Gatestone Institute, by Con Coughlin Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/18/2025 6:49:17 AM The appointment, however, of several officials to key national security positions in the Trump administration, who vehemently oppose direct military action against Iran, has raised concerns that the White House might be backing away from its commitment to eliminate the threat Iran poses to global security.
In particular, these concerns relate to the recent appointments to the Pentagon of influential figures such as John Byers for Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (South and South-East Asia), and Michael DiMino, a former career CIA military analyst and counterterrorism official, for Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Middle East).
New York Post, by Miranda Devine Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/14/2025 6:18:28 AM When he’s not busy ending wars, deporting illegal aliens, overhauling the federal bureaucracy and drastically reordering world trade, the president has big plans for matters closer to home.
Donald Trump, the property developer, is busting out of the political straitjacket to bling the Oval Office and reimagine the White House.
From planning a “beautiful, magnificent” new ballroom to paving over the Rose Garden to create a convivial Mar-a-Lago- style terrace, the 45th-turned-47th president is determined to make his mark on the White House this time.
“It keeps my real estate juices flowing,” he told a reporter recently.
Last week, after announcing a pause on reciprocal tariffs,
New York Post, by Chadwick Moore Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/13/2025 4:36:12 PM Influencers — those obnoxious (and increasingly) political hype beasts who’ve defined much of internet life in the last decade — may finally be going the way of the Apple Watch: once a flashy trendsetter, now a garish relic.
When a jacked-up fitness bro went viral in late March for a video flaunting his daily six-hour morning saga of 4 a.m. pushups, mineral water ice plunges, and banana peel facials, it was mocked into oblivion.
Hipsters posted their own derisive morning routines, huffing on flavored vapes and chugging Red Bull; grannies filmed themselves putting in their dentures before settling in on the john. One man from India did his take:
New York Post, by Julian Epstein Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/13/2025 4:34:08 PM In a nearly unprecedented move, the Trump administration met directly with Iran on Saturday to hold denuclearization talks. Currently, Iran is amassing enough enriched uranium to make one nuclear weapon a month.
Previous administrations would have never dreamed of direct talks with a pariah state like Iran so early in a new administration. They would have favored a slower technocratic process of preliminary proposals, proffers, and, above all else, insulating the principals from any blame in the event the talks failed.
Not Trump. He has never been much for bureaucratic foreplay. He’s bored by conventions and processes.
New York Post, by Jack Richards Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/13/2025 5:06:49 AM An alleged sushi-slinging spy is in ICE custody.
Ming Xi Zhang, known as “Sushi John,” the 61-year-old owner of Ya Ya Noodles in Montgomery Township, NJ, was arrested March 24 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Newark.
Zhang was convicted in April 2024 of acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government and sentenced to three years’ probation. In May 2021, he pleaded guilty to having served as an agent of China in 2016 without notifying the U.S. Attorney General.
ICE says he legally entered the U.S. in 2000 but later “violated the terms of his lawful admission.”
New York Post, by Julian Epstein Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/13/2025 5:05:32 AM In a nearly unprecedented move, the Trump administration met directly with Iran on Saturday to hold denuclearization talks. Currently, Iran is amassing enough enriched uranium to make one nuclear weapon a month.
Previous administrations would have never dreamed of direct talks with a pariah state like Iran so early in a new administration. They would have favored a slower technocratic process of preliminary proposals, proffers, and, above all else, insulating the principals from any blame in the event the talks failed.
Not Trump. He has never been much for bureaucratic foreplay. He’s bored by conventions and processes.
Townhall, by Duggan Flanakin Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/12/2025 11:02:44 AM Back on March 1, President Trump fired a double-barrel shotgun at the long-held preservationist U.S. mantra that for nearly a century has dealt heavy blows to American forests, forest animals, and the humans The first addressed what the White House calls “the threat to national security from imports of timber and lumber.” Even though the U.S. has ample timber resources, the nation has been a net importer of lumber since 2016. Wood products, said the President, play “a vital role in key downstream civilian industries, including construction.” whose homes abut government forest lands.
Gatestone Institute, by Majid Rafizadeh Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/12/2025 7:29:37 AM Tehran has played this game before: Agree to talks. Make vague promises. Extract sanctions relief. Then quietly continue nuclear development under the radar. This formula has worked for more than two decades. Right now, the only reason Iran is talking is to stall, to promise just enough to prevent America from striking it -- "We are almost there!" -- to keep its regime and avoid seeing its uranium centrifuges and enrichment sites blasted to rubble. The regime does not want war -- but it also cannot accept total nuclear disarmament.
PJ Media, by Stephen Kruiser Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/11/2025 6:23:09 AM The political media landscape here in the United States has been undergoing a great change for several years. For those of us in conservative digital/new media, the pace of the change seemed almost glacial until last year. Things started to pick up in late 2022 when the sale of Twitter to Elon Musk was finalized, then really blew up during last year's presidential election.While the Democrats' go-to media sources for prevarication dissemination have been weakened, they still have a lot of fight left in them. This battle is far from being over.
American Thinker, by Monica Showalter Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/11/2025 6:19:00 AM The press and its Democrat allies are screaming bloody murder about President Trump terminating the legal status of those who entered the U.S. under the CBP One app, a questionable entry program for foreign nationals which sported a near-100% approval rate, from which applicants could seek asylum and receive two full years of work authorization, and a host of free benefits whether the asylum was granted or not. It was a no-lose proposition for illegals even if their applications were found to be junk
They insist that Trump was cruel for ending the program, because use of the app made anyone entering the U.S.
The Federalist, by Shawn Fleetwood Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/11/2025 6:15:21 AM Fighting against the wishes of their voters is a classic Republican pastime — and this week is no different.
When they apparently thought nobody was looking, a cabal of GOP senators comprised of Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Utah’s John Curtis, Kansas’ Jerry Moran, and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis — who’s up for reelection next year — quietly sent a letter on Wednesday to Senate Majority Leader John Thune regarding ongoing negotiations over the party’s reconciliation package. Their concern? That the final version of the legislation containing priorities backed by President Trump (tax cuts and border security) will also include provisions fully repealing President Biden’s wrongly named Inflation Reduction Act (IRA),
Associated Press News, by Editorial Board Original Article Posted by Mercedes44 — 4/11/2025 6:12:05 AM China announced countermeasures by raising tariffs on U.S. goods from 84% to 125% starting Saturday.
The U.S. and China have escalated a new trade war by raising tariffs even as U.S. President Donald Trump hit a pause on tariffs for other countries. China notably had said it would fight the American tariffs with its own countermeasures, calling Trump’s actions “economic bullying,” which led Trump to retaliate by continuously hiking up tariffs this week.
Trump’s universal tariffs on China total 145%. When Trump announced Wednesday that China faced 125% tariffs, he did not include a 20% tariff on China tied to its role in fentanyl production.