed their race as “other,” women, white people, people with college or post-college degrees, those with higher-income, married people and those living in states with legal medical marijuana, the report says.

Data also showed that people with multiple chronic diseases also reported a recent increase in prevalence of use.

Some trends reveal what authors called “shifts in cannabis use by older adults.”

“Adults with the highest incomes initially had the lowest prevalence of cannabis use vs other income levels,” they said, for example, “but by 2023, they had the highest prevalence, which may indicate better access to medical cannabis given its costs.”

The rise in cannabis use among adults 65 and older in legal jurisdictions “highlights the importance of structural educational support for patients and clinicians in those states,” the report notes, pointing to potential complications in treating chronic disease.

It also flags that tobacco and excess alcohol use “continues to be high among older adults who use cannabis. However, these results do not suggest that concurrent use is changing.”

The report concludes by advising that clinicians “consider screening and educating older patients about potential risks of cannabis use.”

The new findings, by researchers at University of California, San Diego and New York University medical schools, were published as a research letter on Monday.

Along with the report, JAMA also published an editor’s note asserting that “existing therapeutic evidence for medical cannabis in older adults has been inconsistent across several conditions, with many studies suggesting possible benefits, while others finding limited benefit.”

It also highlights “apparent” potential harms that marijuana might cause older adults, including “increased risks of cardiovascular, respiratory, and gastrointestinal conditions, stroke, sedation, cognitive impairment, falls, motor vehicle injuries, drug-drug interactions, and psychiatric disorders.”

“Older adults require information on methods available for taking cannabis and age-specific dosing guidance,” the editor’s note says. “Health care professionals should recognize that older adults are increasingly using cannabis products and promote open and judgment-free conversations about its use.”

Overall, it says, the new research findings “underscore the need for more high-quality evidence evaluating the benefit to risk ratio of cannabis in older adults as well as the need for clinician support to prevent cannabis-related harm.”

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Only One European Country’s Cannabis Policy Is Actually Undermining The Illicit Market

In the last several decades, Europe has made significant strides in its approach to legalized cannabis use, moving from strict criminalization and prohibition to decriminalization and legalized medical and adult-use models. In addition to expanding healthcare and adult-use access to cannabis use, it’s also important to discuss what impact these varying policies have in counteracting the foothold of illicit cannabis markets throughout the European Union.

Under E.U. law, many countries encounter hurdles in legalizing adult-use commercial cannabis, as they likely would be subject to penalties under the European Court of Justice. For this reason, several countries—including the Netherlands, Malta, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Germany—have taken unique approaches to cannabis policy.

Germany, however, stands out in terms of producing a measurable impact to push back against the illicit cannabis market.

The Netherlands: A Tolerance Model Without Market Control

Long seen as a pioneer, the Netherlands’ approach to cannabis is based on tolerance rather than legalization. Adults can purchase small quantities of cannabis from Dutch “coffee shops,” which are tolerated but not fully legalized. These shops are forced to source products from an illegal supply chain due to a lack of legal production.

In terms of impact, the tolerated model might seem like a considerable way to go, as every adult in the Netherlands can access coffee shops. However, in terms of control, product safety and regulation, the Dutch cannabis system is vulnerable, as the whole value chain is not regulated and the products are produced illegally for the coffee shops.

Due to the drawbacks of the tolerance model, the Netherlands has just initiated its Weed Experiment. The experiment will allow coffee shops in 10 municipalities to sell legally produced and supplied cannabis. A report on the results of the closed-loop experiment is expected for 2028.

Malta: Liberal on Paper, Constrained in Practice

Malta decriminalized cannabis use in 2015 and, in 2021, became the first European Union country to allow the cultivation and private personal use of cannabis. However, the market remains heavily restricted.

The government permits adult cultivation of cannabis (up to four plants) and personal possession of seven grams when away from home and 50 grams at home. The country also legalized nonprofit cannabis associations that can distribute cannabis to their members. These clubs are limited to 500 people, and membership is only available to residents. However, the public consumption, transportation and sale of cannabis are still banned and can result in fines.

With club membership strictly limited, public consumption outlawed and no other options for adults to legally purchase cannabis outside of the nonprofit associations, the market remains very limited. As of May 2025, no public information is available detailing the exact amount of cannabis provided by these associations to their members.

Luxembourg: Legalization Without Access

In 2021, Luxembourg legalized cannabis cultivation for adult use. However, it wasn’t until two years later, in 2023, that the country defined its legal cultivation and possession rules for personal use. Under the law, adults can grow up to four plants and possess three grams. However, consumption, transportation, and sale in public spaces are still banned and can result in fines.

As reported by the Luxembourg Times, 46.3 percent of the country’s residents have tried cannabis at least once in their lives, including 14.2 percent who have used the plant within the last year and 7.8 percent in the past month, according to an ILRES poll. Just under seven out of ten people who grow cannabis at home said they started cultivation after the government legalized home grow, amounting to just 11.5 percent of recent users.

Despite homegrow gaining moderate interest from residents after legalization, there has not been a significant growth in users, and this has not resulted in an explosion in the market. For now, the market remains stagnant and limited in counteracting illicit sellers due to the country’s lack of legalized sales marketplaces as well as restrictions on public consumption.

Switzerland: Research-Oriented but Limited in Scope

Switzerland has taken a scientific approach through pilot programs across seven major cities to determine the viability of cannabis legalization and controlled distribution within the country over 10 years.

While the pilot programs are set up to allow recreational cannabis commerce at a local level, in terms of true societal impact, this initial rollout does not serve as a solution to counteract the illicit cannabis market. This is mainly due to the limited availability of the majority of Swiss residents. Only Swiss residents who have previously established histories of using cannabis can purchase through the pilot program entities. These pilot programs are also limited to a maximum of a few hundred or a few thousand participants.

Germany: A Functional, Scalable Legal Medical Market

Germany’s cannabis market is widely hailed as one of Europe’s most progressive. On April 1, 2024, the country passed The Cannabis Act (CanG), reclassifying cannabis as a non-narcotic. Through this, administrative burdens were eased for medical cannabis patients and prescribing doctors. CanG also allows possession of up to 25 grams of cannabis and cultivation of up to 3 plants, and it permits the rollout of not-for-profit cannabis clubs.

In January 2025, my medical cannabis company, Bloomwell Group, released its “Cannabis 2024 in Germany: A new era for patients in Germany” report. According to the report, in December 2024, the number of prescriptions issued increased by a little less than 1,000 percent compared to March 2024, following the reclassification of cannabis. The rise of patients who are now able to access cannabis for various medical conditions signals a shift in the perception of cannabis being used for its wellness properties in the medical space.

Telemedical technology in the sector has also positively impacted growth and counteracted the illicit market. Telemedical platforms offer convenience for patients and the physicians who prescribe their treatment. This is extremely helpful to patients who are located in rural or isolated areas of Germany and have geographic limitations in accessing healthcare professionals for their medical needs.

The Bloomwell report also revealed that medical cannabis prices dropped to an all-time low by the end of 2024. During October and November 2024, select strains were available for just €3.99 per gram, a stark contrast to previous pricing models. These decreases are due to a steady supply and increased demand for medical cannabis as the number of self-paying patients continues to soar.

Such demand continues to open doors for international imports of medical cannabis to supply the growing market. Just in the first quarter of 2025, more than 37 tonnes of cannabis for medical or scientific purposes have been imported to Germany, according to the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM).

Unlike other legalized markets, like California in the U.S., which fell victim to being dwarfed by a behemoth illicit market, the passage of CanG served as a catalyst to boom the German medical market, and with more patients able to access cannabis, prices of the plant actually decreased. This allowed the legalized medical market to stay competitive with the illicit market.

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Astronomers baffled by mystery object flashing signals at Earth every 44 minutes: ‘Like nothing we’ve ever seen’

The truth is out there.

Astronomers say they’re stunned by an unidentified object flashing strange signals from deep space.

The object, named ASKAP J1832-0911, was detected by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and NASA’S Chandra X-ray observatory — the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope.

“It is unlike anything we have seen before,” Andy Wang, an astronomer at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, declared in a statement published this week.

ASKAP J1832-0911 emits pulses of radio waves and X-rays for two minutes every 44 minutes, according to the experts, who documented their findings in Nature journal.

ASKAP J1832-0911 has been classified as a “long-period transient” or “LPT” — a cosmic body that emits radio pulses separated by a few minutes or a few hours.

Wang and his team theorize that the object could be a dead star, but they don’t know why it “switches on” and “switches off” at “long, regular and unusual intervals,” Space.com reports.

“ASKAP J1831-0911 could be a magnetar (the core of a dead star with powerful magnetic fields), or it could be a pair of stars in a binary system where one of the two is a highly magnetised white dwarf (a low-mass star at the end of its evolution),” Wang wrote.

“However, even those theories do not fully explain what we are observing,” he added. “This discovery could indicate a new type of physics or new models of stellar evolution.”

Wang and his team hope to detect similar another using radio waves and the Chandra X-ray observatory, saying a subsequent discovery will help them learn more about the nature of such LPTs

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Trump Wants To Delete State Medical Marijuana Protections From Budget While Continuing To Block Cannabis Sales Legalization In D.C.

President Donald Trump is again proposing to remove existing protections for states that have legalized medical marijuana, while maintaining a ban that’s prevented Washington, D.C. from enacting a system of regulated adult-use cannabis sales.

As part of his budget request for the 2026 fiscal year sent to Congress on Friday, Trump is seeking to delete a longstanding rider that’s barred the Justice Department from using its funds to interfere in the implementation of state-level medical marijuana laws.

This is Trump’s first budget request of his second term, but during his first term he similarly called for its deletion each year of his presidency.

President Joe Biden, on the other hand, consistently proposed to continue the medical cannabis provision intact in his budget requests—though President Barack Obama, like Trump, had sought to delete it.

Congress has the final say on appropriations legislation language, however, and has not followed through on any president’s request to delete the medical marijuana protection since it was first enacted into law in 2014—though lawmakers have also declined to expand the protections to cover state recreational marijuana programs.

After signing prior appropriations bills into law that included the medical cannabis protection in contravention of his request to delete it, Trump on three occasions issued statements that specifically said his administration “will treat this provision consistent with the President’s constitutional responsibility to faithfully execute the laws of the United States”— implying he was reserving his right to ignore the rider.

The latest action in Trump’s new budget request will likely come as a disappointment to advocates and stakeholders, who have held out hope that the president would take a new direction on marijuana policy reform—especially after he endorsed rescheduling, industry banking access and a Florida cannabis legalization ballot initiative that ultimately fell short.

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Latest FBI Revelations Show The Mueller Special Counsel Was A Cover-Up, And Much More

The FBI’s electronic case management system, Sentinel, allows agents to hide the existence of relevant investigative reports from other authorized users of the federal database. And during the Russia collusion hoax, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team used that functionality to keep potentially relevant documents hidden from other FBI agents investigating whether a Fusion GPS contractor lied to Congress. 

The significance of these two facts cannot be overstated: Now in question is whether the federal government complies with the constitutional mandate in criminal cases to provide defendants all material exculpatory and impeachment evidence as well as its discovery obligations in civil litigation; whether Special Counsel Durham’s office, the inspector general, and agents investigating the members of the Crossfire Hurricane team had access to all relevant information; whether the DOJ and FBI provided congressional oversight committees with requested (or subpoenaed) documents; and whether FOIA responses included all relevant documents to the press and public.

Last Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released a recently declassified FBI “Electronic Communication,” or EC, dating from September 2019, which the Iowa Republican maintains “Proves Fusion GPS Contractor Nellie Ohr Lied To Congress About Contributions To Crossfire Hurricane.” That 43-page document, drafted by a FBI Washington Field Office agent, detailed extensive evidence indicating Nellie Ohr lied multiple times during her congressional testimony concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign.

The catalogue of evidence against Nellie Ohr, who is married to Bruce Ohr — one of the key FBI Russia-collusion hoaxers — raises the question of why the DOJ never pursued criminal charges against the Fusion GPS contractor. The EC also suggests that Nellie Ohr’s open-source research may have made its way into the Steele dossier and the fraudulent Alfa Bank materials provided to the FBI.

Those details, however, pale in comparison to two explosive facts the EC revealed by way of background. First, the EC explained the FBI’s Sentinel case management system allows investigative material to be coded “Prohibited Access,” which renders the files not merely inaccessible to other agents — but invisible to them. And second, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team designated the Trump/Russia-collusion investigations “Prohibited Access” in Sentinel, meaning any agents running keyword search in Sentinel would wrongly believe there were no responsive documents.

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PETA thanks Trump for ending Navy experiments on cats and dogs, calls for broader ban

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has thanked the Trump administration for banning Navy-funded experiments on dogs and cats.

On Thursday, PETA wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan, thanking the administration for the new ban and requesting a broader ban on all animal testing in all military branches.

Phelan announced on Tuesday that all Department of the Navy testing on cats and dogs would be banned.

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