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Massie suggests ‘wrong person’ arrested in Jan. 6 DC pipe bomb case

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that he does not believe federal authorities arrested the true culprit behind two pipe bombs planted outside the Democratic and Republican national committee offices on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

“I believe FBI arrested the wrong person in the J6 pipe bomb case,” Massie wrote on X, linking to an analysis by the conservative outlet The Blaze that he said found “stark physical differences” between Brian Cole Jr., who was arrested, and the suspect shown in videos released by federal and local law enforcement.

Cole was arrested in December after what government officials called an “aha moment” that led to a breakthrough in the nearly five-year investigation. The pipe bombs had become a lingering mystery of the days surrounding the riot.

Prosecutors have said that Cole gave a “detailed confession” after he was arrested, allegedly telling investigators he became “bewildered” by claims the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump and thought someone needed to “speak up” for people who believed the allegations of election fraud. He was the first suspect publicly identified by law enforcement. 

However, Cole has pleaded not guilty to two federal charges, and his attorneys have also suggested the government apprehended the wrong man. They have pointed to his diagnoses for autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder as reason for any suspicious behavior.

The Hill requested comment from the FBI and Justice Department.

The analysis by The Blaze claimed to show that Cole’s physical dimensions, gait, posture and mannerisms are at odds with the hoodie-clad suspect seen in videos released by law enforcement, though the outlet acknowledges that “poor video quality” complicated its efforts to review the footage.

Cole faces counts of transporting an explosive device in interstate commerce and attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials. The first count carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, while the second count carries a five-year minimum sentence and up to 20 years.  

A judge ordered him to remain detained ahead of trial, after finding that there are “no conditions of release” the court could impose that would “reasonably assure the safety of the community.” His lawyers are seeking further review.

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GrapheneOS Defies Age Verification Surveillance Laws, Vowing to Protect User Privacy Worldwide

GrapheneOS has a simple answer to the wave of age verification laws moving through US state legislatures and already live in Brazil: no.

The privacy-focused Android fork announced last Friday that it won’t implement the age data collection these laws demand. “GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone around the world without requiring personal information, identification, or an account,” the project stated.

“If GrapheneOS devices can’t be sold in a region due to their regulations, so be it.” That’s a blunter response than most OS developers are willing to give, and it’s worth understanding what it’s actually refusing.

Brazil’s Digital ECA (Law 15.211) came into force on March 17, hitting OS providers with fines of up to R$50 million, roughly $9.5 million per violation, for failing to build age verification into device setup.

California’s Digital Age Assurance Act, AB-1043, signed by Governor Newsom in October 2025 and effective January 1, 2027, goes further: it requires every OS provider to collect a user’s age or date of birth during account setup, then push that data to app stores and developers through a real-time API.

Colorado’s SB26-051 cleared the state senate on March 3 with similar demands. The architecture these laws collectively envision is an age-linked identity layer baked into the operating system itself, present before you’ve opened a single app.

GrapheneOS is developed by the GrapheneOS Foundation, a registered Canadian nonprofit.

California’s AB-1043 carries civil penalties of up to $2,500 per affected child for negligent violations and $7,500 for intentional ones, enforced by the state attorney general. The Canadian nonprofit status provides some distance but not a guarantee.

The stakes grew more concrete after GrapheneOS and Motorola announced a partnership at MWC on March 2, bringing the hardened OS to future Motorola hardware and ending GrapheneOS’s long exclusivity to Google Pixel devices. A GrapheneOS-powered Motorola phone is expected in 2027.

Once a major hardware manufacturer ships devices with GrapheneOS pre-installed, those products need to comply with local regulations in every market where they’re sold, or Motorola will have to restrict sales geographically.

The defiant stance that’s easy for a nonprofit software project becomes a commercial problem for a global device manufacturer.

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Trump Officials Flee Into the Bunker

In the last few days, drones have reportedly been spotted over Fort Lesley J. McNair, in Washington, DC, where Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth live. Officials are worried, and so am I, though for different reasons. 

Did you know our secretary of state and secretary of defense live on an army base? 

And they’re not the only ones.

Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, and other senior Trump officials have moved into military housing. Tulsi Gabbard and Russell Vought are browsing the available housing, but have not moved yet. One more senior official, unidentified, has been advised to move by security officials.

The official excuse is that they face threats from a range of purported foes, including, we are told, cartels, foreign adversaries, and protesters. 

But I can’t help feeling we’re not getting the real story. And, frankly, what that might be chills me. 

Why does a king (and his courtiers) go into his castle and pull up the drawbridge? 

Because they see themselves as besieged — or are planning to do something they know will cause them to be besieged.   

Harvard professor Steven Levitsky — an expert on threats to democracies — made this sobering observation:

It is something you never see in a democracy. Government officials live on military bases or other sort of fortified zones [only] in authoritarian regimes.

In authoritarian regimes.

Coming at a time when fair elections are openly threatened and our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms challenged at every turn, when we see this group withdraw to a hardened inner sanctum, we’d better be paying close attention. 

But thus far little attention has been paid to this matter, and what it may mean. 

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Bronze Age Artifact Made from ‘Space Metal’ Unearthed at a Sacrificial Site is Confirmed as the Oldest of Its Kind

A curious Bronze Age artifact unearthed at a ceremonial site in southwestern China has now been identified as the earliest known and the largest of its kind, according to newly published research.

Crafted from meteoritic iron, the rare discovery, described as resembling an “axe-like” instrument, was found at the Sanxingdui site in China’s Sichuan Province, one of the country’s most famous archaeological areas. The confirmation of the artifact’s age offers unique new perspectives on metallurgical practices that occurred early in Bronze Age China.

Discovery at Sanxingdui

Sanxingdui, which archaeologists believe was active from 2800 to 600 BCE, is renowned for the early evidence of industrial practices they have uncovered there, as well as its ancient sacrificial pits and other ceremonial features.

A range of items crafted from bronze have been recovered as well, and in the case of the meteoritic iron blade, analysis has shown that the object was crafted in a period that predates the use of iron smelting in this part of the world.

A key indication of the extraterrestrial origin of the metal used to craft the artifact is its high concentrations of nickel and iron, which appear to rule out the use of early smelting techniques.

While this strongly supports that the object was crafted from meteoritic iron, Dr. Zishu Yang, the co-author of a recent study detailing the discovery, recently said in a statement that current analysis is “insufficient to definitively classify the specific type of meteorite,” and that the exact variety of meteorite the material was sourced from remains unknown.

Going forward, additional analysis that Yang and his colleagues plan to undertake may help reveal further clues, including possible correlations between the unique artifact, its discovery location, and ancient Chinese historical records that may document meteorite impacts from which the iron could have been sourced.

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Air Force Officer Continues His Fight Against Vindictiveness and Intolerance Over COVID-19 Shot Mandate

An Air Force officer continues to battle one of the most egregious cases of vindictiveness and intolerance stemming from the military’s 2021 COVID-19 shot mandate, which was rescinded in January 2023 and deemed “unlawful as implemented” across all military departments in May 2025.

Following up on a story from September 2025, The Gateway Pundit spoke to Captain Anthony Monteleone to get an update on his case at the Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records (AFBCMR).

On July 8, 2025, as directed by the Department of War, Capt. Monteleone submitted his packet to the AFBCMR to correct the harms from the unlawful mandate in collaboration with his attorney, Jeffrey Addicott, Director of the Warrior Defense Project, and Mike Rose, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS).

Two months later, on September 03, 2025, the AFBCMR denied his application, stating that his request “falls outside the jurisdiction of the AFBCMR,” and then reversed itself and accepted his case due to the directives from President Donald Trump and War Department leadership.

However, a grueling nine months after he submitted his package, and despite Congressional Representatives and multiple high-ranking Air Force officials reaching out to the AFBCMR on several occasions on behalf of Capt. Monteleone to stress the immediate need for relief in his case, the Board continues to delay the processing of his package.

As reported multiple times by The Gateway Pundit, numerous service members claim that the BCMR process is largely ineffective and that the Board’s willingness to engage amounts to little more than a superficial effort.

In short, despite the explicit directives from President Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata, and the Secretary of the Air Force Troy E. Meink, Capt. Monteleone continues to have active derogatory paperwork in his personnel file. He is still experiencing significant and ongoing damage to his career due to the unlawful COVID-19 shot mandate, which is solely attributed to the prolonged time it is taking for the Board to review his case.

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Pfizer Says Lyme Vaccine Missed Trial Target, Will Still Seek Approval

Pfizer and its partner Valneva said on March 23 that their experimental Lyme disease vaccine did not meet the target in a clinical trial, but that the results were strong enough that the firms will seek regulatory approval for the shot.

The vaccine, known as LB6V, was about 75 percent efficacious in reducing confirmed Lyme in recipients compared with placebo recipients, the companies said. The efficacy was measured one day after the fourth vaccine dose, and was similar to the 73 percent efficacy observed 28 days after the fourth shot.

The drugmakers said that because there were fewer Lyme cases than expected during the trial, dubbed VALOR, the predetermined statistical target was not met. However, because the efficacy was “clinically meaningful,” the companies expressed confidence in the shot and said they would be filing for approval.

“The efficacy shown in the VALOR study of more than 70 percent is highly encouraging and creates confidence in the vaccine’s potential to protect against this disease that can be debilitating,” Annaliesa Anderson, Pfizer’s chief vaccines officer, said in a statement.

Valneva CEO Thomas Lingelbach said: “[The results] bring us a step closer to our goal of delivering a much-needed vaccine.

“We are grateful to our partner Pfizer for their strong commitment which we both share in developing this vaccine as quickly as possible.”

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Hegseth Makes Troops Prove “Sincerely Held” Faith in Latest Beard Crackdown

The latest edict from beard-obsessed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth adds strict new regulations to his crusade on facial hair, which rights groups have characterized as an attack on troops’ civil liberties.

In a March 11 memo, Hegseth, who has made grooming and appearances a central focus in his time at the helm of the U.S. military, raised the bar to qualify for a religious exemption to his blanket ban on beards. The guidelines lay out a strict new process by which service members may apply for a religious exemption and subject those who’ve already received one to a reevaluation, arguing they need to ensure their religious beliefs are “sincerely held” and have a genuine conflict with the grooming standards.

Service members who have spoken against Hegseth’s focus on grooming standards say his restrictions on beards are exclusionary to people from religious communities that require adherents to follow specific tenets of faith around beards, hair, and other grooming matters.

Sikhs, for example, who have served in the U.S. military since at least World War I, are required by their faith not to cut the hair on their head, to keep a beard, and to wrap their long hair in a turban. Members of many schools of Muslim tradition likewise have rules around beards and hair length.

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British Royal Family Is Planning Legal Ways To Prevent Sarah Ferguson From Publishing ‘Tell-All Memoir’ With Unlimited Damaging Potential

Fergie can reignite the ‘Epstein crisis’ and take it to new heights.

The shockwaves from the revelations contained in the US DOJ-released ‘Epstein files’ have greatly subsided, and we’ve come to a point where both the British government and the Royal family dare dream of a moment when they will have put this behind them.

That is – if Fergie does not get in the way.

Former Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, has had her reputation totally ruined with the tsunami of new damaging information released about her and her former husband, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

But now, she wants to put out her version of facts.

OK! Magazine reported:

“Sarah Ferguson is said to be preparing a dramatic return to the public stage with a tell-all memoir – a move sources tell OK! has triggered unprecedented legal planning within the royal household as King Charles and Prince William consider ways to prevent the publication of explosive claims about the monarchy.”

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Paedophile migrant who failed to disclose child sex offence after coming to UK wins appeal against deportation as judge rules it was ‘honest mistake’

A paedophile migrant who failed to disclose his conviction for molesting a five-year-old to UK authorities has won the right to fight against his deportation. 

An immigration judge ruled Edi Cardoso Ramos, 29, made an ‘honest mistake’ when he did not mention his criminal past while applying for leave to remain in the UK. 

He had been convicted of a ‘serious sexual offence’ against a five-year-old in his home country of Portugal for which he received a three-year suspended sentence.

His sordid past only came to light when Ramos was caught in the UK with a prostitute and a police background check uncovered the conviction, prompting the Home Office to start deportation proceedings.   

But Ramos has now successfully appealed against his deportation, after a judge accepted that he had misunderstood an official form asking about his previous convictions and concluding that ‘the threat he represents is not a present threat’.

It means his case will be heard from afresh and he will have the chance to fight deportation.

The Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber heard that Ramos was convicted of sexually abusing his child victim in 2014 when he was 19 years old, having committed the offence in 2012.

Ramos was given a three-year suspended custodial sentence which did not activate because he complied with its requirements.

He migrated to the UK in 2018, just a year after the sentence expired, but when he applied for leave to remain in 2020 he denied having any prior convictions on the form.

He would later claim this was because he thought the form was asking if he had any prior convictions in the UK specifically.

Ramos was then caught in 2024 with a prostitute in his car and accepted a police caution as his punishment.

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“Renewable” energy policies can’t work – because of physics

Chapter 1: The Physics That Demolishes Energy Policy, Or Why You Can’t Boil An Egg In A Swimming Pool

By Richard Lyon, 3 March 2026

On Saturday, I told you I’d written a book and promised to walk through its core arguments chapter by chapter. Some long-standing readers will recognise what follows from a post I wrote in 2024. This is the sharper, tighter version that became the book’s opening chapter – the foundation everything else rests on. If you’re new here, start here.

There is far more heat energy in a swimming pool than in a pan of boiling water. You can boil an egg in the pan. You can’t boil an egg in the pool. And if you doubled the size of the pool, you’d double the energy available – and still have a cold, raw egg.

This is not a riddle. It is the single most important concept in the energy debate, and almost nobody making energy policy understands it.

Gradient

To do useful work, energy must flow from a region of high concentration to a region of low concentration. This difference is called the energy gradient. The steeper the gradient, the more work you can extract. A shallow gradient means the energy is real but useless.

Think of a ski slope. A run that falls 1,000 feet over 1,000 feet of distance is steep enough to let gravity do the work. A ski queue that falls 10 feet over 100 feet is too shallow – you have to shuffle. Now join 100 ski queues end to end. The total height difference is 1,000 feet – the same as the ski run. But do you glide down it? No. Because the gradient hasn’t changed. It’s still a long, flat shuffle.

This is exactly what happens when you build more wind turbines. A gas flame at 1,500°C in a 15°C room is a ski run – a vast temperature difference that a power generation system can exploit. A wind turbine extracts energy from air moving at perhaps 25 miles an hour. That’s real energy, but it’s a tiny gradient – the difference between a breeze and no breeze. Build a thousand turbines and the total energy grows, but the gradient of each one hasn’t changed. You haven’t built a ski run. You’ve built a thousand ski queues.

Density

Energy gradient tells you whether a source can do work, and therefore why the sheer quantity of energy available tells you almost nothing about how much useful work you can extract from it. Energy density tells you whether you can build a civilisation on it.

Diesel contains roughly 44 megajoules per kilogram. The best lithium-ion battery manages about 1. That is a ratio of 44 to 1 – and the gap is not an engineering problem. It is a chemistry problem. Carbon-hydrogen bonds release enormous energy when broken. Shuttling lithium ions between electrodes releases much less. The periodic table is not subject to software updates.

This is why you can drive from London to Edinburgh on 50 litres of diesel, but need a battery weighing half a tonne to do it in an electric car. It’s why aviation runs on kerosene and always will. It is not a matter of waiting for better technology. It is a hard physical constraint.

Every successful energy transition in history has moved up the density ladder: wood to coal, coal to oil, oil to nuclear. Each step concentrated more energy into less mass, enabling capabilities that were physically impossible before. Railways. Aviation. The globalised supply chain. The direction has always been the same: concentration.

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