NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Russiagate was worse than Watergate The efforts to undermine Trump’s 2016 election win were even more sinister than we realised. Sean Collins US Correspondent

Posted By on August 14th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/13/russiagate-was-worse-than-watergate/

Russiagate is back. US attorney-general Pam Bondi has ordered a grand-jury investigation into an alleged conspiracy by the Obama administration and the national-security services to tie Donald Trump to Russia. Bondi’s move follows a criminal referral from director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. It also comes after a slew of new information releases since early July. These include Gabbard’s declassification of intelligence on the Obama administration’s conclusion that Russia sought to help Trump in the 2016 election; CIA director John Ratcliffe’s review of the intelligence-community assessment (ICA), ordered by then president Obama in December 2016; and a newly declassified annex to the Russiagate report, produced by special counsel John Durham in 2023.

While the Department of Justice has not yet brought indictments, the alleged crimes could be serious – including offences punishable by imprisonment. Last month, Gabbard accused Barack Obama – along with former director of national intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director John Brennan and former FBI head James Comey – of leading a ‘treasonous conspiracy’. This was, she said, ‘essentially a years-long coup against the duly elected president of the United States, subverting the will of the American people and attempting to delegitimise Donald Trump’s presidency’. On his Truth Social account, Trump posted a joke video depicting FBI agents handcuffing Obama in the Oval Office, to the tune of ‘YMCA’.

Unsurprisingly, the key figures targeted by Gabbard have rejected her allegations. A spokesperson for Obama called them ‘bizarre’ and ‘a weak attempt at distraction’. Brennan and Clapper wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling the allegations ‘patently false’. They even claimed they never relied on the now-debunked Steele dossier to establish their assessment of Trump’s ties to Russia – a claim that is itself ‘patently false’, and which suggests their dishonesty continues to this day.

Likewise, the mainstream media have essentially concluded that there is nothing to see here. They have either ignored the latest Russiagate disclosures or sought to discredit them as just the latest in a long line of Trumpist ‘conspiracy theories’. Trump is rehashing the past, they say. He is seeking retribution for grievances he cannot let go of. It’s all just a diversion from the Jeffrey Epstein story. Tulsi is trying to get back in Trump’s good graces. And so on.

It is convenient for the New York Times and the Washington Post to wave away the latest revelations as ‘Russian disinformation’, as it means they do not have to engage directly with the facts. After all, their own reporters were complicit in perpetuating the Russiagate hoax, gleefully spreading the falsehoods the Obama team and the security services fed them. These two newspapers even won Pulitzer prizes for their coverage. Coverage which we now know was false.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Renu Mukherjee Trump Holds Universities Accountable for Discrimination The president announced in a memo that universities receiving federal financial assistance will be required to report admissions data.

Posted By on August 14th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-admissions-data-memo-universities-race-discrimination

In a memorandum to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon last Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that for the first time, universities receiving federal financial assistance will be required to report data on applicants, admits, and enrollees by race to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

The memorandum, entitled “Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions,” is the Trump administration’s latest and most comprehensive effort to enforce Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a 2023 Supreme Court decision that banned the use of racial preferences in university admissions. These data are expected to include students’ GPAs and standardized test scores, which will be pivotal to assess compliance with the ruling. Going forward, both the government and American families will be able to point to these data to show evidence of potential discrimination.

“It should not take years of legal proceedings, and millions of dollars in litigation fees, to elicit data from tax-payer funded institutions that identifies whether they are discriminating against hardworking American applicants,” said McMahon in a press release. “We will not allow institutions to blight the dreams of students by presuming that their skin color matters more than their hard work and accomplishments.”

Over the last two years, universities have gone above and beyond to evade the Court’s ruling. They’ve added racially coded essay prompts to their applications, eliminated standardized testing requirements, and incorporated racial proxies, such as whether a student comes from a single-parent household, as considerations in the admissions process.

Some institutions have been strikingly bold in their defiance. Take, for example, Johns Hopkins University, which in the 2023-2024 admissions cycle asked applicants to “tell us about an aspect of your identity (e.g. race, gender, sexuality, religion, community, etc.) or a life experience that has shaped you as an individual and how that influenced what you’d like to pursue in college at Hopkins.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Gerrymandering, Race Pandering, and Political Meandering Gerrymandering wars heat up as both parties redraw districts to cement power, with Republicans flipping liberal tactics and Democrats scrambling to keep their edge. By Arthur Schaper

Posted By on August 14th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/14/gerrymandering-race-pandering-and-political-meandering/

Gerrymandering, the political practice of carving up awkward-looking legislative districts to benefit one party’s political power, has slithered into the public conversation once again.

Some of us remember the history behind this political practice, starting with the governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry. Democratic-Republicans want to shore up their new power in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Federalist opponents of the maneuver mocked one of the serpentine-like districts created by the party, christening the shape with claws, wings, and a razor-sharp mouth, calling the monstrosity “The Gerrymander.”

Why has the discussion roared into the public consensus this time? It started with the Texas legislature’s efforts to redraw its state’s districts after a request from the Trump Administration to review the fairness of the districts.

Yes, there is gerrymandering in Texas, but not the way that liberal reformers want to portray the problem. Consider some of the urban, Democratic Congressional districts in Texas: the 29th, 32nd, and 33rd, for example, are obscenely drawn. These contortions are examples of race pandering, or “race-mandering,” which result from the tortured misuse of the Voting Rights Act and fears of ongoing legal challenges from left-wing legal activists demanding more majority-minority districts. This kind of lawfare recently forced Alabama and Louisiana to create gerrymandered districts.

Texas is not alone in this fight, either. Ohio has to redraw its Congressional districts. This opportunity could create three more Republican-leaning Congressional seats, while the Texas legislature advances a map creating five more GOP seats. Of course, Governor Abbott and the Republican leadership have floated increasing the GOP advantage to six to eight seats if absent Democrats refuse to come back to work in their vain efforts to break legislative quorums. Democrats have not helped their cause by fleeing to Illinois, whose districts are so gerrymandered that even Stephen Colbert poked fun at them.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who Has Been Busy Destroying Democracy? Democrats decry “destroying democracy” while dismantling long-standing institutions, weaponizing agencies, and undermining the very systems they claim to defend. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on August 14th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/14/who-has-been-busy-destroying-democracy/

“Destroying democracy”—the latest theme of the left—can be defined in many different ways.

How about attempting to destroy constitutional, ancient, and hallowed institutions simply to suit short-term political gains?

So, who in 2020, and now once again, has boasted about packing the 156-year-old, nine-justice Supreme Court?

Who talks frequently about destroying the 187-year-old Senate filibuster—though only when they hold a Senate majority?

Who wants to bring in an insolvent left-wing Puerto Rico and redefine the 235-year-old District of Columbia—by altering the Constitution—as two new states solely to obtain four additional liberal senators?

Who is trying to destroy the constitutionally mandated 288-year Electoral College by circumventing it with the surrogate “The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact?”

Does destroying democracy also entail weaponizing federal bureaucracies, turning them into rogue partisan arms of a president?

So who ordered the CIA to concoct bogus charges of “collusion” to sabotage Trump’s 2016 campaign, the 2016-2017 transition, and the first 22 months of Trump’s first term?

Who prompted a cabal of “51 former intelligence officials” to lie to the American people on the eve of the last debate of the 2020 election that the FBI-authenticated Hunter Biden laptop was instead the work of a “Russian intelligence operation?”

Who ordered the FBI to connive and partner with social media conglomerates to censor accurate news deemed unhelpful to the 2020 Biden campaign?

Who pulled off the greatest presidential coup in history by using surrogates in the shadows to run the cognitively debilitated Biden presidency, then by fiat canceled his reelection effort, and finally anointed as his replacement the new nominee Kamala Harris, who had never won a single primary delegate?

Who ordered FBI SWAT teams to invade the home of a former president because of a classification dispute over 102 files out of some 13,000 stored there?

ISRAEL, OPINION Comments turned off

The futility of compassion for those who want to kill you Jonathan Tobin

Posted By on August 14th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/the-futility-of-compassion-for-those-who-want-to-kill-you/?utm_campaign=

Palestinians cheered the atrocities of Oct. 7, have been complicit in the fate of the hostages and support Israel’s destruction. Do Jews owe them aid?

As far as most American Jews are concerned, it’s probably the most Jewish thing any of the numerous organizations that represent them could do. UJA-Federation New York has announced the intended donation of $1 million to help Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. This humanitarian gesture was widely applauded by many of its donors and community members.

Eric Goldstein, the group’s CEO, was careful to note that blame for the suffering of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza belongs to the Hamas terrorists who led the attacks on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, which many Palestinian civilians joined. And he echoed the frustration that friends of Israel feel about the way mainstream media coverage of the conflict generally omits that fact while instead seeking to put the onus on the Jewish state for the suffering caused by the ensuing war. He also refuted the false claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

A moral compass

Still, Goldstein acknowledged that although much of the world has “lost its moral compass” when it comes to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Jews shouldn’t also lose theirs.

That’s why the umbrella organization of Jewish philanthropies in greater New York—home to the largest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel—felt itself obliged to come to the aid of the people of Gaza who have been caught in the crossfire. The money will go to IsraAID—Israel’s largest nongovernmental humanitarian aid organization—to provide food, medicine and the installation of filtration systems to enable safe drinking water for displaced families in Gaza.

Helping people in need is in keeping with Jewish traditions that treat tzedakah—acts of justice and charity—as among the most important obligations and virtues to which Jews should aspire. According to Goldstein, the imperative is: “We must hold tight to what has always anchored the Jewish people: the belief that all human life is sacred.”

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

The media’s Ponzi scheme of lies Al Jazeera is the Islamists’ principal weapon in the war of information to destroy Israel and the west Melanie Phillips

Posted By on August 14th, 2025

http://melaniephillips.substack.com

In the Gaza war, journalism has become a veritable Ponzi scheme of lies. It uses terrorists posing as journalists to tell lies, it lies about the evidence that they were terrorists and it lies about those lying about the lies.

Israel said it had conducted a targeted killing of the al Jazeera ‘‘journalist” Anas al Sharif because he was also a Hamas commander. It produced screen shots identifying al Sharif as a leader in a Hamas rocket-launching squad and member of the Nukhba force, the stormtroopers who led the depraved attack on Israelis on October 7 2023. It showed that he had joined Hamas in 2013 and even revealed his military ID number.

It further emerged that al Sharif was named in a lawsuit by American victims of October 7 against al Jazeera for providing “substantial assistance” to Hamas. The lawsuit quotes messages al Sharif posted on Telegram on October 7 as the massacre of 1200 Israelis developed. He wrote in one message:

Nine hours later and the heroes are still roaming the country, killing and capturing… God, God, how great you are.

He wrote in another:

It is a jihad, a jihad of victory and martyrdom. Allahu akbar and thank God.

Before the attack, Sharif posted photos of himself smiling alongside Hamas leaders, including the eliminated October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar.

None of that cut any ice with Western media outlets that vilified Israel for targeting a journalist. Instead, the media dismissed all this evidence with declarations that Israel’s claims couldn’t be verified and that it had provided “no proof”.

In other words there is simply no evidence, however overwhelming, that is allowed to challenge the foundational lie pumped out by the media echo-chamber that the Israelis are brutal killers mowing down the innocent for daring to resist.

So the media went into mourning for their slain champion of “truth”, presenting that view of al Sharif as unchallengeably correct while ignoring or rubbishing as an Israeli cover-up the evidence that he was a senior Hamas operative.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Bumbling Obama aides actually admit Russiagate was a smear campaign against Trump By Miranda Devine

Posted By on August 14th, 2025

https://nypost.com/2025/08/13/opinion/obama-aides-admit-russiagate-was-a-smear-campaign-against-trump/

“That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.”

It’s hard to believe that the Russiagate plotters are so stupid, but the declassified documents tumbling out of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s files show that, while they had a lot of power and managed to hide their nefarious activities for almost a decade — President Barack Obama’s henchmen were none too bright.

The latest tranche of declassified emails has Obama’s DNI, James Clapper, telling then-Director of the National Security Agency Mike Rogers essentially to shut up and put his name to the intelligence community assessment (ICA) that Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan were cooking up, at Obama’s direction, to concoct a narrative that Russia had tilted the 2016 election to help Trump win.

“Understand your concern,” Clapper wrote to Rogers on Dec. 22, 2016, in the waning days of the Obama administration.

“It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page and are all supportive of the report — in the highest tradition of ‘that’s OUR story, and we’re sticking’ to it.’ ”

Compromised

Rogers had kicked off the conversation by laying out his concerns that normal tradecraft was being compromised and that his team had not had “sufficient access to the underlying intelligence and sufficient time to review that intelligence.”

“I’m concerned that, given the expedited nature of this activity, my folks aren’t fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all of the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments,” Rogers wrote.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Kidnap, Rape, Convert to Islam, and Marry Underage Christian Girls Welcome to Pakistan. Faraz Pervaiz Roshan

Posted By on August 14th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kidnap-rape-convert-to-islam-and-marry-underage-christian-girls/

The harrowing cases of Mahak Siddique and Alshaba Adnan expose a deeply disturbing pattern of violence, exploitation, and systemic failure in addressing crimes against underage girls from minority communities in Pakistan. Babar son of Mukhtar, operating under aliases such as Ghulam Rasool and Muhammad Babar Ali, emerges as a serial predator who manipulates religious institutions to perpetrate kidnapping, forced conversion, rape, and child marriage. These acts, committed with impunity and aided by accomplices including Muhammad Aftab, Shan Masih, and Khurram Masih, reveal a chilling disregard for human dignity and legal accountability.

The incidents underscore a broader societal and institutional crisis. The coercion of vulnerable girls like Mahak and Alshaba into forced conversions and marriages, under the guise of religious legitimacy, highlights the misuse of religious authority to justify heinous crimes. The failure of local law enforcement to act swiftly and decisively—evidenced by the delayed FIR in Alshaba’s case and the lack of immediate action in Mahak’s—points to systemic negligence, if not complicity, within the justice system. This is compounded by the absence of robust mechanisms to protect minority girls, who face intersecting vulnerabilities due to their age, gender, and religious identity.

From a legal perspective, the invocation of the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929 and Pakistan Penal Code sections (365-B, 376, 498-B, 295-A) is a necessary step, but the enforcement of these laws remains inconsistent. The trauma inflicted on Mahak and Alshaba, coupled with the displacement of their families due to threats, demands urgent and comprehensive intervention. The call for a dedicated task force to safeguard minority girls is not just warranted but essential to prevent further atrocities.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

1,000 People Died While New York Attorney General Chased Trump It’s time for Attorney General Letitia James to pay the price for her crimes. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on August 14th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/1000-people-died-while-new-york-attorney-general-chased-trump/

“We have to stop believing or following the rules. Break the rules,” New York Attorney General Letitia James recently told a radical leftist magazine. And she’s been doing exactly that.

Since taking office, the state’s top prosecutor has promoted one politically motivated prosecution after another, targeting, among others, the NRA and the Trump family, even as crime in the state soared to horrifying new heights. An exclusive Freedom Center investigation showed that 1,000 people died while Attorney General Letitia James neglected her duties.

Now James and her media allies are crying because the Justice Department is investigating her.

And no one deserves it more than her.

The New York attorney general’s spokesperson claimed that the federal investigation of the worst attorney general in the country was a “weaponization of the justice system” and “any weaponization of the justice system should disturb every American.”

That is true. It’s why James’ campaign to dissolve the National Rifle Association (NRA) and plunder its assets as part of her promise to eliminate the group for entirely political reasons was so disturbing. It’s why when she ran on promising to “take on President Donald Trump” and fulfilled that promise through politically motivated investigations of his organizations and businesses was equally disturbing. And it’s why the Justice Department has issued subpoenas and is looking into the misconduct of her office in both politically motivated prosecutions.

The so-called ‘fraud’ case against President Trump was illegitimately framed and prosecuted. It should never have existed and would never have existed except for purely political reasons.

Attorney General James now faces her own investigation for mortgage fraud for falsely listing a home for her niece as her ‘primary’ residents. Then there are the documents misstating details in a loan document about a house in New York and James’ father falsely claiming her as his wife on yet another loan document in what looks like a pattern of serial mortgage fraud.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel, Protector of the West, Treacherously Undermined by France, UK and Canada by Lawrence A. Franklin

Posted By on August 13th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21826/israel-protector-of-the-west-treacherously

The Druze, who are Arabs descended from Shia Islam, do not consider themselves Muslim. Therefore the other Arabs in Syria do not consider them Muslim either. For months “government forces” have been slaughtering them. Islamic terrorists appear to believe that they are obligated to slaughter anyone not Muslim:

Something appears wrong with this picture. Al-Sharaa promised Trump that he would protect Syria’s minorities; so far, he does seems to be doing everything but that (here, here and here) . The situation sems increasingly reminiscent of an old Soviet KGB recommendation to just keep telling them what they want to hear, then do anything you want.

In the latest of these opposition demonstrations, on July 21, dozens of protestors shouted “Hamas Out.” There is still strong reason to doubt, however, however, if Gazans would be more favorably inclined toward Israel if Hamas were gone.

Israel is already over-extended in defending virtually every minority in the area – while receiving nothing but opprobrium from most of the insensate media and many in Europe. They seem not to realize that they are the beneficiaries of Israel’s actions, even as they keep on giving away their continent to newcomers who seem intent on replacing Europe’s values with their own.

The question remains, however, if Al-Sharaa in Syria is not still just a terrorist, but in a suit and tie.

Israel has not only been protecting virtually every persecuted minority in the Middle East; it has, with the help of US President Donald J. Trump, also been protecting the West itself. Has anyone heard a breath of gratitude? On the contrary, many leaders in the West — most prominently President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, followed closely by Prime Minister Micheal Martin of Ireland and Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre of Norway — have doubled down on the side of terrorists, this time Hamas. Macron’s announcement to recognize a fantasy “Palestinian state” not only demolished the negotiations that were reportedly nearing completion for a ceasefire and the return of the 50 remaining hostages; it also might cause the death by starvation, shooting or explosives possibly strapped to them, of the 20 hostages believed to be alive. In so doing, they are betraying not only the sole tiny country that is sacrificing its own people to protect them, but their own increasingly abused citizens as well.