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Now We Know What Lindsey Graham’s Official Cause of Death Is

The mystery around Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) sudden death has a medical answer now, and it traces back to a condition that also killed his father.

The DC Medical Examiner’s Office has determined that Graham died of an aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. In plain terms, the senator suffered a tear in his aorta caused by hardening and narrowing of the arteries from underlying heart disease. Journalist Bill Melugin was among the first to report the finding.

Heart disease runs in the family. Graham’s father, Florence Graham, died of a heart attack at 68.

The medical examiner’s office noted that the case isn’t fully closed on paper. “The death certificate will be PENDING until all the toxicological and microscopic testing are finalized and at that point the death certificate will be updated to reflect the cause of death and appropriately classify the manner of death,” the office said.

Graham, 71, died on the evening of Saturday, July 11. His office confirmed the news early Sunday morning in a written statement. “On the evening of Saturday, July 11, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham passed away from a brief and sudden illness,” the statement said. “Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period.” NBC News reported that emergency services were called to Graham’s Washington, D.C., residence for what appeared to be a cardiac event.

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Democrats Can’t Kick the Trans Obsession

I watched the New York Pride Parade on livestream. The parade is a major event in NYC, attended by well over a million people. Today, 11 years after Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage, the movement that once celebrated equality alongside most Democrats looks very different. The near-complete embrace of trans rights as seen in the parade, especially as it affects children, is likely to harm the Democratic Party in coming elections. (FYI, I’ll use the word “gay” as shorthand here for the various constructions, the most complete of which is the unhandy LGBTQQIP2SAA+.)

One of the most noticeable changes in the Pride Parade was the replacement of the once-ubiquitous rainbow flag with the “trans flag,” adding pink, brown, white, and black. Trans people were present in large numbers, had their own floats, and were noticeably name-checked by most of the speakers and signs I saw. 

As in years before, Democratic politicians were also quite visible. But this year the senior pol, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), was booed. Some in the crowd turned their backs on him, and when the parade paused, they shouted out about how he did not support trans rights. Chuck yelled back he was the first major politician to ever attend a Pride Parade, back in the ’90s. Meanwhile, the all-in, modern trans-supporter Mayor Zohran Mamdani got some of the biggest applause of the day.

In Gallup polls from 1996 only about a third of Americans supported same-sex marriage. But by the mid-2010s, the figure had flipped and remained about two-thirds into the 2020s. This change culminated in the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. In 2024 the Republican Party even removed opposition to marriage equality from its platform. Importantly, the Court ruling followed—not preceded—the broader cultural shift. 

The emphasis that led to acceptance of gay rights was driven by several factors, key among which was the emphasis on marriage involving consenting adults, many of whom were already cohabitating in various statuses. Advocacy focused on the universal human rights already part of American law and society, such as the right to work, to own property jointly, and so on—nothing more than asking people to accept someone else’s private life. It did not include sexual “rights” for children.

Then something happened concurrent with the first election of Donald Trump. While it once was sufficient to support basic rights, the Pride Parade started to include overt anti-Trump messages. Signs started to read “Trans rights are human rights,” and the new flag was debuted. Far from “celebrating victory, defending the gains, and staying vigilant while winding down as a movement that had achieved its core objectives,” many gay groups did the opposite. They radicalized. 

Democrats increasingly viewed gay activism as an important component of their electoral coalition. The letter Q and the term “queer” came to symbolize the idea that one’s sexuality was a political act. In the 2016 presidential election, gay voters embraced Hillary Clinton, promoting irrational fears as bizarre as Trump endorsing imprisoning gays in concentration camps. This voting pattern reflected a broader social shift, where identity-based politics became increasingly central to how one voted. The Democrats took full advantage of this, fanning the flames further in the next election cycle with careful allotments by gender identity (as well as race, disability, etc.) throughout the Biden administration, especially in the military.

The move from basic rights to gender identity made things much more complex as Trump took office a second time. 

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Seriously? McConnell Releases Statement, Says No Stroke or Heart Attack – But Instead, He Had a Fall That Has Kept Him Hospitalized for a Month!?

Former Senate Majority Leader and Trump-hater Mitch McConnell, 84, has not appeared in the Senate for three weeks after being hospitalized in mid June for an undisclosed medical condition.

He has not appeared in public since he landed in the hospital on June 14th when he was found unconscious.

His office has declined to reveal details of the illness or provide a timetable for his return.

Leaked emergency dispatch audio from a June 14 call indicated McConnell was reportedly found unconscious at his Kentucky home and may have suffered a heart attack.

Meanwhile, McConnell’s wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, traveled to Beijing following the hospitalization, where she met with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng.

Her office said McConnell’s condition “did not warrant an immediate return to the U.S.”

There has been much speculation about his well-being since he landed in the hospital nearly a month ago.

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Quote of the day by Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy: ‘You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it’ — an early declaration foreshadowing the modern era

Sun Microsystems was a huge force in the technology landscape, with its co-founder and CEO Scott McNealy an outspoken and brash maverick in the early Silicon Valley ecosystem. The company had just launched a new system, and McNealy was quick to push back on any critique centering around the implications for user data.

During an informal Q&A session with reporters, McNealy slapped down concerns that the newly launched Jini platform could pose a risk to user privacy.

The system, as it was engineered, was a revelation – but ultimately failed to catch on due to some pretty significant hardware hurdles. Designed to allow devices to communicate with and share resources, the Jini network architecture allowed unadulterated communication without configuration, driver installations, or human intervention.

It was an early and ambitious effort to establish a vision for smart homes and offices. The trouble was that it required devices to continuously upload data and lease space on networks, with the system creating a massive digital footprint.

Erosion of privacy

McNealy’s comments, unsurprisingly, drew immediate and sharp criticism from privacy advocates and campaigners. Lori Fena, then chairman of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the comments were “completely irresponsible”, for example.

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More Than 200 FBI Agents Swarm Fulton County, Georgia, to Investigate 2020 Election Fraud

In what an FBI memo calls a “priority investigation,” 260 FBI agents are “surging” to Fulton County, Ga., to look into possible fraud regarding the 2020 election.  

The Department of Justice (DOJ) served a subpoena in April for the names and personal contact information of everyone in Fulton County who worked on the 2020 election. The request was slapped down by a judge last week. That didn’t stop the the influx of FBI agents from descending on Georgia from offices around the nation to look into more than 700 pieces of evidence, including documents, ballots and tabulation machines, all of which were confiscated in a sweep last January.

The evidence has been stored in Georgia since it was collected.

The agents have a deadline of July 17 to report their findings. 

Fulton County officials believe the new wave of agents is “one of the clearest signs yet of the scope and intensity of the investigation.”

The Operation Mockingbird media mudpuppies at the Associated Press (AP) are still sticking with the narrative that the 2020 election was on the up-and-up:

President Donald Trump and his allies have made false claims that widespread election fraud cost him the 2020 election. Georgia’s votes in the 2020 presidential race were counted three times, including once by hand, and each count affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s win.

But what the AP refuses to mention is this: How many of those votes were fraudulent? How many were counted repeatedly? How many of the voters are no longer living in Georgia, and how many are no longer living?

A complaint was submitted to the state of Georgia on July 8, 2022, suggesting the following:

  1. Irregularities in the Recount that lead to the addition of 16,382 votes to the “Batches Loaded Report” (BLR) of December 3, 2020, to the“certified result,” on December 4, which included 3,125 duplicate ballots and 17,852 votes of unknown provenance – that is, for which no physical ballot was in evidence. 
  2. Additional tabulator results from unreported and unidentifiable tabulators that accounted for 20,713 votes in the November 3rd vote totals.

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Humanoid Robots Perform Successful Gallbladder Surgery in Major Medical Breakthrough

Humanoid robots have successfully performed gallbladder removal surgeries in live pigs for the first time, marking a significant milestone in the development of robotic surgery and paving the way for future human trials.

The procedures were carried out by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, with the findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The first operation involved a humanoid robot working alongside a surgeon. In the second, two humanoid robots completed the procedure together without direct human assistance.

Researchers say the successful surgeries represent an important proof of concept as the technology moves toward clinical testing in humans.

“As a proof of concept, it absolutely worked,” Dr. Ryan Broderick, interim director of the Center for the Future of Surgery at UC San Diego, told ABC News.

Unlike conventional robotic surgical platforms, the humanoid robots feature a head and two arms.

This allows them to work in operating rooms without the bulky equipment typically required for robot-assisted procedures.

“The space constraints didn’t exist like in traditional robotic surgery,” Broderick said.

“It was a human-type bedside assistant, so it just fit into the space that we’re traditionally used to being in for laparoscopic surgery.”

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Doll-Heads Apparently Fooling Tesla FSD. Is Facial-Recognition Update Next?

Chinese e-commerce platforms are selling miniature heads that, according to Fred Lambert at the EV blog Electrek, are being used to “trick Tesla’s cabin camera into thinking a driver is paying attention.”

Priced at $20 to $50 and marketed as dashboard decorations or “travel companions,” these miniature heads are mounted near the rearview mirror to mimic a human face while Autopilot or Full Self-Driving is engaged.

via Instagram user “decentmiss_” … 

While FSD is engaged, Tesla’s cabin camera monitors driver attentiveness, including whether the driver repeatedly looks away from the road, and issues warnings when attention appears to lapse. Tesla requires increased supervision when FSD is in “Mad Max” or “Hurry” mode.

Videos of the miniature heads recently went viral on social media, suggesting that some users in China are employing them to trick Tesla’s driver-attention safeguards.

Here is Lambert’s first take:

Let me be direct: anyone mounting a fake head to defeat their Tesla’s driver monitoring system is putting their life and the lives of everyone around them at risk. And the sellers profiting from these devices are enabling potentially fatal behavior for $30 a pop.

Over the years, drivers have used various defeat devices, such as counterweights attached to the steering wheel to trick the torque sensor into believing someone was holding it. Tesla countered that workaround with the cabin camera, but now must address the issue of miniature heads.

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Butler, PA: Two Years Without FBI Investigation on Alleged Shooter

July 13, 2026, marks the two-year anniversary of the attempted assassination of then candidate Donald Trump at Butler, PA and, after numerous official investigations and no transparency by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the public is none the wiser about who the shooter was.

The U.S. Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Office of the Inspector General of the DHS, the Pennsylvania State Police/Butler County officials including the coroner, the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees, the House of Representatives Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump and the lead investigative body, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), all investigated what happened in Butler, Pa on July 13th.

The problem with all those august institution’s conclusions is that none can, or will, provide basic information about the identity of the alleged shooter, making it extraordinarily difficult to conclude who did what, where and when. The FBI, as the lead investigative body of the alleged shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, has been the least cooperative or transparent.

The FBI began its decent into transparency hell during FBI Director, Christopher Wray’s, tenure when the Congressional Task Force Chairman, PA Representative, Mike Kelly, wrote “the FBI stonewalled” the investigation, refusing to share crucial files that was the result of either “deliberate” obstruction or pure “incompetence.”  Without the often-requested transparency from the Biden FBI, all the above investigations were completed, but the lack of transparency from the FBI on the Butler shooting continued into the Trump Administration with Kash Patel.

Remember it was FBI Director Kash Patel who said “I pledge full transparency with Congress. Hundreds of lawmakers’ questions to the FBI have gone unanswered. That will not happen if I am confirmed, and all appropriate requests for information will be responded to expeditiously and fully.”  Patel also said, “The American people deserve an FBI that is transparent, accountable, and committed to justice…” Apparently Patel’s promises don’t include any information dealing with the Butler shooting investigation.

Judicial Watch, a conservative investigative group, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in July of 2025, requesting comprehensive investigative files relating to the alleged shooter, Crooks. Judicial Watch was successful in its FOIA request, and the FBI has been supplying the organization with heavily redacted documents for a few months. With an admitted 75 thousand documents on the case, at the rate of current release most people alive today won’t be alive by the time the FBI completes the document dump to Judicial Watch. Worse though is that the few documents being released are so heavily redacted that little information is gained from their release. So, what information has been withheld and what is needed to provide the truth to the American people?

While there are too many questions that need to be answered in this limited space, there are a few that stand out, like, for instance, what physical evidence (DNA, dental or blood-based test) were conducted to identify the alleged shooter? Currently, no information has been provided by any of the released investigations about how the recovered body, lying on the AGR Building roof, was identified and by whom. Oddly, enough, none of the official investigations mention that the alleged shooter’s body lay on the AGR Building roof all night, until 6a.m. the morning after the shooting. How does a thorough investigation miss such an important piece of information, especially when it comes to chain of custody issues?

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New York Times Countersues Trump DOJ After EEOC Accuses Newspaper of Discriminating Against White Male Employee

The New York Times has filed a countersuit against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) after the agency accused the newspaper of discriminating against a white male employee in a promotion decision.

The EEOC sued the Times in May, alleging the newspaper used Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) hiring practices that favored women and minority candidates in violation of federal civil rights law.

The agency is seeking to block the company from continuing these policies and is also seeking damages on the employee’s behalf.

According to the EEOC’s complaint, veteran editor Bryant Rousseau was denied a promotion to deputy real estate editor in favor of a multiracial woman who lacked his experience covering real estate.

The agency also alleges that none of the four finalists for the position were white men.

In a countersuit filed Friday in federal court in New York, the Times accused the EEOC of targeting the newspaper in retaliation for its reporting on the agency.

“The Commission markedly deviated from its ordinary practices in almost every respect to file the flimsiest of lawsuits against The Times, a frequent target of the administration, on the heels of investigative reporting that brought to light scathing bipartisan criticism of the EEOC, its leadership, and its priorities from both inside and outside the Commission,” the complaint states.

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New Mexico says US Justice Dept hindering probe of former Epstein ranch

New Mexico’s top law enforcement official on Thursday accused the U.S. Department of Justice of hindering the state’s investigation into ​Jeffrey Epstein by withholding unredacted files on the late sex ‌offender.

The Democratic-run state re-opened an investigation in February into activities at Epstein’s former ranch south of state capital Santa Fe, where he is accused of abusing women and ​girls for nearly three decades.

Nearly five months into the investigation, New ​Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez has yet to announce any ⁠results.

Political pressure to release U.S. Department of Justice files on Epstein has dogged ​President Donald Trump during his second term. He has suggested the country move on ​from investigating the late financier’s crimes.

In a June 30 letter, opens new tab to Acting U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche, Torrez said the Justice Department had failed to respond to a state request ​in February for unredacted files containing names of Epstein survivors, witnesses, co-conspirators, ​and other individuals essential to the New Mexico probe.

In a statement on Thursday, Torrez said ‌the ⁠delay, which has now lasted 130 days, was “unreasonable under any rule of reason.”

In response, a U.S. Justice Department spokesperson said the agency responded to the New Mexico request in June.

“The DOJ reiterates that it welcomes New ​Mexico undertaking additional ​investigation of the ⁠Zorro Ranch and stands ready to provide necessary assistance with New Mexico’s investigation,” the spokesperson said, adding that ​the agency was ready to investigate and possibly prosecute ​any federal ⁠crimes the New Mexico investigation uncovered.

In March, Torrez said investigators faced significant obstacles in the Zorro Ranch probe. He cited the years that had passed ⁠since ​Epstein’s alleged crimes, possible deterioration or disappearance ​of evidence at the ranch which was sold in 2023, and possible jurisdictional issues surrounding any ​potential prosecutions.

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