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Bondi Claims DOJ Produced ‘Everything Required’ In Epstein Files Release

Bondi Claims DOJ Produced ‘Everything Required’ In Epstein Files Release

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the Department of Justice (DOJ) acted in a transparent manner and acted appropriately in releasing files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, as she testified before Congress on Friday.

“To the best of my knowledge, the Department produced everything required under the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” Bondi said in a statement ahead of a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee.

She added that “justice and transparency in this matter have been delivered at the direction of President [Donald] Trump and his administration,” according to a written copy of her opening statement on Friday.

Bondi told lawmakers in her opening statement that then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is now the acting attorney general, had overseen the process to release the Epstein case files as mandated by a law passed by Congress and signed by Trump last year.

The former attorney general said it was “an enormously complicated and labor-intensive process” and added that the DOJ had made redaction errors during the process. However, she mostly defended the DOJ’s work and said that it had complied with the law and demonstrated “an unprecedented commitment to transparency.”

Democratic lawmakers said that Bondi’s interview should have been televised, with Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) saying on Friday on Capitol Hill that Democrats are “incredibly disappointed of the decision” not to have Bondi’s interview recorded and “released to the American public.”

Another, Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Calif.), alleged that Bondi was “instrumental in the Epstein files cover-up,” without elaborating. “She must explain who ordered the delays [and] who approved the redactions,” he said.

But Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the head of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters that the interview with Bondi on Friday will be released to the public as quickly as possible.

“You’ll know everything that’s been asked” if there are questions, he told reporters at the Capitol before the hearing started. “We’ll release all the transcripts, and if anyone is lying to Congress, that’s a felony,” he also said.

Earlier this week, Bondi confirmed to CNN and other media outlets that she was recently diagnosed with thyroid cancer and received treatment, including surgery, for the disease.

Bondi was replaced by Trump in early April with Blanche, who was the president’s former personal attorney before he was tapped to join the administration. At the time, Trump and Bondi said that she would be working in the private sector.

Officials with the New York City medical examiner’s office ruled that Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while he was on trial on sex trafficking charges. Maxwell, a British socialite, was convicted in 2021 of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein and is now serving a 20-year term in a federal prison.

The DOJ was tasked with releasing files related to Epstein and Maxwell under a measure, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, that was passed in Congress and signed into law by Trump. Previously, some lawmakers had accused the department of not releasing all the files or slow-walking the process.

Blanche, who was involved with overseeing the release of the files, said earlier this year that more than 3 million pages were released, noting that a significant amount of work was required to issue redactions of witness names, among other procedures, before the files were disseminated to the public.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 05/30/2026 – 19:50

The Democrat Establishment Is Starting To Worry About Spencer Pratt

The Democrat Establishment Is Starting To Worry About Spencer Pratt

The last person California Democrats expected to keep them up at night is Spencer Pratt. Yet here we are.

The former reality television personality-turned-independent mayoral candidate has spent the past several weeks doing something that Los Angeles’s political establishment convinced itself was impossible: making incumbent Mayor Karen Bass look vulnerable.

Conventional wisdom held that a candidate like Pratt, a former television personality with no governing experience, running as an independent in a deep-blue city, had no realistic path to victory. The conventional wisdom was wrong, or at a minimum, it failed to account for how much patience voters had actually lost with the Democratic Party’s incompetence.

At some point, even reliable Democratic constituencies reach a limit for how much they can tolerate. Bass may be finding out precisely where that limit sits.

Between April 19 and May 15, Pratt’s campaign has raised roughly $2.7 million. Over that same stretch, Bass pulled in just $282,000. Bass has been raising money since 2024, and her total haul since then is approximately $2.8 million. Pratt nearly matched it in less than a month.

The two candidates are now separated by less than $100,000 in cash on hand, with Pratt sitting on roughly $1.42 million and Bass on approximately $1.32 million.

The money story alone would be enough to rattle the machine. The polls are another story. Pratt has been performing well in the polls, with Bass only leading by single digits in recent surveys, which means Pratt could advance to a runoff with Bass.

In a city where Democratic registration is so overwhelming that Republican candidates don’t bother showing up on general election ballots, this is a huge red flag for the Bass campaign.

The Democrat establishment has heard the message loud and clear and is starting to panic. On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an endorsement of Bass – just five days before the primary.

“The work Karen Bass is doing in Los Angeles is making our entire state stronger, with an 18% decline in homelessness while it grew nationally, historic drops in violent crime, boosting film production in L.A., and protecting our communities against ICE. She has my full support for reelection,” Newsom said in a statement.

Whatever the merits of the endorsement’s substance, its timing speaks for itself. It reeks of desperation.

If no candidate receives a majority on the June 2nd election, a runoff election will be held on November 3rd. Newsom, making an endorsement in the race’s final days, is clearly hoping to boost Bass and avoid a runoff.

Pratt was unimpressed by Newsom’s 11th-hour endorsement. He responded by calling Newsom and Bass “alleged criminal partners,” tying them together through their shared record on the catastrophic January wildfires and the city’s homelessness crisis.

“It’s not shocking because their alleged criminal partners, not only did they work together in their negligence and burning down 7,000 houses and 12 people alive, but they’re both complicit in laundering, what, 24 billion dollars to actually increase homelessness,” Pratt said.

He went further, attacking the homelessness statistics Newsom cited and accusing both Newsom and Bass of making them up.

“Those are not real numbers,” Pratt insisted. “Anybody with eyeballs in the state of California or Los Angeles knows that there has not been a reduction in one homeless person. Actually, there’s been an increase of naked drug addict zombies in front of every kid’s playground, every kid’s school, every coffee shop.”

“They both should be in jail together,” he added.

A runoff now appears likely, and Pratt heads into it with momentum, money, and a message that is clearly resonating.

November represents more than a municipal race. It’s a test of whether California’s progressive one-party model can withstand sustained confrontation with its own results.

The Democrat establishment has reason to worry. The polls and the fundraising say so.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 05/30/2026 – 19:15

Green Retreat: California Eases Carbon-Market Costs For Oil Refiners

Green Retreat: California Eases Carbon-Market Costs For Oil Refiners

California’s green-energy regime has hollowed out the state’s refining and oil industry, leaving motorists paying the highest gasoline prices in the country. AAA data show the state gasoline average now north of $6 per gallon, compared with a national average of roughly $4.36 as of Saturday morning.

The result of political blowback in California over unaffordable gasoline and diesel prices at the pump is a retreat from left-wing climate policies that could offer relief to motorists, Bloomberg News reports.

On Friday, the California Air Resources Board voted to create up to $4 billion in free carbon allowances for oil refiners and other industrial polluters. This will help them more easily comply with the state’s greenhouse gas limits under the Cap-and-Invest program.

Earlier this year, CARB proposed further tightening emission limits by removing 118 million allowances from the market to keep the state on track to meet its 2030 climate targets. For refiners, that would mean further reducing emissions or paying more for allowances, with mounting costs already pushing them out of the state

The move will help contain gasoline prices at the pump and prevent refiners from leaving the state, especially after energy disruptions in the Gulf region pushed California gasoline prices above $6.

Take US oil giant Chevron, which recently warned that California is careening toward an energy crisis because of the Iran war, and that the company may quit refining oil in the state unless officials roll back taxes and regulations.

California is highly exposed to the disruption rippling through commodity markets, as it imports about 20% of its refined fuels from Asia. But as extensively discussed here, oil product shipments from China, South Korea, Singapore, and elsewhere have been disrupted, leaving Asian nations struggling to meet domestic demand, let alone export to California.

Chevron’s oil refining head Andy Walz recently warned that the potential for fuel shortages in California is his worst fear: We have refineries in Asia that are having to cut crude, and so they’re going to make fewer products,” Walz said in an interview in late March. “What if San Francisco doesn’t have the jet fuel it needs? Or Los Angeles? Or maybe gasoline?”

Since California is disconnected from the U.S. fuel-making centers of Texas and Louisiana, it is essentially an energy island.

Walz noted in March, days after the U.S.-Iran conflict broke out, that tightening California’s cap-and-invest program “made no sense when you look at global tensions right now.”

California’s green regime has produced nothing but disastrous consequences for households, making fuel prices the highest in the nation:

There are national security implications stemming from the green regime, especially for the state with the nation’s largest concentration of military personnel and national security activity.

The retreat on climate targets by state regulators is a win for consumers and the nation, as green is nothing more than inflationary and degrowth, hitting working-poor households the hardest with unaffordable gasoline and diesel prices at the pump.

Elsewhere, the US-Iran conflict has forced left-wing states such as New York, Massachusetts, and others to dial back unrealistic climate ambitions.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 05/30/2026 – 18:05

Caught On Tape: Washington Nationals Official Admits To Discriminating Against Religious Player

Caught On Tape: Washington Nationals Official Admits To Discriminating Against Religious Player

Authored by Bryan Hyde via American Greatness,

Washington Nationals Director of Community Relations Sean Hudson has been caught on camera admitting that he discriminates against starting pitcher Trevor Williams because of his Catholic faith.

The Daily Caller reports that O’Keefe Media Group has released a new undercover report where Hudson admits that the team avoids featuring starting pitcher Trevor Williams on social media because of his 2023 criticism of the Dodgers’ Pride Night.

That particular event honored a drag group dressed as nuns and performing on a crucifix that Williams called a mockery of Catholicism.

According to Fox News, in a 2025 interview with Bishop Robert Barron, Williams explained why he spoke out, saying, “Baseball stadiums should be a place where everyone feels welcomed, like 100%. We should all feel welcomed there. But that was clearly against one certain religion. If you don’t draw the line in the sand, who’s gonna do it?

Hudson described Williams as “super Christian-Catholic” with religious tattoos, and confessed that even lighthearted social media posts—for example, ones asking “Is a hot dog a sandwich?”—avoid including Williams because he spoke out.

Hudson also admitted on hidden camera to digitally surveilling fans who attend Nationals Park, saying, “If you ever come to a Nats game, there is someone on our team who’s responsible for figuring out everything about you, given your purchasing habits, what teams you come to when the Nats play, like what teams you come, and assigning you into a bucket of people and then catering content to you.”

The Daily Caller reports that Hudson told the undercover reporter that if a team supporter accepts online cookies “we’re getting your, a plethora of your Google history.”

In the video, the Nationals executive also described himself as “very far-left leaning” and admitted that he has a “Join the Communist Party” poster in his kitchen.

After the video came to light, Hudson deleted his X account, changed his Instagram, and denied the comments when confronted.

Hudson has since been removed from the team’s front office page amid online calls for boycotts and claims of religious discrimination.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 05/30/2026 – 17:30

Trump Blasts “Barack Hussein Obama Judge” After Kennedy Center Renovation Blocked

Trump Blasts “Barack Hussein Obama Judge” After Kennedy Center Renovation Blocked

President Donald Trump lashed out Saturday after U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper blocked the planned closure and renovation of the Kennedy Center, accusing the Obama-appointed judge of halting what Trump described as a badly needed structural and aesthetic overhaul of the performing arts venue.

In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump said millions of dollars in marble, furniture, steel, heating, air conditioning, and other materials had been ordered or were about to be ordered for what he called a “magnificent structural and aesthetic rebuilding” of the center. He argued the building had serious problems involving rust, rot, pests, failing pipes, aging HVAC systems, and structural beams that needed replacement, making it unsafe to keep audiences inside during major construction.

Trump also attacked Cooper personally, alleging a conflict of interest involving the judge’s wife, attorney Amy Jeffress, and tying the Kennedy Center ruling to broader complaints about what he called a “rigged” court system. He said the decision could force the center to remain open despite safety concerns and warned that the institution may soon close “probably never to open again.”

Jeffress, according to Trump, “doesn’t use the ‘Cooper’ name” because the couple “don’t want people to know that she has a Conflict of Interest with an important Judge.” He described Jeffress as “a Radical Left Democrat” who “worked as a Federal Prosecutor and Counselor to Obama Attorney General, Eric Holder,” “worked behind the scenes for the January 6th Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs,” represented former FBI attorney Lisa Page, and is “currently representing Sleepy Joe Biden on the release of his audio tapes.” Trump claimed Jeffress is “totally wired into the Left System, from her husband down,” adding that “it is impossible for me to be treated fairly.”

As the Epoch Times noted earlier, Donald Trump wants to transfer all operations of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to Congress after a federal judge blocked a two-year closure of the venue for renovations.

“The Kennedy Center, which was going to close in early July for largescale renovations and construction due to years of neglect, decay, and poor maintenance, and which was to be transformed by the Trump Administration into the Finest Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World, is not allowed to close for these renovations, which would not be possible to properly do without such a closure,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on May 29.

He accused Democrats of caring “more about opposing your favorite President, ME, than saving a dying Performing Arts Center,” and therefore “we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it.”

Washington-based Judge Christopher R. Cooper issued an order on May 29, which temporarily halted the name change and stopped the center from being shut down for a two-year remodel.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” Cooper said.

Congress organized the center as a “bureau” within the Smithsonian Institution directed by a board of trustees, he said.

The board was given several duties, including “programming obligations,” “memorial obligations” honoring the legacy of Kennedy, and general maintenance obligations, the judge said.

To satisfy these obligations, Congress “empowered the Board to do the kinds of things that boards typically do: negotiate contracts, prepare budgets, employ personnel, solicit and accept gifts, transfer property, bargain with employees, procure insurance, and issue annual reports.”

The lawsuit’s claim that the center’s board violated its fiduciary duty in voting to close the center was “likely to succeed,” the judge said.

A fiduciary duty is a duty of loyalty, care, and good faith that one party owes to another in positions of trust.

Cooper ruled that the building needed to stay open during the planned construction, which would have started after July 4.

Trump said in his May 29 statement that the building needed to be closed for renovation because it had rotting beams and parking areas that were about to collapse.

“I cannot be involved with a situation where danger to the Public is allowed to flourish in plain and open sight,” Trump wrote.

“Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.'”

Trump said the Department of Commerce will arrange a full transfer of operations, maintenance, and management to Congress.

The Epoch Times contacted the White House for additional information.

The ruling came in response to litigation initiated in December 2025 by Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who sued Trump and the Kennedy Center board of trustees over its renaming as the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Beatty is an ex officio member of the center’s board of trustees.

Trump appointed himself to the chairman of the venue’s Board of Trustees after he entered his second term as president in early 2025.

The president swiftly removed and replaced the board’s chairman and every single board member who did not share his vision for “a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”

The current board, which included Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, and Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo – unanimously voted to rename the institution the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in December 2025. Trump welcomed the name change but noted that he didn’t ask for it.

The rebrand came with backlash from some in the performing arts community, as high-profit shows like Hamilton pulled out of plans to tour there.

Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas said it stood in solidarity with the Dramatists Guild and Actors’ Equity Association members who cut ties with the Kennedy Center after Trump’s new board took over.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Actors’ Equity Association and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas for comment on the latest development.

Matthew Vadum contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 05/30/2026 – 16:20

X Cracks Down On Large “Creator” Accounts Built On Stolen Content

X Cracks Down On Large “Creator” Accounts Built On Stolen Content

The saturation of large X accounts built almost entirely on recycled video clips has become impossible to ignore. Many of these accounts brand themselves as “creators,” but they merely lift original reporting, strip attribution, repackage it, and monetize engagement as if the content were their own.

Elon Musk and X product head Nikita Bier have zeroed in on this issue. X is now demonetizing repeat offenders while redirecting impressions and revenue to true originators. For genuine creators producing original reporting, analysis, and commentary, it’s a long-overdue reset.

Disclose.tv Gets the Hammer

The latest high-profile casualty is Disclose.tv (nearly 2 million followers). The account allegedly lifted spaceflight reporter Adam Bernstein’s dramatic video of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploding on the launchpad, cropped the watermark, and reposted it for engagement.

Bernstein called them out: “This video was shot by me as part of my coverage for @SpaceflightNow. It appears you have removed our watermark – please credit us properly.”

Bier jumped in, praising the original footage and confirming the penalty: “Great video – sorry this happened. Creator has been deactivated from monetization for cropping out attribution.”

Mario Nawfal’s Revenue Slash and the Musk Unfollow

Just days earlier, Bier publicly warned serial aggregator Mario Nawfal after he reuploaded an ABC News clip instead of using proper Quote or Video Reshare: “Please do not reupload the author’s video: use Quote or Video Reshare. Your revenue was reduced by 90% last cycle and we’re running out of room to reduce it more.”

Elon Musk unfollowed Nawfal shortly after, sparking widespread speculation.

Massimo Fracas

One of the most dramatic spats involved popular science curator Massimo (@Rainmaker1973), who has 4.3 million followers. Bier dropped the hammer with receipts:

Rainmaker1973 (Massimo) fired back – accusing Bier of unfair treatment, defending watermark cropping as standard practice, claiming selective enforcement, and alleging bullying via Community Notes and deboosting. He announced shifting to a subscriber/donation model and hinted at potentially deleting the account, framing himself as a victim of “abuse of power” and “public execution.”

The exchange lit up X with heated replies, hypocrisy callouts (noting ViralRushX also aggregates from elsewhere), and memes celebrating the “public execution.”

Broader Sweep and Burner Schemes

Other accounts hit include @bpthaber (~1.6M followers) for alleged burner/shield tactics — using secondary accounts to post stolen videos stamped with the main brand to dodge detection. Bier’s team is now actively detecting programmatic re-uploads, watermark stripping, and impression hijacking at scale.

Jason Calacanis summed up the originals’ frustration: “The crazy part, is these accounts are getting paid to steal peoples content – which will make ABC give up on the platform eventually.”

These very public spats highlight X’s aggressive pivot: rewarding originality over volume and manipulation to clean up the platform, boost trust, improve timeline quality, and attract more substantive journalism.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 05/30/2026 – 15:45

Missiles Rain Down On Northern Israel In Large Hezbollah ‘Revenge’ Operation

Missiles Rain Down On Northern Israel In Large Hezbollah ‘Revenge’ Operation

Northern Israel has come under heavy attack from Hezbollah on Saturday, after this past week a full-scale war has resumed in southern Lebanon, which even saw the resumption of Israeli airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, much further to the north.

Even while Tel Aviv maintains the illusion of a ceasefire with Lebanon (as in, its government and national army), there is no ceasefire with Iran-linked Hezbollah, following weeks of sporadic drones being sent on northern Israel, as well as troop positions of invading IDF forces.

The Saturday drone and missile waves hit multiple locations in and around the Galilee area, with regional media reporting that at least eight missiles were launched at Israeli positions in the initial salvo, one of which struck a site in Kiryat Shmona city.

Hezbollah subsequently announced it had carried out 22 military operations against Israeli army positions and equipment within the prior 24 hours. It framed this as a revenge operation for Israeli attacks on civilian centers in Lebanon.

Times of Israel has cited IDF statements saying Israel is bracing for more attacks out of Lebanon. “Hezbollah launched several rockets from Lebanon at the Western Galilee a short while ago,” it said in a late in the day Saturday (local time) update. “The IDF says some of the rockets were intercepted and others struck open areas, causing no injuries.”

Sirens across several towns and cities were activated, and there were scenes of coastal locales being impacted, with throngs of people scrambling for bomb shelters.

Starting early last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that he instructed his military to “press the pedal even harder” against Hezbollah, reportedly upon a greenlight being given by Washington, following increased drone attacks from the Shia paramilitary group backed by Iran on northern Israel.

Impacts filmed in water areas of Nahariya Beach

“We are at war with Hezbollah. Just in recent weeks, our brave fighters have eliminated more than 600 terrorists,” Netanyahu announced in video statement. “But we are not taking our foot off the gas. On the contrary, I have instructed them to press the pedal even harder.

“We will strike them. Yes, they are attacking us with drones, cyber-enabled drones, and we have a special team working on this — and we will solve that too…But what this requires from us now is to intensify the blows, increase the force. We will strike them decisively,” the Israeli leader said.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 05/30/2026 – 15:45

Kenyan Court Rejects Plan For US Ebola Quarantine Center Amid Growing Outbreak

Kenyan Court Rejects Plan For US Ebola Quarantine Center Amid Growing Outbreak

Authored by Brett Wilkins via Common Dreams

A day after US officials said Kenya had approved a request to open a quarantine center for Americans exposed to a rare strain of the Ebola virus, a court in the East African nation on Friday temporarily blocked the plan amid a growing outbreak in neighboring Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The High Court prohibited the Kenyan government from establishing or operating any Ebola exposure, quarantine, isolation, or treatment facility in the country under any agreement with the United States or any other foreign government or agency.

Getty Images

The court also blocked Kenya’s government from allowing anyone infected with or exposed to Ebola into the country pending the outcome of the case, which was filed by the Katiba Institute, a civil rights group.

“At its core, the case is about preserving constitutional accountability, protecting public health, and ensuring that no government may place expediency above the lives and safety of the people of Kenya,” Katiba Institute executive director Nora Mbagathi said Thursday.

A 50-bed Ebola quarantine center was set to open Friday at Laikipia Air Base in Nanyuki, located approximately 125 miles north of Nairobi. The facility would have been operated by members of the US Public Health Service, a uniformed branch of the Department of Health and Human Services.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday during a Cabinet meeting that “we cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States.”

However, US public health officials strongly criticized the plan to quarantine Americans in Kenya instead of repatriating them, with one emergency physician accusing the Trump administration of “a dramatic abdication of what we owe our own.”

Elected leaders in Laikipia County welcomed the High Court’s ruling. They had opposed the US quarantine center, and had asked in a joint statement prior to the decision, “Why Laikipia?”

“What does the US government know about this that they are not accepting their own affected citizens into their soil but are ready to have them elsewhere?”

The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists, and Dentists Union (KMPDU), which had strongly opposed the quarantine center and had threatened to strike, also welcomed the High Court ruling.

“We are utterly disgusted by the government’s apparent willingness to trade national biosecurity and the lives of its citizens for foreign aid,” KMPDU secretary general Davji Bhimji Attelah said in a statement Thursday, referring to the $13.5 million the Trump administration pledged for Ebola preparedness in Kenya, part of a broader $125 million US commitment toward fighting the disease.

“We will not sit back and watch Kenya be treated as a containment colony for a lethal pathogen that we did not generate,” Attelah added. “We will not tolerate an apartheid healthcare model on Kenyan soil. If it is too dangerous for America, it is too dangerous for Kenya.”

Critics say President Donald Trump’s ideologically driven decision to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO), his administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, and reduced funding for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global public health efforts have adversely affected the response to the current Ebola epidemic, compared with 2014 and 2019 outbreaks.

The WHO said Friday that there were a total of 906 suspected Ebola cases and 223 suspected deaths reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as of Wednesday, and 125 confirmed cases in the DRC and 9 in Uganda, with 18 deaths among the confirmed cases in both countries.

Ebola—which typically kills between 25% and 90% of infected people, depending upon the strain of the virus and quality of available medical care—causes widespread and often catastrophic damage to the body’s blood vessels, immune system, and organs. The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals, including fruit bats, porcupines, and non-human primates, and then spreads between humans through direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of infected people.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 05/30/2026 – 15:10

Why The SAVE Act Matters

Why The SAVE Act Matters

Authored by Stu Cvrk via American Greatness,

American self-governance rests on one indispensable foundation: that elections reflect the will of eligible citizens, counted accurately, administered transparently. Republicans and election integrity advocates argue that this foundation has been progressively undermined – not necessarily by a single grand conspiracy, but by a systemic pattern of loosened safeguards, dirty voter rolls, exploitable mail-ballot systems, and aggressive Democrat opposition to the audits and reforms that would resolve public doubt once and for all.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act – which polls at roughly 80 percent public support – would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. To its advocates, it is the minimum logical response to documented vulnerabilities in the registration and voting system. To its opponents, it is voter suppression. The fight over that characterization is itself a revealing indicator of where the parties stand on the fundamental question: do you want to know, or don’t you? And why!

Let’s examine the subject in some detail.

Note: the below analysis was written from a Republican/election-integrity-advocate perspective. Where allegations are unconfirmed or contested, they are labeled as such.

Part I: Confirmed And Documented Problems

1. Dirty Voter Rolls – A National Scandal

The evidence that American voter rolls are riddled with ineligible registrations is not in dispute. The only dispute is over whether they should be fixed.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, under Assistant AG Harmeet Dhillon, reviewed voter rolls from just 16 voluntarily cooperating Republican-leaning states and found tens of thousands of apparent noncitizens and hundreds of thousands of dead people still registered to vote. The administration subsequently sued 29 states – including blue-state heavyweights California and New York, and swing states Arizona and Georgia – to compel production of voter roll data under the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

In California, a review of voter rolls found registrations tied to P.O. boxes and individuals listed as 125 years old. In Colorado, a lawsuit forced the purge of 372,000 ineligible registrations. In Michigan, dead voters have been documented – some of whom show records of in-person voting after their deaths. In Oregon, similar anomalies have been reported. Judicial Watch has documented tens of thousands of names removed from rolls in multiple states, often only after litigation – raising the obvious question of why states resisted cleanup in the first place.

The consistent pattern: Republicans seek cleanup to remove any possibility that unauthorized people are voting in elections through fraud associated with ballot harvesting. Democrats sue to prevent it for the purposes of preventing disenfranchising eligible voters (with the unspoken reason to enable Democrat ballot harvesting).

2. Noncitizen Voting – Prosecuted Cases

Noncitizen voting is not a hypothetical. It is documented, prosecuted, and ongoing.

In Philadelphia, ICE and the FBI arrested Mahady Sacko, an illegal alien from Mauritania, for voting in seven federal elections dating to 2008 – despite a 2002 removal order. In Coldwater, Kansas, Mayor Joe Ceballos – a legal permanent resident from Mexico – resigned and faced charges after voting in multiple elections. These are not isolated cases; they are confirmed examples of a vulnerability that Republicans argue the SAVE Act would directly address.

3. Mail Ballot Fraud – A Proven Mechanism

Democrats and their media allies spent years insisting mail ballot fraud is vanishingly rare. The prosecution record tells a different story – of widespread, real, and exploitable vulnerabilities (over 1400 cases in this database).

In Pennsylvania, a grand jury indicted three Democrats – Mohammed Nurul Hasan, Mohammed Munsur Ali, and Mohammed Rafikul Islam – for attempting to steal the 2021 mayoral election in Millbourne. Using Pennsylvania’s online voter registration portal (PAOVR), they changed the registered addresses of nearly three dozen non-residents to Millbourne addresses, requested mail ballots on their behalf, filled them out, and submitted them. The system’s vulnerability: anyone with basic personal information about a voter could modify that voter’s registration and divert their ballot to any address in the world. The candidate lost anyway – but the mechanism worked. The “safeguards” the AP assured voters existed did not stop it.

In Minnesota, a duo pleaded guilty to flooding an election with fraudulent ballots. In Connecticut, a state employee was arrested for switching Republican voters’ registrations to Democrat without their knowledge. Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight organization was forced to pay the largest campaign finance violation fine in Georgia history.

4. ActBlue – Active Congressional Investigation With Significant Red Flags

This is not an allegation. This is an active, documented federal investigation backed by congressional subpoenas.

The House Judiciary, Oversight, and Administration Committees released a joint interim report in April 2026 finding that five current and former ActBlue employees – including its general counsel (fired), legal department personnel, and VP of customer service – collectively invoked the Fifth Amendment 146 times during depositions. Not once or twice. 146 times. Not a single substantive question was answered.

The report also found that ActBlue made its fraud-prevention rules more lenient twice during the 2024 election cycle, and that internal training materials directed fraud-prevention staff to “look for reasons to accept contributions” rather than scrutinize them. The entire legal and compliance team – every member – had resigned, been fired, or gone on extended leave by March 2025, in the months immediately following the election.

The New York Times – not a right-wing outlet – reported on the foreign donation concerns. Former Biden White House Counsel Dana Remus, working at ActBlue’s law firm Covington, reportedly warned that ActBlue’s CEO may have misrepresented facts to Congress. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan summarized the irony: Democrats spent a decade accusing Trump of foreign campaign collusion. The evidence of foreign money flowing into Democrat fundraising infrastructure is now the subject of formal congressional investigation.

5. Fulton County, Georgia – Missing Evidence, FBI Raids, And Unanswered Questions

Fulton County has become the symbolic epicenter of 2020 election integrity concerns, and for documented reasons.

In January 2026, the Georgia State Election Board revealed that investigators could not locate a single “zero tape” from Fulton County’s 148 early voting machines from the 2020 general election. Zero tapes are the legal documents that certify each ballot tabulator began counting at zero – preventing pre-loaded votes or test data from being counted as real votes. Their absence does not prove fraud. But their absence also cannot be explained away. A December 2025 admission by Fulton County’s attorney confirmed that more than 100 tabulator closing tapes – representing roughly 315,000 votes – were never signed by poll workers as required by law.

The week after the State Election Board meeting, the FBI executed a search warrant at the Fulton County election office, specifically seeking the zero tapes. The search warrant itself represents a federal judicial determination that probable cause existed to search. Fulton County has not produced a satisfactory accounting of what happened to these documents.

6. Democrat Opposition To Election Audits

A pattern election integrity advocates find telling: Democrats have consistently used legal action to delay, defund, or block full forensic audits of the 2020 election. A “full forensic audit” – as distinguished from the limited hand recounts most states conducted – would involve independent examination of ballot chain of custody, machine logs, cast vote records, envelope signatures, and precinct-level data.

No jurisdiction in the United States has completed a full forensic audit of the 2020 presidential election. In every jurisdiction where serious audit efforts have been launched, Democrat attorneys general or allied groups have filed litigation to impede them. Critics ask: if you’re confident in the result, why fight the audit?

Democrat AGs have also collectively challenged Trump’s executive order requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration, filing suit to block it. This resistance – to verification measures that most democracies consider standard – strikes election integrity advocates as its own form of evidence.

Part II: Serious But Unconfirmed Allegations

The following allegations have been raised by researchers, analysts, or investigators and are reported here as claims that merit investigation. They have not been confirmed by courts, federal law enforcement, or independent forensic auditors (yet). So-called election integrity reporters in the legacy have not bothered to investigate these troubling issues. They are presented because they are being actively investigated or because the underlying data patterns have not received adequate official explanation. Note: there are many other credible allegations besides the below that need to be investigated.

1. Statistical Anomalies In The 2020 Vote – Unexplained, Not Disproven

A team of scientists and engineers at election-integrity.info has published analyses of 2020 vote time-series data claiming to identify statistically improbable vote spikes – large batches of ballots reported in short windows heavily favoring Biden – that they argue cannot be explained by normal counting patterns. They also claim to have found instances of “negative votes” appearing in time-series data, which should be mathematically impossible.

Status: These analyses have not been independently replicated or accepted by mainstream statisticians. Election officials attribute large vote spikes to the batch-reporting of mail ballots. The “negative vote” claims may reflect data-entry artifacts or reporting methodology. However, no official body has conducted the granular time-series audit that would definitively address these claims. Unconfirmed – merits independent statistical review.

2. Wisconsin Voter File Algorithm

An analysis published in American Thinker in April 2025 claimed that a newly discovered algorithm embedded in Wisconsin’s voter file constitutes evidence of criminal election fraud, allegedly manipulating registration data in a systematic pattern.

Status: This claim has not been verified by Wisconsin election officials or independent computer scientists with access to the underlying data. The Wisconsin Elections Commission disputes it. Unconfirmed – requires independent forensic examination of the voter file.

3. ActBlue “Smurfing” – Foreign Donors Using Straw Americans

Beyond the confirmed Fifth Amendment invocations and congressional investigation, some analysts allege a specific mechanism: foreign money flowing into ActBlue via thousands of small donations made under the names of unwitting or fictitious American donors – a practice known as “smurfing.” Data published at electionwatch.info purports to show state-by-state patterns of anomalous small-dollar donations. One Arizona state senator filed a whistleblower complaint making specific allegations along these lines.

Status: The congressional investigation is active, and this specific mechanism is under subpoena. The pattern data is suggestive but has not been verified through forensic banking analysis. Partially confirmed as an investigation target – specific smurfing allegations unconfirmed pending investigation.

4. Chinese Source Code In Voting Machines

Allegations have circulated – amplified by Rasmussen polling commentary – that Chinese-origin source code was found embedded in digital voting machines used in U.S. elections.

Status: No federal agency has publicly confirmed this finding. The claim appears to originate from researchers without access to machine firmware through official channels. The DHS’s Albert intrusion detection system was reportedly subject to failures during the 2020 cycle, which raises cybersecurity questions, but this does not confirm Chinese code insertion. Unconfirmed. Serious enough to warrant official investigation with full transparency.

5. CCP Influence Operations In The 2020 Election

Reporting from Just the News and others has alleged that intelligence analysts suppressed findings about Chinese Communist Party interference in the 2020 election – favoring Biden – and that the NSA intercepted communications involving foreign government discussions about routing money to U.S. campaigns.

Status: That China preferred Biden over Trump in 2020 is assessed by the intelligence community. The specific allegations about suppressed intelligence and money routing have not been confirmed through declassified documents or prosecutions. Former CBS reporter Catherine Herridge has amplified related reporting. Partially confirmed as an assessment (China preference); specific money-routing and suppression allegations unconfirmed.

6. USAID Laundering Into The 2024 Biden Campaign

Allegations have been published claiming USAID funds – U.S. taxpayer money routed through NGOs – were used to support the 2024 Biden-Harris campaign operation, effectively constituting illegal government funding of a political campaign through a laundering mechanism.

Status: As a result of DOGE discoveries, USAID was dramatically restructured under the Trump administration, in part over concerns about politicized spending. Specific documentation of funds flowing to the Biden campaign has not been verified through official audit or prosecution. Unconfirmed – active area of government review.

7. Pakistan And Foreign National Voting

Reports from Gateway Pundit and allied outlets have alleged that Pakistani nationals who have never set foot in the United States have nonetheless appeared on American voter rolls and may have cast ballots.

Status: The mechanism by which this could occur at scale is not established. Individual instances of foreign national registration are documented (see Part I), but systematic Pakistani voting is unconfirmed. Unconfirmed.

8. The Directional Pattern: All Fraud Benefits Democrats

One of the most rhetorically powerful arguments made by election integrity advocates is that virtually every confirmed or alleged instance of election fraud benefits Democrats, not Republicans. If fraud were random, one would expect roughly equal distribution. The pattern, they argue, is not random.

Status: This argument is worth taking seriously as a statistical observation. Confirmed fraud cases (Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Connecticut, etc.) trend Democrat – which helps explain Democrat resistance to the SAVE Act. Democrats support illegal aliens voting in US elections, support and incentivize ballot harvesting, and employ lawfare to fight virtually all Republican-sponsored election integrity laws, cleaning up voter rolls, and conducting full forensic audits of election results. All of this increases the probability of election fraud. When it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

Concluding Thoughts

Whether one accepts all, some, or none of the unconfirmed allegations above, the documented problems alone – dirty voter rolls, noncitizen registrations, exploitable mail ballot systems, resistance to audits, foreign money concerns – provide ample justification for the SAVE Act’s core requirement: prove you are a citizen before registering to vote in a federal election. The SAVE Act is a logical response.

The American people apparently understand the issue quite well. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 59 percent of U.S. voters believe it’s likely that there will be widespread cheating that will affect the outcome of this fall’s congressional elections. And more than 80 percent across all political parties and racial groups support the SAVE Act.

Opponents (elected Democrats and their activist base) argue this will disenfranchise legitimate voters who lack documentation. Proponents respond that the same logic would argue against requiring ID to board a plane or open a bank account – that the burden of documented citizenship is minimal and the protection it provides is substantial. Every other major democracy requires some form of citizenship verification for electoral participation.

The ~80 percent public support for the SAVE Act reflects a simple intuition: in a self-governing republic, the franchise belongs to citizens. Verifying citizenship is not suppression. Resisting verification – when the voter rolls demonstrably contain ineligible registrations – is not protection of democracy. It is protection of a system that benefits those who prefer less scrutiny.

The American people deserve to know that their elections are clean. The SAVE Act is a start. Full forensic auditing capacity, completed without legal obstruction, would be the finish. Neither should be controversial in a country that claims to believe in democracy.

After all, don’t the Democrats want to “save our democracy”?

Tyler Durden
Sat, 05/30/2026 – 14:00

US Military Hasn’t Identified A Single Confirmed Mine In Strait Of Hormuz, Officials Tell NBC

US Military Hasn’t Identified A Single Confirmed Mine In Strait Of Hormuz, Officials Tell NBC

Just a few hours after President Trump boasted that the US Navy had detonated “numerous” Iranian sea mines, NBC News reported that, even after three months of warfare, the US military has yet to confirm the presence of even a single mine in the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz

Citing two US officials and a “person familiar with the matter,” NBC said relentless searches of the waterway by aerial and undersea drones haven’t found any confirmed mines, merely finding some objects that might be mines. “If anything, the threat has been far less robust than we had feared,” the person “familiar with the matter” told NBC. 

The USS Santa Barbara, a littoral combat ship, is configured for minesweeping duties (Navy photo)

Around the time Trump decided to join Israel in launching a war on Iran in the midst of ongoing negotiations in which Tehran had offered major concessions along the lines of what Trump is demanding today, US intelligence officials believed Iran had placed mines on the south side of the strait ahead of the shooting or shortly thereafter, said NBC. Allies had likewise reportedly concluded that Iran had deployed sea mines. The mine menace was said to be so formidable that, in April, a Pentagon official speaking to US legislators in a classified session said that fully clearing the strait of mines could take six months.  

In a Friday morning social media post in which he foreshadowed a potential ceasefire agreement that would end restrictions on commerce through the Strait of Hormuz, Trump boasted that the US Navy had “removed, through detonation, numerous such mines with our great underwater mine sweepers.” 

The NBC report seemingly contradicts multiple CBS News reports. Most recently, on May 19, the outlet reported that US intelligence had identified “at least 10 mines” in the strait. Back in March CBS reported that an official said there were at least a dozen, while another one said fewer than a dozen. CBS attributed this information to officials who weren’t named. 

The potential presence of mines has weighed heavily on the minds of ship owners and –more importantly — shipping-insurance underwriters who’ve terminated existing coverage and offered new protection at prohibitively expensive rates. Of course, mines aren’t the only weapon at Iran’s disposal: drones and missiles can wreak havoc as well. 

Last week, there were reports that the UK Royal Navy was making moves for a potential deployment of hundreds of sailors on a mine-sweeping mission in the strait. However, as we emphasized, AP reported that this potential deployment would only proceed if a peace agreement were reached, suggesting it’s principally a gesture meant to placate Trump, who has pestered NATO allies to help remedy the massive, strait-centered economic disruption caused by the US-Israeli decision to launch a war on Iran over a nuclear weapon program that almost certainly does not exist

In March, Trump ranted against nations that were anxious over the shutting of a waterway that transports about 20% of the world’s petroleum, in addition to about a third of international fertilizer trade: “Go to the strait and just take it. You have to start learning how to fight for yourself. Go get your own oil.” Days later, he said, “The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future. We don’t need it. We haven’t needed it and we don’t need it.”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 05/30/2026 – 13:25