This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
By Matt Bailey, WorldNetDaily Washington correspondent
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, a "shadow government" at a Monday news conference on Capitol Hill.
Schumer and others from the Democratic caucus had gathered the media to discuss the Elon Musk-helmed agency gaining access to the Treasury Department's payment system.
The five gathered Democrats – Sens. Schumer, Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, Patty Murray, and Brian Schatz – argued DOGE had no authority to access the payment system. They claimed Musk had "illegally" accessed the system.
At one point, Sen. Warren claimed that DOGE had "raided" the Treasury to gain access to the system. As of this reporting, that is not accurate, and it appears Treasury Secretary Scott Bissent has cooperated with DOGE's efforts to access the Treasury.
The Democrats also argued President Donald Trump has no authority to interfere with congressionally approved funding.
Unfortunately for the senators, this is incorrect. In fact, the DOGE office is a reworking of an Obama-era agency known as the United States Digital Service. Just as with DOGE, the Digital Service was created unilaterally by the president.
What was on display today was a reaction to Trump doing exactly what he said he would do: cut the government down to size and get it to work for the American people. Elon Musk claims to have already found what he's calling "fraudulent" payments that Treasury officials were directed to hand out, no questions asked.
Donald Trump has created an agency whose sole job it is to look under the hood of government institutions. This has establishment bureaucrats on both sides of the aisle terrified, and for good reason.
The questions about DOGE stalling payments already authorized by congress is at this point a hypothetical. But it is a net positive that the executive branch, as part of the checks and balances that make our government work, now has the ability to audit the fund that congress is approving.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
President Donald Trump is withdrawing America support, again, from the United Nations' Human Rights Council, according to a Politico report.
He also is pausing funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that was set up specifically to give money to Palestinians, an organization that was revealed to have had employees take part in the Oct. 7, 2024, terror attack by Hamas on Israel.
The publication said it obtained a document outlining the plans.
The moves are like what President Trump did during his first term in office, from 2016-2020.
The HRC long has faced accusations that it gives cover to governments with human rights abuses,
The report explained UNRWA is the "main agency" giving money to the population in Gaza, where Hamas has ruled for years already.
Several staff members were dismissed by the U.N. when it was revealed they may have been involved in the Oct. 7 terror.
The report said a fact sheet from the White House said the Human Rights Council "has not fulfilled its purpose and continues to be used as a protective body for countries committing horrific human rights violations."
Specifically, the council's repeated attacks on Israel were condemned.
"The UNHRC has demonstrated consistent bias against Israel, focusing on it unfairly and disproportionately in council proceedings. In 2018, the year President Trump withdrew from the UNHRC in his first administration, the organization passed more resolutions condemning Israel than Syria, Iran, and North Korea combined," the document explained.
President Trump's order is reported to require Secretary of State Marco Rubio to review and report to the White House "which international organizations, conventions, or treaties that 'promote radical or anti-American sentiment,' with a particular focus on UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization."
That division of the U.N. lost American support several years ago over an anti-Israel bias.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Tech companies across America were surprised this week by a Chinese announcement about an artificial intelligence advance, and industry-wide, stocks were off a couple of percentage points.
One report described the industry as "freaking out" and another said the stocks "crashed," although the industry itself was off only a modest amount and even individual stocks in companies that were impacted directly by the development were off only about 10% or thereabouts.
The word was that Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek had "leapfrogged" U.S. performance for AI.
The Nasdaq Composite of tech companies was down 3.4% and the Dow was off 180 points.
It was DeepSeek, launched only a week ago, that announced it had succeeded in building an AI model on a "shoestring budget."
DeepSeek reported of its language model to generate human-like conversation.
Reports purport that the model already has been tested against America's software giants like ChatGPT, and in some cases outperformed them.
Experts say the development is a "wake-up" to American tech operations.
The news comes following an announcement from President Donald Trump of a $500 billion investment in a new AI idea called "Stargate," that would include OpenAI and ChatGPT.
The news comes after the now-gone Joe Biden administration had tried to hamper China's AI industry.
The market already had exhibited fluctuations in recent days as investors assess the impact of President Trump's economic agenda, which focuses on American first and buying American.
It includes plans for tax changes, tariffs, imports and exports and much more.
NBC News reported also hit with stock drops of 2% to 4% were various tech giants including Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet.
Reuters reported DeepSeek claimed its programming uses cheaper computer chips and less data. Interest in the claims immediately pushed its product past ChaptGPT as the top-rated free application on Apple's App Store.
In the report, Adam Sarhan, CEO of 50 Park Investments, said the question is whether the Chinese operation can disrupt other plans.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The latest outbreak of what is a growing problem – schoolchildren accessing X-rated and other explicit content on school iPads or websites – has left a government education official demanding action.
It is the Christian Institute that is reporting the Scottish Government's education secretary is calling for action, following an episode where children as young as 10 in Edinburgh were able to access porn on school iPads.
Jenny Gilruth, MSP, contacted local councils across Scotland to ensure that "safety protocols are regularly reviewed" to guarantee that the issue "is not replicated in other parts of the country," the institute reported.
One parent confirmed that students as young as 10 and 11 were able to view explicit images like "erotic hanging, strangulation and drowning … and theoretically unlimited porn" by misspelling blocked terms, the report said.
Miles Briggs, the MSP for Lothian, warned, "This incident is a wakeup call for Edinburgh council and the Scottish government to ensure that robust measures are put in place, so that this does not happen again."
A lawmaker on Edinburgh's Education, Children and Families Committee said the priority now is the safety of children, and possible enhancements are being reviewed in light of the situation.
The government actually has a law for online safety, and its requirements are being implemented on a phased basis.
The same situation – offensive X-rated and other materials – also has appeared periodically in the United States.
A few years ago, officials at Pacific Justice Institute went to court in a fight between the Florida Citizens Alliance and the Broward County Public Schools.
At that time the school was declining to comply with public records requests concerning whether it was exposing children to porn.
WND also reported a few years earlier on a fight that developed in Colorado over a school district's decision to give children access to an online database that contained offensive material.
A lawsuit at the time named EBSCO, the online library company, for allegedly brokering "pornographic database to schools and libraries."
It was the Cherry Creek School District that at that time discontinued its contract with EBSCO after parents complained.
Information that had been available to students included "How to have oral sex," "How to have anal sex" and "How to have vaginal sex."
The non-profit MassResistance discovered at the time EBSCO works with 55,000 schools.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Supplicants are defined as a "person making a humble or earnest plea to someone in power or authority."
Or, according to Steve Bannon, a former strategist for President Trump, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.
They are the leaders of SpaceX and Twitter, Facebook's empire, and Amazon – all billionaires a hundred times over or more.
They have been given seats at today's presidential inauguration for Trump, to his second term in office, and they are now, in Bannon's description, seeking favor from the new president.
"As soon as [Mark] Zuckerberg said, 'I've been invited. I'm going,' the floodgates opened up and they were all there knocking, trying to be supplicants. So I look at this and I think most people in our movement look at this as President Trump broke the oligarchs, he broke them and they surrendered."
It was noted that, for a time, the social media companies banned Trump from being on their sites. He ended up creating the competing Truth Social at that time.
Bannon, who was targeted, and actually went behind bars for a time as part of the Democrats' lawfare against Trump, said the billionaires' appearance at Trump's inauguration is an "official surrender" to Trump.
Bannon was sentenced for declining to give to ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's January 6 committee details that were covered by executive privilege, a standard that the committee refused to allow.
The PostMillennial explained Bannon's comments came during an interview on ABC.
The report explained, "Tech leaders have shown signs of softening controversial policies in the wake of Trump's victory. Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook would eliminate its fact-checking services, adopting a community notes system similar to X. He also appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, where he criticized the Biden administration and admitted that under his leadership, the federal government pressured Facebook to censor certain posts."
Bannon also warned against trusting Zuckerberg too much. He cited the $400 million plus that Zuckerberg handed out to elections officials during the 2020 race who used it mostly for recruiting voters in Democrat districts. Bannon called that criminal.
It was one of two undue influences documented on the 2020 results, the other being the FBI's decision to interfere in the results by describing the Biden family scandals documented in Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop computer as Russians disinformation, when in fact it all was true.
"Zuckerberg's, you know, road to Damascus came a little late. It was after the Fifth of November," Bannon explained. "It's very, you know, now wants to be a bro. He Kung Fu fights. He's going to UFC. He's got his hair done differently. He's, he's cut. That doesn't hack it with me. That guy will flip on President Trump and he'll flip on us in the second. When it's convenient for him. He will flip."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The status of a Palestinian "state" is the core issue around which much of the violence – the repeated terrorist assaults on Israel – has revolved for years.
That's even though there are multiple Arab states just over the national boundary.
But a new treatise developed by Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, emeritus, at Harvard Law School, has identified the reason that the Palestinians don't have the "state" that they demand.
It's because they have refused it. Over and over.
Dershowitz explains, at the Gatestone Institute website, that the Jews in the Middle East previously "agreed to Palestinian statehood," again and again.
"In 1937-1938, 1947-1948, 1967, 2000-2001, and 2007. In each case, it was the Palestinian leadership that refused to agree to the two-state solution," he documented.
Back in 1937, before the Jewish state was declare, he said, "the Arabs categorically rejected (the Peel partition plan), demanding that all of Palestine be placed under Arab control and that most of the Jewish population of Palestine be 'transferred' — ethnically cleansed — out of the country."
At that time, the Palestine Royal Commission Report found that because of the "general hostility and hatred of the Jews by the Muslims," sharing a land was ruled out.
"Nor could the Jews be expected to accept Muslim rule over them," since Arab leaders, at that time, were allied with Adolf Hitler.
That plan was for a Jewish majority land in several small strips by the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, while the planned Arab state was several times larger, including the Negev, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"The Peel Commission implicitly recognized that it was not so much that the Arabs wanted self-determination as that they did not want the Jews to have self-determination or sovereignty over the land the Jews themselves had cultivated and in which they were a majority," he wrote.
After World War II, the U.N. recommended partition, again.
The Arab leaders again rejected it. "They did not want a Palestinian state. And they wanted there to be no Jewish state," he explained.
On declaring its own statehood, Israel immediately was invaded by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, with help from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Libya.
The agenda later included the "three no's." No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
'These companies should only be maximizing returns for investors, not working to advance their radical climate change agenda by leveraging their holdings and pressuring American energy companies'
Multiple states have joined in a lawsuit against several major investors in the coal industry taking their climate change ideology too far – and threatening the nation's energy supply.
Fox News reports Wyoming, Texas, West Virginia, and eight other states have gone to court against BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, charging the industrial investing giants bought into and then used their leverage with various coal companies to "artificially" limit the industry.
"These companies should only be maximizing returns for investors, not working to advance their radical climate change agenda by leveraging their holdings and pressuring American energy companies," charged West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.
According to the report, he warned his state stood to be directly harmed by the actions alleged as coal-fired power plants account for nearly 90% of Mountaineers' electricity generation in 2022.
Other states that are plaintiffs in the case include Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, and Nebraska.
The West Virginia Office of Miners' Health & Safety reported that 55,000 West Virginians work in coal mines as of 2023.
Ken Paxton, the attorney general for Texas, said, "Texas will not tolerate the illegal weaponization of the financial industry in service of a destructive, politicized 'environmental' agenda.
"BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street formed a cartel to rig the coal market, artificially reduce the energy supply, and raise prices. Their conspiracy has harmed American energy production and hurt consumers. This is a stunning violation of state and federal law."
A report at Cowboy State Daily explained Wyoming's concerns.
The report said the lawsuit is over "three massive investors" who are accused of "colluding to downsize coal companies in the name of achieving net-zero carbon emissions, driving up energy prices for Americans, and monopolizing the market in the process."
The report explained the defendants "all acquired large percentages of major coal companies, then used their influence to bully the companies into cutting production."
A statement from Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon's office said the defendants, each, "have individually acquired substantial stockholdings in every significant publicly held coal producer in the United States. Each thereby has acquired the power to influence the policies of these competing companies and significantly diminish competition in the coal markets."
The defendants in 2021 had confirmed they would be activists in the climate agenda, with goals of cutting coal out of the energy production industry as much as possible.
Gordon said, "Under the guise of ESG policies, (the investors) have leveraged their holdings and voted their shares to artificially constrain the supply of coal and significantly diminish competition in the markets for coal, which resulted in increased energy prices for American consumers and extraordinary profits for the asset managers."
The case seeks a court declaration the companies "violated an anti-monopoly federal law; to award damages to the states; to stop the investors from using their stock, proxy voting or other means to restrain coal output; and make the investors pay civil fines and penalties for violating a Texas business law, among other penalties," the report said.
The investors own about 30% of Peabody Energy, 34% of Arch Resources, and small portions of other coal companies, like Black Hills Corp., the report said.
Congress, since 1914, has banned acquiring stock where the effect is to substantially lessen competition.
The report explained, "From 2019 through 2022, Peabody Energy's production fell by 34.7 million tons or 25.5%, says the complaint. Its revenues rose by $358.5 million during the same period, and its profits soared by $1.593 billion, or 853.9%. Arch Resources' production fell by 9.4 million tons over that timeframe, or 11.7%, while its revenues rose by $1.448 billion and its profits skyrocketed by $1.097 billion, or 469.2%, says the complaint."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
In Rod Serling's famous television series, "The Twilight Zone," there was a fascinating episode called "What You Need" (Season 1, Episode 12, Dec. 25, 1959), based on a 1945 short story of the same name by Lewis Padgett. It told the story of a kind, elderly neighborhood street peddler, Mr. Pedott, who had the uncanny ability to provide his customers with just what they needed shortly before it was needed.
Pedott enters a nearby bar, where he first gives a woman at the counter a small bottle of cleaning fluid from his case. Then he gives an unemployed former Chicago Cubs pitcher a bus ticket to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Moments later, the baseball player receives a call on the bar's pay phone offering a coaching position for a minor league team in Scranton. His excitement is diminished when he notices a spot on his jacket. He wished he could remove it so that he might look his best when he met his new employers in Scranton. The woman offers to use the cleaning fluid she received from Pedott to scrub it out. Later in the episode, Pedott was provided with what he needed to save his life from the murderous intent of a small-time crook seeking to exploit him.
Pedott's gift of providing people with what they need at the proper time is a reminder of God's timely provision for the needs of His children for their benefit. This is true at all times, but especially in trying times.
After the death of his father, Omri, Ahab (874–853 B.C.) became king of Israel and followed his evil example. Encouraged by his Phoenician wife Jezebel, he led Israel more than all the kings before him into rebellion against God through the worship of Baal (1 Kings 16:28-33).
Because of the unfaithfulness of the leadership and the nation, God sent the prophet Elijah to tell King Ahab that rain would not fall. For more than three years, severe famine plagued the land, and an angry and desperate Ahab sought to find Elijah, even earnestly seeking him in other nations (1 Kings 18:1-18).
During this terrible time, God protected Elijah and provided him with what he needed at the proper time (1 Kings 17). He told him to hide east of the Jordan River by a small brook called Cherith, where he would have water to drink. The Lord also sent ravens in the morning and evening to bring him bread and meat.
When the brook dried up due to the drought, God sent Elijah to stay at a widow's home in the Phoenician city of Zerephath, where he lodged in the room on the roof accessible from outside the house. When he arrived, he asked her for some water and bread, but she revealed her desperate poverty. She told him that all she had was a handful of flour and a little oil that she was going to prepare, along with a few sticks, for herself and her son as their last meal.
Elijah told her to make a bread cake for him first, then make one for herself and her son, prophesying that as long as the drought and famine continued, the Lord would make sure that neither the flour nor the oil ran out. On another occasion, when her son became sick and died, the Lord, through Elijah, restored his life. So God provided the widow and her son with what they needed at the proper time: sustenance and life, which strengthened their faith in the God of Israel.
A man encouraged by this biblical account was Christian evangelist and pastor George Müller (1805–1898), who, with his wife, established orphanages in Bristol, England.
Müller was in continual prayer and dependent on God's provision through donors for food, clothing, and money. One of many documented examples of this was a time when the children were sitting around the breakfast table, though there was nothing to eat in the house. As they finished thanking God for His provision, the baker knocked on the door with enough fresh bread to feed everyone, and the milkman gave them plenty of fresh milk because his cart had broken down in front of the orphanage.
Throughout his ministry, the Lord provided Müller with what he needed when he needed it to care for and educate more than 10,000 orphans. He never solicited financial support, nor did he go into debt. Every morning after breakfast, there was a time for Bible reading and prayer. The children were well nourished, dressed,d and educated, preparing them for a godly, productive life.
As many of us struggle to make ends meet in this environment of increasing costs for food, fuel, clothing, health care, and other essentials, we may be tempted to forget God's ability to provide for our needs and lose hope.
The Lord Jesus said these words in a country ruled by the Roman Empire, which imposed oppressive taxes that impoverished most of its people:
"Do not worry then, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear for clothing?' For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (Matthew 6:31-33, emphasis added.)
The prophet Elijah, the widow of Zerephath and her son, George Müller, and countless other faithful through the centuries who lived through challenging and dreadful times found their trust in the Lord justified and strengthened in His timely provision for their needs (Philippians 4:6-19).
Have faith in God through His Son Jesus Christ, and seek His righteousness, not your own, to be reconciled with Him. Famine, financial hardship, oppressive rulers, war, or any other severe circumstances cannot prevent Him from providing what you need when you need it and taking you home to His kingdom, where want is no more (Revelation 7:9-17).
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
7:09 p.m.: Google caught electioneering for Kamala, then promises to fix its system
It happened when people asked where they could vote for President Donald Trump, Google would send them to "top stories" and eventually to the Trump campaign website.
"But users who searched 'Where can I vote for Harris?' were immediately shown a link provided by Democracy Works and Voting Information Project that allows voters to enter an address and be directed to their nearest polling location," the Federalist report said.
6:23 p.m.: Man arrested for threatening to shoot Trump supporters
The FBI has arrested a man from Ann Arbor, Michigan, for allegedly posting plans to carry out a shooting on Trump's Christian supporters.
5:44 p.m.: Pretender in chief: WATCH Kamala get caught faking a phone call to a voter
4:48 p.m.: Iowa: Some ballots to be hand counted as machines fail reported by the Des Moines Register, voting machines in some Story County precincts failed to work, resulting in the decision to hand count ballots beginning after polls close Tuesday night.
Story County Auditor Lucy Martin told the Register machines did not read "certain ballot styles" at about 12 of the county's 45 polling locations.
3:39 p.m.: Video emerges of Kamala Harris getting caught staging a visit to the home of Pennsylvania voters
In the last few hours of the night before the 2024 presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris was caught on video staging a home visit to Pennsylvanian voters in Reading.
2:14 p.m.: China issues message to President Trump and Kamala Harris on Election Day
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have both been sent a message from China on Election Day – China will not interfere in U.S. elections and hopes to collaborate with the U.S. regardless of the results.
2:13 p.m.: Misprinted ballots, broken machines in Southern state
At least three Alabama voting sites were experiencing problems with voting Tuesday morning, reports the Montgomery Advertiser.
12:54 p.m.: Ballot-scanning malfunction in key battleground state
A Pennsylvania judge has ordered voting to be extended until 10 p.m. Eastern Tuesday after a "malfunction" prevented voters in Cambria County from scanning their ballots.
12:25 p.m.: Trump thanks his election workers in West Palm Beach, Florida
11:45 a.m.: President Trump shreds Fox News and Oprah Winfrey in Palm Beach, Florida, on Election Day
Former President Donald Trump blasted Fox News and Oprah Winfrey moments after casting his ballot Tuesday morning, saying the network and the left-leaning cultural icon should be "ashamed" of themselves.
"You know who else should be ashamed? Fox. Because I've seen Oprah on Fox about 50 times making the same statement. And I think it's a disgrace what Fox does. Everyone thinks Fox is so pro-Trump. They're not pro-Trump at all."
11:44 a.m.: President Donald Trump urges Republican voters to stay in line after casting his vote in Palm Beach, Florida
Trump says: "I'd like the Republicans to stay in line. Democrats, if they like, they can leave, but I'd like the Republicans to stay in line."
11:23 a.m.: Real Clear Politics predicts Trump will win the election and retake the White House
10:35 a.m.: Prayers around the globe for a Trump victory
In a stunning development on America's Election Day, there are prayers going on around the world for President Donald Trump, reported by pollsters in a neck-and-neck race with leftist Kamala Harris to guide the nation for the next four years.
9:16 a.m.: JD Vance speaks to reporters after voting in Cincinnati, Ohio
7:00 a.m. (Tuesday, Nov. 5): Polls open in numerous states in the Eastern Time Zone.
9:21 p.m. (Monday, Nov. 4): Joe Rogan joins Elon Musk in endorsing Trump on Election Eve
Popular podcast host Joe Rogan threw his full support behind former President Donald Trump on Monday, just one day before the election.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Barack Obama, who once publicly complained to Americans about how they were not like him, blasting them for getting "bitter," and condemning how "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them," now says he cannot understand how Americans can be so divided.
"How we got so toxic and just so divided and so bitter," he said.
But it is a report at the Daily Wire that enlightens him.
The report explained that Obama, campaigning for the word salad-generating Kamala Harris, who holds at least partial responsibility for the Biden-Harris record of stunningly high inflation, a porous southern border that is threatening multiple facets of American life, a push for transgenderism and abortion that has alarmed many Americans, and more, was at a rally for her.
"I don't understand how we got so toxic and just so divided and so bitter," he complained. "I get why sometimes people just don't want to pay attention to it. And we all have friends like that; we have family members who are just like, 'Ahh, y'know, it's all a circus out there.'"
Then the report documented "Obama's own rhetoric" and that from other Democrats, that "has fanned the flames of division."
Among the points made in the report:
A Rasmussen poll in July 2016, before he left office, found 60% of Americans reporting race relations "worse" under Obama's tenure.
And Obama's insistence, in 2008, "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
And he said in 2008, "I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face."
And he said in 2010, about Republicans, "They see an opportunity to take back the House, maybe take back the Senate. If they're successful in doing that, they've already said they're going to go back to the same policies that were in place during the Bush administration. That means that we are going to have just hand-to-hand combat up here on Capitol Hill."
And he said in 2014, "This (racism) is something that's deeply rooted in our society, deeply rooted in our history."
And, the report explained, in 2016, at a memorial for five Dallas police officers ambushed and gunned down by a man who "wanted to kill white people," said, "America, we know that bias remains. We know it. Whether you are black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or of Middle Eastern descent, we have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point. We've heard it at times in our own homes. If we're honest, perhaps we've heard prejudice in our own heads and felt it in our own hearts. We know that. And while some suffer far more under racism's burden, some feel to a far greater extent discrimination's sting. Although most of us do our best to guard against it and teach our children better, none of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police departments. We know this."
Also, Sen. Maxine Waters, an extremist from California, once insisted that Democrats actually track down Republicans in stores, on streets, and more, and essentially run them out of those venues.