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Freedom Convoy blacklist circulated to thousands of financial firms, records show

A federal blacklist containing personal information about Freedom Convoy supporters was circulated to potentially thousands of financial firms, according to new records uncovered by Blacklock’s Reporter.

Blacklock’s reports that regulators in Ontario distributed the information to between 1,000 and 2,000 brokerages and other firms, with no restrictions placed on further distribution.

The blacklist originated with the RCMP and included names, birth dates, telephone numbers and other personal information. Earlier parliamentary records showed it was distributed by unencrypted email to as many as 50 financial institutions, along with industry organizations and securities regulators.

The list was created after the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act in February 2022. Authorities froze $7.8 million held in 437 bank and credit union accounts and cryptocurrency wallets associated with Freedom Convoy supporters.

The Federal Court of Appeal ruled in January that the government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act was unlawful.

Finance officials have also acknowledged the names on the blacklist were not verified.

“There was no verification,” then-assistant deputy finance minister Isabelle Jacques testified in 2023. “We didn’t do any follow-up.”

The revelations contrast with comments from then-finance minister Chrystia Freeland, who said in 2022 the RCMP had provided financial institutions with information on protest leaders, organizers and people whose trucks participated in blockades.

Blacklock’s previously reported parliamentary records showing the blacklist also went to Canadian operations of foreign financial institutions, including Bank of China, State Bank of India, BNP Paribas, Citibank, Habib Bank, ICICI Bank, Mizuho Financial Group and Wells Fargo.

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California Special Ed Teacher Sparks Police Investigation for Disturbing ‘Black Militia’ Video: “Shoot Some Guns” and “Rob Some White People”

Disturbing videos posted on Instagram by a special education teacher in California have prompted a police investigation.

Kenisha Daily, a special ed teacher at Madera Unified School District in Fresno, posted videos holding a gun where she suggested it was time for Black people to create a “Black mafia,” “shoot some guns,” and “rob some white people.”

On Saturday night, the videos were quickly reported to Madera Unified by concerned followers.

KMPH reports that authorities conducted a home visit, which resulted in a temporary restraining order and an ongoing investigation.

“MUSD and the Madera Police Department completed a safety review to enhance security at Lincoln Elementary.”

Per ABC30:

In one clip, Kenisha Daily of Fresno says she’s “starting a black militia,” and will “rob some white people.”

Other videos on Daily’s Instagram, captured by concerned citizens, show her with a handgun, and then what appears to be a long gun.

The videos were quickly met with strong online backlash, and a multi-agency investigation.

Fresno and Madera police and the Madera Unified School District all told Action News they’re aware of the videos and looking into them.

In the meantime, the Lincoln Elementary School special education teacher was placed on leave, and under a temporary restraining order.

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With debt near $40 trillion, GOP bills would tie debt hikes to spending cuts

As the U.S. nears a mid-2027 debt-limit deadline with debt approaching $40 trillion, two Republican bills would bar Congress from raising the ceiling without matching any increased spending with spending cuts elsewhere.

The Dollar-for-Dollar Deficit Reduction Act, introduced separately by U.S. Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming and Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., would require any increase or suspension of the debt limit to be matched by equal or greater spending cuts over the current year and the following 10 years. It would be enforced through a congressional point of order. The National Taxpayers Union supports the measure.

“Congress cannot keep raising the credit limit on the American people without cutting up the credit card,” Steube said in announcing the bill. “If Congress wants to raise the credit limit, Congress must cut spending by the same amount.”

The national debt stands at $39.9 trillion, according to the Treasury Department, closing in on the $41.1 trillion ceiling that Congress raised by $5 trillion in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a tax-and-spending law.

Fitch Ratings projected that the government will hit that ceiling around mid-2027, with several months more before it exhausts the extraordinary measures that stave off default.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, which tracks the deadline, is trending toward the earlier end of that window. Shai Akabas, the group’s vice president of economic policy, told The Center Square that weaker-than-expected tariff revenue and higher deficits are pulling the date forward, leaving “another six to nine months” of extraordinary measures once the ceiling is hit “before the government could no longer pay all of its bills in full and on time.”

The bills would bar accounting methods that let past deficit deals count savings that never materialized. Net interest savings could not count toward the required cuts, and lawmakers could not shift spending outside the 10-year window to meet the target. The Congressional Budget Office would have to score any debt-limit bill and post the estimate publicly for 24 hours before a vote. Waiving the point of order would take 60 Senate votes.

All three major credit-rating agencies have downgraded U.S. debt – Standard & Poor’s in 2011, Fitch in 2023 and Moody’s in 2025 – each pointing to the nation’s rising debt and Washington’s failure to address it. S&P and Fitch specifically cited debt-ceiling standoffs. S&P warned more than a decade ago that “the statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips.”

Neither bill has drawn a Democratic cosponsor. The mechanism draws its force from the debt ceiling itself: because the point of order applies only to debt-limit legislation, the pressure to accept the required cuts builds against the deadline for avoiding a default. House Budget Committee Democrats did not respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.

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‘Reckless’ 18,000 reduction in firefighters during worst year for wildfires

New EU data revealing a huge reduction in the number of firefighters during the worst year on record for wildfires highlights the need to end reckless cuts to our public services. 
 
Figures published today by Eurostat show that Europe had 372,400 professional firefighters in 2025 – down from 390,600 firefighters in 2024. See notes for national figures.

The reduction coincided with the most destructive year for wildfires on record, with more than a million hectares burned across the length and breadth of the EU. 

Austerity 

In response to a campaign by trade unions, the European Commission told member states in March to ensure their fire services are adequately staffed to deal with rising climate threats.

But some of the significant staff reductions came in countries which the Commission itself put under an ‘Excessive Deficit Procedure’ in 2024. For example, Poland lost 9,000 firefighters and France lost 4,100.  

That is why the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is calling for a revision of the EU’s economic governance rules to ensure all member states can invest in vital public services and their staff. 

ETUC General Secretary Esther Lynch said: 

“You could not design a more reckless policy if you tried: sending Europe’s fire services into its most dangerous wildfire season ever with 18,000 fewer firefighters. 

“This is austerity setting fire to common sense and putting lives, livelihoods and homes at risk. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly just how dangerous and self-defeating the EU’s economic rules are. 

“Failing to properly staff our fire services, which carry out crucial prevention work as well as tackling blazes when they occur, is a false economy at a time when the economic cost of wildfires is running into the billions.

“Europe is massively increasing spending on defence but letting our guard down against the most imminent and serious risk to people’s safety. We need a consistent approach to all of the challenges we are facing and that requires investment in our public services and their workforce.”


Jan Willem Goudriaan, General Secretary of the European Public Service Union, said: 

“The public services emergency is repeatedly showing us its dangers, yet the Commission is fiddling while Rome burns. 

“Wildfire seasons are becoming longer and more severe, while the number of firefighters is declining. 

“The Commission’s focus on deregulation and competitiveness does nothing to address people’s concerns nor does it strengthen preparedness. 

“We need to end austerity, focus on climate change and just transition – invest in firefighting and emergency services, hire more staff and protect the workers who protect us.”

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German Parties Converge To Change Law that Makes It a Crime To Insult Politicians

To call German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ‘Pinocchio’ hardly classifies as a crime.

Germany has become a repressive society where the politician overlords are shielded from online insults by an absurd law.

But now, parties from all political stripes have come to a rare consensus: the law criminalizing citizens for offending politicians needs to change.

This comes after outrage broke over investigations of people who mocked failing Chancellor Friedrich Merz and called him names like ‘Lying Fritz’.

Politico reported:

“But while politicians across the spectrum agree the law needs fixing — they just can’t agree how, or when, to change it, according to a POLITICO survey of the lawmakers responsible for the issue from each of the parties represented in the Bundestag.

‘We take seriously the criticism that, in practice, it may have created the impression of a special legal privilege for politicians’, said Susanne Hierl, a lawmaker from Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). ‘Such preferential treatment was never the intention of the legislature’.”

While the Left Party and right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) want to abolish the law, the establishment political forces like the CDU, the Greens, and the Social Democratic Party just want to ‘revise’ it.

“’Politicians like Friedrich Merz insult ordinary people in this country every day by calling them lazy or malingerers’, said Luke Hoss, a Left lawmaker, referring to the chancellor’s remarks that Germans should work more to boost economic growth. ‘The provision creates a special criminal offense that applies only to politicians and should be abolished’.

Tobias Peterka, an AfD lawmaker, said tough criticism comes with the job. ‘Anyone who voluntarily enters politics and exercises public authority must — as Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has repeatedly emphasized — tolerate harsher criticism than private citizens, not less’, he argued.”

The absurd law applies to insults that ‘impede the politicians’ work’.

The ‘criminals’ face up to three years in prison.

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Something Sparked a Technological Revolution in China 146,000 Years Ago—Archaeologists Have Now Linked It to a Mysterious Extinct Human Species

During the harsh conditions that prevailed in ice age China 146,000 years ago, a remarkable survival strategy was being developed by early humans—something that led to one of the region’s earliest technological revolutions.

In a series of recent discoveries at the Lingjing site in Northern China, archaeologists have unearthed evidence of sophisticated stone tools associated with Homo juluensis, an extinct human relative that inhabited parts of East Asia long ago, and which may even have interacted with ancestors of modern humans.

The findings, reported in the Journal of Human Evolution, have now revealed that stone crafting at the site began nearly 20,000 years earlier than previous estimates, placing these ancient toolmakers amid some of the harshest glacial period conditions, rather than the later warmer climate associated with past evaluations of the site.

The findings add to recent discoveries that have revealed surprising features about ancient archaic humans that thrived during this period, which include not only their unexpected size, but also their understanding of complex stone crafting techniques.

Creativity Driven by Cold

“People often imagine creativity as something that flourishes in good times,” said lead author Yuchao Zhao, the assistant curator of East Asian archaeology at Chicago’s Field Museum, in a statement. “Finding out that these stone tools were made during a harsh ice age tells a different story.

“Hard times can force us to adapt,” Zhao adds.

For more than a decade, archaeologists have undertaken excavations at Lingjing, where everything from animal remains to ancient tools has been uncovered.

Something else that the ancient human presence at this site has revealed is a surprisingly sophisticated ice age lithic industry, where the ancient humans who once thrived here employed a technologically complex manufacturing process for their time.

Evidence of this comes in the form of disc-shaped stone cores, which are deceptively simple in appearance. To craft them, their ancient makers had to carefully work them in ways that produced useful cutting flakes. Some of them were shaped evenly on both sides, while other examples reveal asymmetrical designs where one side served as a striking platform, and the other appears to have been prepared for controlled flake removal.

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Senior Israeli official calls for killing of “30 to 40” people in Gaza every night: “They’re not even people”

Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, in a podcast published over the weekend, called for “30 to 40” people to be killed per night in targeted assassinations in the Gaza Strip. 

Discussing Israel’s response to the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza, and Israel’s recent move to reduce the number of strikes being carried out in the decimated Palestinian territory, Ben-Gvir said: “It’s no secret, I disagree with the prime minister … I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night.” 

“Not just those who pose an immediate threat,” added the Israeli cabinet member. “There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”

The security chief made the comment to Rom Braslavski, who was previously held as a hostage in Gaza, on his Sunday podcast. 

Israel once had a block of 21 settlements — known as Gush Katif — in the Gaza Strip, but the settlers and Israeli forces pulled out of the enclave two decades ago. 

“I see all of Gaza as ours,” Ben-Gvir said in the taped interview. “Settlements not just in Gush Katif but throughout Gaza, encouraging as much emigration as possible, sending them to their countries. And for the terrorists, no emigration, nothing, just to kill them one by one.”

Legal experts and the Secretary-General of the United Nations have warned that any move to force Palestinians to leave Gaza could amount to ethnic cleansing. 

Israel’s vast network of settlements in the occupied West Bank — the other, much larger Palestinian territory — are considered illegal by the United Nations, the International Court of Justice and many other entities and nations. Israel’s current government has encouraged new construction in the West Bank, however, and it disputes the illegality of most of the settlements in the territory.

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The Decline Of Higher Education Continues

During my second career teaching high school English, I noticed several darkly funny but disturbing trends in “higher” education.  They were fueled by three primary drivers: abandoning merit, the federal government taking over the student loan industry, and DEI hysteria.

It was Barack Obama who federalized the student loan industry, pushing the idea that everyone should go to college.

To make that idea a reality, it was necessary for the government to guarantee student loans.

That had plenty of unfortunate and foreseeable effects. Because Colleges no longer had any financial skin in the game, they went on a mad administrator-hiring binge, which required enormous amounts of money, which required unprecedented numbers of students. 

Combined with a faux-religious devotion to DEI, colleges admitted all manner of people who in past years would have reasonably been found to be poorly suited to do college-level work. To cover this, it was necessary to do away with any sort of predictive testing like the SAT. All that was required for college admission was a student loan, unless one was a white male applying at an Ivy League school. Those guys, regardless of academic qualification, were often denied.

Enormous DEI departments with all manner of administrators and functionaries were established, and hundreds of millions were wasted on DEI gurus imported to inspire them.

So unprepared were so many, colleges were forced to establish remedial high schools on campus. It was a great scam. Full tuition for no credit, and blame students’ lack of ability on high school teachers like me, who could have told them who wasn’t academically capable if anyone had bothered to ask.

Grade inflation was a direct result of these disasters. It was necessary to hide the scams, so professors were required not only to dumb down the content of their classes and to require far less work, but to award unearned grades. An entire generation of college students was conditioned to expect maximum grades for minimum and poor work. And God help any professor who gave a minority student the grade their lack of work deserved.

As a result, innumerable students took 6-7 years to get a 4-year degree at enormous cost, but many simply dropped out without a degree, bearing enormous debt they had no credentials or ability to pay off.

I’m certainly not arguing college should be denied to anyone. I’ve known many people who struggled greatly but managed to earn a degree and were better and more productive people for it. I am arguing for rational decision-making and fiscally sound, ethical colleges.

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3D-printing enthusiast creates ‘Flock Sock’ to blind controversial cameras, shares design — slip-on cover attaches to broom handle to make it easy to put on devices placed on traffic and streetlights

Privacy concerns and multiple incidents have led many citizens to take it upon themselves to block or disable Flock cameras. They often do this either by placing black trash bags over them or by spraying paint or insulating foam onto their lenses. Now, the former can be dangerous, especially if you don’t have equipment, as you need to reach high enough to cover the camera and secure the plastic bag over it. The latter can get you into deeper trouble, as paint or foam can damage the camera. So, 3D printing enthusiast SquidInk decided to create an easy-to-use model that would take seconds to install without damaging the camera and posted it on Maker World.

While the public was initially concerned about their privacy with Flock’s AI-powered cameras, this concern eventually turned into outrage after it was discovered that some police officers had been misusing the system. There were also a couple of high-profile incidents where procedural errors led to the mistaken apprehension of innocent people. Because of these incidents, some jurisdictions have voted to remove these cameras, to the chagrin of some of their most ardent supporters. As for towns and cities that voted to keep their Flock AI cameras operational, some citizens are taking matters into their own hands and deliberately blocking these cameras to prevent them from capturing video. Note that actions like these are probably illegal and will get anyone caught doing so in hot water. Possible charges include vandalism, criminal mischief, property damage, tampering with public infrastructure, obstruction, and more.

The Flock Sock itself doesn’t encourage anyone to commit a crime. Its description says, “The Flock Sock is a slip on cover designed to help protect a Flock camera from the harmful radiation of the sun. Your city spent their very own hard-earned tax dollars scattering these cameras everywhere to keep you safe, all it cost you was a little privacy. The very least you can do is help protect these valuable civil servants from getting a bad sunburn.”

The creator also said that Flock commonly uses three different models, and that they’re working on profiles for the other two so that there’s a 3D-printable Flock Sock for every Flock camera you may find in the wild.

Aside from being easy to print, it’s also easy to use and deploy. It slides onto Flock cameras in seconds, and you can easily lift it into position with a 1-inch broom handle through the built-in adapter. They also highlighted that it’s 100% non-permanent, saying, “No glue, no screws, and zero structural changes. Because it pops off instantly with absolutely no damage caused and costs exactly $0 to revert, it conveniently avoids some of the troublesome labels that Uncle Sam might stick to you. It’s just a removable accessory.” While SquidInk recommended using ABS/ASA for its excellent heat and UV resistance, they also suggested using PLA “if you prefer your Flock Sock to develop a long term relationship with the summer heat.”

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Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear Demands Mitch McConnell Tell Voters the Truth About His Health

Kentucky’s far-left Democrat Governor Andy Beshear took to national television this Sunday and once again demanded that longtime Republican Senator Mitch McConnell provide a public health update.

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Beshear claimed he has “heard absolutely nothing back from Mitch McConnell” despite formal requests for information following the senator’s June 14 hospitalization after a fall.

“I’ve heard absolutely nothing back from Mitch McConnell,” Beshear said.

“And while I do hope that he is getting better, I’ve known him my entire life. I wish him no harm. I actually wish him good health. His boss are the people of Kentucky, and this is why the Senate – the Republican-controlled Senate – feels so broken. They feel like they’re not accountable to anyone.”

Beshear then escalated: “All he needs to do is call into this show for two minutes, or Fox News for two minutes, or do a video for two minutes to the people he’s supposed to serve. But you know what? He absolutely refuses to do it.”

The Democrat governor also took a shot at Senate Majority Leader John Thune, claiming the South Dakota Republican has a “duty to make sure all of your senators have the capacity to serve” and accusing him of saying “Not my job.”

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