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U.S. Votes Against UN Resolution Fully Blaming Russia for Ukraine War

The United States voted Tuesday against a three-page United Nations resolution that placed the blame for the ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict solely on Russia. The resolution came on the third anniversary of the start of the Ukraine War, and passed the UN General Assembly with a vote of 93 in favor and 18 against, with 65 countries abstaining.

Israel also voted against the resolution placing the blame solely on Russia. The Israeli foreign ministry clarified that its position is intended to back the U.S. efforts to end the war, telling the Time of Israel, “Israel believes it is important to support the American effort aimed at bringing about progress in efforts to end the war and resolve the conflict peacefully.”

Notable absentations from the resolution include India, China, and all of the other BRICS members except Egypt and Indonesia, which voted for the resolution. All EU member-states except Hungary also voted for the resolution. 

In contrast to the resolution adopted by the General Assembly fully condemning Russia, the UN Security Council adopted a U.S. resolution calling for an end to the conflict and mourning the loss of life without assigning blame. This American resolution was backed by 10 of the 15 members of the Security Council, with the other five abstaining. Russia backed the American resolution after failing to amend it.

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Arizona Lawmakers to Vote on Proposal to Pay Cops $2,500 for Each Illegal Alien They Help ICE Deport

Arizona lawmakers will be voting on legislation to pay police officers a $2,500 bounty for each illegal alien they help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deport.

The legislation states that the bounties will be paid by taxing international money transfers.

Under the proposal, each international money transfer under $500 will be taxed $25, and those over $500 will be taxed $25 plus five percent of the additional amount.

Opponents of the legislation have argued that it will lead to racial profiling and distract police from handling their local duties.

Democrat Arizona Senator Lauren Kuby called the bill “racist” and compared it to the “wild west.”

“But it’s Wild West with a twist, it’s a racist bill,” Kuby said.

“This is a critical mission that Arizona voters overwhelmingly support, and we want to reward the efforts of our hardworking officers,” the bill’s Republican sponsor Senator Jake Hoffman said in a statement obtained by Reuters.

The report adds, “Missouri and Mississippi recently considered bills to pay civilian bounty hunters $1,000 for each illegal immigrant they caught. The legislation was shot down in Mississippi and looks set to fail in Missouri, with state Republicans reluctant to pay for immigration enforcement.”

The bill passed through committee last week and will now go to the state’s House and Senate for votes.

Arizona’s Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs has said she will veto the bill if it passes.

To override the veto, there would need to be a two-thirds majority vote in each chamber.

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It’ll Be A Lot Easier Said Than Done For Germany To “Achieve Independence” From The US

The US might go along with this though to accelerate the decline of Germany’s “peaceful” hegemony over the bloc in favor of a “multipolar EU” led by a combination of Poland, France, Italy, and others.

Germany’s likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz declared on Sunday after the snap elections’ results started streaming in that he envisages helping his country “achieve independence” from the US. This is a dramatic statement that few could have foreseen any German leader saying just several months ago but that just goes to show how fundamentally Trump 2.0 is revolutionizing International Relations. Here’s what he told a televised roundtable about his foreign policy plans:

“The interventions (meddling) from Washington were no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow. We are under such massive pressure from two sides that my top priority is to create unity in Europe.

My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.

I would never have believed that I would have to say something like that on television. But at the very least, after Donald Trump’s statements last week, it is clear that the Americans – at least this part of the Americans in this administration – are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

That’ll be a lot easier said than done for several reasons. To begin with, Germany hosts around 50,000 US troops at five Army garrisons and two Air Force bases. The US also displaced China as Germany’s top trade partner last year. Moreover, the US became Germany’s largest LNG partner last year too, which covered around 9% of its total gas usage last December. These three factors make it difficult for Germany to “achieve independence” from the US but the US might also go along with this for its own purposes.

Many of its troops in Germany can be redeployed to Asia for containing China and/or to Poland as part of that country’s power play to replace Germany as the US’ top ally in Europe. While casual observers might interpret these outcomes as victories for the military dimension of Merz’s policy, they’d come at a huge economic cost to the local communities that are employed by these US bases and receive their troops’ business. This observation segues into the US’ trade leverage over Germany.

While some think that Trump’s threatened tariffs can create strategic openings for China, at present, the EU is actually working with the US to prevent Chinese “overcapacities” in steel and other products from flooding the bloc as they desperately search for new markets amidst Trump’s new tariffs. In other words, Trump’s tariffs have thus far created a domino effect where China tries to dump newly tariffed products onto the EU, which in turn considers tariffing these same products. This works to the US’ advantage.

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Draining the Swamp: Pres. Trump Formally Instructs All Federal Agencies to Prepare for Large-Scale Bureaucracy Cuts by March 13

The bloated, inefficient, and corrupt federal bureaucracy is finally facing a long-overdue reckoning.

President Donald Trump has ordered all federal agencies to prepare for significant reductions in workforce and structural reorganization.

According to a newly released memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), agencies must submit their initial plans for large-scale reductions in force (RIFs) by March 13, 2025.

This directive is part of Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Workforce Optimization Initiative, an executive order signed on February 11, 2025, which aims to eliminate waste, bloat, and insularity in Washington’s deep state.

“The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt. At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public. Instead, tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hardworking American citizens,” according to the memo signed by OMB Director Russell T. Vought and Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell.

“This is the mandate of the American people,” the memo added, pointing to Trump’s landslide victory on November 5, 2024, as proof that voters are fed up with Washington’s entrenched elite.

“President Trump required that “Agency Heads shall promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law.” President Trump also directed that, no later than March 13, 2025, agencies develop Agency Reorganization Plans,” the memo states.

The administration’s goal is clear: gut unnecessary bureaucratic functions, fire underperforming government employees, and end taxpayer-funded handouts to radical special interests.

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Pentagon Is Removing DEI Material from ‘All Official Online Content’

The Pentagon is removing diversity, equity, and inclusion materials from “all official online content.”

Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell sent the directive to the entire department on Wednesday.

The memo, titled “Digital Content Refresh,” was obtained by Breitbart News and read as follows:

By March 5, 2025, Components must take all practicable steps, consistent with records management requirements, to remove al DoD news and feature articles, photos, and videos that promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). All articles, photos, and videos removed from DoD websites and social media platforms must be archived and retained in accordance with applicable records management policies.

DEl content includes but is not limited to information that promotes programs, concepts, or materials about critical race theory, gender ideology, and preferential treatment or quotas based upon sex, race or ethnicity, or other DEI-related matters with respect ot promotion and selection reform, advisory boards, councils, and working groups.

Content requiring removal also includes that which is counter to merit-based or color-blind policies (e.g., articles that focus on immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or sex) or promotes cultural awareness months as outlined in Secretary Hegseth’s January 31, 2025, Memorandum, “Identity Months Dead at DoD.”

Breitbart reports, “It said explicitly that the guidance does not apply to content required by law to be publicly available or related to normal installation or component operations and activities, including but not limited to, customer-focused content,” which includes base conditions, activies and services; current and historical leadership biographies; DoD Education Activity school activities, operations and notifications; and Morale, Welfare, and Recreation and Commissary operations and activities.

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Secession: Why Redrawing US State Borders Makes Politicians So Mad

Over the past five years, 33 counties in Illinois have voted to secede from the state, presumably to either form a new state or join another state. In most of these counties, the voters were given the option to vote yes or no on  a ballot question that looked generally like this:

“Shall the board of (the county) correspond with the boards of other counties of Illinois, outside of Cook County, about the possibility of separating from Cook County to form a new state and to seek admission to the Union as such, subject to the approval of the people?”

Many of the voters and policymakers supporting the separation note that they consider themselves to be economically, culturally, and historically separated from Chicago and the counties surrounding it. Most of the state’s 13 million residents—more than nine million people—live within the greater Chicago metro area, but that potentially leaves one or two million people—a “state” the size of Montana or Nebraska—who are interested in breaking free of Chicago metro politics.

The fact that the secession efforts keep coming up again and again suggest some political staying power, as does a new development in Indiana: last week, the Indiana House of Representatives passed new legislation creating a Indiana-Illinois Boundary Adjustment Commission. The purpose is to facilitate the secession of separatist Illinois counties and their subsequent annexation into Indiana. This greatly simplifies the matter, politically. Were Indiana to actually annex Illinois’s separatist counties upon separation,  the change would not even raise the problem of admitting a new US state.

Essentially, were Illinois and Indiana to redraw their border, the matter of Illinois’s secessionist counties would be of minor national impact. For virtually everyone in the United States, life would go on as it had before.

Yet, the Illinois ruling class, centered in Chicago, is dead set against the idea. Illinois’s Governor JB Pritzker called the secession effort a “stunt” and declared that it is “not going to happen.” The Illinois attorney general has declared the effort illegal. Critics have adopted the usual posture of those in power when faced with secession efforts like these: a mixture of authoritarianism and patronizing contempt.

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Turkey Warns That Netanyahu Will Resume Gaza War Once All Captives Released

The first phase of the Hamas-Israel ceasefire is coming to a close, with Hamas Thursday night expected to handover the bodies of four more deceased Israelis. This time there won’t be a handover ceremony, after outraged Israeli officials threatened it could collapse the deal and all progress made.

Negotiations for the second phase don’t really appear to have gotten of the ground as yet. The first phase took effect Jan.19 – and has resulted in the release of 25 living hostages by Hamas, as well as the bodies of four more.

The deal called for the exchange of some 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners held by Israel. Over 60 Israeli hostages still believed to be held in Israel, but some half are suspected to be dead at this point.

Conditions in the Gaza Strip continue to deteriorate amid winter conditions. “Sila Abdul Qader is the seventh child confirmed to have died from the cold in Gaza in just 24 hours,” Al Jazeera reports Thursday.

Meanwhile, Turkey is warning that once Israel gets all its citizens back, Prime Minister Netanyahu will simply resume the war, also as the White House has been vocalizing plans for a total displacement of the Palestinian civilian population there:

In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says he fears Israel will resume the war on Gaza after all the captives are released.

“As it is known, an ethnic cleansing war was witnessed by the whole world; almost 60,000 civilian Palestinians were killed, most of them were women and children. This must never reoccur,” Fidan said.

“However, it is feared that once all Israeli captives are released, Netanyahu will resume the war. There are deep concerns in this respect and they give rise to constant threats within the region,” he said.

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Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who leaped onto JFK’s car after the president was shot, dead at 93

Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who leaped onto the back of President John F. Kennedy’s limousine after the president was shot, then was forced to retire early because he remained haunted by memories of the assassination, has died. He was 93.

Hill died Friday at his home in Belvedere, California, according to his publisher, Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. A cause of death was not given.

Although few may recognize his name, the footage of Hill, captured on Abraham Zapruder’s chilling home movie of the assassination, provided some of the most indelible images of Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

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Biden-Appointed Judge Blocking Trump’s ‘Spending Freeze’ Always Sides With The Left

After losing at the ballot box, the left has returned to its familiar strategy of slowing President Donald Trump’s agenda through the courts. Lucky for them, former President Joe Biden appointed reliable lefty U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan in 2023 to the Washington, D.C. court.   

AliKhan has sided against the American people throughout her legal career, often in cases involving faith. Did you want to go to church during Covid? AliKhan actively worked against the freedom of religious assembly.

Now, AliKhan is overseeing a court challenge to the temporary spending freeze requested by the Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The OMB requested spending pause in a Jan 27 memo, saying OMB must do an analysis of all federal financial assistance programs to identify spending that may be affected by Trump’s executive orders. It was looking for spending related to foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the Green New Deal.

The National Council of Nonprofits went to court the next day, Jan. 28, challenging the 90-day pause, saying the pause “could deprive people and communities of their life-saving services,” court papers show.

“This order is a potential five-alarm fire for nonprofit organizations and the people and communities they serve,” said a statement from National Council of Nonprofits President and CEO Diane Yentel. “The impact of even a short pause in funding could be devastating and cost lives. This order could decimate thousands of organizations and leave neighbors without the services they need.”

AliKhan immediately granted a temporary restraining order Jan. 28, blocking the spending pause. The next day, Jan. 29, OMB rescinded the memo and later told the court the case was moot because the pause was no longer in effect. Money is flowing to nonprofits.

The pause was to look at spending before sending out payments. The spending cuts are still happening. This case only addresses the pause. Ending the pause should have been the end of the case, but it continued.

On Tuesday, AliKhan issued a preliminary injunction blocking the pause.

“Plaintiffs painted a stark picture of nationwide panic in the wake of the funding freeze. Nonprofits and organizations across the country were left adrift as they scrambled to make sense of the memorandum and its effects,” AliKhan wrote in her dramatic decision. “Entire funding portals were taken offline with no rhyme or reason, generating significant confusion and fear. Many organizations had to resort to desperate measures just to stay operational. The pause placed critical programs for children, the elderly, and everyone in between in serious jeopardy. Because the public’s interest in not having trillions of dollars arbitrarily frozen cannot be overstated, Plaintiffs have more than met their burden here.”

The decision from AliKhan was predictable as he often sides outside of common sense and in alignment with the political views she favors.

During AliKhan’s 2023 confirmation hearing, numerous religious groups signed a joint letter to Congress in opposition to her nomination, detailing her activism. She was approved in a tie-breaking vote by former Vice President Kamala Harris.

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It Didn’t Take Long for Free Speech to Prevail in Mississippi

Last week, we brought you the story of a city council in Mississippi that was so thin-skinned that it couldn’t handle a critical editorial in the local paper. The City of Clarksdale took the Clarksdale Press Register to court over an op-ed in which the editors questioned why the city lobbied the state government for a “sin tax” without notifying the citizens or local media.

“The editorial highlighted how the mayor has touted his ‘open’ and ‘transparent’ governance, yet he and the city council didn’t notify the press about its intentions despite promising to ‘give appropriate notice thereof to the media,’” I wrote last week. “The editors admitted that they support the tax, yet they questioned why the city left everyone in the dark about the lobbying efforts.”

In the court filing, the city clerk admitted that she forgot to notify the media of the city’s efforts, which turned out to be a violation of state law. Nevertheless, Judge Crystal Wise Martin issued an order demanding that the paper take the editorial off its website — without a hearing that would give the paper a chance to tell its side of the story.

“For over a hundred years, the Press Register has served the people of Clarksdale by speaking the truth and printing the facts,” said Wyatt Emmerich, president of Emmerich Newspapers, the Press Register’s publisher. “We didn’t earn the community’s trust by backing down to politicians, and we didn’t plan on starting now.”

The order set off a First Amendment firestorm, and the paper enlisted the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) to help defend itself against this unconstitutional onslaught. By the end of last week, FIRE had agreed to help the Press Register work to lift the judge’s order.

“The implications of this case go beyond one Mississippi town censoring its paper of record,” said FIRE attorney David Rubin. “If the government can get a court order silencing mere questions about its decisions, the First Amendment rights of all Americans are in jeopardy.”

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