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Scott Bessent Just Humiliated a Democrat Senator Over Jeffrey Epstein

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) walked into a budget hearing Wednesday thinking he could grandstand his way through an attack on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Instead, Wyden walked out looking like a fool.

The hearing was supposed to be about the federal budget, but Wyden, being a Democrat, had other plans. He opened with a broadside against President Donald Trump’s administration, accusing it of “widespread corruption” and personally dragging Bessent into it. He also wanted to make Jeffrey Epstein the issue, because it’s pretty much the only play Democrats have, and it’s not even a good one. He claimed that Bessent blocked congressional investigators from accessing Epstein’s financial records and participated in a cover-up lasting a year and a half.

“There’s no better example than the fact that there has been a cover-up of the massive file of Epstein’s financial records for a year and a half,” Wyden said. “This is part of the effort I’ve made, it’s the only one, to follow the money in the Epstein situation. And yet there’s been a denial of access to committee investigators and lying in public about their significance. That subject alone deserves its own hearing. Senate investigators are trying to figure out who paid Epstein for girls, and unfortunately, Secretary Bessent is involved in preventing that from happening.”

Strong words. Too bad they collapsed on contact with reality. As far as Epstein is concerned, the Trump administration has always been about transparency. The Trump administration released the Epstein files to the public, something the Biden administration refused to do. So the senator railing about cover-ups belongs to the party that actually kept those files buried for years.

Bessent wasn’t about to sit there and take it.

“I had hoped to keep this in terms of the economy — Senator Wyden has mendaciously slandered the Treasury building in an attempt to cover up his son having an investment meeting with Jeffrey Epstein to ask for funding,” Bessent said.

Wyden didn’t take it well.

“Let’s be clear here. Nobody is interested in the ramblings of a capo in the most corrupt regime in American history. We want to get some facts about this deal. That’s what we’re here for,” Wyden shot back.

And then Bessent went in for the kill. “And we would like to hear what Adam Wyden and Jeffrey Epstein talked about. Your son’s largest investment position was Rick’s Cabaret. So did your son and Jeffrey Epstein talk about pole dancing as he begged him for money using your limited credibility?” Bessent said.

The room went quiet. Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) turned to Wyden to check whether he had a response. He didn’t.

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‘Trade over Aid’: GOP Resolution Introduced to Phase Out U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Republican Reps. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) and Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) have introduced a resolution calling for the phased elimination of the $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel and its replacement with a partnership focused on trade, joint technology development, and strategic cooperation — a proposal endorsed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The nonbinding resolution, introduced Wednesday, urges the United States and Israel to negotiate a memorandum of understanding before the current ten-year agreement expires in 2028. Under the proposal, direct military assistance would be gradually phased out and replaced by a framework centered on joint defense cooperation, co-development, co-production, and mutual investment.

The effort comes with Netanyahu’s backing.

Following a May 27 meeting in Jerusalem with Stutzman and Hamadeh, Netanyahu sent a June 1 letter expressing support for the initiative and embracing its broader vision of transitioning the U.S.-Israel relationship from one based on aid to one based on partnership.

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Kash Patel Unveils FBI’s “Most Wanted Fraudsters” List as Officials Announce New Medicaid Fraud Indictments

FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Wednesday that the FBI is launching a “Most Wanted Fraudsters” list as the Department of Justice investigates criminal fraud rings across the country.

Patel credited Vice President JD Vance, the chairman of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, for the idea. “Mr. Vice President, thanks to your vision, we’re here to deliver, and you see it here today,” he said.

“I want all Americans to take a look at these most wanted individuals and look at the amounts, the 10s of millions and billions of dollars in fraud that they have decimated our societies from,” Patel continued, urging Americans to provide tips on the fraudsters’ whereabouts.

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Facial recognition watchlist made permanent in Christchurch supermarkets after trial

A Christchurch supermarket trial of facial recognition technology has been made permanent and extended to another store after showing measurable safety improvements.

After a three-month trial, Foodstuffs South Island has decided to keep the technology at New World St Martins and Pak’nSave Papanui and Moorhouse, while expanding it to New World Stanmore.

The initiative, which ran from October 2025 to January 2026, was designed to identify and manage individuals with a history of serious and harmful behaviour in stores.

Foodstuffs South Island retail head Kent Mahon said the results gave the co-operative confidence that the system could be deployed carefully and responsibly.

“The focus has always been on reducing harm. The trial showed we can do that while keeping accuracy high and respecting customer privacy,” Mahon said.

The facial recognition system scans images of everyone entering participating stores and compares them with a watchlist of known offenders.

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Murder charge dropped for Arkansas sheriff nominee who killed teen daughter’s rapist

A judge tossed a murder charge against an Arkansas sheriff nominee who was about to go on trial for killing his 14-year-old daughter’s rapist.

The case against Aaron Spencer was dismissed by a judge on Thursday afternoon after law enforcement lost a dash camera memory card that may have captured the fatal October 2024 shooting of 67-year-old Michael Fosler.

“The court finds that conduct by law enforcement was so egregious that dismissal of this case is warranted,” wrote Special Circuit Court Judge Ralph Wilson Jr.

The development comes just a few weeks before Spencer was slated to go to trial on a second-degree murder charge for allegedly gunning down Fosler on Oct. 8, 2024 after catching him driving off with his daughter — whom the sicko had already been charged with grooming and abusing.

Spencer woke up around 1 a.m. to find his then-13-year-old daughter had vanished. He soon found her in the passenger seat of the car Fosler was driving.

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Bomb Squad Called in Amid Reported Explosion on Chicago Highway – Person Found Dead in SUV Surrounded by Shell Casings

An Illinois highway was shut down in both directions on Thursday as bomb technicians and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives investigated a vehicle parked on the road. 

The highway was closed at approximately 10 am until 6:55 pm. According to authorities, a person was found dead inside the vehicle, which was surrounded by shell casings, according to CBS. Authorities have not released the cause of death.

Initially, the vehicle was seen on the Eisenhower Expressway in Cook County. Illinois State Police reportedly called in an “explosion.”

Video from the sky shows law enforcement officers, including one in a bomb suit, investigating the car.

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The Shocking Damage Caused by Covid Policies

he Covid lockdowns may not have been remotely effective, but at least they harmed millions of people and created long-lasting negative impacts that we’re still dealing with today.

That’s the conclusion of a massive new body of research into the nonsensical policies promoted by the public health “expert” class, promoted by their media partners, and enacted by incompetent, cowardly politicians.

Mask mandates had been thoroughly discouraged by decades of pre-Covid pandemic planning. There was no body of research supporting the closing of certain businesses at different hours of the day, as many jurisdictions demanded.

No studies were conducted on the reduction of infection rates resulting from placing directional arrows on the floors of grocery stores to direct people through aisles in predetermined patterns.

There were no randomized controlled trials on closing skate parks and beaches, arresting people surfing alone in the ocean, restricting capacity to random percentages based on inaccurate assumptions of community spread.

We had no idea whether closing schools would be effective or “save lives,” but we did it anyway. We didn’t know if vaccine passports would actually have a meaningful impact on community spread, yet we were encouraged to push that too.

All these “interventions” started with little-to-no evidence. That’s bad enough. What makes it much worse? That we implemented them all with zero consideration of possible side effects resulting from those policies.

Lockdowns were an unprecedented incursion on freedom and liberty. What would that do to society, the economy, mental health, and so on? It appeared that no one involved gave those considerations a second thought, and now we’re paying the price.

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Florida vs. OpenAI: The Fight to ID Every ChatGPT User

Florida wants a court to force OpenAI to verify how old you are before ChatGPT will talk to you freely and the demand reaches far past the children the state says it wants to protect.

Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a civil suit on Monday against OpenAI and chief executive Sam Altman, calling it the first state-led case of its kind.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

Most of the coverage has gone to the alleged harms. The complaint accuses the company of feeding content unsuitable for children to minors and states that “vulnerable people have been encouraged into suicide.”

Uthmeier told reporters, “If this was a human being on the other side of the screen, we would be charging them with accessory to commit murder.” Those are heavy charges and a court will weigh them.

The part that touches everyone who opens ChatGPT is the remedy Florida is chasing. The state complains that the free product has “no gatekeeping or age verification mechanism,” and it claims the paid subscription has “no mechanism to verify the age of its users.” It wants a judge to close that gap by ordering verification into place.

There is a problem with the second claim. OpenAI announced its age estimation plans back in September and it began rolling out age prediction across consumer plans in January.

The system already runs as a form of mass surveillance. It works by watching how you behave, studying how long your account has existed, when you tend to log in, and how you use the product, then guessing whether you are under 18.

Anyone the model flags as a minor who is actually an adult has to prove it by handing a selfie or a government ID to a third-party firm called Persona.

So the supposed absence of verification is a verification system that runs on behavioral profiling backed by face scans and identity documents.

That changes what the lawsuit is actually pushing for. Age verification cannot work without identity verification.

To confirm you are not a child, a company has to learn enough about you to rule it out. That means collecting your government ID, scanning your face, or building a profile detailed enough to estimate your age from how you type and when you log in.

There is no version of “prove you are an adult” that does not involve handing over something you would otherwise keep to yourself.

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Norwegian Teenager Allegedly Recruited by Swedish Gang Linked to Iran – Gets Arrested and Prosecuted in the UK for Attempting to Carry Out a Murder for Hire

Another aspect of the migrant invasion in Northern Europe.

We have been reporting here on TGP about the rising criminality in the Scandinavian countries, with migrant gangs in Sweden and Norway taking the law enforcement challenges to unprecedented levels.

One of the commons features of these gangs is their use of minors for criminal acts. Usually, we see teens from migrant backgrounds – but now, it appears their reach has widened.

News arose today of a court session in which a white, middle-class looking Norwegian teenager is being charged with travelling to Britain to carry out a murder for hire.

The defendant was allegedly recruited by a ​Swedish organized crime group with ties to the Iranian government, prosecutors told a London court.

Reuters reported:

“Johannes Natland, now 19, was arrested in a hotel room in Huddersfield in northern England in March last year ​in possession of two firearms and ammunition, prosecutor Alistair Richardson ​told London’s Old Bailey Court.

‘He had been recruited by an ⁠organization called the Foxtrot Network to an agreement that in ​return for money he would travel here and undertake a hit’, Richardson ​said. ‘The group that had recruited him, the Foxtrot Network, is a Swedish organized crime group used by the Iranian regime’.”

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2 NIH researchers charged with smuggling deactivated Mpox samples into U.S., lying to CBP

Two National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers have been criminally charged with conspiracy to smuggle biological materials into the United States and making false statements to federal law enforcement.

A federal criminal complaint unsealed in Detroit reveals that Vincent Munster, the chief of the virus ecology section at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, and his colleague, Claude Kwe, were intercepted by authorities at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

The scientists were stopped by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers following a flight from Paris, which concluded a 9-day research trip to the Republic of Congo — a region heavily impacted by an mpox outbreak that has been linked to over 2,000 deaths.

Mpox, formerly “monkeypox,” is an infectious viral disease causing flu-like symptoms and a painful rash. It spreads primarily through close, direct contact with an infected person’s lesions, bodily fluids or contaminated items like bedding.

According to court filings submitted by the FBI, Munster adamantly denied carrying any biological materials or samples when questioned by airport investigators. However, a physical inspection of their luggage uncovered more than 100 vials stored inside Styrofoam coolers.

Subsequent laboratory testing on a portion of the seized materials also confirmed that at least 17 of the first 20 vials tested positive for deactivated mpox virus. When pressed about the required federal permits and documentation for importing such materials, Munster allegedly told customs officers that the paperwork was on his laptop, adding, “but you don’t need them. I do this all the time.”

Federal prosecutors assert that these statements were materially false and that the researchers lacked the mandatory authorization to bring the pathogens into the country.

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