This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

A family in Ireland is working through the shock notification, on social media, that their mother is dead – by "assisted suicide," in a situation about which they knew nothing.

According to the Christian Institute, Maureen Slough, 58, from County Cavan, left, telling family members she was going on holiday to Lithuania.

Instead, she went to the death-dealing Pegasos clinic in Switzerland.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

"We can no longer deliver water to the people," Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian announced recently. "In every field, we are on the edge of the abyss. We have water problems, electricity problems, gas problems, money problems, inflation problems – where don't we have problems?"

Pezehkian's July 23 confession continued: "There is no longer any choice; everything is a matter of compulsion. I cannot avoid cutting the water, because I have no other option."

In Iran, each crisis enumerated by the nation's president carries the potential to erupt into a social explosion. Indeed, public anger over livelihood issues, water shortages and electricity blackouts is flaring up.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

After a three-hour meeting with Russian President Putin in Alaska Friday, President Trump spent hours on the phone with world leaders overnight, leading to an announcement that he expects all parties in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war soon to agree to a peace agreement – skipping the usual step of a ceasefire.

In addition, Trump said he would host Ukrainian President Zelensky in the Oval Office Monday to discuss the deal. That part of the announcement reminded some of the last time the Ukrainian leader visited the White House, an acrimonious meeting that ended without any official agreement between the parties.

Trump posted Saturday morning:

"A great and very successful day in Alaska! The meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia went very well, as did a late night phone call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and various European Leaders, including the highly respected Secretary General of NATO. It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up. President Zelenskyy will be coming to D.C., the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon. If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people's lives will be saved. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

A newly filed friend-of-the-court brief in the legal battle over sending taxpayer cash to abortion industry giant Planned Parenthood, over the objections of taxpayers, Congress and the president, warns just exactly how dangerous is the precedent the abortionists want.

They are, in fact, endorsing a system in which court judges would be able to allocate tax money to their pet causes, thereby violating the "constitutional separation of powers" that allows only Congress that power.

It is the American Center for Law and Justice that has filed the arguments in the legal fight over the law of the land – adopted by Congress and signed by the president, that no tax money should go to Planned Parenthood.

Then there is a single pro-abortion judge, Indira Talwani, who claimed the power of Congress and is insisting that tax money be handed over to the abortionists.

"Our brief makes a fundamental point that Planned Parenthood desperately wants to obscure: There is no constitutional right to government subsidies. The Supreme Court established this principle decades ago and has reaffirmed it consistently, even during the Roe v. Wade era," the ACLU reported.

"When Americans elect representatives who prioritize protecting life over funding abortion providers, those policy choices must be respected. The Constitution does not transform every legal activity into a taxpayer-funded entitlement, and courts cannot conscript unwilling taxpayers to subsidize practices they find morally objectionable."

It explained, "Planned Parenthood's argument ignores a critical reality that the Supreme Court has acknowledged: Money is fungible. When the government provides funding to an organization for one purpose, those funds free up other resources that can be redirected toward activities the government prefers not to support."

The brief to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals defends Congress' constitutional authority to decline to fund abortion providers like the industry giant.

"This case, Planned Parenthood Federation of America v. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., represents far more than a dispute over government funding – it strikes at the heart of our constitutional separation of powers and America's commitment to protecting life," the organization confirmed.

It was Talwani, in a Massachusetts court, who is insisting that Planned Parenthood get all of the money it requests from taxpayers, hundreds of millions of dollars.

"This judicial activism represents nothing less than a direct assault on the will of the American people and their elected representatives in Congress, who voted to stop forcing taxpayers to subsidize abortion," the legal team noted.

"When Congress exercises its constitutional authority to direct taxpayer dollars away from organizations that perform abortions, it reflects the deeply held values of millions of Americans who believe their tax dollars should not subsidize the taking of innocent life."

In the case of Planned Parenthood, when it gets Medicaid payments for "family planning services, that money allows the organization to redirect other funds toward performing abortions. Congress has every right – indeed, the responsibility to taxpayers who oppose abortion – to prevent this indirect subsidization of abortion providers."

The congressional action, it explained, "involves no punishment whatsoever."

"Planned Parenthood remains free to operate, employ staff, and provide services. No one is barred from working there or prohibited from seeking their services. Congress has simply decided not to pay for its activities with taxpayer dollars – a decision well within legislative authority. Every time Congress makes funding choices – supporting some activities while declining to fund others – it could face similar challenges if Planned Parenthood's theory prevailed. This would transform every appropriations decision into potential constitutional litigation, undermining the democratic process and separation of powers," the ACLJ argued.

But maybe most troubling is the assault in the case on "constitutional separation of powers."

"The Appropriations Clause could not be clearer: 'No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.' This power belongs exclusively to Congress, not to courts or executive agencies."

But the abortion industry leader is demanding courts order Congress to spend money "it has explicitly declined to appropriate."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

New York Attorney General Letitia James' reputation has taken some serious hits in recent months.

She's been put under investigation for allegedly submitting fraudulent documents to the government to obtain better mortgage loan rates.

Those allegations include lying about her primary residence, lying about her relationship with her father on a loan application, and lying about how many living units are in one of her buildings.

This was the candidate for state office in New York who campaigned on the promise to "get" President Donald Trump and she did, in part, by obtaining a mortgage fraud judgment against him in front of a leftist judge and a leftist jury that returned a penalty of about half a billion dollars, a figure that astonished commentators.

That was even though those alleged victims in the "fraud" lost no money, were happy with their business deals with the Trump companies and, in fact, said they would like to do more business with him. The case is on appeal.

But now, for James, it's gotten worse.

U.S. House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, is calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to open a full federal investigation into Standard Chartered Bank, and to review James' alleged "complicity" in what a report at the Gateway Pundit calls "a billion-dollar terrorist financing scandal."

Stefanik's letter cites a "sanctions evasion case" involving Standard Chartered Bank that now is pending before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which involves "at least $9.6 billion in illegal payments by the bank to Iranian and Hezbollah entities—payments that directly violate U.S. Treasury sanctions and undermine national security."

James' troubles were reported to have escalated just recently when she came under the investigation from the FBI.

It was William J. Pulte, chief of the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency, who sent a referral letter to Bondi alleging that James may have ""falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms."

Now the Gateway Pundit explains the bank case, allegedly involving James, involves authorities allegedly ignoring "illicit transactions" as well as "failing to enforce sanctions already designated by the Treasury Department."

"At least $9.6 billion of specifically identified illicit payments were made by SCB from its NYC branch to OFAC and known terrorist names. The $9.6 billion was found in internal trade reports turned over by bank whistleblowers and represents the first batch from SCB Dubai office that cleared through SCB NYC. There are estimated over $100 billion more of illegal payments that are more recent and from SCB China where it has 53 mainland branches that facilitate dollar trade payments for oil and war-making materials," the report explained.

It states, "In early 2024, NYAG was briefed by terrorist financing experts and the whistleblowers in detail on the illicit payments yet did nothing about it other than reapprove SCB annual license. NYAG was briefed in two meetings in February and March 2024 about the $9,6 billion of illegal payments and did nothing but approve the annual renewal of SCB State banking license."

Among other developments involving James, Bondi recently appointed DOJ official Ed Martin as special prosecutor to investigate James, along with Democrat Sen. Adam Schiff of California, who also faces accusations of mortgage deceptions.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, arrived Friday afternoon in Alaska for a summit with President Donald Trump, whose goal it is to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, which Russia invaded three years ago.

And he was met immediately with a demonstration of America's firepower: A flyover by a B-2 stealth bomber and some F-35 jets.

Washington Examiner said two B-2s had been flown into Alaska just before the meeting, and did the flyover just as Trump was greeting Putin.

They are the same type of aircraft that conducted the successful strike on Iran's nuclear production facilities just months ago.

The meetings at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson were to run into the evening.

Trump has said he's ready to call for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky if things are going well.

The Examiner commented, "They are likely meant to assert U.S. dominance over Russia ahead of the summit. More bombers may be headed in the same direction, according to defense analysis site TWZ."

And Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, pointed to the presence of more than 100 fifth-generation fighter jets in his home state.

Putin's arrival put him in a Western country for the first time since he commanded the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

The U.S. military trains its personnel on virtually everything under the sun, yet fails to provide any training at all on the fundamental legal document of the United States of America – and the one every service member swears an oath to "support and defend."

WorldNetDaily spoke to Dr. Chase Spears, a retired U.S. Army public affairs officer, writer and host of the Finding Your Spine podcast about this blatant oversight.

A service member's sworn oath to support and defend the Constitution dates back hundreds of years in American history, Spears noted. He described the commitment as "a good and noble thing." For while other militaries around the world swear allegiance to a ruler or a particular ruling party, Spears said, "the American military is set apart because we swear to our Constitution."

Interestingly, he admitted that over the course of his two decades of service to his country, "it was hard to find anyone who actually read it." As a result, "hardly anyone knows what's actually written in the nation's foundational document."

Why don't service members know the Constitution? Why don't Americans, in general, understand it? These are two questions that heightened Spears' interest in the topic, compelling him to write an article titled "The Case for a Constitutional Training Culture in the Military." For Spears, the answer lies in a lack of "institutional instruction."

He explained to WND, "Many schools are deliberately not teaching civics in elementary education, and the worst offenders are in the public school system."

"That's very much by design," he added.

"They don't want Americans to know civics because the public is much easier to control when isolated from their history," Spears argued.

Specific to the military, he added, "We train them how to shoot, how to manage equipment, how to plan maneuvers, and so much more, but you won't find a single line of instruction about the Constitution and how to uphold an oath to it."

"There are also 'equal opportunity' trainings and 'sexual harassment and prevention' trainings that are mandated," he shared.

"These all sound good on the surface, but through the years, they've become Trojan horses for hard leftwing Marxist ideologies to infiltrate unit culture." Thus, the military has been influenced on how to think about "highly contentious political partisan issues," but its personnel have not been trained on the Constitution that they've actually sworn to defend.

"This is extraordinarily problematic," Spears lamented. "Ignorance to the military's true purpose is how you get a military that has members who will say, 'Of course you should take this experimental jab and lay aside your moral beliefs because you ceded your rights when you joined the military.'" But for Spears, this couldn't be further from the truth.

"There is no such clause in the very Constitution we swear to," a point also noted in the book titled "Defending the Constitution Behind Enemy Lines" by Navy Commander Robert A. Green, Jr.

"Leaders who ignore a service member's constitutionally protected rights are the kind of people helping separate soldiers from their history, and making the Pentagon and partisan whims of Washington, D.C. the ultimate authority," Spears argued.

He encourages Defense Department leadership to strongly consider his words, paving a way to include training service members to know and understand the U.S. Constitution.

"Our military has to get concerned about the constitutional illiteracy filling its ranks," he asserted.

"While there's already precedent to train soldiers in basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills, we should also be educating them to know the very document they swear to support and defend."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Democrats and other extremists long have insisted the January 6, 2021, events at the U.S. Capitol were an "insurrection."

And they continually blame President Donald Trump, who urged its supporters to protest "peacefully" that day.

They've even tried to use their assumption of an "insurrection" to try to keep Trump off the 2024 presidential ballot.

That stunt reached full fruition at the Colorado state Supreme Court, where an all-Democrat panel decided to go for it, before being summarily blocked and reprimanded by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Actually, those events were a protest that got out of control, with the result being vandalism damage to the Capitol and hundreds and hundreds of protesters jailed for months by anti-Trump prosecutors.

But now there's new evidence of an "insurrection."

Actually, constitutional expert Jonathan Turley describes it as more of a "mutiny."

It came in a commentary in the New York Times by Barack Obama administration officials Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson.

They seemed to write that the U.S. military should disobey the commander in chief, President Donald Trump.

Their sentiments were that they were counting on the military to overthrow the president and they now are disappointed that that apparently won't happen.

The dispute arose over Trump's agenda to crack down on crime, including the rampant violence in Washington, D.C., by using the National Guard to keep order there.

Turley explained, "The NY Times seems to have changed its mind on insurrections. Former Obama officials Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson wrote the bizarre column, 'We Used to Think the Military Would Stand Up to Trump. We Were Wrong.' Only the last three words are demonstrably true…"

He added, "There is no question that Trump has the authority to order the National Guard into Washington, a federal enclave. Yet, the column decries how 'it now seems clear to us that the military will not rescue Americans from Mr. Trump's misuse of the nation's military capabilities'…

"So, let's get this straight. A President issued clearly lawful orders for deployment and the NY Times and these Obama officials expected them to simply disregard his orders. In fairness, that is not exactly an insurrection; more like a mutiny."

Commentary postings at Twitchy first said, "At this point in our Twitchy lives, you'd think nothing would bother or shock us, and yet The New York Times found a way to do just that. Hey, we get it, they hate Trump, they're not big fans of America in general, and the idea of 45-47 doing something to help Americans struggling is somehow triggering to these people, but still. Whining because the military hasn't overthrown our duly elected president. Really, you guys? That's low and stupid, even for you."

And Twitchy pointed out the headline soon was changed: "Somebody at the Times eventually thought that was saying the quiet part a little too out loud, so the title of the op-ed was changed to 'How the military became another instrument of Trump's power.' That's still ridiculous, especially considering that Trump is the Commander-in-Chief of the military."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

DEI practices at U.S. schools and universities, while "diversity, equity and inclusion" may sound altruistic, almost invariably include indoctrinating students with racist and sexist ideologies, for example, blaming all whites for slavery that ended in America centuries ago.

That particular concept has resulted in the extraordinary demands by some DEI activists that whites today, who never were slave owners, pay billions of dollars in "reparations" to blacks today, who never were slaves.

That ideology also has advocated for what essentially are quotas, meaning hiring has been based on race, or sex, or orientation, rather than qualifications or abilities.

But now a federal judge says President Donald Trump's plan to eliminate those racist and sexist lessons from classrooms can't go forward.

The recent ruling from Stephanie Gallagher, a federal judge hearing a case by the activists at National Endowment for Democracy, likely will be appealed, as judges in the entry level courts to the federal judiciary often have ruled against Trump's plans to Make America Great Again, and have ended up being reversed.

Gallagher wrote, about two Department of Education memos telling schools to rid themselves of the discriminatory lessons, "It initiated a sea change in how the Department of Education regulates educational practices and classroom conduct, causing millions of educators to reasonably fear that their lawful, and even beneficial, speech might cause them or their schools to be punished."

Trump's promises to make the nation better have included removing those how-to teachings in discrimination. His plan for schools was to tell them to clean up their act, or lose federal funding.

Gallagher's claim is that the Department of Education acted unlawfully when it threatened to withhold federal funding from institutions that continued DEI schemes.

Gallagher, curiously, also is a defendant in a separate lawsuit brought by the Trump administration against all federal judges in Maryland over an order automatically blocking the immediate deportation of migrants who are challenging their removals.

Despite her clear conflict of interest, in being sued by one of the parties in a case before her, she didn't recuse herself.

It was the American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association who sued over the crackdown on biased DEI teachings.

The focal point in the fight are two department memos telling schools to end all "race-based decision-making" or risk losing federal funding.

The AP said the Trump measures "had been on hold since April" because of various court rulings.

Gallagher's ruling also noted she was making no finding on the policies themselves, whether they are "good or bad, prudent or foolish, fair or unfair," but that they ran into trouble because of procedural requirements.

The Department of Education said, "judicial action enjoining or setting aside this guidance has not stopped our ability to enforce Title VI protections for students at an unprecedented level."

The guidance had been based on the 2023 Supreme Court decision barring colleges from considering race in admissions decisions.

"Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon 'systemic and structural racism' and advanced discriminatory policies and practices," explained Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of the department's Office for Civil Rights.

The goal of the guidance had been for schools to dismantle DEI offices and programming, end race-based hiring and admissions, halt racially segregated graduation and scholarships and more.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Hillary Clinton, whose 2016 presidential race loss to President Donald Trump was the second time she failed in such a campaign, has adopted a mantra in the following years – now approaching a decade – that Trump's term in office was illegitimate.

Her claims have been based on the completely debunked conspiracy theory she's credited for creating – the Russiagate agenda, that Trump's campaign that year colluded with Russia.

Actually, the players in that conspiracy, Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and many more, now apparently are under investigation by both Congress and the Department of Justice over the damage they may have done to America.

Now, in a stunning new direction, Clinton claims she'd nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize if he's able to bring about an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.

Actually, Trump already has been nominated several times for the other regional conflicts he's worked to resolve around the globe.

But Clinton, described as "perhaps President Donald Trump's most bitter rival," dropped her "bombshell" on a podcast.

"Honestly, if he could bring about the end to this terrible war, if he could end it without putting Ukraine in a position where it had to concede its territory to the aggressor, could really stand up to Putin — something we haven't seen, but maybe this is the opportunity — if President Trump were the architect of that, I'd nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize," she said.

"Because my goal here is to not allow capitulation to Putin."

The promise came just as Trump is heading to Alaska to hold high-stakes talks with Russian chief Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine was invaded, and Western nations, including the U.S., have delivered billions of dollars in aid over the three years of the war.

Putin lately has called for Ukraine to pull troops from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions and admit those areas are part of Russia.

Analysts have said Putin may be open to compromise, as the war has drained his nation of its military equipment, personnel and finances.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he won't agree to giving up Ukrainian land.