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About theartfuldilettante

The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.

AOC Gets Torched by MLB Legend

Infamous “Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently issued a reaction to the attack on individuals calling for the release of Israeli hostages still in Hamas captivity during a demonstration held in Boulder, Colorado, this past weekend. She stated in a post on social media that she was “horrified” by the attack.

“My heart is with the victims and our Jewish communities across the country,” the post said. “Antisemitism is on the rise here at home, and we have a moral responsibility to confront and stop it everywhere it exists.”

One person who wasn’t impressed by the reaction was former Major League Baseball star Kevin Youkilis. The two-time World Series winner, who is himself Jewish, called out AOC and demanded to know what she, personally, has done to confront those who are calling for intifada in the city of New York.

“Jews are targeted with violence and it’s the same virtue signal post time and time again,” he wrote in his response to her reaction on X. “What have you done to confront those calling for intifadas in NYC? Until you create a plan of action, your repeated virtue signaling after the violence occurs holds no weight.”

Youkilis is primarily known for the time he spent playing for the Boston Red Sox, but the final year of his career was spent playing for the New York Yankees.

Youkilis was asked what action he wanted to see Ocasio-Cortez take, to which he responded, “Confront the radical mobs chanting for intifadas in NYC.”

“That would be brave leadership, but we know politicians, on both sides of the aisle, shy away in fear of losing votes and power,” he added.

“In the midst of last year’s chaos at Columbia University, Ocasio-Cortez called anti-Israel agitators on campus ‘peaceful.’ The message came as Jewish students were recommended to stay home as students were caught on camera sympathizing with Hamas. The FBI described Sunday’s violence as a ‘targeted terror attack.’ Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, was accused of using homemade incendiary devices to light eight people on fire as they gathered to advocate for the return of Israeli hostages in Hamas captivity in a daytime attack at Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall,” Fox reported.

Videos of the Boulder attack show a man, shirtless, standing with a menacing posture and holding two more devices after the first assault on bystanders, while someone in the crowd of people recorded him.

Local authorities eventually swarmed the scene, and Soliman surrendered. The suspect first arrived in the U.S. on a non-immigrant visa in August 2022. That visa expired in February 2023, but instead of leaving the country, he decided to stay.

Soliman then received a work permit from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in March 2023 that was valid for a year, expiring in March 2024. Again, he decided to stay in the country illegally.

The suspect is now looking at multiple charges for his actions on Sunday.

Advocates had gathered for a Run for Their Lives event, which is a walk/run to help raise awareness and call on the government to provide assistance in freeing Israeli hostages who are in Hamas captivity. Victims of Soliman’s attack range in age from 52 to 88. One of them was previously listed in critical condition.

Staff, Trending Politics

Musk Blasts “Big, Beautiful Bill”

  • Elon Musk blasted the big tax-and-spending-cut bill backed by President Donald Trump.
  • Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” is a “disgusting abomination” that will boost the federal deficit, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said.
  • Musk until recently led DOGE, the Trump administration’s effort to cut government spending.

Musk on Tuesday tore into the massive tax-and-spending-cut bill backed by President Donald Trump, calling it a “disgusting abomination” that will explode federal budget deficits.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote in a post on his social media site X.null

“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” added the Tesla and SpaceX CEO.

“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know

Musk led the Trump administration’s DOGE effort to cut government spending and waste until last week, when his term as a temporary “special government employee” expired.

Musk added in a follow-up post that the bill “will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly high spending.

The White House quickly shrugged off the criticism from Musk, a vocal Trump supporter who spent over $250 million backing Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

“Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said when asked about the post.

“It doesn’t change the President’s opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill, and he’s sticking to it,” she said.

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a fiscal hawk and one of only two Republicans to vote against the House version of Trump’s bill, wrote, “He’s right,” in response to Musk’s post.

Musk replied to Massie: “Simple math.”

Earlier Tuesday, Trump lashed out at Sen. Rand Paul after the Kentucky Republican criticized the bill’s provision to raise the debt ceiling by trillions of dollars.

Trump accused Paul of failing to understand that the bill would spur “tremendous GROWTH.”

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.

Kevin Breuninger










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Ukraine’s Drone Attack on Russia’s Bomber Fleet Won’t Win the War

Andrew Latham

ByAndrew Latham

Key Points – Ukraine’s recent “Operation Spiderweb” drone strikes deep into Russia, targeting strategic bomber bases, are characterized as “pure theatre” and strategically meaningless despite generating significant media attention.

-The targeted bombers (Tu-95s, Tu-22m) play a peripheral role in the current conflict, primarily launching occasional cruise missiles.

-These symbolic attacks do not alter the fundamental battlefield reality where Russian forces continue to make slow, methodical advances in key areas like Donbas, pursuing limited objectives through a war of attrition.

-Russia, worried, but undeterred by these strikes, remains focused on consolidating its gains, while Ukraine’s reliance on such actions suggests a shift towards optics over substantive military outcomes.

Education Dept Nixes Pride Month for ‘Title IX Month’

The Department of Education announced Monday that the month of June will now be recognized as “Title IX Month,” commemorating the 53rd anniversary of the federal civil rights measure being signed into law while highlighting how the previous administration undermined efforts to protect girls and women under the law.

Title IX Month replaces Pride Month celebrated by the Department of Education under former President Joe Biden, who in 2022 declared June LGBTQ Pride Month. From there, Biden’s DOE Pride Month celebrations focused on gender ideology, critical race theory, and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.  Not this June.

The Department is recognizing June as ‘Title IX Month’ to honor women’s hard-earned civil rights and demonstrate the Trump Administration’s unwavering commitment to restoring them to the fullest extent of the law,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a release.

The Department of Education on Monday announced the first of its monthlong initiatives: Title IX investigations of the University of Wyoming and Jefferson County, Colorado, Public Schools for allowing biological males into female-only spaces.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation of the University of Wyoming for allegedly allowing a biological man to join the campus sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma.

“A school receiving federal funding that supports, sponsors, or promotes a sorority or fraternity, must meet its obligations under Title IX to protect its students from sex-based harassment and sexual assault, regardless of the sorority or fraternity’s policy,” the DOE wrote.

The investigation into Jefferson County Public Schools centers on district policy “that students will be assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share a student’s ‘gender identity,’ thus removing the safeguard of single-sex overnight accommodations.”

The case involves an 11-year-old girl who would have had to share a bed with a biological on an overnight school trip. The school district’s definition of a girl includes boys who identify as girls.

“Title IX provides women protections on the basis of sex in all educational activities, which include their rights to equal opportunity in sports and sex-segregated intimate spaces, including sororities and living accommodations,” McMahon wrote. “This Administration will fight on every front to protect women’s and girls’ sports, intimate spaces, dormitories and living quarters, and fraternal and panhellenic organizations.”

Mark Swanson 

Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.

EPA, NOAA Face Steep Cuts in Revised Trump Budget Plan

Several federal environmental agencies are facing cuts of at least 28% under the Trump administration’s new budget blueprint that was released late Friday.

Departments such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Park Service would see deep and specific cuts for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1 under a budget proposal released by the Office of Management and Budget, The Hill reported Monday.

The EPA would see a 34.7% cut to its payroll for science staff and staff working on environmental programs and environmental management. The Park Service would see a 30% cut to its staff in charge of its system operations. And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would get a 28.4% cut to its staff operations, research and facilities payroll.

But the cuts aren’t just for staff. A number of offices related to energy and environmental research, as well as disaster response, are reduced or eliminated, The Hill reported. The new blueprint for example eliminates the NOAA’s office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and it also cuts federal assistance at the Federal Emergency Management Agency by 31.9%.

White House budget requests are typically seen as a signal of an administration’s priorities rather than a realistic road map because Congress controls appropriations, The Hill reported. The Trump administration has signaled it is willing to go further to challenge congressional authority by instituting massive layoffs at many agencies with more on the horizon.

Michael Katz 

Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.

Hamas Lies Published by U.S. Media Become for Terrorism


In Boulder, Colorado, eight elderly Jews were torched alive in a park. They wore red T-shirts bearing the names of hostages seized by Palestinian terrorists over 600 days earlier. Some carried Israeli flags. Walking peacefully in memory and solidarity, they were attacked with fire as a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails created flames as high as a tree. An 88-year-old Holocaust survivor was among the injured. The attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, is reported to be an Egyptian national in the country illegally. He now faces murder charges.

This third such targeted attack on American Jews in three months confirms a disturbing trend. In April, the home of Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor was firebombed shortly after he hosted a Passover meal. In May, two Israeli embassy staffers were shot dead outside the Capital Jewish Museum. And this weekend, the fire returned – this time in Boulder. This time in broad daylight. This time with the specific intent to incinerate Jewish pensioners gathered to remember kidnapped civilians.

At a shooting range in South Florida, I met Jews who on October 7th, 2023 chose to arm themselves for the first time – a story I heard over and over as I met with members of the Jewish community, from lawyers to PR men to moms and dads. They’re training. Securing homes, temples, and schools as if a war has already begun. Because this week, we learnt it has. Had there been a single armed guard among the elderly marchers in Boulder, it’s possible we would be talking today about a foiled terror attack – not about charred flesh and burned lives.

There has been some outcry. Officials have condemned the attacks. Statements have been issued. But even as Jews in America are being attacked with increasing regularity, we have not seen the birth of a “Jewish Lives Matter” campaign. No nationwide reckoning. No marches filling the streets. The continued targeting and killing of Jews does not appear to summon the same political urgency or cultural solidarity as other forms of hate. That silence is only broken by the continued death chant of “Free Palestine”.

One answer lies in the narrative war unfolding alongside the real one. Just hours before the Boulder attack, major media outlets rushed to report that Israeli tanks had opened fire on starving Palestinians at an aid distribution site in Rafah. The headlines were brutal, the claims unchecked. There were no videos. No forensic evidence. The sources? “Local health officials” and “witnesses” – terms that in Gaza almost always mean Hamas.

Hours later, drone footage emerged showing a very different reality: quiet crowds, no gunfire, no chaos. The Israeli footage was not conclusive, but it did raise a simple, devastating question – was there even a mass casualty event? And if there was, what happened? To date, no reliable, verified evidence has surfaced. Yet the narrative had already run its course. Yet more tales of Israeli cruelty had already circled the globe. Jews, once again, had been painted as butchers. Hours later, in Boulder, someone lit a match.

Ambassador Mike Huckabee condemned the media’s role in this cycle. “Reckless and irresponsible reporting by major US news outlets,” he said, “are contributing to the antisemitic climate that has resulted in murder… and terror.” These aren’t exaggerations. They’re recognitions of cause and effect. When falsehoods from Hamas mouthpieces are repeated uncritically by CNN, the New York Times, or the Associated Press, they become fuel. Fuel for slogans. Fuel for rage. Fuel, quite literally, for firebombs.

Yet while the press was crying massacre, something real was taking place in Gaza – something almost entirely ignored. For the first time since the war began, a new aid distribution model – designed by the US and implemented with Israeli coordination – has begun to work. It bypasses Hamas. It is transparent. And its early results look promising.

In just one week of operations, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has distributed nearly six million meals via 87,360 aid boxes. On Sunday alone, one distribution site – SDS1– delivered 1,159,200 meals without a single security incident. No violence. No deaths. No chaos. Prices of basic goods in the area have reportedly dropped by over 35 percent. GHF is now expanding to four more sites, including northern Gaza. This is what actual humanitarianism looks like: structured, verifiable, non-political. And it’s working. Not in theory – in practice.

Meanwhile, Hamas has not paid its fighters for months. Its grip on the streets is weakening. Civilians have begun storming Hamas warehouses, some being shot in the process. The tide is turning, but you wouldn’t know it from the headlines. What we get instead is disinformation. One outlet even reported that Israeli naval ships were firing on civilians at a GHF site – a claim so implausible, so grotesque, that it barely merits rebuttal. But it made the rounds. To the Jew-hating media, it “felt true.” And that’s the problem.

The slogan “Free Palestine” has, for many, become a kind of moral shorthand. But we must now ask honestly: what does it mean? Increasingly, it is declared while slaughtering Jews. It is shouted outside temples and adorns placards not of peace, but of bloodlust. Like “Allahu Akbar” before it, it has become the cry beneath which Jews are murdered in the street. If the goal is statehood, we are forced to ask: what kind of state? What would it be for? What would it do?

Because what we are seeing does not point toward the birth of a liberal democracy. It points toward yet another theocratic terror state. There is no civic program behind the chant. No vision of coexistence. No blueprint for governance. The responsibility is on those who chant and their supporters to tie their movement to the actual goods of statehood – not to murder, not to arson, not to open war on Jews.

Central to that war is a news machine that cannot distinguish between elderly Americans at a vigil and a far-off war against terrorists in the Middle East. It is not a news ecosystem, but a propaganda machine. It does not simply mislead – it weaponizes. It invites violence. And increasingly, that violence is coming home. The attack in Boulder should been a national rupture. A moment to step back from the brink. But it won’t be.

Something fundamental has shifted. The veil has slipped. American Jews are learning what their coreligionists in Europe and in Israel have known for some time: that hatred of Jews is never defeated, never rational and never far away.

Jonathan Sacerdoti, The Spectator

Nathaniel Branden on Capitalism

In terms of results in the measurable form of jobs created, lives enriched, communities built, living standards raised, and poverty healed, a handful of capitalists has done infinitely more for mankind than all the self-serving politicians, academics, social workers, and religionists who march under the banner of compassion.—Nathaniel Branden