Trump’s War Critics Discuss Everything — Except the Point

The Los Angeles Times recently published a “News Analysis” headlined: “Trump, long a critic of ‘forever wars,’ may be stumbling into one with Iran.”

The analysis offers legitimate grounds for criticizing President Donald Trump. He has described the objectives of the war against Iran in different ways. He has made changing predictions about its duration. He has repeatedly suggested that an agreement was near, only for negotiations to collapse. He promised no more endless Middle East wars, yet the conflict has continued for months, American servicemembers have died, and the administration has not clearly defined what victory looks like.

All fair questions. But the article omits the most important question of all: Why did the war begin?

Similarly, recent analyses in Time, The Washington Post and Politico raise many of the same objections. Yet, here, too, none address the threshold question: Was Iran close to obtaining a nuclear weapon—and if so, how close?

Trump, from the beginning of the war, said the primary purpose was to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte publicly agreed with Trump and said Iran was close to acquiring a nuclear and ballistic-missile capability “which is posing a threat not only to the region, the Middle East, including posing an existential threat to Israel, it is also posing a huge threat to us here in Europe.”

Was that assessment correct?

The Times quotes three experts who explain why Trump may be “stumbling” into a “forever war.” Yet the article does not ask any of them whether Iran was close to producing a nuclear weapon. It does not ask what Iran might have done with one. And it does not ask what they would have proposed to prevent it.

Suppose Iran was nowhere near a bomb. Suppose its nuclear program posed no imminent danger and could have been contained indefinitely through inspections, sanctions and negotiations. In that case, Trump’s decision to use military force becomes far harder, if not impossible, to defend.

But suppose Trump and Rutte were right. Suppose Iran was approaching the point at which it could produce a nuclear weapon along with increasingly capable missiles. It could intimidate its neighbors, protect its terrorist proxies and trigger a regional nuclear-arms race.

That would not automatically prove that every Trump decision was wise. It would not excuse shifting explanations, unrealistic timelines, failed ceasefires or poor planning, if that was the case. But it would establish that the president did not simply awaken one morning and decide he felt like bombing a country. It would establish that he took action when previous presidents chose not to—an action no other country on earth was willing or able to undertake.

Americans cannot intelligently judge this war when major news organizations discuss its costs while barely mentioning the danger it was intended to prevent.

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed recently denounced “a war we should have never started.” Yet the interviewer never asked: Was Iran close to a nuclear weapon? If not, what evidence disproves that claim? If so, what would you have done about it, if anything?

Sanctions? Iran endured them for years.

Negotiations? Iranian negotiators broke the memorandum of understanding before the ink was dry.

Inspections? Those work only when inspectors receive genuine access without notice and only if Iran allows the inspectors to inspect.

Containment? That means accepting the risk that the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism remains determined to acquire a nuclear weapon while hoping deterrence works forever.

That is what serious analysis looks like.

Critics may conclude that military action was unnecessary, disproportionate or counterproductive. But they must confront the alternative. What was the likelihood that Iran would obtain a bomb? How soon? What would the consequences have been if and when Iran achieved this objective? And what nonmilitary policy had a realistic chance of stopping it?

An analysis that calls the conflict a potential forever war, while refusing to analyze the threat that caused the war, is not analysis. It is a prosecution brief.

The public deserves scrutiny of Trump’s inconsistencies, predictions and strategy. But it also deserves scrutiny of Iran’s nuclear progress, intentions and capabilities. This is not too much to ask from a “news analysis.”

Larry Elder, Townhall

After 10 years of covering the trans madness, here’s what I learned

Sometimes you just have to write what you know and document what you’ve seen, heard, and metabolized to remind yourself that, no, you haven’t gone crazy.

Perhaps by spelling it all out and publishing it, the masses might begin to grasp the breadth and scope of a problem they’ve been led to believe is an overblown, remote issue. Tenacious journalist that I am, I’ll provide ample receipts proving that the exact opposite is true.

Allow me to show you what life in the trans trench has been like for the past decade, with a combination of personal story and indisputable, brute facts. This is the tip of the iceberg, a mere fraction of the filth.

Probably eight years ago, I remember seeing for the first time a series of images that are burned into my memory. They say a picture says a thousand words, but in the trans trench, they are the beginning of a kind of trauma — the jarring introduction to a bestial type of Hell you never knew existed. Writing in Corinth with a front-row seat to all kinds of debauchery, the Apostle Paul noted in Romans 1 how wicked people “invent new ways of doing evil” (Romans 1:30). The trans scourge is that. On steroids, literally.

The first image I saw was a blue-haired, bare-chested girl who looked like she might be all of 14 years old. Scars were where her breasts used to be. She had the most tormented, vacant eyes.

It took me aback, and I gasped repeatedly. I stood up from my desk and walked away, feeling as though I’d been violated at a deep level, like a sledgehammer to the gut. I told a friend that it felt like I had involuntarily looked at sexually violent fetish porn featuring a minor child. That friend replied, “Brandon, that is exactly what you saw.”

The second image I saw was when I heard from someone who’d undergone a radial forearm phalloplasty and regretted it. She sent me a picture of her gutted forearm, the harvested tissue from which was used to make a fake penis. Another gut-punch.

Some weeks later, I stumbled upon Miami-based Irish gender surgeon Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher’s Instagram account — some of us refer to her as the “butcher of Louth.” This surgeon was posing next to young people she’d operated on, including a girl who had previous self-harm scars. Around that same time, I remember seeing Canadian gender surgeon Giancarlo McEvenue posing with a Santa hat, holding up two medical waste buckets labeled “breast tissue.” I subsequently saw footage of him speaking at a Johnson & Johnson–sponsored discussion, boasting of his sordid profession. Calling this unmitigated depravity is the understatement of the century.

I also remember interviewing a regretful de-trans man who was castrated, and he told me how he ended up ejaculating blood. I was glad this interview was on the phone and not on a Zoom call because he would have seen me fall out of my chair.

Everyone has their own journey of falling down the gender rabbit hole, and when you find yourself in this particular trench, you soon start meeting all sorts of shocked and disoriented people, astonished that this is real life. It’s a freight train of unimaginable nightmares hurtling down the tracks at a high velocity, bulldozing people right and left.

Those of us who’ve been doing the hard work exposing the madness against an impenetrable mainstream media blockade can all tell you what it’s like to learn about all the horrors, only to be gaslit with flat denials like “that’s not happening.” Then you show concrete proof, and it becomes “well, it’s only a few people,” and then maybe “why are you so obsessed with this small, strange issue?” The whole world is under a reality-denying spell, shrouded in pink and blue flags, and people are programmed with dismissive talking points if anyone suggests that something’s wrong.

We, the trans (and queer) trench dwellers, have seen pedophilic elements of this movement in silicone pediatric penis packers — vile products aimed at girls as young as 4 so that they can “pack” their underwear to give the appearance of a male bulge.

If that wasn’t ghastly enough, we found out how academics and others in internet chat forums were behind the strategic rebranding of “gender identity disorder” to “gender dysphoria” at meetings of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Thanks to the intrepid reporting of Reduxx, which spent several months investigating the Eunuch Archive, we learned that men on that site swap castration-themed written pornography involving the sexual torture of children whose puberty has been stunted. One user on that foul site described watching a trans surgery on a male as “arousing” to watch. These men say “eunuch” is a kind of “gender-diverse” person, by the way, and it’s actually listed in WPATH’s official guidelines.

The trench dwellers also know about the 2016 Dutch medical report that was part of the linchpin study underlying gender surgeries on youth. An 18-year-old in that study had been on puberty blockers, so his genitals hadn’t matured, and surgeons used part of his bowel tissue to fashion a simulacrum of a female sex organ — a laparoscopic intestinal vaginoplasty. Complications followed: E. coli bacteria from his intestine spread through his body, and he died of sepsis. When this came to light, more people started paying attention, especially since Elon Musk had purchased Twitter by then, and photos of the man’s maimed genital area were able to circulate freely online.

We’ve seen pink-haired queer surgeon Blair Peters speak in a podcast interview about using the peritoneum in similarly grotesque surgeries he does on minor boys. We’ve watched Democrat politicians walk out of the room when U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Florida) tried to show footage of that Peters interview during a House hearing.

We’ve seen Jazz Jennings’ face contorted in excruciating pain after “bottom surgery,” and we later learned how his postoperative wound split open. We’ve seen a young woman with cerebral palsy bearing chest scars from “top surgery,” while croaking out sounds and flailing about in a wheelchair.

Just when we think it can’t get worse — it always does — we stumble upon the story of Scarlet Blake, a transgender-identifying man who livestreamed himself killing a cat by skinning it and putting the animal in a blender. Blake murdered a human being a few months later, but the mass media broadly reported that he, the perpetrator, is a “woman.”

We’ve seen all the boundary-breaking madness of garish drag queens reading to children in libraries. We can’t seem to forget this particular pervert that some of us call “rainbow monkey dildo man.”

We’ve seen the 11-year-old “drag kid” performer “Desmond Is Amazing” dance in a gay nightclub while patrons threw dollar bills at him. Elle Magazine platformed another young drag performer, an 8-year-old boy from Canada whose stage name is “Lactatia.”

Speaking of lactation, we’ve watched the disturbing capture of groups like La Leche League and the Centers for Disease Control endorse the feculent phenomenon of “chestfeeding” — trans-identifying males pretending to breastfeed babies. The NHS Trust in the UK even claimed that the drug-induced, hormone-addled discharge that such men secrete was as good as mother’s milk. In 2017, one such man who “chestfed” his daughter wrote in the Seattle alt newspaper The Stranger that the experience was sexually charged and that he “got off” on it, insisting readers not judge him. Yes, it’s as revolting as it sounds; they are using infants like prostitutes to satisfy their sick, twisted fetish.

We’ve seen the FOIA’d progress report document showing how Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy altered a research protocol, lowering the age from 13 to 8 for the cross-sex hormone cohort inclusion criteria in an NIH-funded grant.

We’ve watched in horror as a psychopathic man who savagely murdered a lesbian couple and their teen son was transferred into a women’s prison, made easy by a state law that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed in 2020. We’ve heard bone-chilling stories of violent male offenders being housed with women elsewhere, too. We’ve seen a judge who nearly received a lifetime federal appointment — thank you, Senator Ossoff, for voting no — who had urged, against the recommendation of the Bureau of Prisons, that a man who had sexually abused a nine-year-old boy and distributed child sexual abuse material be incarcerated with women. All because of the magic word “trans.”

We’ve seen the data, from insurance record analyses and medical journal documentation, showing girls as young as 12 and 13 undergoing mastectomies, and boys as young as 15 undergoing genital surgery. We’ve seen the Do No Harm database showing that between 2019 and 2023, nearly 14,000 minors received puberty blockers or hormones, and over 5,700 minors underwent gender surgeries. These are lowball figures, I should note, since some insurance systems are closed to researchers.

We’ve watched the federal government pursue whistleblowers, like Dr. Eithan Haim, who exposed the entrenched medical harm. We’ve fielded dozens of desperate calls from parents describing how their children are permanently sterile and surgically disfigured in pursuit of a lie. We’ve heard the piercing anguish and exhaustion in their voices, and their stories of being jolted awake at night with heart palpitations. Some have had their children taken and kept away from them by state social services agencies and their ideological machinery, and many moms and dads have no legal recourse to get them back. One such teenager, Yaeli Martinez, who was taken from her mother, died by suicide, stepping in front of an oncoming train in Los Angeles. Her mother had to learn how the pieces of her shattered body were being retrieved from the railroad tracks.

Some of us now carry secondary trauma from years of sifting through this diabolical wretchedness. We find ourselves sporadically and inexplicably on the verge of vomiting, our bodies seizing up in panic. Our nervous systems are fried, and our sleep is disturbed. Some of us have family members mired in the gender jungle, and it makes the torment all the more personal.

We are not in the mood to be told that we are right-wing “culture warriors” stoking a moral panic. We are done being told “Just let them pee in peace,” and “Trans kids know who they are,” as we have heard ad nauseam.

No — those of us in the trans trench have been exposed to things at a granular level that we hope you never have to see. We’ll take some of it to our graves. We’ve been harassed, threatened, sent disturbing material by email, and censored on social media for stating basic biology. We can relate to the kind of hostile bilge that Irreversible Damage author Abigail Shrier received from a trans activist. I print it in full so as not to sugarcoat what it has been like: “I’ll slit your f*cking throat and f*ck your newly made neck p*ssy.”

How any of us in the trans trench have remained sane is nothing short of a miracle. Some of us need counseling to process everything we’ve had to absorb, so we can inform the public about the atrocities happening right under our noses.

Even as some gender clinics are closing due to federal agency action, and though the U.S. Supreme Court has handed down three solid rulings curtailing gender ideology in the past year, this horrific problem continues. Oregon remains a transgender haven. Maine Democrats recently platformed a man who claims to be a woman as a possible candidate for US Senate — a man who also has claimed that he ovulates and that menstrual blood comes out of his anus.

But instead of accountability, we feel mostly ignored. In a sane world, we would be convening Nuremberg 2.0 tribunals, but we’re watching politicians and major media start to treat this chapter as something to forget and be memory-holed.

But we trans trench dwellers never will.

Brandon Showalter, Christian Post

AI Goes Rogue: The Latest OpenAI Model Hacked Another Company Without Being Asked

We’ve gone through all of this before with Anthropic. Back in April, Anthropic limited the release of its latest model, called Mythos, to major software companies because it was concerned it could do massive damage in the wrong hands.

…rather than make it widely available to Claude users, Anthropic gave 12 tech companies access via Project Glasswing, which it described as “an effort to secure the world’s most critical software”.

They include cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services, device manufacturers Apple, Microsoft and Google, and chip-makers Nvidia and Broadcom…

In a video released alongside Project Glasswing’s launch, Anthropic boss Dario Amodei said it had offered to work with US government officials to “help defend against the risk of these models”.

Anthropic essentially called the cops on itself, asking the federal government to help it decide when the model would be safe to release. And for a time last month, the White House actually did tell them not to allow its use by “any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States.” Anthropic shut it down for two weeks until it was able to convince the Trump administration it was safe.

Now we’re seeing a similar story play out at OpenAI, though arguably this one didn’t go as smoothly. OpenAI revealed today that it’s latest model had hacked into another company without being told to do so.

Artificial intelligence software in testing by ChatGPT-maker OpenAI breached security controls, accessed the internet and hacked another tech firm to obtain answers to questions probing its cybersecurity skills, OpenAI said on Tuesday…

“We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities,” OpenAI said in a blog post Tuesday. The company is working with Hugging Face, the AI company that OpenAI’s system attacked, to determine the full impact of the hack.

OpenAI briefed the Trump administration on the situation before announcing it publicly, according to a person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share nonpublic information.

Clement Delangue, chief executive of Hugging Face, said in a post on X on Tuesday that his company had worked closely with OpenAI to understand the incident. “We strongly believe there was no malicious intent on their part. It’s quite mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously!,” he wrote.

What this AI model did is pretty impressive but also a bit worrisome. The plan was to test the new model’s capabilities without all of the safety features included for a final release. OpenAI thought the test was safe but the model found a way out.

This incident occurred during an internal evaluation which prompts models to pursue advanced exploitation using complex attack paths, in an effort to quantify their cyber capabilities. We estimate maximal cyber capabilities by running this evaluation without production classifiers used to prevent models from pursuing high-risk cyber activity. Our benchmarks run in a highly isolated environment, with network access constrained to the ability to install packages through an internally hosted third-party software that acts as a proxy and cache for package registries.

The models identified and chained vulnerabilities across OpenAI’s research environment and Hugging Face’s production infrastructure to obtain test solutions directly from Hugging Face’s production database. All evidence suggests that the models were hyperfocused on finding a solution for ExploitGym, going to extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal.

While operating in our sandboxed testing environment, our models spent a substantial amount of inference compute finding a way to obtain open Internet access, in pursuit of solving the evaluation problem. To gain access, the models identified and exploited a zero-day vulnerability (which we’ve now responsibly disclosed to the vendor) in the package registry cache proxy. With this access, our models performed a series of privilege escalation and lateral movement actions in our research testing environment until the models reached a node with Internet access.

After gaining Internet access, the models inferred that Hugging Face potentially hosted models, datasets and solutions for ExploitGym. Knowing this, the model searched for and successfully found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation.

To sum up, the model hacked its way out to the internet, then realized the answers were inside another company’s private servers and hacked into those servers to get the information it wanted.

So the spin here is that everything is fine and “We are strengthening the containment, monitoring, access controls, and evaluation practices used during model development.” That sounds good. But the conclusion is that, “The incident also makes clear that advanced models can discover and exploit novel attack paths in real-world systems without source-code access.”

And this model wasn’t even told to do any of this. It just seems to have known this would be an easier way to get answers. What could it do if directed to steal some information from a particular government or company? If it was told to cover its own tracks, could it do that?

There are two things to worry about here. One, that our own tools will be used to hack their way into information they aren’t supposed to have. Two, that China is developing the same tools about six months behind us and will have no compunction about using them in this way. Either way, the potential for a lot of disruptions seems to already be on the horizon.

John Sexton, Hotair

Has Donald Trump Sidelined Vance Over Iran?

Has Vice President J.D. Vance been sidelined by President Trump over Iran? Right now, it seems that indeed, this might be the case.

Let’s take a look at a brief timeline.

On July 8, President Trump, joined by his Secretaries of War, State and Treasury at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, publicly ripped up the Vice President’s “Memorandum of Understanding” (MoU) with Iran. He said it agreement was “over.”

“To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them,” Trump told reporters at the Summit. “They’re scum. They’re sick ⁠people. They’re led by sick people.”

The President also issued orders for a new series of air attacks on Iran beginning with a wave of 90 U.S. air attacks that day – which continue to this evening.

And exactly where was Vice President J.D Vance on July 8?

He wasn’t at the White House. He wasn’t in the Situation Room monitoring events. Instead, he traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he delivered a speech about Medicaid and food stamp fraud.

Of course, if he were still engaged in Iran, Vance could have canceled his Milwaukee speech and remain in Washington to interact on both the diplomatic and national security fronts concerning Iran and his now dead MoU.

Vance wasn’t needed there at all. In fact, the administration was well represented in Milwaukee. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services was speaking at the same event on the same subject.

I believe that when the President decided that he was done with the MoU, he also decided he was through with his Vice President’s input on international affairs.

This is speculation of course. But based on public actions to date, and what I know of how inside Washington works, it appears that for now, Vance is largely out of the loop.

Remember, as a U.S. Senator, Vance had no committee assignments on armed services, intelligence or national security. He never sat on a single committee that dealt with foreign policy or military policy.

But, while Vance might have been sidelined, he really wasn’t done on all things concerning Israel.

On July 14, Politico reported, “Vance postponed earlier plans to address a Tuesday morning House GOP conference meeting, instead traveling to Texas to tape an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast.”

Now Vance was giving the big finger to the House leadership and instead decided it advanced his own interests as he traveled to Austin to appear with Joe Rogan. The podcaster has about 11 million viewers per episode.

In fact, the House Republican conference was confronting very important issues close to the President and could determine the outcome of the mid-term elections.

At that July 14 meeting, they were grappling with legislative efforts to finalize an $95 billion budget resolution, with supplemental requests related to fighting the war in Iran, and the President’s top priority, to pass the SAVE Act, an electoral reform bill to reduce electoral fraud.

In the end, the House did narrowly pass all three pieces of legislation today – but without J.D. Vance’s assistance on July 14.

And then, while on Rogan’s podcast, Vance decided to viciously attack Israel – America’s key ally in the Middle East as well as our wartime ally.

The Vice President claimed that Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 Presidential campaign manager, had committed political treason: he secretly lobbied on behalf of Israel through podcasters.

The Vice President was furious over a Time investigative article that focused on Parscale’s attempt to generate pro-Israel sympathies among conservatives through a digital campaign. Indeed, the contract was awarded to him through Havas, an Israeli-based global ad agency.

Vance lashed out at Israel, telling the podcaster, “When I open up the pages of Time magazine, and I see that there’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing, and many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways. You know, my response to that is, well, go to hell.”

But Pascale, in the same Time article categorically denied that his campaign tried to undermine the President of the MoU, or Vance’s ceasefire MoU, telling the magazine, “I have never funded, organized, or participated in any effort to undermine President Trump – ever – including his Memorandum of Understanding or ceasefire proposal.”

The conservative digital expert additionally told Time, “The claim that I am coordinating an effort to prolong the war is completely false. The only people manufacturing a conflict between President Trump, Israel, and me are anonymous officials using background quotes to make me the bogeyman.”

Vance did concede to Rogan that indeed, countries other than Israel do try to influence American public opinion as well as our government. “I wouldn’t say they’re the only effective country trying to influence American politics by any means,” he said.

In fact, according to the U.S. Attorney General’s latest FARA report to Congress, in the last six months of 2024 Islamic nations spent more than $46 million for public relations and lobbying in the United States. Israel, on the other hand, spent only $1.5 million in lobbying and public relations, according to FARA. If you add Pascale’s 2025 contract, you can add $4 million more.

According to Open Secrets, an American nonprofit that has long tracked lobbying and public relations by foreign governments, Qatar alone spent over $240 million on FARA-registered lobbying and public relations in the US since 2015. “This includes efforts through firms influencing policy, media, and academia. In 2024 alone, expenditures exceeded $30 million, dwarfing many other foreign entities while advancing Doha’s interests amid regional tensions,” the investigative nonprofit reported.

Vance’s hostility towards Israel appears to be part of an emerging plan by the Vice President to run against Israel in the 2028 Presidential election. In this regard, he’s aligning himself with Tucker Carlson and other conservative voices that are openly anti-Israel.

The only good news is, perhaps, President Trump has lost trust in Vance as his international point person on Iran. If indeed he is sidelining him, that would be good news.

But there are many chapters to be written about the war against Iran. Who knows if Vance will be resurrected within White House national security circles? And will the Vice President be asked against to serve as the President’s lead negotiator with Iran?

Time will only tell. Stay tuned.

Richard Pollock

The Problem With Leftist Women

Leftist women show a striking tolerance for infidelity that sets them apart from their conservative counterparts.

In 2022, a groundbreaking poll was conducted by the Survey Center on American Life. Later, it was analyzed by the Institute for Family Studies. Only 36 percent of liberal women say it is “always wrong” for a woman to have an extramarital affair. That compares to 71 percent of conservative women who condemn infidelity outright. Even more telling, these same liberal women apply a blatant double standard: they are far more lenient toward female cheating than male cheating.

This is not nuance. It is a moral loophole that excuses betrayal when it suits lefty women.

General Social Survey data spanning nearly three decades confirms that the behavior matches the attitude. Liberals, including women, report significantly higher rates of extramarital sex than conservatives, even after accounting for age, income, education, and other factors. Liberals were nearly twice as likely to admit infidelity. These patterns reveal a worldview that treats personal commitments as flexible and conditional rather than ironclad.

This moral flexibility collides with another hard reality: leftist women have turned politics into a non-negotiable dealbreaker in dating.

Pew Research Center data from 2020 showed something stark. Seventy-one percent of single Democrats and Democratic-leaning women said they probably or definitely would not date someone who voted for Donald Trump. The 2023 American Perspectives Survey reinforced this, finding most committed partisans on the left reject partners from the opposing side far more aggressively than in past generations.

For non-leftist men living in deep-blue cities, metros, and states, the pool of compatible women shrinks dramatically. Young women in those areas lean heavily left-wing and they filter ruthlessly for ideological alignment.

Joseph Cotto, American Thinker

Brussels Blocks 600,000 Europeans From Demanding an Immigration Halt

In a not so surprising move, the European Commission has formally refused to register the anti-immigration ‘Save Europe Act’ as a European Citizens’ Initiative, meaning its organisers cannot begin collecting the one million validated signatures required to put the proposal formally before Brussels. The Commission argues that the proposal is incompatible with the European Union’s “fundamental values” and anti-discrimination rules.

Dutch right-wing activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek, one of the campaign organisers, called the decision unacceptable and said the campaign would challenge the decision in court.

The Save Europe Act campaign, led by Vlaardingerbroek and Austrian identitarian activist Martin Sellner, has attracted significant support across Europe, with almost 600,000 signatures.

The Act’s main demands are a halt to non-European immigration—both legal and illegal—and the creation of a Europe-wide remigration system. The charter also calls for the removal of “social welfare incentives and benefits that function as pull factors for migration.”

Under the rules governing European Citizens’ Initiatives, campaigns must collect at least one million validated signatures from citizens across a minimum of seven EU member states before the Commission is required to consider them.

However, the Commission announced on Wednesday, July 22nd that the call for a temporary moratorium on new non-Western immigration channels, based on protecting the ethnic and cultural continuity of Europe’s native peoples, would constitute discrimination on the grounds of race and ethnic origin.

It said the proposed criteria would be “manifestly contrary” to the “values” set out in the Treaties of the European Union and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Responding to the Commission’s decision, Vlaardingerbroek accused Brussels of attempting to silence hundreds of thousands of Europeans. She announced that the organisers will take legal action against the Commission and continue gathering signatures.

With the Save Europe Act, we have asked for a halt on non-Western immigration. Now, the European Commission is saying that that is racist and that it goes against the non-discrimination principle. And that’s not all. They are also saying that wanting to preserve your national identity can only happen within the framework of European values. And who gets to decide what those European values are? Well, apparently, the Commission does.

Several politicians from the Patriots for Europe political family also condemned the Commission’s decision. Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) MEP Petra Steger described the rejection as hypocritical: “When Brussels obstructs democratic citizens’ initiatives simply because it doesn’t like the demands, it’s no longer about values—it’s only about their reckless ideology.”

Spanish VOX MEP Hermann Tertsch accused Brussels of applying ideological double standards: “The European Commission only recognizes the NGOs of the far left, associations supporting immigrant traffickers, Greta-style eco-fanatic lunatics, and franchises of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Brussels’ hostile attitude to the Save Europe Act was on full display last week, when the Mayor of Brussels attempted to ban a rally organised by the campaigners outside the European Parliament. The organisers successfully overturned the decision in court and symbolically delivered more than half a million signatures to Parliament.

Zoltán Kottász, European Conservative

Independent Baptist Pastor Accused of Sending Nude Pics To Teenage Boy

A Baptist pastor in Virginia has allegedly confessed to sending more than a dozen sexual images to a teenage boy, according to court documents.

Kenny Baldwin, 46, has been the lead pastor of Crossroads Baptist Church since 2011. Earlier this week, he was charged with 13 counts related to sending naked pictures of himself to a teenage boy. The two met while Baldwin came to the young man’s church to give a sermon and the two exchanged phone numbers afterwards. ABC27 reports:

“According to court documents, Baldwin had confessed to two different people, who then reported the confession to Troopers. When Baldwin was interviewed on June 12 at the Pennsylvania State Police York station, he allegedly admitted to sending the pictures.

Baldwin faces 13 charges that include felony counts of unlawful contact with a minor and corruption of minors, and misdemeanor counts of indecent exposure, open lewdness and corruption of minors.”

Baldwin is married and has 5 children. He was released on an $80,000 bail, with a preliminary hearing occurring on Aug 10.

US to announce deal allowing Saudi Arabia a nuclear programme

James FitzGerald

The US and Saudi Arabia are expected to announce a deal that will allow the Gulf kingdom to develop a civilian nuclear programme.

An announcement is expected from US President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

The agreement could be worth billions of dollars to the US, whose companies could be involved in building a facility to produce enriched uranium, which can be used as fuel for power plants but also to make nuclear bombs.

Nuclear experts and former officials in Israel – the US’s top ally in the Middle East – have voiced concern that the plan could ultimately lead to Saudi Arabia being able to develop a nuclear weapon.

The BBC has asked the White House for comment.

The deal would allow U.S. companies to run nuclear power for the Saudis on Saudi soil, CBS reported citing a regional official familiar with the agreement. The corporations involved have not been disclosed and Congress would need to be consulted.

After undertaking a joint study with the US, Saudi Arabia may be allowed to enrich uranium on its soil to produce fuel at a US-built enrichment facility, instead of relying on imported fuel, according to media reports.

The deal would last 30 years and is estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The enrichment provision would distinguish this agreement from another one that was struck by the US in 2009 with Saudi Arabia’s neighbour, the United Arab Emirates, under which the UAE does not produce its own fuel and accepts a host of other restrictions.

For that reason, the agreement is also expected to attract the concern of nuclear non-proliferation campaigners, whose ultimate aim is to prevent an increase in the number of nuclear weapons worldwide.

The nuclear issue has been at the centre of the months-long US-Israeli conflict with Iran. The two nations say one of the reasons they attacked Iran in February was to prevent the country from ever developing a nuclear weapon – something that Tehran denies planning to do.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told CBS News in 2018 that his own nation was not planning to acquire a nuclear weapon, but that “without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible”.

The US-Saudi deal due to be unveiled on Wednesday has already been approved by Trump and will last 30 years, according to The Wall Street Journal.

If the US objects to enrichment taking place in Saudi Arabia following the joint study, the kingdom would not be allowed to do so on its own or with another foreign partner for 10 years, the newspaper says.

The plan will now be sent to the US Congress. Some lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle are also expected to oppose the deal, though Trump’s Republican Party controls both the upper and lower chambers.

The US-Saudi deal has not been made contingent on the Saudis normalising diplomatic ties with Israel, the New York Times reports. The push for Saudi-Israeli normalisation has been an aspiration of successive US presidents.

Is Social Security still taxable? Here’s what you need to know about the recent tax law.

Key takeaways

  • Social Security income continues to be subject to federal income tax.
  • A new senior deduction means only about 12% of seniors will pay taxes on their benefits.
  • Nine states impose some income tax on Social Security.

Is the income you receive from Social Security taxable? With the recent tax law, Social Security income continues to be taxable, but an additional deduction for seniors may help offset what is owed.

Under the recent law, taxpayers age 65 or older—and their spouses, if filing jointly—can each claim a $6,000 deduction for tax years 2025–2028. This senior deduction is reduced by 6% (but not below zero) for adjusted gross income that exceeds $75,000, or $150,000 for joint filers.

With the new deduction, only about 12% of seniors will pay taxes on their Social Security benefits, according to a White House Council of Economic Advisors analysis.

Some also will pay state income taxes, if they live in one of the few states that doesn’t exempt Social Security benefits.

Let’s look at the formula for federal income tax and the states that still tax Social Security income.

Social Security and federal income tax

The IRS uses a “combined income formula” to determine if you must pay taxes on your benefits. Combined income includes typical forms of income such as wages, interest, dividends, pension payments, and taxable distributions from traditional 401(k)s and IRAs (less adjustments), as well as nontaxable interest and half of Social Security benefits.

Whether you will have to pay federal income tax on your Social Security benefits depends on your combined income:

  • If you file as an individual:
    • Up to $25,000: No tax
    • $25,000–$34,000: Up to 50% of your benefits may be taxed.
    • More than $34,000: Up to 85% of your benefits may be taxed.
  • If you file a joint return:
    • Up to $32,000: No tax
    • $32,000–$44,000: Up to 50% of your benefits may be taxed.
    • More than $44,000: Up to 85% of your benefits may be taxed.

Tip: There are ways to save on taxes in retirement. Read Viewpoints on Fidelity.com: 2 ways to save on Social Security income tax.

Do states tax Social Security income?

Most states do not tax Social Security income. But some portion of your benefits may be subject to state tax if you live in one of these 9 states: Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, or West Virginia. The rules vary widely from state to state. Some states may allow you to exclude federally taxable Social Security benefits for state income tax purposes based on your adjusted gross income, or AGI, so keep this in mind when reviewing the information below.

Quick refresher: What is adjusted gross income? Your AGI is income for the year after you subtract amounts—or “adjustments”—that are not taxable. The IRS uses your AGI as a starting point for calculating how much income tax you owe for the year.

Here’s a closer look at how those states tax Social Security benefits for 2024:

Colorado

  • Under 65: Up to $20,000 of federally taxable Social Security benefits are not taxed by the state of Colorado. Beginning in 2025, individuals ages 55–64 will be able to deduct all federally taxable Social Security income if their AGI is $75,000 or less for an individual and $95,000 or less for a couple filing jointly. Above those thresholds, $20,000 of federally taxable Social Security income may be excluded.
  • 65 and older: No state taxation of federally taxable Social Security benefits.

Connecticut

Up to 25% of benefits may be taxed above these thresholds:

  • Single filers: Federally taxable Social Security benefits are not taxable in Connecticut if AGI is below $75,000.
  • Married filing jointly: No tax if AGI is below $100,000.

Minnesota

  • Single or head of household filers: Federally taxable Social Security benefits are exempt from Minnesota state income tax if AGI is $82,190 or below for 2024. Starting at $82,191 in income, federally taxable Social Security benefits receive a partial exclusion from Minnesota state income tax, and at $118,191 and above, all federally taxable benefits are subject to state tax.
  • Married filing jointly: Federally taxable benefits are exempt if AGI is at or below $105,380. Starting at $105,381 in income, federally taxable Social Security benefits receive a partial exclusion from Minnesota state income tax, and at $141,381 and above, all federally taxable benefits are subject to state tax.

Montana

  • Social Security benefits are taxed as they are at the federal level.

New Mexico

  • Single filers: No tax on federally taxable benefits if AGI is below $100,000.
  • Married filing jointly: No tax on federally taxable benefits if AGI is below $150,000.

Rhode Island

The following apply once residents reach their full retirement age (66 or 67, depending on year of birth):

  • Single filers: No tax on federally taxable Social Security benefits if income is below $104,200.
  • Married filing jointly or qualifying widow(er): No tax on federally taxable Social Security benefits if income is below $130,250. If only one spouse has reached retirement age and both are receiving Social Security benefits, only the percentage of taxable Social Security benefits attributable to the spouse who has reached full retirement age are exempt from taxation.

Utah

  • Single filers: Federally taxable Social Security benefits are taxed if modified adjusted gross income (What is MAGI?) exceeds $45,000. A state tax credit may reduce the amount of income tax paid.
  • Married filing jointly: Federally taxable Social Security benefits taxed if MAGI exceeds $75,000. A state tax credit may reduce the amount of income tax paid.

Vermont

  • Single filers: Federally taxable Social Security benefits are not taxable in Vermont if AGI is $50,000 or below. Federally taxable Social Security benefits are partially exempt from state income tax if AGI is above $50,000 and less than $60,000. If AGI is $60,000 and above, federally taxable benefits are fully taxable in Vermont.
  • Married filing jointly: Federally taxable Social Security benefits are not taxable in Vermont if AGI is below $65,000. Federally taxable Social Security benefits are partially exempt from state income tax if AGI is above $65,000 and less than $75,000. If AGI is $75,000 and above, federally taxable benefits are fully taxable in Vermont.

West Virginia

West Virginia is one of the latest states to phase out taxes on Social Security benefits. Single filers with AGI at or below $50,000 and married filers with AGI at or below $100,000 can exclude 100% of federally taxable Social Security benefits from West Virginia state income tax. If they have AGI above their respective thresholds, they can deduct the following percentages of federally taxable Social Security benefits until they are fully exempted for all income levels in 2026:

  • 2024: 35% exempt
  • 2025: 65% exempt
  • 2026: 100% exempt

State and federal income tax rules can be confusing, especially as they can change year to year. That’s just one of the things that can make managing taxes through retirement complicated. Working with a tax professional can help you better understand the potential tax impacts of any planning decisions.

Fidelity

Soccer, America, ‘Country Roads,’ and the World

Steve Cortes•   July 21, 2026

The country roads of America brought the world across our land, as our role hosting the World Cup fittingly coincided with America 250. The sprawling event on a grand stage reminded the world—and us—about important realities of our nation at its quarter-millennial birthday.

Now, like most Americans, I hugely prefer our football—which starts soon. We are just culturally biased toward a game that is far higher scoring, much more violent, and far more of a spectacle. We opt for the sports version of opera, with heightened, dangerous drama, rather than the grind and nuance of soccer.

But regardless of anyone’s sports preferences, the World Cup served to remind the world about the realities of Americans and life in the United States. Pew Research recently revealed that global polling shows China is now viewed more favorably than the U.S. around the world. It marked the first time in two decades of polling that China has surpassed America by this metric.

Notably, very few of those respondents wish to immigrate to China, even if it were possible. In contrast, most of the world yearns to come to the U.S. Nonetheless, America does have an emerging image problem. As America reasserts a populist nationalist worldview, some of this resentment is expected and even helpful. After all, it is more vital for a strong nation-state to be properly respected, and even feared, than to be loved.

But the World Cup experience made clear that much, if not most, of America’s image problem abroad flows from myths. Smears of the U.S. flow nonstop from legacy media platforms, especially the most powerful ones in the rest of the Western world. Unfortunately, the whole world lags badly behind America in developing alternative new media. Consequently, those legacy outlets in places like England and Brazil still shape public opinion very effectively.

Like the legacy media players here, those media conglomerates constantly push a dispiriting false narrative that the U.S. is a brutish bully country, bereft of both sophistication and gentility.

But then the world came to America.

More specifically, the world came to “parts unknown” to most foreign travelers. When these international visitors ventured beyond New York City and Disney World, they found a giant, diverse country of wonder, hospitality, openness, and just plain fun.

freestar

Thankfully, social media fostered an unfiltered flow of storytelling, straight from the experiences of the international fans themselves. These superfans could not get enough of America, especially flyover country, the parts of the nation normally ignored by their home media outlets. The joy of the visitors was genuine and immense, and it was returned in kind by generous Americans thrilled to show off local customs and cuisines.

Some of these social media accounts went viral, and the videos truly entertained the world. We will never forget the amazed reactions of Japanese fans eating BBQ in Texas and the champion Spanish team gushing with gratitude for their training camp hosts in Appalachia, in my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The Norwegians “rowing” all across the States became a meme, and the Scots sang like one giant bawdy chorus as they outdrank even the Irish-American locals in Boston pubs.

Speaking of singing, the playlist for global soccer reflects the enduring soft power of American culture. Matches across the globe feature American songs, from “Sweet Caroline” to country favorites, and especially “Country Roads.” In fact, that John Denver ballad has become the unofficial anthem of global sports, belted out with gusto all over the earth by people who know nothing about West Virginia.

The throngs of happy foreigners loved on America. They sang our classic tunes with overseas accents and highlighted the unique appeal of the U.S. to the world, at least when America is authentically presented. The world saw that the U.S. is not the caricature portrayed to them by The Times of London, Der Spiegel, or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Instead, visitors marinated in the vibrancy and eccentricity of regional American cultures. The guests were welcomed with open arms by a country that is largely not enamored with their sport but grateful to serve as host country regardless.

As these masses of visitors marveled at our stadiums, they also came to understand the emerging consensus among American citizens regarding foreigners. The U.S. is an exceedingly generous and welcoming country. We allow far more legal immigration than any other country on earth. Even the most nationalist among us do not seek a “Fortress America,” sealed off from the globe. Instead, we demand a country that welcomes the world, but only on our terms.

null

freestar

As our nation turns 250 years old, Americans have much to celebrate, of course. We also face major challenges and intense debates over foundational principles. For example, the modern Democratic Party is increasingly devolving into an extremist alliance of Marxists and jihadis, the starkest challenge to the Union since the Civil War.

But we are a great and mighty country as well, showcased superbly through the carnival of the world’s soccer championship. The world experienced the dynamism of the U.S. economy, the warmth of Americans as friends, and the spirit of the greatest republic ever to exist.

As the fans now fly home across the oceans, they bring with them a new and realistic vision of who Americans truly are. Accordingly, they might explain to their countrymen that in America, “life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze.”

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Steve Cortes

Steve Cortes | Contributor

Steve Cortes is a contributor to the Daily Signal.

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