Florida Probe Uncovers Migrant CDL Test Cheating With Hidden Cameras
Florida investigators say some migrants have been using hidden cameras and earpieces to cheat on commercial driver’s license (CDL) exams, allowing them to operate 18-wheelers despite not knowing English, according to WTLV-TV and Breitbart.
According to WTLV-TV, applicants used tiny cameras to transmit test questions outside DMV facilities, where an accomplice provided answers through an earpiece. Police in Jacksonville recently arrested several migrants in the scheme. One man was sentenced to eight months in prison, another was turned over to ICE, and others had cases dismissed after court-ordered conditions.
Officials describe the cheating operation as “highly organized” and likely active nationwide. It comes amid a rise in fatal crashes involving non-English-speaking truckers.
Mellissa Dzion, who lost her son Connor in one such crash, is urging Congress to pass “Connor’s Law,” which would require all commercial drivers to read and speak English.
The report says that the cheating is not the only scheme. In Bay County, Florida DMV staff were caught selling up to 1,000 licenses to migrants without tests. Similar scandals have surfaced in Kentucky, where licenses went for $200 each, and in Boston, where investigators broke up another ring.
Critics link the surge in non-English-speaking truck drivers to President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. Following a deadly Florida crash this month, the state announced new checkpoints: ICE will now operate at truck weigh stations, and agricultural inspection stations will double as immigration stops.
On August 12, 2025, a fatal crash on Florida’s Turnpike killed three people when truck driver Harjinder Singh, an undocumented immigrant from India, attempted an illegal U-turn through a restricted median and a minivan slammed into his trailer.
Singh, who entered the U.S. illegally in 2018 and held a California commercial license, now faces vehicular homicide and manslaughter charges and is being held without bond under an ICE detainer. The tragedy sparked a political clash over state licensing policies, renewed scrutiny of English-language requirements for truckers after Singh failed a basic proficiency test, and divided public opinion—highlighted by a petition with more than 2 million signatures arguing the crash was “an accident.”
Prominent Ukrainian Politician Assassinated In Broad Daylight On Streets Of Lviv
Former Ukrainian parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy – a prominent voice on the hardline Ukrainian right – was shot and killed in the western city of Lviv on Saturday, grabbing headlines in Ukraine and internationally, and resulting in an urgent manhunt for the assailant. He had been walking casually near his home on a sidewalk when he was executed in the street.
The country’s Prosecutor General’s Office described Parubiy was fatally shot multiple times by an unidentified gunman who quickly fled the scene. It appeared to be a professional hit or assassination, given authorities described a gunman dressed as a courier on an e-bike as the killer. The assassin never removes his helmet during the attack from behind.
The 54-year old Parubiy served as speaker of Ukraine’s parliament from April 2016 to August 2019 and was a prominent figure and organizer of 2014 Euromaidan protests (or Maidan coup) and anti-Russian/pro-EU coup events which ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, and in many ways led to the current Russia-Ukraine war.
He had also held the position of secretary of the National Security and Defense Council in early 2014, during the events of the civil/proxy war in the Donbass, as well as when Russia declared full sovereignty over Crimea.
President Volodymyr Zelensky within hours after confirmed the assassination and condemned it as a “horrific murder” and said “all necessary forces and means” would be used to uncover the plot and assailant.
“Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko and Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko have just reported on the first known circumstances of a horrific murder in Lviv. Andriy Parubiy has been killed,” Zelensky solemnly announced on social media. The shooting happened at around noon local time.
Parubiy is already being hailed as a national hero and “patriot” – including by Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, who said he “belongs in the history books”. According to more:
National police said the shooting in Lviv was reported at around noon. Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said finding the killer and establishing the circumstances of the attack was of outmost importance.
“This is a matter of security in a country at war, where, as we can see, there are no completely safe places,” he wrote on Telegram.
Tributes poured in from colleagues in parliament and the government, praising Parubiy’s contribution to Ukraine’s fight for sovereignty and independence as one of the leaders of what became known as the Euromaidan protests in 2013-14.
CCTV footage was quickly released of the killing, in hopes of finding a suspect…
Video of today’s murder of MP Andriy Parubiy in Lviv. This is my neighborhood. Close to my home.
The killer posed as a Glovo courier.
A manhunt has been launched to capture him. pic.twitter.com/d3ILc4pehU
While it’s likely that Ukrainian officials and media will point the finger at Russian intelligence or a pro-Russian assassination operation, there’s another possibility which independent observers have already raised: infighting among Ukraine’s hardline, far right and neo-Nazi factions.
Journalist and author Mark Ames wrote that this is an “early preview of post-war Ukraine” – and possibly a warning to those Ukrainian leaders willing to make territorial compromise with Russia.
Moon of Alabama blog also suspects this could more likely be an internal fight for the spoils at a moment Russia is winning the war, and as the country’s Western backers are frustrated and still figuring out what’s next:
About a year ago another prominent rightwing person, Iryna Farion, was also killed in Lviv.
Parubiy was the organizer and commander of the fascist militia during the Maidan coup in February 2014. During those days several snipers from Georgia, stationed at the Hotel Ukraina which was under opposition control, fired and killed policemen as well as protesters.
Video from those days showed Parubiy supervising the situation as the snipers, with their weapon cases, were leaving the hotel.
Below: Outline of Parubiy’s bio, and his Maidan coup links, as he’s been very active in organizing anti-Russia political action and even violence over the past decade-plus…
🇺🇦 Andriy Parubiy – Background & Context
Far-Right Origins & “Banderite” Roots
➡️In 1991, Parubiy co‑founded the Social‑National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), an openly far‑right, ultranationalist party with neo‑Nazi features
But again, all of this might also suggest he’s long been a prime target for assassination by Russian intelligence. This remains a likely scenario, but for now no motives for the killing have been released by Ukrainian authorities, and there is only speculation and rumor at this point.
Throughout the war there’s been tit-for-tat assassinations of prominent figures, with most of them of late being against Russian figures and on Russian soil. Russia’s Interior Ministry back in 2023 had officially placed Parubiy on its wanted list, accusing him of war crimes in Donbass, and charged him in absentia.
At the start of the year, only eight days into President Trump’s second term, the FBI’s counterterrorism division held an unclassified briefing on an emerging domestic terrorism threat: “Nihilistic Accelerationism.”
I was at an FBI briefing just 6 months ago where “Nihilistic Accelerationism” was a hot topic as an emerging threat. That meant groups like The Com, 764, O9A…
Not sure what happened to that priority but they were very much surveilled at the time. We failed w/ Robin Westman. pic.twitter.com/QHmhCnXYIA
Some of the most recent examples of nihilism and accelerationist beliefs can be found alarmingly emanating from the political far-left. Violence, chaos, and destruction are recurring themes found in their online posts, propaganda, manifestos, and civil disobedience (also known as “civil terrorism“).
Take, for example, the transgender mass shooter last week that carried out a horrific attack against Christians at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, killing two children and injuring 17 others before taking his own life, wrote in a dark, troubling manifesto posted online that he was “tired of being trans.”
A literal monster.
See the rainbow propaganda with an AK-style rifle?
Self-proclaimed investor and “CIA/NSA contractor/whistleblower” Tony Seruga wrote on X that the demonic transgender mass shooter had attended “at least five antifa protests” and “also appeared to have been present with several Zizians.” Seruga made this claim using GPS data.
GPS—Robert “Robin” Westman devices were present during at least 5 antifa protests. Upon cross pollinating devices at his residence, there were numerous ‘burner’ phones. His devices have also appeared to have been present with a number of Zizians, including their founder Jack… pic.twitter.com/wXka6GznT6
Seruga also claimed that the transgender mass shooter was also “100% trantifa,” which opens up another rabbit hole that Andy Ngo, senior editor at The Post Millennial, has covered in-depth for quite some time about the disturbing rise of “trans militancy” across America.
On Aug. 28, I joined Rob Schmitt on Newsmax to discuss the Minneapolis trans mass shooting that left children dead during Mass inside the Annunciation Catholic Church. The attack didn’t happen in a vacuum — it unfolded against the backdrop of increasingly militant and violent trans propaganda.
This propaganda is blasted nonstop across social media, Reddit threads, internet forums, and radical leftist blogs.
It encourages gender-confused individuals, many with mental health conditions, to grow grievances, collect every perceived wound, and convert that narcissism into violent rage.
At the same time, far-left and Antifa networks across the U.S. have been openly urging trans activists to stockpile firearms and undergo paramilitary training — with the explicit aim of killing so-called “transphobes” and “fascists.” They frame it as defense against a government and society-sponsored “trans genocide,” but in reality, it’s violent brainwashing, like what Robert “Robin” Westman admitted to in his manifesto.
More violence…
He identified as a trans leftist radical and used the name “Sasha.” And he’s an Indian national. Why is the Boston-area local media omitting this right after the Minneapolis trans mass sh—ting? https://t.co/1mdXtcaWhrhttps://t.co/pIJczWLn3h
Ngo: “Why are we suddenly seeing a wave of trans-identified killers?”
Why are we suddenly seeing a wave of trans-identified killers? A surge in violent trans propaganda, lies, grievance-collecting, and socially-encouraged psychosis and militancy, to name a few things.
I talked about how I observed the trans to violence pipeline years ago in my… pic.twitter.com/IAsFzHbVOX
Israel is not interested in adhering to the Middle East’s established borders set by the WWI Sykes-Picot agreement and has the “capacity or the desire” to take over Lebanon and Syria, according to US special envoy Tom Barrack.
Barrack made the assessment in an astonishing and candid interview with online personality Mario Nawfal, which went online late on Thursday. It was just one of many insights that Barrack, who is at the center of US diplomacy in the region, shared. In addition, he said that Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa will not sign the Abraham Accords with Israel and alluded to deeply strained ties between Egypt and Israel, which he said are no longer “talking to each other or cooperating”.
Barrack is the US ambassador to Turkey but has become Trump’s envoy to the wider Eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus. A billionaire real estate investor, Barrack, like his boss at the White House, has chaffed at the traditional US foreign policy establishment – including its preference for maintaining quiet ties with American establishment media. Instead, he has given shoot-from-the-hip style interviews. On Thursday, he called himself an “events-driven mercenary”.
“What’s going on in Gaza makes the rest of the Arab world totally freaked out,” Barrack said. “In Israel’s mind, these lines that were created by Sykes-Picot are meaningless. They will go where they want, when they want, and do what they want to protect the Israelis and their borders,” Barrack said.
The Sykes-Picot agreement was a secret agreement between Britain and France struck in 1916 during WWI that divided the Ottoman Empire’s territories in the Levant, fashioning the modern states of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Mandatory Palestine, the wide swath of land that was later partitioned to create Israel.
‘Israel can’t be so brutal’
Barrack visited Beirut this week as part of efforts to disarm Hezbollah and has been mediating talks between Syria and Israel. Pressed on whether Israel would conquer Lebanon or Syria, Barrack said he did not mean Israel wants to “take over” its neighbors, but will act against its foes.
“Does Israel have the capacity or the desire to really take over Lebanon? Absolutely. Why didn’t they do it? They have the capacity to do the same thing in Syria,” he said.
“The idea that Israel is really interested in keeping everybody off balance so that they can have more control and command, in my opinion, just as an individual, is ludicrous,” he said.
Barrack is attempting to mediate a deal by which Hezbollah surrenders its heavy weaponry to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). Lebanon wants Israel to withdraw from the south of the country, and for reconstruction funds to flow in from the oil-rich Gulf as part of this deal.
Israel severely degraded Hezbollah in battle following the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israel. In November, Hezbollah was resigned to sign a lopsided ceasefire with Israel, which it has used to bomb Lebanon at will without Hezbollah retaliation.
Israeli forces withdrew from much of southern Lebanon earlier this year, but still occupy five hilltops in the south. Barrack, whose grandparents emigrated to the US from Lebanon, said he made a personal appeal to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting this week, as a man with “Lebanese blood”.
“I’m asking you [Netanyahu] to do something that I know will do you well, and do Jews all over the world well. Give Lebanon a break…give them a whiff of tolerance. You can’t be apparently so brutal on everybody, going anywhere, anytime you want… it’s gonna backfire.”
Barrack said Netanyahu agreed, but did not provide specifics. Two Lebanese soldiers were killed by an Israeli drone on Thursday. Israel apologized for the strike, calling it a “technical malfunction”.
Disarming Hezbollah
Israel says it wants to see Hezbollah disarmed before it withdraws from Lebanese territory and ends its attacks. Analysts and regional diplomats tell Middle East Eye that Hezbollah is unlikely to give up its arms under Israeli fire.
The US has been supporting the non-sectarian LAF as a counterweight to Hezbollah. But in the interview, Barrack ruled out the LAF forcibly disarming Hezbollah. “There is not going to be a LAF military movement to go blow them (Hezbollah) away,” he said.
After telling reporters in Lebanon to “act civilized” rather than “animalistic,” U.S. envoy Tom Barrack says Israel
Barrack said this week that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are willing to invest in Lebanon’s reconstruction, including in the south, where Hezbollah has traditionally relied on support among Lebanon’s Shia community.
Lebanon was ravaged by a civil war between 1975 and 1990, which pitted Christian, Druze and Muslim militias against each other, including the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Hezbollah was born out of resistance to Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon. With Iranian arms and training, it emerged as one of the world’s most powerful non-state actors. Iran has resisted efforts to disarm Hezbollah, and many regional diplomats say the group is unlikely to surrender its weapons without approval from Tehran.
Hezbollah is one of two main parties, along with Amal, representing Lebanon’s Shia community. Barrack has courted the 89-year-old leader of Amal, Nabih Berri, who is also Lebanon’s speaker of parliament, as he pushes to disarm Hezbollah. “We need him. He is the voice and the power not just to the Amal party, but to the Shia community,” Barrack said.
Hezbollah is designated a US terror organization. However, Barrack has made overtures to the group in his public statements.
“Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese world. You can’t just say, ‘We want to disarm Hezbollah.’ Everybody is armed…everybody is carrying a .357 magnum. Most people have AK-47s or .50 caliber machine guns at home…this is not an environment where you are going to disarm small arms,” Barrack said.
Syria not joining Abraham Accords
He also said that Israel’s recent strikes on Syria – in what it framed as the defense of Druze – have made convincing Hezbollah to give up its arms more difficult because, “Hezbollah is saying we are the last stop for you against Israel and maybe Syria.”
“After Sweida, that argument has become even more impactive (sic) because the Lebanese community is saying, ‘Wow, Israel just blew through the line’…[and] we have a jihadist who may not love Shias,” he said.
Israel invaded a swath of southwestern Syria after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government in late 2024. This week, Israel said it would continue to occupy Syria’s Mount Hermon. It also launched air strikes and a ground raid near Damascus.
Barrack has been mediating direct talks between Syria and Israel, which Damascus acknowledged publicly for the first time last month.
Barrack described Syrian President Sharaa as a “pragmatist” and said the two countries’ engagement was “so good”, but curbed expectations for a wider diplomatic deal. “Can he go to the Abraham Accords? No way. He has a backing of Sunni fundamentalists,” he said.
Barrack was accused of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the UAE during Trump’s first term in office. In the interview, he alluded to “introducing” Trump to leaders in the Gulf, which contributed to the Abraham Accords.
Barrack worked as an attorney in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, enjoys close ties to UAE ambassador Yousef Otaiba, and has struck business deals with Qatar, including selling its sovereign wealth fund the Paris Saint-Germain football club.
Barrack said Lebanon had to engage in a broader dialogue with Israel or “We are going to evaporate as a dinosaur,” referring to his Lebanese origins.
Lebanon and Israel do not have diplomatic relations, but signed an Armistice Agreement in 1949. They have a longstanding dispute over their border, referred to as the Blue-Line. “You’re talking sometimes two kilometers or four kilometers,” he said, referring to the line of demarcation.
“So it’s what size pen drew the green line and the blue line and the red line. You could lose your mind over this, honestly, but people are losing lives over this, which again to me is amazement…who cares?” he said.
Judge Blocks Trump Admin’s Expansion Of Fast-Track Deportations
A federal judge has halted the Trump administration’s attempt to expand fast-track deportations across the United States, ruling that the policy violated illegal immigrants’ constitutional rights to due process.
In an Aug. 29 decision, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb temporarily blocked the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) January order authorizing “expedited removal” for illegal immigrants arrested anywhere in the country who cannot prove two years of continuous residence.
As Tom Ozimek reports for The Epoch Times, Cobb’s ruling pauses both the Jan. 21 DHS designation expanding expedited removal nationwide and the Jan. 23 guidance implementing it—known as the Huffman Memorandum—while the case proceeds.
She said the administration’s policy risks sweeping up people who have lived in the country long enough to deserve full hearings before deportation.
Unlike new border crossers, Cobb wrote, such individuals “have a weighty liberty interest in remaining here and therefore must be afforded due process.”
Under expedited removal, Cobb noted, immigration officers, rather than immigration judges, can order deportations within days, often after a single interview and with little chance to gather evidence, consult counsel, or appeal. That stripped-down process, she said, may be efficient at the border but is dangerously inadequate when applied to people with established ties in the interior.
“In defending this skimpy process, the Government makes a truly startling argument: that those who entered the country illegally are entitled to no process under the Fifth Amendment, but instead must accept whatever grace Congress affords them,“ she wrote.
”Were that right, not only noncitizens, but everyone would be at risk.”
The Department of Homeland Security criticized the ruling, saying it undermined the president’s constitutional authority to control immigration.
“This activist judge’s ruling ignores the President’s clear authorities under both Article II of the Constitution and the plain language of federal law,” a DHS official told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
“President Trump has a mandate to arrest and deport the worst of the worst. We have the law, facts, and common sense on our side.”
While Cobb’s order blocks DHS’s designation and guidance implementing the expansion, it leaves intact the long-standing use of expedited removal at ports of entry, at sea, and within 100 miles of the border for those apprehended within 14 days of entry.
The lawsuit was filed in January by Make the Road New York, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and its affiliates, who said the rule was unconstitutional.
“Expanding expedited removal would give Trump a cheat code to circumvent due process and the Constitution, and we are again here to fight it,” Anand Balakrishnan, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement in January.
In June, the groups moved to block the policy while the case played out, citing reports of ICE agents arresting immigrants at courthouses and shifting them into fast-track proceedings.
“People who are complying with their legal obligations are basically being ambushed by ICE at their court appointments,” Balakrishnan said at the time.
The Trump administration has argued that expedited removal is a necessary tool to swiftly deport people who entered the country unlawfully and to deter future illegal crossings.
In their April motion to dismiss, they said the Homeland Secretary has “sole and unreviewable discretion” to apply expedited removal nationwide to noncitizens who entered illegally within the past two years.
They also argued that the January designation was fully consistent with Congress’s mandate.
“The designation lawfully applies to aliens who crossed illegally, since they were not previously inspected,” Justice Department attorneys wrote. “To hold otherwise would reward such aliens for their illegal entry and significantly limit the operation of the expedited removal scheme.”
Senior White House advisor Stephen Miller shredded Democrats during a press briefing, defining them as having aligned with an overall ideology that is anti-human.
“[Democrats] are society destroyers,” Miller declared.
“It’s a simple choice. You either side with civilization, or with anarchy and violence,” he added.
🚨 BREAKING: Stephen Miller just exposed the Democrats for being a massive threat to western civilization.
“[Democrats] are SOCIETY-DESTROYERS. It’s a simple choice. You either side with civilization, or with anarchy and violence.”
“The Democrat Party as an institution – its judges, its lawyers, its community activists, and its politicians – exist to serve these criminal THUGS. We see it here in DC,” Miller contiuned.
He added, “We talk to the cops. They say, ‘We’re not allowed to arrest anybody, and when we do arrest somebody, they are immediately bailed out, they are immediately set free, they’re back on the street again.’”
“And what do they do? They kill, they attack, they rob, they rape. WHY would we put up with this?” He further urged.
“President Trump is PROUD to be using federal law enforcement and National Guard to make this city safe and peaceful for Americans,” Miller proclaimed, adding that the President “stands ready to help and assist any community that wishes to be Liberated from these criminal elements.”
America wants to see law-enforcement and justice. We are tired of those who continually attack society!
They’re operating world wide. It’s not just Democratic Party. It’s a globalist agenda to wipe off western civilization, white people and Christianity, from the face of the earth
In DC, the administration deployed approximately 2,000 National Guard troops to address surging crime rates, homelessness, and urban decay, resulting in widespread arrests, the clearing of encampments, and enhanced law enforcement presence on the streets.
Extending this approach to Chicago, Trump announced that the city would likely be the next target, involving federal intervention to combat violent crime, which he compared to conditions in war-torn areas.
The plan includes sending federal agents and possibly the National Guard to assist local police in high-crime neighborhoods, aiming to restore order and reduce shootings and gang activity that have plagued the city.
Trump has also hinted at expanding the effort to other Democrat-led cities like New York, emphasizing a national strategy to federalize crime-fighting in areas he deems out of control.
The initiative is part of a broader anti-crime push, with plans potentially involving immigration enforcement as seen in preliminary discussions for Chicago.
Remarkably, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, who initially opposed the president’s federal takeover of the capital, has reversed course and actually praised the surge in federal assistance in comments earlier this week.
Bowser noted, “The federal surge has had a significant [decrease] on crime in Washington, DC, and we greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what [DC’s Metropolitan Police Department] has been able to do in this city.”
🚨 HOLY CRAP! After a STAGGERING decline in crime, DC Mayor Bowser says she “GREATLY APPRECIATES” President Trump for surging federal agents into the city
Even Democrats are being forced to admit Trump was right.
The mayor further explained that overall crime in the district is down 15 percent since Trump initiated the federal cleanup. The drop in violent crime has been even more significant, down 45 percent over the same time period.
Bowser added that carjackings are down by a huge 87 percent, homicides have plummeted by 38 percent, and sexual abuse cases are down 44 percent.
Robberies are down 62 percent, burglaries down 47 percent, motor vehicle thefts down 35 percent and overall property crime down by 12 percent.
It’s another stunning victory for Trump, who touted the impact in a post Thursday, declaring “Carjacking in DC is down 87%. ALL other categories of crime are likewise down massively since I got involved.”
“DC will soon be a CRIME FREE ZONE, in only 14 days, far faster than scheduled. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” The President added.
Perhaps the most visible success story in DC has been at Union Station, which has been transformed from a haven for homeless camps and drug addicts.
WJLA news reporter John Gonzalez was stunned at the turnaround, remarking “We are in the main atrium here at Union Station, and I got to tell you, in my opinion, the place looks better than it has in years, cleaner than it has in years, but there’s still plenty of empty retail space.”
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The mother of the man who killed two children at a Minneapolis church and school and left 18 other people wounded is not speaking to authorities, the city’s police chief said on Aug. 28.
“We have not been successful in talking to the shooter’s mother yet at this time,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told a briefing.
The shooter, who killed himself after firing more than 100 rounds during Mass into Annunciation Church and School on Aug. 27, has been identified as Robin Westman, a male who identified as female.
Westman previously attended the school and has attended Mass there, officials said.
Mary Grace Westman, the mother, worked at the parish in the past, O’Hara said.
The church, in a 2021 Facebook post that it has since deleted, posted a picture of Mary Westman and said that it had honored her as she was retiring after working there for five years.
“She has provided such wonderful hospitality, friendship and compassion to all who gathered,” the post stated.
Ryan Garry, a defense attorney, said he has been retained by Mary Westman.
“She is completely distraught about the situation and has no culpability but is seeking an attorney to deal with calls like this,” Garry told Fox News.
Garry did not respond to a request for more information by publication time.
O’Hara said that law enforcement has conducted dozens of interviews with others, including relatives, friends, and associates of Robin Westman.
Authorities have also carried out search warrants at three residences in or near Minneapolis that are connected to the shooter. They’re not sure yet at which residence he was staying immediately prior to the shooting.
There is no sign yet of an event that triggered the shooting, they said.
‘Hatred’
Evidence gathered so far, including writings allegedly left behind by Robin Westman, shows that the shooter “demonstrate[d] hatred towards many different individuals and different groups of people, and he fantasized about the plans of other mass shooters,” according to O’Hara.
Those groups include black people, Christians, and Jews, Joseph Thompson, the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, told reporters.
The writings have not been made public.
Thompson also confirmed that there was alleged evidence of hatred toward President Donald Trump.
Federal officials previously said that Westman had allegedly written several phrases on a rifle magazine, including “For the Children” and “Kill Donald Trump.”
“More than anything, the shooter wanted to kill children, defenseless children,” Thompson said.
“The shooter was obsessed with the idea of killing children.
“The shooter saw the attack as a way to target our most vulnerable among us while they were at their most vulnerable, at school and at church.
“I won’t dignify the shooter’s words by repeating them. They are horrific and vile, but in short, the shooter wanted to watch children suffer.”
Update on Injured
Officials originally said 19 people were shot, with two children killed.
An additional child was added to the tally of wounded individuals. Officials said that the child was transported to a hospital via private vehicle, so they had not been aware of the injury.
The two children who died were aged 8 and 10.
Of the 18 wounded, 15 are children between the ages of 6 and 15, O’Hara said. Three others are adults in their 80s.
Some of the wounded remain hospitalized. Injuries range from graze wounds to serious and life-threatening injuries, the police chief said.
Officials also said they found 116 rifle rounds at the scene and three shotgun shells. They have said the shooter was armed with three guns.
The third, a handgun, appeared to have malfunctioned when Robin Westman tried loading it, officials said.
From Blacklist To NIH Director: Jay Bhattacharya On Fauci, Bioweapons, And The Collapse Of Free Speech In Science
Director of the National Institute of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, sat down for an extended interview with ZeroHedge. Bhattacharya, long known as one of the fiercest critics of lockdown orthodoxy, has gone from blacklisted dissenter to running the world’s largest biomedical research agency. He carries into his new post a distrust of entrenched power, a skepticism of politicized science, and an insistence that free inquiry—not censorship—must guide American health policy.
What follows is a candid conversation, in Bhattacharya’s own words, on censorship, woke politics in research, the threat of bioweapons, and why he believes science cannot exist without free speech.
Fauci’s Censorship Apparatus
Bhattacharya did not hesitate to call out what he experienced during the pandemic years:
“It wasn’t just ZeroHedge that got subject to this censorship. I did too. I was on the Twitter blacklist. It was all true information that was just found inconvenient. That’s what you guys were sharing. That’s what I was sharing. And it was a gross violation of the American First Amendment.”
The Stanford professor—blacklisted for co-authoring the Great Barrington Declaration—was among those exposed in the Twitter Files as a target of covert suppression. He says the NIH under his leadership will chart a different course:
“We’re no longer in the misinformation detection business. We’re no longer in the censorship business.”
ZeroHedge itself was deplatformed during that same period for reporting inconvenient facts on the origins of COVID.
As documented thoroughly in RFK Jr’s book “The Wuhan Coverup”, Anthony Fauci played a pivotal role in ballooning the U.S. biowarfare budget following the post-9/11 anthrax scare, an event still riddled with open questions Kennedy himself addresses in the book.
While our previous overlords would espouse morally virtuous stances against “bioweaponry” and lecture us about the importance of “biodefense”, Bhattacharya sees through the sleight of hand and dismisses the entire concept as suicidal. His full answer below which we find incredibly important:
“I think that bioweapons are useless to national security and incredibly dangerous for human populations. The Biological Weapons Convention in 1973 is a tremendously important convention. And I think that the United States adheres to it. But we have to make sure that we adhere to it not just on the letter, but in the spirit. That includes, for instance, research for biodefense. Biodefense sounds good, but often there’s very little line between bioweapons and bio-defense… this line of research is fundamentally useless to protect this country from anything and potentially places the whole world at risk.”
The warning is timely. President Trump recently signed an executive order banning gain-of-function research—which some read as only applying to foreign nations but Bhattacharya assured us is indeed a universal ban.
Bhattacharya doesn’t see DEI as harmless bureaucracy—he sees it as poison to science. The problem, he argues, isn’t the stated goal of improving minority health, but the way the system forces scientists to pledge allegiance to political dogma instead of data.
“Many universities, before they would hire some people as professors in scientific disciplines, would require DEI statements. It’s essentially like loyalty oaths.”
He says this ritual signals to scientists that advancement isn’t about competence or discovery—it’s about parroting the right ideology. That corrodes the incentive to produce results that actually improve health.
At NIH, he saw the same rot: tax dollars poured into programs that branded themselves as equity-driven but failed to move the needle.
“There was some chunk of our portfolio that was really huge during the Biden administration of DEI grants… The problem is that this DEI work—I don’t see any evidence that it actually improves minority health. It just politicized the agency.”
Bhattacharya’s stance is simple: real health equity will come from rigorous science applied to concrete problems—diabetes, cancer, infant mortality—not from “loyalty oaths” or politically branded grant programs. In his words, most scientists would gladly jump at the chance to “just do your excellent science” if freed from ideological policing.
For Bhattacharya, the single thread tying all of this together is free inquiry:
“If you were a scientist in the Soviet Union during the time of Stalin, you’d have this guy named Trofim Lysenko who fundamentally believed that Mendelian genetics was false—in fact, that it was a capitalist plot. You were only allowed to agree with his theories. And so he used his position to suppress the speech of all the Mendelian geneticists around him. Many of them went to the gulag. As a result, science on agriculture basically froze and people were always starving as a consequence of this.”
That lesson, he argues, applies directly to America today.
“You can’t have science unless you’re allowed to criticize the predominant ideas. And if you have scientific power married to political power in a way that suppresses the ability for lots and lots of other scientists to say, ‘Look, you’re wrong, here’s this experiment to prove it’—you don’t have science. You have something else.”
I continue to believe that it is more important to watch what Donald Trump does rather than focus on what he says. However, his remarks during the meeting of his cabinet earlier this week regarding negotiations to end the war in Ukraine are alarming and merit attention. When asked about Sergei Lavrov’s comment that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not legitimate, Donald Trump dismissed the statement, saying:
It doesn’t matter what they say. Everybody’s posturing. It’s all bullshit, okay. Everybody’s posturing.
He characterized Lavrov’s remarks – and the broader Kremlin rhetoric on Zelensky’s legitimacy – as meaningless showmanship, emphasizing that such claims should not obstruct peace efforts. Trump did not directly defend Zelensky, but instead focused on downplaying the significance of Russia’s statements and suggested that “everyone is just putting on a show” in ongoing negotiations.
I believe that Trump genuinely believes this, and he is dangerously mistaken. President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov are not posturing when they try to explain to clueless westerners that they do not believe that Zelensky is the legitimate President of Ukraine. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not explicitly “cancel” the presidential election, as Ukrainian law prohibits holding elections during martial law, which has been in effect since Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, the reality from the Russian perspective is that a negotiated agreement with Zelensky could easily be overturned or rejected once Ukraine holds the required election.
The scheduled presidential election, expected in March or April 2024, was automatically postponed due to this legal restriction under Article 19 of Ukraine’s “On the Legal Regime of Martial Law,” which bans presidential, parliamentary, and local elections during martial law. Martial law has been extended in 90-day intervals by the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament), with the latest extension as of July 2025 lasting until November 5, 2025.
Based on Zelensky’s multiple public remarks since his last meeting with Trump at the White House, it is clear that he is completely disinterested in reaching a peace agreement with Russia.
Stephen Bryen has just published a new piece on his Substack, and it provides an explanation for Zelensky’s recalcitrance… NATO is going to attack Russia. Steve writes:
While Putin has flown off to meet with his two buddies, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, in China on an unprecedented four day jaunt, NATO, with full US backing, is stepping up its effort to hand the Russian army a major defeat and, following that, introducing NATO troops to “stabilize” Ukraine.
What is the evidence? First and very noticeable is the US decision to ship 3,350 missiles to Ukraine, ostensibly to be paid for (someday?) by the Europeans (which ones is not defined). These are known as Extended Range Attack Munitions (ERAM), a type of air launched cruise missile missile. The Aviationist reports that “Ukrainian Air Force’s F-16s, Mirage 2000s and its fleet of Russian-origin MiG-29s, Su-25s and Su-27s would be able to operate it. This new weapon would be an addition to the AASM Hammer and GBU-39 SDB already employed by Ukrainian fighters.”
According to open source intelligence, ERAMs have a range of 250 miles. However, that is the range once launched by an aircraft. Washington says it opposes Ukrainian missile attacks on Russian territory, and while it is restricting the use of long range HIMARS, it is not restricting the use of ERAM. Reportedly ERAM carried a 500 lb. warhead, far larger than any Ukrainian UAV and more than double any of the different HIMARS missiles (M31 Utility Warhead, ATACMS warhead). It may be that ERAMs can be fielded with cluster munitions, although much about the ERAM is uncertain.
Ignore what Trump says, watch what he does. Deploying ERAMs is not a gesture of peace or de-escalation. While it is possible that this action was taken without Trump’s knowledge, now that the information is public he has not countermanded the order.
Steve goes on in his article (I encourage you to read it in its entirety) to highlight the faulty assumptions that NATO planners and leaders are making:
NATO has understood Russia’s use of North Korean troops as an admission that Russia faces manpower shortages and instability in the Russian army, and that Russia is taking heavy casualties in the Ukraine war. NATO may be reading Putin’s statements that he has no intention of attacking Europe now or in future as an admission that he cannot attack Europe with an army that is too small and one that has been broken by the Ukraine war. Part of the pushback can be found in the Saratoga Foundation report, “A Systems View of Russia’s Early Failure in Ukraine.”
Now Russian sources are reporting two developments that indicate that a new offensive will soon materialize, heavily supported by NATO, and aimed at Crimea.
Those sources say that the US and its NATO partners have significantly increased overhead intelligence gathering preparing for the coming attack.
Once again we have Western leaders – both military and political – wrongly interpreting Russia’s execution of a special military operation as a sign of weakness. The belief that Russia is suffering “manpower shortages and instability” is beyond ridiculous. During the course of the last 42 months, Russia has doubled the size of its army and is now conducting multiple offensive operations in Zaporhyzhia, Dniepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Sumy.
Even if we accept as true the false Western claims about Russia suffering massive casualties, the fact remains that even with such losses Russia has 1.3 million men in uniform and carrying arms. Instead of being “broken,” the Russian army has enhanced its capabilities and developed new techniques, especially with the use of drones, that far exceed anything NATO is capable of doing.
Besides conducting the ground war, Russia continues to enjoy a lopsided advantage in the use of missiles and drones. It has carried out massive strikes on missile production facilities and other key logistic nodes in the past week, and shows no sign of weakness on that front.
A NATO-backed attack on Crimea will put increased pressure on President Putin to shift from the Special Military Operationto full war footing. NATO’s inability to supply Ukraine with something as simple as artillery shells is just one indicator of NATO’s impotence if it decides to up the ante with Russia.
Europe On Path To War Economy: Rheinmetall Opens Continent’s Largest Ammo Factory
Submitted by Thomas Kolbe
In Unterlüß, Lower Saxony, Europe’s largest ammunition factory began production yesterday. What started clandestinely is now being publicly scaled with full firepower: the European Union is building its own war economy.
In the good old days in Germany, recessions were typically masked by state-funded infrastructure programs. The concept worked as long as the state did not overgrow, overregulate, or force the private sector into a destructive ideological agenda, as is the case with the green transformation. In other words: the economy was always able to clear away the debris left behind by the state.
Southern Europe Could Never Recover
In Southern Europe, where the state’s role has traditionally been high, monetary policy generous, and handling of public funds notoriously lax, this policy left nothing but infrastructure ruins and industrial wastelands. Local economies were never able to productively absorb the artificial credit distributed by Brussels. The fatal consequences of this pseudo-boom still shape the landscape today.
For economic historians, present-day Europe has long been a fascinating study object. Crisis followed crisis, with the public sector intervening each time with increasing volume. The attempt to install the Green Deal, a Keynesian pseudo-economy, must be understood in this context. That Germany’s defense company Rheinmetall yesterday launched Europe’s largest ammunition plant in Unterlüß fits into this narrative.
The company invested half a billion euros to provide an annual capacity of up to 350,000 rounds by 2027. 500 new jobs are to be created, celebrated by politicians as a turning point and the beginning of a pan-European defense architecture.
Ceremony and Half-Truths Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger expressed satisfaction: “It was not easy for us to invest half a billion without orders. I am very grateful to you”—the words were directed at Defense Minister Pistorius—“for keeping your handshake agreements. You are a man of word and deed.” A heavy dose of pathos and self-congratulation is evident here—politics and the defense industry are long intertwined.
Of course, this is only half the truth. Beyond the usual behind-the-scenes deals, politics has made it clear that it is ready to mobilize all means to build a German defense industry and provide sector companies with guarantees and subsidies where necessary. Big business, no risk.
After the collapse of the green economy, politics is now betting everything on the next pseudo-economy. The aim is to loosen dependence on America while exploiting the media spin that stylized Vladimir Putin’s Russia over years as a potential European invader. Whether this fear campaign will work in the long term remains to be seen.
No One Will Fight for Merz or Macron
Given the deep economic depression in which Germany and large parts of the EU are stuck, the general war fatigue, and social fractures in core EU states like Germany and France, it is clear that despite the reinstatement of conscription, most citizens will rigorously reject military engagement.
A glance at EU public finances alone is enough to recognize that a war against Russia is political madness. France, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 115%, is days away from a confidence vote on the new austerity budget. Bond markets are already punishing these bankrupt states. The signs point to savings, not bellicose adventures.
Absurd and Destructive
It is absurd in this situation—where Germany has almost fully spent the so-called Bundeswehr special fund of €100 billion and now switches to borrowing mode—to accelerate this path. Yet Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and London are serious. In fall 2026, Rheinmetall plans to launch its next plant in Weeze, producing fuselage components for the F-35 fighter jet. Cost: €200 million, this time directly publicly funded.
Defense factories will mushroom in the coming months and years, producing far beyond civilian demand. Germany plans to raise its defense budget to up to 5% of GDP, which will worsen the impoverishment of its population as the private sector already shrinks by 4–5%. A disaster unseen in Europe since the end of the war.
A hot conflict with Russia is economically highly unlikely. Yet a new Cold War, a state of continuous armament like before 1990, seems to be Europe’s goal. They are trapped in an absurd economic theory of central planning and command economy. A new power base is forming: a corporatism between the defense industry and the political complex in Brussels.
Germany as Anchor Germany has clearly been chosen to finance this economic disaster. The country, previously with one of the lowest debt ratios in the EU at 64%, will double its annual defense budget to €162 billion by 2029. By 2027, the special fund will be exhausted, after which loans up to €400 billion will be required.
Germany will become an active player in bond markets, where interest rates are already rising. The European Central Bank will have plenty of work to keep the rapidly growing debt pile liquid. The EU will also participate with new funds, EDIP and ASAP (a term bordering on infantilism in this context), contributing €50–70 billion annually to joint defense projects.
No Lessons Learned
While Germany’s civilian industry collapses, factories close in droves, and the country moves toward mass unemployment—with all consequences for social funds and the domestic climate—we now witness one grand opening after another: pompous inaugurations of defense plants, with champagne popping at our expense.
Europe has learned nothing from the green pseudo-economy disaster. It refuses to analyze how Germany and other industrial centers were deindustrialized. The fatal consequence of building a war economy is that it will siphon scarce resources from productive sectors on a massive scale, making financing and developing civilian enterprises nearly impossible.
Germany is being technologically left behind and bombing its own prosperity—in the literal sense.
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About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination
