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USDA Says Crackdown On SNAP Fraud Prevented $5.8 Billion In Taxpayer Losses

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced nearly $6 billion in total savings tied to efforts to eliminate fraud in the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Rollins outlined the wins in a Sept. 15 post to X, saying that $5.8 billion in taxpayer losses have been prevented by the anti-fraud initiatives implemented during President Donald Trump’s second term.

This was done through the shutdown of nearly 1,840 illegal SNAP devices that processed Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and the disqualification of 5,335 fraudulent retailers.

“Those who defraud SNAP are stealing from taxpayers and taking resources away from Americans who genuinely need assistance,” Rollins said. “We have zero tolerance for this abuse, and we will continue pursuing bad actors and protecting the integrity of the program.”

There are several ways an ineligible person can be counted in SNAP, including illegal immigrants being certified in error or by fraud, and deceased household members continuing to receive benefits.

This comes just over three months after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a report in early June about their discovery that 185,986 deceased people in 29 states were receiving food stamps.

Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 directing federal agencies to obtain lawful and “unfettered access” to data from federally-funded programs such as SNAP to facilitate an audit of government spending.

The SNAP integrity team was created in May 2025 to review state SNAP data against federal databases to identify potential fraud.

The maximum monthly food assistance offered through SNAP is set for its annual increase in line with the cost-of-living adjustment in October.

The benefit ceiling for a family of four will reach $1,023 for most of the nation, which is an increase from the current maximum of $994. Total benefits vary based on family size and income. In May 2026, the average monthly benefit received by U.S. households was $344.51.

The overall cost of the monthly SNAP benefits have fallen in recent years, from $13.4 billion in October 2022 to $6.8 billion in May 2026, largely because pandemic emergency allotments largely ended in 2023 and fewer people on the program.

Separate state cost-sharing penalties for high payment-error rates, enacted by the Republican-led Congress in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, are scheduled to begin in October 2027. More than 40 states and territories recorded SNAP payment-error rates above 6 percent in fiscal year 2025, the level that triggers the penalty.

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Huh? House Democrat Says Trump’s Renovations and Smithsonian Plans are “Violence on the Buildings” – “This is an Act of Violence!”

Democratic Congressman Jonathan Jackson ridiculously said on Thursday that President Trump is committing “acts of violence” with his renovations of DC’s memorials and reform of the Smithsonian.

He likened the beautification of our nation’s capital and the correction of the Smithsonian’s dishonest portrayal of history to the war in Iran, strikes against narcoterrorists in the Western Hemisphere, and instances of ICE agents defending themselves against violent left-wingers.

Reps. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), Jonathan Jackson (D-IL), Kweisi Mfume (D-MD), and American Historical Association executive director Sarah Weicksel held a press conference on Thursday to announce new legislation, called the “Smithsonian Integrity Act.” The bill aims to stop the Trump Administration from removing left-wing political messaging and revisionist history from the National Museum of American History.

This comes as the Trump Administration moves forward with plans to install temporary signage outside of the museum, warning visitors of museum curators’ “personal viewpoints.”

“The informational signage [] will provide visitors with important context about the exhibits they are about to encounter and the personal viewpoints that the curators of the exhibits are seeking to advance,” Burgum wrote in a letter, notifying Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) of the change.

The White House previously released a 162-page report, exposing how the Smithsonian has rewritten and weaponized history “as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.” Key findings from the report include the National Museum of American History’s anti-White activism, illegal alien activism, and transgender activism sprinkled throughout the museum’s exhibits. 

During the press conference on Thursday, the lawmakers were asked whether they were worried that Trump might “take advantage” of Congress’s recess to implement further changes. Stansbury responded, “absolutely,” before putting her Trump Derangement Syndrome on full display.

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The Enemy the Alliance Needs

On the morning of August 6, near the coastal town of Furuvik, a Russian couple named Semyon Rusanov and Tatyana Milenina were declared a threat to the security of the Swedish state. They had lived in Spain for five years. They opposed the war in Ukraine. They had not set foot in Russia since 2022. They had a tent, fishing rods, and two tourist walkie-talkies, and they had camped within sight of the summer cottage used by the chief executive of an arms company. For this they were interrogated for seven hours, locked in a migration detention center, and ordered deported.

No espionage charge was filed. No charge of any kind was filed. Säpo, the Swedish security service, never took the case. The couple’s lawyer said they were never notified of any suspected crime. The evidence, entire, was that they spoke Russian, carried radios sold to hikers, and could not explain their choice of campsite to the satisfaction of a policeman. On that foundation the state moved against them.

An American reader might file this under European strangeness and move on. That would be a mistake. What happened at Furuvik is a small, clear demonstration of the machinery that Washington has spent three years installing across Europe – the machinery of the necessary enemy – and the wreckage at the center of the story lies at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, where it points not at Moscow, and not really at Stockholm, but at home.

The pipeline Washington promised to destroy

Begin with the pipeline, because everything else hangs from it.

On February 7, 2022 – seventeen days before Russian tanks crossed into Ukraine – President Joe Biden stood beside the German chancellor and made a promise about Nord Stream 2, the pipeline built to carry Russian gas to Germany. “If Russia invades,” Biden said, “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” A reporter asked how, given the project lay under German control. “I promise you,” the president answered, “we will be able to do it.”

Seven months later, someone did. On September 26, 2022, four explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines beneath the Baltic. In February 2023, Seymour Hersh – the reporter who exposed the My Lai massacre and the CIA’s domestic spying — published an account, sourced to a person with direct knowledge of the planning, of how the United States did it: Navy divers from the Diving and Salvage Center in Panama City, Florida, planting remotely triggered charges under cover of the NATO exercise BALTOPS 22, detonated three months later by a sonar buoy dropped from a Norwegian aircraft. Hersh reported that the operation was routed through Navy divers precisely because, unlike Special Operations Command, they are not required to report to Congress – that when the national-security bureaucracy debated the plan, CIA director William Burns came back and said, “Do it.” The purpose, Hersh’s source told him, was to lock Europe into the war at a moment when allies were wavering: destroy the pipeline, and you destroy the temptation to make peace and buy Russian gas again.

The White House and Norway denied it. Hersh’s account rests on a single anonymous source and has not been independently confirmed. I set it beside you not as proven fact but as the account Washington has never had to answer under oath – because, as we will see, the one country positioned to force that answer chose instead to look away. And whatever one makes of Hersh’s source, the hard facts around it are not in dispute: the president publicly vowed to end the pipeline, the pipeline was destroyed, and the United States was, as even Russia’s critics conceded, the principal beneficiary of its destruction.

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Washington State Democrat Candidate Has a Meltdown in Patrol Car After DUI Arrest

Democrat candidate Krista Perez — who who is running for a state House seat in Washington — was seen on police video having a meltdown in a patrol car after being arrested for a DUI.

In the body camera footage, Perez — who won the Democrat primary in Washington state’s 29th Legislative District, Position 1 — admitted to drinking wine, declined field sobriety tests, and begged to go home before she was seen praying and sobbing in the back of a police vehicle.

“Did you get into an accident here?” an officer asked Perez in the video, to which the Democrat candidate replied, “I did not.”

In the footage, the 40-year-old woman is seen standing outside her vehicle, where an airbag had deployed at the front wheel.

“What happened, then?” the officer inquired, to which Perez responded, “I don’t know. I’ve never been in an accident before.”

After being asked for her insurance, Perez told law enforcement, “I literally just changed my insurance just, like, within the last two weeks,” and was unable to tell the officer the name of the insurance company.

Perez then told police that she was driving from “a friend’s business” on Tacoma Avenue South when the car accident occurred.

“Did you have anything to drink tonight?” the officer asked, to which the Democrat candidate replied, “I just had some wine while I was there.”

After being asked how much wine she had, Perez responded, “I had a glass of wine. One glass of wine.”

The officer then asked how big the glass was, to which she answered, “I’m confused about what our questions are right now,” before adding, “I think you might need to contact the business.”

“On a scale from zero to ten, zero being sober, ten being unable to function, where would you rate yourself tonight?” the police officer inquired, to which Perez replied, “I would like to go home.”

After being asked to rate herself on the scale from zero to ten again, the Democrat candidate finally responded, saying, “Four.”

The officer then asked Perez to participate in field sobriety tests, informing her multiple times that she can decline the tests if she prefers.

“It’s totally voluntary,” he said. “You can say no if you’d like.”

Perez told the officer she wanted to “go home” first, and repeatedly stated that she was “confused.”

“You’re not going to go home first. I’m going to tell you that right now, okay? So, your options between the test, yes or no, that’s going to be determined tonight, right now, not when you go home. So, would you like to take these tests or no?” the officer asked.

After declining the roadside sobriety tests again, the officer instructed Perez to turn around and put her hands behind her back.

“Oh no, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. One second,” she reacted.

The officer then handcuffed Perez while she repeatedly stated, “I don’t know what any of this means.”

“It means you’re under arrest for DUI,” the officer replied.

The Democrat candidate then informed law enforcement that she doesn’t know what “DUI” means, before continuing to repeat, “I don’t know what any of this means.” Perez went on to ask God to help her in Spanish.

Later, inside the squad car, Perez told the officer, “I think what I assume tonight is that you did not experience domestic violence in your life.”

“What makes you think that?” the officer asked, to which Perez responded, “I choose gratitude in my life.”

The officer then asked, “Is there anything else you want to share?” to which the Democrat candidate bizarrely replied, “Anything that you are requesting to be shared right now would be under duress.”

The video footage goes on to show Perez crying in police car and repeatedly asking, “Can you please help me?”

Upon reaching the station, the sobbing Democrat candidate told authorities, “I don’t know to get out” of the vehicle.

The Tacoma Police Department said Perez struck a parked car and set off a chain reaction that damaged five vehicles shortly after midnight on August 11, according to The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red.

The Democrat candidate was booked into Pierce County Corrections on the morning of August 11 on a DUI charge.

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ZERO hurricanes formed by peak 2026 season, and climate alarmists hope you don’t hear about it

A former climate reporter said she deliberately avoided covering positive weather developments because doing so would have complicated the narrative that climate change posed an existential threat.

“When I was a climate reporter, I never covered positive climate stories because it would ‘muddy the narrative’ that climate change was an existential threat,” Lucy Biggers wrote Tuesday on X. “No one told me to behave this way. I chose to do this of my own volition.”

Biggers, who now works for The Free Press, pointed to the historically quiet 2026 Atlantic hurricane season as an example of the type of story she believes climate reporters may be reluctant to highlight.

“I think this is why we rarely see events like this year’s historically quiet eastern hurricane season covered widely by the news,” Biggers wrote. “Many reporters believe covering it will ‘give fodder to climate change deniers.'”

Just five tropical storms have formed, none reaching hurricane strength, The Weather Channel reported. The season also set a record Saturday for the latest start without a hurricane in the satellite era, which dates back to 1966, CBS News reported.

“[I]t was mostly soft self-censorship. I knew what the accepted beliefs of the climate movement were, and I wasn’t going to stick my neck out and challenge them. That would have been so much work and threatened my standing within the group,” Biggers, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“So I ignored anything that challenged the mainstream understanding of climate change anything positive about plastics, fossil fuels, or capitalism. I stayed away from those topics because I was protecting my own neck and wanted to fit in with the group,” Biggers said.

Biggers previously described herself as a former climate activist and said she spent years accepting the arguments of the climate movement without seriously questioning them while working at left-wing outlet NowThis News.

“I would say it is still common today. You can see it with the quiet east coast hurricane season we’re experiencing right now. Nobody is covering it in the same way they would if we were having a very active hurricane season on the East Coast,” Biggers told DCNF.

“If that were happening, we would never hear the end of it. But because the story doesn’t confirm a dangerous climate catastrophe, newsrooms are less inclined to cover it.”

Meteorologists have largely blamed the unusually quiet season on a powerful El Niño, a climate pattern marked by an unusual warming of the Pacific Ocean’s surface temperatures. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said El Niño increases vertical wind shear over the tropical Atlantic, making it harder for hurricanes to form and organize.

The Atlantic hurricane season is far from over, however, with the National Hurricane Center listing Nov. 30 as its official end point.

“I basically spent half my twenties, kind of just buying everything as it was sold to me. Never really investigating,” Biggers said during a May appearance on TRIGGERnometry.

The former climate reporter said she had become convinced climate change represented an existential threat despite lacking what she now describes as a deep understanding of climate science.

“That was how turned off my critical thinking was, because I was getting so much support from being part of this movement that I just pushed it,” Biggers said.

While Biggers argued the quiet season has received limited coverage, several major news outlets have reported on the absence of hurricanes. The Associated Press, CBS News, The Washington Post and The New York Times have all covered the unusual lull in recent days.

“Climate reporters now frequently cover studies that project a frightening future without looking at the empirical evidence we already have,” Biggers said.

“Thank you, President Trump!” the White House’s Rapid Response 47 account wrote on X Sunday in response to a post from meteorologist Chris Martz, describing the hurricane season as historic.

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EU’s Social Media Ban Could Bring ID Checks for Adults

As expected, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has announced that the EU Kids Act will propose that no child under 13 should be allowed on social media, while 13 and 14-year-olds should have limited accounts.

The announcement, just in time for the EU’s planned digital ID rollout, was made in von der Leyen’s State of the European Union address in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

According to von der Leyen, the Act would ensure that “no social media under the age of 13. No personal account under the age of 15.”

Children between the ages of 13 and 14 will be allowed a limited account, with a limited set of features, and with a time limit of one hour a day, and parents will have to set up and supervise these “mini accounts.”

Von der Leyen also said that the Act would reverse the burden of proof, so that instead of regulators having to prove that a service is unsafe, it will be up to the platforms to prove that their product is safe for minors.

The Commission President also took aim at Big Tech, saying, “I am aware that many perceive the power of big tech as overwhelming and impossible to roll back. I disagree.” She added, “Europe has the power to act. It is us who decide the rules, not Big Tech.”

The scope of the Act will cover social media, video sharing platforms, app stores, online games, as well as AI companions and chatbots, with a focus on “high-risk” services, although the definition of that category is not yet clear.

Other rules that have been reported as part of the Act are age checks for every new account, with existing users also subject to “proportionate” checks, taking into account the time they have been subscribed to a service. Verification will be done via an app, either the one developed by the Commission or a national equivalent. These apps will only return information about whether a user is over or under a certain age.

The draft also reportedly seeks to ban certain design features, such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, and push notifications, as well as artificial notifications and rewards. The text is said to state that “technology companies bear primary responsibility for making their products safe.”

Fines for non-compliance can reach up to 6% of a company’s global annual turnover, while a supervisory fee will be introduced to make sure the Commission can enforce the new rules.

The Commission’s app was presented by von der Leyen in April in Brussels, and at the time, she said it was “fully open source. Everyone can check the code.”

But security consultant Paul Moore took the Commission up on that and found that the app stores sensitive data on phones and leaves it unprotected. According to Moore, he was able to hack the app in under two minutes.

The Commission first responded to this by saying the app was ready and could always be improved. A week later, a spokesperson described the version presented as “a demo version.”

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Homeless Advocate Charged With Recruiting Teens To Make and Sell Drugs

Lisa Kinkade, the Brattleboro homeless advocate who was praised last year for helping create a downtown drop-in center for homeless people, has been arrested following a drug raid in which police say a large amount of crack cocaine and cash was seized.

Kincade, 46, was one of three people arrested Sept. 4 when Brattleboro police assisted the Vermont Drug Task Force in executing a search warrant at an apartment at 69 Elliott Street at about 9:15 AM, according to a Brattleboro Police Dept. statement. She pleaded innocent Tuesday to trafficking, manufacturing and sale of crack cocaine and fentanyl, and conspiracy to sell drugs.

In her arraignment Tuesday, Judge John Treadwell set bail at $ 50,000 for Kinkade, saying she allegedly recruited “young people from Connecticut to come to Vermont to manufacture and distribute regulated drugs in this community,” according to a Brattleboro Reformer report.

The other two people arrested were 18-year-olds from Connecticut: Darrius Tatum of Darien, and Xavier Burgos of Meriden. 

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Rep. Meeks puts hold on Trump’s reported $2.8B weapons sale to Israel

The ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., announced Wednesday that he was putting a hold on the Trump administration’s plan to sell 40,000 one-ton bombs to Israel for a reported price of $2.8 billion.

Meeks posted a statement to X that while he is firmly committed to Israel’s security and its ability to defend itself, he is concerned about the risk to civilian lives, citing Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

“I therefore will not clear this sale at this time. The decision does not diminish Congressional support for Israel’s legitimate defense needs; it reflects Congress’s responsibility to ensure that U.S.-funded weapons are used lawfully, responsibly, and with meaningful safeguards for human life,” said Meeks. 

His decision to go public with his opposition, which typically occurs behind the scenes in an attempt to find a compromise, according to The Hill, is based on frustration with both the Trump administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  

The weapons package, first reported by the Washington Post, includes 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s. It also includes 20,000 I2000 Penetrator warheads, the Post reported. 

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Arkansas Democrat Hallie Shoffner: ‘We’d Trade Five Americans’ for One ‘Undocumented Immigrant’

Hallie Shoffner, who is running to unseat Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), defended “undocumented” farm workers as exceptionally hardworking, after previously saying she grew up around “undocumented” farm workers, discussing Mexican H-2A employees on her family farm, defending farmers’ reliance on foreign-born labor, and leading a nonprofit that assisted “undocumented Hispanics.”

“Every farmer will tell you at one point, we did, or still do, employ undocumented immigrants, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that these folks are being rounded up because they’re hardworking people,” Shoffner said on Free Arkansas with host Andy McNeill. “They’re some of the best people we know, and honestly, we’d trade five Americans for just one of them because of how hard they work.”

“And why is it that there’s no pathway for them to work here legally when they’re good workers? We pay them well. They spend money here. They have family here,” Shoffner said.

“We’re acting like all Republicans like what’s happening with ICE, and Tom Cotton’s basically saying you, Andy, if you’re a Republican and you disagree with my position on ICE, or if you’re asking any kind of questions about it, well, you must be anti-American and anti-safety,” Shoffner said. “And I’m like, I have a seven-year-old boy. All I think about is safety.”

Laura Loomer highlighted the interview on X, writing, “The facts are clear: Farmer Hallie loves putting illegal aliens first, which is why she is UNFIT to serve in the U.S. Senate.”

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