Important Takeaways:
- The clock is ticking towards a possible government shutdown at midnight Friday.
- A measure to keep the government open for three more months was rejected by President-elect Trump and other Republicans.
- The 1,500-page spending bill that included pay increases for members of Congress received enormous backlash from Trump who called on lawmakers to go back to the drawing board and pass a better bill before he takes office on January 20, 2025.
- Likewise, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who have been tapped to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency, both blasted the bill for earmarking vast amounts of taxpayer dollars on frivolous items.
- Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus also complained the bill was packed with wasteful spending.
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Important Takeaways:
- Health officials have said that the overall risk to the American population is low, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 61 human cases of the bird flu since April 2024.
- On Wednesday, California governor Gavin Newsom, whose state has seen the bulk of the cases confirmed so far, issued a state of emergency in connection with the bird flu
- Although the majority of the reported cases have come with only mild symptoms, this week the agency reported a new severe case of the virus discovered in Louisiana that resulted in hospitalization for the patient
- The Louisiana Department of Health tells CNN that the patient in question is older than 65 and is currently hospitalized in critical condition with “severe respiratory illness,” but also has other underlying health conditions.
- “While an investigation into the source of the infection in Louisiana is ongoing, it has been determined that the patient had exposure to sick and dead birds in backyard flocks,” the agency said, noting that this is also the first bird-flu case to be traced back to backyard flocks.
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Important Takeaways:
- With Hezbollah in Lebanon disabled and Hamas’ strength waning, Houthi rebels in Yemen have been launching missiles at Israel, and Israel is striking back.
- Israeli airstrikes pounded the rebel regime in Yemen early Thursday after the Houthis launched another missile at Israel – one of several fired at the Jewish state in recent days.
- Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to huddle with top officials to discuss a hostage deal that may be fast approaching.
- A Palestinian negotiator told the BBC the talks are in the final stage. Though issues remain, it may include a six-week ceasefire, during which Hamas would free 30 of the remaining 100 hostages.
- IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said from Gaza that Israeli troops continue to do their part there.
- “We are exerting pressure on Hamas daily, driving it into greater distress, to ensure the return of the 100 hostages,” Halevi said.
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Important Takeaways:
- President-elect Donald Trump is weighing his options to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon, including preemptive airstrikes that would end years of containing Tehran with sanctions, according to a new report.
- Members of Trump’s transition team are reviewing the military strike option more closely now following the recent upheavals in the Middle East, including the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and Israel’s decimation of Tehran terror proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, the Wall Street Journal reported.
- Uzi Rabi, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University, said Trump has a “great opportunity” to end the Middle East conflict and halt Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions.
- Trump recently said in his interview with Time magazine that America could go to war with Iran after investigators found that Tehran had once plotted to assassinate him.
- The US could also sell additional advanced weapons to Israel, including bunker-busting bombs, to pressure Tehran with a foe that has hit its nuclear facilities in the past.
- “Anything can happen,” he told the magazine that named him 2024 Person of the Year. “It’s a very volatile situation.”
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Important Takeaways:
- While much national attention is on the first 100 days of the Trump 2.0 presidency, there is growing reason to be concerned about the final days of Joe Biden’s term.
- Among those with a powerful interest in disrupting the peaceful transfer of power to a new Trump administration are: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), world government globalists, Sharia-supremacists, deep state bureaucrats and assorted homegrown and foreign-enabled terrorists, jihadists, and other revolutionaries.
- These hostile forces’ ability to create chaos in the United States – especially collectively – cannot safely be ignored.
- The bottom line is that any one of these elements is capable of creating or greatly exacerbating chaos that could be used to justify martial law, try to derail the inauguration and thwart the on-time transfer of power to the incoming administration.
- As the federal government may for the next few weeks be part of the problem, it will fall to liberty-loving states to pursue six steps that can help mitigate this dangerous situation:
- Raise awareness of the existence of threats.
- Crowdsource information about the whereabouts and status of potentially hostile elements.
- Enhance personal and community preparedness.
- Heighten the readiness of the National Guard, constitutional sheriffs, other state and local law enforcement.
- Protect critical infrastructure and likely targets.
- Plan for contingencies, such as any effort to respond to chaos-inducing events with a declaration of martial law and efforts to postpone the inauguration.
- In addition to action at the level of state and local governments, it behooves every patriot committed to the American experiment to be alive to these dangers. Collectively, we can bring to bear the kind of “situational awareness” that can help detect and expose the potential for harm before it is inflicted. And, thereby, millions of us can assist in ensuring the on-time, peaceful transfer of power and national course-correction for which the majority of Americans voted on November 5th.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.S. says prepared to use all power to prevent nuclear Iran
- European diplomats consider ‘snap back’ sanctions to prevent nuclear weapon
- Iran accelerates uranium enrichment, denies pursuing nuclear weapons
- Iran’s deal with Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia and China is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
- “Time is of the essence,” U.N. political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo told the Security Council, which enshrined the deal in a 2015 resolution.
- “We will take every diplomatic step to prevent Iran from requiring a nuclear weapon, including the triggering of snap back if necessary,” Britain’s deputy U.N. Ambassador James Kariuki told the council on Tuesday.
- They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 next year when the 2015 U.N. resolution on the deal expires.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has added hundreds of new missiles and 100 more nuclear warheads as part of a military buildup designed for a future war with the United States, according to a Pentagon report made public Wednesday.
- The latest survey of Chinese military power also for the first time reveals extensive PLA preparations for sophisticated information warfare operations against the United States, including the use of “deep fake” online posts and cyber-enabled psychological warfare. The goal is to target U.S. military leaders’ decision making in a regional conflict and to demoralize troops and sow divisions in U.S. society, Pentagon analysts said.
- The latest report provides new details on extensive PLA advances in weapons systems, doctrine and training. The efforts include practice missile strikes against U.S. aircraft carriers and warships during operations against Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing has vowed to annex as early as 2027.
- “The PLA increasingly views warfare as a confrontation between opposing operational systems, rather than annihilation of opposing mechanized military forces,” the report said. “Following this logic, PLA writings refer to systems destruction warfare as the next way of war, transforming from mechanized warfare to an informatized and intelligentized style.”
- On the information warfare front, the PLA calls its activities “cognitive domain operations” described in the report as “an asymmetric capability to deter U.S. or third-party entry into a future conflict, or as an offensive capability to shape perceptions or polarize a society,” the report said.
- The operations target the U.S. government and military, media organizations, businesses, academic and cultural institutions and policy communities.
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Important Takeaways:
- A 1,547-page spending deal was released Tuesday night will give members of Congress a raise.
- Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the top Democrat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, explained in 2023 that the so-called “Member Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) automatically takes effect unless it is blocked.”
- “News flash: a COLA is a pay increase for Members of Congress,” she stated unequivocally.
- Congress often cleverly rebrands politically toxic items like congressional pay raises, as when they began referring to earmarks as “congressionally directed spending.”
- This is not the first time in recent memory Congress has taken advantage of a last-minute lame-duck spending bill to benefit itself.
- In the 2022 lame-duck spending bill, Congress snuck in a provision to allow reimbursement for a number of living expenses, including lodging, food, and travel while on the job in Washington, DC.
- According to the New York Times, individual members could be reimbursed up to about $34,000 in the first year.
- Most members of Congress earn $174,000 annually, although some in leadership positions receive higher salaries. The Speaker of the House receives $223,500, while the Senate president pro tempore receives $193,400.
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Important Takeaways:
- The strange, Zeppelin-like aircraft had been spotted on the Russian side of the frontier near Narva, a Russian-speaking Estonian town on the far edges of Nato territory.
- After some debate, Estonian police chose to ignore the blimp and hoped that would be the end of the matter. But the next day, it came back – this time marked with a “Z”, the symbol of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
- “We are seeing things like this nearly every week,” Egert Belitšev, the director-general of the Estonian police, said during a tour of Narva’s border checkpoint, the day before Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, arrived in the country for a security summit with Baltic and Nordic leaders.
- “It was intentionally made visible to everyone, to say: ‘We are watching you.’”
- “Two years ago we had 18 border incidents and this year we had 96,”
- “We have seen constant attempts to destabilize the situation.”
- In one of the more serious incidents in May, Russian border guards removed 20 buoys from the Narva river in the middle of the night in an apparent attempt to redraw the edges of Russia’s territory.
- “They did it at 3am – this is not something you do if it is a proper or normal thing,” Mr. Belitšev said.
- Moscow is also trying to push irregular migrants across the Estonian border, and across the Baltic Sea into Finland.
- Police say there have even been cases of Russians trying to smuggle drone parts across the Estonia border to support Putin’s war.
- “Russia will remain a threat for a very significant time, we don’t see any changes in the mindset of the Russian regime,” Mr. Tori said.
- “Russia’s understanding is that we will become more tired and they can outlast us in this war of aggression. Russia sees itself as being at war with Nato and therefore the ends justify the means.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Natalie Rupnow was identified as the shooter who opened fire inside a study hall inside Abundant Life Christian School, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said. Responding officers found Rupnow with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She died on the way to a hospital.
- Police were speaking with Rupnow’s father and other family members, who were cooperating, and searching Rupnow’s home, Barnes said. He declined to offer additional details about the shooter, partly out of respect for the family.
- “He lost someone as well,” Barnes said of Rupnow’s father. “And so we’re not going to rush the information. We’ll take our time and make sure we do our due diligence.”
- Barnes said officers responded just before 11 a.m. to a second-grade student’s 911 call reporting the shooting.
- The teacher and student that were killed in the shooting have not yet been identified.
- Barnes said that of the six wounded in the shooting, two were students in critical condition. A teacher and three students were also hospitalized with less serious injuries, and two of them were later released.
- The FBI’s Milwaukee bureau says it has deployed agents to the scene to assist in investigating.
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