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Pentagon Considers Tasking Musk’s SpaceX With Military ‘Missile Tracking’ Satellite Program: REPORT

Tech billionaire and DOGE chief Elon Musk is constantly under fire these days by the lunatic left, but on the real world, where relevant things are in motion, he continues to excel and thrive.

His SpaceX company is reported to be about to considerably expand its share of military business, as the Pentagon considers overhauling a program to deploy hundreds of missile-tracking satellites into low orbit.

Washington Post reported:

“Competitors have fallen so far behind SpaceX that many fear they won’t be able to catch up, leaving NASA and the Pentagon with few other options as it faces increased competition in space from China and other nations. Musk’s hard-charging company rakes in billions of dollars from the U.S. government, flying everything from cargo to astronauts to some of the Defense Department’s most sensitive satellites. The company also operates more than 7,000 Starlink internet satellites in orbit, more than any other entity.”

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We Didn’t Start the Trade War—We’ve Just Finally Joined It

When President Donald Trump slapped a fresh round of tariffs on European and Asian imports, the professional hand-wringers and legacy press clodpolls sprang into choreographed action.

Headlines and television anchors blared warnings of trade wars, economic isolation, and diplomatic fallout. The bureaucratic priesthood that worships at the altar of “free trade” without reciprocity—from Brussels to Brookings—launched into familiar homilies: tariffs are regressive, Trump is reckless, and globalism is gospel.

But let’s pause the hysteria momentarily and apply something vanishingly rare in today’s media-industrial complex: perspective.

The prevailing orthodoxy treats tariffs as anathema to prosperity—an outdated relic of 19th-century mercantilism. But this overlooks a simple truth: for trade to be free, it must also be fair. For decades, American policymakers—both Democrats and Republicans—have tolerated a grotesquely asymmetrical global trade regime that has hollowed out the American industrial base and made us dangerously dependent on foreign powers, friend and foe alike.

Trump’s critics are wrong. These tariffs aren’t a calamity. They’re a much-needed course correction

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Amer Rabee, American teen who moved from New Jersey to West Bank, fatally shot by IDF

An American teen who moved from New Jersey to the West Bank was shot and killed by Israeli troops who said they were targeting “terrorists” throwing rocks at cars.

Amer Mohammad Saada Rabee, a 14-year-old US citizen whose family moved from Saddle Brook when he was in elementary school, was shot along with two other teens in Turmus Ayya in the West Bank on Sunday, the Bergen Record reported.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said troops opened fire on “three terrorists who were throwing rocks at a highway with civilian vehicles.”

“The soldiers opened fire toward the terrorists who were endangering civilians, eliminating one terrorist and hitting two additional terrorists,” the statement said.  

Rabee was detained before he was declared dead, with relatives saying his body was returned to his parents with multiple bullet holes.

Mourners gathered Sunday at the Palestinian American Community Center in Clifton, where Rabee’s uncle, Saleh Rabee, is a board member.

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US First: Idaho Legalizes Firing Squads for Pedophiles

Courts in Idaho will be able to impose the death penalty on individuals convicted of aggravated lewd conduct with minors aged 12 or younger, with firing squad as the main method of execution.

Governor Brad Little signed into law a bill that will create a new criminal charge punishable by execution.

To seek the death penalty, prosecutors must show at least three of 17 specific aggravating factors. These include multiple incidents of abuse, the use of force, and the transmission of a sexually transmitted disease to the victim.

In cases that do not qualify for the death penalty but involve children up to the age of 16, mandatory prison sentences will apply.

Governor Little said the highest possible punishment should be reserved for those who sexually abuse children.

“Just like capital murder destroys lives, aggravated sexual abuse of a young child devastates victims and families for generations,” the Governor said.

State politicians have praised the legislation, saying existing laws were too weak.

According to State Representative Bruce Skaug, the new law “establishes a strong deterrent, making it clear Idaho will not tolerate these offenses.”

“Idaho currently has some of the most lenient statutes for child molestation and child rape in the nation.”

The new law will go into effect on 1 July.

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Trans Covenant School shooter referred to Columbine killers, herself as ‘gods,’ stated wish to ‘kill all the white kids’: report

Journalist Megyn Kelly revealed on Monday that she had obtained over 1,000 pages of writings left behind by Nashville Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale, with the never-before-published pages providing “clear insight into the depraved mind of a killer.”

On her morning show, Kelly read out portions of the writing, including a passage written in the one of the final pages before the attack that stated, “I have to kill so I can be remembered in the most horrific way possible that no one will ever forget,” with Hale signing off under the name Aiden, Hale’s preferred male name. 

Kelly said the pages, which her team reviewed over the weekend, “detail a deeply disturbed individual planning meticulously over years to carry out a mass shooting and then kill herself. The killer discusses her autism diagnosis, race, and her desire for ‘black love’ and acceptance, as well as her hatred of her own whiteness.”

Many pages had content that was “sexual in nature,” including “frustration with her virginity,” and also included information about Hale’s guns and training with firearms, as well as references to other school shootings.

Kelly said that Hale referred to the Columbine school shooters as “gods,” and the words “dark abyss” frequently pop up in the writings, either directly in the writings or in the margins, alongside “an image resembling a radioactive symbol, the logo created by the killer to represent her all-consuming depression and commitment to gaining notoriety via a mass shooting.”

In one entry dated April 12, 2022, titled “let kids choose their sex,” Hale wrote, “I only wore some nice girl clothes as a cover-up from the truth, which I denied myself all these years. And I hated all of it. It was miserable being raised a girl because I had no choice. There was lack of education, research, and medicine to help society or parents better understand transgender.”

The entry continued, “I didn’t know trans existed. I thought you could only be gay or bi and that’s the fate you had. But transgender is transcending way deeper to the core. There is still medicine to be approved by the FDA, and so little research has been done. If I had puberty blockers back then, I would have transitioned a long time ago, but I didn’t know you could possibly change your sex.”

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UK Tribunal Blocks Government’s Attempt to Keep Apple Surveillance Case Secret

With a necessary reality check, a UK tribunal has told the government that, no, it cannot hold a secret legal battle against Apple over encryption. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the body meant to oversee the country’s surveillance powers, has dismissed efforts by the Home Office to keep the entire case hidden from public view. And in doing so, it has delivered a quietly important win for press freedom and digital rights. Although, things are far from over.

The case revolves around Apple’s Advanced Data Protection system, or ADP. It’s a security feature that gives users the option to encrypt their iCloud data in a way that even Apple itself cannot access. Not through a backdoor, not with a master key, not at all. It’s the kind of robust end-to-end encryption that governments around the world have grown increasingly nervous about.

The UK, it turns out, is no exception.

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US outpost not given proper air defenses before deadly attack

For three years the United States has been giving Ukraine everything it needs by way of offensive and defensive weapons in its war with Russia. Critically, this has included air defense systems, much of it taken from our own national stockpiles.

Now it turns out that our own troops may have been denied access to anti-drone air defense systems and more sophisticated radar detection months before a lethal attack on a small American outpost in Jordan on Jan. 18, 2024. The drone assault, reportedly launched by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iranian-backed militia group, resulted in the deaths of three American Army soldiers.

According to the Washington Post, which obtained access to the massive Army internal investigation of the incident through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the small outpost was ill-prepared for the attack on a number of levels. But this is key:

The investigation’s findings appear to have some contradictions. For instance, investigators faulted Tower 22’s leaders for failing to “visualize risk” and not appreciating the likelihood of an attack.

Yet commanders above them also failed to envision the base’s vulnerability. Four months before the attack, Army Central, which oversees operations throughout the Middle East, denied a request for an air defense system capable of shooting down drones because, investigators found, only one such system was available and troops in the United States needed it to prepare for deployments. A request for a radar system that could better detect drones also was denied, the report said.

The only counter-drone defenses at Tower 22 were electronic warfare systems designed to disable the aircraft or disrupt their path to a target, according to the investigation and previous reporting by The Post.

A spokesperson for Army Central did not respond to repeated requests for additional information, including regarding who at Army Central denied Tower 22’s appeal for an air defense system.

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Art of the Deal: EU Offers Trump ‘Zero-for-Zero Tariffs’ on Industrial Goods with United States

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday that the bloc has offered a “zero-for-zero tariff” trade arrangement on industrial goods with the United States in a bid to avoid a full-on trade war.

While the EU chief continued to condemn the reciprocal tariff measures enacted by U.S. President Donald Trump to rectify the long-standing transatlantic trade imbalance, as pressure from the markets began to take shape, Von der Leyen and other top eurocrats expressed willingness to negotiate with the White House.

“We stand ready to negotiate with the US,” the EU president said. “We have offered zero-for-zero tariffs for industrial goods as we have successfully done with many other trading partners. Because Europe is always ready for a good deal. So we keep it on the table.”

However, the German politician did not address other significant areas of concern expressed by the Trump administration, such as restrictions on American food imports or, perhaps more significantly, on EU tariffs against U.S. made automobiles, which currently stand at around four times the rate European cars are taxed when sent to the United States.

Von der Leyen warned that Brussels is “prepared to respond through countermeasures and defend our interests if the trade dispute continues.” The EU chief said that Brussels will take a two-pronged approach towards the Trump tariffs, firstly by reducing internal barriers within the bloc — as opposed to reducing further barriers with the U.S. — and of “diversifying” Europe’s trading partners.

“This is why we are deepening our relations with our trading partners: You know the deals we have done with Mercosur, Mexico, Switzerland, and we are working with India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and many others. With that, we want to be very clear: Europe stands together for our businesses and with our businesses for all Europeans in the European Union and beyond,” she said.

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The Return of the Dire Wolf

Romulus and Remus are doing what puppies do: chasing, tussling, nipping, nuzzling. But there’s something very un-puppylike about the snowy white 6-month olds—their size, for starters. At their young age they already measure nearly 4 ft. long, tip the scales at 80 lb., and could grow to 6 ft. and 150 lb. Then there’s their behavior: the angelic exuberance puppies exhibit in the presence of humans—trotting up for hugs, belly rubs, kisses—is completely absent. They keep their distance, retreating if a person approaches. Even one of the handlers who raised them from birth can get only so close before Romulus and Remus flinch and retreat. This isn’t domestic canine behavior, this is wild lupine behavior: the pups are wolves. Not only that, they’re dire wolves—which means they have cause to be lonely.

The dire wolf once roamed an American range that extended as far south as Venezuela and as far north as Canada, but not a single one has been seen in over 10,000 years, when the species went extinct. Plenty of dire wolf remains have been discovered across the Americas, however, and that presented an opportunity for a company named Colossal Biosciences. 

Relying on deft genetic engineering and ancient, preserved DNA, Colossal scientists deciphered the dire wolf genome, rewrote the genetic code of the common gray wolf to match it, and, using domestic dogs as surrogate mothers, brought Romulus, Remus, and their sister, 2-month-old Khaleesi, into the world during three separate births last fall and this winter—effectively for the first time de-extincting a line of beasts whose live gene pool long ago vanished. TIME met the males (Khaleesi was not present due to her young age) at a fenced field in a U.S. wildlife facility on March 24, on the condition that their location remain a secret to protect the animals from prying eyes.

The dire wolf isn’t the only animal that Colossal, which was founded in 2021 and currently employs 130 scientists, wants to bring back. Also on their de-extinction wish list is the woolly mammoth, the dodo, and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. Already, in March, the company surprised the science community with the news that it had copied mammoth DNA to create a woolly mouse, a chimeric critter with the long, golden coat and the accelerated fat metabolism of the mammoth.

If all this seems to smack of a P.T. Barnum, the company has a reply. Colossal claims that the same techniques it uses to summon back species from the dead could prevent existing but endangered animals from slipping into extinction themselves. What they learn restoring the mammoth, they say, could help them engineer more robust elephants that can better survive the climatic ravages of a warming world. Bring back the thylacine and you might help preserve the related marsupial known as the quoll. Techniques learned restoring the dire wolf can similarly be used to support the endangered red wolf.

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North Dakota Senate Committee Rejects Bill To Expand Marijuana Decriminalization That Had Already Passed House

A North Dakota Senate committee has defeated a House-passed bill that sought to reduce the state penalty for low-level marijuana possession to a $150 civil fine.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday voted 5–2 to reject the bill, HB 1596, from Rep. Liz Conmy (D). While the proposal had support from county prosecutors and defense attorneys in the state, police and sheriffs departments were broadly opposed.

“The voters have spoken on this issue,” Stephanie Ingebretsen, who testified on behalf of the Chiefs of Police Association of North Dakota. “They’re not interested in legalization and would like it to stay a criminal offense.”

While North Dakota in 2019 enacted what advocacy groups refer to as a marijuana decriminalization law that removed the risk of jail time for possessing under a half-ounce of cannabis, possession nevertheless remains a criminal infraction and carries a fine of up to $1,000.

While voters have not weighed in on decriminalization itself, last year they rejected an adult-use legalization ballot initiative that would have created a commercial cannabis market. Voters also rejected an earlier legalization proposal at the ballot box in 2022.

The newly rejected bill, HB 1596, would have made simple possession of up to half an ounce of marijuana a civil citation. That change would remove the need for courtroom appearances, which proponents said would help decongest the state’s clogged court system and free up prosecutorial resources for more pressing concerns.

“To give you an idea of the magnitude of time, energy and resources extended,” sponsor Conmy told colleagues, “between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2024—four years in North Dakota—there were 8,676 marijuana charges, 7,365 cases opened, 17,000 hearings, 2,357 cases with a public defender appointed. And all of these cases were handled by our state’s attorneys.”

More than 90 percent of cases involved possession of less than half an ounce of marijuana, she said.

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