This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Internal Revenue Service has reinterpreted its rules to now allow churches to endorse political candidates to their congregations without losing their tax-exempt status.
Reports described the adjustment as a formality since the regulation rarely was enforced anyway.
But the new standard was made clear in a court filing, a consent judgment, in a Texas federal court in a case brought by the National Religious Broadcasters and Intercessors for America, Sand Springs Church and First Baptist Church Waskom.
A report at Just the News explained those plaintiffs sued over the Johnson Amendment because it requires "certain organizations, including churches, to refrain from participating or intervening in campaigns for public office as a condition for their non-profit, tax-exempt status."
That was instigated by Lyndon Johnson who, as a senator, was facing opposition from faith groups in his campaign.
"When a house of worship in good faith speaks to its congregation, through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith in connection with religious services, concerning electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith, it neither 'participate[s]' nor 'intervene[s]' in a 'political campaign,' within the ordinary meaning of those words," the federal agency confirmed.
Analysts confirmed it was the first time the IRS formally confirmed such statements are legal, not just tolerated or overlooked.
"The agency has for years been wary of punishing religious leaders for political statements made during worship," the report said.
The contention from churches and Christian organizations has been that the IRS rule violated the First Amendment right they have to speak and to exercise their religion, as well as their Fifth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection.
The IRS said that stretching the Johnson Amendment to cover church statements regarding issues of faith and candidates "would create serious tension with the First Amendment's Establishment Clause" as it "would treat religions that do not speak directly to matters of electoral politics more favorably than religions that do so."
The Washington Examiner noted, in the case, both sides "asked a federal judge to order the Trump administration and future presidential administrations not to enforce the ban on political endorsements against the groups that sued."
The report noted President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have been trying to overturn the amendment for years.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A shooter, armed with a rifle and wearing tactical gear, tried an ambush of U.S. Border Patrol agents at a facility in McAllen, Texas, and was shot and killed, authorities reported.
"The Department [of Justice] has zero tolerance for assaults on federal officers or property and will bring the full weight of the law against those responsible," explained Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Police reported the shooter wounded one officer, but he was in stable condition.
The dead man was identified as Ryan Louis Mosqueda, and reports revealed no known motive yet.
But they said it was a "targeted" attack on federal officers.
A report at the Washington Examiner explained border czar Tom Homan said on Fox News that attacks on ICE officers increased since last year by 690% as of July 4.
He blamed, in part, leftist rhetoric constantly being unleashed by opponents of President Donald Trump who are in Congress.
"We have senators, we have congresspeople, that compare ICE to the Nazis, compare ICE to racists, and it just continues. The public thinks, 'well if a member of Congress can attack ICE, why can't we,'" he said.
From Jan. 21 to June 20 of last year there were 10 attacks on ICE agents, the report said. This year during the same time, there have been 79.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
USAID workers for years have handed out billions of U.S. tax dollars to other nations, their programs, their politicians, their agendas.
Some were completely off-base when it came to U.S. interests and some simply were in support of the ideologies of the USAID.
Now, under President Trump, multiple thousands of USAID workers are now ex-employees, with the official closure of the agency just days ago and a few jobs considered important transferred to the State department, with a few hundred leftover workers.
But among those thousands, now, apparently is a contingent planning to sabotage the United States.
U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, paraphrased the intent: "If you stop letting us run America, we'll start a color revolution and overthrow your democratically elected government." He added, "These people are making the case for their own firing better than we ever could."
It was at Twitchy that the plans were noted.
"Some of the democracy-building experts President Donald Trump fired this year from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department are now reapplying the skills and knowledge they built up over decades to undermine Trump's power," it said. "For years, these officials were stationed across the globe actively supporting opposition movements in autocratic nations. Now they've got time, a network of former colleagues and a growing sense of moral indignation."
One said, in an interview with NOTUS, "Take it from those of us who worked in authoritarian countries: We've become one. They were so quick to disband AID, the group that supposedly instigates color revolutions. But they've done a very foolish thing. You just released a bunch of well-trained individuals into your population. If you kept our offices going and had us play solitaire in the office, it might have been safer to keep your regime."
Twitchy noted, "That sounds a lot like sedition, a lot like a direct threat, and a lot like someone who belongs in a jail cell, not in an office at Foggy Bottom."
One observer suggested maybe not everything being planned is serious.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Life just got a bit easier for those rushing to catch a plane at one of America's busy airports.
At Ronald Reagan National Airport in D.C. Tuesday, DHS Secretary announced that the Transportation Security Administration will no longer require any passengers to remove their shoes at security checkpoints.
The requirement has been in place for most passengers since 2006, part of the reaction to an attempted terrorist attack in which a passenger tried to ignite explosives in his shoes during a 2001 flight.
An email from the TSA about the news conference said the new policy would "make screening easier for passengers, improve traveler satisfaction and will reduce wait times."
Most people have had to take their shoes off for airport screening for nearly two decades after a passenger tried to ignite explosives in his shoes during a 2001 flight.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Many experts assessed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, common drugs already documented for their effectiveness against certain ailments, as both a defense against getting infected with COVID-19, the China virus that circled the globe and killed millions, as well as a possibly beneficial treatment.
Not Big Pharma, which was taking in billions of dollars for the various mRNA shots which now have been documented to trigger a multitude of problems, including heart ailments in young men. Part of the problem was the availability of the likely COVID-fighters, as they required prescriptions, and physicians were under intense pressure to reach out for the shots that included a corporate profit for drug manufacturers.
But that could be changing. Dr. Simone Gold and America's Frontline Doctors have filed citizens petitions with the Food and Drug Administration asking that they be available to consumers over the counter.
They were joined by doctors Dana Granberg-Nill, Bryan Atkinson, Pierre Kory, Brian Tyson, Peterson Pierre, Robin Armstrong, Geoff Mitchell, and Lynn Fynn as co-petitioners, according to a report from the Gateway Pundit.
The report said, "Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has been FDA-approved for decades and is available OTC in many parts of the world, such as in Africa and South America, for the prevention and treatment of malaria. In the United States and other Western Nations, HCQ is a widely prescribed medication primarily used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. According to the government's own database, FAERS (FDA Adverse Event Reporting System), HCQ is one of the safest drugs on the planet."
And, "Ivermectin is a wide-ranging antiparasitic agent that has been used in humans for over three decades and won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015, reflecting the drug's enormous impact on human health."
The report said ivermectin also has "gained much attention for its potential use in cancer treatment.
The Gateway Pundit explained, "The COVID pandemic sparked a tremendous public health demand to repurpose well-known drugs like HCQ and ivermectin for new uses, specifically for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Tragically, patients who were prescribed these medications by their doctors were denied access by pharmacies that refused to fill these prescriptions due to pressure from government health agencies and their C-suite executives.
"To make matters worse, both drugs were attacked relentlessly in order to push experimental mRNA injections onto the public."
The report said with the goal of cutting through COVID propaganda and removing a barrier to patient access, the petitions were delivered to the FDA, originally during the pandemic. Now the petitions have been refiled.
Gold said, "The fight to make hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin over-the-counter continues. The mainstream narrative has collapsed under the weight of its own deception, and the truth can no longer be suppressed. It is way past time for our government to truly follow the science."
Mitchell said, "We suggest that one of the predominant reasons for the poor clinical outcomes and excess COVID deaths in the U.S. was the prohibition of early, oral, outpatient treatment with safe, effective, repurposed drugs like the Nobel-prize-winning IVM and also HCQ. The FDA led the charge against these treatment alternatives, enlisting pharmacists, corporate pharmacies, and physicians in their effort as well."
The medical industry had to suppress availability of the existing drugs because in order to release the new, potentially injurious mRNA shots, because under the emergency authorization process, it was required that there be "no viable existing alternatives."
President Trump dismissed Elon Musk as a "trainwreck" as the former Trump campaign benefactor moves toward starting a third political party.
"I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely 'off the rails,' essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks. He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States - The System seems not designed for them," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Musk has been ramping up threats to Trump and his political influence as a rift widens over the "Big, Beautiful Bill," which Trump signed into law Friday.
Musk has been taking shots at Trump since early June, accusing him and Republicans of putting the country's financial future at risk with reckless spending.
After apologizing for some unhinged comments linking Trump with Jeffrey Epstein, Musk returned to blasting Trump's policy bill last week and threatened to start a third political party if it passed.
Republicans sent the "Big, Beautiful Bill" to Trump's desk last week, just in time to meet Trump's July 4th deadline. In response, Musk held a poll on social media site X - which he owns - asking if he should start a new party dedicated to fiscal conservatism.
"By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it," Musk posted Saturday. "When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom."
When asked to comment on Musk's move, Trump was skeptical the "ridiculous" effort would succeed, pointing to the durability of the two-party system.
"I think it’s ridiculous to start a third party," Trump said on Saturday. "We have a tremendous success with the Republican Party. The Democrats have lost their way, but it’s always been a two-party system, and I think starting a third party just adds to confusion."
"It really seems to have been developed for two parties," Trump said. "Third parties have never worked. So, he can have fun with it, but I think it’s ridiculous."
While Musk says he's concerned about the cost of Trump's agenda, and what Musk calls a lack of representation for people concerned with the budget, Trump has said the Tesla CEO has a personal motive: the elimination of electric car subsidies.
"It is a Great Bill but, unfortunately for Elon, it eliminates the ridiculous Electric Vehicle (EV) Mandate, which would have forced everyone to buy an Electric Car in a short period of time. I have been strongly opposed to that from the very beginning," Trump wrote in his Truth Social post.
Trump considered running for the White House on the Reform ticket in 2000, but ultimately made history as a candidate for the GOP, winning an upset primary challenge in 2016 and then the presidency.
While Trump continued to face resistance from the GOP establishment during his first term, the situation has changed dramatically since then, with the passage of the "Beautiful Bill" confirming Trump's near total dominance over the party.
President Trump campaigned on ridding America of the DEI agenda, and major companies are following suit.
Facing government pressure, top corporations are walking back Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies that have divided America, the Washington Times reported.
During the Biden era, DEI became a whole-of-government effort as the White House set explicit racial targets and shoveled public money toward the government's favored groups, while shutting out whites and other supposedly dominant demographics. Trump's approach has been just as sweeping, but in the other direction.
Trump has threatened to cut off government funds to institutions that practice DEI, and he has clarified that such policies violate civil rights law, creating a starkly new legal climate for corporations and universities to navigate.
Many companies in the private sector are walking a tightrope between placating the government and keeping woke activists at bay. Some major chains, such as Costco, have publicly resisted Trump's pressure, but others have tried to play it both ways, adopting new language to dodge scrutiny.
Major League Baseball deleted a "diversity" reference from its website, but the corporation says its "values on diversity remain unchanged.”
In February, Pepsi said it was axing its chief DEI officer and ending "workforce representation" goals, but the extent of the rollback has been questioned.
“If you check their website it still has DEI [crap] all over it… they’re just pushing it below the surface,” said Paul Chesser, director of the Corporate Integrity Project for the National Legal and Policy Center, told Fox Business.
Like many big names, McDonald's has taken an equivocal approach. Facing a boycott over its DEI rollback, the fast-food giant issued a boilerplate response touting "inclusion."
"As a brand that serves millions of people every day, McDonald's opens our doors to everyone, and our commitment to inclusion remains steadfast," the company said.
The big question is, are corporations like McDonald's really abandoning DEI, or just pretending? While many companies are still woke using woke lingo, the real changes are happening privately, said Dan Lennington, managing vice president and deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
“A lot of this is happening behind the scenes,” he said. “Corporations, education institutions, hospitals, health care institutions are just sort of either caving completely, fighting or they’re trying to play it cutesy by changing the language in their DEI webpages, which is doomed to fail eventually.”
Trump has also used regulatory power to browbeat telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T, which have agreed to curtail DEI to get approvals for merger deals from Trump's FCC.
The administration's war on DEI is also shaking up higher education. University of Virginia's president resigned in June following months of pressure from the Justice Department, which finally threatened to cut off funding to the public university unless its DEI-friendly president stepped aside.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Bullying by teenagers causes inestimable damage across America. Sometimes victims have responded with extreme measures, up to and including suicide.
But now one state has adopted a plan that will hit back, really hard.
It will take drivers' licenses away from the offenders.
A report at EndTimeHeadlines calls it a "bold move to curb bullying."
Minors could lose their driving privileges for up to a year if found guilty of bullying or cyberbullying.
The law was signed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee in April and expands previous attempts to define the actions as offenses.
Rep. Lowell Russell, a Republican who sponsored the bill, said, "Most acts of violence or suicides are results of being bullied."
He said the issue came into focus when he encountered a parent whose son faced bullying and got inadequate support from his school.
If the licenses are suspended by a court ruling, the court notifies the Tennessee Department of Safety.
"For teens caught driving on a suspended license, additional penalties may apply," the report said.
The plan does offer access to required driving, such as to school, work or church, with a "restricted license" that involves a separate application and permission from the court.
Adam Lowe, another Republican supporter, it finally there are some "teeth" in attempts to suppress bullying.
The report explained, "The legislation is part of Tennessee's broader efforts to combat bullying and its associated risks, including youth violence and suicide. Last year, lawmakers expanded the legal definition of harassment to include bullying and cyberbullying, aiming to provide clearer guidelines for prevention."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A majority of the judges on a state supreme court's bench have exercised what has been determined to be their "personal preference" to overturn a "duly enacted" law banning abortion.
The details are documented a report at the Federalist, which pointed out the minority dissent in the case before the Wisconsin state Supreme Court noted even judges are supposed to follow the law, even if they don't like it.
The report explained, "In a decision deemed judicial activism and a 'power grab' by pro-life and judicial experts, the leftist-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday to nullify the Badger State's longstanding law barring abortion."
The 4-judge majority claimed "the legislature impliedly repealed" an 1849 law that made abortion a felony. There was no specific repeal.
The new interpretation of the law, unchanged by the legislature in the state, is abortion is allowed – through a certain time period.
Chief Justice Jill Karofsky actually "repeated the leftist lie that women, such as Georgia woman Amber Thurman, lost their lives 'because they lived in states that severely restrict abortion care,'" the report confirmed.
However, both of the women cited by Karofsky died after taking the dangerous chemicals involved in a do-it-yourself abortion pills, and the report noted that medical malpractice also was involved in their deaths, a factor ignored by Karofsky.
"In her dissent, Justice Annette Ziegler scolded the majority and the concurring chief justice for prioritizing the 'profoundly personal way in which we might determine our respective positions on abortion' over 'how a court is required to interpret the law,'" the Federalist explained.
She cited the legal standard that, "It is the court's duty to adhere to the law whether we 'like' the answer or not."
The majority, she explained, took part in "a jaw-dropping exercise of judicial will, placing personal preference over the constitutional roles of the three branches of our state government and upending a duly enacted law," the report said.
"In this dangerous departure from our constitutional design, four members of the court make up and apply their own version of implied repeal, failing to hew to any semblance of traditional judicial decision-making or jurisprudence."
Andrew Bath, of the Thomas More Society, explained, "This decision is nothing short of a judicial power grab. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to erase a law that elected representatives deliberately preserved for over 175 years — even while Roe v. Wade rendered it unenforceable.
"The majority abandoned sound legal reasoning in favor of political activism, mocking the very concept of judicial restraint. This is a betrayal of the rule of law and a devastating blow to the state's longstanding commitment to protecting the most vulnerable."
Such judicial radicalism isn't a surprise, as the original Roe decision creating a "right" to abortion was adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court majority with an absence of any link to the U.S. Constitution back in 1973. It was overturned just a few years ago.
And Kelsey Pritchard, of SBA Pro-Life America, told the Federalist that the lives of unborn now are at risk because of an "activist ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court."
"Babies with heartbeats and who can feel pain have no legal protection in the state of Wisconsin where abortion through the fifth month is now the law of the land as dictated by four justices on the court," Pritchard said.
Bath described the court's activism as "legislating from the bench — an egregious violation of our constitutional system of separation of powers."
President Donald Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill has already sparked legal actions on both sides of the aisle, and on the pro-gun side, several gun rights groups have already taken action on an important part of Trump's bill.
According to Newsweek, multiple gun rights groups and organizations have filed suit in an attempt to "dismantle what is left of the National Firearms Act (NFA)" after Trump's bill was signed into law.
The president's signature legislation reduced the "NFA's excise tax on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and any other weapons."
The gun rights groups argue that the new legislation eliminates the tax and as a result, the NFA should be eliminated.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, including Gun Owners of America (GOA) dubbed the lawsuit the "One Big Beautiful Lawsuit" in their efforts to quash what's left of the NFA.
Newsweek noted:
The National Firearms Act was first enacted in 1934 to regulates firearms considered the most dangerous and crack down on gangland crime in the Prohibition era.
The law had imposed a $200 tax on machine guns and shotguns and rifles with barrels shorter than 18 inches, and also required the federal registration of these types of firearms.
The tax on certain weapons has been a point of contention for decades. Trump's bill reduced the tax to $0, and gun rights groups are essentially saying that there's no longer a need for the NFA as a result.
However, the tax still applies to machine guns and explosive devices, but has been eliminated dthe "$200 fee that gun owners are charged when purchasing silencers and short-barreled rifles."
🚨BREAKING🚨
GOA, @GunFoundation, & allies just filed our One Big Beautiful Lawsuit to gut the NFA.
On this Independence Day our team does what Congress failed to do—fight for gun owners. pic.twitter.com/OoReiCg5I7
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) July 5, 2025
Newsweek added:
The authors of the NFA "left no doubt that the NFA was an exercise of the taxing power, and the Supreme Court upheld it on that basis," says the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
Users across social media weighed in on the lawsuit.
"Will the case be able to move forward before the $0 tax is in effect in Jan 1st 2025?" one X user wrote.
Another X user wrote, "Y’all know this has to get to SCOTUS before the Democrats increase the tax next time they have a chance? This has to be expedited big time. If they put the tax back it kinda moots the case. I’m not a lawyer so I might be wrong but this is how I understand it."
Only time will tell if the gun rights groups prevail in their efforts.