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Supreme Court likely to rule for parental opt-out on LGBTQ books in schools

The Supreme Court on Tuesday was sympathetic to a group of Maryland parents who want to be able to opt their elementary-school-aged children out of instruction that includes LGBTQ+ themes. The parents argued that the local school board’s refusal to give them that choice violates their religious beliefs and therefore their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion. During nearly two-and-a-half hours of oral argument, a majority of the justices seemed to agree with them, with several justices questioning whether there would even be any harm to simply allowing the parents to excuse their children from the instruction. 

The parents in the case have children in the public schools in Montgomery County, which is in the Washington, D.C., suburbs and is one of the most religiously diverse counties in the United States. The parents include Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat, who are Muslim, Melissa and Chris Persak, who are Roman Catholic, and Svitlana and Jeff Roman, who are Ukrainian Orthodox and Roman Catholic. 

In 2022, the county’s school board approved books featuring LGBTQ+ characters for use in its language-arts curriculum. One book describes the story of a girl attending her uncle’s same-sex wedding, for example, while another book, Pride Puppy, tells the story of a puppy that gets lost during a Pride parade. 

The following year, the board announced that it would no longer allow parents to excuse their children from instruction using the LGBTQ-themed storybooks. That prompted the parents in this case to go to federal court, where they argued that the board’s refusal to allow them to opt their children out violated their rights under the First Amendment to freely exercise their religion because it stripped them of their ability to instruct their children on issues of gender and sexuality according to their respective faiths and to control how and when their children are exposed to these issues. 

The lower courts refused to temporarily require the school board to notify the parents when the storybooks would be used and give them a chance to opt their children out of instruction. A federal appeals court reasoned that on the “threadbare” facts before it, the parents had not demonstrated that exposing their children to the storybooks compelled the parents to violate their religion. 

Several justices had questions about what it means for children to be “exposed” to the storybooks. Justice Clarence Thomas asked Eric Baxter – who argued on behalf of the parents – whether the LGBTQ-themed storybooks were merely present in the classroom, or instead actively used as part of the curriculum. 

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Judge orders return of 2nd migrant deported to El Salvador

A federal judge in Maryland has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a 20-year-old Venezuelan man deported to El Salvador, whose removal violated a previous court settlement, according to an order issued on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, also ordered the government not to remove other individuals covered by the settlement.

The class action case from 2019 was filed on behalf of individuals who entered the U.S. as unaccompanied minors and later sought asylum.

The group sued the government to be able to have their asylum applications adjudicated while they remained in the United States. The parties settled in 2024.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs say the Trump administration, in breach of the settlement agreement, removed one of the class members — referred to using the pseudonym “Cristian” in court records — to El Salvador on March 15 when it deported three planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to the CECOT mega-prison there.

In an opinion filed Wednesday, Judge Gallagher referenced the case of wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and said that “like Judge [Paula] Xinis in the Abrego Garcia matter, this court will order Defendants to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement.”

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Navy Scraps Biden-Era ‘Climate Action’ Plan, Returns Focus To Warfighting

The U.S. Navy officially scrapped a Biden-era “climate action” plan for the force on Tuesday, signifying the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to refocus the military towards warfighting.

“Today, I’m focusing on the warfighters first, and I’m rescinding the Biden administration’s climate action program. Our focus needs to be on lethality and our warfighters,” Navy Secretary John Phelan announced in a video message.

Released in May 2022, the Climate Action 2030 program contained a series of actions and goals the Department of the Navy (DON) has taken or planned to undertake to tackle what Biden Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro characterized as the “urgency of the climate crisis.” In the document’s opening foreword, Del Toro claimed the Navy and Marine Corps “are in the crosshairs of the climate crisis,” and that “[c]limate change is one of the most destabilizing forces of our time, exacerbating other national security concerns and posing serious readiness challenges.”

The action plan identified two “performance goals,” one of which included the DON’s stated aim of reducing “greenhouse gas emissions and draw[ing] greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere to stabilize ecosystems, and achieve, as an enterprise, [President Biden’s] commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, as well as other targets.”

In order to achieve these objectives and comply with a 2021 climate-related executive order by Biden, the DON laid out a series of targets for the branch to work towards in the years ahead. This included commitments to “[a]cquiring 100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035, including 100 percent zero-emission light-duty vehicle acquisitions by 2027” and “[a]chieving a 50 percent reduction in emissions from buildings by 2032.”

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RFK Jr. Launches Long-Awaited Offensive Against Deadly COVID-19 mRNA Shots

As millions of Americans anxiously await action from the new HHS leadership against the deadly COVID-19 mRNA injections—injected into over 9 million children this year—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has finally gone publicly on the offensive.

Let’s go over each key point made by RFK Jr.:

The recommendation for children was always dubious. It was dubious because kids had almost no risk for COVID-19. Certain kids that had very profound morbidities may have a slight risk. Most kids don’t.

In the largest review to date on myocarditis following SARS-CoV-2 infection vs. COVID-19 vaccination, Mead et al found that vaccine-induced myocarditis is not only significantly more common but also more severe—particularly in children and young males. Our findings make clear that the risks of the shots overwhelmingly outweigh any theoretical benefit.

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4 Admissions Of Social Security Fraud In April Alone Show Waste And Abuse Are Real

When Elon Musk announced in February that there were 10 million Social Security numbers belonging to holders apparently aged 120 years and older, instead of acknowledging the great potential for fraudulent activity, the corporate media downplayed the concerns. They insisted that Social Security fraud is “not very common” and maligned the Trump administration’s efforts to purge the federal government of waste and abuse.

However, multiple instances of Social Security fraud confirmed in April alone are a reminder that the system has enabled abuse for years.

In late March, DOGE announced that, following a “major cleanup” of records, 9.9 million number holders listed with ages 120 years and older “have now been marked deceased.” (While people do live past 100, the oldest person who ever lived in modern times was Jeanne Louise Calment, of France, who died in 1997 at 122 years old.)

Corporate media and so-called experts have claimed that the listed ages of these centenarian number holders may be the result of “coding quirks” in the system and that efforts to mark these number holders as deceased could lead to more errors. But this does not change the fact that unused Social Security numbers marked as live are ripe for fraud.

What can you do with a spare Social Security number? You could register to vote again or sign up for social welfare, like housing, health insurance, cash assistance, and SNAP. Noncitizens can get a job, and of course, collect Social Security retirement or disability benefits.

Last month, a White House fact sheet, citing an inspector general report from 2024, noted how “The Social Security Administration made an estimated $72 billion in improper payments between 2015 and 2022.”

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U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst Sentenced to 7 Years for Leaking Top-Secret Military Documents to Communist China

25-year-old former Army intelligence analyst Korbein Schultz was sentenced to 84 months in federal prison for conspiring to hand over America’s most closely guarded military secrets to a hostile foreign power: Communist China.

The disgraced soldier from Wills Point, Texas, pleaded guilty in August 2024 to transmitting sensitive defense intelligence, unlawfully exporting classified material, and accepting bribes — all in the service of a foreign adversary.

“This defendant swore an oath to defend the United States — instead, he betrayed it for a payout and put America’s military and service members at risk,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi in a statement.

She continued, “The Justice Department remains vigilant against China’s efforts to target our military and will ensure that those who leak military secrets spend years behind bars.”

From May 2022 until his arrest in March 2024, Schultz conspired with an individual from Hong Kong, whom he believed to be affiliated with the Chinese government — referred to in court filings as Conspirator A.

That individual masqueraded as a geopolitical analyst on a freelance website but quickly turned the relationship into an espionage pipeline.

For just $42,000, Schultz sold out American troops, revealing tactical and technical data, training documents, and sensitive material relating to U.S. missile defense and aerial combat capabilities.

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The Media Have A New Conspiracy Theory About Trump’s Interior Decorating

Trump critics often engage in what Federalist contributor Inez Stepman calls the “Hitler also ate breakfast” fallacy: pointing out some tertiary or non-evil habit of Adolf Hitler’s like driving in a car or having an affinity for tariffs, and drawing a comparison to Trump, as if any mundane activity in which Hitler ever engaged is necessarily and permanently fascist-coded. In a 1,700-word thinkpiece published Wednesday, Washington Post opinion columnist Carolina Miranda used that blueprint to draw parallels between President Donald Trump and a new historical villain — the famously absolutist King Louis XIV of France — based on similarities in their interior decorating taste.

If you look at the maximalist gold accents with which Trump has appointed the Oval Office, “the sparkle conveys something more insidious about how Trump views himself,” Miranda writes. “Behold the new Sun King, a wannabe emperor who views his powers as absolute.”

Sure, Jan. Trump’s affinity for flashy, theatrical decor is only breaking news if you’ve been living under a rock since the last century. And he’s hardly the first successful American businessman to develop a taste for extravagant digs.

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European Leaders Reject US Proposal of Russian Sovereignty Over Crimea Despite Russia Controlling the Region for the Last 10 Years

More insanity from the globalist Western European elites.

According to news reports last week, the Trump Administration suggested it was prepared to recognize Russian control over Crimea. This is part of a broader peace agreement that the US has facilitated between Ukraine and Russia.

If elected, President Trump promised to bring peace to Ukraine, but he did not understand that illegitimate President Volodymyr Zelensky and the globalist Western warmongers would be his main obstacles to peace in the region.

Crimea is a peninsula off Ukraine in the Black Sea. In 2014, Russia took control of the region and its ports during the Obama presidency, over ten years ago now. For much of its history Russia has controlled Crimea. Crimea was passed from the Soviet Union to Ukraine in 1994, not that long ago.

According to RT.com and others, the Europeans have rejected this idea.

They did nothing about Crimea for over ten years but suddenly this is a peace deal game-stopper.

How do they think this will play out if they insist on Russia returning Crimea to Ukraine.

RT reported:

European leaders have rejected a US proposal to recognize Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea as part of a draft peace deal on the Ukraine conflict, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. European officials told the outlet that such a move could cause a rift within NATO and force Kiev’s backers to choose between sticking with Ukraine or siding with Washington.

According to the report, US President Donald Trump’s team has presented Ukraine with a take-it-or-leave-it deal that includes Washington formally recognizing Crimea as Russian territory. US Vice President J.D. Vance has also suggested freezing the conflict along the current lines of control.

A senior European diplomat told the FT that it would be “impossible” to accept the US proposal, while one EU official claimed that “Crimea and future NATO membership aspirations are red lines for us.”

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More Letitia Files: Is NY Attorney General Letitia James a Slumlord? – Tenants Complain of Peeling Paint, Apartments Used as Hotel Rooms, and Every Unit Reported Bedbug Infestations!

New York Attorney General Letitia James, champion of the poor and wretched, is now facing criticism for her conduct as a landlord.

Records from the New York City Department of Buildings and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) indicate a troubling pattern of neglect at her five-unit apartment building at 296 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn.

In the past 20 months alone, there have been 17 complaints against James with the New York City Department of Buildings.

These include unauthorized construction work without proper permits, the alteration of a load-bearing wall without permits, illegal use of apartments as hotel rooms, illegal conversion, a fence over the height limit, and a failure to notify authorities of scaffold work.

More alarming still, all four of Letitia James’s tenants are listed as having bedbug infestations and re-infestations.

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Back With A Vengeance: Nina Jankowicz Calls On Europeans To Oppose The US

Nina Jankowicz, the former head of Biden’s infamous Disinformation Governance Board, was “back with a vengeance.” 

After the outcry over the board led to its elimination, Jankowicz did what many of the displaced disinformation experts have done: she peddled her dubious skills to Europeans and others like a wandering rōnin without a master. 

Now, Jankowicz has appeared before one of the most anti-free speech bodies in the world — the European Union — to call upon those 27 countries to fight against the United States, which she called a world threat.

How the “Mary Poppins of disinformation” came to alight upon Europe is a familiar tale. 

The European Union has become the global hub for censorship efforts and, after she departed from the government, Jankowicz made a beeline for Europe.

I have been a long critic of Jankowicz, who became an instant Internet sensation due to a musical number in which she sang “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation” in a TikTok parody of the song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” 

After the Biden Administration reluctantly disbanded her board, she later moved to join a European group as a foreign agent to continue her work to block views that she considers disinformation.

The false portrayal of the United States as a lawless, autocratic nation no doubt thrilled the Europeans. 

In announcing her heading a private disinformation group called the American Sunlight Project, Jankowicz used the same hysteria to attract donors, insisting that “Disinformation knows no political party. Its ultimate victim is our democracy.”

Of course, Jankowicz herself has been accused of disinformation that served one particular party. 

She was previously criticized for allegedly spreading disinformation and advocating censorship.

The ultimate irony is that Jankowicz knows that she can count on many of us in the free speech community to support her right to spread such sensational and inflammatory information. 

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