"Do Something Quickly": Top Court Asks Centre To Find Russian Woman, Child

07/18/25 4:41 PM

Victoria Basu, the Russian woman who is missing with her four-year-old child, has not left India through legal channels, the Central government informed the Supreme Court on Friday.

"She's For Russia, It's Allowed": Crowd Assaults Woman In Kyiv Metro

07/18/25 6:21 PM

A young woman was brutally beaten inside the Kyiv metro in Ukraine for allegedly shouting pro-Russian slogans.

'Coincidence? Not even close': Ex-Trump operative blows up White House narrative

07/05/25 9:43 PM

Donald Trump and the media insist on one version of events, but a former Trump associate insists there's more to the story.Trump recently completed a phone call with Putin, which the media has reported led to no progress in halting the war on Ukraine. A follow-up call with Ukraine's leader was reported as having featured Trump offering some assistance.But there's more to the call with Ukraine's leader, according to Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump who worked on issues related to Ukraine during the president's first term.Parnas on his Substack flagged a devastating attack on Ukraine right after the call with Trump, saying, "The attack wasn’t random. It was systematic, with multiple drones launched in waves designed to overwhelm air defense systems. Targets included civilian zones, energy infrastructure, and transit hubs, with some of the heaviest activity tracked near Kirov Oblast—a name that’s now entering military dispatches as a hub for these new tactics."According to Parnas, the attack was directly connected to Trump's publicized calls with foreign leaders. "This is Putin’s escalation, timed perfectly after Trump’s back-to-back calls with him and then with Zelensky. Coincidence? Not even close," the ex-associate said, before blowing up the White House's (and the media's) description of the call."According to the press, Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was 'productive' and 'supportive.' But my sources—inside the room—tell a different story," he said. "Trump made no commitments to deliver weapons. He vaguely mentioned that he’d 'look into' retrieving U.S.-supplied arms that were held up. But as I’ve told you for weeks, this is part of a calculated delay tactic."According to Parnas, "Donald Trump has no intention of sending Ukraine the weapons it needs.""The strategy is simple: stall the Ukrainians, comfort Putin, and let the situation in eastern Ukraine deteriorate while Washington is distracted with optics," the ex-insider added. "I’m also hearing credible intel about a large-scale Russian troop buildup in the Sunni region, with over 50,000 troops mobilizing. The kind of movement that signals a major new offensive—one that could shift the war."Read the piece here.

'Cowardice!' Cory Booker loses it after Mike Waltz blames Biden for Signalgate

07/15/25 4:41 PM

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) lashed out at Mike Waltz after he suggested former President Joe Biden's administration shared some of the blame for the so-called SignalGate scandal, where he shared secret war plans with a journalist on a group messaging app.The New Jersey senator chewed out President Donald Trump's nominee for United Nations ambassador at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday."Congressman Waltz, I've watched this hearing, and I've been really disappointed," Booker opined. "And what's been troubling to me about your nomination from the beginning is your failure to just stand up and take accountability for mistakes that you made and that all Americans know that you've made.""But I heard you just blame Biden," he continued. "I've seen you not only fail to stand up, but lie... You denied, deflected, and then you did something that to me really lacks integrity, is that you sought out to demean and degrade that very journalist in crass and frankly cruel ways that made him a target.""Smearing people, attacking folks, singling them out, just furthers, compounds what I think is disqualifying about you for this position. It also, to me, just shows profound cowardice."Booker noted that Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) had pressed Waltz on the Signal scandal earlier in the hearing."Unfortunately, what you're doing to me is perfectly in line with the way this administration as a whole has operated," he observed. "We have too much of that rhetoric, that divisive, demeaning, degrading, cruelness that's being elevated and celebrated by this administration that you seem to fall in line with.""I just watched with great disappointment that even after weeks, if not months of reflection, you couldn't sit before this committee and take some responsibility and talk constructively about what's learned," Booker added. "Instead, you do what seems to be yet another creative tool that people are doing, which is, hey, let me just blame Biden."Watch the video below.

'Deliberately lying': Trump hammered over 'horrible' new trade deal

07/02/25 6:56 PM

President Donald Trump announced his second trade deal as part of his "90 Deals in 90 Days" marathon, and this one is with Vietnam. For political analysts, however, the deal doesn't look as good as Trump boasts. "It is my Great Honor to announce that I have just made a Trade Deal with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam after speaking with To Lam, the Highly Respected General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam," Trump announced on Truth Social Wednesday.Trump said that all imports from Vietnam will be taxed at 20% with a 40% tax on "transshipping." He goes on to celebrate that the United States will have "TOTAL ACCESS" to sell U.S. goods in Vietnam. As foreign affairs journalist Olga Nesterova explained, Trump is taxing Americans 20-40% while Vietnam gets products for free. However, the country's economy, cost of living and salaries are vastly different from those in the United States. For example, Numbeo data shows the cost of a 12-ounce bottle of soda is about 50 cents. The monthly cell phone bill with at least 10 gigabytes of data is under $6. A one-bedroom apartment in the City Centre averages under $400 a month.As political and media researcher Craig Harrington explained, "Our trade relationship with Vietnam was growing before Trump, but we still only exported $13.1 billion worth of goods to Vietnam in 2024 (they exported $136.6 billion to us). Tariffs aren't the reason we don't export much to Vietnam, it's because they are poorer than we are."Meanwhile, University of Michigan professor of public policy and economics, Justin Wolfers, noted on X, "'New' trade deal just dropped: US businesses get tariff-free access to the Vietnamese market, just as they were offered 8 years ago in the TPP, but Trump refused to sign. In addition, Trump's imposing a 20% tax on Americans who import goods from Vietnam."Political commentator Brian Krassenstein posted on X that the deal is "horrible" for the U.S."Trump announces what appears to be a horrible trade deal for the United States and Vietnam. American businesses will now be paying between 20 and 40% for imports coming from Vietnam. It’s literally like they want inflation," he wrote. The group Republicans Against Trump agreed, noting, it "sounds like a really terrible deal."Harrington pointed out that on April 4, there was a "zero-rate tariff offer in Vietnam was proposed." Trump announced his "Liberation Day" on April 2. "He's essentially done nothing in 3 months. A true genius at work. The art of the deal."Zeteo News founder and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan attacked, "Trump is brazenly and deliberately lying here - but American consumers and businesses will pay."

'Faded away': Expert despairs as Supreme Court ends 'glimmer of independence'

07/08/25 1:10 PM

Any sign that the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court were interested in checking President Donald Trump's power have subsided, legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern wrote for Slate in a scathing roundup of the court's agenda this term.He focused particularly on the abrupt heel-turn of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump's third appointee.His column follows the court's abrupt decision to allow the Trump administration to deport migrants to South Sudan, despite them never having been to that country and despite a near-total lack of due process."Less than six months into the second Trump administration, the Supreme Court has settled on a posture of complicity toward the executive branch’s assault on civil liberties and democracy itself," wrote Stern. "The 47th president seeks to restructure the government around his own whims, blasting through any barrier that restrains him as he embarks on a project to illegally freeze spending, end birthright citizenship, and disappear noncitizens to black sites, among other autocratic ambitions. And six Republican-appointed justices are falling over themselves to help him do it."The particularly notable thing about the sudden shower of shadow-docket decisions nullifying lower-court checks on Trump, as well as the potentially landmark Trump v. CASA decision that puts new limits on the ability to even block illegal orders from the Trump administration, is how quickly the Supreme Court's modicum of resistance to Trump fell apart, Stern wrote."From January through March, the court looked to be taking a cautious approach to his presidency, seeking out compromises and imposing limits on his authority," he wrote. "Early on, Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s vote seemed to be in play, as did Chief Justice John Roberts’, to a lesser extent. Along with the liberals, the two justices forced Trump to attend his criminal sentencing shortly before he reentered the White House. They ordered his administration to pay out $2 billion in foreign aid that it illegally withheld." The two justices then joined a few liberal dissents when the majority allowed Trump to resume certain illegal deportations and withhold Education Department grants.However, he continued, "By May, these glimmers of independence had faded away. Roberts and Barrett now appear to be almost entirely on board with Trump’s agenda, enabling his consolidation of power at the expense of the other branches, the states, and the people. Perhaps they have simply given up trying to police this administration, fearing that, if they continued to try, they would reveal their own impotence in the face of an aspiring autocrat. Or maybe, as CASA suggests, they believe that the biggest outrage of Trump’s term so far isn’t his own lawless agenda, but the lower courts that dare shoot it down."At this point, Stern continued, the only areas in which these justices shoot down Trump, as with placing limits on the Alien Enemies Act for deportations, it "may be better understood as preserving the court’s own authority — reminding the president that, in the end, the justices get the final say on what the law requires." But all too often, that say still goes in Trump's favor, he concluded.

'Go a little bit quicker': Trump scolds African leaders for talking too much

07/09/25 5:43 PM

President Donald Trump scolded the leaders of several African nations because he said they were talking too much.At a luncheon with the leaders on Wednesday, Trump spoke at length about his accomplishments before handing the floor over to the president of Mauritania. Within minutes, however, the U.S. president lost his patience and signaled for the leader to wrap up his remarks."I appreciate it," Trump said. "Maybe we're going to have to go a little bit quicker than this because we have a whole schedule. If I could just say your name and your country would be great."Watch the video below from C-SPAN or click here.

'Humiliating': MSNBC panel says Putin 'laughing' at 'snowflake' Trump

07/08/25 9:55 PM

Russian President Vladimir Putin is laughing at President Donald Trump, said one MSNBC host on Tuesday. Trump has been asked about Putin and the state of the war against Ukraine after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth paused a weapons shipment to the war-torn country. On Tuesday, when asked about the matter, Trump said, "We get a lot of bulls--- thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.""Another reversal from Donald Trump today after a seemingly humiliating call during which he admitted he again made zero progress," MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said. "Getting to this took maybe the clearest, most obvious sign yet that Putin doesn't want peace," Wallace continued, noting that he launched "the largest air attack against Ukraine since the start of the war, just hours after his call with Donald J. Trump."The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum said that, despite Trump's anger with Putin, he still seems to be laying on compliments while halting the issuance of new sanctions on Russia. It's one of several things she said is "sending a message to the Russians, telling them, essentially, that the U.S. isn't playing the game anymore, and they're welcome to keep going. And that's why Putin is still going. That's why he's stepping up his attacks."She was speaking to Wallace from Warsaw, Poland, and noted that Europeans see Trump making concessions to Putin."And then, somehow, Trump is surprised when Putin laughs at him and continues fighting, even though he said he seemed to believe that he said he wouldn't," said Applebaum. Wallace wondered if there was a strategic play to move Trump away from the Russians while he's being "so publicly ignored. And it would seem Putin's laughing at him. He gets off the phone and bombs the you-know-what out of Ukraine after Trump asks him not to. I mean, is there any consideration given to playing this very public humiliation of Donald Trump that Vladimir Putin is clearly enjoying?"Applebaum said that many Republican senators have pushed back on Trump "for a long time." After a commercial break, Wallace recalled Trump being asked who he turns to for advice, and Trump said "himself" and his "big brain."Commentator John Heilemann called Trump a "pouty little snowflake," who "sounds like a 14-year-old who's just been learning the hard way that the quarterback, the varsity quarterback, just is not into her — or into him. Whichever. It's just, it's the most infantile kind of pathetic display."See the discussions below or at the link here. - YouTube www.youtube.com - YouTube youtu.be

'It's all fake': White House insider admits Trump's trade war is just for show

07/05/25 12:42 PM

According to a White House insider who is deeply involved in talks with U.S. trading partners, Donald Trump's tariff threats are not to be taken seriously because they are just a "theatrical show" being put on by the attention-obsessed president.According to a report from Politico, as Trump's 90-day window on getting trade deals done before onerous tariffs are put in place looms, there is no real urgency at the White House which has negotiators and even some White House staff taking a dim view of the proceedings.Politico's Daniel Desrochers and Megan Messerly are reporting, "Foreign officials, trade experts, lawmakers and even some White House allies have expressed a nihilistic view of the July deadline, questioning whether a deal with the Trump administration means anything at all given the president’s penchant for using tariffs as leverage to get his way."After noting Trump himself was wavering this past week when he told reporters, "We could extend it, we could make it shorter. I’d like to make it shorter,” one insider offered a candid assessment about what is really going on.“Trump knows the most interesting part of his presidency is the tariff conversation,” they admitted. “I find it hard to believe he’s going to surrender it that easily. It’s all fake. There’s no deadline. It’s a self-imposed landmark in this theatrical show, and that’s where we are.”The report notes that the president has delegated negotiations to three individuals, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, with Politico is reporting they have little actual authority and are often working at cross purposes."The result has been a convoluted process with little progress and no end in sight. Countries have sent representatives to the U.S. on repeated visits to negotiate, but some have failed to secure meetings. Those who have secured facetime with Trump officials have sometimes left confused about U.S. demands or have been later seen their countries chastised by Trump on social media," the report states.Another White House insider suggested Trump just likes the attention tariff threats bring him.“You have wins. Take them,” they remarked. "You only have to assume he doesn’t want to take them because he likes the game too much.”You can read more here.

'Just so you know': MAGA rep schooled live on CNN as he tries to dismiss scandal

07/14/25 2:44 PM

MAGA Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) wasn't convinced of the merits of appointing a special counsel to investigate the elusive Jeffrey Epstein files when asked about conservative activist Laura Loomer's suggestion on Monday.Loomer, who appears to have President Donald Trump's ear when it comes to firing "disloyal" White House staffers, has been calling for Attorney General Pam Bondi's ouster over her bungling of the Epstein issue.Lawler told CNN's John Berman Monday, "I'm not exactly one to subscribe to conspiracy theories. So from my vantage point, if somebody committed a crime, if somebody affiliated with Jeffrey Epstein committed a crime, they should be prosecuted. In the absence of that, frankly, this seems like a colossal waste of time and effort, and frankly, a lot of nonsense."Lawler added, "There are a lot of issues facing this country right now — a dead pedophile ain't one of them. And from my vantage point, you know, the world is a lot better off with Jeffrey Epstein no longer part of it."But Berman pushed back."You say there's a lot of nonsense," he said. "A lot of nonsense from whom? Explain to me what you think the nonsense is here."Lawler said he didn't understand why the news media was "continuing to cover" Epstein in comments that were reminiscent of President Donald Trump's frustration that the topic was still being discussed. Biographer Michael Wolff has claimed that the FBI may have photos of Epstein and Trump together with young girls, prompting both MAGA and Democrats alike to call for full transparency."At the end of the day, if there are people who were part of any crimes, then they should be prosecuted. But in the absence of that, what exactly are we looking to do?" Lawler asked.Berman went on to explain why the story was still important."Just so you know, it's being covered because the deputy director of the FBI is said to have taken off work on Friday to protest the justice department's own handling of this. And there have been shouting matches reported inside the White House on this. So, whether or not you think it's important, apparently there are people who are quite agitated about it."Watch the clip below via CNN.