‘Who Was Running the Country?’ – Witnesses Testify on Biden Health Cover-Up, Autopen Scandal
https://youtu.be/QqIvhaIUKEw
A federal judge on Thursday issued a preliminary injunction barring the Trump Administration from withholding funding from cities that refuse to cooperate with ICE.
US District Judge John J. McConnell, an Obama appointee, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy lacked the authority and his directive was vague and unconstitutional.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.59601/gov.uscourts.rid.59601.57.0.pdf
“No Kings,” Except for the Bureaucrats
Over the weekend, thousands of anti-Trump advocates gathered for “No Kings” protests across the country, but their aims were not directed at constitutional norms; instead, they are engaged in a protest against the President’s authority over the Executive Branch.
The chief issue in Washington since the second Trump inauguration is whether the commander-in-chief is empowered to control the Executive Branch, which houses nearly all federal agencies.
The Vesting Clause answers that question with absolute certainty: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.
In response to the Trump administration’s efforts to abolish the government’s vast censorship apparatus, however, Democrats and judicial activists offer an anti-constitutional alternative for the country: The power to fire taxpayer-funded bureaucrats or reduce their funding shall be vested in no person.
In April, Secretary of State Rubio announced the closure and defunding of the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI), formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC).
Under Rubio’s predecessor, Antony Blinken, the GEC was instrumental in silencing dissent, as it worked to “limit the reach of, the circulation of, and render unprofitable, disfavored press outlets by funding the infrastructure, development, and marketing and promotion of censorship technology and private censorship enterprises to covertly suppress speech of a segment of the American press,” according to one lawsuit.
But this week, California District Judge Susan Illston upended the President’s control of the executive branch and ordered Secretary Rubio to halt the abolishment of R/FIMI. According to Judge Illston, not only is the Ministry of Truth permitted to censor Americans for alleged “disinformation,” such as the Hunter Biden laptop, the lab-leak theory, or natural immunity; but the Constitution actually prohibits the president from exercising control over the State Department.
Unsurprisingly, the “No Kings” crowd offered no pushback to the judge’s defense of a censorious cabal’s entitlement to taxpayer funding.
This is familiar territory for Judge Illston. Previously, she issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting President Trump from “reorganizing” or “reducing” staff at 22 executive branch agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services (annual budget, $1.8 trillion), the Social Security Administration (annual budget, $1.5 trillion), the Department of Veterans Affairs (annual budget, $350 billion), and the Treasury Department (annual budget, $1.3 trillion).
Illston is not alone. After President Trump ordered “all executive departments and agencies to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS,” the outlets responded that the First Amendment requires the disbursement of taxpayer funds to their operations.
https://brownstone.org/articles/no-kings-except-for-the-bureaucrats/
More 2 weeks Comms
After meeting Rubio, British FM says there’s a 2-week window for diplomacy with Iran
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy will travel to Geneva on Friday for talks with his French and German counterparts, as well as EU High Representative Kaja Kallas and Iran’s foreign minister, to push for a diplomatic resolution over Iran’s nuclear program.
The meeting comes amid heightened tensions in the Middle East and follows Lammy’s visit to Washington, where he met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff.
“A window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution,” Lammy says in the foreign ministry statement.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/uk-foreign-secretary-to-attend-geneva-talks-on-iran-nuclear-programme/
Trump White House Considers Dropping Nukes on Iran
The Trump administration is reportedly considering nuking Iran.
The Guardian on Wednesday claimed that the U.S. military has reservations regarding the success of using a bunker-buster bomb, a nonnuclear weapon, to eliminate Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility, buried deep in a mountain. Two defense officials were reportedly briefed that only a tactical nuclear weapon could reach the facility, but The Guardian noted that Trump is not considering using a tactical nuke.
On Thursday, Fox News senior White House correspondent Jaqui Heinrich reported that the White House told her otherwise.
“I was just told by a top official here that none of that report is true, that none of the options are off the table, and the U.S. military is very confident that bunker busters could get the job done at Fordo,” Heinrich said.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-white-house-floats-possibility-203023786.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/19/trump-caution-on-iran-strike-linked-to-doubts-over-bunker-buster-bomb-officials-say
Iran says Israel attacked area of Tehran where Khamenei reportedly hiding Live updates
Drones infiltrate the Dead Sea region twice; first rescue flight takes off from New York to return citizens to Israel; Iran threatens legal action against IAEA head for 'inaction' over Israeli strikes
Sirens warning of an unidentified aerial vehicle sounded twice in the Dead Sea region, including at hotels in the central Dead Sea and Neve Zohar, early Friday morning. The drones were intercepted, according to the IDF.
The first rescue flight from New York to Israel took off from JFK airport with hundreds of Israelis on board. Another flight is expected to depart later from Newark Airport in New Jersey - among its passengers is Minister Haim Katz, who was stranded in the city along with thousands of Israelis due to flight disruptions caused by the war on Iran. The Consul General of Israel in New York, Ofir Akunis, stated: "In a good and successful hour, the first rescue flight has taken off on its way to Israel. With the safe landing of both rescue flights from New York, our hope is that they will continue next week as well - until the skies open with Israel's victory over the ayatollahs."
Iranian news agency "Fars" reports that the IDF has begun attacking the area of Kolesh Taleshan village in northern Iran, about 20 km from the Caspian Sea - approximately two hours after IDF Persian-language spokesperson, Sergeant Major (res.) Kamal Pinchasi, issued an evacuation notice to some residents there. In the message Pinhasi published to residents, he warned that the IDF would strike the "Sefidrood Industrial Park located in the village.
At the same time, Iranian media reports that several Revolutionary Guard soldiers were killed in an Israeli drone attack on a base of the organization in the Bustan Abad area in northwest of the country, in East Azerbaijan province.
Iran reported late Thursday evening that smoke is billowing in the Lavizan area of the capital Tehran as a result of an Israeli attack. Last Sunday, the Iran International website reported from two knowledgeable sources in Iran that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei 'was moved to an underground bunker in Lavizan in northeast Tehran, hours after Israel began its attacks on Tehran on Friday morning.' According to the report, all members of Khamenei's family, including his son Mojtaba, are with him.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/b12y7zgvex
The end of Israeli exceptionalism
The West’s proxy state is burning out
Israel has now been at war with its neighbours for nearly two years. The latest round began with the Hamas-led terrorist attack on 7 October 2023. In response, West Jerusalem launched an aggressive military campaign that has since expanded to touch nearly every country in the region. The escalation has placed the Jewish state at the centre of Middle Eastern geopolitics once again – this time, dragging in Iran, a state that had long avoided direct confrontation through strategic caution. Now, even Tehran finds itself under fire, with US backing making the stakes far higher. Iran is left facing a grim choice between the bad and the very bad.
But this isn’t about Iran. It’s about Israel, a country that has for decades functioned as the West’s forward operating base in the Middle East. Since the mid-20th century, Israel has enjoyed a privileged position – a bridgehead of Western power in a volatile region, while also deeply enmeshed in its politics and rivalries. Its success has rested on two pillars: the unshakable support of the United States, and its own internal capacity for innovation, military strength, and a unique social model.
That second pillar, however, has weakened. The clearest sign is in demographics: Israel is facing rising negative migration. In 2024, some 82,700 people are expected to leave the country – a 50% increase from the year before. It is not the unskilled or disengaged who are leaving, but the young and educated. The people who are needed to sustain a modern state are choosing to go.
Of course, Israel’s troubles are not unique. Like many developed nations, it is struggling under the weight of a decaying neoliberal economic system. The pandemic made things worse, exposing the fragility of the model and encouraging a shift toward a “mobilisation” mode of governance – rule through emergency and constant readiness for conflict. In the West more broadly, war and geopolitical confrontation have become a way to delay or disguise necessary systemic reform.
In this regard, Israel has become a laboratory for the West’s emerging logic: permanent war as a method of governance. In the autumn of 2023, the Israeli establishment embraced this fully. Conflict became not just a tactic, but a way of life. Its leaders no longer see peace as the goal, but war as the mechanism for national unity and political survival. In this, Israel mirrors the broader Western embrace of conflict with Russia and China – proxy wars chosen when actual reform is off the table.
At the global level, nuclear deterrence limits how far such wars can go. But in the Middle East, where Israel wages war directly, those constraints don’t apply. This allows war to serve as a pressure valve – politically useful, even as it becomes self-destructive.
But even war has limits. It cannot indefinitely mask economic decay or social unrest. And while conflict tends to cement elite power – even among incompetent leadership – it also drains national strength. Israel is now consuming more and more of its own resources to sustain this permanent state of war. Its social cohesion is fraying. Its once-vaunted model of technological and civic progress is no longer functioning as it did.
Some in West Jerusalem may dream of “reformatting” the Middle East – reshaping the region through force and fear. If successful, it could buy Israel a few decades of security and breathing room. But such outcomes are far from guaranteed. Crushing a neighbour doesn’t eliminate the threat; it merely brings distant enemies closer. Most importantly, Israel’s deepest problems aren’t external – they are internal, rooted in its political and social structures.
War can define a state, yes. But such states – Sparta, North Korea – tend to be “peculiar,” to put it mildly. And even for them, war cannot substitute for real diplomacy, policy, or growth.
So has Israel, always at war, truly developed? Or has it simply been sustained – politically, militarily, and financially – as a subdivision of American foreign policy? If it continues down this path of permanent conflict and right-wing nationalism, it risks losing even that status. It may cease to be the West’s bridge in the Middle East – and become something else entirely: a militarised garrison state, isolated, brittle, and increasingly alone.
https://www.rt.com/news/619864-wests-proxy-state-is-burning/