The United Kingdom has given the U.S.
authorization to use its military bases to carry out strikes on Iranian
missile sites attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz, following a
ministers' meeting.
"They [British ministers] confirmed that the agreement for the U.S.
to use UK bases in the collective self-defence of the region includes
U.S. defensive operations to degrade the missile sites and capabilities
being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz," a statement from 10
Downing Street, the home of the prime minister, said.
The statement led to a rebuke from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on social media.
"Vast majority of the British People do not want any part in the
Israel-U.S. war of choice on Iran," Araghchi wrote. "Ignoring his own
People, Mr. Starmer [British Prime Minister Keir Starmer] is putting
British lives in danger by allowing UK bases to be used for aggression
against Iran."
"Iran will exercise its right to self-defense," Araghchi added.
Starmer has vowed that the U.K. would not be drawn into a war with
Iran and had previously rejected a U.S. request to use British bases for
the strikes on Iran, saying he needed to be satisfied that any
military action was legal.
President Donald Trump has sharply criticized Starmer, saying he once considered the U.K. as "the Rolls-Royce of allies."
On Friday, Trump said Britain "should've acted a lot faster."
"It's been a very late response from the U.K.," Trump said. "It's a
surprise because the relationship is so good. This has never happened
before. They were really pretty much our first ally all over the world."
But Starmer
changed his stance after Iran conducted strikes on
British allies across the Middle East, saying that the United States
could use RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia, a joint U.S.-U.K. base in the
Indian Ocean.
British ministers "reaffirmed that the principles behind the UK's
approach to the conflict remain the same: the UK remains committed to
defending our people, our interests and our allies, acting in accordance
with international law and not getting drawn into the wider conflict,"
the statement from Downing Street said.
But
Variety decided to step on the third rail, not even waiting an entire
day, before offering up a steaming pile of garbage, rather than simply
honoring a wonderful entertainer who brought all of us so much joy.
It
was bad, talking about how "in nearly every Norris movie, he’s muscling
into a foreign land or othered community." Othered community, really?
The article also talked about how the "right-and-wrong simplicity of
'Walker' is cop-aganda.
But it gets worse.
Was
Norris a brilliant athlete and top-shelf star? Yes. But there’s no
denying that his roles were part of a body of work used to show American
strength, might and the pernicious attraction of taking the law into
one’s own hands — something that seems less fun in a year in which our
country is funneling money into bombing Iran and ICE agents are acting
like one-man militias. Given our nation’s divisions in morality,
information literacy and overall sense of reality, it’s easier to see
Norris’ characters as justification for a fringe conspiracy movement
rather than a moral standing. When patriotism and laws shift away from
the Constitution, what side does a gunslinger land on? [....]
When
a star is the poster boy for American exceptionalism and might, at what
point does his legacy transition from escapism to dangerous propaganda?
Oh, hell no. Don't you even. Talk about divisions in morality and
reality. Iran has been committing terrorism against us for 47 years. ICE
(Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is enforcing the law, whether the
left likes it or not. That's just a bizarre, twisted take from
Variety.
The real kicker is the last sentence, and that's why the article is trying to go after Chuck.
No,
the characters Norris played were not about politics. But yes, America
is exceptional. Chuck understood and believed it. Sorry, not sorry that
some folks on the left don't get that. That's not propaganda, that's
hard reality.
I've seen ratios on social media posts before, but I
don't think I've ever seen people say so much with one voice to tell
Variety to get bent. The commenters even banded together to get a
Community Note on the Variety post, and they have succeeded.
Chuck
Norris killed his shadow while shadow boxing. That's why you never see
his shadow when he comes up behind you. Chuck Norris can never be
"overshadowed".
Then I realized something important about that note - that it is all true.
Even
in death, even with such a vile, bad take from liberal media outlets
like Variety, they cannot overshadow who Norris was; just like they
can't overshadow the greatness of America, no matter how much they try.
His legacy is beyond them, his place secure.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is accusing Democratic Attorney
General Rob Bonta of trying to intimidate and derail his department’s
investigation into a shocking 45,896-vote ballot discrepancy involving
Governor Gavin Newsom’s Prop 50 redistricting scheme.
Proposition 50, passed in a special election this past November,
allows the state legislature to temporarily override the independent
Citizens Redistricting Commission and redraw congressional maps to favor
Democrats until the 2030 census.
Prop 50, officially titled the "Election Rigging Response Act," is an actual example
of election rigging. What's worse, Bianco, who is a leading 2026
Republican gubernatorial candidate, is probing whether it was passed
through nefarious or possibly rigged means.
According to county
records reviewed during the probe, only 611,428 ballots were actually
cast in the special election in Riverside County, yet officials
certified a staggering 657,322 votes — creating a massive unexplained
gap.
Now, Bianco claims, Bonta is suspiciously, allegedly trying to "shut down" the investigation. Bianco described
to reporters multiple direct contacts from the AG's office—including
phone calls and letters—that he characterized as heavy-handed attempts
to shut down scrutiny of the unexplained 45,000+ vote gap.
“Instead of addressing the discrepancy, Bonta has tried multiple times to shut down our investigation,” he said.
“This
investigation is very simple,” Bianco stated. “Our investigation will
determine the validity of that alleged discrepancy… We will do that by
physically counting the ballots. This is not a recount to determine how
many votes were for or against Prop 50.”
Bianco,
in a follow-up post on X, declared it his "duty" to investigate the
massive ballot discrepancy, noting that the Prop 50 scheme "could decide
the balance of power in Congress."
In a sane world, the Attorney
General would also feel it his "duty" to get to the bottom of things.
Yet, Bonta is trying to shut it down.
Biano has vowed to press on, despite the heavy-handed attempts to thwart his probe.
“AG
Bonta is part of the executive branch of this state,” he declared.
“Under the separation of powers principle, AG Bonta does not have
authority over the court or evidence. I will carry out my constitutional
duty to pursue justice impartially.”
A Riverside Superior Court judge sided with the sheriff earlier this
week, greenlighting the continuation of the inquiry under a
court-appointed special master to ensure independence and transparency, a
ruling that Bianco hailed as a victory against state overreach.
Michael
Gates, the Republican candidate challenging Bonta for California
Attorney General, strongly endorsed Bianco's investigation into the Prop
50 ballot discrepancy.
He blasted Bonta for allegedly covering up corruption and attempting to block legitimate probes into election integrity.
"Rob
Bonta wants to shut down that investigation," he said in a video posted
to X. "Why? Because he's not really acting as the top law enforcement
official in California. He doesn't want to get to the truth."
"He's there to run cover for corruption."
Isn't running cover for corruption what Democrats do in California?
It's not a negative in their world. It's more of a resume enhancer.
The
scandal here isn't just the unexplained vote discrepancy. It's the
Democratic establishment's frantic efforts to silence the investigators.
It's the effort to protect Newsom's redistricting power grab. To tip
the scales of power in the House for Democrats.
The scheme starts
at the county level but then explodes into a national power grab. It's a
wholesale corruption complex. Election integrity takes a back seat to
raw political control in the Golden State.
It's incredible how the mainstream media can
investigate something when they have an axe to grind or an agenda to
push. Earlier, we told you NBC News dug up some European "experts"
who said the U.S. and Israel aren't winning in Iran, despite
obliterating their leadership, navy, air force, and missile and drone
supplies.
NBC News also dug into comments made by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
about what the families of fallen soldiers told him about Operation
Epic Fury.
This is such a bunch of semantic bull, even for NBC News.
EXCLUSIVE: Father of service member killed in Iran war said he did not tell Pete Hegseth to "finish" the job. https://t.co/4QTTfz5SGM
Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth met privately Wednesday with the families of six
service members who died in the Iran war and, in a press briefing the
next morning, said the message he got was consistent and supportive.
“What I heard through tears, through hugs, through strength and through unbreakable resolve was the same from family after family. They said, ‘Finish this. Honor their sacrifice. Do not waver. Do not stop until the job is done,’” Hegseth said.
One
of the people he met at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware was Charles
Simmons. His 28-year-old son, Tech. Sgt. Tyler H. Simmons, was among the
six crew members killed when their refueling plane crashed in Iraq last week.
Simmons recalled his exchange differently.
“I can’t speak for the other families. When he spoke to me, that was not something we talked about,” he told NBC News in an interview Thursday.
Simmons
said he spoke separately to Hegseth and President Donald Trump at Dover
and was grateful for the warmth that both men showed him.
And here's the kicker buried at the end of the article:
Simmons recalled something his son had told him before volunteering for the mission that ended his life.
“He said, ‘Dad, I can’t give you any details, but if civilians knew what we knew, a lot of the criticism [of the war] would cease,” he said.
Secretary
Hegseth never said "all families," he said, "family after family." But
NBC News found the one guy who met with Secretary Hegseth separately and
decided to use that as proof that Hegseth is lying about what the other
families said. NBC News could have asked the other families, too, but
we noticed they didn't.
We do not despise the media enough.
They can't help themselves.
They deserve to have trash ratings.
NBC News knows that few people will read beyond the first paragraph,
and even fewer will read the headline. And if you check out some of the
quotes of that post, they got exactly the sort of reaction they wanted:
the Leftists accusing Secretary Hegseth of lying.
Editor's Note: For decades,
former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is
eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
It’s remarkable that this woman remains employed
by the Secret Service. How does she continue to stay in her position?
She has been suspended once more. Agent Miyo Perez has become a symbol
of the agency’s shortcomings at the 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania,
which nearly resulted in President Trump’s assassination. Surprisingly,
this wasn’t enough to get her fired. Now, she’s under investigation
again for a secret nine-month relationship with a foreign national. They
got married, too. More details are provided by Susan Crabtree of Real
Clear Politics:
This is the third time Perez has been
suspended in a little more than a year. She is on administrative leave
and under "Do Not Admit" status while the investigation continues.
Congressional
investigations that examined the Butler failures faulted Perez for not
placing any Secret Service or local police asset on top of the
now-notorious sloped roof of the American Glass Building where would-be
assassin Thomas Crooks fired off his shots, among other security
problems at Butler.
Yet Congress also questioned why the Secret
Service allowed an inexperienced agent to be placed in such a crucial
role at an outdoor rally with thousands of people in attendance. The
decision to have Perez in a leading security role for the Butler rally
is even more concerning considering that top-level Secret Service
officials, including current Secret Service Director Sean Curran, who
was serving as the Trump campaign detail leader at the time, had been
briefed on an Iranian threat to Trump’s life.
Despite the ongoing
congressional investigations and internal Secret Service review of her
role in the Butler failures, Perez quietly married a Brazilian foreign
national last April without notifying the agency, according to a copy of
her marriage certificate located on the Brevard County public records
website and according to sources familiar with the timing of when she
informed the agency of her marriage.
THE INVESTIGATION IS
LOOKING INTO THE TIMING OF PEREZ'S MARRIAGE TO A FOREIGN NATIONAL AND
WHETHER THE WOMAN WAS AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT AT THE TIME OF THE MARRIAGE
Perez
had informed the Secret Service of her contact with the Brazilian woman
in 2024 before the assassination attempt on Trump’s life, but the
agency may have either lost the notification or failed to act on it at
the time, according to several sources in the Secret Service community.
It’s
unclear, however, whether Perez characterized the contact accurately in
2024 and ever since. Agents are questioning whether she followed
mandatory protocol to keep the Secret Service updated on how the
relationship was developing and when the two began to live together and
subsequently married. The marriage took place in April 2025, according
to the marriage certificate attained on a public records database. I'll
link to the marriage certificate below.
Yet sources in the
Secret Service community say Perez didn’t inform the agency until
January, nine months after the marriage took place.
The internal
Secret Service investigation is examining whether the woman Perez was
dating and married last year had overstayed her visa and was facing a
deportation order, multiple sources familiar with the matter told RCP.
SECRET
SERVICE HAS A CHECKERED HISTORY OF COVERING UP OR UNEVENLY DISCIPLINING
AGENTS WHO HAVE HAD RELATIONSHIPS WITH FOREIGN NATIONALS, INCLUDING AT
LEAST ONE KNOWN RUSSIAN SPY
In 2018, news broke that a suspected
Russian spy had been working for the Secret Service in the U.S. embassy
in Moscow for at least a decade. Dan Bongino
revealed on his
podcast that he had tried to report the spy when he was serving in the
embassy before he left the Secret Service in 2011 but was dismissed and
told to keep his mouth shut.
The same Russian woman was
suspected of being involved in an affair with the top Secret Service
agent working at the embassy, who had served as the Resident Agent in
Charge, or RAC, after Bongino left but several years before her
discovery as a spy, multiple sources in the Secret Service community
told RCP.
The Secret Service and the FBI launched an extensive
investigation and suspended the former Secret Service RAC because he
couldn’t pass his polygraph when questioned about his relationship with
the spy, according to sources familiar with the matter.
At the
time, the agent in question was the head of the Inspections Division,
which oversees disciplinary actions and investigations against all
Secret Service employees. The agency allowed this agent to remain on
administrative leave until he retired in 2019, a breach of normal
disciplinary protocol to benefit an agent and keep the matter out of the
press, the sources told RCP.
Dear God, fire this woman. Like, how is this even a question?
A clip of Rep.
Kristen McDonald Rivet, the incumbent in the race for Michigan’s Eighth
District, has been acquired by Townhall that displays the
congresswoman’s ardent support for a Chinese Communist Party-linked
effort to build an EV battery mega factory near Big Rapids, Michigan.
“What I can tell you is that there has been a lot of
political drama around it, and what I will never do is put politics in
front of people’s jobs,” McDonald Rivet said during a 2024 candidate forum
about her support for Gotion’s planned factory that sparked bipartisan
national security concerns. “Now we have to absolutely address the
unfair playing field with China. They don’t play by the rules and we
need to be ensuring that our national security is protected in those
investments. That particular investment had absolute screening by the
federal government and I stand by it.”
The project was brought about after McDonald Rivet voted in favor of a $175 million tax-payer funded deal to coax the Chinese firm into constructing the facility in Michigan. Locals widely protested the deal, who claimed that they felt as if they were “at war” with Michigan officials who unilaterally pushed for the plant.
Animosity to the deal grew so fervent
that the entirety of the board of local officials who approved the deal
either resigned or were removed in a recall election. Another local
board rescinded their approval of the deal in 2025.
Gotion is still on the hook to repay $23.6 million to the taxpayers after the agreement broke down due to withdrawn support. The firm, which is “wholly owned and controlled”
by a Chinese parent company, has blamed the failure due to “anti-CCP
rhetoric” and “anti-China sentiment” based on “unfounded accusations.”
McDonald Rivet had made a previous statement
eerily similar to that of the CCP-linked firm, saying that those who
opposed the deal were pushing “misinformation and baseless claims” that
“serve the politicians spreading them.”
Republicans have argued that McDonald Rivet’s decision placed party over country, but in this case, it was the Communist Party.
“Kristen
McDonald Rivet has made no secret of her admiration for the Chinese
Communist Party,” said RNC Spokesman Hunter Lovell. “She chose to send
millions in taxpayer subsidies to a CCP-linked company over the concerns
of her own constituents. Hardworking Michiganders can’t trust her to
put their interests ahead of the CCP’s.”
Kristen’s CCP-tied comrades may lose their ally in Congress, as Michigan’s Eighth District is currently rated as “Lean Democratic.”
The death of Ali Mohammad Naini,
spokesperson for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was
announced Friday, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) saying in a post
on X that he was ‘eliminated.’
“Naini served in several propaganda and public relations roles. In
his role as the IRGC’s main propagandist for the past 2 years, he
disseminated the regime’s terrorist propaganda to its proxies across the
Middle East in order to influence and advance terror attacks against
Israel.”
They also claimed he “played a significant role in the recent suppression of Iranian protests.”
ELIMINATED: Ali Mohammad Naini, the Spokesperson and Head of the Public Relations Array of the IRGC.
Naini
served in several propaganda and public relations roles. In his role as
the IRGC's main propagandist for the past 2 years, he disseminated the
regime's terrorist… pic.twitter.com/e29Elb16FS
The IRGC in a Friday statement confirmed the death, saying he “was
martyred in the criminal cowardly terrorist attack by the
American-Zionist side at dawn,” according to Al Jazeera.
Hours before, Naini reportedly told Iranian media that the Islamic
Republic is continuing to produce missiles in spite of the conditions of
war.
This is in contrast to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Thursday announcement that “Iran has no ability to enrich uranium and has no ability to produce ballistic missiles.”
According to U.S. Central Command (CENTOM), about 6,000 targets have
been struck, including more than 90 ships, during the U.S.-led campaign
against Iran known as Operation Epic Fury. Thousands of additional
strikes have also been carried out by Israel in their campaign known as
Operation Roaring Lion, sources report.
Many Iranian regime officials have also been killed, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Rob Finnerty did his job this week, hauling a resurfaced clip into
the light and calling out James Talarico for comments that sound like a
lecture from a coastal think tank, not a candidate trying to win
statewide in Texas. Americans who prize common-sense liberty should be
skeptical when a rising Democrat’s offhand musings about what people eat
get framed as policy direction.
Talarico is no fringe blogger —
he emerged from a crowded primary to become the Democratic nominee for
U.S. Senate in Texas, a race that has suddenly put national attention on
his record and remarks. His victory in the March primary made him the
face of the Democratic opposition in a state where voters value honest
work, ranching, and the traditions that bind communities.
What has
conservatives hopping mad is a clip that paints him urging Americans to
“reduce our meat consumption” for animal-welfare and climate reasons — a
line that in Texas lands like a cultural provocation. Whether you call
it a policy suggestion or an ill-considered sermon, the optics are
brutal in a state where brisket and beef are not just dinner but a way
of life.
Predictably, GOP heavyweights pounced, casting Talarico’s
words as proof Democrats want to micromanage everyday choices from your
plate to your paycheck. That’s the playbook: take a thoughtful personal
opinion about sustainability or welfare and spin it into a threat to
liberty — and too many voters, rightly or wrongly, respond to that fear.
If
you look at Talarico’s wider media appearances, he’s shown a
willingness to lecture elites and mock those who disagree, which feeds
into the narrative conservatives are selling: that Democrats aren’t just
making policy, they’re trying to change culture. He’s been on
high-profile podcasts and interviews talking about climate, elites, and
even food choices — talk that opponents will happily turn into “you
can’t grill in Texas” attack ads.
This isn’t just about one
sentence; it’s a pattern and a reminder for hardworking Americans to
demand clarity. Voters should ask whether a candidate respects Texans’
livelihoods and common-sense freedoms or wants to reshape our habits
from an ivory tower. The choice in November will be about who trusts
ordinary Americans to live, work, and eat without having their plates
policed by politicians.
