Hellbound and Down

Russia’s secret drone playbook handed to Iran as Zelensky warns Trump’s war is a gift to Putin

Russians are advising Iranians on how to use their deadly mini drones to target US assets in the Middle East, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is warning.

The Ukrainian President shared on Monday that Russian officials have advised Iranian counterparts on their operational experience from their invasion against Ukraine, including how to carry out short-range first-person-view (FPV) drone attacks.

Videos of the drone strikes have been a hallmark of the brutal conflict, often showing soldiers or tanks on patrol being hunted by the small UAVs before the screens go black, indicating a detonation.

Russia has recently released a new first-person drone called the KVS which reportedly has a range up to 30 miles that was designed after previous drones faced issues on shorter flights.

Russia has closely worked with Iran since 2022 to deploy its Shahed-136 drone against Ukraine, which Russian officials rebranded into the Geran-1.

In 2025 alone, Russia launched approximately 55,000 Shahed-style drones at Ukraine, according to the institute for Science and International Security.

Having to rely on cheap, widely available drones to fend off repeated Russian assaults during the invasion, Ukraine has developed world-class FPV drone weapons.

They’ve been so effective that the Ukrainian drone tech has even been procured by the US military.

‘I think Russia is supporting Iran directly, 100 percent. The same format of sharing satellite images like they did in the case of Ukraine,’ he told Axios in an interview.

He shared that Russia is keen on the US-Iran war dragging out so that President Vladimir Putin’s oil-reliant economy can sell crude at a markup to continue funding its hostilities in Ukraine.

‘I am sure Russia wants long war. They have benefits: The U.S. is focusing on the Middle East and may decrease military help to Ukraine. Sanctions are partially lifted. I see only benefits for Russia from the war with Iran continuing,’ Zelensky said.

Another concern for Ukraine as the US-Iran war continues: Ukraine’s weapons supply.

Zelensky said he is ‘absolutely’ sure that his country will have ‘challenges’ due to US resources being reallocated to the Middle East.

The Ukrainian President was recently in the Middle East to meet with leaders about possible security deals. He reportedly met with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan.

Ukrainian military officials have also been advising Gulf nations on how to shoot down Iran’s Shahed drones.

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Bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did NOT match rifle allegedly used by suspect Tyler Robinson, new court filing claims

The bullet that killed conservative commentator Charlie Kirk did not match the rifle used by suspected killer Tyler Robinson, a bombshell new court filing states.

Robinson, 22, is facing capital murder charges and a potential death sentence for Kirk’s murder at Utah Valley University on September 10.

But his defense attorneys now argue that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ‘was unable to identify the bullet recovered at autopsy to the rifle allegedly tied to Mr Robinson.’

The defense team may now offer the ATF firearm analyst’s testimony as exculpatory evidence, they said in a motion filed on Friday to push the preliminary hearing back at least six months, Fox News reports.

It also notes that DNA reports filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and ATF will take time for the defense team to analyze because reports indicated that several different DNA were found on some items of evidence.

‘As these cases indicate, determining the number of contributors to a DNA mixture and determining whether the FBI and the ATF reliably applied validated and correct scientific procedures… is a complicated process which requires the assistance of various types of experts, including forensic biologists, geneticists, system engineers and statisticians, all of whom must review and evaluate’ several different categories, the filing states, according to Deseret News.

Robinson’s attorneys added that they have received about 20,000 electronic audio files, videos and written documents that prosecutors have presented as evidence in the case.

‘The defense team has devoted, and will continue to devote, significant resources, to processing discovery, including identifying materials not yet received to inform readiness for the preliminary hearing,’ the filing states.

‘However, the defense team is realistic and the comprehensive review required to determine what is missing will take hundreds of hours.’

‘What is known at present is that Mr Robinson has not yet received the forensic case files and data necessary to investigate, through the use of qualified experts, the scientific reports the state intends to introduce at the preliminary hearing,’ the attorneys continued.

Defense attorneys and prosecutors had previously met on March 12.

Based on that meeting, the defense said in the motion it believes prosecutors will introduce ‘discrete “buckets” of evidence through three identified law enforcement witnesses at the preliminary hearing.

‘This includes a conclusory forensic DNA and ballistic reports authored by the FBI and the ATF, social media data, testimony by law enforcement officers about the crime scene and search locations, and testimony by Mr Robinson’s parents and roommate’ as well as ‘a significant amount of hearsay’ from ‘non-testifying peace officers.’

Prosecutors have alleged Robinson drove three hours from his home to the university campus to kill Kirk, 31.

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Transgender Pedophile Convicted of Raping 4-Year-Old Girl Files Legal Claim Requesting Transfer to Women’s Prison

A man convicted of sexually assaulting a 4-year-old has lodged a legal complaint against the New Jersey Department of Corrections (NJDOC) seeking a transfer from a sex offender treatment unit to the state’s only women’s prison, Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women (EMCF). While court records protected the pedophile’s identity, Reduxx can reveal him as Robert Gladulich – though he is listed in DOC records as Samantha Abigail Gladulich.

In 2011, Gladulich pled guilty and was sentenced to a maximum term of 10 years for the aggravated sexual assault of a child which he committed on Christmas Eve of 2010. While limited case details are available, it is known the young victim was the daughter of one of Gladulich’s friends. He was indicted on charges of sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault and child endangerment. In addition to a 10-year prison term and sex offender registration requirement, Gladulich was sentenced to parole supervision for life.

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NYT Covers Iran War With No Reporters in Iran

Since the US and Israel first attacked Iran in late February, it has been easy to spot the stark difference between the New York Times’ distant coverage of Iran and its up-close and personal coverage of Israel.

Multiple Times employees are reporting from and currently living in Israel. These include reporters Isabel Kershner, Aaron Boxerman, Gabby Sobelman, Natan Odenheimer, Ronen Bergman, Adam Rasgon, Johnatan Reiss and Raja Abdulrahim, as well as Jerusalem bureau chief David M. Halbfinger.

They routinely report stories that center Israeli citizens, as in “How Israelis Feel About Another Potential War With Iran” (2/26/26). First-hand Times reports have Israelis taking “Shelter as Sirens Warn of Incoming Missiles” (2/28/26), feeling “Tense But Relieved That Iran’s Supreme Leader Is Dead” (3/1/26) and celebrating “Purim Amid Iranian Missile Attacks” (3/4/26). They also have penned stories on Iranian missile strikes in Israel mere hours after they took place (3/1/26, 3/18/26).

Many articles have been based primarily on statements from Israeli officials (3/1/26, 3/3/26, 3/11/26, 3/19/26) and US officials (3/2/26, 3/7/26). Other articles have centered on the perspective of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and what would benefit him (2/28/26, 3/14/26, 3/18/26).

Meanwhile, the Times has no reporters based in Iran, as its editors admitted in two Q&A-style articles (3/9/26, 3/16/26). Instead, the paper has largely relied on its Visual Investigations team (3/12/26) and reporters based elsewhere to cover Iran, including correspondents in Israel, the US, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, India, Sri Lanka, South Korea, England, France and Germany. The Times reporters who most often quote Iranian voices—like Farnaz Fassihi, Parin Behrooz (both based in the US) and Yeganeh Torbati (reporting from Turkey)—largely rely on telephone interviews (3/2/26, 3/27/26), along with “text messages and social media posts” (3/18/26).

This lack of on-the-ground coverage in Iran has directly resulted in slower coverage and confirmation of US/Israel culpability for deadly strikes. For example, it took five days for the Times (3/5/26) to report that the US was “most likely to have carried out the strike” on the school in Minab that killed at least 175 Iranian civilians, mostly schoolchildren.

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The Assisted Suicide Of Lofty State And Local Taxes

We get the government we choose to elect, hence the government we deserve. Voting for ever-higher punitive taxes on the rich is arguably a form of civic suicide. Consider that a wealthy New Yorker can get a raise of almost 40% just by moving.

That’s right. If moving eliminates a 14.8% top state and local tax rate, our top-tier taxpayer gets a 36% raise, not a 14.8% raise, by leaving. It’s doubtful if any of our city and state leaders have done this math, but it’s shocking.

Mamdani wants to take the top rate up another 2%, if not by the state then by the city, which would mean that our rich neighbor can get a 42% raise.

Here’s how the math works.

A rich New Yorker pays a maximum state and city income tax of 14.8%, on top of a maximum federal tax of 37%. But there are hidden taxes. Uncapped Medicare and Medicaid taxes push the marginal federal tax to 39.4%. If the income is earned on investments, the Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT, another gift from Obamacare) adds another 3.8%, pushing the top federal tax above 43%.

So, top-tier New York taxpayers may soon pay a marginal tax of 43% to the IRS and 17% to the city and state of New York. The combined 60% marginal tax rates mean they have the privilege of keeping 40 cents of each new dollar they earn. A move to one of the nine states with no income tax allows our taxpayer to keep 57% of every additional dollar of income, instead of 40%. Do the math. That’s a 42% raise.

Forget the argument about “paying their fair share.” “Fair” is an entirely subjective term. Your fair share of someone else’s money might be seen as a ripoff by them, especially if the money is spent less wisely than we might spend our own money. If you are rich and believe you’ve earned your money, will you consider leaving a state for a permanent 40% raise? Of course.

This is hardly a phenomenon unique to New York. California’s headline top rate of 13.3% becomes 14% with the phase-out of deductions. A Silicon Valley billionaire can keep 43% of each new dollar of income. Moving to Dallas or Miami, or Anchorage for the adventuresome, boosts this to 57%, a raise of almost 33%. This doesn’t even count the “please leave now” impetus of a “one-time only” 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Never mind that the fine print on the wealth tax initiative turns a 5% tax into a 50% expropriation for billionaires like the founders of Google, because their 30% voting share at Google, not their 3% equity ownership, is used to determine the tax.

People have called the United States “50 laboratories of democracy.” A state or a city is welcome to impose whatever taxes, regulations, or laws are allowed by its own bylaws or the national Constitution. And citizens are welcome to choose whichever states have taxes, regulations, and laws that they feel best align with their values and beliefs.

Nor is it unique to our various states, with their diverse tax regimes. Taxes drove the Rolling Stones to their own “Exile on Main Street,” relocating to France of all places to escape England’s 90% top tax rate (where a tiny drop to 85% would provide a 50% pay raise). Even Switzerland has divergent tax rates, ranging from 22% in Zug to roughly 40% in Berne, Geneva, and Vaud. Where do the billionaires tend to live? Zug.

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He Compared a Black Child to a Dog and Withheld Evidence in Death Row Cases. Now He’s Running for Judge.

Hugo Holland’s aggressive legal tactics made him one of Louisiana’s most renowned prosecutors and helped turn Caddo Parish, a majority Black community in the northwest corner of the state, into one of the nation’s leaders in death penalty convictions.

His nearly 40-year career, though, has been marked by controversies.

In at least two death penalty cases, Louisiana judges found that Holland withheld evidence. In a third, he secured the conviction of a Black 16-year-old, comparing the boy to a dog and telling the jury to “get rid of it”; prosecutors later admitted that Holland and his team had failed to turn over evidence.

Defense attorneys have also accused him of racism, pointing, for example, to a capital murder case several years ago in which Holland emailed one of them to say he was going to spend Veterans Day in his pickup truck looking for “a Black guy or a Mex-can.” Holland called it a joke.

Holland, 62, is now running for judge in the First Judicial District Court in Caddo Parish, and his nascent campaign appears to have substantial backing. He has raised more than $61,000 in less than two months, according to the first campaign finance report released in February — twice the amount many candidates running for the 1st Judicial Court spend in an entire campaign, said Jeffrey Sadow, an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University in Shreveport.

Holland’s donors include an assistant district attorney with the Caddo Parish DA’s office, the district attorney of neighboring Bossier and Webster parishes, a former state judge, and members of major law firms throughout the area.

Holland’s funding haul might prove to be so daunting that it scares off potential challengers, Sadow said, though candidates have until the end of July to enter the race. “It shows he’s got an awful lot of support and that he’s considered a quality candidate,” he said.

In addition to his robust campaign fundraising, Holland has been able to bring on the head of the local Republican Party, Matthew Kay, as his campaign chair. (Kay also served as an elector for Donald Trump in 2024.)

Holland declined multiple requests for comment about his candidacy and record as a prosecutor. Neither Kay nor nine of the 10 donors Verite News and ProPublica reached out to would respond or agree to speak about their support for Holland.

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Iran’s Alleged 47-Year War on America: Debunking the 1,050 American Deaths Canard

On the eve of the horrific World Trade center attack on September 11, 2001, the mullahs and their IRGC hooligans had been in power for nearly 22 years. Yet the record for that two decade interval subsequent to the founding of the Iranian Revolution does not even remotely establish that the regime in Tehran had been wantonly prosecuting a murderous war against Americans.

Thus, from the ballyhooed list of 1,050 Americans allegedly killed by the Iranian regime during the last 47 years about 29o of these deaths had occurred before 9/11. Yet more than 90% of these unfortunate fatalities occurred in Lebanon in the midst of the war between the indigenous Shiite/Hezbollah fighters and the Israeli occupiers, including 241 deaths of US servicemen at the Marine barracks.

So let us say it again. For crying out loud, US soldiers should never, ever have been in Lebanon. Moreover, by his subsequent action which amounted to “cutting and running” under the euphemism of repositioning these forces to a far away aircraft carrier, President Reagan himself admitted his mistake.

In a word, Israel’s long running battle with the PLO and other Palestinians, which had spilled over into Lebanon’s already fraught confessional fissures in the early 1980s, had no bearing on America’s homeland security. None whatsoever. Had Washington maintained the good sense to stay out of this fight, even the car bomb incidents at the US embassy during these years would surely not have occurred, either.

Again, this period also proves the hoary myth that Iranians or their proxies killed Americans because they hated our freedoms is just damn nonsense—casuistry confected by Israeli/neocon propagandists to fuel that Big Lie that Iran has been “attacking” America for nearly five decades. To the contrary, these deaths happened because Washington was meddling where it had no business intervening at all, thereby putting American servicemen and State department employees in harms’ way for no good reason.

During this 22-year period there were also a handful of incidents where Americans were killed in Israel or Gaza by Hamas operatives. Yet no one can argue with a straight face that without what was actually Iran’s limited, episodic and secondary support for Hamas (versus the much, much larger support from Sunni Gulf states) that Israel and Hamas would have laid down together in blissful harmony.

In fact, the perpetual war between Hamas and the Israeli govenrment would have been every bit as brutal and intense, and what were 7 American deaths attributed to Hamas during the 1990s would likely have happened anyway. Surely, the Iranian regime did not provide modest aid to Hamas in order to instruct it to go out and find visiting Americans to kill.

Indeed, even the 1996 killing of 19 American servicemen at Khobar Tower in Saudi Arabia by Shiite militants actually proves a wholly different point. As it happened, the Saudi’s were supremely embarrassed by the breakdown of security with respect to the American troops still domiciled there at a time about five years after the First Gulf War ended. So in short order they rounded up six Shiite militants who they claimed had been responsible for the attack.

The interesting point, however, is that the Saudi’s refused to extradite these admitted members of Saudi based Hezbollah al-Hajaz, but instead extracted “confessions” from them with respect to their alleged Iranian-backing while in Saudi prisons. The only time America officials were ever allowed to see them or question them was on a single occasion from behind a one-way mirror in response to be pre-submitted questions. None of them ever faced US officials, prosecutors or courts without Saudi chaperones.

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‘Refuses to enforce its own precedents’: Sotomayor torches SCOTUS for inaction on ‘significant’ buried evidence in slaying of teen pizza delivery driver

Justice Sonia Sotomayor registered a sharp dissent Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the case of a man sentenced to life in the 1998 slaying of a teenage pizza delivery driver in Louisiana, accusing her colleagues of refusing to “enforce its own precedents.”

Joined only by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor argued that it made little sense for the Supreme Court to effectively free James Skinner’s co-defendant from death row with a decision a decade earlier but to leave Skinner in prison for the rest of his days without parole, when both men were incarcerated for the murder of 16-year-old Eric Walber based on “similar sets of evidence, which centered on the same two eyewitness accounts.”

“Equal justice under law, the phrase engraved on the front of this Court’s building, requires that two codefendants, convicted of the same crime, who raised essentially the same constitutional claims, receive the same answer from the courts,” Sotomayor said. “Here, because the Louisiana courts refused to apply this Court’s Brady precedents, including a decision by this Court involving the very same evidence, Skinner risks spending the rest of his life in prison while [Michael] Wearry walks free,” Sotomayor said. “Because the Court refuses to enforce its own precedents, I respectfully dissent from the denial of certiorari.”

Under Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors must hand over “Brady material,” evidence that is exculpatory or tends to be favorable to the defense. The “withholding of evidence that is material to the determination of either guilt or punishment of a criminal defendant violates the defendant’s constitutional right to due process,” the Supreme Court held in 1963.

The evidence of Brady violations in the case of Michael Wearry was egregious to the point that the Supreme Court ruled his conviction and death sentence had to be set aside in 2016, and a new trial was “required.” Of particular concern was what the state hid from the defense about its star witness, a “jailhouse snitch” named Sam Scott who two years after the slaying claimed a lesser level of responsibility in Walber’s death while pointing to Wearry, Skinner, and three others.

That story not only changed, but was also wrong about basic facts. For instance, the witness claimed Walber was shot to death — but the evidence showed that on that April 1998 day, the Albany High School football player was filling in for someone who didn’t show up for work at Pizza Express and was beaten and run over by his own car, local CBS affiliate WAFB reported. Skinner was allegedly behind the wheel.

Further explaining why the Supreme Court found Scott’s account “dubious,” one of his versions of the crime said Randy Hutchinson — who had “undergone knee surgery to repair a ruptured patellar tendon” nine days earlier — ran after the pizza delivery driver.

Worse yet, Scott had made statements behind bars that he wanted to “‘make sure [Wearry] gets the needle cause he jacked over me,'” an inmate reported. Neither the defense nor the jury were aware of this evidence.

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OneTaste Founder Nicole Daedone Gets 9-Year Prison Sentence

Nine years in prison for preaching unpopular ideas about sexuality? That’s the sentence that a judge imposed today on Nicole Daedone of OneTaste, a company built on orgasmic meditation (OM) and other unconventional wellness practices. Daedone has also been ordered to forfeit $12 million—which is how much she got for selling the company in 2017—and to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution.

The government will say that this is about human trafficking. But that’s just a sign of how “human trafficking” has become a catchall term for sex-tinged antics that prosecutors want to punish.

In this case, no one has accused Daedone and her colleague/co-defendant Rachel Cherwitz of violence. No one has accused them of confining victims, or of withholding identity documents or other items that employees might have needed to get away.

The alleged victims in this case could come and go as they pleased. They were adult women. They had college degrees, outside professional opportunities, and sometimes even independent wealth. They testified in court that they remained affiliated with OneTaste—some as employees, some as volunteers, some simply as people who took classes from the company or lived in group houses that it maintained—because they believed in its mission, believed in Daedone and Cherwitz, or wanted to maintain social status within the OneTaste community.

The government’s assertions about how Daedone and Cherwitz employed “coercion” in this case are a huge affront to freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Prosecutors suggested that the ideas Daedone and Cherwitz spread served as a form of brainwashing. These supposedly dangerous ideas include such things as being open to new sexual experiences and the notion that engaging in daily OM—a 15-minute, partnered, clitoral stroking session—could focus the mind and help empower practitioners, especially women. Daedone and Cherwitz appear to sincerely believe these ideas, which they saw as rooted in both Buddhism and feminism.

The government’s case was also a huge affront to the idea that women are fully agentic people capable of consent, sexual and otherwise. Prosecutors suggested that anxiety about being shunned by the OneTaste community was a harm so powerful that grown women were effectively “trafficked” by it. They argued that these women’s consent—to OM, to participate in sexual fantasy scenes, to enter into and out of relationships, to engage in sex acts with OneTaste members or donors, or to pay for OneTaste classes—was rendered null by the force of fear of social exclusion and/or fear that stopping OM and other OneTaste practices would have a negative impact on their lives.

Ultimately, the case portends a dangerous new standard for what counts as forced labor and what counts as harm under federal trafficking statutes.

Sentencing for Daedone started this morning, following a June 2025 conviction on one count of conspiracy to commit human trafficking. Cherwitz, convicted of the same, is scheduled to be sentenced this afternoon.

The government sought 20 years in prison for Daedone and more than 15 for Cherwitz—basing calculations in part on alleged conduct for which they were not even charged, let alone convicted. Judge Diane Gujarati denied the government’s request for a sexual abuse enhancement based on untried conduct.

The government’s star witness was to be a woman named Ayries Blanck, whose journals were a big part of the prosecutors’ case (and, also, of a Netflix documentary). Prosecutors would eventually disclose that Blanck had fabricated evidence, producing journals she said she had handwritten in 2015 but had actually composed much later. After heavily featuring Blanck and her journals in their arguments leading up to the trial, prosecutors declined to call Blanck as a trial witness and said they no longer believed in the authenticity of portions of her journals. The case nevertheless proceeded, and now a woman is heading to prison for nearly a decade.

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