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Leaked Phone Call: Karen Bass Defends Trip to Ghana, Drops Cryptic Warning Before LA Wildfires

O’Keefe Media Group obtained leaked audio of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass defending her trip to Ghana just three days before the wildfires erupted in Los Angeles in early January.

LA’s Democrat Mayor Karen Bass slashed Fire Department funding by $17.6 million a few months before the fires erupted last month.

January’s blaze was the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history and the city was not prepared to contain the fire because of Democrats like Karen Bass.

Karen Bass was tweeting from Africa as her city burned down.

The LA Mayor was actually in Africa attending the presidential inauguration in Ghana as hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles residents evacuated and watched their homes burn down.

Fire hydrants ran dry due to Democrat incompetence but Karen Bass saved the day by tweeting from Africa.

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Former CNBC Analyst To Admit Conning Investors Out Of Nearly $3 Million

Former CNBC financial analyst James Arthur McDonald faces decades behind bars after defrauding investors out of at least $2.7 million, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Feb. 19.

McDonald, 53, a former resident of Arcadia, Calif., agreed to plead guilty to one count of securities fraud, a felony that carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

“This defendant was entrusted by his clients to care for their money and he violated that trust by using it to enrich himself,” said acting U.S. Attorney Joseph McNally.

In June 2024, federal officers arrested McDonald in Washington state, where he fled in 2021 to avoid appearing before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

At his Washington hideout, officers found a fake Washington, D.C., driver’s license bearing McDonald’s photograph and the name “Brian Thomas,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.

McDonald was the CEO and chief investment officer of two companies headquartered in Los Angeles—Hercules Investments LLC and Index Strategy Advisors Inc. He also often appeared on the CNBC financial news network.

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Google to be hit with EU charges of breaching Big Tech rules, sources say

Alphabet (GOOGL.O) unit Google is set to be charged with breaching EU rules aimed at checking the power of Big Tech after proposed changes to its search results failed to address the EU antitrust regulator’s concerns and those of its rivals, three people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The move by the European Commission comes amid tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump who has sided with U.S. tech giants lobbying against EU regulations and criticising fines as a form of tariff. That has in turn triggered concerns that the EU watchdog may ease up on Big Tech.

The European Commission has been investigating Google for potential breaches of the Digital Markets Act since March last year.

One probe focuses on whether Google favours its vertical search engines such as Google Shopping, Google Flights and Google Hotels over rivals, and whether it discriminates against third-party services on Google search results.

The imminent charges concerned this issue, the people said.

The EU competition watchdog declined to comment. Google referred to a December blog post by its director, EMEA competition, Oliver Bethell, who said the company is working to find a balanced solution with the Commission.

Bethell said more changes in Google’s search result format to appease rivals could result in the removal of certain helpful features.

The U.S. tech giant has in recent months announced a series of changes to search result formats in a bid to address conflicting demands from price-comparison sites, hotels, airlines and small retailers. The majority of them have dismissed the proposals as not DMA-compliant.

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Bizarre: Trans Activist Says “Why Not?” to Combining Paralympics and Olympics

Trans activist Blossom C. Brown joined Piers Morgan to push the bizarre idea of a gender-neutral Olympics.

But her bizarre take did not stop there.

Fellow guest Riley Gaines, who has been a champion of protecting women’s sports, asked a question so outlandish she probably thought Blossom would finally admit how ridiculous her premise is.

Should the Paralympics and the Olympics also then be combined if we are going to ignore physical advantages?

Her answer, while bizarre, should not come as a surprise to anyone who has watched efforts to have women canceled from many areas of society, including sports.

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Arctic Defense: The Growing Geopolitical Battle For The North

The Distant Early Warning Line (DEW Line) runs north of the Arctic Circle from Alaska in the west to Baffin Island in the east, then continues across Greenland.

It was built by the United States, with the cooperation of Canada, at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s as a defence against the Soviet Union.

Most of the self-sufficient bases on this line had a paved runway, with equipment and personnel necessary to keep the runway cleared. The bases had to be operational for the dozens of fighter planes that were kept at the ready by U.S. Strategic Air Command, in case Soviet jets came over the North Pole.

Most of those sites fell into disuse, and the DEW Line became the North Warning System. Not much has happened since then. 

Although the federal government has promised to address the deterioration of our defences, nothing of substance has been done by Ottawa to deal more effectively with the defence of our vast North. Similarly, although the government has promised to modernize its NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) commitments, it has been largely ignored.

The Trump administration has made it clear that it finds Canada’s defence readiness to be unacceptable. The complaint is legitimate.

The fact is that the world is very different from what it looked like in the 1950s and 60s. At that time, the Soviet Union was the major threat to the West, while communist China was desperately poor and weak. Under Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” and later his “Cultural Revolution,” millions starved. China looked then more like North Korea than the economic and military behemoth it has become today. We certainly didn’t fear it as a threat.

Now, both communist China, and an increasingly aggressive Russia are formidable foes. They are also very interested in the North. Ominously, they have recently partnered with each other in a “friendship without limits” which raises the possibility that they might collaborate (or be collaborating right now) on joint plans for the military and commercial exploitation of the North.

The fact that shipping on a large scale through the Northwest Passage might be a possibility in the not-so-distant future is one of the reasons why. The passage can cut shipping distances drastically, so huge amounts of money and fuel can be saved. Future passage from Asia to Europe via the Northeast Passage (also called the Northern Sea Route) and Northwest Passage would be incredibly valuable—strategically, militarily and commercially—for both Russia and China.

Russia is far ahead of Canada on northern strategy and development. It has at least 40 ships capable of breaking through ice, including eight nuclear-powered icebreakers. Canada has no icebreakers that are nuclear powered. Recent promises to build two are years away from fruition. The Americans are acutely aware of Russia’s northern superiority.

Northern security goes some way to explaining Donald Trump’s very public offer to buy Greenland. 

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DOE Launches Investigation into Maine Just Hours After Governor Sparred with Trump at White House Over Men in Women’s Sports

The Department of Education launched an investigation into Maine’s compliance with Title IX laws just hours after the governor sparred with President Donald Trump over men playing in women’s sports.

Democrat Maine Governor Janet Mills clashed with the president at a meeting of the National Governors Association (NGA) on Friday.

The fight was over Trump’s landmark executive order signed on February 5, which ensured that biological men could not compete in women’s sports. States that allow it will be subject to losing federal funding from the Department of Education.

Mills released a statement on Friday vowing not to follow the order and asserting, “The State of Maine will not be intimidated by the President’s threats.”

“If the president attempts to unilaterally deprive Maine school children of the benefit of federal funding, my administration and the attorney general will take all appropriate and necessary legal action to restore that funding and the academic opportunity it provides,” Mills added.

Trump called the governor out for her remarks during the meeting.

“Is the governor of Maine here?” Trump asked.

After confirming she was present, Trump asked Mills if she intended to defy his executive order.

“I am complying with state and federal laws,” Mills replied.

“Well, we are the federal law,” Trump replied. “You better do it. “You better do it because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t.”

“By the way…your (state’s) population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports. So you better comply because otherwise, you’re not getting any federal funding,” he added.

Mills, attempting to act tough, responded that she will see him in court.

“Good. That should be a real easy (case) one,” he stated. “And enjoy your life after governor because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

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Conflicts of Interest in Climate Science: A Systemic Blind Spot

The field of climate science has long been presented as an objective, data-driven discipline, immune to the biases and financial conflicts that plague other scientific domains. However, a recent preprint study by Jessica Weinkle et al, Conflicts of Interest, Funding Support, and Author Affiliation in Peer-Reviewed Research on the Relationship between Climate Change and Geophysical Characteristics of Hurricanes, challenges this assumption, shedding light on an alarming lack of conflict of interest (COI) disclosures in climate research, particularly in studies linking hurricanes to climate change​. She also has an excellent write up of the study on her Substack, Conflicted.

The study’s findings reveal a disturbing trend: not a single one of the 331 authors analyzed disclosed any financial or non-financial conflicts of interest​. Moreover, the research found that funding from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was a significant predictor of studies reporting a positive association between climate change and hurricane behavior​.

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US Flies B-52 Bombers Over Middle East In Show Of Force Amid Regional Tensions

The U.S. Air Force sent two B-52 bombers on a high-profile “force projection” overflight across the Middle East on Feb. 17, in a bid to send a clear warning to adversaries and reinforce deterrence against escalating threats.

The bombers, which launched from RAF Fairford in the UK, flew over the airspace of nine Middle Eastern nations, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a Feb. 18 statement. The mission included aerial refueling and live munitions drops, with U.S. F-15s and fighter escorts from four partner nations providing security.

“Bomber Task Force missions demonstrate U.S. power projection capability, commitment to regional security, and ability to respond to any state or non-state actor seeking to broaden or escalate conflict in the CENTCOM region,” Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, CENTCOM commander, said in a statement.

While CENTCOM declined to specify which countries participated in the mission, the deployment follows recent U.S.-led airstrikes against terrorist targets in Syria and Iraq, a carrier withdrawal from the region after a collision with a merchant ship, and heightened Iranian military activity.

Two major airstrikes were carried out in recent days by CENTCOM and regional partners, aimed at degrading terrorist networks.

U.S. forces launched a precision airstrike in northwest Syria on Feb. 15, killing a top financial and logistics official for Hurras al-Din (HaD), an al-Qaeda affiliate. Iraqi Security Forces, enabled by CENTCOM, struck an ISIS cell near Rawa, Iraq on Feb. 12, killing five ISIS operatives and destroying weapons, suicide vests, and explosives.

“We will continue to relentlessly pursue terrorists in order to defend our homeland, and U.S., allied, and partner personnel in the region,” Kurilla said in a statement.

The B-52 bomber mission also coincides with a temporary U.S. naval void in the region after the USS Harry S. Truman sustained damage in a collision with a commercial bulk carrier near Egypt’s northern coast, prompting its departure.

This marks the third time since the Israel–Hamas war began in 2023 that the United States has lacked a carrier presence in the Middle East, leaving regional waters open to increased Iranian military activity.

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Mayor Johnston’s Lawless Defiance to Cost Denver Taxpayers $2M

Mayor Mike Johnston is no stranger to controversial headlines. He’s also well known for defying US immigration law and prioritizing resources for illegal residents.

Remember the “Newcomer Playbook“? How about the time his peer in Aurora accused him of “human dumping“? Back before inauguration day, he was tacitly calling for insurrection. The reality is, Denver has been focused on settlement rather than law enforcement. When Biden was in office, they bragged about it.

A sustainable response to newcomers… right?

Johnston was called to D.C. last month to answer for his subversion of the law. First he resisted, then he said he was open to it, and now he has secured a top Biden lawyer at a reported rate of $1,000 per hour. From Denverite:

“Denver to pay $1,000 hourly for top Biden lawyer as Republicans investigate ‘sanctuary’ cities. The city of Denver is hiring outside lawyers as it prepares for a Congressional Republican inquiry about the city’s immigration policies. A contract passed by Denver City Council allows the city to pay up to $2 million over a one-year period to Covington & Burling, a Washington-based law firm. The city is to be represented by Dana Remus, who previously was the White House counsel for President Joe Biden.”

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“Journalist” Susan Glasser Tries to Play Race Card Against President Trump But Forgets One Key Fact

The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser tried to play the race card over President Donald Trump’s firing of Air Force General CQ Brown Jr. as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Gateway Pundit reported on Brown’s ouster on Friday.

In a post on X, Glasser floated the idea, via a quote without attribution, that claimed Brown was fired because he is Black.

Glasser conveniently failed to acknowledge that Brown was nominated by him for Chief of Staff of the Air Force during his first term.

Users on X were quick to point out Glasser’s embarrassing omission.

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