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Palm Beach Elections Volunteer Arrested for Stealing Computer Equipment and Encrypted Access Key Ahead of Special Election Won by Democrat

A Palm Beach, Florida, elections volunteer was arrested for stealing computer equipment encrypted access key ahead of a special election where a Democrat won by 800 votes.

John Panicci was arrested on Friday for taking sensitive computer equipment and other supplies on March 19 ahead of the March 24 special election.

As previously reported, a Democrat flipped a Florida state house district that includes President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Emily Gregory won state house district 87 in last Tuesday night’s special election.

President Trump won this district by 11 points in 2024.

Last Monday, ahead of the election, President Trump endorsed Republican Jon Maples for state house district 87.

However, Emily Gregory defeated Republican Jon Maples last Tuesday night.

NBC Miami reported:

A man accused of stealing election computer equipment in Palm Beach County was arrested on Saturday, authorities said.

John Panicci was charged with taking damaged computer equipment, supplies/electronic devices.

According to detectives, on Friday, they arrived at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office after receiving reports that sensitive computer equipment had been stolen.

During their investigation, detectives said that on March 19, the Elections Office was doing a training session for volunteers who were going to help with the election scheduled on March 24.

Detectives said that during the training session, Panicci stole an encrypted access key from a voter registration terminal.

The key that Panacci allegedly took was programmed only for the training databases, but there were concerns that if someone else could reverse engineer the encryption, they could then use it on a voter registration kiosk for malicious purposes.

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The not-so-hidden agenda behind Mamdani’s budget bumbling

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is making a show of cutting the budget, with videos of him looking for millions under sofa cushions.

He’s pretending he’s leaving no stone unturned to close a $5.4 billion budget gap.

Don’t buy it. These are token gestures meant to suggest the city has cut all it can, giving Albany cover to justify what he hopes comes next: Mamdani’s tax hikes on high earners and employers.

Sure, cutting low-value government spending deserves some credit, but the problem is that Mamdani’s savings are mostly speculative or trivial.

Even the largest cut so far, $100 million from removing ineligible health-care dependents, would only materialize if auditors find such dependents.

And even if he reaps all the $1.7 billion in savings that he’s seeking, it would still leave that $5.4 billion hole untouched.

In other words, his budget assumes those savings are real, even though they may never materialize, leaving not a $5.4 billion but a $7.1 billion gap.

Meanwhile, he’d be spending on things like a three-year, $1.86 billion, no-bid deal with the hotel industry to provide homeless shelters, including for migrants, who now have no time limit on their stay.

He somehow found another $260 million for a new “Mayor’s Office of Community Safety,” an office with just two staffers.

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Second Plane Grounded, Isolated, and Declared a ‘Potential Hijacking Incident’ in Atlanta

Just hours after an American Airlines flight was diverted to Detroit with a disruptive passenger prompting an FBI response, a second U.S. commercial flight declared a potential hijacking incident upon landing in Atlanta on Sunday evening.

Frontier Airlines Flight 2539 (flight number F92539), an Airbus A320 flying from Columbus, Ohio (CMH) to Atlanta (ATL), landed at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport around 5:09 p.m.

Shortly after touchdown, the crew declared a potential hijacking and security concern.

The aircraft was immediately directed to isolation away from normal airport traffic and followed by emergency vehicles to an inactive runway.

Video and tracking data show the plane remained isolated on the remote runway for nearly two hours as law enforcement and airport personnel responded.

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North Carolina Youth Group Trained Teens as Young as 14 to Become ‘Abortion Doulas’ in Two-Day Event at UNC Charlotte

A recent report has uncovered that a youth collective affiliated with Advocates for Youth hosted a two-day in-person “Abortion Support Training” at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in November, explicitly open to participants as young as 14 years old.

The event was organized by the Youth Abortion Support Collective (YouthASC), a nationwide network of young people under the umbrella of Advocates for Youth.

The training aimed to teach attendees the tools, resources, and skills needed for “abortion support” work, including how to become an “abortion doula,” companion, or support person.

According to the official event invitation, the training was described as follows:

“This training is for young people ages 14-24 and will provide an introduction to the tools, resources, and skills for abortion support work. We welcome anyone who is interested in becoming an abortion doula, companion, and/or support person. The training will center youth-led abortion support efforts, specifically for high school and college students, but we will also discuss how to offer support as community members and continue advocacy after leaving campus.”

The invitation further explained the role of an “abortion doula” using a definition from Dopo, the partner organization that helped develop the curriculum:

“Anyone that can physically, emotionally, and/or spiritually hold space for someone before, during, and/or after abortion.”

The program covered clinical and non-clinical settings for procedural and medical abortions, as well as strategies for organizing campus communities to build networks.

The training was promoted as part of a broader national effort by YouthASC to make “abortion doula” training accessible to activists aged 14–24. Advocates for Youth has run similar youth-focused programs, including multi-week online series and in-person sessions at other campuses.

The group has also hosted panels on “abortion funding for minors, challenges young people face in accessing care, and the state of abortion access in our region.”

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White House renamed ‘Epstein Island’ on Google phones – WaPo

The White House was briefly renamed ‘Epstein Island’ for some Google Pixel phone users, the Washington Post has reported.

The term is used to refer to the Caribbean island of Little St. James, which had been owned by the late convicted pedophile Jeffry Epstein. According to the prosecutors, it served as the venue for sex trafficking and other abuses involving some high-profile figures in business and politics.

WaPo said in an article on Saturday that when its journalist tried calling the White House switchboard earlier this week, the name on screen indicated that they were contacting “Epstein Island.”

Only users of Google’s Pixel phones experienced the issue. For those calling the presidential residence from other Android phones and iPhones, no name was displayed, the report read.

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AOC Faces House Ethics and FEC Complaint for Spending Campaign Funds on Doctor who Specializes in Ketamine Therapy

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has come into the crosshairs of an ethics complaint for using campaign contributions for personal use after allegedly spending almost $19,000 on a psychiatrist who is known for specializing in Ketamine therapy.

The National Legal and Policy Center filed a joint complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) and the House Ethics Committee on Friday.

It reads, “NLPC alleges that AOC’s expenditure of almost $19,000 of campaign funds in 2025 to psychiatrist Dr. Brian W. Boyle ostensibly for ‘leadership training and consulting’ was expended instead for personal psychiatric services provided to AOC or members of her campaign staff. Accordingly, those expenses were also misreported by the campaign committee with the FEC. NLPC requests that the FEC and OCC immediately investigate the facts and circumstances of these payments and impose appropriate penalties and disciplinary sanctions against AOC.”

However, “there is reason to believe that Dr. Boyle does not provide campaign ‘Leadership Training and Consulting,’” the complaint continues, highlighting his specialty in depression and his status as a “leading authority” on Ketamine therapy.

The complaint further provides receipts of the expenditures from FEC data.

Paul Kamenar, the group’s general counsel, told the New York Post, “AOC’s spending almost $19,000 in campaign funds for a shrink appears to violate both the FEC and House Ethics rules prohibiting use of such funds for personal purposes.”

He added, “While AOC has been in therapy in the past, she should spend her own money if she needs psychiatric treatment from Dr. Brian Boyle, whose specialty includes narcissistic personality disorder.”

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IDF suspends entire reserve battalion after CNN crew attack, in unprecedented disciplinary move

An unprecedented decision by the Israel Defense Forces has seen an entire reserve battalion suspended from activity following an incident in which a CNN crew was attacked, sparking international outrage.

The IDF suspended all soldiers from Reserve 941st Battalion, known as “Netzah Yisrael,” whose members are graduates of the Netzah Yehuda framework.

The incident occurred while a CNN team was covering what was described as an illegal settler takeover of nearby land. According to reports, the journalists were confronted by IDF troops who attempted to halt their work, aimed weapons at them, and in one case placed a cameraman in a chokehold, damaging his equipment.

During the confrontation, soldiers reportedly told the journalists that all of the West Bank belongs to Jews and said they were seeking revenge for the killing of Yehuda Sherman, who police said was murdered in a ramming attack last Saturday.

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US ‘worked directly’ with terrorists in Syria on Israel’s behalf – Trump’s ex-counterterrorism chief

The US “worked directly with Al-Qaeda” and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) to topple former President Bashar Assad and destroy Syria, US President Donald Trump’s former counterterrorism chief, Joe Kent, has said.

Kent, who resigned as head of the US National Counterterrorism Center in protest of the US-Israeli war against Iran, made the remarks in an interview with MintPress News on Friday.

The former senior official reiterated his take on the Iran conflict as the latest in a series of wars waged by the US on behalf of Israel, preceded by the Second Iraq War and the Syrian Civil War, in which Washington actively backed terrorist groups, he said.

“We came in and we said: We’re going to work with the Israelis, but we’re also going to have to work heavily with the Sunni population on the ground in Syria to create an uprising,” he added.

“And that’s where ISIS came from. We worked directly with Al-Qaeda; Hillary Clinton’s emails confirm this. The operations that we were doing to support the so-called Free Syrian Army, and there were some moderates there, but the most effective guys initially were Al-Qaeda and then eventually ISIS.”

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Bank of America to Pay $72.5M Settlement Over Epstein Lawsuit

Bank of America is paying $72.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit claiming it enabled sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The lawsuit claimed Bank of America ignored “obvious red flags” while doing business with Epstein and his associates, according to the New York Post.

The bank, so the lawsuit claimed, could have brought law enforcement down upon Epstein sooner if it had adopted a see-no-evil policy. Epstein died in 2019 in a federal jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Bank of America is the third bank to settle a lawsuit linked to Epstein. JPMorgan Chase ponied up for $290 million. Deutsche Bank settled for $75 million.

In a statement, a Bank of America representative said, “While we stand by our prior statements made in the filings in this case, including that Bank of America did not facilitate sex-trafficking crimes, this resolution allows us to put this matter behind us and provides further closure for the plaintiffs,” according to The New York Times.

Bank of America became Epstein’s bank after JPMorgan cut ties with him.

The settlement would pay “all women who were sexually abused or trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, or by any person who is connected to or otherwise associated with Jeffrey Epstein or any Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking venture, between June 30, 2008 and July 6, 2019, inclusive,” according to CNBC.

Lawyers estimate “that there are at least 60 women who were victimized by Epstein between” those dates, the filing said.

The lead plaintiff  alleged that after meeting Epstein in 2011, and through 2019, “Epstein sexually abused Jane Doe on at least 100 occasions, including but not limited to, forcibly touching her, forcibly raping her, and forcing her to engage in sexual acts with other women for his own depraved sexual gratification.”

The suit says that in May 2013, the woman, known in court papers as Jane Doe opened a bank account at Bank of America at the direction of Epstein’s accountant and an immigration attorney to defraud immigration officials.

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A month of war has shown the strategic failure of attacking Iran

After one month of war against Iran, one conclusion stands out more clearly than anything declared in all the press briefings: Neither the US nor Israel entered this confrontation with a plan for a long war.

The campaign was conceived as a short and brutal episode, a shock operation designed to break Iran’s will, force Tehran back to the table on humiliating terms, or in the most ambitious fantasies circulating around Donald Trump’s political circle, trigger internal collapse and perhaps even regime change. Israel’s aim was somewhat different, though complementary. It wanted to inflict the maximum possible damage on Iran’s military and strategic infrastructure, weaken it for years, and reshape the regional balance through force. Yet in the first month of fighting, the central assumption behind both approaches began to collapse. Instead of folding and getting coerced into submission, Iran resisted like a state fighting for survival.

What doesn’t kill Iran makes it stronger

American planners appear to have imagined a limited punitive maneuver lasting perhaps a week or two. The logic was familiar and, from their point of view, elegant. Strike hard, generate fear, disrupt command structures, raise the economic cost, and create a moment in which Iran’s leadership would face a stark choice between capitulation and disaster. Some in the Trump camp seem to have believed that Iran’s political system was brittle enough to crack under pressure. That assumption now looks less like strategy and more like projection. Washington entered the war expecting quick leverage rather than a drawn out contest of endurance.

Israel, for its part, appears to have approached the opening phase with fewer illusions about diplomacy and more determination to degrade Iran by force. The strategic instinct in West Jerusalem was not primarily to negotiate with Tehran from a position of strength, but to use the cover of an American-backed offensive to hit as much as possible and to push Iran backward in military, technological, and geopolitical terms. In that sense, Israel’s goals were harsher and more concrete. But even here the first month exposed a contradiction. A state can damage Iran. It can kill, disrupt, sabotage, and bomb. Yet weakening Iran is not the same thing as breaking Iran. A campaign that hurts but does not decisively cripple can still end by strengthening Tehran politically, morally, and strategically if the attacked state manages to survive, retaliate, and turn endurance into legitimacy.

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