This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Just hours after voting no on advancing President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful" bill and the president's vow to have him primaried, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., announced he will not seek reelection.

"In Washington over the last few years, it's become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species," Tillis said.

"Democrats recently lost two such leaders who were dedicated to making the Senate more of a functional and productive legislative body. They got things done. But they were shunned after they courageously refused to cave to their party bosses to nuke the filibuster for the sake of political expediency. They ultimately retired and their presence in the Senate chamber has been sorely missed every day since.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

President Donald Trump announced on Friday after the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in a fight over nationwide injunctions from entry-level judges in the federal judiciary that a number of disputes now will be litigated.

Refugee resettlement, sanctuary cities, birthright citizenship, federal funding freezes, taxpayer money used for radical and injurious "trans" surgeries and more.

The actual dispute was over lower court judges who took over the decision-making for the executive branch and issued nationwide injunctions on Trump's birthright citizenship order. The ruling Friday didn't address that dispute.

But one senator, John Kennedy of Louisiana, put the legal controversy in terms for the common man: "Anybody who knows a law book from an L.L. Bean catalog knows that federal judges just made up the concept of universal injunctions. … If you disagree with a president or Congress, fill out a hurt feelings report – but you can't put their actions on hold because you don't like them."

The Supreme Court found that the nationwide injunctions at issue went far beyond the authority of the local judges, and those injunctions now are limited to the actual case participants.

Trump's contention is that "birthright citizenship" has been misused to deliver citizenship to any person born on U.S. soil, when the Constitution actually stipulates that citizenship goes to those who are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

A man has been convicted of a "religiously aggravated public order offense," and he's been fined more than $300, because a violent radical was so upset with the speech that he attacked him.

"That's right, a man's violent attack on another was cited as evidence of the victim's guilt," explained a report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

The case developed in London, where Kurdish-Armenian asylum seeker Hamit Coskun was accused of burning a Quran.

"Coskun ignited a new round of debate over blasphemy in the UK after burning a Quran outside London's Turkish consulate and yelling," among other themes, "Islam is a religion of terrorism."

He has said that was a protest against the "Islamist government of Erdogan," the strong-arm leader of Turkey.

As a result of Coskun's statements, London resident Moussa Kadri attacked Coskun.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

President Donald Trump says the U.S. pilots who bombed three nuclear sites in Iran Saturday are "devastated" by negative news reports in American media minimizing the damage inflicted on the Islamic Republic's nuclear weapons development.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday at the NATO Summit in the Netherlands, Trump said: "I got a call that the pilots and the people on the plane were devastated because they (the media) were trying to minimize the attack. And they all said it was hit."

"They were devastated. They put their lives on the line and they have … real scum come out and write reports that are as negative as they could possibly be. It should be the opposite. You should make them heroes and heroines.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

'If America's policy makers continue accepting these distorted narratives ... they will be compelling Americans to subsidize their own decline'

For years, the U.S.-India relationship has been sold as a mutually beneficial "strategic partnership." Trade agreements are marketed as balanced, offshoring is rebranded as economic modernization and the displacement of American workers is masked behind talking points about innovation and global cooperation.

But beneath this polished narrative lies a stark truth: The partnership has become a one-sided arrangement, heavily tilted in India's favor, enabled by U.S. multinationals, Indian lobbying and economic misdirection.

The latest example comes from the India-based Global Trade Research Initiative or GTRI, which now claims the U.S. runs a $35-$40 billion trade surplus with India. This new characterization of the trade balance between the U.S. and India uses selective accounting tactics, such as counting offshore labor operations in India as American exports, while ignoring the long-term damage to U.S. wages, employment and innovation capacity.
The official U.S. trade deficit with India, as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, remains substantial. In 2024, the United States recorded a $46.08 billion goods deficit with India, an increase from the previous year. While the Global Trade Research Initiative argues that this gap is offset by other revenue streams, such as student tuition payments, software exports, digital services and intellectual property royalties, these claims require closer scrutiny.

It's true that India is a growing consumer of U.S. technology and services. In 2024, total U.S. exports of goods and services to India reached $82.1 billion, a 10.3% increase over 2023. But imports from India also rose to $128.2 billion, up 6.7%, widening the overall trade deficit to $46.1 billion.

Reframing the deficit

The Global Trade Research Initiative attempts to reshape this trade gap by including loosely associated or tangential revenue flows in its analysis, such as digital advertising income, licensing fees and revenues earned by U.S. companies operating in India.

While these revenues may appear in corporate accounting books, they often have little to no bearing on actual trade flows between the two countries. In many cases, the value is created and consumed entirely within India, booked through third-country tax jurisdictions and excluded from official trade statistics maintained by institutions such as the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the World Trade Organization. Therefore, including such figures in bilateral trade balance calculations not only violates established global trade accounting standards, it actively obscures the real asymmetry in the U.S.-India economic relationship.

This misrepresentation is not accidental; it is intentional and serves a high-stakes political objective.

As President Donald Trump intensifies efforts to reassert America's economic sovereignty and address long-standing trade deficits, India faces pressure to open its markets, reduce tariffs and eliminate non-tariff barriers. In this context, reframing the deficit becomes a tactical necessity for India. By inflating U.S. gains through creative accounting, India seeks to portray the relationship as balanced, thereby neutralizing demands for reciprocity and delaying enforcement actions that would disrupt its export-driven model.

India has much to gain from maintaining this illusion of parity. It wants continued access to the U.S. market for goods and services, protection of its visa-dependent labor supply chain and uninterrupted flows of American capital, contracts and technology.

At the same time, it remains one of the most protectionist economies in the world, with high tariffs, opaque regulatory processes and a digital economy increasingly shielded by localization mandates and indigenous innovation schemes to become "self-reliant" India. GTRI's economic spin is thus designed to protect this one-sided arrangement by misleading American negotiators, media and lawmakers into believing India is playing fair, when in fact it is extracting significant benefits while offering minimal concessions in return.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has explicitly attacked President Trump's "protectionist" "American First" policies, saying "Many countries are becoming inward focused and globalization is shrinking, and such tendencies can't be considered lesser risks than terrorism or climate change." Meanwhile, India's policies and budgets often include import duties to "provide adequate protection to domestic industry" and "promote creation of more jobs." Critics have even remarked that India's "Make in India" slogan has become, in effect, "Protect in India."

According to Rick Rossow, former deputy director at the U.S.-India Business Council, India's strategy has always been "pro-investment and anti-trade."

By reframing the deficit through distorted metrics, India is not engaging in honest diplomacy; rather, it is executing a long-term influence strategy. And unless U.S. officials look beyond surface-level numbers and examine the underlying capital flows, labor displacements and regulatory asymmetries, the trade relationship will remain fundamentally unequal, hidden behind the illusion of balance.

One of the most egregious distortions in the Global Trade Research Initiative narrative is its treatment of Indian student spending in the United States as a form of "export revenue" contributing to a U.S. trade surplus.

According to GTRI, Indian students studying in America inject over $25 billion annually into the U.S. economy, $15 billion in tuition and $10 billion in living expenses. From this, they argue that education represents one of the most significant and undercounted U.S. "exports" to India. This is not only false, it's a deliberate manipulation of established trade definitions.

At the heart of this argument lies a fundamental misunderstanding – or willful misrepresentation – of how global trade balances are measured. Under internationally accepted accounting standards used by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, student spending is classified as "personal travel" or "consumption expenditure by nonresidents," not as a commercial export of goods or services between nations. It is a private expense made by individuals voluntarily choosing to reside temporarily in the United States.

In other words, when an Indian student pays tuition at Purdue or rents an apartment in Ann Arbor, that is not India sending American money for a product. It is an individual participating in the U.S. economy, no different than a tourist buying a Broadway ticket or a foreign national eating at a restaurant in San Francisco. GTRI attempts to retrofit these personal financial decisions into a bilateral trade framework to fabricate a U.S. surplus where none exists.

Moreover, education-related travel is already captured in the BEA's international transactions account under "Exports of Services: Travel (Education-Related)", a line item that includes all spending by international students in the U.S. But even in this context, it remains a subset of consumer spending, not the kind of commercial export one would expect in a trade negotiation or tariff discussion. Including it as a central pillar of the U.S.-India economic relationship is both misleading and irrelevant to the structural trade imbalance.

GTRI's framing also obscures the true cost of this education pipeline. While universities benefit from full-tuition international students, the broader American public does not. Indian students often use international F-1 student visas to secure U.S. work authorizations under Optional Practical Training (OPT) and STEM OPT loopholes, which allow them to work for up to three years post-graduation without being subject to employer-sponsored visa caps and labor protections.

From 2023 to 2024 there were a recorded 378,175 jobs that went to international students studying at U.S. colleges and universities. And according to the Pew Research Center, the OPT program has grown 400% from 2008-2016.

These programs, poorly monitored and exploited by multinational corporations, function as backdoor immigration channels that displace qualified American graduates in STEM and tech roles. So while universities gain revenue, the American workforce loses essential job opportunity.

If India, through its think-tank GTRI, insists on classifying student tuition payments as part of a U.S. trade surplus, then by that logic, the United States should equally account for the far larger and more impactful flows of capital into India – namely remittances, foreign aid and direct investment.

Indian students who often remit income earned during and after their education back to India contribute to a reverse flow of wealth. Once they secure employment under OPT or H-1B, their presence is frequently used by outsourcing firms to build long-term foreign labor pipelines, creating a net drain on U.S. job availability and wage growth.

In 2024 alone, India received approximately $129 billion in inward remittances, 28% of which came from the U.S. – the largest single remittance source for India's economy. These outflows represent real earned income leaving the U.S. economy and directly bolstering India's GDP. If India is going to distort trade logic by including private tuition payments as national income, then it must also reckon with the scale of wealth, investment and development subsidies flowing from the United States into India, none of which are ever acknowledged in GTRI's conveniently narrow calculations.

Misclassifying offshoring as U.S. gains

In its attempt to reframe the U.S.-India trade deficit, the Global Trade Research Initiative also misleadingly counts revenue from Global Capability Centers (GCCs) operated by U.S. corporations in India as part of a supposed American "trade surplus." This framing is fundamentally flawed. GCCs are offshore units – outsourced operations intentionally set up by U.S. firms to cut costs by shifting high-paying white-collar jobs from the United States to low-wage labor markets like India.

These centers do not generate export revenue or contribute to America's GDP. Instead, they represent capital outflows, where U.S. companies pay Indian-based employees and infrastructure to perform work that would otherwise be done by Americans. Indeed, the very function of a GCC is to replace U.S. workers with cheaper foreign labor, often reducing labor costs by 50-80% per employee.

For instance, a $140,000 software engineering role in the U.S. is commonly offshored and replaced with a $45,000 job in India, a direct wage-suppression tactic that not only destroys American incomes and career paths, but also drains local economies of tax revenue and consumer spending.

But according to GTRI's logic, because companies like Amazon, Microsoft, JPMorgan and Google generate digital services revenue from Indian-based Global Capability Centers, some of which may be booked in U.S. corporate accounts, that somehow constitutes a U.S. economic win. This is a fundamental misrepresentation of how GCCs function economically and why they are, in fact, a mechanism for capital outflow and labor arbitrage, not trade inflow.

While revenues may technically be booked in the United States, these centers do not drive American exports; rather, they displace American workers. They should be understood for what they are: job-exporting, wage-suppressing mechanisms that facilitate capital outflow, not trade inflow. U.S. multinationals have poured more than $300 billion into India over the past two decades, fueling Indian infrastructure, technology parks and manufacturing capacity. Framing them as contributors to a U.S. surplus is not only misleading; it conceals the very offshoring engine that is hollowing out the American middle class.

GTRI lumps in the gross revenues earned by U.S. digital giants (e.g., Google, Meta, Microsoft) in India without accounting for local cost and operations, revenue booking across jurisdictions and, most critically, the fact that many of these revenues are generated inside India, often through localized operations, content moderation centers and sales teams. In many cases, these companies reinvest heavily in India or engage in transfer pricing, whereby profits are booked in tax havens, not the U.S.

This maneuver lowers U.S. multinational enterprises' (MNEs) tax jurisdictions while reducing the U.S. Gross Domestic Product and raising the host country's GDP. The use of transfer pricing by digital giants to shift profits into low- or no-tax jurisdictions means revenue from Indian users may be booked in Ireland, Singapore or Bermuda, not the U.S. GTRI's assumption that this revenue counts toward the U.S. trade surplus, citing $15-20 billion in revenue as part of the U.S. trade surplus, is factually incorrect and totally misleading.

In fact, a 2020 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report clearly outlined how digital services companies structure their international operations and why revenue earned abroad is not always taxable, reportable or traceable to the United States in a way that would qualify it as part of the U.S. trade surplus.

Yet, by presenting revenue as a "U.S. surplus," GTRI implies that this money benefits the American economy. But as the Congressional Research Service notes, this revenue does not translate into U.S. tax gains or trade credit, especially when it's routed through foreign subsidiaries. The CSR report also details a 2% "Equalization Levy" – India's version of Digital Service Taxes (DSTs) – a fact undermining GTRI's claim that the revenue constitutes a legitimate U.S. trade surplus. In fact, India doesn't even view the activity as contributing to its own economy, let alone to the U.S. But the U.S. does not necessarily record those revenues as national income either, meaning neither country treats this revenue the way GTRI does.

The illusion of balance, the reality of betrayal

At its core, the Global Trade Research Initiative effort to recast the U.S.-India trade relationship as one of balance, let alone surplus, rests on economic sleight-of-hand, not statistical truth.

India's campaign to redefine the trade deficit is not a misunderstanding; it is a geopolitical tactic.

As trade negotiations with President Trump intensify, India has every incentive to soften the numbers, obscure the imbalance and delay enforcement. Its overall goal, however, is not parity, but preservation for continued access to U.S. markets, expanded visa pipelines and unfettered flows of U.S. capital and technology, all while maintaining protectionist barriers and repatriating economic gains.

Meanwhile, American workers are left jobless, American innovation is offshored and America's economic sovereignty continues to erode.

The U.S. must stop treating statistical propaganda as economic reality. GTRI's manipulated data is not just bad math, it is designed to manipulate American lawmakers into surrendering leverage at the negotiating table. If America's policy makers continue accepting these distorted narratives, they will not only fail to correct the trade deficit, but they will be compelling Americans to subsidize their own decline.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

A minister identified as being part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, commonly described as one of the most liberal organizations claiming the description "Christian," has publicly rebuked the Bible's call to share the Good News with others.

In fact, this pastor promotes the idea that, "There are people who are perfectly happy in other faiths who don't need converting to ours."

The video was posted on social media by Protestia, which monitors "theological mischief-makers."

The pastor, identified as being in the ECLA, "openly rejects the Great Commission," the report said.

"We who are in kind of progressive church circles don't tend to be real excited about the idea of running out and telling other people to change because of Jesus," she said.

That refutes one of the basic teachings in the Bible, often stated and repeated by Jesus himself, that no one reaches the Father, or heaven, without going through Jesus.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

A recent article promoting education software company Terra Dotta's new "Next Gen" platform paints a deceptively optimistic picture of a tech upgrade for international student services. It positions the tool as a critical solution for navigating compliance with the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS, the Department of Homeland Security's online system for tracking certain classes of foreign students in the U.S. But the article ignores the deeper and more ominous consequences of what Terra Dotta has actually built – a streamlined, automated pipeline from foreign student enrollment to long-term employment, bypassing essential safeguards meant to protect American workers and U.S. immigration integrity.

Beneath its glossy branding, the Next Gen platform is not merely a foreign student support tool, but an end-to-end foreign labor funnel. The software doesn't stop at admissions or visa monitoring; it actively guides students through the life cycle of employment-based immigration, from Optional Practical Training (OPT) and STEM OPT to H-1B visas – and ultimately green card sponsorship.

This automation of the visa-to-work pathway is not incidental; it's the core feature. The purpose of "Next Gen" is to ensure international students remain in the U.S. labor market long after graduation, regardless of workforce demand or labor market conditions. Thus, this is not about support, but rather about retention, conversion and exploitation, all driven by institutions that profit from international tuition and foreign labor demand.

Institutions aren't adopting Terra Dotta to better serve students; they're doing it to protect revenue. After all, international students contributed $43.8 billion to colleges and universities in the United States in 2023-2024. Their presence financially props up graduate programs, funds administrative expansion and helps universities inflate job-placement statistics through extended work authorization loopholes like STEM OPT. Tools like Terra Dotta's ensure these students stay in compliance, remain enrolled and transition smoothly into U.S. employment pipelines, often while bypassing U.S. citizens for entry-level STEM jobs.

This is a business model disguised as education, and platforms like Next Gen provide the back end infrastructure.

The worst part is the automation itself. By embedding immigration transitions into campus systems, the platform removes friction points that might otherwise catch abuse. There is no human discretion, no case-by-case analysis, no scrutiny of student merit or employer intent. If a foreign student gets flagged for SEVIS termination, the system alerts the student before any consequence hits. If a visa deadline approaches, the system nudges the student toward the next immigration category, usually one that benefits the student's institution or a tech employer looking for a cheap hire. It is an unregulated, AI-assisted visa machine that institutionalizes what should be a rigorously controlled process.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

One of the more "insurrectiony" things that those Americans arrested and persecuted by Joe Biden's Department of Justice over the J6 protests did was that they sang and recorded, while they were gathered together in a jail, the National Anthem.

President Donald Trump joined in what eventually was a fundraiser for prisoners accused of offenses like trespassing by recording the Pledge of Allegiance.

And for that, authoritarians embedded in the Biden administration wanted criminal charges filed.

It was a commentary at PJMedia that reflected on the revelations documented by Democrat emails.

"Democrats have spent months theatrically clutching their pearls over President Trump's supposed authoritarianism, and the past week reveling in their self-righteous 'No Kings' protests. But now, bombshell internal FBI emails have pulled back the curtain, catapulting their own authoritarian behavior into full view," it said.

"Rogue agents and prosecutors in Joe Biden's Department of Justice were apparently so desperate to bury Donald Trump under new criminal charges that they zeroed in on — wait for it — his involvement with the J6 prisoner choir. Yes, you read that right: the choir. The effort was based on a single, laughably partisan Forbes article. This is peak Democrat hypocrisy, folks."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

GRANTS PASS, Oregon – Two Oregon educators who were fired for expressing their opinions about gender-identity issues on their own time have won a victory in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The two women, Rachel Sager (previously Damiano), a former assistant principal, and Katie Medart, a teacher, had sued the Grants Pass School District after being fired over their production of a 2021 video, called "I Resolve," that presented ideas about how the district could handle issues surrounding the use of pronouns and restrooms amid the growing popularity of students identifying as genders counter to their biological sex. The two hoped the district would establish policies that protected student privacy, respected parental rights and labeled restrooms and changing areas based on "anatomical gender presentation."

A three-judge panel ruled Monday that the women can move forward with their lawsuit.

As reported by the Oregon Eagle, Judge Jennifer Sung wrote that there are real disputes over what the pair did and whether it disrupted the district enough to justify their firings, meaning a jury of the educators' peers may now decide whether their speech was wrongly punished by the district.

Sager and Medart's video was made at a local church during spring break on their own time, but allegations arose that they used some work time and school email accounts, and that Medart mentioned an actual student's situation in the film. As WND reported, after initially being fired, the district reinstated them but in different positions.

The educators sued the school district for violating their free speech, equal protection, Title VII rights and the Oregon Constitution. A lower court threw out their claims, but the 9th Circuit decision brings key parts of the suit back to life.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

India's leaders claim they're fighting for independence and peace. But behind the patriotic slogans and colorful summits lies a coordinated campaign of manipulation, extraction and strategic dominance, targeting America's jobs, intellectual property – and even its defense systems.

At the heart of this campaign is the concept of "Atmanirbharata," a Hindi term loosely translated as "self-reliance." Yet, as revealed during the recent Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Annual Business Summit, that term is being weaponized to justify India's growing demands for unfettered access to U.S. military technology, defense partnerships and global trade advantages.

"Atmanirbharata is the only way," said Air Chief Marshal A P Singh during the 2025 CII Summit in New Delhi. "We need to be future-ready. We need to act today and get into quick 'Make in India' programs, while 'Design in India' progresses in the near future."