Enjoining the national tabs ...
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said agents arrested an “MS-13 kingpin” Wednesday in the Omaha, Nebraska area.
ICE said in a news release that the agency arrested a high-ranking member of the MS-13 gang who is among El Salvador’s top 100 most-wanted fugitives. ...
“These illegal aliens didn’t just sneak into our country; they brought with them a legacy of violence, terror and death,” said Homeland Security Investigations Kansas City Special Agent Mark Zito, whose office oversees Omaha. “They thought they could hide in America’s heartland, but they were sadly mistaken. Not on our watch.”
Ed: I voted for this. So did a lot of others.
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🚨@AlanDersh said he saw the entire Epstein list while proving his innocence:
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) July 10, 2025
"Documents are being suppressed to protect individuals. I know the names of the individuals. I know why they're being suppressed. I know who's suppressing them. But I'm bound by confidentiality." pic.twitter.com/2bx7SwozN3
Ed: Well, well, well ... The ball is back in Pam Bondi's court, it seems.
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Racket readers may remember reports I co-authored with Michael Shellenberger and Alexandra Gutentag last February, describing how Brennan, Comey, and Clapper “cooked the intelligence” in that 2017 ICA. For instance, the chiefs suppressed junior analysts’ belief that Russia may not have preferred Trump, seeing him as “mercurial,” “unreliable,” and “not steady,” while viewing a possible Clinton presidency as “manageable and reflecting continuity.” The notion that the ICA was manipulated isn’t new, as Aaron Mate at RealClearInvestigations reported the ICA’s preparation “deviated from standard CIA practice,” and similar reports came out via former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, current deputy FBI director Dan Bongino, and others.
However, this new report contains a wealth of new details. It’s not clear what this may or may not mean for any possible future criminal investigation, but Ratcliffe’s CIA investigation fills in a lot of blanks.
Ed: It does indeed. And perhaps this might even lead to some consequences and accountability for the political weaponization of the intel agencies to interfere in American elections and to kneecap a duly elected president. Matt Taibbi seems cautiously optimistic about those prospects; I am not so sure, but I'd love to believe it possible.
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FYI—American law prohibits federal, state, and local governments from assisting the ICC in investigations and arrests. Mamdani is literally promising to make unlawful arrests of foreign leaders. pic.twitter.com/rEYKiVXMR7
— Bluesky Libs (@BlueskyLibs) July 10, 2025
Ed: I'd say that this would hurt his election chances, but in New York City these days, I'm not so sure. I'd also like to think that this would be entirely theoretical because Mamdani would never be in position to follow through on this promise, but ... again, in New York City these days, I'm not so sure.
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All the conditions are aligned: Israel has the upper hand, the world is silent, the Arab regimes are silent, criminal gangs are everywhere, society is collapsing,” he added. In the West Bank, the Sheikhs of Hebron have engaged in direct talks with Israel outside the prevailing government structures. “We want cooperation with Israel,” says Sheikh Wadee’ al-Jaabari, also known as Abu Sanad, from his ceremonial tent in Hebron, the West Bank’s largest city located south of Jerusalem. “We want coexistence.” To that end, they have sent a letter to Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat, a former mayor of Jerusalem, who has hosted Mr. Jaabari and others at his home, meeting with them more than a dozen times since February. According to The Wall Street Journal, the letter “seeks a timetable for negotiations to join the Abraham Accords and ‘a fair and decent arrangement that would replace the Oslo Accords, which only brought damage, death, economic disaster and destruction.’” They propose Israel admit 1,000 workers from Hebron for a trial period, followed by 5,000 more with a long term goal of over 50,000 workers. They also promise “zero tolerance” for terrorism by workers, “in contrast to the current situation in which the Palestinian Authority pays tributes to the terrorists.”
While it remains to be seen which of these various opportunities will come to fruition and it’s certainly conceivable none of them will, clearly something has changed radically in the region over the past six months and just as clearly, that something is President Trump.
Ed: It's difficult to overstate the impact that Trump has had on the Middle East in just a few short months. Much of this goes back to the first term and his work on the Abraham Accords, but Trump's decision to take out Iran's nuclear facilities was a game-changer -- and maybe not just in the Middle East.
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I love when CNN shows polls they hate showing…
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) July 10, 2025
Americans don’t care about climate change… and they had to admit it.
🤣🤣🤣🔥🔥🔥
pic.twitter.com/Xhy7XrfM13
Ed: "Despite all of these horrible weather events"? We have always had "horrible weather events" for as long as we have recorded weather events at all. That's why we call it WEATHER. The reason that climate panic isn't working is because the people selling the freak-outs keep (a) being wrong about their predictions, and (b) living their own lives like climate change doesn't matter.
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The proposal, championed by Wadee’ al-Jaabari and Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat, promises peace through fragmentation, replacing Palestinian national aspirations with a patchwork of local “emirates.” This isn’t new thinking—it’s the colonial playbook. It’s divide and conquer dressed up for a modern audience. The proposal makes Palestinian self-determination impossible, reducing the dream of statehood to a work-permit program. At least the Palestinian Authority, for all its failures, emerged from a national movement.
The Journal reports that “Jaabari and four other leading Hebron sheikhs have signed a letter pledging peace and full recognition of Israel as a Jewish state” in return for Israel’s recognition of the “Emirate of Hebron,” with the goal of joining the Abraham Accords. But the Palestine Liberation Organization recognized Israel’s right to exist in 1993. Israel nonetheless established more settlements, more checkpoints and a more entrenched occupation. The settler population nearly doubled during the Oslo years. Now we’re expected to believe that an artificial Hebron emirate recognizing Israel more fully as a Jewish state and joining the Abraham Accords will make things better for Palestinians?
Ed: I'm including this because it is a well-written rebuttal to some of the commentary on this topic, including my own, and worth considering. Mahmoud Jabari is correct that it undercuts the idea of Palestinian 'nationalism,' and that Israel would benefit from it. However, that doesn't mean that it won't improve the situation for the Palestinians either. Fatah is never going to cooperate with Israel on the basis of its legitimacy as a Jewish state; they are still promising to reverse the Nabka and achieve a "from the river to the sea" state for 'Palestine'. That delusion isn't making life better for Palestinians either, and has led to nearly 80 years of misery.
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The wife of TX Attorney General and GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton announces she has filed for divorce on "biblical grounds" citing "recent discoveries" https://t.co/l9ncJOgFkQ
— Meridith McGraw (@meridithmcgraw) July 10, 2025
Ed: Well, things may get interesting in next year's primary challenge to John Cornyn. I'm not sure a divorce really does much damage to political prospects anymore, especially for legislative elections. But that may depend on what the "recent discoveries" are and whether Angela Paxton plans to share them -- and when.
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After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives.
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) July 10, 2025
I could not be any more proud or grateful for the incredible family that God has blessed us with, and I remain committed to supporting…
...and I remain committed to supporting our amazing children and grandchildren. I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time.
Ed: This sounds less biblical than his wife suggests. And 'privacy' may not be what Angela has in mind. Stay tuned. But also ... pray for them and their families. This is way more important than an election, especially to the children and grandchildren.
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Shay Laps arrived at a prestigious Stanford University research laboratory from Israel in April 2024 with a mission to develop a type of insulin that could transform diabetes treatment. He had won the job after interviews more than six months earlier, and his credentials included a PhD, a groundbreaking method for protein synthesis, and the recommendation of a Nobel Prize winner.
By October 2024, however, Laps was gone from Stanford. He had been locked out of the lab, his research sabotaged and his reputation threatened, according to a lawsuit he filed Thursday in a federal court in California. The lawsuit alleges antisemitic discrimination, retaliation, and deliberate institutional indifference.
Why did everything go wrong? The lawsuit alleges that the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel “was a match to tinder at Stanford,” igniting pervasive antisemitism that targeted Laps from the moment he walked into the lab. During the hiring process, lab director Danny Hung-Chieh Chou had circulated Laps’ curriculum vitae, which made clear that he had served in the Israeli Defense Forces, and lab members also knew that he was Jewish and Israeli, according to the lawsuit.
Ed: Sounds like a case for Linda McMahon at the Department of Education.
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Jasmine Crockett: Joe Biden was totally fine, Trump is the one with the mental acuity problem. pic.twitter.com/JiQrCRhDWC
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) July 10, 2025
Ed: Res ipsa loquitur.
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Israeli intelligence indicated that Iran's enriched uranium remained at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan, the sites that the US hit last month, and had not been moved, an Israeli official told international media on Thursday.
The official suggested, however, that the Iranians might still be able to gain access to Isfahan, but it would be hard to remove any of the material there.
Ed: As I said at the time of the strikes and ever since, the speculation that Iran moved its enriched uranium from Fordow or the other two sites made little sense. The Iranians built Fordow to be the most secure facility for storing as well as enriching it, and Isfahan was where they build facilities to enrich as well as metalize the uranium. Attempts to move it during the war would have been immediately seen by the IDF and probably by the US as well. The question is whether any of it survived and can be extracted, and thus far, there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that the Iranians can access it.
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