This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
In less than a year, Donald Trump's second term as president has seen spectacular improvements in many areas of government, including notably in the U.S. military. However, at least one major area of support for America's armed forces – the Department of Veterans Affairs – is reportedly failing in its commitment to veterans. Case in point: Howard "Buck" Sheward, an 80-year-old Vietnam vet suffering from leukemia, who many believe deserves much better treatment than he is receiving from the VA.
WorldNetDaily spoke to retired Army Lt. Col. Francesca Graham, who currently serves as chief operating officer of Walk the Talk Foundation, an advocacy organization for members of the U.S. military. As Graham put it, "The Oklahoma VA system lacks connectivity between the systems in place to help Buck, a veteran who is undergoing chemotherapy and has almost died a couple of times."
For example, she said, "At the end of 2023, he unexpectedly spent nearly a month in a non-VA hospital in and out of lucidity fighting leukemia. While there, the VA kept calling to tell him he was missing pre-scheduled VA cancer treatment appointments."
In the rare moments that Sheward was lucid and able to talk, Graham said, he told the VA representatives where he was, but the calls to him did not cease. "According to Buck," she told WND, "he was berated for missing the VA appointments and was told that the VA would cancel his referrals if he continued to no-show his appointments."
"He's been asked why he was at a community care facility without a referral when he was actually taken there by ambulance," she shared. "Where's the common sense and connectivity?"
When it comes to community care facilities and the VA, she said, "These systems need to be talking to each other."
Not only is the lack of communication problematic, but so is the bureaucracy itself, Graham argued. "When a veteran travels to an appointment outside of the VA hospital, the veteran is supposed to receive travel reimbursement for that appointment," she said. Yet Sheward has not been reimbursed for the last six months. "He's submitted the paperwork," Graham said, "and then he hears nothing."
"There are also days where he'll submit paperwork for two different trips on the same day and only get reimbursed for one," Graham added. "Given his sickness and his age, is the VA not capable of helping him navigate getting his reimbursements and the ever-changing forms, or is the bureaucratic machine too large to really care about his health?"
Between February 2023 to May 2025, Graham said Sheward submitted 113 travel claims for cancer treatment and routine care. Out of these, 46 were approved for payment, while 67 claims, or 59%, were denied. Another 18 are still awaiting a decision. Interestingly, some trips that received approval one day were denied the following day.
In addition to the "bureaucracy and apathy" issue, the Walk the Talk Foundation's executive offered this shocker: "Buck discovered that a behavioral health provider, assigned to help veterans, including him, in Muskogee, Oklahoma, had been tried and convicted of a federal crime but still continued to see patients until it was time for him to report to prison."
"Just think about the implications of trusting your mental health to the VA, only to learn that your therapist has a criminal record," she said. "Buck brought up the issue, but it was swept under the rug."
"Buck is very frustrated because his concerns are not being acknowledged in any sort of meaningful way," Graham told WND. In fact, he is beginning to think the gradual accumulation of his problems and the indifference toward his health is retaliatory.
"Is this the position an 80-year-old Vietnam vet should find himself in?" she questioned. "I can assure you that he's not the only one facing these kinds of struggles."
Buck Sheward has reached out to several congressional offices in Oklahoma, including that of GOP Sen. James Lankford, regarding his concerns. "Unfortunately," Graham told WND, "those efforts have been hampered by a combination of bureaucratic inertia and a limited understanding of the complexity of his case within the state's VA system."
WND asked Sen. Lankford's office what steps, if any, his office is taking to address the lack of record integration between the VA and community care providers in Sheward's case. The office did not reply to request for comment by publication time.
The U.S. Supreme Court could limit the 1965 Voting Rights Act and alter the way congressional redistricting maps are created, according to The Washington Times. The case stems from a lower court's decision to mandate that Louisiana add a second majority-Black district, based on its overall population, rather than the geographic distribution of that population.
It's always been the case that the winning political party gets to draw the districting maps, including when it is advantageous to the party in power. However, Democrats have used the 60-year-old legislation as a way to push their own version of how the maps should be drawn, and it has become a way to discriminate.
This is what happened in Louisiana, as the arbitrary factor of skin color became the method by which to redraw the maps, thanks to a lower court's decision. That scheme may now be in jeopardy with the case before the conservative-leaning high court.
Some, including Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aruinaga, argue that the Voting Rights Act is reductive when it comes to race and that at least part of it is unconstitutional. "The Constitution does not tolerate this system of government-mandated racial balancing," Aguinaga argued before the Supreme Court.
Janai Nelson, an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said that redrawing the maps to eliminate the new Black districts would be "a staggering" change to the way voting is made fair. "This is about race," Nelson said, arguing in favor of keeping the status quo.
"Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is laser-focused on eliminating racial discrimination from our electoral process regardless of party," she added. However, the justices have been hinting that Section 2 of the legislation may be on the chopping block, especially those appointed by President Donald Trump.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch pushed back on Nelson's assertion, noting that it sounds as if it is "sometimes acceptable for a federal district court to order a map that intentionally discriminates on the basis of race," he said. Similarly, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said that Section 2 may be obsolete, or at least on its way to becoming so.
"This court’s cases, in a variety of contexts, have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time … but that they should not be indefinite and should have an endpoint," Kavanaugh said. Democrats see it differently, of course, and Biden-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson insisted that racial discrimination is the only way to fix racial discrimination.
"They’re so tied up with race because that’s the initial problem. That’s the beginning," Jackson said.
As per the usual arrangement, the left is doing mental gymnastics to explain how racial discrimination is actually a good thing because it suits their purposes this time around. As the Daily Wire's Matt Walsh pointed out in a post to X, formerly Twitter, Democrats are attached to the law because it has been a boon for them.
"Democrats have used the Voting Rights Act to rig the system for decades. If the Supreme Court finally fixes this problem, and it looks like they will, Democrats may never win a majority in the House ever again," Walsh wrote on Thursday.
"This is a huge, huge case," he added. The post included a photo of the southern states and how Democratic strongholds would be "wiped out" if the law was repealed.
Democrats have used the Voting Rights Act to rig the system for decades. If the Supreme Court finally fixes this problem, and it looks like they will, Democrats may never win a majority in the House ever again. This is a huge, huge case. https://t.co/oSG3isAxLA
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 16, 2025
There is no excuse for racial discrimination, even when it is ostensibly done to make things fairer for a downtrodden population. The only truly fair move is to treat people like individuals and not based on the color of their skin, but the left is simply incapable of doing so.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Two former FBI officials who were punished under the Biden administration for their efforts to expose a protection scheme for first son Hunter Biden now have reached settlements in their lawsuits.
Hunter Biden, of course, faced both gun and tax charge convictions, cases that could have left him behind bars for years.
Then his daddy gave him a get-out-of-jail free card through a presidential pardon that Joe Biden actually signed, unlike many of his pardons that were issued through autopen signatures.
The settlements were reach for former Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Special Agent Joe Ziegler who had charged illegal retaliation against them.
The settlements with the IRS and Justice Department (DOJ) "included significant compensation for damages and a requirement for new training for federal prosecutors to deter future whistleblower retaliation."
They two issued a statement:
"We have been in the public eye because we did our duties as loyal public servants. We legally blew the whistle when Hunter Biden almost escaped prosecution for his crimes because he was the President's son. We had to file a lawsuit against Biden's attorney, Abbe Lowell, because he falsely accused us of committing serious felonies in retaliation. Since then, Biden pled guilty to his crimes and has been pardoned. He also dropped his lawsuit against the IRS targeting us for our protected disclosures.
"We have recently concluded settlement agreements of our claims that the DOJ and IRS illegally retaliated against us for blowing the whistle on the improper politicization of that case.
"In addition to substantial compensation for the harm we suffered, the DOJ has agreed to use this example to train all federal prosecutors for years to come, so other brave civil servants are not victimized the way we were.
"Today, a federal judge announced that when Abbe Lowell published that we had committed a 'clear-cut crime unprotected by any whistleblower statute' and other similar allegations, he was merely speaking his opinion. Although the judge dismissed our defamation case, we disagree that Lowell's attack was just his opinion and will consider whether to appeal.
"We think the record speaks for itself about what we did, who Biden is, and the value of Lowell's so-called opinion."
They had exposed, through protected disclosures, the "preferential treatment" given to the young Biden.
What followed was a "well-funded campaign to smear" them, they said.
The settlement was announced by Empower Oversight, a nonpartisan group that works to improve oversight of government wrongdoing.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A report on the Supreme Court's rejection of an appeal from InfoWars founder Alex Jones of an incredible $1.4 billion judgment over his comments regarding the Sandy Hook school shooting years ago turned blunt in confirming that he will "lose everything."
"It appears that our 1st Amendment rights have been decimated by SCOTUS," explained the Gateway Pundit's report on the Supreme Court's decision to let stand decisions by leftist judges who ruled against Jones.
The report said, "Alex Jones owed families who lost their children that day $1.4 billion for claiming the massacre was a hoax. Regardless of his remarks how is $1.4 billion a reasonable punishment for speaking your opinion?"
The penalty comes from two court rulings, a huge penalty from a Connecticut court and a smaller one in Texas.
The report continued, "In April of last year, Infowars host and founder Alex Jones joined Steve Bannon on The War Room the day after undercover video revealed a CIA-FBI operative explaining how the FBI used their powers to bankrupt Alex and Infowars. Alex Jones told Steve Bannon that President Trump needs to 'fire their a—' and clean house at the deep state…"
Jones charged that the default judgment was improper because it presented an incomplete picture of his statements about Sandy Hook, it made too much of "trivial" discovery issues, and it undermined Supreme Court precedent on the First Amendment rights of media defendants, like him, according to a blog that focuses on the high court and its issues.
"Viewed in full context, Jones expressly affirmed that deaths occurred, while using the phrases 'staged' or 'hoax' to characterize media and governmental scripting. It is therefore contextually impossible to construe his remarks as denying deaths, as the Complaint did by selective editing. Precisely to guard against such distortions, this Court has required independent judicial review of the entire record in First Amendment cases," said the petition.
The report explained Jones is a longtime talk show host who had built a platform for comment and discussion.
He repeatedly has addressed "conspiratorial claims about major world events, such as that the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 was staged or that the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 were an inside job," the report said.
In this case, after the 2012 shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead, Jones repeatedly criticized coverage and suggested parts of the events were staged to push for new gun limits.
Family members of victims sued, both in Connecticut and Texas.
Both judges ruled against Jones by default.
After the judgment, the companies filed bankruptcy petitions and that process has not yet yielded a final result.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Elon Musk, the former chief of DOGE, the federal Department of Government Efficiency, is hammering the judge who sentenced two teenagers who jumped Edward "Big Balls" Coristine, a former DOGE staffer, in Washington, D.C., last summer.
Musk posted on X: "This was a racist verdict by a racist judge. The simple test to apply is if the races has been reversed, the White kids would be in prison. Equal justice for all!"
Judge Kendra Briggs Tuesday sentenced the boy and girl, both 15, from Hyattsville, Maryland, to probation after they agreed to plead guilty to simple assault.
On Aug. 3, after an attempted carjacking, Coristine tried to intervene and was badly beaten. He said he and a female companion were jumped by "a group of 10 guys."
According to the New York Post, the boy was handed a 12-month probation and allowed to return home under strict house arrest, while the girl was given a nine-month probation and remanded to a local youth shelter.
Their accomplices in the attempted carjacking and assault at approximately 3 a.m. in a D.C. parking garage remain at large, as Coristine pointed out on X:
Here's Coristine describing the assault on Fox News:
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A Florida judge has been asked to dismiss a complaint by the manager of a condo association that seeks to prevent a church from holding services in the property it owns.
"Because the gravamen of plaintiff's complaint is the enforcement of a discriminatory restriction on defendant's land use for religious worship services in violation of Florida law that declared all such restrictions and covenants to be unlawful, plaintiff cannot state a cause of action. The complaint should be dismissed," explained the motion to dismiss from Liberty Counsel.
The fight involves Coastal Family Church in Flager Beach and Flagler Square-JAX, a condo association that sued to close down the church.
The church purchased part of a strip mall that is organized as a condo association, and a manager for that organization claims he can stop a church from holding services.
Liberty Counsel said it filed a motion in Seventh Judicial Circuit Court on behalf of one of the pastors of the church to dismiss a meritless lawsuit.
In July 2025, Pastor Roderick Palmer purchased a unit in the Flagler Square strip mall to use as a church home. But when services launched, the condominium association that supervises the structure with four units sued Palmer for holding "public assemblies."
The claim was that those services violate the "condominium declaration."
The complaint cited an issue with parking, which Liberty Counsel said would leave some 160 spaces available during services.
The association wants an outright court ban on "assemblies."
Liberty Counsel said that wasn't allowed under state law.
"The Florida legislature has rendered null and void all such discriminatory land use restrictions and covenants … Further, plaintiff's requested prohibition on religious services substantially burdens defendant's religious exercise in violation of the Florida Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act."
The legal team said the city commission approved the church meetings at the strip mall location, and other residents raised "no objections."
Other occupants include "Junque in the Trunk," a Dollar Tree and a police lodge, which, in fact, advertises that it holds public gatherings periodically, and is available for "rent for meetings, parties, and commercial classes."
The team said, "The entire premise of plaintiff's complaint centers on and arises from a discriminatory restriction that has become wholly inoperative, unenforceable, null, and void."
Liberty Counsel said, "Whether the association's proposed restriction is phrased as a ban on public assemblies or an outright prohibition on religious services, it violates Florida's nullification on discriminatory covenants, as well as the church's constitutional rights to religious exercise and so the case must be dismissed."
"Florida law is clear that Pastor Roderick Palmer and Coastal Family Church have the right to hold church services on church property and that restrictive covenants cannot ban religious assembly. Flagler Square – JAX, Inc. cannot target Pastor Palmer or his church while ignoring other tenants' non-religious gatherings. This meritless lawsuit must be dismissed," explained Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver.
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has declined to hear a case brought by Colorado parents over the local public middle school's policy to not inform parents about their children's "gender identity" decisions, but not for the reason you think.
The case was declined on procedural grounds, as the high court agreed with lower courts that the case was not brought correctly on the proper grounds.
Lower courts dismissed the case against Wellington Middle School in Poudre School District R-1 on procedural grounds before considering it on the merits.
Parents wanted to challenge “District Secrecy Policies” that said teachers and administrators could keep a child's so-called gender transition a secret from parents and not inform them that the child was identifying as a different gender and even taking on a different name at school.
Parents argued that the policy violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause by denying them parental rights to be informed and make decisions for their children.
The school district's attorneys argued that the petitioners were seeking "an advisory opinion that would fail to afford them any relief from the rulings below, and this is the wrong case to consider whether a public school employee’s alleged discouraged disclosure regarding gender identity and expression implicates a fundamental right."
We aren't talking about 16 or 17-year-olds, here, but 12 and 13-year-olds who are generally quite immature and whose ideas about gender identity are often changeable.
In no way, shape, or form should schools be allowed to hide this or any other information from parents, who have the right to make these decisions for their children.
While even the most conservative justices on the court agreed with the ruling, Justice Samuel Alito encouraged lower courts not to avoid similar cases that did not have the procedural hurdles this one does.
“I concur in the denial of certiorari because petitioners do not challenge the ground for the ruling below. But I remain concerned that some federal courts are tempted to avoid confronting a particularly contentious constitutional question: whether a school district violates parents’ fundamental rights when, without parental knowledge or consent, it encourages a student to transition to a new gender or assists in that process,” Alito wrote.
“Petitioners tell us that nearly 6,000 public schools have policies—as respondent allegedly does—that purposefully interfere with parents’ access to critical information about their children’s gender identity choices and school personnel’s involvement in and influence on those choices,” he continued. “The troubling—and tragic—allegations in this case underscore the great and growing national importance of the question that these parent petitioners present.”
A case like this one definitely needs to be heard, either in a lower court or by the Supreme Court if necessary.
It is unfortunate that this case was bungled procedurally and that the courts will have to wait for some other brave parents to get fed up with the schools taking their power away.
Most good parents know that kids this age are not making a long-term decision when they decide to change their gender identity, and they should be the ones deciding how that plays out in their child's life, not the school.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
One member of the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito, has expressed concern that the federal court system is avoiding one issue because it is so charged.
That's parental rights.
"I remain concerned that some federal courts are 'tempt[ed]' to avoid confronting a 'particularly contentious constitutional question': whether a school district violates parents' fundamental rights 'when, without parental knowledge or consent, it encourages a student to transition to a new gender or assists in that process,'" he wrote this week.
He agreed with the majority in denying the petition in the case Lee v. Poudre School District R-1 in Colorado, where leftist state officials long have advocated for, even demanded, pro-LGBT ideologies, on technical grounds.
The state, in fact, has lost multiple court cases when it has tried to demand that Christians violate their faith by promoting those choices. In one of those cases, the Supreme Court itself criticized the state's "hostility" to Christians.
He said he was worried over the "nearly 6,000 public schools" cited in the case for their policies that hide school managers' agendas to make boys believe they can change into girls and vice versa.
"The troubling—and tragic—allegations in this case underscore the 'great and growing national importance' of the question that these parent petitioners present,'" Alito wrote.
According to a report at the Washington Examiner, the Colorado fight was over an agenda from a middle school that "allegedly hid the promotion of gender ideology to students … with officials at the school giving prizes to students who 'came out' as transgender" at student meetings.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined Alito's statements.
America First Policy Institute, which worked on the case, said its work to litigate against other such school extremism was continuing.
"Our mission doesn't end here," Gina D'Andrea, of the AFPI, said, "Schools should never be allowed to introduce complex, identity-shaping ideas in secret. And we will continue holding them accountable.
"Every parent deserves the right to know what their child is being taught," D'Andrea explained.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the chief of the House Judiciary Committee, is demanding testimony from ex-special counsel Jack Smith.
Smith needs to respond to questions about how his team "sought to silence President Trump by restricting his public statements about the case."
How Smith orchestrated an "unnecessary and abusive raid of his residence."
How Smith "attempted to improperly pressure defense counsel with the promise of political patronage."
And how Smith "manipulated key evidence."
That's according to letter from Jordan to Smith, in which he requires Smith's testimony "after several members of his special counsel team failed to fully cooperate with the committee's investigation of the Biden-Harris Justice Department's weaponization of the rule of law."
Smith, although his cases against Trump failed, did succeed in his plan to undermine "the integrity of the criminal justice system," Jordan said.
Jordan wrote, "To date, the committee has conducted transcribed interviews and depositions of several individuals detailed to your office, including Jay Bratt, J.P. Cooney, and Thomas Windom. In addition, the committee has obtained internal Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents that show the FBI, with the likely involvement of prosecutors that were later assigned to your team, surveilled Representative Scott Perry prior to seizing his cell phone in a stunning breach of constitutional separation of powers. Your abusive surveillance of sitting Members of Congress did not stop there. Earlier this week, the FBI, at the direction of Director Kash Patel, released an alarming document showing that your team requested and obtained private phone records for at least eight Senators and one Representative during an investigation known as 'Arctic Frost.' These documents reinforce the conclusion that your office conducted politically motivated investigations."
He explained, "Although the Committee has learned new information from these interviews, several members of your Special Counsel team failed to fully cooperate with the Committee's inquiry. For example, during a transcribed interview with the Committee, former Senior Assistant Special Counsel Thomas Windom relied on an overbroad and unreasonable interpretation of grand jury secrecy protections to refuse to answer the Committee's questions on important topics. After the Committee subpoenaed Windom to compel his testimony, he invoked various ill-defined privileges and objections, including the Fifth Amendment, to refuse to answer approximately 70 questions. According to Windom's counsel, 'the foundation of [Windom's] decision to decline to answer is his constitutional right to silence embodied in the Fifth Amendment.' For instance, Windom refused to answer 'how many other members of Congress were investigated as part of the Arctic Frost investigation and Jack Smith investigation' and if there are records of additional 'Members of Congress that were swept up by a legal process' pursuant to this investigation."
The member of Congress explained, "As the special counsel, Smith was ultimately responsible for the prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional abuses of his office."
Jordan noted another problem was Jay Bratt, who advised Smith, who "invoked the Fifth Amendment approximately 75 times during his interview with the Committee. He refused to answer key questions necessary for the Committee's oversight, including whether the purpose of the classified documents investigation was to affect the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, whether the raid on Mar-a-Lago was intended to capture political intelligence, who he met with during his three visits to the Biden-Harris White House, and why he pressured defense counsel using the promise of political patronage."
Jordan now wants from Smith details about his appointment, details about Smith's interactions and meetings with the Biden-Harris administration, and details about all of the investigations, decisions, and "tactics."
President Donald Trump got a standing ovation from the Israeli Knesset on Monday when he asked Israeli President Isaac Herzog to pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of bribery charges he faces.
“Hey, I have an idea. Mr. President, why don’t you give him a pardon? Give him a pardon,” Trump said, after which applause and chants of “Bibi, Bibi!’ broke out.
“By the way, that was not in the speech, as you probably know, but I happen to like this gentleman right over here,” Trump continued.
“It just seems to make so much sense. You know whether we like it or not, this has been one of the greatest wartime presidents. Cigars and champagne? Who the hell cares about that?” he stated.
🚨 BREAKING: President Trump asks the President of Israel ON THE SPOT to give Benjamin Netanyahu "a PARDON."
The Knesset erupts into a standing ovation
"That was NOT in the speech! But I happen to like him, and it just seems to make so much sense. One of the greatest war time… pic.twitter.com/EgdBx2RtEj
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 13, 2025
Trump's on the spot request has put Herzog on the spot, and at a time when both Trump and Netanyahu are being looked at as heroes for reaching a deal to stop the fighting.
Trump has been saying since June that the State of Israel should drop the charges against Netanyahu.
Supporters of the PM say the charges of petty corruption for acts such as receiving cigars from a friend are politically motivated.
The judges in the case even suggested that at least one of the charges should be dropped, but Netanyahu was forced to testify during a time of war anyway.
Trump is riding high on public opinion after brokering an initial peace deal between Israel and Hamas, bringing an end to the fighting and the release of all hostages held by Hamas for the last two years.
Figures on both sides of the political aisle are lauding him for the peace deal, even some who criticized him before.
This includes media figures like CNN's Jake Sullivan, The View co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, and even his former presidential opponent Hillary Clinton.
"I really commend President Trump and his administration, as well as Arab leaders in the region for making the commitment to the 20-point plan and seeing a path forward for what's often called the day after," Clinton told CBS' Norah O'Donnell on Friday.
Former President Barack Obama praised the peace deal, but did not name Trump in the post that did so, drawing criticism from another CNN figure, host Abby Phillip.
"I think if you can't say that ending a deadly war that has killed so many children and human beings is a good thing, I think you need to take a look at your gut and find out what's going on there. This is, everybody wants this to end and if he's able to get it done, he deserves credit for it," she said.