This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Chuck Schumer-led Democrats in Congress, following up on their failed weeks-long shutdown of the U.S. government to try to force taxpayers to pay billions of dollars for Obamacare subsidies, have created a new plan to accomplish their goal.
But in reality the "designed to fail" agenda is all about messaging, allowing Democrats to claim Republicans don't want to extend those taxpayer subsidies.
In fact, they don't.
But the problem was created by Democrats alone, and the GOP doesn't feel an urgent need to bail them out.
The issue is that Democrats in the majority then created subsidies, paid for by taxpayers, to Obamacare premiums during the COVID-19 panic. The Democrats scheduled them to expire at the end of this month.
The result, as they are not the majority now and cannot simply extend their largesse, is that those forced into the Obamacare program are facing huge premium increases.
The Schumer Shutdown, which ended only just ended, was about forcing the GOP to raid taxpayers' pockets for some $1.5 trillion for those subsidies. Democrats failed, but now a new report at the Washington Examiner explains their latest.
They have plans to force a vote next week on their idea of extending those expensive subsidies, draining for taxpayers, for three years.
They are pushing the plan even while opposing bipartisan suggestions to address the problem.
The report said that has left Republicans charging the Democrats are in an "unserious attempt to avert skyrocketing out-of-pocket premiums."
What it would do, the report said is, "offer Democrats their latest healthcare messaging opportunity ahead of the 2026 midterm elections."
"It remained unclear whether Republicans, who said Democrats settled on a measure designed to fail, would counterprogram and offer an alternative bill to address health insurance costs," the report explained.
Schumer claimed that Republicans have only one path to work to avoid premium increases, support his agenda.
Republicans have been willing to work on compromise legislation, but they want additional abortion limits, and Democrats have flatly refused to consider that.
GOP members already have proposed shorter extensions, and just minutes before Schumer's announcement, House centrists proposal a bipartisan one-year deal.
"Opting for a more partisan route breathed new fire into Republican accusations that Democrats were insincere about blunting rising costs for most of the 24 million marketplace recipients who are forecasted to leave millions without the ability to afford insurance," the report said.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said, "This is not an offer that they're trying to get Republican buy-in at all. That's not it. This is complete messaging on their part."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A driver was rescued from likely death after a commercial cargo truck veered off a snow-covered highway in West Virginia, leaving the semi-truck cab dangling for five hours off a bridge nearly 100-feet above the ground.
According to a report at Fox Weather, at roughly 6:25 a.m. Tuesday, first responders from Hurricane Fire Department were dispatched to U.S. Route 35 in Mason County.
According to local first responders, technicians from several responding departments implemented three rope systems using two heavy "wrecker" trucks, Fox reported, operating one as an anchor to the bridge and the other to secure the dangling truck to prevent it from plummeting to the ground below.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
President Donald Trump is set to convene a meeting at the White House Monday at 5 p.m. ET to discuss the next steps regarding Venezuela.
Key members of Trump's cabinet and national security team are expected to attend, including War Secretary Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Additionally, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller will be present.
President Donald Trump indicated Thursday night that the U.S. might "very soon" start targeting alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers on land. This would expand operations that have primarily concentrated on the Caribbean Sea. Trump and Hegseth have confronted the threat directly in recent months by conducting military airstrikes against them in the Caribbean.
Does the U.S. have a moral and strategic imperative to intervene military? Breck Henderson, a retired Navy Reserve Officer and retired nuclear engineer for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, recently wrote in his Substack that "military action against the Maduro regime is not just justifiable, but imperative."
What are others saying? WorldNetDaily spoke to national security expert and retired Army Lt. Col. Darin Gaub, who agreed: "I support military action to curb or eliminate the expansion of communism in the Western hemisphere." For Gaub, "all such action must be taken within the bounds of the U.S. Constitution."
While he shares Trump's and Hegseth's serious concerns about drug trafficking, viewing it as major threat to the people of the United States, he also expresses a less frequently discussed concern: Venezuela is "an ideological launchpad for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and other aligned nations and people who seek to attack the United States' soft underbelly," explained Gaub.
The national security expert said Venezuela has long been utilized to disseminate communist influence throughout the Western hemisphere, leveraging all of South America and Central America as a way to further undermine America's stability. "Beyond the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)," he said, "terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah, who work in concert with the CCP and sympathetic organizations and people, also target the United States."
"This is why the election results in Argentina and now Chile are concerning to the CCP, Russia and Iran," he said. With potential leaders who are not sympathetic to their agenda, he added, "their foothold gets a little smaller."
Gaub also pointed out that the threats to the U.S. extend beyond communist influence and include more than just the drug cartels operating from Venezuela. "They are also the primary sources of violent criminals who were mass released from prison and escorted across our Southern border and vulnerable waterways," he explained.
To that end, drug-affiliated gangs like Venezuela's Tren de Aragua have been implicated in crimes in over a dozen states, including sex trafficking in Tennessee, ATM theft in New York, a contract killing in Florida, low-level arms dealing in Colorado and many more.
Gaub contends that various countries in South America and the Caribbean have similarly dispatched tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of criminals to the United States throughout the years.
"All of this explains why the United States is focusing so much on our own backyard and will demonstrate military and political resolve in the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean," Gaub concluded. "It is folly to think we should focus on wars in Europe and elsewhere when our enemies are so close to our shores" – and while, he added, there are also "ideological supporters within our own government."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
LOS ANGELES – A new statewide survey shows 33-year-old businessman Leo Zacky leading among California voters aged 18-44, with 31% selecting the Republican candidate as their top choice for governor in 2026.
Former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra came in second at 24%, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter at 15% and California State Controller Betty Yee at 7% – all three of them Democrats.
Other notable candidates included political commentator Steve Hilton, a Republican, at 3%, former Mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, at 2%, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Korean-American evangelical pastor Ché Ahn, both Republicans, at 1% each.
"Young voters are gravitating toward leaders who offer real-world experience and who unapologetically challenge traditional political norms and corruption," said Zacky campaign manager Ronnie Kroell. "Across the political spectrum, young voters want to see generational change – and recent elections in New York and Seattle, along with this poll, are clear indicators of that trend."
The 2026 California gubernatorial election will take place on Nov. 3, 2026. Many people believe the state's current governor, Gavin Newsom – who cannot run for a third 4-year term since the state's Constitution limits governors to two terms – has all but destroyed the state of California. Ironically, Newsom is considered the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president in 2028.
Thus, both the Democratic and Republican sides have many candidates. The most recent Democrat to announce his candidacy is disgraced U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell.
Zacky previously served as vice president of Zacky Farms and as a leader within the California Poultry Federation.
"My family business, Zacky Farms," Zacky noted recently, "was at one point the largest private employer in California and the largest poultry company on the West Coast. After nearly 100 years in business, the company was forced to close in 2018, due to suffocating regulations imposed by Sacramento and worsening economic conditions."
Describing his campaign strategy, Zacky said: "On the campaign trail, I share with voters each day the lessons I learned helping to run my family business, and what the state can do to improve on issues ranging from taxes, minimum wage, water management, homelessness, illegal immigration and much more.
"I love California and I want to make it better. To do that, those of us who offer solutions different from the leftist ruling elites and Democratic super-majority in this state have to talk to and persuade as many voters as possible, including those who might disagree."
He added: "In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's death, I vow to keep talking. It is the best way to combat violence as the tragic, destructive and criminal recourse it is for settling our political differences."
The survey was commissioned by the Zacky campaign and conducted in association with the Symphony Technology Group.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
In a shocking case of "I'm not dead yet," a woman was found alive in a coffin just moments before she was set to be cremated.
The incident took place in Thailand as Tham, a Buddhist temple in the Nonthaburi province on the outskirts of Bangkok, posted a video on its Facebook page, "revealing a woman lying in a white coffin in the back of a pickup truck, slightly moving her arms and head, leaving temple staff bewildered," according to the Associated Press.
The 65-year-old woman's brother drove her from the province of Phitsanulok to be cremated, the temple's general and financial affairs manager Pairat Soodthoop told AP.
And that's when they heard a faint knock coming from the burial box.
"I was a bit surprised, so I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled," Pairat said.
"I saw her opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the coffin. She must have been knocking for quite some time."
The brother indicated the woman had been bedridden for two years and became unresponsive. He believed she had stopped breathing and therefore presumed she died.
He then placed her in a coffin and made the 300-mile journey to a hospital to fulfill her wish of donating her bodily organs.
The hospital refused since there was no official death certificate.
The woman was sent to a nearby hospital, and Pairat said the temple would cover her medical expenses.
CBS News reports: "Similar instances of a person being found alive at funeral homes or morgues have been reported in the past."
In June 2024, a 74-year-old Nebraska woman declared dead at a nursing home was found breathing at a funeral home two hours later.
In January 2023, a 66-year-old woman was pronounced dead at an Iowa care facility after an employee said she "did not feel a pulse" and that the woman was not breathing. After she was taken to a funeral home, the woman woke up "gasping for air."
That same year, a New York funeral home found an 82-year-old woman alive and breathing shortly after she was declared dead at a nursing home.
In 2002, five officials in Shanghai, China, were punished, and a doctor had their license revoked after a video showed funeral parlor workers returning a body bag containing a live person to a retirement home.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Somalian community in Minnesota has been in the headlines recently, with a report showing massive financial support coming from it for terrorists in Africa, and President Donald Trump's decision to end protected status for the immigrants there.
But now a video has surfaced in which a Minnesota sheriff is trying to reassure the community.
In fact, he's promising that he, as a Somalian, and other Somali police officers, are there to protect Somalians.
"As Somalian police officers, we work for you (Somalians) day and night, we stand for you and serve you," he said. "You know, we came to this country as refugees. There were no Somalian police officers, so now that we have been hired, it means we are working for our own people (Somalians). We understand the culture, we understand the language, we understand the way of life.
"That's why we are different from foreigners or white officers. We help bridge that gap. Know this, every Somalian police officer, whether you're in the homeland or aboard, works for you (Somalians)."
The sheriff was speaking Somalian during his announcement.
Social media comments included, "Minnesotastan" and "His priorities are misaligned. He should be concerned about every citizen…"
Another said, "There is a problem in Minnesota."
Actually, a recent research project by City-Journal is charging that because of the huge Somalian community that has moved into Minnesota as well as its reliance on public programs, and the ability to channel money back to Somalia, Minnesota state taxpayers now are the biggest single source of funding for the Muslim terror network of al-Shabaab.
The report charges the Minnesota social programs are drowning in fraud, and "Billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim Walz alone. Democratic state officials, overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the country, are asleep at the switch. And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to connect the dots."
The schemes involve hundreds of millions of dollars.
Because of the reporting, Trump ordered an end to the Temporary Protected Status for Somalis in Minnesota.
Federal officials may designate that status if nationals cannot return safely to their home countries.
"Minnesota, under Governor Waltz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity. I am, as President of the United States, hereby terminating, effective immediately the Temporary Protected Status (TPS program) for Somalis in Minnesota. Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from. It's OVER!," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
In fact, a Somali police officer a few years back was accused of shooting and killing a Minneapolis woman who had called police for help.
Justine Diamond had recently gotten engaged. She called police twice to report what apparently was an attack in her neighborhood, and as she approached the responding police car, Mohamed Mohamed Noor, an officer, shot and killed her. He was convicted of murder but was later sentenced to prison for manslaughter, and he has since been released.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Two leftist organizations have filed court action because two leftist states are failing to comply with a clearly leftist agenda point.
It is Courthousenews that revealed the Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Environmental Health have sued the Trump administration, through the Environmental Protection Agency, because California and Colorado have air pollution.
The complaint involves the State Implementation Plans submitted by the states.
"To set national air quality standards, each state or air regulator in the U.S. submits a State Implementation Plan with a timeline to tackle pollution," the report explained. "With the EPA's approval within two years of submission of such a state plan, a Federal Implementation Plan is enacted.
"Numerous SIP elements, submitted by both the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District (California) and the State of Colorado for the West Mojave Desert and Denver Metro/North Front Range nonattainment areas, respectively, have now languished before EPA, without receiving final approval or disapproval, for years," the lawsuit charges.
"Additionally, EPA has failed to promulgate a FIP for Colorado, after partially disapproving its SIP two years ago."
The claims are that the federal government is underserving the California and Colorado residents.
"Trump's EPA is forcing millions of people to breathe extremely harmful levels of smog, day after day," Ryan Maher, of the Center for Biological Diversity, charged. "As this administration gives handout after handout to the fossil fuel industry and other polluters, we're counting on the courts to step in and protect public health."
Of course, most of the time during which the EPA allegedly didn't act was under the supervision of the Joe Biden administration.
"The plaintiffs say that the agency has sat on plans submitted by California in 2020 and 2023 and failed to take action by May 2025, as the act requires," the report said. Trump had been in office only a few months at that time.
"With regard to Colorado, the 'EPA disapproved the SIP revisions ¬— submitted by Colorado on May 14, 2018, May 13, 2020, March 22, 2021, May 18, 2021, and May 20, 2022 — citing their lack of 'sufficient reporting requirements,' which illegally undermine the ability of the public to enforce the rules being incorporated into Colorado's SIP,' causing further delay and prompted the organizations to file suit," the report said.
So after years of inaction by the Biden administration, the lawsuit now is trying to "push the EPA to act as soon as possible."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Letitia James, the Democrat New York attorney general who campaigned on a promise to "get" President Donald Trump, then took him to court and obtained a $500 million penalty against him only to see it tossed because of its unconstitutionality, is facing "damning" evidence against her in a mortgage fraud case.
Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney for eastern Virginia, has released a cache of evidence related to the alleged mortgage fraud case pending against James.
According to the Washington Examiner, it is Mike Davis, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who delivered the verdict on the evidence that showed "that she lied to the lending bank, the IRS, and her homeowners' insurer."
Halligan secured an indictment against James last month on counts of bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution.
"The charges stem from allegations that James lied on a 2020 mortgage application to obtain favorable loan terms for a Virginia property," the report said.
Among the evidence now public is that her "Affidavit of Occupancy" showed her stating under oath her Norfolk residences was a "secondary home," like a vacation home.
Her primary residence, she said, was elsewhere.
But witnesses have confirmed James's niece and three children lived there full-time.
"In her homeowner's insurance application, James claimed that the home would be unoccupied for five months out of the year, despite it being occupied the whole year," the report said. And, "In another insurance application, James claimed only one person would be occupying the house, an adult, and no children."
If convicted, the Democrat could spend years in jail.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
In a state that long has pursued an aggressive anti-Christian agenda through its official actions, including the LGBT activism of homosexual Gov. Jared Polis, it now is school children who are being targeted, according to a report from ADF's legal team.
That group now has filed a briefing with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opposing a school district policy that "directs that students should be 'assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share the student's gender identity' rather than rooming by sex."
Further, officials in the district involved, Jefferson County, refuse "to give parents truthful, pertinent information about their children's overnight accommodations, thus hampering parents' ability to make informed decisions about their children's education and privacy."
The school simply lets children say they are boys or girls, and then assigns roommates for overnight outings based on what the children say.
Joe and Serena Wailes, Bret and Susanne Roller, Rob and Jade Perlman, Daniel and Annette Brinkman, and their children are challenging the district's decision to violate "parents' fundamental right to make decisions about the upbringing and education of their children."
Colorado's antagonism toward Christianity and Christians dates back more than a decade. Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop has been in the courts for that long for refusing to submit his Christian faith to the progressive LGBT agenda in which state officials believe.
That's despite the state losing at the U.S. Supreme Court in the fight.
Same thing happened with the state's demand that a web designer violate up her Christian faith in order to operate her business. Colorado lost again at the Supreme Court, and taxpayers there were billed millions for state officials to waste in their legal fight.
Right now the Supreme Court is considering whether to allow the state to censor pro-Christian comments by counselors, who are urged to deliver pro-LGBT ideologies to young clients. And the state recently attempted to impose its transgender beliefs on a Christian children's camp.
Further, the state is in court trying to defend its decision to discriminate against Christian preschools. Under a state "universal" preschool program, children are provided free preschool services, unless they choose a preschool linked to the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, and in those cases they are discriminated against.
In the Jefferson County fight, the families are asking the court to stop school-district officials from requiring their children to share bedrooms and shower facilities with students of the opposite sex on school-sponsored overnight trips, ADF explained.
The district's practices violate "the families' free exercise, bodily privacy, and parental rights."
"Parents, not government bureaucrats, have the right and responsibility to direct the upbringing and education of their children, and that includes making informed decisions to protect their children's privacy," said ADF lawyer Kate Anderson. "This fundamental right is especially vital for all parents who wish to raise their children according to their religious values and protect their children's bodily privacy. Jefferson County Public Schools claims to 'freely grant accommodations to all,' yet they will not offer equal accommodations to religious students to access educational opportunities without sacrificing their bodily privacy."
The district, in practice, tells parents when their children are on overnight outings sponsored by schools, that "girls will be roomed together on one floor, and boys will be roomed together on a different floor."
But then officials allow a boy who says he is a girl to room on the girls' floor.
The district's operations stunningly assigned a male to share a bed with the Waileses' 11-year-old daughter on a trip.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Onetime popular entertainer Rosie O'Donnell has become a one-person attack machine against President Donald Trump these days.
She "seems to spend much of her days in a constant rave about Trump, Republicans, and the demise of the United States from her new home in Ireland. That is fine and an exercise of free speech. However, it may have crossed the line into defamation in her latest posting," explained constitutional expert Jonathan Turley in a commentary.
In fact, she said, "Did you think it a million years that they would reelect a man who orchestrated an insurrection against the government? They would reelect that guy with all the charges of sex abuse? — the adjudicated rapist…And then I just saw this thing today about all the cases he's settled with children, children's families, accusations about him, that he chose to settle. … When are we going to be able to go, 'We're grown up enough to understand that this kind of deviant, psychotic, mentally ill behavior goes on at the highest level sometimes, and no matter where it goes on, it is our duty to stop it.'"
Turley, whose expertise in the Constitution and the law has qualified him to advise Congress on those issues, even represent members in court, explained the issue.
"O'Donnell may have supplied the president with another defamation case if she cannot back up sensational claims made against the President to her 2.9 million TikTok followers. She states as a fact that the president is an 'adjudicated rapist' and settled child abuse cases."
Turley noted about a year ago, O'Donnell called Trump a "rapist" and a "serial pedophile rapist."
A previous case involving such allegations resulted in a jury refusing to "adjudicate" Trump a "rapist," prompting a leftist judge to issue his own condemnation of Trump.
"Nevertheless, Trump was not legally 'adjudicated' to be a rapist," the commentary said.
Further, "MSNBC and the show 'Morning Joe,' for example, quickly retracted a statement that Trump was a 'rapist,'" he continued. "The second claim is that Trump settled with the 'children's families' over abuse cases."
O'Donnell wasn't even "clear what the basis for this allegation is," Turley said. "It is not clear if O'Donnell can produce support for the claim. If she cannot, it would certainly constitute 'per se' defamation."
He said, "The common law has long recognized per se categories of defamation where damages are presumed and special damages need not be proven. These include: (1) disparaging a person's professional character or standing; (2) alleging a person is unchaste; (3) alleging that a person has committed a criminal act or act of moral turpitude; (4) alleging a person has a sexual or loathsome disease; and (5) attacking a person's business or professional reputation."
A "couple of these categories" could be triggered by O'Donnell's statements.
"That she said this to millions of followers only magnifies the general damages presumed in such cases. Unless O'Donnell can argue truth as a defense with credible support for such settlements, she may have just given Trump a golden opportunity to pursue his long-time critic."