This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Taxpayers in Colorado are being stuck with a bill that will total in the millions of dollars because a forensic lab tech for the state's bureau of investigation "cut corners" with DNA tests that now have undermined the results in hundreds of criminal cases.
Colorado Public Radio reported the next step in the disaster is for the CBI to reach a contract deal with a Wisconsin company that is to assess the state's forensics lab and its operations.
That comes after former forensic tech Yvonne "Missy" Wood was found "to have manipulated DNA test results of more than 800 cases."
"CBI told lawmakers that it will cost almost $7.5 million to retest DNA sample tests and potentially retry cases affected," the report said.
The disaster resulted after Woods' 29 years with the CBI, and her involvement in multiple high-profile cases, including the 2003 investigation of the late NBA star Kobe Bryant on accusations of rape.
An internal affairs investigation at the CBI was opened in 2023 and Woods was placed on leave. She then retired before the investigation was finished but the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, which was helping, opened a criminal investigation of her just days ago.
The alleged failures surfaced when an intern reviewing DNA testing and reports found some data was missing, the report said.
State authorities have identified 809 cases going back to 2014 in which Woods was involved.
The situation should not have surprised anyone, as her co-workers had warned of her reputation for cutting corners and there even had been earlier claims of faulty evidence.
Officially, an investigation showed she didn't falsify DNA matches but did deviate from standard protocols.
The costs now are estimated to reach $3 million to retest 3,000 cases, and another $4.3 million for the review and post-conviction processes that will be needed to resolve case questions.
"Two watchdog groups, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and the Korey Wise Innocence Project from the University of Colorado Law School sent a joint letter to CBI seeking clarity in the Woods investigation Wednesday," the report said.
Both groups have expressed concern about how Woods' work was allowed to continue for so long without intervention by officials.
"CBI allowed Missy Woods to alter forensic evidence for years. This misconduct brings CBI's entire forensic operation into question, and a thorough, independent audit, followed by full disclosure of the results to stakeholders and the public is essential," Emma Mclean-Riggs, ACLU of Colorado lawyer, said in a statement.
Prosecutors have been making adjustments in some of the affected cases already, with a murder conviction that ended with a life sentence being reduced to 42 years in one situation.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy have been tasked by President-elect Donald Trump to go through the federal government and cut down on waste.
Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX executive who bought Twitter, got rid of a significant percentage of its staff and is watching it still perform in the marketplace, once estimated he could reduce federal spending by $2 trillion.
Most of the bureaucratic reaction has been fear and loathing so far, from entrenched federal payroll recipients who want no more work and no less pay.
But not at NASA.
A report at Daily Mail explains staff members there "are calling on Elon Musk to 'clean house.'"
It's partly because of the millions of taxpayer dollars that have gushed through the agency on the way to racist "diversity, equity and inclusion" programs.
"A former NASA employee told DailyMail.com that NASA's DEI is 'destroying America's ability to compete with China in space because the Biden-Harris administration will only fund programs that feature it.'"
In the overall scheme of federal spending, NASA's role is less than many other agencies, with a budget of some $20 billion.
But large parts of that money now are going, according to spending reports during the Biden-Harris administration, "to universities and consulting firms to support 'environmental justice' and initiatives that 'embrace greater diversity and inclusive practices.'"
For instance, LMI Consulting got $2 million in 2023 to "incorporate and deeply engrain diversity, inclusion, equity and accessibility in the culture and business."
Booz\ Allen Hamilton took $3 million for NASA's "office of diversity and equal opportunity," and another $7 million last month went for "minority-serving institutions."
The report said that's even as there are budget shortfalls for the agency's main mission.
Software engineer Kyle Sorensen told he hopes Musk will "clean house."
Its Jet Propulsion Laboratory laid off 325 employees from its workforce recently, on top of 535 let go months back.
NASA also gave a private organization $900,000 for "increasing diversity and inclusion in the leadership of completed space missions by establishing an ad hoc committee to recommend actions to increase diversity, inclusion, equity and accessibility in the leadership of space mission proposals."
"DailyMail.com uncovered more DEI grants worth missions that had not published in the spending report," the report said.
Another former employee told the publication, "NASA JPL will lay off almost a thousand workers this year to make budget space for a plethora of ridiculous word salad DEI and environmental programs which contribute nothing to actual space exploration. DEI is a full employment program for people with otherwise useless degrees."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Democrats have been left reeling by a long list of names that President-elect Donald Trump has announced he will nominate for key posts: Elon Musk to address government efficiency, Pete Hegseth for Defense, Tulsi Gabbard as director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe for CIA, Mike Huckabee for Ambassador to Israel, Marco Rubio as secretary of State, Tom Homan as Border Czar, Lee Zeldin at the EPA, Elise Stefanik to the United Nations.
But there's one nominee who has not only alarmed Democrats but raised eyebrows – and concerns – from Republicans and other conservatives.
Matt Gaetz, for attorney general.
Hair-pulling outrage from the left was expected and appeared immediately:
But groups like Liberty Counsel, which has been on the cutting edge of a long list of legal fights for conservatives and Christians, openly doubted the pick.
It issued a statement describing Gaetz as "neither morally nor professionally qualified" for the position.
It pointed out he has three years or less experience in the practice of law, "hardly enough to serve as the nation's chief law enforcement officer." Then is cited suspicions that have clouded Gaetz for months already as the House Ethics committee reviewed claims against him concerning sex and drug activities.
In fact, he resigned from Congress as soon as his nomination was announced, "ending the Ethics probe into his sex parties that includes allegations of paying an underage girl for sex."
And his "close association with former Seminole Country Tax Collector, Joel Greenburg, adds to these serious allegations," the statement said. "Greenburg is now serving time in prison for using his position for illegal gain and arranging sex parties for his friends, including Gaetz."
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver stated, "President-elect Donald Trump has quickly named many good choices to serve in his cabinet. But Matt Gaetz is not one of them. The nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general is shocking and disappointing to those who have followed this man and the lurid scandals and serious allegations of sex parties and drugs during his tenure in the U.S. Congress. The resignation of Gaetz immediately after his name surfaced for attorney general is inexplicable except for the fact this resignation now ends the U.S. House Ethics probe. Obviously, Gaetz does not want America to know the result of the Ethics investigation. Matt Gaetz has neither the experience nor the moral character to serve as the highest law enforcement officer of the United States of America. Gaetz should do President Trump and all of America a favor and withdraw his name from consideration. This will save him considerable embarrassment. America deserves better."
Fox News reported that one Republican senator, "granted anonymity to speak freely," confirmed, "He will never get confirmed."
Gaetz had expressed, on social media, he considered it an honor to serve as attorney general, but did not address GOP concerns.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters, "I think we have to consider any nominee by the president seriously, but we also have a constitutional responsibility."
Ethics committee chair Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., confirmed that Gaetz's resignation means his committee now "has no jurisdiction."
"He's under investigation by the House Committee on Ethics," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, noted. "Obviously, the president has the right to nominate whomever he wishes, but this is why the background checks that are done by the FBI and the advice and consent process in the Senate, and public hearings are also important."
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford said Gaetz "will go through the nomination process just like everyone else."
"Due diligence" is what Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said will be applied by the Senate to the nomination.
The Daily Caller News Foundation noted CNN political commentator Scott Jennings said Trump "is feeling his power" with the appointment.
Trump's announcement said Gaetz would "end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations, and restore Americans' badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department."
Jennings explained, "It is apparent to me that Trump is in a decisive mood and is not someone who's interested in picking things that he would consider to be watered down."
The foundation also reported Democrats are claiming that Gaetz would make the DOJ an arm of the White House, "designed to prosecute Trump's political enemies."
Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy called Gaetz unqualified.
"Matt Gaetz is being nominated for one reason and one reason only. Because he will implement Donald Trump's transition of the Department of Justice from an agency that stands up for all of us to an agency that is simply an arm of the White House designed to persecute and prosecute Trump's political enemies," Murphy said.
Vice President-elect JD Vance took that argument and turned it around against Joe Biden's AG, Merrick Garland.
The Gateway Pundit noted that 20 Republican senators actually voted to confirm "lawless radical Merrick Garland."
But at least two of those, the report said, now have indicated they cannot support Gaetz.
"RINO Senators Murkowski and Collins, who shamefully supported Merrick Garland in 2021, now claim they won't vote for Matt Gaetz," the report said.
"Garland oversaw the historic legal assaults on former President Donald Trump and his supporters. Garland and Joe Biden also approved the unprecedented raid on President Trump's home in August 2022."
Some GOP senators were open to listening:
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has confirmed hackers associated with the People's Republic of China have stolen data related to lawful wiretaps, after hacking into a number of U.S. telecommunication providers.
In a joint statement, the FBI and the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency said the ongoing investigation into China's targeting of commercial telecommunications infrastructure has uncovered a significant espionage campaign.
"We have identified that PRC-affiliated actors have compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies to enable the theft of customer call records data," the statement reads.
Furthermore, the FBI said the hacking activity compromised private communications between certain individuals involved in government and politics, while other information "subject to U.S. law enforcement requests," were illegally copied.
"We expect our understanding of these compromises to grow as the investigation continues."
In late October, Politico reported then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, had been two of those people targeted by Chinese hackers.
Trump's campaign team were informed there was a potential breach, which could have given hackers access to private communications, and even location data, as Trump uses his private iPhone for social media and making calls and sending text messages.
During the Vanderbilt Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats in April, FBI Director Christopher Wray said China poses a "broad and unrelenting" threat to U.S. national and economic security, with U.S. critical infrastructure being a prime target.
"The PRC has made it clear that it considers every sector that makes our society run as fair game in its bid to dominate on the world stage, and that its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic and break America's will to resist," Wray said.
Wray noted the threat is "driven by the CCP's [Chinese Communist Party] aspiration to wealth and power," and pointed out China will "seize economic development in the areas most critical to tomorrow's economy," by any means necessary if it gives them an edge over the U.S.
One week before the Vanderbilt Summit, Wray had warned Congress about the growing danger of Chinese hackers on U.S. telecommunications and infrastructure.
In January, Wray admitted the Chinese have a huge advantage over U.S. intelligence agencies, because the amount of hackers China has vastly outpaces the number of FBI agents available to combat them.
"The PRC has a bigger hacking program than that of every major nation combined. In fact, if you took every single one of the FBI's cyber agents and intelligence analysts, and focused them exclusively on the China threat; China's hackers would still outnumber FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1," Wray said.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares for his return to the White House, China has been secretly working on a land-based prototype nuclear reactor to power its warships, a move that signals China is moving further toward competing with the U.S. for global dominance.
According to satellite images and Chinese government documents obtained by the Associated Press, China has been rapidly modernizing and morphing its vast naval fleet, the largest in the world, into a "blue water navy" able to operate for long periods of time away from mainland China out in the open ocean.
Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the AP nuclear-powered warships would elevate China into "the exclusive ranks of first-class naval power," which currently includes the U.S. and France.
"For China's leadership, such a development would symbolize national prestige, fueling domestic nationalism and elevating the country's global image as a leading power," Zhao said.
The AP further reported that researchers from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California have said the satellite images suggest the nuclear reactor was built in the Leshan mountains, located within the Sichuan province.
Senior fellow with the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Matthew Funaoile told Business Insider, moving further into nuclear-powered territory is a "goal" for China.
"They know that this is the hallmark of technology for propulsion on aircraft carriers," Funaoile said.
Furthermore, China currently has three conventionally powered ships – the Liaoning, the Shandong, and the Fujian. According to Funaoile, China has the ability to develop capabilities that outpace its peers. He did, however, note nuclear propulsion development is a complex process, and could take time before all three carriers, along with a fourth currently under construction, are fully nuclear-powered.
Trumps meteoric victory over Vice President Kamala Harris disrupted China's plans to further its own interests, with some analysts saying the ambitions of China are not just going to wane and disappear. China has been preparing for such an event to unfold and the acceleration in weapons development and manufacturing plays a part of that because it could lead to conflict.
Brandon Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, a geopolitical analyst, and former congressional staffer, wrote in a recent op-ed the real threat to the U.S. is China's growing fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, something Trump will have to deal with, especially with China's plans to have at least 21 new nuclear submarines operational by 2030.
"The priority for the Trump administration when it comes to the U.S. Navy must be twofold. First, it must concentrate on building more submarines. Second, as part of that new submarine building program U.S. Navy shipyards must undergo the most radical modernization program since the Second World War," Weichert wrote.
Weichert noted the U.S. must build up its capabilities quickly, and warned if some radical change doesn't happen soon, China will surpass the U.S. submarine fleet in both quality and quantity.
"This must happen in an expedited manner. America was once the 'arsenal of democracy.' It can be that once again. But it cannot achieve this lofty goal by doing that which has always been done for the last 30 years."
Newly nominated Secretary of Defense for the Trump administration Pete Hegseth said during an interview the amount of bureaucracy within the U.S. weapons procurement system is slowing down any real progress.
"The Pentagon has a perfect record in all of its war games against China. We lose every time," Hegseth said, noting the U.S. is lagging behind China by a decade, further pointing out it is important to diversify weapons systems.
"China's building an army specifically dedicated to defeating the United States of America, that is their strategic outset… If our whole power projection platform is aircraft carriers, and you have the ability to project power that way strategically around the globe…if 15 hypersonic missiles can take out our 10 aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of a conflict, what does that look like?"
Kyle Bass, chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management LP told Bloomberg Trump's so-called "China Hawks" are just realists on the threat China's President Xi Jinping poses to the U.S., which extends past the military, and into the economy as well.
"Xi Jinping has been telling you what he's going to do since 2017 in every public speech, every public appearance he's made,"\ Bass said, adding investing in China is a "fool's errand" and a "horrible idea going forward."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Two judges in the Washington, D.C., region are pressing pause on various trials for Jan. 6, 2021, case defendants amid President-elect Donald Trump's confirmation he'll consider pardons for them.
Multiple thousands of individuals who were part of a protest against suspicious developments in the 2020 presidential election have been charged and convicted of offenses like trespassing for walking into the Capitol building when authorities said it was "closed."
They sometimes walked past security guards who were holding the doors open for them, but nonetheless were charged anyway.
About 600 already have been given, and many have served, prison terms.
Many others have remained in jail for years awaiting the resolution of their cases.
Now it is Politico that has reported U.S. District Judges Rudolph Contreras and Carl Nichols have suspended action on those pending cases, to avoid calling in dozens of possible jurors for cases that will end.
The judges have, after multiple requests, agreed that Trump's coming inauguration could make the proceedings fruitless.
The federal Department of Justice has objected to the moves, insisting on sending as many Trump supporters to jail as possible in what has come to be seen as primary evidence of the weaponization of the Department of Justice by Democrats against Trump and his supporters.
Politico reported, "It's the first time federal judges have acquiesced to the demands of Jan. 6 defendants for delays in anticipation of potential pardons from Trump, who has pledged to grant clemency to many people charged for their role in the attack on the Capitol."
Trump has said several times that he thinks most of those defendants did nothing to deserve prison time, but that there are a few who vandalized the Capitol that do need to be punished.
One case defendant, William Pope, representing himself, had been scheduled for trial next month on misdemeanor charges, and Contreras agreed to consider a trial, if necessary, in February.
"Nichols, similarly, declined to set an imminent trial date for three Jan. 6 defendants charged with misdemeanors for trespassing in the Capitol. Without prompting, he asked prosecutors whether they expected the trial would go on even after Trump took over the Justice Department. When the prosecutor in the case could not confirm either way, Nichols opted to set an April trial date and postpone all other deadlines, allowing time for the Justice Department to recalibrate after Trump takes office," the report added.
Multitudes of the defendants already have had their cases changed, after the Supreme Court ruled prosecutors had incorrectly used a specific charge against them that was not allowed.
Other judges have claimed that Trump's commitment to the defendants is "speculative."
One judge, Paul Friedman, claimed that whatever the president would do "is irrelevant to the court's" own obligations.
A report at the Gateway Pundit said Joe Biden's Department of Justice, under Merrick Garland, already has pushed to have sentenced 944 individuals from events that day.
More than 560 have been sent to prison.
Most of the judges hearing the cases, leftist in their own ideologies, "remained defiant after the Supreme Court reversed the 'obstruction' statute," the report said.
That was when the Supreme Court delivered a stunning blow to the DOJ by rejecting its use of a specific statute regarding obstruction of an official proceeding in the J6 cases.
The judges responded to that correction by their own judiciary superiors by threatening to add "enhancements" to J6 cases against defendants.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A columnist from the Independence Institute in Colorado is mocking the state's Democrat-majority legislature and Democrat governor for joining a scheme – without approval from voters – that this year would have given all the leftist state's 10 Electoral College votes to President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican.
The state's voters, by a 12% margin, this year wanted Kamala Harris in the White House.
But the National Popular Vote Compact, joined because Democrats in state government wanted it that way, would have sent all the state's support to Trump.
The compact is a Constitution-avoiding idea in which states agree to give all their votes to the winner of the national popular vote, the totaling of state election votes for each candidate.
Adopted when Democrats routinely won that total, even if they lost the Electoral College count that decides the presidency, states with about 200 votes already have joined the scheme, which is untested yet in the courts.
But the deal doesn't "take effect" until the states have a total 270 Electoral College votes or more, enough to win.
It is columnist Jon Caldara who has written at Complete Colorado about how the strategizing by Democrats to push their candidates has gone astray, as Trump collected millions more votes this year than Harris.
"I have a question for the majority of Coloradans who didn't want him as president: How do you feel about Colorado's 10 Electoral College votes going to President-elect Trump instead of Vice President Kamala Harris?" he taunted. "Voters of our hardcore blue state despise Trump and came out in very large numbers to voice their hatred of the man. And yet, our 10 electoral votes from Colorado will go to…Trump."
He continued, "So, you with Trump Derangement Syndrome, is this what you wanted? California might hate him even more than us, but their 54 electoral votes will also be going to elect Trump. So will the Trump-phobic states of New York (28 electoral votes), Illinois (19), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Maine (4), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Connecticut (7), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), Oregon (8), Washington (12) and the District of Columbia (3)."
This, he explained, "is the version of America our Democrat-controlled legislature and Gov. Jared Polis have signed us up for."
He pointed out that the compact has voters' will being ignored, and their support going "as voters in other states dictate."
"Those who supported the idea of the national popular vote must now imagine their self-made dystopian future where their own presidential electors are forced to vote for the maniacal, misogynistic, fascist, democracy-destroying, tyrant-loving Donald Trump," he ribbed.
He pointed out the supporters of the compact mostly are "urban progressives," but are part of the "win-at-all-costs coalition (who) have conveniently forgotten their high school civics lesson that we are not a country run by a federal government. Rather, we are 50 semi-sovereign states who send representatives to the federal government to work for us."
He suggested they might not have realized before that their "invention could be a godsend for dangerous populists."
"NPV fanatics, who almost uniformly hate Trump, may begin to realize their scheme would empower the very monsters they despise. If their compact was in effect this year, the Trump-loathing states that have signed on would be forced to give their collective 197 electoral votes to Trump. Kamala would be left with only 30 sad, lonely votes. Sweet Poetry," he warned.
He pointedly noted that Colorado voters never approved the scheme; it was pushed by a "progressive" legislature and signed by a "progressive governor."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
President-elect Donald Trump returned to the White House Wednesday, holding a meeting with Joe Biden as the two discussed plans for a peaceful transition of power.
Biden greeted Trump, saying: "Mr. President-elect and former President, Donald, congratulations and looking forward to having a, like we said, a smooth transition.
"[We'll] do everything we can to make sure you are accommodated and what you need and we're gonna get a chance to talk about some of that today. Welcome. Welcome back."
"Politics is tough and it's in many cases not a nice world," Trump told Biden after the two shook hands.
"It is a nice world today and I appreciate very much a transition that's so smooth. It'll be as smooth as it can get and I very much appreciate that, Joe."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
JERUSALEM – The election of Donald Trump as the presumptive 47th president of the United States has led to a raft of recent headlines about this being a catalyst for the resumption of an Israeli push to announce annexation over Judea and Samaria.
Whether the daylight which existed between Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over this matter has closed, is yet to be seen, however, some on Israel's Right are sensing an opportunity to put their case. Indeed, the nomination of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – who has gone on the record to say there are no Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, merely Jewish communities, as U.S. ambassador to Israel could be a sign of which way the wind is blowing inside the putative second Trump administration.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party is one of the figures at the forefront of these calls, and a recent press tour to the region, which the movement Regavim organized, (which he along with two others established in 2006, but with which he is no longer involved) – provided an opportunity to see the issues up-close and attempt to get a firmer grip on the reality on the ground.
When opponents of the so-called "Two State Solution" to the Israel-Palestine issue say Israel is only some 9 miles wide at its narrowest point, it takes a vantage point on the roof of a Rosh Ha'ayin apartment block to bring this point home.
When opponents of the so-called "Two State Solution" to the Israel-Palestine issue say Israel is only some 9 miles wide at its narrowest point, it takes a vantage point on the roof of a Rosh Ha'ayin apartment block to bring this point home.
"We are living in one of the largest neighborhoods in all of Israel," said Moriah Tzafar, talking about Psagot Afek, which by 2025 year's end is supposed to have some 50,000 residents. "As you can see, it abuts the Green Line, and over the other side is a[n IDF] firing zone [203]. It stretches until the nearby Palestinian villages; Deir Balut, Rafat, and Zahawiya," she said.
"We see a lot of suspicious activity that is concerning. It is supposed to be an area where the IDF carries out training, but we see vehicles all the time. There is no road here for workers, no agriculture or shops, so what are they doing here? It is a hostile population and the question we have to ask is why are they encroaching so close to the fence? After Oct. 7, it reminds us of the female observers who pointed out the dangers in the south – and also reports from the north [of residents who heard suspicious noises]; we point these things out to the authorities; flashlights visible at night-time, and people approaching the fence on foot, who are scoping the situation out. Given what we know, how are we still relying on a fence and ignoring the concerns of residents?" she asked plaintively.
According to Naomi Kahn, director of Regavim's International Division, one of the key aims of the movement is to lobby Israel's government to acknowledge how "land use policy is the most basic expression of national sovereignty."
Structures, that do not belong to the IDF, nor any Israeli – and at the moment they would not receive permission to build on this territory – are popping up in what is supposed to be an area the army controls, however "the Palestinians build, and the IDF retreats," according to Kahn.
"The Oslo Accords were supposed to pull the two sides apart, and here the evidence on the ground is de facto pushing them closer together."
The Arabs who are illegally attempting to settle on land that does not belong to them, and is in fact, illegal according to the Oslo Accords and international law, are acting rationally according to a power vacuum that exists, and are attempting to create facts on the ground. Both sides of this issue are working on different levels of understanding; meaning both Palestinians and Israelis saw how long it took for the IDF to wrest control of southern Israel back from Hamas terrorists following the Oct. 7 attack.
Israel's long internal border with Jordan, which stretches roughly along the 1949 Armistice Line from the Gilboa area in the north down to Ein Gedi near the Dead Sea, is dangerously porous – and where several infiltrations have already taken place – and difficult to defend.
Kahn also pointed out that some 65% of the area given over to the Palestinian Authority to control has no construction on it. If we accept this is the case, why, if their intentions are allegedly peaceful, would they permit building within a literal stone's throw distance from Israeli neighborhoods? Not only does the question practically answer itself, it is astonishing any Israeli government would countenance continuing to permit it given the catastrophic results of ignoring similar activity along the Gaza border. Regavim claims the Israeli government has not prevented Palestinians from building on state land and encroaching onto Israel's state land, including the construction of some 90,000 edifices of different kinds.
Even from the point of view of the Oslo Accords, the construction is difficult to legitimize, given they were supposed to enforce a 500-meter buffer from the border fence, which would require permits (which again would never be given to any Israeli to build on), and were intended to distance Arabs from Israeli bureaucracy. They were supposed to pull the two sides apart, and here the evidence on the ground is de facto pushing them closer together.
The danger is not theoretical, it is very real. While it doesn't get overly mentioned much in the international press, and it has not been given an official title, the third intifada effectively started in about June 2021. It has largely centered around Iranian efforts to transfer increasingly powerful weaponry to Islamists in Judea and Samaria, principally through holes in Israel's security apparatus via Jordan. This movement of men and materiel has picked up in speed and intensity over the last year or so, especially as access from Gaza and across the Lebanese border is now significantly more challenging. At least the IDF has acknowledged this threat and for several months has aggressively targeted terrorist leaders and their so-called battalion commanders in Judea and Samaria.
The emotional power of the olive tree
A typical image of the countryside in Judea and Samaria is one of the often craggy rocks interspersed with olive trees. The assumption – particularly in the Western imagination – is that these trees are centuries old and have been nurtured for all that time by ancient and noble Palestinian families. The truth, however, is more complex.
As part of their attempts to annex the land, Palestinians have taken to planting copious amounts of these trees, which provide them with dual use. They are used as cover for ongoing surveillance of the neighboring Israeli communities, and they can be utilized as a symbol of their supposed ownership of the land.
"These people are just like Hamas or Hezbollah," said Rani Gavriel, head of an auxiliary police unit, which is designed to be a fast response to reports of infiltrations – of which there have already been many – as well as fence cutting and other suspicious activity. "They openly say that Rosh Ha'Ayin is theirs," he added.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
One social media commenter summed it up succinctly: "Boo hoo."
That was a reaction to multi-millionaire entertainer Whoopi Goldberg's claim that she, too, works for a living and struggled under the economy of the past few years.
That would be the economy under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who Goldberg pushed in the 2024 election, in which Americans were tortured with inflation of some 22%, gasoline prices as high as $6 or $7 per gallon, skyrocketing energy costs, some grocery categories nearly doubling in price and more.
Apparently an $8 million annual paycheck, and a net worth of $60 million, doesn't cover costs like it used to.
It was RedState that "apologized" to her.
"Apparently, an apology is in order, y'all. I can only speak for myself, but it appears that I've been a bit too hard on Whoopi Goldberg. That's right. Turns out that the moderator of ABC's clown show, 'The View,' has had a 'hard time' over the last four years, too — just like every other American who 'works for a living,'" the site posted.
It was Parade that previously estimated her net worth at $60 million, and quoted her own explanation of her nickname, "Whoopi."
She previously told a New York publication the name comes out of her stand-up comic era some 40 or 50 years ago: "When you're performing on stage, you never really have time to go into the bathroom and close the door. So if you get a little gassy, you've got to let it go. … So people used to say to me, 'You're like a whoopee cushion.' And that's where the name came from."
RedState noted it was when the conversation on the talk show turned to President-elect Donald Trump's landslide victory over Harris.
"Co-host Sara Haines — who said she voted for Harris — was having a hard time understanding why working-class people voted for Trump with the belief that he will make things better for them," the report said.
"Enter Whoopi," it said.
"I'm sorry. When you have one candidate who has been running for 12 years — who lies and changes things — I appreciate that people are having a hard time. Me, too. I work for a living. If I had all the money in the world, I would not be here!" [audience laughs] So, I'm a working person [audience applauds]. You know? And my kid has has to feed her family. And my great granddaughter has to be fed by her parents. I know it's hard out there. But I also know that there are a lot of things that we just said, 'Nope, I'm just gonna go this way.'"
Another on social media: "Living on an annual salary of 8 million dollars a year for being on tv a few hours a day has got to be so hard! She really gets it!"
Others opined: "Delusional" and "pathetic."