Monday, August 11, 2025

August 11, 2025

Good morning,

Welcome to the news for independent thinkers

Leading the News . . .

Trump Vows to Make D.C. Safer, Clean Out the Homeless, Jail Criminals . . . President Donald Trump vowed to make Washington, DC, "safer and more beautiful than it ever was," adding that he would be cleaning out the homeless and putting criminals in jail. In a post on Truth Social, Trump explained that "just like the Border," changes to the nation's capital would occur "very fast." Trump announced that he will be holding a press conference on Monday, outlining a plan to "essentially, stop violent crime" in the District of Columbia. Breitbart

FBI agents and National Guard troops are already on the ground.

Politics

House Republicans Defied DOGE Cuts to Foreign Aid Org Used to Push Abortion Abroad . . . House Republicans kept almost a billion dollars in funding for an agency targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency after the Biden administration used it to promote abortion in Africa. The Office of Management and Budget asked for just $224 million in discretionary funding for the MCC in fiscal year 2026, a decrease of $706 million from fiscal year 2025. Yet Republicans chose to keep funding at its previous levels, $930 million. Daily Signal

The uniparty strikes back.

Bernie Turns On Kamala In Scathing Critique Of 2024 Bid

Comer says he'll try to interrogate Clintons about Russiagate in addition to Epstein probe . . . House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., revealed he is going to try striking an agreement with attorneys for Bill and Hillary Clinton to cover the Russia collusion probe under the subpoenas he has issued related to the committee's investigation of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Comer said he is eager to press the Clintons about the origins of the probe in light of the recent intelligence released by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence. Just the News

Marlow: Buying Our Democracy — Meet the Billionaire Leftists Behind the Lawfare Chaos

Inside the DSA Convention, Where Socialists Declared Dominance Over Dems and Set Sights on 2028 . . . The Democratic Socialists of America sent a clear message to Democrats during its biennial convention: We're in charge now. Zohran Mamdani's surprise win wasn't an anomaly, delegates said, but rather the start of the DSA's rise to power over the Democratic Party. Roughly 1,200 DSA members gathered over the weekend at McCormick Place, Chicago's convention center, to solidify the party's platform. Washington Free Beacon

Vance hopes Musk will rejoin MAGA movement before midterm elections

The Left's Latest Court-Packing Scheme . . . Back in 2020 and under President Joe Biden, the institutional Left would tell anyone foolish enough to listen that we needed to add seats to the Supreme Court. In October 2024, however, much of the court-packing rhetoric vanished, almost on cue. Now, it's back, as Democrats strain to find any reason to claim they're getting slighted while President Donald Trump seeks to restore fairness by correcting the errors of the 2020 census. Daily Signal

Culture

Courts let red states ban 'gender affirming' drugs for kids, keep boys out of girls' restrooms . . . Red states are getting the green light from the Supreme Court and an appeals court disproportionately overturned by SCOTUS to enforce laws that prioritize sex over gender identity in medicine and education, reinforcing a growing divide between conservative and liberal jurisdictions on immutable versus fluid traits. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block Oklahoma's ban on medicalized gender transitions for minors, upholding a lower court ruling that it had delayed reviewing to await the Supreme Court's decision on Tennessee's "substantially similar" law. Just the News

National Security

Trump and California: Court to decide legality of National Guard deployment to Los Angeles . . . A three-day bench trial will begin Monday over whether President Trump's National Guard deployment to Los Angeles violated a general prohibition on using federal troops as civilian law enforcement. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer will hear testimony from three military and immigration officials as the judge weighs whether sending in troops to combat immigration protests violated the Posse Comitatus Act. The Hill

International

IDF says it killed Hamas terrorist who posed as Al Jazeera journalist . . . The Israel Defense Forces announced it killed the head of a Hamas terrorist cell who has been simultaneously working as a journalist for Al Jazeera. On Sunday evening, the IDF confirmed the death of 28-year-old Anas al Sharif, a prominent Gazan journalist who had been working with the Qatar-based Arabic media outlet, after strikes on Gaza City. Washington Examiner

Vance: 'We're done with the funding of the Ukraine war business' . . . Vice President Vance on Sunday said he wants peace and to stop funding the Ukraine war, ahead of a Friday meeting in Alaska between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a ceasefire deal. "We're done with the funding of the Ukraine war business. We want to bring about a peaceful settlement to this thing," Vance told Fox News's Maria Bartiromo on "Sunday Morning Futures." The Hill

British man who perished in Antarctic glacier found 65 years later . . . The bones of a British man who died in a terrible accident in Antarctica in 1959 have been discovered in a melting glacier. The remains were found in January by a Polish Antarctic expedition, alongside a wristwatch, a radio, and a pipe. He has now been formally identified as Dennis "Tink" Bell, who fell into a crevasse aged 25 when working for the organisation that became the British Antarctic Survey. "I had long given up on finding my brother. It is just remarkable, astonishing. I can't get over it," David Bell, 86, tells BBC News BBC

Money

Nvidia and AMD to Give U.S. 15% Cut on AI Chip Sales to China . . . It's an unusual agreement that deepens their relationships with the U.S. government. The Trump administration will receive 15% of the sales as part of a deal to approve exports of Nvidia's H20 AI chip to China, according to people familiar with the matter. That could amount to billions of dollars given demand for the H20 chips and is the latest example of the White House employing novel tactics to raise revenue. Wall Street Journal

Intel CEO Singled Out by Trump to Visit White House on Monday . . . Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is set to visit the White House Monday after President Trump called for his removal last week over ties to Chinese businesses, according to people familiar with the matter. Tan is expected to have a wide-ranging conversation with Trump, with the intent of explaining his personal and professional background, the people said. He could also propose ways that the government and Intel could work together, they said. Wall Street Journal

It's not exactly clear why someone with such close ties to China is running a company with a critical role in US national security.

You should also know

Jim Lovell, the astronaut who commanded the famous Apollo 13 mission, has died . . . . He was 97. Apollo 13, a 1970 flight to the moon, became known as a "successful failure" after the spacecraft experienced an oxygen tank explosion thousands of miles from Earth but managed to safely return home. "Jim's character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the Moon and turned a potential tragedy into a success from which we learned an enormous amount," Duffy said. Lovell was the command module pilot for 1968's Apollo 8 mission, the first to carry humans to the moon and back, though it did not land on the lunar surface. CBS

Guilty Pleasures

Man Scammed into Buying 300 Years worth of Gym Membership . . . A Chinese man was recently scammed by a Hangzhou gym into spending more than 870,000 yuan ($121,000) on hundreds of years of gym memberships and private lessons. The average life expectancy in China is around 78 years, but one Hagzhou man will have to figure out a way to live a lot longer if he plans to take full advantage of the 300-years-worth of gym memberships he was scammed into paying a fortune for. Oddity Central

It appears he signed up for "The Optimist Plan."

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