Responding to Kelly’s CBS interview, Hegseth accused the retired Navy captain of publicly discussing classified information.
“‘Captain’ Mark Kelly strikes again,” Hegseth wrote on X. “Now he’s blabbing on TV (falsely and dumbly) about a CLASSIFIED Pentagon briefing he received.”
The report also said Eshagh Ghalibaf secured long-term Australian residency despite Canada twice rejecting his visa applications over concerns related to the Iranian regime.
The revelations are likely to raise questions about Australia’s handling of sanctions involving current and former IRGC-linked figures and their families.
Ghalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guards air force commander and police chief, has never been sanctioned by Australia, unlike in Canada.
The newspaper said Trump plans to raise concerns about China’s support for Tehran, including alleged exports of dual-use technology and possible weapons-related assistance as the Iran war and ceasefire diplomacy remain unresolved.
The summit is also expected to cover Taiwan, artificial intelligence, trade disputes and nuclear arms issues, according to the report.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that federal agencies must prioritize American-made products in government purchasing, touting efforts to tighten enforcement of "Buy American" policies and limit exceptions that allow foreign goods.
"ALL FEDERAL AGENCIES MUST BUY AMERICAN — NO EXCUSES!" Trump exclaimed on Truth Social. "For decades, Washington politicians sent your Taxpayer Dollars overseas, and let Foreign Countries rip us off while our Workers, Factories, and Supply Chains were left behind. That betrayal is OVER.
"My Administration is strengthening MADE IN AMERICA Laws, ENDING Waiver Loopholes, and STOPPING the Federal Government from buying Foreign Products when Great American Products are available — And to the D.C. Bureaucrats: NO MORE handing out Waivers like candy!" he continued. "No more rubber-stamping exceptions for Foreign Products while American Workers get shafted.
"We are putting American Workers, American Factories, and American Supply Chains FIRST — Bigger, better, and stronger than ever before! I already signed EO 14392 to crack down on fake "MADE IN AMERICA" claims, and we are enforcing it HARD," he added. "No more games. No more fake labels. No more ripping off the American Taxpayer. AMERICA FIRST means BUY AMERICAN!"
The comments come as the Trump administration moves to tighten domestic sourcing requirements across federal procurement, part of a broader push to boost U.S. manufacturing and reduce reliance on foreign supply chains.
In March, Trump signed an executive order aimed at combating fraudulent "Made in America" labels by foreign manufacturers and sellers, Reuters reported.
The order directs the Federal Trade Commission to prioritize enforcement against companies that falsely label products as U.S.-made or make misleading origin claims in violation of existing law.
It also calls on federal agencies responsible for country-of-origin labeling to work with the FTC to consider new regulations and ensure consistent guidance across the government.
As part of the administration’s broader focus on domestic manufacturing, the order requires agencies overseeing federal procurement contracts to periodically verify that products marketed as American-made meet those standards and directs suspected violations to be referred to the U.S. Department of Justice for potential enforcement action.
Trump’s post emphasized closing those loopholes, particularly targeting what he described as overuse of waivers by federal agencies.
by Andrea Widburg
In June 2024, over a dozen pro-Hamas activists are alleged to have broken into and vandalized the Stanford president’s office, including writing antisemitic slurs. The damage estimates ranged from $360,000 to $1,000,000. Santa Clara County’s DA filed charges against 12 of them.
Some defendants pleaded out, but five went to trial, which resulted in a mistrial. The DA’s office then did what DA’s offices often do: It sought to retry the case.
However, the twist here is that Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Kelley Paul, a Democrat and public defender before Gavin Newsom appointed her to the court, agreed to a defense motion to fire the entire prosecutor’s office because the District Attorney, Jeffrey Rosen, openly supports Israel. Thus, on his campaign website, Rosen said that he supports Israel and opposes antisemitism, and raised this case as an example of his fight against antisemitism.
According to the defense, this means that Rosen and his entire office are so biased that they cannot try any cases involving defendants hostile to Israel:
“DA Rosen is not entitled to continue to pursue a case where he falsely describes the prosecution of the defendants as part of his fight against antisemitism while attempting to raise campaign dollars off that false description,” Defense Attorney Avi Singh wrote in court documents.
It’s unclear from the article what “false description” Singh means. While it’s true that the defendants were not tried for specific hate crimes (a thought crime cause of action that is always unconstitutional), the reality is that their violently expressed support for Hamas is an invariable corollary to hatred for Israel, and hatred for Israel has yet to show itself as anything other than antisemitism.
But parsing words really doesn’t matter. From a legal perspective, the argument is ridiculous. Either the defendants committed acts consistent with a crime, or they did not. Certainly, there was enough material presented to the jury to warrant a mistrial rather than a not-guilty verdict.
Notably, there is no allegation that the original trial was tainted by any pro-Israel or philosemitic bias. As for his campaigning off the case, he’s not a judge who cannot show bias. He is the DA, which is always a political position, and he wouldn’t have brought the case if he didn’t believe in it.
Nevertheless, Judge Paul, a white leftist woman, put her stamp of approval on the claim that Jewish prosecutors cannot try cases against people who hate Jews:
While Paul reaffirmed Rosen’s right to free speech and noted passion for fighting antisemitism, she said “caution and care” must be taken when using active litigation for fundraising purposes.
The Stanford lawsuit is “not a hate-crime case,” and should not be characterized as a fight against antisemitism, Paul said.
Attorney General Rob Bonta, who helped represent the District Attorney’s Office, argued that defense attorneys did not prove Rosen’s guilt.
“DA Rosen neither vilified nor defamed defendants and/or their movement while fundraising and simultaneously prosecuting defendants,” Bonta wrote in court documents.
The court also agreed that Rosen’s behavior could have affected Deputy District Attorney Rob Baker’s treatment of the defendants as Baker was leading the prosecution’s case.
At times, he criticized the students’ motivations and at one point called the group “un-American.”
“The court finds a conflict of interest exists,” Paul said.
Now, it’s up to the State AG to decide whether to go forward with the case. And while AG Bonta did stand up for Rosen in this matter, there’s no reason to believe that the hard-left state AG will want to continue this fight. After all, his base is behind this type of vandalism.
Try imagining this scenario without it involving a Jewish DA on a case that involves Israel. Imagine, for example, Neo-Nazis trashing the Stanford president’s office and then being prosecuted by a black DA who has a political fundraising campaign page about his support for the black community, and mentions the case on that page. Or imagine fanatic anti-homosexual Christians committing vandalism, and then being prosecuted by a gay DA who has a campaign page that focuses heavily on his support for gay rights, while mentioning the case.
If you can’t get those images in your mind, that’s not a failure of your imagination. It’s because it would never happen, not even in the realm of imagination.
What we have here is a DA whose office brought charges against people who caused massive property damage. There are no allegations of any bias or unprofessionalism in the first trial. Nevertheless, the entire office is being dismissed because the DA supports Israel. This is absolutely disgraceful, and exactly what I would expect from a leftist judge in 2026 America.
The families of two Americans imprisoned in China for more than a decade are urging President Donald Trump to seek their release during his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week.
The cases involve Dawn Michelle Hunt, 54, a Chicago-area artist and former flight attendant, and Nelson Wells Jr., 52, a Louisiana native and father of three, who were convicted on drug charges after what their families say were separate "blind mule" scams in which they were unknowingly used to carry narcotics.
For Trump, who has cast himself as a dealmaker who brings Americans home, securing the release of two ailing U.S. prisoners would offer a gain from a summit expected to be short on outcomes amid tensions over trade, Iran and Taiwan.
For Beijing, a humanitarian release of two Americans would be a low-cost gesture that could buy goodwill with a mercurial U.S. president at a sensitive moment in the relationship.
"With President Trump meeting President Xi, our two families are writing letters - we're asking, 'Can you please ask for the release of our loved ones?'," said Tim Hunt, Dawn Michelle's older brother.
"Hopefully, we can get those letters delivered and read."
Hunt said his sister is an artistic "brainiac", a highly intelligent person, and former flight attendant with a degree in fashion design who loved entering sweepstakes with her mother.
Hunt said Dawn Michelle was lured into an international "prize" trip by scammers who, once she was in China, gifted her purses and a new suitcase containing hidden drugs that she unwittingly agreed to carry on a flight out of the country.
Nelson Wells Jr. traveled the world, climbed mountains and explored Japan's peaks, sharing the views with his father. Wells was arrested after agreeing to carry another person's suitcase while returning from a trip to China, his family said. The individual vanished once security at the airport discovered narcotics hidden in the bag.
"I enjoyed serving my country," said Wells' father, Nelson Wells Sr., a U.S. Army veteran whose wife also worked for the Department of Defense for 28 years. "Now I just want my country to serve me."
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said it is providing the pair with consular assistance and that officials are advocating for the health and welfare of the two citizens but declined to provide details, citing privacy considerations.
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the two are serving sentences for serious drug-related crimes and that the government is handling their cases according to the rule of law while ensuring their health and legitimate rights are protected.
HEALTH A MAJOR CONCERN
Advocates say the State Department has made a formal request to Chinese counterparts for both prisoners to be released on humanitarian grounds, and that Chinese officials have privately indicated a willingness to consider it if the appeal comes from a senior level.
"The Chinese side has shown a willingness to grant the humanitarian release, but they are also keen to hear from the U.S. side just how important it is for the American people," said Beijing-based lawyer James Zimmerman, who is advising the Hunt and Wells families.
The relatives of the prisoners say both are in deteriorating health. Hunt has developed serious health problems, needs blood transfusions but does not trust prison doctors enough to consent to surgery. Wells suffers from severe seizures, diabetes, high blood pressure and other complications, they say.
In 2024, China and the U.S. each released three citizens both governments said were wrongfully detained in the other country, concluding years of diplomacy.
The advocates say U.S. official attention has intensified in recent months. Peter Humphrey, a fraud investigator and former prisoner in China who now advises families of foreign detainees in the country, said the U.S. embassy has been raising the cases more frequently with Chinese authorities.
The health concerns are now central to both families' appeals.
“Both Dawn Michelle Hunt and Nelson Wells are gravely ill and in desperate need of medical care in the U.S. - they should both be granted humanitarian parole," said John Kamm, whose San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation researches political prisoners in China. Dui Hua estimates that there are around 200 Americans in carceral facilities in China.
Both families say the cases have gained momentum after the families testified at a September 2024 hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which brought wider attention to Americans imprisoned in China.
They are also pushing legislation introduced by Representative Chris Smith, named for Hunt and Wells, that they say would improve support for families in similar cases.
For the two families, the toll at home has deepened with time. Tim Hunt said his father died in January without seeing his daughter freed. Wells' youngest daughter, now 12 and living in Japan, barely knows her father because she was six months old when he was arrested, his family said.
"We are common people," Wells Sr. said. "We cry every night. Our loved ones never leave our minds."
https://www.aol.com/articles/families-two-americans-jailed-china-010252000.html
North Korea just casually revised its constitution to automatically launch a nuclear strike if leader Kim Jong Un is assassinated, or if the country’s nuclear command-and-control system is placed in danger by hostile forces’ attacks.
The change was adopted during the first session of the 15th Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang on March 22 and was disclosed this week by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, which briefed senior officials on the details.
The updated Article 3 of North Korea’s nuclear policy law states: “If the command-and-control system over the state’s nuclear forces is placed in danger by hostile forces’ attacks … a nuclear strike shall be launched automatically and immediately.”
South Korean intelligence officials said the revision codifies procedures for retaliatory nuclear attacks in the event that Kim is killed or incapacitated during an attack, Reuters reports.
The policy update comes months after the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials in U.S.-backed Israeli strikes in February 2026. Analysts have described those operations as a “wake-up call” for Pyongyang, highlighting the effectiveness of leadership-targeted strikes.
Professor Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul told The Telegraph that the constitutional emphasis gives added weight to what may have been existing policy: “This may have been policy before, but it has added emphasis now it has been enshrined in the constitution. Iran was the wake-up call.”
The nuclear policy revision was adopted alongside broader changes to North Korea’s constitution, also passed in March and revealed earlier this week. Those amendments remove all references to unification with South Korea, add an explicit territorial clause defining the country’s borders (including with the Republic of Korea to the south), and formally state that command authority over nuclear forces rests with Kim Jong Un as chairman of the State Affairs Commission.
North Korea has not issued an official response to the reports. South Korea’s government has said it remains committed to its policy of peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula and will review the implications of the changes.
The moves come as North Korea continues to expand its nuclear and missile capabilities, including plans to deploy new long-range artillery systems near the border with South Korea.
by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,
“Eff around and find out”: That taunt from Hakeem Jeffries celebrating Virginia’s gerrymander did not age well.
On Friday, the House minority leader found out that Virginia’s Supreme Court was not quite as gleeful as he about Democrats’ attempt to virtually eliminate Republican representation in the purple state.
The court just cooked the party’s infamous lobster, a district over 100 miles long that was designed to help devour the GOP’s slender majority in the House of Representatives.
It also cooked the ambitions of Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the Democratic establishment, which tossed aside any pretense of principle in a raw political gambit.
The resulting faceplant is nothing short of legendary: Spanberger’s Democrats have succeeded in alienating half of the state.
For the governor, the court’s decision was particularly embarrassing.
Before assuming power, Spanberger denounced gerrymandering as “detrimental to our democracy and weakens the individual voices that form our electorates.”
She ran as a moderate, but Spanberger immediately turned sharply left once in office and called for the most extreme gerrymander in the nation.
The court found that effort was not only unconstitutional, but “wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history.”
It characterized the state’s position as “a story of the tail wagging the dog that has no tail.”
While some of us had previously expressed skepticism over the rushed effort to circumvent the state constitution, the media almost exclusively relied on liberal experts who predicted the new districts would be upheld.
It was a calculated risk for Democrats, who have now burned their bridges with Virginia conservative and Republican voters.
As Winston Churchill said, “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
Exhilarating and unforgettable: In a purple state where politicians often require crossover votes to prevail, the redistricting push was not just partisan but personal for voters.
National Democrats will soon “find out” whether Jeffries was right to prematurely celebrate a victory that seemed to secure his anticipated elevation to Speaker of the House.
The party is facing a potentially catastrophic reversal of fortune.
When Democrats declared a gerrymandering war, some of us warned that the party, with its already heavily gerrymandered blue states, had far more to lose than the GOP did.
It was particularly comical when Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey pledged to join the redistricting fray, even though her state is so badly gerrymandered that it’s elected zero Republicans to the House since the 1990s.
Virginia, a state long opposed to gerrymandering, has been considered the fairest state in the country, with a distribution of congressional seats that closely matches its partisan divide.
Once Spanberger sought to eradicate Republican representation, total war broke out — and now red states like Florida and Tennessee have moved forward with their own redistricting.
On top of the fact that GOP states have more room for partisan gerrymandering, the Virginia Supreme Court decision comes on the heels of the US Supreme Court’s ban on racial gerrymandering.
That means a dozen or more Democratic districts could now be deemed unconstitutional — and Louisiana and Mississippi are moving to redistrict in line with the Supreme Court’s decision.
The result could be a dramatic shift in districts favoring the GOP.
To make matters worse for the Democratic Party, a new census in 2030 will correct the mistakes that erroneously awarded them multiple districts after the 2020 census.
Those corrections, and the ongoing exodus from high-tax blue states to booming red ones, could translate into even more congressional gains for the GOP.
That prospect of a political apocalypse has Democratic strategists pushing for radical changes in Washington before it’s too late.
Top priority: packing the Supreme Court as soon as they retake power.
As Virginia has shown, an independent court can unravel the best-laid plans.
Democratic politicians, pundits and professors have been openly pushing for expanding the high court to 13 members with four new liberal additions, in order to rubber-stamp the radical changes needed to keep the party in power.
James Carville recently told Democratic politicians that they have no choice but to pack the court, declaring “F–k it . . . Just do it.”
He suggested, however, that they might not want to tell the voters.
“Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it,” he said. “Just do it.”
Last week, Jeffries declared the Supreme Court “illegitimate” as he blasted its ban on racial gerrymandering.
After the Virginia court’s ruling, the frustrated Democratic establishment is ever more likely to echo him — and to go beyond.
Many Democrats are now “all in” with this radical agenda.
With the courts declaring their redistricting efforts unconstitutional, it is the constitutional system itself that will now have to go.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
New organized labor reforms signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week require a majority of members to be present for teachers union certification or recertification votes, increase fines for illegal strikes, and establish merit-based pay for educators.
In Idaho, after July 1, teachers unions will be prohibited from collecting dues directly from members’ paychecks, using paid time off for union activities, or recruiting new members during school hours.
A similar law in Arizona, which also bans teacher strikes and prohibits organized labor members from using any school property—even email addresses—for union activities, will be decided on by voters in the November election.
“They can’t consume taxpayer-funded resources during the school day,” said Rusty Brown, special projects director for the Freedom Foundation policy organization, which assisted state legislators with those measures and helps teachers opt out of union membership.
These ideas are expected to gain ground throughout the nation in the months and years ahead, Brown told The Epoch Times.
Individually, the Freedom Foundation’s Teacher Freedom Alliance has so far helped more than 272,535 teachers opt out of union membership, including more than 50,000 in 2025 alone, according to data provided to The Epoch Times. This includes educators in red and blue states.
At the state level, Oklahoma lawmakers have advanced legislation that would allow teachers to withdraw from a union at any time and would terminate “closed shop” provisions that prevent teachers from accessing alternative labor or professional organizations, such as the Teacher Freedom Alliance.
Brown calls this an “equal access and an end to a monopoly and captive audience bill.” Alternative organizations can offer teacher liability insurance and other benefits at a fraction of the price that traditional unions charge, he said.
Brown said he believes that the legislation could pass before Oklahoma’s session ends later this month, but the member withdrawal proposal probably won’t go through this session.
Alabama state lawmakers will consider legislation similar to Oklahoma’s next session, he said.
Maxford Nelsen, Freedom Foundation’s director of research and government affairs, said several factors prompted growing interest in pushing back against teachers unions. Members do not like that dues are automatically deducted from their paychecks. There is increasing animosity toward “zombie unions,” in which a limited number of members are informed or allowed to vote on matters. Labor organizations also engage in practices that create very narrow windows and bureaucratic hurdles for terminating membership.
“That’s the last thing they want to think about during their summer vacation,” Nelsen told The Epoch Times, citing one union’s requirement in which opt-outs were limited to the last 10 days of July.
Perhaps the most contentious issue, Nelson said, is how teachers union dues are spent. A review of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers unions’ websites shows that both heavily favor Democrats and promote transgender ideology; diversity, equity, and inclusion practices; special protections for illegal immigrants; anti-school choice measures; and other left-leaning policies.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into this progressive apparatus,” Nelson said.
A recent report from Defending Education, a conservative policy center, states that teachers unions at the local, state, and national levels have spent more than $1 billion on “far-left political causes” unrelated to collective bargaining since 2015. This includes school board races, political action committees, and campaigns against school choice.
“Given the outsized role that unions have played in the education system over the past 50 years, greater transparency on union spending is absolutely critical so that policymakers and teachers themselves can make informed decisions about the role that these entities should—or should not—play in the future,” Defending Education President Nicole Neily said in an April 27 statement.
The Epoch Times reached out to the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers unions for comment.
In response to prior Florida legislation that prohibited teachers unions from deducting dues directly from paychecks, the Florida Education Association contracted with a company to withdraw dues from members’ bank accounts after their paychecks are deposited.
“This type of ‘paycheck deception’ legislation is nothing new and has been wielded across the country to weaken unions and roll back working conditions,” the Florida Education Association stated on its website. “It’s no secret that this legislation is designed to diminish our collective voice.”
The Idaho Education Association teachers union implemented a similar system. It also denounced Idaho Gov. Brad Little for refusing to veto the legislation.
“Idaho’s students and the dedicated professionals who teach them will be worse off because of his choice,” the union’s president, Layne McInelly, said in an April 10 statement. “They deserve better.”
The Freedom Foundation is scrutinizing public organized labor groups across the nation, not just teachers unions. In Oregon, it recently submitted a complaint to the state employment relations board on behalf of a union member who said dues were deducted from his paycheck without his authorization. He asked for a refund and requested to opt out of the union, only to be told that the window to do so is Aug. 8 through Sept. 9, according to documentation provided to The Epoch Times.
Nelsen did not work on that case but said this type of practice by unions is common in an era of direct deposits and withdrawals and digital forms.
“There are no mechanisms in place to verify that the individual workers have authorized the form, let alone understand it,” he said.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/more-states-enact-new-laws-curbing-teachers-unions
Utah-based defense tech firm Hypercraft has unveiled a 300 hp diesel-hybrid-electric unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that can power directed-energy weapons, charge drones, and sustain a forward command post, all autonomously.
Defense Blog’s Dylan Malyasov reports that Hypercraft’s Razorback UGV can travel 280 miles on a single charge, reach speeds of 60 mph, and export 38 kilowatts of power, which is enough to power laser weapons and recharge drones.
Razorback is being positioned as a critical energy source for forward operating units that need power for drones, electronic warfare, ISR, counter-UAS systems, and communications. The UGV is also designed to move supplies and support infrastructure on the modern battlefield.
The role of UGVs on the battlefield is still being shaped in real time by the Russia-Ukraine war, where robots, whether ground bots or drones, are increasingly removing infantrymen from harm's way as the grinding fight evolves into a war of attrition fought by machines.
The wars across Eurasia, from Ukraine-Russia to the U.S.-Iran conflict, have validated a new style of warfare in which cheap ground robots and drones increasingly operate in ‘no man's land’ (front lines). The next phase is already coming: humanoid systems entering the battlespace as militaries look to push more machines, not infantrymen, into the kill zone.
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-firm-unveils-ground-bot-enough-power-fire-laser-guns
