- Tuesday July 1st, 2025
- "It Is Not A Question of Who Is Right Or Wrong But What Is Right Or Wrong That Counts."
- --Geoff Metcalf
- Providing an on line Triage of the news since 1998
My son has narrated the last book I wrote.Please consider listening to it and encouraging others to do so too.(Click HERE)
World & Nation
VP Vance Casts Tiebreaking Senate Vote to Pass One Big, Beautiful Bill
Despite weeks of hyperbole, Democrat obstruction, and days of votes and
amendments to delay, the Senate has finally passed the One Big
Beautiful Bill Act.
The Republican-controlled Senate voted Tuesday to pass a wide-ranging
tax-cut and spending bill sought by President Donald Trump.
Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate 51-50.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine; Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; and Sen. Rand
Paul, R-Ky., were the three Republicans to boldly break from Trump and
the party to vote against the bill.
Buoyed by the Supreme Court, Trump to Press Forward on Firings and Social Agenda
President Donald Trump's team is moving quickly to challenge
injunctions that thwarted implementation of his policies on social
issues and firing federal workers after the Supreme Court limited lower
courts' powers to block them.
Friday's ruling was widely viewed as a victory for the president
because it shifted power from the judicial to the executive branch. But
Trump opponents said they still have legal options to impede his agenda.
One White House official told Reuters the administration was moving
immediately to go back to the lower level courts to seek changes,
citing layoffs at federal agencies driven by the Department of
Government Efficiency (DOGE) as one example of a top priority that an
injunction had blocked.
20 bodies — including four headless corpses hanging from bridge — found in Mexico after horrific cartel violence
Twenty bodies were discovered — including four decapitated corpses
hanging from a bridge near a plastic bag of human heads — after a
bloody day of cartel violence in Mexico over the weekend.
All 20 of the victims were male and had gunshot wounds, the Sinaloa State Attorney General’s Office said.
Five of the bodies were decapitated, with four of those corpses left
strung up by their feet along a highway bridge near Culiacán, the
largest city in Sinaloa state, authorities said.
Four decapitated bodies were found hanging by their feet from a bridge in Mexico over the weekend.
Two Chinese nationals arrested for spying on US Navy personnel and bases
Two People's Republic of China
nationals arrested after allegedly recruiting service members and
conducting clandestine operations for China's Ministry of State Security
Two Chinese nationals face serious charges after they allegedly acted
as agents of the People's Republic of China’s government to collect
intelligence about U.S. Navy service members and bases, while also
recruiting other military members to carry out tasks for the country’s
main foreign intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security (MSS).
The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Chinese national Yuance Chen, who
resides in Happy Valley, Oregon, and Liren Lai, who traveled to Houston
on a tourist visa in April 2025, were arrested on Friday. Both
individuals face charges of overseeing and carrying out various
clandestine intelligence tasks in the U.S. on behalf of the Ministry of
State Security.
Along with assisting with the recruitment of potential MSS assets and
gathering intel about service members and bases, the two men are
accused of facilitating a "dead drop" payment of cash on behalf of the
MSS.
Family of victim in Bryan Kohberger case say they were sent into 'panic mode' after plea deal
'The system has failed these four innocent victims and their families,' Kaylee Goncalves' sister, Aubrie, said
The family of Kaylee Goncalves — one of the victims of Idaho murder
suspect Bryan Kohberger — said Monday they were sent "scrambling" and
"jumped into panic mode" after Kohberger accepted a plea deal to avoid
the death penalty.
Kohberger, 30, is accused of killing Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21,
Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, in a 4 a.m. home invasion
attack on Nov. 13, 2022.
Goncalves' 18-year-old sister, Aubrie, said she refuses to stay silent
and reaffirmed her family support for the death penalty in this case.
She said she was unable to attend the family's meeting with prosecutors
in person to make her case.
California Dismantles Landmark Environmental Law to Tackle Housing Crisis
California lawmakers on Monday night rolled back one of the most
stringent environmental laws in the country, after Gov. Gavin Newsom
muscled through the effort in a dramatic move to combat the state’s
affordability crisis.
The Democratic governor—widely viewed as a 2028 presidential
contender—made passage of two bills addressing an acute housing
shortage a condition of his signing the 2025-2026 budget. A cornerstone
of the legislation reins in the California Environmental Quality Act,
which for more than a half-century has been used by opponents to block
almost any kind of development project.
The abuses of the law have spread so widely that opponents used it to
block some bicycle-lane expansions when Newsom served as San
Francisco’s mayor, he said during a signing ceremony at the Sacramento
capital. Democratic leaders of the Assembly and Senate, who had steered
the bills to bipartisan passage earlier Monday, flanked him.
Some environmentalists and other defenders of the longstanding law were
furious, and warned that developers will now go unchecked. “Who needs
Trump when we have a wolf in sheep clothing negotiating backroom deals
while he and his oligarch donors score big,” one critic wrote on X.
Mamdani’s public grocery stores may have devastating effects on city's food supply
Economists and business leaders are sounding alarms over New York City
mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s plan to roll out city-owned grocery
stores that he says will lower food costs.
"You don’t lower grocery bills by having government-run stores," Ryan
Bourne, a top economist at the Cato Institute, told FOX Business.
"Government-run entities have no market discipline — no need to earn
profits, compete, or serve customers efficiently. That leads to bloated
costs, empty shelves, and zero accountability," he added.
Bourne called Mamdani's city-run grocery stores "the height of
political hubris" by failing to acknowledge that grocers operate in
competitive arenas and on razor-thin profit margins.
Dave Rubin warns Jews to 'get the hell out' of NYC if Mamdani becomes mayor
Jewish political commentator claimed 'there will be pogroms' if democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani wins in November
Political commentator Dave Rubin warned his fellow Jewish Americans on
Friday that they should flee New York City if Zohran Mamdani becomes
the new mayor in November.
Mamdani, a Ugandan-born Muslim New York State Assemblyman from Queens,
won the race to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for New York City
mayor, but Republicans and even some Democrats have blasted the
democratic socialist as too extreme.
He has also been criticized for his stance on Israel and refusing to
condemn the phrase "Globalize the intifada," concerning many Jewish New
Yorkers amid rising antisemitism.
"This guy is an absolute radical," Rubin said about Mamdani. "He said
that if Bibi Netanyahu showed up in New York City he would arrest
him... He's still chanting 'From to the river to the sea,' all of this
stuff."
Iran-linked hackers threaten to release new trove of emails stolen from Trump's inner circle after strikes
FBI Director Kash Patel promises to
bring 'hostile adversaries' to justice after Iran-linked group
threatens to leak stolen communications
An Iran-linked cyber group is threatening to release a trove of emails
it claims to have stolen from top Trump officials and allies.
The hackers previously released a batch of stolen emails to the media during the 2024 campaign.
Under the pseudonym Robert, the hackers first told Reuters they had
roughly 100 gigabytes of emails from White House chief of staff Susie
Wiles, President Donald Trump confidante Roger Stone, Trump lawyer
Lindsey Halligan and Stormy Daniels, the porn star who claims to have
had an affair with Trump.
Trump: Musk Could Lose More Than Subsidies
Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened Elon Musk with deportation in the
latest barb during a feud that began over the president's tax cut and
spending bill.
Musk, who for nearly four months headed Trump's Department of
Government Efficiency (DOGE), has criticized Trump and Republicans for
not cutting enough spending in the megabill being worked on by Congress.
After the president suggested ending all government subsidies to Musk's
companies, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO dared Trump to "cut it all." Musk
also has called for a new political party.
Netanyahu Expected to Meet Trump
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he is
expected to travel next week to the United States for meetings with
President Donald Trump.
Last month Trump announced a ceasefire ending 12 days of hostilities between Israel and Iran.
MORNING GLORY: A week that changed the world
President Trump’s order to strike Iran rebuilt American deterrence in 36 hours and capped a remarkable month
"If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the
United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the
forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and
free institutions throughout the world."
That is an excerpt from President Richard Nixon’s speech on April 30,
1970, when he announced the U.S. attacks on North Vietnamese-controlled
areas inside Cambodia along the border with South Vietnam.
This speech and the decision to strike across the South
Vietnam-Cambodian border into the North Vietnamese sanctuaries in
"neutral" Cambodia came six months after Nixon’s November 3, 1969,
speech appealing to the country’s "great silent majority of my fellow
Americans," and asking for their support as he began the
"Vietnamization" of the long-running war he inherited when he took
office in January 1969.
Now President Trump has "escalated to de-escalate" by ordering the B-2s
to fly from Missouri, take out hardened sites in Iran’s nuclear weapons
assembly line, and fly home. Trump’s display of American reach and
military power was followed quickly by a Trump-orchestrated cease-fire
between Israel and Iran. Rumors of ongoing talks about expansion of the
Abraham Accords from Trump’s first term continue to multiply, and if
they come to pass, "peace through strength" will be demonstrated,
again, and a future Trump Presidential Library and Museum has another
room to fill out.
SCOTUS’ slap at lower courts: Letters to the Editor — July 1, 2025
The Issue: The US Supreme Court ruling that lower-court judges are “likely exceeding” their authority.
The US Supreme Court has rightfully ruled that lower-court judges do
not have the constitutional authority to block executive actions from
taking effect nationwide (“Supreme rebuke of judges,” June 28).
While they did not rule on the merits of this executive order, I’m sure all that litigation will come in due time.
For the minority of the court to assume judges can overstep the powers
granted to them by the Constitution is in direct conflict with their
opinion that the Executive Branch is doing the same.
Also: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s opinion that she could trump
President Trump does not align with her argument that the law applies
equally to all. Her rare but stinging admonition by fellow Justice Amy
Coney Barrett was well deserved.
