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SOCIALISTS GOING DOWN: Spanish Anti-Corruption Police Raid the Headquarters of PM Sánchez’s PSOE Party in Probe of Illegal Funding

The Spanish Socialists are crumbling under multiple corruption investigations.

Today (24), Spanish anti-corruption police have raided the headquarters of PM Pedro Sánchez’s socialist PSOE party.

This is yet another damaging development in a season of scandals that have sparked talks about the government having to resign and hold snap elections later this year.

Visegrad24 on Telegram:

“The agents were sent to secure evidence for an ongoing probe into the alleged illegal financing of the country’s ruling party.

The raid comes just days after the socialist former PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was indicted on corruption charges linked to the Venezuelan regime.

Today’s raid is linked to an unrelated investigation overseen by Spain’s Anti-Corruption Prosecutor.

Many in the closest circle around PM Sanchez, including his wife and brother, are already under criminal investigation for corruption.”

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Federal Court Strikes Down Landmark Fluoride Ruling on Technicality — ‘Not the Science’

 A federal appeals court has vacated a landmark decision that found fluoridated drinking water poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not challenge the substance of the lower court’s findings — that fluoride is toxic to children and ought to be regulated. Instead, the court based its decision on procedural issues related to the lower court’s handling of the litigation.

The case will now go back to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where District Judge Edward Chen will be required to exclude all scientific evidence that became available after 2020.

Michael Connett, attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender the court “instructed Judge Chen to travel back in time to 2020 and make this ruling based on a stale factual record.”

Connett said the directive to ignore years’ worth of evidence on fluoride’s dangers runs counter to the intent of the TSCA — which is to protect hundreds of millions of Americans from substances that are harmful to human health.

The federal appeals court ruling, handed down late Thursday, stemmed from a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) brought by consumer advocacy groups including Food & Water Watch, the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), and Moms Against Fluoridation.

The groups sued after the EPA refused to consider their 2016 citizens’ petition asking the agency to regulate fluoride.

After two bench trials, Chen ruled that fluoride at the federally recommended concentration of 0.7 milligrams/liter (mg/L) posed an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health and ordered the EPA to regulate it accordingly.

However, the 9th Circuit panel said the lower court violated the “party presentation principle” — a legal doctrine requiring courts to act as neutral arbiters rather than taking control of a case’s factual development.

Connett said the decision was “a very expansive and unprecedented application of the party presentation principle.” He said that to date, “this principle has really only been applied to situations where judges raise new legal issues, not where judges use procedural mechanisms to resolve the issues presented.”

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Pete Hegseth Details Trump’s Orders for Department of War to Protect Nigerian Christians

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailed President Donald Trump’s instructions for the Department of War to protect Christians in Nigeria who were being targeted and murdered by ISIS terrorists.

Giving some examples of what the establishment media does not focus on when it comes to President Trump and the Department of War, Hegseth pointed to the plight of Christians in Nigeria.

“I just want to note one more thing to give you a sense of how committed this president is. Maybe a year ago he heard the call of Nigerian Christians who were being targeted and killed by ISIS in Nigeria, and he said, ‘Pete, I want the War Department to focus on ensuring that we do everything we can to protect those Christians,’” Hegseth revealed during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting.

“Partnerships like that can take time behind the scenes, but he never wavered on it,” he continued, explaining that they put out their assets and have successfully killed one of the ISIS heads inflicting harm on Nigerian Christians.

“Over the last month — and there hasn’t been much coverage of this — we killed ISIS’ number two in Nigeria, who is most responsible for killing Christians and trying to target the U.S. homeland, and have since — because of the intel we gathered — killed hundreds of ISIS members who were targeting and killing Christians in Nigeria, creating a whole new opportunity there,” the secretary revealed.

“So, there’s a lot of things we do that the media pays attention to, and a lot of things the President empowers the department to do on behalf of the American people that he deserves great credit for,” Hegseth continued, noting that the American people are happy with what the president is doing as evidenced by the increased recruitment rates.

“Thanks to the investments that you’ve made in this department, firing on all cylinders for the second year in a row, we’re at historic recruitment rates,” Hegseth said. “Last year we said that here, this year we beat it even faster. The American people are excited about what you’re bringing to our department.”

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Supreme Court rejects Meta’s appeal in Vermont social media addiction case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a push to avoid a lawsuit alleging that Facebook and Instagram harmed young users, a decision that comes as social media companies increasingly face legal scrutiny.

Parent company Meta Platforms Inc. appealed after Vermont’s highest court allowed a suit filed by its attorney general in 2023 to move forward. The company is facing similar lawsuits from states across the country, accusing it of knowingly designing addictive features.

Meta had argued that it can’t be sued in Vermont court because neither the company nor the app design has specific ties to the state. Vermont countered that the sites’ large number of teen users gives its courts jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal in a brief, unexplained order, as is typical. The procedural decision comes after court losses for Meta and YouTube in social media addiction lawsuits in California and New Mexico.

Vermont’s lawsuit was filed after an investigation by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in several states. Newspaper reports based on Meta’s own research also found that the company knew about the harms Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues. One internal study cited 13.5% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse.

Almost all teens ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. report using a social media platform, with about a third saying they use social media “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.

Meta, for its part, has said that it has already introduced dozens of tools to support teens and their families and suggested it would have worked with the states on standards for youth social media use.

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark applauded the decision, saying it affirms “that companies that choose to do business in Vermont, like Meta, can be held accountable when they harm kids.”

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Food Stamp Fraud Pipeline Exposed: U.S. Taxpayer-Funded Groceries Shipped Overseas And Sold For Profit

Food stamps and food pantries are intended to keep struggling Americans fed.

What we found is that, in some communities, that food never reaches an American table. Instead, it gets shipped overseas and sold for profit.

The scheme works like this. Residents in cities like Lawrence, Massachusetts collect food through two channels: purchasing it at local markets using EBT cards, and picking it up for free from food banks and churchesThat food is then packed into large blue barrels, dropped off at shipping companies, and sent by container ship to the Dominican Republic. Once it arrives, it is sold for profit in local stores. The people doing this see nothing wrong with it. In many cases, they do it openly.

According to a local that assisted us with this story, this fraud has been happening for over a decade.

Over the course of several weeks, Muckraker Foundation traced the full pipeline from food pantry lines in Lawrence, Massachusetts, through shipping warehouses in New York, to store shelves in Santo Domingo. This is what we found.

Lawrence, Massachusetts

Lawrence is a small city about 30 miles north of Boston. It has the highest concentration of Dominican immigrants of any city in Massachusetts, and the highest rate of SNAP enrollment in the state.

John has been delivering goods in Lawrence for over 11 years, six days a week, 35 stops a day. He knows the community intimately.

“I’ve been witnessing the Dominican residents going to food bank lines and collecting non-perishable goods,” he told us, “and then packing it in barrels and in boxes, and then they ship it back to the Dominican Republic.”

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“She’s Lying” – Former Biden Official Reacts to Jill Biden’s Claims She “Never” Saw Joe Biden Stroke Out Before Or After the 2024 Debate

A former Biden official reacted to Jill Biden’s interview with CBS Mornings in which she claimed she thought Joe Biden had a stroke during the 2024 debate.

Dr. Jill told CBS Mornings host Rita Braver that she thought Joe Biden was having a stroke during the 2024 presidential debate.

Jill Biden insisted she never saw Joe Biden stroke out like this before or after the June 2024 debate.

“I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never since,” Jill Biden told CBS News Sunday Morning’s Rita Braver.

“I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death,” Jill Biden added.

A day after the debate, Jill Biden got on stage and praised Joe for answering all the questions perfectly.

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Breaking Free of Psyops: Who is Causing the West’s Drug Epidemic?

Spoiler: it’s not China. In this episode of Breaking Free of Psyops, I trace North America’s drug crisis from the British Empire’s original opium wars through the CIA’s Air America heroin pipeline, Afghan poppy fields guarded by Western troops, and the Sackler family’s OxyContin empire.

We review how Afghan opium production exploded the moment US forces arrived in 2001 and collapsed again the moment the Taliban returned in 2023, a fact the Pentagon’s trillion-dollar budget apparently could not replicate.

We also review some of the actual proven players fueling today’s fentanyl crisis: Khalistani organized crime networks in British Columbia, money-laundering banks including TD Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan and Bank Coutts- the official bank of the Royal Family, as well as a pharmaceutical company that paid a fine smaller than its profits. Major shipping companies such as Maersk, Mediteranean Shipping Company (which partnered with Blackrock to snach up China’s international ports), have actually been caught smuggling billions in drugs, yet we are supposed to believe that Beijing is out to get us.

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75% of Blairmore residents want a coal mine — so why are outside activists allowed to block it?

The people of Blairmore already had their say. They want the coal mine.

While celebrity activists from outside the region push for a province-wide referendum to stop a proposed coal mine in Alberta’s Crowsnest Pass, locals in Blairmore voted nearly 75 percent in favour of the project. But apparently, that democratic result only counts if the “right” people vote the “right” way.

On tonight’s episode of The Gunn Show, longtime energy advocate and Oil Sands Strong founder Robbie Picard talks about his work amplifying the voices of the people who actually live in the region and stand to benefit from the jobs, investment and economic activity tied to the proposed mine.

Instead, the debate has been hijacked by celebrity opposition campaigns led by musicians like Corb Lund and George Canyon, whose province-wide citizen initiative petition seeks to override the wishes of the local community through a referendum driven largely by outside activists.

Picard argues this fight is about more than coal. It’s about whether rural Albertans still have the right to shape their own economic future without being steamrolled by urban activists, celebrities and political pressure groups who parachute in for the headlines and leave locals to deal with the consequences.

If “local voices matter” is more than just a slogan, why are the people of Blairmore being ignored after already voting overwhelmingly in favour of the project?

And why is Alberta’s resource economy subjected to veto campaigns, while the communities that depend on these projects are treated like their opinions don’t count?

Robbie Picard joins me to discuss the growing backlash from rural Albertans who are tired of being talked down to by people who don’t live there, don’t work there and won’t suffer the economic fallout if these projects are killed.

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Homeland Security ‘Drawing Up Plans’ to Suspend International Flights Into Sanctuary Cities Until They Stop Protecting Illegal Aliens

The Trump administration is considering plans to suspend immigration and customs processing at airports in Democrat-run sanctuary cities.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the administration is drawing up plans to halt processing at airports in Democratic-run jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

Mullin confirmed the plans in an interview on Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“We’re currently drawing up plans to say listen, in these sanctuary cities, where the local, radical left Democrats aren’t allowing us to do our job and enforce federal laws, then we shouldn’t be processing international flights into their cities either,” he explained.

“Because they don’t want us to enforce immigration, but they want us to process immigration at their facilities? Nothing about that makes sense to me.”

The proposal would impact some of the country’s busiest international gateways, including airports in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Philadelphia, and Newark.

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Carney says majority will not be enough for Alberta to secede, citing the Clarity Act

Bloc Québécois MPs are calling on Prime Minister Mark Carney to drop the Clarity Act, arguing it complicates secession referendums by adding conditions beyond a simple majority vote. Carney, however, said the Clarity Act does not apply to the current Alberta independence question and defended the Act’s requirements.

During Question Period in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Carney said the 50 per cent “plus one” threshold, a standard measure of majority support, does not automatically apply to questions of provincial independence, as set out in the Clarity Act.

The Act, passed in response to a 1998 Supreme Court ruling on Quebec secession, states that even if a majority votes to leave the federation, Parliament must determine whether the result reflects a “clear majority,” taking into account factors such as voter turnout and the size of the margin.

Bloc MP Christine Normandin pressured Carney in the House of Commons on Tuesday after he declared that he would use the Clarity Act to interfere in an Alberta referendum to separate from Canada.

“Any province or Quebec has the right to ask its citizens the question of its choice in a referendum. Citizens have the right to answer freely, and the majority wins with 50% of the votes plus one,” Normandin said in French. “ This concerns only two groups, the government that asked the question and the citizens who answered it. That is democracy. It’s that simple.”

Carney stated that the current question before the Alberta government is a “question on the question” and the Clarity Act wouldn’t apply, but that a “clear majority” on a secession question would need to be recognized by parliament for a province to leave confederation.

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