Blog

China To Arm Iran With Hundreds Of MANPADS Despite Trump Warnings: Report

President Trump has repeatedly said that China’s President Xi Jinping has directly assured him that Beijing will not supply Iran with weaponry or military support.

But this week these ‘assurances’ have been called into question by an Reuters investigation. “Iran is expected to receive within weeks a first shipment out of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers, three sources familiar with the deal told ​Reuters, as it rebuilds its defenses amid war with the United States,” the fresh report says.

“The purchase, valued at $60-70 million, is one of Tehran’s largest-known efforts to strengthen its short-range air ‌defences since the outbreak of its war with the U.S. and Israel, which exposed gaps in Iran’s ability to protect military sites and strategic infrastructure,” it adds.

The fresh report cites three anonymous sources and did not receive comment from the Iranian side. Some of the assertions of the Reuters report are surprisingly specific, such as in the following:

The contract covers the purchase of between 300 and 400 man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), including Chinese-made QW-12 and FN-16 missiles, the sources said.

The deal was signed with Zhongqing Baoshang International Investment, a Hong Kong-based company that the sources said was acting as an intermediary between the Iranian ​side and the Chinese supplier.

The reporting even explores options being considered for delivery of the weapons, at a moment Iran is urgently seeking to replenish its air defense supplies after months of grinding tit-for-tat conflict with the US military.

“Two Western intelligence sources and an Iranian official said Tehran had also explored the use of overland routes to move Chinese military supplies and dual-use components ⁠more discreetly and ​reduce the risk of disruption,” Reuters continues.

MANPADS could prove especially dangerous for US helicopters and other low flying aircraft, and for Iran can serve as layer of short-range protection.

The opening days of Operation Epic Fury saw much of Iran’s anti-air units get taken out, especially across the Western part of the country, giving US-Israeli jets air superiority. However, at times the Iranians have claimed to shoot down some aircraft, and since then the US has seemed to operate from further afar.

Keep reading

‘UNACCEPTABLE RISKS’: Trump Bans Import of Chinese Humanoid Robots Over National Security Concerns

‘These are not the droids that you’re looking for.’

Chinese companies have been leaping ahead in the race to develop the best, most useful (and most lethal) humanoid robots in the planet, clearly taking the lead in this flourishing industry.

But now, the Chinese droids face a major obstacle in their path, as they lose access to the planet’s largest and most robust market.

Today, it’s been reported that the Donald J. Trump administration has banned imports of humanoid robots made in China.

Officials warn they pose ‘unacceptable risks’ to US national security.

The Telegraph reported:

“US regulators barred imports of advanced Chinese robotics on Tuesday, including bipedal robots and four-legged devices, arguing they could be used to spy on American citizens or controlled remotely.

Officials at the Federal Communications Commission said: ‘Foreign-produced advanced robotics devices present an unacceptable cybersecurity and safety risk. Advanced robotic devices collect data that could be leveraged by malign actors to surveil Americans, enhance the capabilities of foreign intelligence services, or to remotely commandeer the robots’.”

Keep reading

New Jersey Rejects DOJ’s Request For Records On Noncitizen Voter Registration Error

New Jersey is refusing to hand over information to the U.S. Department of Justice involving a voter registration error that allowed thousands of noncitizens to register to vote in the state.

The DOJ requested the full names, dates of birth, nationalities, residential addresses, and registration dates and locations of 6,600 people involved in the error.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill rejected the DOJ’s request for the data, saying in a letter on Tuesday that state and federal privacy laws prohibit releasing it.

“The request had no legal basis, and I will always protect New Jerseyans’ personally identifiable information,” Sherrill said on X.

Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ, said the governor’s “refusal to cooperate with federal law enforcement does nothing to protect law-abiding NJ voters.”

“NJ has a legal duty to keep ineligible voters off its rolls, & our request is grounded in that legal authority. DOJ will get this information through all legal means!” she said Tuesday in a post on X.

Sherrill said on July 21 that approximately 6,600 people who indicated they were not U.S. citizens were mistakenly registered to vote because of a software flaw in the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission system.

According to Sherrill, the error affected applicants between June 2023 and June 2024, during the previous administration. While applying for driver’s licenses or state identification cards, the individuals selected “no” when asked on a keypad whether they were U.S. citizens, but they were nevertheless added to the voter rolls due to the software issue.

The governor said a preliminary review found that fewer than 400 of those improperly registered ultimately cast ballots. Those voters included Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters and were spread across New Jersey.

Sherrill said she has directed her chief counsel to investigate how the mistake happened and instructed election officials to remove anyone who was improperly placed on the voter rolls during that timeframe. She said the software problem was corrected in June 2024 but that she only recently became aware of it.

The governor also said the Motor Vehicle Commission administrator she appointed has started replacing the vendor that managed the system.

However, a company that has worked with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle System for more than 40 years suggested the New Jersey government was responsible for the noncitizens being placed on the state’s voter rolls.

IDEMIA, an identification software provider, told The Epoch Times July 22 that the individuals disclaimed U.S. citizenship but also said they indicated “Yes” to wanting to register to vote.

“The voter registration information is transmitted to the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Elections, which is ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote,” the company stated. “Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections.”

The governor said in the July 21 announcement that she was “appalled” by the failures that allowed the error to occur and vowed that those responsible would be held accountable.

She also accused the Trump administration of trying to “weaponize elections for political gain.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has found that about 278,000 noncitizens were illegally registered to vote in U.S. federal elections after reviewing voter rolls from several states that cooperated and turned over data, according to the White House.

The White House said earlier this month the actual number could be higher because some states did not share their voter files with the federal agency.

The Trump administration has been involved in lawsuits with several states involving access to voter registration rolls.

In April, a U.S. District judge dismissed a lawsuit the Trump administration had filed in Massachusetts to get access to unredacted voter rolls.

The White House said the error in New Jersey “is the direct result of Democrat policies that refuse basic citizenship checks—and exactly why Congress must pass the SAVE America Act immediately,” in a July 21 statement.

The SAVE America Act is a bill that would mandate proof of U.S. citizenship while registering to vote in federal elections, require photo ID verification to vote, and restrict the use of mail-in ballots.

Keep reading

THAT SHOULD DO IT: Chicago Officials Put Signs in Subway Cars That Say ‘Violence Will Not be Tolerated’ 

Officials from the city of Chicago, including the transit authority, recently made a big to-do about putting up signs in subway cars that say ‘violence will not be tolerated.’

This should work perfectly, right? Criminals will see the signs and change their behavior in order to follow the rules, right?

Of course, this assumes that potentially violent criminals on Chicago’s public transit system can read, which isn’t a safe bet.

FOX 32 in Chicago reports:

New CTA campaign aims to deter violent crime on buses, trains

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Chicago Transit Authority are launching a new public awareness campaign warning that prosecutors will seek pretrial detention for people accused of committing violent crimes on public transit.

The initiative will place more than 7,000 signs on CTA buses and trains that say, “Violence on the CTA will not be tolerated. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office will prosecute and seek pretrial detention for all violent offenses on public transit.”

“In order to have a safe and thriving city, we need to have a safe public transportation system,” Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke said in a statement.

“The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office is committed to doing everything we can to make our public transportation system the safest in the nation. We are putting up these signs to show how seriously we take these cases and to reinforce the consequences offenders will face for bringing violence onto the CTA.”

CTA Acting President Nora Leerhsen said the campaign is intended to reassure both riders and transit employees.

Keep reading

Nancy Sinatra Calls to ‘Eliminate All Guns’ After ‘Mass Shooting’ That Wasn’t a Mass Shooting

Singer and actress Nancy Sinatra, the daughter of Frank Sinatra, called to “eliminate all guns” after reports of a “mass shooting” in Seattle that turned out not to be a “mass shooting” at all.

Nancy reacted to a post by an X user that said: “With the mass shooting at Seattle Center, it might be good to mention that Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban reduced mass shooting deaths by nearly half – but after George W Bush & Republicans let it expire, mass shooting deaths more than doubled – because it’s the f*cking guns.”

Nancy’s response: “Eliminate the guns. The founding fathers did not know about automatic weapons.”

Breitbart News reported the Seattle shooting, noting that it was actually a shootout between at least two people that occurred during the Bite of Seattle food festival on Sunday. Three people were killed in the shootout and four others injured and police detained a 15-year-old in connection with the incident.

NBC News noted that a second suspect was killed in the shootout and police are seeking a possible third suspect. Multiple handguns were recovered at the scene. The guns included one that Democrats refer to as a “ghost gun” and another that was outfitted with a “Glock switch.”

A total of 14 rounds were fired during the shootout.

Mike Blooberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety ranks Washington the No. 9 state in the Union for gun control stringency. Some of Washington’s gun controls include an “assault weapons” ban, a ban on “Glock switches,” a ban on bump stocks, a red flag law, a concealed carry permit requirement, a gun storage law, and universal background checks for handgun sales.

None of Washington’s gun controls prevented the shootout.

Keep reading

Mississauga Centre PC MPP Natalia Kusendova-Bashta billed taxpayers $4,258 for six Toronto hotel stays

Mississauga Centre PC MPP Natalia Kusendova-Bashta billed taxpayers $4,258 for six hotel stays in downtown Toronto despite representing a riding within commuting distance of Queen’s Park.

Expense disclosures from the Ontario Legislature show Kusendova-Bashta claimed $4,258 under the Legislature’s “Special Circumstance Accommodation in Toronto” policy through six separate hotel claims between 2023 and 2025.

Ontario’s expense rules allow MPPs who live within 50 kilometres of Queen’s Park to claim overnight accommodations only in exceptional circumstances, such as severe weather or other emergencies that make returning home impractical. Mississauga Centre is well within commuting distance of the Legislature.

Kusendova-Bashta’s claims are part of the broader Ford government hotel expense scandal that saw Toronto-area Progressive Conservative MPPs collectively bill taxpayers more than $100,000 for Toronto hotel stays under the “special circumstances” allowance.

Keep reading

Sure, Roasting Fauci Is Fun, but There’s No Do-Over for the Biden Years

As I wrote in Tuesday’s Morning Briefing, conservative Americans are once again finding out that we were right about everything they called us crazy for during the Wuhan Chinese Bat Flu pandemic. Never in recorded history have “conspiracy theorists” been on a roll like the one we’re experiencing right now. I’m beginning to think that the planet might change its shape if we decide to go the Flat-Earther route. We’re that good these days.

Our current “You shoulda listened to us,” moment is courtesy of Satan’s Garden Gnome, alleged Doctor Anthony Fauci. We’ve been finding out how wrong he was for years but, thanks to his personal diary entries that we’re seeing for the first time, we have evidence of Anthony Fauci proving that Anthony Fauci is a liar. 

We also now have evidence that Fauci was far more concerned with his own perverse pandemic-fueled celebrity than with anyone’s health. His diary entries about his growing fame (infamy for those of us on this side of the aisle) read as if he were working himself into a sexual frenzy after every television appearance. Anthony Fauci most definitely had an Anthony Fauci fetish. 

Being proven right is always a good feeling, and watching Fauci being berated by Republican senators while pleading the Fifth (which Matt covered here) was entertaining for a minute or two, but it’s not sufficient payback for what we endured during the interminable slog of the pandemic. The cold, harsh reality is that it never will be. 

Yes, the public exposure of the unhinged nature of Fauci’s ego is newsworthy. And, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, there is some entertainment value in watching him squirm a little. However, unless you get extraordinary satisfaction from pointing at the television and saying, “I told you so,” there’s not a lot of satisfying “there” there. 

I am not an attorney, so I will not be indulging in any legal speculation about what might happen to Fauci. From a layman’s perspective, it seems that a presidential pardon that’s backdated to the Mesozoic Era probably covers a lot. If there is some workaround that can be used to nail this vile human being, I hope it’s found soon. I don’t want to just see Fauci in an orange jumpsuit, I want to bring back town squares and pillories and put him on display for his crimes. 

That sentiment may not be brimming with Christian charity, but I think we all know that I’m rather imperfect in that regard. There’s also the fact that I only attack people with words, and I’m honest about it. I’ve never fear-mongered with lies that got elderly people sent to assisted living death beds. Once a person has a body count, he or she is deserving of some ill will. (I believe that’s Confucius.)

My reaction to these Fauci revelations is the same as last year when the lefties started admitting that Joe Biden had pudding for brains during his presidency. The validation wasn’t much of a balm for the steaming piles of misery those four years heaped upon us. OK, it wasn’t any kind of balm at all, especially given the fact that Joe Biden has never been held accountable for any of his awfulness in the half century-plus that he poisoned American politics. 

Keep reading

Sen. Rand Paul: Congress Will Vote on Holding Fauci in Contempt After He Invoked Fifth Amendment Over 100 Times

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said there will be a panel vote to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt after the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) refused to answer any question during his testimony on Wednesday, instead repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment.

“That’s a vote that will happen in committee next week. It will be in contempt of Congress,” Paul told reporters after the hearing, which featured Fauci refusing to answer one question from lawmakers.

“We believe that with his… immunity from criminal liability, that he didn’t need to hide behind the Fifth Amendment and that maybe the Fifth Amendment doesn’t attach when you have a pardon in place,” Paul explained, noting it will be a legal question.

“That’ll be a legal question, but the question on contempt will be voted on, and then there’s a question of whether or not the Department of Justice will take that up,” he added.

Fauci made clear during his opening statement that he would not respond to any lawmaker questions. And after his own line of questions, which Fauci refused to answer, Paul said that there would be repercussions.

“The chairman has denied your assertion of privilege and directed you to answer, but you nonetheless refuse and stand on privilege despite the existence of the pardon. The committee will have to consider after this hearing what appropriate action should be taken against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so,” Paul said.

He added, “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today.”

Other lawmakers on the committee also pointed out that Fauci, whom former President Joe Biden pardoned, had nothing to hide.

“Let’s just get one thing straight: You don’t have any rights under the Fifth Amendment because you’ve been pardoned, as you very well know, as the Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said. “Brown vs. Walker, 1896. When he has been pardoned, he may not stand upon his privilege. You know that, your lawyers sitting behind you now shifting nervously in their chairs, they know it.”

Keep reading

Fauci Admits To Working Against Trump’s 2020 Re-Election Bid In Shocking Diary

Anthony Fauci’s newly released diary entries, made public by Sen. Rand Paul, reveal that Fauci privately viewed efforts to fast-track COVID-19 treatments and vaccines before the 2020 election as politically motivated — and show he recorded personally intervening to support FDA officials resisting pressure for emergency authorizations.

The entries were first highlighted by Justin Hart of the Rational Ground Substack.

The entries, spanning five months in 2020, detail Fauci’s concerns about what he repeatedly described as an effort to deliver President Donald Trump an “October surprise” ahead of Election Day. They also identify the administration officials he believed were applying pressure and document a call in which Fauci wrote that he and other top federal health officials assured the FDA’s top vaccine regulator they would support him if he refused to approve a vaccine prematurely.

The diary centers on several key figures. Peter Marks led the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the office responsible for reviewing vaccine applications. Then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn oversaw Marks. Fauci also references then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, NIH Director Francis Collins, Fauci deputy Cliff Lane and Larry Horowitz, whom he identifies as someone working closely with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

One of the earliest entries, dated June 20, 2020, focuses not on White House political aides but on then-White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx.

Fauci wrote that he had become increasingly frustrated with Birx, accusing her of wanting to bypass traditional clinical trials in favor of emergency authorizations.

“Deb has ststed [sic] that we should noit [sic] do clinical trials since ‘I want to see every infected person in a nursing home get plasma early on and steroids later. Forget the trial, we need to do this on EUAs. She says the same thing about vaccine trials. Clearly, she is trying to provide Trump with his October surprise. I may need to blow the whistle on her.”

The diary entry suggests Fauci believed months before the election that accelerating vaccine approvals was being driven by politics rather than science, and that he was already considering publicly opposing the effort.

By late July, Fauci recorded similar concerns about Meadows.

In a July 26 entry, Fauci wrote that after watching Meadows on television, he believed the chief of staff was “trying to get an ‘October Surprise’” and warned of an effort to push an early vaccine approval.

The following day, after briefing Trump in the Oval Office on vaccines and therapeutics, Fauci wrote that the president acknowledged a vaccine might not be ready before Election Day, though “he was not happy about it.”

Keep reading

Rearmament: UK Govt Pushes For New Generation of Explosives Factories to Fix Post-Cold War Deindustrialisation

The British government is seeking to build “at least six new munitions and energetics factories” after the Ukraine War experience showed how fast ammunition is used in a near-peer conflict, and how long it takes to make more when the industrial base no longer exists.

The Ministry of Defence has announced a funding package to support 22 unnamed companies to underwrite their costs in building “at least six” new factories to produce what the industry calls energetics, which might better be known as explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics. The selected businesses will receive up to £300,000 each to “develop proposals for the creation of new factories producing energetic materials used in munitions”, and the winners in the competition will receive contracts “worth up to £5 million each” to get the ground broken on building the new facilities.

According to the government’s statement, the project is intended to move — at least by Whitehall standards — at a very brisk pace. The proposals are due to be made by the end of the summer, and construction of new munitions factories should begin before the end of 2026. The rush to build is part of a century-long story of corporate amnesia in which London has repeatedly destroyed its own armaments factories to save money in peacetime, only to be surprised, yet again, when war returns.

Keep reading