"Across the country, a new defense is being heard in state and federal courtrooms. From Democratic members of Congress to judges to city council members, officials claim that their official duties include obstructing the official functions of the federal government. It is a type of liberal license that excuses most any crime in the name of combating what Minn. Gov. Tim Walz called the 'moodern-day Gestapo' of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

"The latest claimant of this license is Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), who was charged with assaulting, resisting, and impeding law enforcement officers during a protest at Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. McIver is shown on video forcing her way into an ICE facility and striking and shoving agents in her path."

Read the entire article here.

"Members of the press have hit upon a deliberate strategy to influence the debate surrounding immigrant deportations: Lead with emotion, then trickle out facts, perhaps selectively.

"The coverage follows a pattern. First, the headline presents the deportee as a blameless bystander. Then come the laments -- how the individual has been 'ripped' from his community, how his family is in turmoil, how his life has been upended, and so on.

"These individuals are often portrayed using unofficial but undeniably American labels: 'Maryland dad,' 'Georgetown scholar,' and 'Harvard researcher.' Rarely, if ever, are they identified by nationality. Rarer still is any early detailed mention of criminal charges or convictions, where applicable. When details of accused or convicted wrongdoing emerge, they are buried deep within the piece, concealed beneath the advocacy quotes and appeals to sentiment.

"This editorial sleight of hand has become too consistent to attribute to anything but intent. It is a conscious effort to steer the immigration debate in a direction that unequivocally favors the deportees."

Read the entire article here.

"The Department of Homeland Security and Secret Service are investigating a social media post by former FBI Director James Comey that several U.S. officials interpreted as calling for the assassination of President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday.

"In a now-deleted post on Instagram, Comey shared a photo of what he described as a 'shell formation' on a beach that formed the numbers '8647.' The post was swiftly condemned by administration officials, Republican lawmakers and Trump allies who said it blatantly targeted Trump, the 47th president of the United States.

"According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, 'eighty-six' can informally mean 'to get rid of.'"

Read the entire article here.

"Not long after Michelino Sunseri, a professional mountain runner, finished a race across Grand Teton last fall, he found himself on the receiving end of a Justice Department criminal charge. His offense? Running on a closed trail, for which he could end up serving six months in jail.

"We are not making this up.

"Last Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designed to prevent such gross abuses. It is one of the most important -- and underappreciated -- actions he's taken.

"The 'crime' Sunseri committed wasn't a federal law passed by Congress. It was a crime invented by the National Park Service -- one of some 300,000 federal crimes (although nobody knows exactly how many there are) that unelected bureaucrats have conjured up when writing regulations.

"What's more, many of these regulatory crimes are 'strict liability' offenses, which means that you don't need to have criminal intent to be charged with a crime."

Read the entire article here.

"Like the weather, everyone complains about Pentagon spending and mismanagement, but no one does anything about it. Leaders of the world's most expensive military have refused to conduct or failed to complete every internal financial audit since Congress first demanded such accountability in the 1990s. The Department of Defense owns over 70% of the nation's assets and can't account for half of them. In fairness, military brass has had plenty of enablers in its failures to tame wild and sometimes blindfolded spending, with a special boost from political leaders who consistently block reform.

"Although the Pentagon budget has grown by 50% over the last 10 years, President Trump wants to add another 12% to the Pentagon's budget for fiscal year 2026, a move that for the first time will boost defense spending to over $1 trillion.

"That number will almost certainly end up higher because, by law, no matter how generous the president's request is, the Pentagon is required to ask Congress for even more money. The chief of staff of each military branch must put together an unfunded priority list -- nicknamed a 'wish list' -- requesting money for items not included in the president's budget.

"This has been routine since the 1990s, and the procedure became federal law in 2017. The lists don't need to include lengthy justifications of why the money is needed, as is the case for most budget requests to Congress."

Read the entire article here.

"Gone are rules banning a wide swath of gas stoves. Gone are the strict water standards governing dishwashers and shower heads. And gone is the government-wide effort to force electrification of the economy through appliance regulations. It is all part of a historic action the Trump administration announced Monday, reversing dozens of energy regulations, saving consumers more than $11 billion, and cutting more than 125,000 words from the United States Code of Regulations.

"As part of the Department of Energy's sweeping action unveiled Monday, it will rescind dozens of energy efficiency regulations targeting common household appliances that the Biden administration issued as part of its climate agenda. That includes rules restricting sales of certain types of gas-powered stoves and ovens in addition to microwaves, clothes washers, dishwashers, faucets, shower heads, and dehumidifiers.

"'It should not be the government's place to decide what kind of appliances you or your restaurants or your businesses can buy,' Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the Washington Free Beacon earlier this month. 'Everybody wants clean air and wants to lower their energy costs and run their factories good as they can. The big hand of government doesn't actually help that process at all.'"

Read the entire article here.

"The U.S. is on the brink of a tax nightmare, with Democrats pushing the largest tax increase in history.

"President Trump's signature legislation from his first term, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, is set to expire at the end of the year, and Democrats are united in their efforts to end this successful policy and implement an automatic $4.5 trillion tax increase.

"Republicans were elected up and down the ballot in 2024 with a mandate to end the lunacy of Bidenomics and make America competitive again. This means enacting bold tax reforms that go beyond simply extending the Trump tax cuts and -- most importantly -- preventing any tax hikes. Trump recently reminded Republicans that they cannot repeat the same mistakes that sank previous administrations. A tax increase of any kind would ruin any chance of success in 2026 for the Republicans as would failure to go beyond the tax cuts.

"The tax cuts expire on Dec. 31. If Congress does nothing, an automatic $4.5 trillion Democratic tax hike will land squarely on working families, many of whom are already struggling under lingering Biden-era inflation. Less than a year from now, the average taxpayer could see a 22 percent tax hike. For a working family of four, that's a $1,700 tax increase."

Read the entire article here.

"Democrats are blasting former President Biden's reemergence in the spotlight following his interview Thursday on 'The View,' his second major post-presidency interview.

During the sit-down, which took place alongside former first lady Jill Biden, Biden slammed President Trump's second administration, saying he's had 'the worst 100 days any president's ever had.' The former president also denied reports of his mental decline during his term and took responsibility for Democratic losses in 2024, telling the show's hosts, 'I was in charge and he won.'

But some Democrats are criticizing Biden's recent appearances, arguing the former president is becoming a drag on the party as it seeks to rebuild following its widespread losses in 2024."

Read the entire article here.

"The Biden administration authorized federal law enforcement four years ago to target Americans engaged in 'concerning non-criminal behavior' in the name of fighting domestic terrorism, with a specific eye on those serving in the military, owning firearms, or spreading what officials considered to be 'xenophobic' disinformation, according to newly declassified documents.

"The stunning breadth of the mandate was disclosed when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently released a fully unredacted version of the prior administration's 'Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism.'

"The June 2021 memo exposed for the first time the law enforcement and intelligence framework that led the FBI to monitor and probe conservative Catholics and parents who protested against some school board policies and justified Homeland Security to engage in censorship or debanking of Americans the administration considered to be potential enemies of the state."

Read the entire article here.

"The Taliban took in $3.4 billion in revenue over the last year, boosting its cash supply by 14 percent amid the return of Afghanistan as a central safe haven for terrorist organizations across the Middle East, according to a U.S. government watchdog group.

"The repercussions of the Biden administration's disastrous 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan continue to reverberate across the war-torn country, with multiple al Qaeda affiliates accessing American-supplied 'weapons seized from the former Afghan National Army,' according to a new oversight report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

"The United States left 78 aircraft, 40,000 military vehicles, and over 300,000 weapons in Afghanistan in a withdrawal that saw 13 American service members lose their lives. According to the SIGAR report -- which the watchdog group delivered to Congress on April 30 -- the Taliban transferred many of these arms directly to terrorist affiliates, while others made their way to the black market."

Read the entire article here.