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U.S. Launches New Strikes on Iran After Trump Says Ceasefire Is ‘Over’

U.S. forces launched a new round of strikes against Iranian military targets Wednesday after President Donald Trump declared the U.S.-brokered ceasefire with Tehran was “over,” escalating Washington’s military response to Iran’s attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

The operation marked the second consecutive day of U.S. strikes after Iran fired on three commercial vessels transiting the strategic waterway, prompting Washington to accuse Tehran of violating the memorandum of understanding reached last month and to resume military action.

U.S. officials said Wednesday’s operation was broader than Tuesday night’s strikes and targeted additional military infrastructure supporting Iran’s operations in and around the strait.

“At the direction of the Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command forces have started conducting additional strikes against Iran to further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz,” U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.

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Photo of bound Palestinian detainee corroborates Israeli torture reports, say rights groups

An Israeli soldier’s photo of a Palestinian man from Gaza stripped to his underwear, blindfolded and bound face-down to an iron rod corroborates extensive reporting on Israeli torture of Palestinians in detention and itself may constitute a war crime, rights groups have said.

The image was shared on a now-deleted personal social media account, with the Hebrew-language caption “good morning”. It was brought to wider public attention by a Palestinian writer and activist who goes by Tamer.

“Both abusive treatment of detainees and the public sharing of humiliating or degrading images of them can constitute war crimes,” said Oneg Ben Dror from the prisoner and detainees department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI).

The photo “confirms what thousands of testimonies from Palestinian detainees have exposed, and what we and other organisations have been reporting for nearly three years now,” she added. “Israeli detention facilities are torture camps for Palestinians.”

Israel’s military confirmed the authenticity of the photo. “The incident does not align with IDF values and regulations,” a spokesperson said, adding that an inquiry was under way.

Holding and photographing the man semi-naked also broke international law, said Sari Bashi, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. “There is no security justification for holding a detainee in his underwear,” she said. “Forced nudity followed by capturing and sharing sexualised images on social media is a form of sexual violence and also a war crime.”

After the photo was widely shared on social media at least two mothers claimed the bound man as their son, highlighting the painful limbo of Palestinian families searching for loved ones missing since their detention by Israeli forces, Bashi added.

“This is not the first time Israeli soldiers have published humiliating photos of Palestinian detainees while depriving families of information or access to them. It has become a grotesque and unlawful way for families to get information about their loved ones.”

Rana Abu Nasser is sure the photo shows her son Osama, who was seized with his one-year-old son in March, near the shifting “yellow line” that marks the boundary of Israeli military control in Gaza. “I know the details of his body,” she told Reuters. “He has swelling in his foot and scars on his leg – the same swelling on his left leg I saw in the picture.”

Joudeh al-Ghoul wept the first time she saw the photo, instantly sure it was her son Amin, missing since his arrest in November 2023, when he was trying to travel from southern Gaza to the north. “It’s him, his hair and chin. He is ​my son. A mother’s heart can recognise her son. ​I hugged the mobile phone and started crying,” she said. “He is my son, my soul, my life.”

The Israeli military declined to comment on whether the detainee had been identified or given medical support, and whether his family in Gaza had been notified.

For seven months at the start of the war the Israeli military refused to provide basic information about the status of people detained in Gaza, in effect implementing a policy of forced disappearance.

From May 2024 Israel provided an email address for enquires about Palestinians from Gaza, but that provided only a partial, limited improvement. Israeli authorities had denied holding hundreds of missing Palestinians whose arrest was confirmed by witness testimony, the rights group HaMoked said this year.

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Jasmine Crockett on Talarico Win in Primary: ‘It Was Racist, It Was a Racist Race’

Radical leftist Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) said race played a major role in her Democrat primary loss to Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico (D).

Crockett argued that racism, not politics, was the deciding factor in her Democrat primary loss to James Talarico.

“The reality is that there was a lot of races, not a lot, it was racist. It was a racist race. It is what it is, right? But we live in America as y’all are celebrating 250, okay? We know what this country is,” Crockett said.

Crockett rejected criticism that she should have spent more time campaigning alongside Talarico. Instead, she said her strategy was to help down-ballot candidates, pointing to five black men she endorsed in Texas runoff races who all advanced to the November election.

“The best thing that I can do for James Talarico isn’t me standing on a stage with him,” Crockett said. “It is the fact that I endorsed five candidates in the runoff who all happen to be black men in the state of Texas and every single one of them won.”

She pushed back on criticism that she should have campaigned more directly for Talarico, saying giving voters multiple candidates to support is a more effective strategy for boosting turnout.

“People keep trying to say, ‘Well, Jasmine has to go and hold his hand.’ No, I don’t,” she said. “If you can give people more than one thing to vote for, then you have a better chance of getting them out to the polls.”

Talarico defeated Crockett in Texas’s Democrat primary for the U.S. Senate in March, overcoming weeks of polling that had shown her with a sizable lead in the race to challenge Republican Sen. John Cornyn in November.

Crockett previously said she does not believe black voters have fully united behind Talarico’s Senate campaign and confirmed she will skip next week’s Texas Democrat Party convention.

She said she has not seen broad enthusiasm for Talarico or the rest of the party’s statewide candidates, adding that many voters remain unconvinced despite several months remaining before the November election.

“I’ve not heard a bunch of kumbaya,” Crockett said. “People don’t seem to be convinced at this point, but there’s a lot of time between now and November.”

Asked whether she plans to campaign for Talarico, Crockett explained that her focus is on down-ballot races rather than his Senate bid.

“I have no idea. I am more focused on down-ballot races in general,” she said.

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Stop Praising All Our ‘Wonderful’ Teachers

As a teacher for over two decades, I’m allowed to criticize people who regularly extol all the wonderful teachers in our country. In any cohort numbering over five million, there are obviously many excellent teachers, but as a whole, educators are one of the nation’s least admirable professional cohorts and contain numerous individuals who shouldn’t be near children at all.

Thomas Sowell has long noted that education majors represent the dregs of college and post-graduate applicants. One study found that only 7% of high school seniors with SAT scores in the top quintile chose education as a major, whereas more than half of those in the lowest quintile went into education. What’s true of students is also true about their instructors and the quality of classes taught by these “doctors” who rank at the bottom of the academic totem pole in terms of collegial respect. Little wonder that Jill Biden’s “doctorate” degree (Ed.D.) was in education. Her so-called dissertation was accurately described in a 2020 Wall Street Journal opinion column as emitting “so much noxious methane the EPA should regulate it.”

Given the paucity of significant content compared to disciplines like history or science, there is always the temptation, as Sowell again notes, to promote educational fads. Some years ago, for example, the look-say method of reading replaced a long-proven technique, phonics, doubtless to create some new-and-improved product. As if depriving generations of children the ability to read effectively weren’t bad enough, schools of education (along with their 10 to 1 leftist scholastic mentors) also employ curricula designed to indoctrinate kids in perverse ideologies that have proliferated for decades at universities where former terrorists like Distinguished Professor of Education Bill Ayers and Northwestern Law’s Bernadine Dohrn found cushy employment.

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Ukraine Drones Hit Blue Stream Pipeline Compressor — Targeting Russia’s Gas Lifeline To Turkey On Day One Of NATO Summit In Ankara

Ukraine struck the Krasnodarskaya compressor station in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai on the evening of July 7 — timed, whether by design or coincidence, to the opening day of the NATO summit hosted by Turkey in Ankara. The Krasnodarskaya station is a critical node in the Blue Stream pipeline, which carries Russian natural gas directly to Turkey under the Black Sea. Gazprom confirmed the attack in an official statement, saying deliveries were not disrupted. That claim should be treated as a floor, not a ceiling — Gazprom has institutional incentive to minimize the incident and a track record of doing so.

The strategic geometry is deliberately provocative. Ukraine is attacking infrastructure that supplies gas to Turkey — the very country hosting the NATO summit where Erdogan is simultaneously positioning himself as both NATO convener and back-channel broker with Russia. At the summit, Erdogan separately announced new arms supplies to Ukraine while thanking the US, Spain, Germany, and Italy for air defense assistance during the Iran conflict — a performance of omnidirectional relevance that only Erdogan could plausibly sustain.

The Kremlin’s response was predictable: calling the strike “terrorism against critical global energy infrastructure.” What is less predictable is Turkey’s actual long-term posture. Ankara depends on Russian gas via Blue Stream and Turkish Stream, is courting Ukraine with weapons, is hosting the NATO summit, and is negotiating quietly with Moscow. Ukraine’s targeting of the Blue Stream compressor — reportedly guided by Palantir’s Maven targeting system — puts Erdogan in a genuinely uncomfortable position: his NATO allies’ weapons are striking infrastructure that heats Turkish homes.

Gazprom said exports were unaffected. This is the second reported attack on Blue Stream infrastructure in recent weeks, suggesting Ukraine has identified the pipeline as a pressure point specifically because it hurts both Russian revenue and Turkish dependency simultaneously — a two-for-one leverage play. There has been no indication Kyiv offered Turkey any advance warning….

President Trump has intentionally courted Turkey for its refusal to get involved on the side of Muslim Iran in the conflict, going so far as returning access to the F-35. Whether Anakara will remain in Trump’s camp as Russian gas is slowed is another issue entirely.

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Ex-Girlfriend of Graham Platner Calls Out NYT’s Claim They ‘Could Not Corroborate’ Allegations: Victim Says They Ignored Her Evidence and Witnesses

Scandals surrounding Maine Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner continue to unfold.

On Monday, The Gateway Pundit reported that rumors are swirling that he will drop out of the race after he abruptly canceled multiple town hall events ahead of a new damaging hit piece.

Later Monday, Politico released the latest Platner sex scandal regarding a woman who said that he raped her.

Following the latest scandal, some of his prior backers, including Democrat Senator Ruben Gallego and Democrat Rep Ro Khanna, withdrew their endorsements.

One of his prior girlfriends, 40-year-old Lyndsey Fifield, a Virginia conservative who dated Platner between 2013 and 2015, called him “cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions, of our ‘weakness.’

On Tuesday, Fifield addressed questionable reporting by The New York Times in their coverage of Platner and their claim that they “could not corroborate” the allegations, at least where she was concerned.

Fifield describes, in detail, the multiple contacts she provided to the outlet that could corroborate her timeline, as well as specific incidents detailing disturbing behavior.  She provided friends, former roommates, and even other men she dated.

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Ketanji Brown Jackson Is Neither A Biologist Nor A Qualified Justice

Being a justice on the United States Supreme Court requires legal brilliance, intellectual rigor, strict discernment of and adherence to facts, and logical consistency. Clearly, not every justice on the current court meets these criteria.

This was demonstrated in the courts’ recent “trans” sports decision that now reasonably permits schools, under Title IX, to let biological sex be the determinant of who can and cannot compete on high school and college sports teams. In sum, this was a case about fundamental human reality and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s bold and incoherent dissent from it.

In their landmark 6-3 decision, the majority (Kavanaugh, Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett) describe the primary plaintiff — identified as “B.P.J.” in the case — as a biological male who “identifies as female.”

This boy is West Virginia’s Becky Pepper-Jackson, who consistently dominated girls in track and field events. Kristen Waggoner, President of Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that helped argue this case before the court, said Pepper-Jackson took wins from more than 470 girls over 1,400 competitions. He stole two regional and one state championship from deserving female athletes. In addition to beating girls in sports, Pepper-Jackson also threatened them with sexual assault in the locker room, Waggoner explained to a CNN host.

The majority thankfully never referred to this sexually abusive boy as “transgender” nor by female pronouns, but simply as B.P.J. They chose to not play the gender ideology language game. That was certainly not true for the minority justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson.

They confess “B.P.J. is also transgender” while ignoring the fact that no one is transgender. It is a made-up term with no objective scientific backing. Even the American Psychiatric Association (APA), who regularly carries water for trans ideology, confesses “transgender is a non-medical term” which merely refers to one’s subjective gender-atypical belief or physical presentation. The APA explains the term is used interchangeably with other meaningless ideological words such as “gender non-conforming, genderqueer, bigendered and agendered.”

Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson then write these nonsensical words: “Her sex was identified as male at birth, but she has known from the time that she was ‘very little’ that she is a girl.” 

This is the deceptive talk of gender ideology. These three justices reflexively side with and parrot the child’s obvious mental illness, all while sitting on America’s highest court.

This is bad enough already, but certainly not the worst of it.

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Federal Judge Rejects DOJ Attempt to Subpoena 2020 Fulton County Election Workers

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to subpoena 2020 Fulton County election workers.

Earlier this year the FBI raided the Fulton County election office.

The Justice Department also issued subpoenas for information on all 2020 election workers from Fulton County.

The records include those who were performing the following functions and duties:

  • Individuals assigned to review Mail-In Ballots
  • Individuals assigned to the Voter Review Panel/Board
  • Individuals assigned to Mobile Voting Locations
  • Individuals assigned to transfer results to or from media or transport ballots, ballot stock, or media
  • Individuals employed or contracted by the Fulton Board of Registrations and Elections
  • Individuals who worked or volunteered for the Risk Limiting Audit
  • Individuals who worked or volunteered for the Recount
  • Individuals who served as precinct managers and assistant managers

On Tuesday, US District Judge William Ray, a Trump appointee, quashed the subpoenas.

Judge Ray said the grand jury subpoena was unreasonable.

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Air Force Engineer Accused Of Cutting Down AI Cameras Becomes Unlikely Hero, Raises Thousands For Legal Defense

A U.S. Air Force engineer charged with allegedly destroying a series of AI-powered license plate surveillance cameras has become an unlikely cause célèbre among privacy advocates, drawing thousands of dollars in donations to help fund his legal defense, according to Yahoo News.

Jeffrey Sovern, a 41-year-old Air Force engineer and mechanic from Virginia, is accused of cutting down multiple Flock Safety license plate reader cameras. He now faces 13 counts of destruction of property, along with six counts each of petit larceny and possession of burglary tools.

The case comes as Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader network continues to spread rapidly across the country. Supporters say the cameras help police solve crimes, while critics argue they create a growing surveillance network that tracks the movements of ordinary Americans and raises serious privacy concerns.

Yahoo News writes that opposition to the systems has intensified in some communities, with vandals reportedly using everything from spray paint and garbage bags to chainsaws to disable or destroy the cameras.

Sovern has made no secret of his views. In a GoFundMe campaign created to cover his legal expenses, he framed the case as a fight over privacy rights.

“My name is Jeff and I appreciate my privacy. I appreciate everyone’s right to privacy, enshrined in the fourth amendment,” Sovern wrote.

He said the criminal case has taken a significant emotional toll on him and those close to him, adding that the encouragement he has received online prompted him to launch the fundraiser.

Originally seeking $8,500, the campaign has gained momentum as news of the case has spread. It has now brought in more than $15,000 from over 400 contributors, far surpassing its initial goal.

In a recent update following a preliminary hearing, Sovern thanked supporters for helping bring attention to the issue.

“Thank you to those that had the time to show support this week!” he wrote. “We have seen a huge uptick in awareness of the system and this case.”

He also urged supporters to continue advocating against what he called an expanding surveillance network, encouraging people to “reach out to the local governments and demand that these systems are taken down.”

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