3 Jul, 2025 19:57

British PM Starmer could be on way out – Sky News

The Labour Party is demoralized and in “despair” just a year after taking power, the outlet has reported

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer could be ousted by next May if his Labour Party continues to perform poorly, Sky News has reported.

Labour lost ground to Reform UK in local elections in May, after the ruling party experienced a plunge in public support.

The prime minister could lose his position if Labour performs badly in the next vote across Wales, Scotland and London, Sky News reported on Thursday, citing two senior Labour MPs.

“I am hearing from ministers in government that Starmer might have to go in months,” the outlet’s deputy political editor Sam Coates said,describing “unhappiness and despair” in the Labour Party.

A day earlier, a controversial welfare bill proposed by the government passed in a watered-down form, after a number of Labour MPs rebelled against proposed cuts to social benefits.

This latest U-turn undermined the prime minister’s authority after a series of similar flip-flops in June, the BBC wrote on Wednesday.

Last month, Starmer bowed to pressure and ordered a national inquiry into the police handling of the massive Pakistani grooming gangs sex abuse scandal. Just months before, his administration had insisted the prior seven-year investigation into decades of systematic rape of young, vulnerable girls in the UK had been sufficient.

Labour had been under mounting public pressure to backtrack on the issue, after the simmering scandal was thrust back into the spotlight early this year by tech mogul Elon Musk.

Starmer’s public approval has taken a nose dive, with 73% of UK adults unsatisfied with his performance, the Independent wrote on Thursday, citing an Ipsos survey concluded in June. Less than a fifth of respondents were satisfied with his tenure, the poll suggests.

According to Ipsos, this is the lowest score ever recorded by the polling company for a prime minister’s first year performance.

https://www.rt.com/news/620962-british-pm-could-quit/

Supreme Court agrees to review bans on transgender athletes joining teams that align with their gender identity

By John Fritze and Devan Cole, CNN1/2

Updated: 12:00 PM EDT, Thu July 3, 2025

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to decide whether states may ban transgender students from playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity, revisiting the issue of LGBTQ rights in a blockbuster case just days after upholding a ban on some health care for trans youth.

The decision puts the issue of transgender rights on the Supreme Court’s docket for the second year in a row and is by far the most significant matter the justices have agreed to hear in the term that will begin in October.

The cases, one from West Virginia and the other from Idaho, involve transgender athletes who at least initially competed in track and field and cross country. The West Virginia case was filed by a then-middle school student who told the Supreme Court she was “devastated at the prospect” of not being able to compete after the state passed a law banning trans women athletes’ participation in public school sports.

The court’s decision landed as transgender advocates are still reeling from the 6-3 ruling in US v. Skrmetti, which upheld Tennessee’s ban on trans youth from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy. Though the state law also bars surgeries, they were not at issue in the high court’s case. But that decision was limited to questions of whether the state had the power to regulate medical treatments for minors, leaving unresolved challenges to other anti-trans laws.

Cases challenging sports bans in two states

The justices agreed to review two cases challenging sports bans in Idaho and West Virginia. The court didn’t act on a third appeal over a similar ban in Arizona and will likely hold that case until it decides the other two, probably by early next summer.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is part of the legal team representing the athletes in the cases, said school athletic programs should be accessible to everyone regardless of a student’s sex or transgender status.

“Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”

West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey, a Republican, said that the state is “confident the Supreme Court will uphold the Save Women’s Sports Act because it complies with the US Constitution and complies with Title IX.”

The Supreme Court will review the case at a time when Republican-led states and President Donald Trump have pushed for policies to curtail transgender rights. Trump ran for reelection in part on a campaign to push “transgender insanity” out of public schools, mocking Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in advertising for supporting “they/them,” the pronouns used by some transgender and nonbinary people.

But even before that, states had passed laws banning transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams. Roughly half of US states have enacted such laws.

The Trump administration has actively supported policies that bar transgender athletes from competing on teams that match their gender identity. On Wednesday, the federal government released $175 million in previously frozen federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania after the school agreed to block transgender athletes from female sports teams and erase the records set by swimmer Lia Thomas.

https://lite.cnn.com/2025/07/03/politics/supreme-court-transgender-athletes

>>23271777

2/2

In West Virginia, former Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican, signed the “Save Women’s Sports Act” in 2021, banning transgender women and girls from participating on public school sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Becky Pepper-Jackson, a rising sixth grader at the time, who was “looking forward to trying out for the girls’ cross-country team,” filed a lawsuit alleging that the ban violated federal law and the Constitution.

The Richmond-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that West Virginia’s ban violated Pepper-Jackson’s rights under Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex at schools that receive federal aid. The court also revived her constitutional challenge of the law.

“Her family, teachers, and classmates have all known B.P.J. as a girl for several years, and – beginning in elementary school – she has participated only on girls athletic teams,” US Circuit Judge Toby Heytens, who was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden, wrote for the court. “Given these facts, offering B.P.J. a ‘choice’ between not participating in sports and participating only on boys teams is no real choice at all.”

Most of the appeals on the issue of transgender athletes question whether such bans are permitted under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The West Virginia case was different in that it also raised the question of whether such bans violated Title IX. The Supreme Court often prefers to settle a dispute under a law, rather than the Constitution, if it has the option because such a ruling technically allows Congress to change the law in response to the decision.

West Virginia appealed to the Supreme Court last year, arguing that the appeal court decision “renders sex-separated sports an illusion.”

“Schools will need to separate sports teams based on self-identification and personal choices that have nothing to do with athletic performance,” the state said.

West Virginia initially brought the case to the Supreme Court last year on an emergency basis, seeking to enforce the law against Pepper-Jackson while the underlying legal challenge played out. In an unsigned order, the court declined that request. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have granted it.

In Idaho, Republican Gov. Brad Little signed the state’s sports ban in 2020, the first of its kind in the nation. Lindsay Hecox, then a freshman at Boise State University, sued days later, saying that she intended to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams and alleging that the law violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

A federal district court blocked the law’s enforcement against Hecox months later and the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision last year. Idaho appealed to the Supreme Court in July.

“Idaho’s women and girls deserve an equal playing field,” said Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, a Republican. “For too long, activists have worked to sideline women and girls in their own sports.”

But Sasha Buchert, senior attorney and director of the Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project at Lambda Legal, stressed the importance of team sports for all students. Lambda Legal is part of the team representing Pepper-Jackson in the West Virginia case.

“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Buchert said. “Everyone understands the value of participating in team athletics, for fitness, leadership, socialization, and myriad other benefits.” (Fine she can play sports with them, but cannot be in competitions for taking away awards, or scholarships, or other benefits. If she just wants to play with them, she can do that.)

https://lite.cnn.com/2025/07/03/politics/supreme-court-transgender-athletes

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/114789602482197220

Grifty

@TheGriftReport

Young teen pulls out a knife only to have a gun pulled him by a cop and get arrested😲😲

4:08 PM · Jul 1, 2025

·12.2M Views

https://x.com/TheGriftReport/status/1940140549039611960

>>23271812

Did they really need 7 cops to come and help, the kid was tiny?

4 ways Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' could impact your wallet

Story by bgriffiths@insider.com 7/3/251/2

President Donald Trump could sign the bill into law by July 4, marking a major achievement for his second term.

• The "Big Beautiful Bill" is headed to President Donald Trump's desk.

• It includes a repeal of student loan forgiveness and an increased child tax credit.

• It also includes new "Trump accounts" and changes to Medicaid and SNAP.

From taxes to student loan forgiveness, provisions in President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" will soon be impacting Americans' wallets. On Thursday, the House passed the final version of the bill, which would extend the president's 2017 tax cuts and make key changes to the tax system, along with implementing significant changes to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Beyond the effects on Americans' wallets, the legislation provides roughly $150 billion to ramp up immigration enforcement. The bill first passed the House in May before undergoing changes in the Senate, where it narrowly passed on Tuesday. Trump could sign the bill into law as soon as Friday, July 4.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to the US deficit. In May, Moody's Analytics downgraded the US's credit rating last week, citing rising federal debt. It said an extension of Trump's 2017 taxes could add $4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. This could lead to higher interest rates on mortgages, auto loans, and more down the road.

Here are four other key ways the tax bill could affect Americans' finances.A slew of tax policies

• Many of Trump's campaign promises are included in the tax bill.

• The legislation would eliminate taxes on tips and overtime wages. About two-thirds of tipped workers earn enough to owe federal income tax. After a final bill is signed, the Trump administration will release a list of qualifying occupations.

• The Senate bill includes a $6,000 tax deduction for older people making less than $75,000 a year ($150,000 for couples). Seniors making above that threshold would see a decreasing deduction until hitting a cap of $175,000 ($250,000 for couples.) Lower-income seniors likely won't benefit from the deduction. The provision is how lawmakers are trying to fulfill Trump's promise to end taxes on Social Security payments. The deduction would run through 2028.

• Another provision would permanently raise the child tax credit to $2,200.Additionally, it would eliminate electric vehicle tax credits after September.It also proposes endingtax credits for homeowners to install solar panels or energy-efficient heat pumpsand incentives for new energy-efficient homes and home weatherization projects by the end of this year.

The bill would also make Trump's 2017 tax cuts permanentand increase the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, from $10,000 to $40,000 in 2025, $40,400 in 2026, and increase an additional 1% every year through 2029 before reverting to $10,000 in 2030. Lifting the SALT cap allows wealthy taxpayers in states and cities with high taxes to claim a bigger federal deduction, and the cap is something some Republican lawmakers have sought to raise or eliminate.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/4-ways-trump-s-big-beautiful-bill-could-impact-your-wallet/ar-AA1HV3rH

>>23271886

2/2

Student loan forgiveness repealed

• Under the Senate bill, millions of student loan borrowers would see their repayment options change. The legislation proposes eliminating existing income-driven repayment plans and replacing them with two options: the Repayment Assistance Plan and a standard repayment plan.

• The Repayment Assistance Plan would allow for loan forgiveness after 360 qualifying payments based on the borrowers' income, while the standard repayment plan would require a fixed monthly payment over a period set by the servicer.

•The bill also would repeal former President Joe Biden's SAVE plan, an income-driven repayment plan that promised cheaper monthly payments and a shorter timeline for debt relief. The plan is blocked in court pending a final legal decision.

'Trump accounts'

If the bill passes, parents could get extra money for their kids down the line. The tax bill includes a "Trump account," previously called a "money account for growth and advancement," or MAGA account. The government would put $1,000 into accounts for babies born after December 31, 2024, and before January 1, 2029. The baby would be required to have been born in the US and have a Social Security number to receive the cash. The money would need to be invested in a qualified index fund and can't be touched until the child turns 18. Parents and others could contribute up to $5,000 a year to each account.

The accounts would have tax incentives; earnings would be tax-deferred, meaning taxes on the accounts would not need to be paid right away. Withdrawals from the accounts would also be taxed at the long-term capital-gains rate, which is dependent on income and typically lower than the regular income tax rate.

Work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP

Lower-income Americans could face bigger healthcare costs or lose federal assistance benefits. The tax bill would mean significant changes for the millions who rely on Medicaid and SNAP.The legislation would mandate that states implement an 80-hour-a-month work requirement by the end of 2026 for childless adults on Medicaid without a disability.

The Congressional Budget Office previously estimated that work requirements on Medicaid could strip coverage from over 8 million Americans over the next decade. (Because many illegals on it and cheating, the some can work, if they don’t work they can’t get it.)

Additionally, the bill would extend the age range of adults subject to work requirements to receive SNAP to include adults ages 55 to 64. Currently, adults ages 18 to 54 without children can receive SNAP benefits only if they work at least 20 hours a week. (And if not disabled, a disabled person is not required.)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/4-ways-trump-s-big-beautiful-bill-could-impact-your-wallet/ar-AA1HV3rH

>>23272019 (Worst idea of Cotton's ever, he is as corrupt as all of the Senators on the SSIC)

The New MAGA Turf War Over National Intelligence

By Philip Wegmann RCP Staff July 03, 20251/3

The war over what America First means will soon move to a new theater:a battle over the fate of the Office of Director of National Intelligence.

Overseeing all 18 of the U.S. intelligence agencies, the office was created in the wake of 9/11 to serve as a sort of orchestra conductor for the intelligence community, integrating operations and mediating feuds between shadowy three-letter agencies. Intended to be a small coordinating office, the ODNI has become sprawling and bureaucratic in the decades since. Republicans now broadly agree that it must be reformed.

At issue though is how the agency will change, and perhaps more importantly, who will accrue more power as a result. It is a fraught question for a GOP already suspicious of “weaponized” intel agencies.

Two MAGA heavyweights will shape the outcome.

Tulsi Gabbard, a skeptic of foreign intervention and President Trump’s current director of national intelligence, has already cut the ODNI workforce by 25% and finalized plans for additional reforms. Sources familiar with that effort tell RealClearPolitics that Gabbard is moving quickly but methodically not only to change the agency but to “set the example for all IC elements to emulate.”

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, the hawkish chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced legislation last week to shrink the size of the agency. The ODNI workforce would be capped at just 650 employees. Certain responsibilities would also be transferred, in coordination with the director, to other intel agencies. Notably this includes the ODNI center focused on counterproliferation and biosecurity, which would be subsumed by the CIA. The end goal: “A lean organization,” Cotton said in a statement announcing the bill, “not the overstaffed and bureaucratic behemoth that it is today, where coordinators coordinate with other coordinators.” (Cotton is controlled by CIA and the rest off SSIC, the Senate Intelligence Committee has colluded with the agencies to push on the RussiaHoax to get rid of Trump. Every senator on that committee is compromised and willingly work with Anti-Trump politicians. This would give them free reign to undermine Trump’s control of the CIA)

And so, the latest MAGA turf war – this one over the size and scope of the intelligence agencies – begins.

“They don't want to reform the ODNI the way thatTulsi Gabbard and President Trump want to reform it,” said one senior intelligence official who complained that the Cotton bill would “just give the CIA more power.”

“This long predates Tulsi Gabbard being DNI. [Cotton] has been on the committee for 10 years now. It is a long time coming,” countered a Senate aide. The timing of the legislation has nothing to do with current leadership, the aide told RealClearPolitics. Cotton is preparing for the coming debate over the Intelligence Authorization Act, the aide added, and preparing to keep a public pledge.

During Gabbard’s confirmation hearing, Cotton noted in committee that the ODNI is now larger than many of the agencies it was established to manage and has staff in the thousands. Said the chairman, “I promise that is going to change.” For her part, the director vowed in that same hearing to cut out “redundancies and bloating.”

Asked where the president stands on the question,a White House official told RCP that Trump's relationship with both Gabbard and the intelligence community “remains strong” before adding that “there are no plans to merge ODNI with CIA or have CIA take over ODNI.”

https://www.newsweek.com/tom-cotton-chair-senate-intelligence-committee-under-trump-report-1984213

>>23272190

2/3

The official said thatthe president continues to meet regularly with his national security team, “which includes the ODNI,” adding also that “reports that seem to suggest there is a rift between ODNI and POTUS have no basis to it and are just turning things into something it is not.”

All of it is the latest in an ongoing experiment. The agency is comparatively new. It was established in 2004 after a sprawling intelligence community failed to prevent the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Petty rivalries between three letter agencies, particularly between the CIA and FBI, had hampered intelligence sharing.

“There was some resentment throughout the intelligence community but more broadly, throughout Washington, DC, that the CIA had blown it on WMDs in Iraq and had blown it on 9/11 to a large degree, and therefore, didn’t warrant being the great leader of the intelligence community,” said Loch Johnson, professor at the University of Georgia whom the New York Times once dubbed “the dean of American Intelligence Scholars.”

A director was needed to oversee and integrate all the intelligence agencies, Johnson said, recalling the debate at that time. “And that made some sense,” he told RCP, “except for one problem: The office was never given the tools that it needed to get the integration job done.” Without the authority to hire and fire or oversee budgets, he concluded, the agency often struggles to wrangle a vast intelligence apparatus.

“Prior DNIs were the head of the IC only on paper and were routinely accustomed to yielding IC actions and decisions to the preferences of the CIA and other agencies,” John Ratcliffe said of the office he led during Trump’s first term, during an interview for the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

The responsibility of reforming the ODNI now falls to Gabbard. When Elon Musk was marching through the administration in search of waste, fraud, and abuse, she was cutting staff and eliminating entire departments at the ODNI,such as the Intelligence Community Human Capital office which she dismissed as a “slush fund” for diversity, equity, and inclusion. “Find another agency who has reduced 25% of their workforce in less than 5 months,” the intel official bristled.

Gabbard will soon release her plan to overhaul the office further. The topline of thatreorganization, RealClearPolitics is first to report, includes manpower, money, process, and structure.

The revamp comes amidst a quiet debate on the right.Some have advocated elevating the ODNI as a counterweight to the CIA, which conservatives complain has become too political. Others insist that both are bloated and ripe for reductions. For his part, Ratcliffe concluded that during his tenure, he was only able to “begin reversing that capitulation” of the office “because President Trump made it repeatedly clear to the entire national security apparatus that he expected all intelligence matters to go through the DNI.”

Ratcliffe now serves as CIA director. Gabbard, meanwhile, has appeared embattled and out of step with the president.

Trump seemed to disregard analysis from Gabbard last month: “I don’t care what she said,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One when asked about her March assessment that Iran had not restarted its nuclear program. (Less noticed in the press, however, was her testimony that Iranian “enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”)

https://www.newsweek.com/tom-cotton-chair-senate-intelligence-committee-under-trump-report-1984213

>>23272199

3/3

This rebuke came after the president was reportedly left fuming at an unauthorized video she posted to social media when the White House was still considering whether to strike Iranian nuclear facilities; Gabbard warned in the three-minute video that nameless “warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tension between nuclear powers.”

Gabbard was not present during a huddle Trump held at Camp David with his national security team, a fact that led allies and critics alike to speculate that she had been sidelined because of her anti-interventionist views. A senior intel official later told RCP that she had not been snubbed; Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, was instead away training in Oklahoma.

The administration has dismissed the idea that there are any rifts among the president’s national security team. Steven Cheung, White House communications director, told RCP last month that assertions otherwise were simply “efforts by the legacy media to sow internal division.”

And when the headlines implied that Gabbard seemed like she was in the barrel, Vice PresidentJD Vance told RCP, unprompted, that that the opposite was true. “She’s an essential member of our national security team,” Vance said ofGabbard, who shares his skepticism of foreign wars, “and we’re grateful for her tireless work to keep America safe from foreign threats.”

Gabbard, a former Democrat who represented Hawaii in Congress for four terms, would normally have been an unorthodox pick to be the top intelligence official in a Republican administration. But she shares Trump’s rejection of “forever wars” and skepticism of intel agencies. Those characteristics seemed to make her straight out of central casting for a non-interventionist president eager to realign the right on foreign policy. They have also invited controversy.

Citing “the sheer volume of unrelenting attacks against her,” a senior administration official told RCP that “You can tell Tulsi touched the third rail.” This was not unexpected, they said, adding, “Of course, the deep state was going to fight back against being reduced and their power being decentralized.”

Philip Wegmann is White House correspondent for RealClearPolitics.

Cotton is only doing this to undermine Trump, all of those Senators believe they are smarter and more powerful than Trump and anyone would try to control the CIA, needs to be neutered. Rubio was the prior head of the SSIC, and he has seemed to change his attitude and realize how dangerous this is. CIA wants to dictate foreign policy and wars and they try all the time for regime change, hence the ongoing war in Ukraine against Russia.

https://www.newsweek.com/tom-cotton-chair-senate-intelligence-committee-under-trump-report-1984213

Trump Admin Institutes 80-Hour Constitution Course for ‘Deep State’ Execs

By Philip Wegmann - RCP Staff May 29, 2025

As the administration continues to remake the federal bureaucracy to President Trump’s liking,the Office of Personnel and Management has developed an intensive new training program for those aspiring to join the Senior Executive Service, the upper echelon of government employees.

Per an OPM memo, obtained first by RealClearPolitics, the syllabus includes course work grounded in the U.S. Constitution,“Founding ideals of our government,”and Trump’s own executive orders.

The development program requires 80 hours of video-based training and culminates in two days of in-person training in Washington, D.C. It will affect government employees across the administration and disparate agencies and go live this September. The stated goal: “Ensure that SES officials uphold the Constitution and the rule of law and effectively serve the American people.”

This is the latest effort in the ongoing campaign to crush what the White House sees as an unaccountable administrative state. Trump began slashing and burning his way through the agencies as soon as he returned to office, with a particular emphasis on the Senior Executive Service. Normally little-noticed and non-controversial, they are the elite of career civil servants who serve just below presidential appointees and wield tremendous influence over federal levers of power.

To those on the right, this makes the SES the Praetorian Guard of an allegedly rogue bureaucracy that gave the president fits during his first term. Trump officials felt that they were repeatedly thwarted by bureaucrats who either slow walked his agenda or outright refused to implement his policies.

“Either the Deep State destroys America,” Trump declared during his first major rally of his last campaign, “or we destroy the Deep State.” His White House sees it as a question fundamental to self-government. “If the bureaucracy is in charge,” asked Elon Musk earlier this year in the Oval Office, “then what meaning does democracy actually have?”

The White House moved quickly to answer that question by attempting to eradicate the “deep state.” Trump stripped SES employees of civil service protections, mandated new standards, and fired many of them during his first 100 days in office. Now his administration seeks a new crop of replacements in line with his policy and more accepting of his maximalist vision of executive authority.

Hence the training, and what the OPM memo describes as “new Executive Core Qualifications.” Diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics are out. Evaluation of potential hires will, instead, be according to merit, competence, and “dedication to our Nation’s Founding ideals.”

The identity of the author of the new curriculum was not clear as of press time. The general parameters of the core qualifications, however, include a commitment to the rule of law, which the memo defines as “upholding the principles of the American Founding, including equality under the law and democratic self-government.”

The overture to the American founding comes ahead of the national semi-quincentennial, or 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and after nearly half a decade of dramatic disagreement over what those ideals mean. Democracy itself has been up for debate, with Democrats alleging that Trump represents an existential threat to that form of government.

The memo also outlines a streamlined hiring process, including minute details. The 10-page narrative essays required of interviewees will be struck from the application process and resumes limited to just two pages.

Perhaps most significant, the administration will require every agency to add a majority of non-career federal employees to their Executive Review Boards, which are responsible for assessment, hiring, and management of senior civil servants.

This too is intended as a step toward democratization.“These requirements ensure that effective implementation of the President’s policies is at the forefront of agency executive management decisions,”the memo says.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/05/29/trump_admin_institutes_80-hour_constitution_course_for_deep_state_execs__152853.html

Tim Burchett

@timburchett

The ⁦@realDonaldTrump Big Beautiful Bill passed.

Thank you for your patience America.

3:18 PM · Jul 3, 2025

·

183.7K

Views

1:57

https://x.com/timburchett/status/1940852573520494600