Egyptian officials have officially confirmed that an Iranian drone strike was responsible for damaging two US energy tankers at the port of Damietta. Following the strike, the United States carried out limited conventional air raids, opting against a broader military escalation despite warnings of a much harsher response.

Egyptian authorities officially confirmed Thursday that an explosion damaging two American energy tankers at Damietta Port was caused by an Iranian drone strike. Egyptian officials emphasized that an investigation into the incident remains underway, noting that no group has formally claimed responsibility for the operation.

The official confirmation from Cairo follows statements made by Iranian sources to The New York Times acknowledging that the attack was executed using a drone. According to those sources, the strike was intended as a signal to demonstrate Tehran’s capacity to disrupt international shipping lanes and global energy supplies if the US escalates military tension in the region. The sources did not specify whether the drone was launched directly from Iran or by a regional proxy, nor did they disclose the launch site.

Following the attack, US military forces carried out targeted air strikes against select proxy positions in the region to counter threats to maritime traffic. However, the military actions were restricted to standard conventional raids. This limited response diverged from public statements by President Donald Trump, who had promised a far stronger reaction after warning that the US would hit back hard.

Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial front-runner Francesca Hong is facing fresh scrutiny after a years-old social media post calling to “Abolish the Senate” resurfaced, even as her campaign now insists she never took that position.

“Abolish the Senate,” Hong, a self-described socialist, wrote in February 2021 while replying to a post from human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid. The post remained live on X as of Wednesday afternoon.

Despite the public post, a spokesperson for Hong’s campaign pushed back on the claim in comments to Fox News, arguing that Hong has never advocated eliminating the U.S. Senate.

The dispute erupted after Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, the leading GOP candidate for Wisconsin governor, blasted Hong following Tuesday night’s Democratic primary debate.

Tiffany said Hong “has called to abolish the police, prisons, and the U.S. Senate.”

Hong’s campaign told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Democratic state lawmaker did not remember making the 2021 post and has since clarified her position during recent media interviews.

According to the spokesperson, Hong wrote “Abolish the Senate” one day after the Senate failed to convict President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial over the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol breach. Although 57 senators voted to convict, the total fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for conviction.

The campaign said the post reflected Hong’s frustration with Trump’s acquittal rather than a lasting policy position.

“It is not her current position, and it is not something a governor has any role in. She’s running to lower costs, fund public schools, and make childcare affordable,” the spokesperson said.

The campaign also flatly denied Tiffany’s accusation.

“Rep. Hong has never called for abolishing the U.S. Senate. Tiffany cannot produce a single statement where she did, because it doesn’t exist,” the spokesperson told Fox originally.

The exchange comes as Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, leads the Democratic primary field ahead of the Aug. 11 election.

A July Marquette Law School poll found Hong with 38% support among Democratic primary voters, followed by former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes at 16% and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley at 7%. A large share of voters remained undecided.

The race to replace outgoing Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who is not seeking another term, is expected to be one of the nation’s most competitive gubernatorial contests. Evers has endorsed Crowley, while the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the general election as a “toss-up.”

We have a new Daniel in the lions’ den in Ohio. At risk is the First Amendment. What will the Supreme Court say?

Lathan Watts | July 30, 2026

The biblical account of Daniel in the lions’ den is so well known that even those with differing religious beliefs or none are likely familiar with it.  Daniel, a devout Jew exiled in Babylon, was praying in his home, which violated King Darius’s decree.  As punishment, he was cast into a den of lions, but God saved him by miraculously closing the lions’ mouths.

Thousands of years later, another Daniel finds himself at odds with his government over prayer.  The stakes are not life-threatening for this Daniel, but for religious freedom in America, they are dire.

Daniel Grand is a devout Orthodox Jew who has lived in University Heights, Ohio, a small suburb east of Cleveland, since 2019.  He bought his home to raise his family and live out his faith.  For Daniel, those things are inseparable.

Orthodox Jewish practice calls for prayer in a group of at least ten men three times every weekday and four times on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays.  On those holy days, driving is prohibited, which means Daniel must either live within walking distance of a synagogue or gather with at least ten Jewish men close to home.  A minyan — a traditional Jewish prayer quorum — is not a convenience for Daniel.  It is a religious duty.

He reached out to about a dozen friends near his neighborhood, inviting them to walk to his house the following Sabbath and pray together as a minyan.  No announcements.  No signage.  No noise.  Just a quiet gathering of men who share their faith and live close enough to walk to each other’s homes.

A neighbor saw the email and informed the city’s mayor.  The next day — before the prayer meeting could happen — the city sent Daniel a cease-and-desist order.  It accused him of operating an illegal “place of religious assembly.”  It threatened legal penalties.  And it ordered him to stop, citing zoning regulations.

What happened to Daniel had nothing to do with traffic, noise, or any legitimate zoning concern.  It had to do with the fact that University Heights decided to classify Daniel’s prayer group the same way it classifies actual synagogues and other houses of worship — as “places of religious assembly” requiring a special use permit.

Daniel tried to work with the city and began the process of filing for the permit.  The public hearing that followed was marked by overt hostility.  Some neighbors sent letters opposing the permit with statements like “I am not Jewish, and I do not want our neighborhood labeled as Jewish.”

Then came the ultimate Catch-22.  Daniel discovered that obtaining the permit the city had told him to apply for would have barred “sleeping or residential use” on any property governed by the permit.  So the only way to legally host a prayer group in his home was to stop living there.  Faced with the untenable choice between praying at home with friends or living at home, and wanting to avoid another hostile public spectacle, Daniel withdrew his permit application.

After Daniel withdrew his application, the city government’s harassment escalated.  The mayor declared publicly that the cease-and-desist order remained in full force.  The mayor turned to the community, urging Daniel’s neighbors to surveil his home and “report” any “activities consistent with those in a house of assembly.”  Police patrols drove past Daniel’s house.  The city prosecutor launched baseless housing code investigations against him.  The city withheld Daniel’s certificate of occupancy and tax abatements, resulting in substantial additional taxes.  City workers even began periodically skipping his home on trash collection days.

This was a coordinated pattern of harassment and discrimination.  Forcing Daniel to continue the permit process was a punishment.

In 2022, Daniel filed suit in federal court for violations of his First Amendment rights, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, and other federal and state laws.  But the district court dismissed his case, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit agreed, saying that because Daniel had not fully completed the permit process, a court could not review his case.  Missing the constitutional forest for the procedural trees, these courts never addressed the city’s blatant violations of the First Amendment.

In February 2026, Daniel petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case.  He wrote that petition himself, and it garnered the support of nine amicus briefs.  Alliance Defending Freedom then came on as co-counsel, alongside Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, filing a reply brief on Daniel’s behalf, urging the high court to hear his case, Grand v. City of University Heights.  In June, the court agreed.

If the free exercise clause of the First Amendment means anything, it should mean that no American needs the government’s permission to host a prayer meeting in his home.  The result of the city’s position — that poker night with ten friends is fine, but praying requires a permit — would be laughable if the consequences were not so serious.

If government can restrict religious observance in a man’s home with no accountability, then bureaucratic tentacles have slithered into the sacred space between man and God.  In this nation, founded by pilgrims fleeing religious persecution, nothing could be more antithetical to our way of life than government officials policing private religious practice.

Though this attack on religious liberty came from a local government, the United States Supreme Court should deliver justice for Daniel on a Grand scale.

Lathan Watts is the vice president of public affairs for Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) and its sister organization, ADF Action.  He earned his juris doctor degree from the University of Mississippi.

Iran’s rulers are not playing to win the war today—they are playing to survive long enough to fight another one tomorrow.

By Victor Davis Hanson

July 30, 2026

We are now in Stage III of the Iran War: the familiar monotony of bomb, talk, bomb.

It is now the liberal consensus that the war has failed, if not been won by Iran.

Hardly. It will likely take a decade for Iran to recover and rearm.

Russia has been sidelined in the Middle East. China is losing its influence with the Iranian theocracy. Nor is Beijing riding high; instead, it is grappling with trade, demographic, energy, and food challenges.

The Gulf states are more pro-American than they have been in decades.

Israel is stronger than ever and has humiliated an enemy that, for nearly 50 years, remained on a war footing while enjoying a population ten times larger.

But what’s next?

We could be entering the war’s final stage, marked by an effort to escalate decisively before disengaging.

We know the tired Iranian strategy by now. We might call it “theocratic rope-a-dope.” For the theocrats and their terrorist proxies, survival means outlasting Trump, waiting for the next cash-laden Democratic administration, and using “moderates” to play good cop while haggling away months.

The mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps feign indifference even as their half-century, half-trillion-dollar investments in what is now essentially a vaporized military-industrial-nuclear complex continue to be destroyed.

The war has finally revealed the full extent of Iran’s vast conventional arsenal, nuclear program, and missile and drone industry.

These munitions proved far more numerous and deadlier than experts had imagined. The regime had poured much of its GDP into conventional arms, missiles, drones, and its nuclear program in hopes of dominating the Gulf, holding Israel beneath a nuclear sword of Damocles, and eventually bringing European cities within range of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.

The Islamic government shows no real concern for the attendant suffering of its own 93 million people. In the theocrats’ view, it matters little whether 1,000 civilians die as collateral damage from allied bombing or 36,000 are murdered by their own government. All that concerns these corrupt grandees is preserving their own comfort amid the rubble.

The Iranian zealots are counting on the Trump administration to withdraw, thereby avoiding a two-year-long impeachment and lawfare circus while preserving the Republican House majority. Yet doing so also requires relative calm in the Gulf, a denuclearized Iran, an open Strait of Hormuz, oil prices between $60 and $70 a barrel, and gasoline prices of roughly $2.50 to $3.00 a gallon—all conditions the theocrats believe they can control.

So what would best accomplish the Trump administration’s objectives, both militarily abroad and politically at home?

We may see another week or two of intensive strikes against Iran’s dual-use infrastructure. At some point, the United States may also seal Pickaxe Mountain and any other remaining sites suspected of storing or producing enriched uranium.

The United States has already severed many of Iran’s rail and maritime links to China, Russia, and their allies. It can reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force and convert frozen Iranian assets into a maritime insurance fund to compensate any foreign tanker damaged by Iranian attacks.

Then, by mid-August, the United States could disengage, leaving a small naval flotilla and regional air bases to coordinate Gulf and Israeli retaliation against Iranian missile and drone attacks while maintaining all sanctions and embargoes until Tehran ends its attacks on the Gulf and shipping through the Strait.

One reason, among many, that the Shah fell in January 1979 was that the Ayatollah Khomeini spent 13 years in exile in Iraq, where he built a veritable shadow theocracy. As resistance to the Shah mounted, Khomeini moved in 1978 to the more visible and media-friendly setting of Paris for four months before returning to Tehran to hijack the revolution and seize control of the country.

Iranian anti-clerical dissidents should reverse that model by establishing their own provisional government in exile, pledged to oversee a transition to consensual rule once it assumes power. Western governments should recognize it, transfer frozen Iranian assets to finance its media and outreach, help arm it, and negotiate exclusively with it while shunning all contact with the theocratic prevaricators.

Its agenda should entail a comprehensive plan to replace the theocracy with the help of seized Iranian assets and Western military and financial support.

Unlike the Obama administration’s haphazard and incoherent intervention in Libya, the United States could make any direct assistance contingent on a viable provisional government presenting a concrete plan for national unity, a realistic timetable for elections, demonstrable support within Iran, and a determination to prevail.

The Iranian people remain pro-Western.

They will likely eventually regain their determination to rid themselves of their corrupt, mass-murdering rulers once the bombing stops. Then the full extent of the damage will become clear, and the theocracy will try once again to rebuild its garrison state and subsidize Arab terrorists abroad—at the expense of an already destitute Iranian people.

Victor Davis. Hanson

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are scheming to gut the Constitution and implement full-scale communism in the United States – and they’re not being shy about it.

From July 31 to August 2, the DSA will host a “Socialists Summit” in Chicago, which the organization’s event page describes as an opportunity “to learn through political education, skills training, organizer development, general programming, and social activities.” The summit will specifically center on the DSA’s latest policy platform, which amounts to a shocking attack on capitalism, private property, the U.S. Constitution, and the entire American system.

One section of the platform, titled “A Real Democracy,” calls for abolishing the Electoral College along with the Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court. It states plainly that the executive and judiciary should be “chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”

Another section, titled “A Democratic Congress,” goes even further, calling for the replacement of the two-party system with proportional representation, ranked-choice voting in all elections, and voting rights for “all permanent U.S. residents” – which includes illegal aliens, who will be given a “pathway to citizenship” under the DSA platform.

But the real kicker comes in a section titled “economic democracy,” in which the DSA demands “public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people” – in other words, communism.

The DSA platform calls for extending voting rights to “all permanent U.S. residents,” taxpayer-funded political campaigns, abolishing the Senate, and seizing ownership of private companies.

These proposals amount to a total rejection of the system of separation of of powers and checks and balances outlined in the Constitution. The framers built these important checks into the American system of government specifically to prevent any single branch from accumulating too much authority.

But the DSA’s radical platform doesn’t stop at scrapping the Constitution. It also calls for massive economic and social upheaval, including “universal rent control,” reparations for slavery, abolishing prisons and police, and ending “patriarchal restrictions on abortion, childbirth and childraising, and gender expression and transition.”

On foreign policy, the platform demands defunding the Department of War, closing overseas military bases, and ending U.S. economic sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran. It also calls for legalizing all mass migration and granting amnesty to immigrants regardless of legal status.

The DSA Platform on foreign policy calls for defunding the Department of War, prosecuting Israeli leaders, ending sanctions against terrorist regimes, and abolishing ICE.

The DSA’s National Political Committee adopted the platform this summer after a months-long drafting process, according to City Journal. The provision replacing the presidency and the Supreme Court passed the committee by a razor-thin margin, while a separate amendment on abolishing police and prisons passed 16 to 8.

Program co-author Michaela Brangan offered few details about what would replace the presidency during the launch webinar, according to the Washington Examiner. “We could call it the ‘head honcho’ or whatever,” she said, comparing the office to a prime minister rather than an elected president.

Socialist commentator Emma Vigeland, speaking on the same call, compared the abolition of the Senate to Britain’s removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Britain, however, retained the Lords as an appointed upper chamber and remains a bicameral system.

Reading the DSA’s description of its vision for the future of America underscores just how detached from reality its members are. It asks readers to envision a “socialist day off.” Here’s what that looks like, according to the platform:

“You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.”

To anyone with a basic understanding of economics and the real world, that’s the stuff of childish fantasies. It might be laughable – if it weren’t becoming a mainstream position on the political left.

Five years ago, virtually no one had heard of the DSA. Now, it boasts more than 95,000 members, including the mayor of America’s largest city, Zohran Mamdani. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the highest-profile House Democrats and a potential 2028 presidential contender, has ties to the group, as does Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Meanwhile, DSA-backed primary candidates are winning Democrat primaries against candidates backed by the liberal establishment. At least three DSA picks, Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez, and Melat Kiros, are on track to win U.S. House races in deep blue seats this fall. The DSA’s own news outlet, the Democratic Left, counts nearly 90 endorsed candidates running nationwide this cycle, including more than a dozen for Congress.

Inside the Democrat Party, formal resistance to this agenda has been minimal. Just 10 House Democrats and three candidates signed a “Promise to America” pledge in June, declaring, “We are capitalist, not socialist.” Set against a House Democrat caucus of more than 200 members, that amounts to a dismal level of support.

Carrying out the platform would require constitutional changes of extraordinary scope. The DSA itself calls for a new political system and a new constitution establishing a “democratic socialist republic.”

The DSA does not need current politicians in Washington to embrace its platform. It just needs to keep winning Democrat primaries and transforming the party into a vehicle to advance radical socialist-communist policies. Given that 59 percent of self-described Democrats view the DSA favorably, that strategy seems like an effective one.

As voters cast their ballots this fall, they should understand that a vote for Democrats is also a vote for the growing power of the DSA. Their radical platform remains a fringe position. But if current trends continue, it won’t be for long.

Sarah Katherine Sisk, AMAC Newsline

Islamic Academy Acquires Richardson Baptist Church, Plans K‑12 School, Seminary, and MosqueThe campus is slated to become an Islamic education hub built around an “Islamization of Knowledge” curriculum.

A Muslim organization has purchased a Baptist church in Richardson after engaging in a lawsuit with the previous owners over a signing dispute. The organization announced plans to convert the church campus into a Muslim school, seminary, and mosque, in addition to other uses.

Salahuddin Future Academy (SAFA), the purchaser of the property, is a K-12 educational entity that states part of its mission is to “connect learning to Islamic principles by integrating the rich texts of the Quran and Hadith into every aspect of the Common Core standards” through a curriculum they describe as “Islamization of Knowledge.”

SAFA purchased the property from the Korean World Mission Baptist Church, which states on its website that it has owned the property since 1992. Some of the church’s prayers include that the people would “love Jesus more than anything else” and that the church would “[be a place] where Jesus’ disciples are made,” according to a translation from Korean.

“Our church’s mission is to live a life that brings glory to God by transforming people into God’s children and Jesus’ disciples,” according to a translation from Korean.

According to The Dallas Express, SAFA sued the Baptist church in February. The lawsuit was filed over SAFA’s claims that the church allegedly signed a contract in October of last year to sell the property for $3.8 million.

After SAFA allegedly paid $38,000 in earnest money and expected the transaction to close in May, the Korean Baptist Church stated that the pastor misunderstood what he was signing, thinking it was a listing agreement. This prompted SAFA to file the lawsuit to push the sale forward and seek more than $1 million in damages. The suit was dismissed in April without a ruling on the merits.

In conjunction with SAFA, Authentic Ilm Mission (AIM) has plans to open the Dawah Academy & Seminary on the property. Described as “America’s first national residential Dawah seminary,” the academy offers pathways ranging from an entry-level intensive to a “Bachelor’s Degree in Islamic Studies.”

“We are dedicated to cultivating knowledgeable, principled, and effective leaders who can represent Islam with wisdom, defend the truth with evidence, and carry the prophetic legacy into every sphere of modern life.”

The property will reportedly also house a mosque.

In a video posted to the AIM Facebook account, a speaker for AIM boasted that Korean World Mission Baptist Church “was a church that used to train missionaries to try to give Da’wah (evangelization) to Muslims to leave Islam, but … now we’re going to buy this place.” During this comment, the phrase “Muslim haters!!” was flashed on the screen.

The purchase of the former Baptist church property comes as concerns continue to rise over Islam’s influence in Texas.

At a recent mosque open house in Plano, a speaker announced that “Sharia is already here.” Another man, who claimed to have “lived under full force of Sharia law (in Iran)”, warned of “apostasy laws, where they’re being killed for leaving their religion in my country, Iran.”

While Islam makes up just 2 percent of the population of Texas, the state holds what some estimates claim is the fifth-largest population of Muslims in the nation and Islam is widely cited as the fastest-growing religion in the world.

Hunter Burney

There’s an active debate in Democratic politics between progressives and moderates about how to build a winning coalition.

A new report from a pair of California researchers, shared exclusively with NPR, argues that debate misses the point. The answer isn’t centrism, they write, it’s respect for where working-class voters are coming from.

“It’s about understanding that people need a sense of personal and economic security before they will support the changes progressives are calling for,” the authors write.

The report’s authors are, to put a label on it, college-educated coastal elites. Joan C. Williams is a law professor from San Francisco who is known for her work in diversity, equity and inclusion. Jared Abbott leads the Center for Working Class Politics and has a Ph.D. from Harvard. Their intended audience is people who share their progressive politics.

Their message is that the Democratic Party would be making a huge mistake if it keeps catering to social justice warriors and fails to understand, respect and appeal to working-class voters. “The path heavily favors the party that wins working-class voters,” the report explains.

“I am tired of losing,” Williams said in an interview. “I want to build a sustained progressive coalition capable of delivering on progressive goals. And that’s not what we have now, and that’s not what we’ve had for decades.”

Titled “The Left’s Coalition Crisis: Understanding the Massive Divide Between Working Class and College Educated Voters, and How to Bridge It,” the report argues that Democrats have lost support from working-class voters of all races because the party’s base is out of touch with the priorities and values of those Americans.

The greatest divide is on the issue of “resisting authoritarianism.”

“Resisting authoritarianism is the second-highest priority for liberal college grads, but for workers, it’s like 19 out of 20,” said Williams.

Defending democracy was a major theme of Vice President Kamala Harris’ losing presidential campaign in 2024. She delivered her closing argument from the White House Ellipse, recounting President Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021.

Another major theme of her campaign was defending abortion access. Those are two issues, according to the report, “that liberal college grads prioritize but most working-class Americans don’t.”

The lesson, they argue, isn’t that working-class voters are unreachable. It’s that you can’t reach them if you’re not focused on the issues they care about the most.

“If we really care about stopping authoritarianism, if we really care about defending democracy, we have to stop talking about defending democracy in the way that we’ve been doing for the last too many years,” Abbott said.

So, what should Democrats be talking about? The economy, and not just in abstract terms like “affordability,” because wages are as important as costs, the researchers find.

“Ten out of 12 workers’ top priorities are economics, so if you want them to vote for you, talk about economics,” Williams said.

Abbott said Democratic candidates this midterm election year have done a relatively good job of keeping that economic focus. But how they talk about economic issues matters too.

The researchers took issues that weren’t top priorities for working-class voters and poll-tested new messages framed around working-class values. That shift in messaging was able to move opinion.

Prosecuting a young mother for her angry words seems poisonously symbolic.

J.B. Shurk | July 29, 2026

Last week, a Minnesota jury convicted Shiloh Hendrix of disorderly conduct for using a racial slur against a Somali man who was harassing and recording her.  The “crime” occurred in a public park last year after Hendrix caught a Somali child stealing from her handbag.  Hendrix had her hands full with her own toddler at the time, and her protective maternal instincts kicked in.  

Black Lives Matter (a domestic terror group that Democrats and Mitt Romney enthusiastically support, even after BLM caused more property damage during the 2020 George Floyd riots than any other event in American history) demanded that Hendrix be charged with a crime.  Minnesota prosecutors complied.  And anti-American, open borders Democrats got their scalp.  Hendrix was found “guilty” for saying a naughty word.

This is the same state that has done nothing while Democrat-aligned domestic terrorists attack Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.  During those encounters, black and Hispanic officers are called horrendously racist names.  Similarly, when Islamic supremacists march through Minneapolis calling for Israel’s eradication, they use the most offensive language to intimidate Jewish-Americans.  Because corrupt Governor Tim Walz sympathizes with these dangerous leftwing fanatics, their use of the “n-word” is treated as protected free speech.  As soon as a young, white mother uses the same word to push back against a stalking Somali migrant, Minnesota’s Democrat cowards decide that language must be punished more vigorously than anti-ICE terrorists who use their vehicles as murder weapons.

Just to put this betrayal of the First Amendment in perspective, this is the same Minnesota criminal “justice” system that permitted state employee Dylan Bryan Adams to vandalize Teslas around the Minneapolis area last year and cause tens of thousands of dollars in damage without suffering any real consequences.  Adams engaged in that crime spree because he was angry that Elon Musk was using his DOGE team to identify government fraud.  Democrats love to launder taxpayer dollars into the bank accounts of NGOs and special interest groups, so they encouraged their army of Democrat domestic terrorists to set Teslas on fire across the country.  State employee Adams got the message and did his part.  Minnesota’s Democrat prosecutors thanked him for his service by declining to press charges.  

In order to appreciate how unjust the decision not to prosecute Adams was, consider this: At the same time that Minnesota’s Democrat prosecutors rewarded Adams for his “politically correct” animus toward Elon Musk, they charged a nineteen-year-old woman with no criminal record with first-degree felony property damage for keying a coworker’s car.  Because her vandalism had nothing to do with attacking Elon Musk or President Trump, she did not receive the Dylan Bryan Adams special treatment.  Because Democrats considered Adams’s crime spree a noble exercise in “political speech,” he was even rewarded with a promotion and pay raise for his criminal behavior.  

In order to understand just how corrupt and politicized Minnesota’s criminal “justice” system has become, it is worth taking a closer look at Sharmake Omar, the Somali who followed and recorded Shiloh Hendrix as she attempted to leave the park while carrying her child in her arms.  The same Minnesota authorities who prosecuted Hendrix dismissed rape charges against Omar “in the interest of justice” one month before he filmed Hendrix and her child and uploaded the video to TikTok.  

In 2022, Omar was charged along with another Somali for allegedly raping a teenage girl who had run away from her foster home.  The girl identified the pair in a photo line-up.  In her statement, she alleged that Omar and his friend offered her a place to stay, took her to a trailer, stole her shoes so that she couldn’t leave, and raped her for several days.  The juvenile girl escaped in a pair of oversized rain boots, reached a public phone, and called a previous foster care parent for help.  The former foster parent immediately reported the rape to the police and took the child to a Minneapolis children’s hospital.  Omar was arrested.

Just before Omar was scheduled to stand trial, Minnesota’s prosecutors inexplicably dropped the charges.  A month later, Omar turned into a BLM poster boy by racking up tens of millions of views for his TikTok video of Hendrix.  Can you imagine the aberrant personality and temperament of someone who, having just recently avoided standing trial for raping a child, felt emboldened enough to harass a young mother on a playground?  Minnesota authorities have coddled Somalis so obsequiously (Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey gave his victory speech in Somali, for goodness’ sake!) that accused child rapists aren’t the slightest bit afraid of being caught filming children in parks.

This is the abysmal state of criminal “justice” in the leftwing nuthouse of Minnesota.  Black Lives Matter arsonists burn down homes and businesses across the Minneapolis area (while leaving plenty of unsolved homicides in their wake), and Governor Tim Walz applauds the Democrat Party’s favorite domestic terrorists as “civil rights heroes.”  Anti-ICE domestic terrorists obstruct the arrests of foreign murderers, rapists, and pedophiles, and Minnesota Democrats lionize individuals who threaten the lives of cops.  Those same anti-ICE domestic terrorists scream profanities (including the “n-word”) at black law enforcement officers every time they try to do their jobs by protecting ungrateful Minnesotans from their deadly “sanctuary city” policies.  Minnesota not only lets state employee Dylan Bryan Adams off the hook for causing tens of thousands of dollars in property damage but also rewards his criminality because he chose to target fellow Minnesotans for driving Democrat bogeyman Elon Musk’s Teslas.  Minnesota’s Democrat prosecutors drop child rape charges against Sharmake Omar “in the interest of justice” and then, one month later, turn him into a star witness against a young, white Minnesota woman who used a bad word while an alleged child rapist followed and recorded her.

There is no “justice” in Minnesota.  Those who do not belong to a protected class — Somali, domestic terrorist, rapist, pedophile, etc. — should get the heck out of the North Star State.  Minnesota won’t be safe until its suicidal tendencies succeed.  Only after foreign and domestic criminals have robbed, raped, and murdered enough Minnesotans to break through the leftwing delusions of brainwashed “progressives” will Minnesota have a chance to restore sanity.  Even then, however, the state’s survival will depend entirely upon whether Minnesotans finally realize that responsible, no-nonsense lawmen are the only kind of people who might save them.  The Somalis will not lift a finger to stop violence in Minnesota.  The anti-ICE, Antifa, and BLM domestic terrorists thrive on violence.  Only virtuous law enforcement officers who are willing to put their lives on the line for strangers can stop this madness and resurrect Minnesota.  Unfortunately, those are the very people whom Governor Tim Walz and his fellow Democrat goons vilify every single day.

Given how broken Minnesota has become under Democrat Party rule, prosecuting a young mother for her angry words seems poisonously symbolic.  Minnesota authorities refuse to protect citizens from criminal illegal aliens.  Minnesota authorities refuse to protect citizens from domestic terrorists.  Minnesota authorities have given Minnesota’s criminals general amnesty.  But citizens who dare to violate “politically correct” commandments are punished with the full force of the law.  The First Amendment is dead in the North Star State.  Justice is dead, too.

American Thinker

Megan Messerly and Myah Ward

Tue, July 28, 2026 at 4:45 AM EDT

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during his last in-person meeting at the White House, reportedly sold President Donald Trump on starting a war with Iran.

Now, the GOP’s America First wing fears he’s about to pitch the president on ramping up attacks.

“I think all of President Trump’s most ardent non-‘Israel First’ supporters are furious,” said former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. “Netanyahu has had twice as many visits to the White House in 18 months as Churchill had in all of World War II — with every one of them a disaster for America First.”

The two men are set to meet Tuesday morning for the first time since the two countries attacked Iran in February, with Netanyahu in Washington to attend the funeral of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. The meeting comes at a moment of tension between the two allies: While Trump has long defended Israel, he has grown increasingly willing to publicly criticize Netanyahu for being too aggressive with Lebanon.

It also arrives at a pivotal moment in a war that has dragged on for five months, with the U.S. teetering between attempts at peace and a more aggressive phase of war. U.S. and Iran suspended nearly two weeks of tit-for-tat strikes over the weekend amid hopes for a new ceasefire deal, but Trump continues to threaten “massive attacks” on the country after an earlier peace agreement fell apart this month.

Many of the president’s anti-interventionist allies had hoped the latest ceasefire attempt would lead to a permanent end to the conflict. Instead, they’re grappling with the possibility that Netanyahu, who is visiting the U.S. for the seventh time since Trump took office last year, may instead push the president into a new, more durable phase of war that could leave the U.S. embroiled in conflict in the Middle East for months, if not years.

The meeting comes as new polling shows that a growing share of the president’s base no longer believes the war is worth its economic costs. And Republicans are increasingly resigned to the fact that the war will likely still be hanging over voters in some form when they head to the polls in November.

Curt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative magazine, described the meeting as “DEFCON 1.”

“Netanyahu is going to argue for the essential logic of escalation, which — if Trump is not willing to give the [memorandum of understanding] a chance and if Trump is not willing to walk away from the conflict entirely without a resolution — then I think we probably will escalate, and that’s what we’ve been seeing these last couple of weeks,” Mills said.

Trump allies concede that Netanyahu wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t try to persuade the president on further military action that would guarantee an end to Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

“I’m interested in seeing how forward-leaning Netanyahu is about wanting a U.S. engagement in that way. I mean, is that something he wants to do privately? Is that something he’s going to say publicly?” said Alex Gray, who served as National Security Council chief of staff during Trump’s first term. “Netanyahu is going to push his agenda, which I don’t think in this instance necessarily is compatible with our interests, but I have no concern that Donald Trump is going to be manipulated by any leader into doing something that’s not compatible with America’s interest first.”

A White House official, granted anonymity to preview the meeting, said the two leaders will discuss the Iran conflict, the trilateral agreement between the U.S., Israel and Lebanon as well as expanding the Abraham Accords, the agreements establishing diplomatic normalization between Israel and a handful of Arab countries.

All of President Trump’s decisions are guided by what is best for the American people and our national security,” the official said.

Netanyahu has not been to the White House since the launch of the war, despite months of efforts to secure another invitation. Until Monday, the White House had not publicly confirmed the meeting, details of which were only just finalized as officials prepared for Graham’s funeral.

Strikes between the U.S. and Iran remain paused, though Trump on Monday threatened that the U.S. would “go back to doing what we were doing” if the latest attempt at diplomacy fails. Netanyahu could ultimately shoulder the burden of blame if the war continues to drag on — potentially deepening strains between the two allies.

“Netanyahu is kind of a problem-maker at the moment, right? This war has consumed the last five and a half months or so. There’s not a clear solution to it,” said a former official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamics of the meeting. “Trump probably, publicly or not, blames Netanyahu partially or associates him with a thing going badly. It’s not like it has to be his fault. It’s that he’s associated with it. And the president’s pissed off about it.”

Trump, who faces increasing pressure at home to bring the war to an end ahead of November’s midterms, has grown increasingly vocal in his frustration with Netanyahu. At the G7 summit last month, he criticized Israel’s continued military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon as he sought to promote a fragile peace deal. And his vice president, JD Vance, has also sharpened his attacks against Israel, accusing Netanyahu’s government of undermining U.S-Iran negotiations in an effort to drag out the war.

Proponents of the U.S.-Israel relationship are hoping that the Tuesday meeting helps mend fences between the two leaders as they continue to pursue a shared goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“The one constant and the one area in which there is zero daylight between the prime minister and the president is that under no circumstances will Iran ever have a nuclear weapon,” said Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “And to his credit, despite some of the political costs associated with this, President Trump has remained absolutely resolute in this, and he could very easily do what previous presidents have always done, and just kick the can down the road and make it somebody else’s problem.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) added that the meeting is “better than having them not talking to one another.”

The Israeli prime minister, who faces reelection in October, needs Tuesday’s meeting to understand Trump’s next steps — whether he intends to return to the memorandum of understanding or move toward further escalation, said Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special representative for Iran in Trump’s first term.

But Netanyau, who has built much of his political identity around confronting Iran’s security threat, also enters Tuesday’s meeting from a position of significant political risk as the two leaders are poised to broach several difficult subjects, including Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.

“The stakes are higher for Netanyahu both because Trump, not he, is the decision-maker here,” Abrams said. “And because his job and not Trump’s is on the ballot.”

Alex Gangitano, Riley Rogerson and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

This video features commentary from *Black Conservative Perspective* regarding the current political state of the *Democratic Party* as it heads toward the midterm elections. The host argues that the party is in a state of crisis due to its association with far-left, socialist ideologies.

**Key takeaways from the video:** * **Ideological Shift:** The host highlights a *Fox News* interview (0:23-1:12) with a *Democratic Socialists of America* (DSA) co-chair, pointing to support for radical policies like abolishing the *Senate*, the *presidency*, the *Supreme Court*, *ICE*, and *prisons*.

* **Media Panic:** The host contends that mainstream media, including *Joe Scarborough* on *Morning Joe*, is panicking because these radical positions are driving away moderate voters and hurting the party’s electoral chances (12:44-13:14).

* **Internal Civil War:** The video discusses rising tensions within the *Democratic Party*, specifically highlighting conflicts between establishment figures and progressives, mentioning figures like *John Fetterman* and *Abdul El-Sayed* (6:06-7:57).

* **Financial and Strategic Woes:

** The host notes that the *DNC* is facing significant debt (2:52-3:30) and argues that leadership, such as *Hakeem Jeffries* and *Chuck Schumer*, is failing to stand up to the party’s radical wing because they are focused on short-term election wins (11:02-12:43).

The host concludes that by refusing to define their party, *Democrats* are allowing their socialist wing to set the agenda, which they believe will lead to a disastrous electoral performance in November.