The Patriot Post® · Wednesday: Below the Fold
Security
Israel’s revenge: Top leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas killed: Yesterday was a deadly day for the enemies of Israel, as the Jewish state exacted revenge for a Hezbollah rocket attack that killed 12 Israeli children over the weekend. In two separate incidents some 1,200 miles apart and deep in the territory of other countries, Israel appears to have avenged its children by assassinating Hezbollah’s top military commander and Hamas’s top political leader. In the former case, in an airstrike carried out in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, “The Israeli military confirmed in an X post that it had taken out Fuad Shukr in the strike, Hezbollah’s ‘most senior military commander,’ who is believed to be responsible for Saturday’s soccer-field massacre in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights,” according to the New York Post. In the latter case, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of its new president. “No one immediately claimed responsibility for the assassination,” reports the AP, “but suspicion quickly fell on Israel, which has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other leaders of Hamas over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken hostage.”
Washington Post issues editor’s note after backlash over Hezbollah missile front page (The Wrap)
Hamas has massive influence network in U.S.: Former FBI agent and former counterterrorism strategist John D. Guandolo recently warned in a new report that Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood pose a significant security threat to the U.S. They both have close ties to Marxist groups stateside and have a massive influence network in the country. “The recent protests across college campuses and U.S. cities by communists and jihadis highlight the need for communities to identify and root out these hostile elements,” Guandolo points out. “All of the jihadi attacks in the United States since and including Sept. 11, 2001, have been perpetrated with the direct help and involvement of organizations easily identifiable in this hostile U.S. Islamic movement.” Guandolo observes that both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood have a long history of fomenting both nonviolent and violent protests in the U.S. with the aim of pushing public opinion and government policy. His report states that “in towns all around America, communist and MB/Hamas organizations and leaders work to undermine liberty, erode effective security measures, and destroy the republican form of government demanded by the U.S. Constitution.”
KOSA and COPPA 2.0 pass Senate: On Tuesday, the Senate passed two bills aimed at protecting children online. The two pieces of legislation are the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0). The package passed with massive bipartisan support, garnering a 91-3 vote. The bills will now head to the House. KOSA would require social media platforms to restrict users from messaging minors, ban features like autoplay that are designed to keep users on apps longer, and essentially force TikTok to do a massive redesign. COPA 2.0, which is an update of the original law passed in 1998 that bans ads targeting children, would allow parents to delete their children’s information from sites. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), one of KOSA’s sponsors, contends that it will “protect minor children from” transgenderism. Despite its broad bipartisan support in the Senate, these bills are not expected to see the same popularity in the House.
Meta to pay $1.4 billion to settle Texas facial recognition data lawsuit (Reuters)
Politics
Project 2025 director steps down: In what appears to be both Republican damage control and a big victory for alarmist Democrats, the Heritage Foundation’s head of Project 2025 is falling on his sword. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Paul Dans, the Heritage staffer who spearheaded the conservative think tank’s detailed roadmap for the next Republican president, is stepping down in the wake of Democrat scaremongering and the Trump team’s public criticism of the plan. While the Democrats have denounced it as “radical and dangerous,” Project 2025 is actually a thoughtful plan for pushing back against The Swamp — a plan that is popular with battleground voters. Nonetheless, as the Trump team’s Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita put it, “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.” This seems to us like a badly missed opportunity for good governance and a failure of the Trump team and the nation’s leading conservative think tank to coordinate a response to the Left’s all-too-predictable demonization.
Kari Lake wins Arizona’s GOP Senate primary (National Review)
Harris will announce her VP pick next week: After a couple of weeks of speculation, we’ll soon find out who Kamala Harris chooses to round out the Democrats’ presumed presidential ticket. Harris plans to make the announcement ahead of a rally in Philadelphia. Her short list reportedly includes Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Governor Mark Beshear, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and former Rhode Island Governor and current Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. The latter two, Buttigieg and Raimondo, are merely window dressing; no one seriously thinks Harris will pick anyone other than a straight white moderate male to offset her leftism. The venue, Philadelphia, suggests that Harris’s selection might not be Kelly, as many have speculated, but perhaps Shapiro, whose centrist credentials and popularity in a must-win state could help balance Harris’s radicalism and help shore up the Democrats’ so-called blue wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Kamala Harris deploys weird accent during Atlanta event (Townhall)
Humor: As Kamala campaigns, nation starting to miss the clarity and coherence of Joe Biden (Babylon Bee)
Culture
Media members punished for Olympic wrongthink: American scribes could learn a thing or two about truth-telling from an intrepid Pole. During the Paris Summer Games’ opening ceremonies, as John Lennon’s “Imagine” was being performed by French singer Juliette Armarnet, Polish state broadcaster Przemyslaw Babiarz rightly and accurately called out the iconic song for what it is: “This is a vision of communism, unfortunately,” he said. Babiarz ought to know, given his country’s awful history under the boot of Soviet communism. But no good deed goes unpunished, and the intrepid broadcaster was promptly suspended from the Olympics. Elsewhere from the Files of Olympic Wrongthink, Eurosport has defenestrated longtime swimming commentator Bob Ballard for having said, after a swimming event, “Well, the women just finishing up. You know what women are like … hanging around, doing their makeup.” So go ahead and poke fun at The Last Supper, one of the holiest moments of Christian history, but don’t dare poke fun at women and their affinity for cosmetics.
More colleges shut down DEI offices … sort of: Many public colleges and universities in Alabama and Missouri appear to be engaged in a game of DEI whack-a-mole. Both states recently passed legislation effectively banning DEI in public schools. In Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey signed legislation in March that banned the promotion of racial or sexual discrimination via favoritism. Furthermore, the bill banned the teaching that “meritocracy or traits such as hard work ethic are racist or sexist.” Both Auburn University and the University of Alabama reported that they will be closing their campus DEI offices. However, the University of Alabama said that its DEI chief, Dr. Christine Taylor, will not be leaving but will simply be given a new title and be heading the new Division of Opportunities, Connections, and Success. In other words, the same woke ideology, just under a different name. At the University of Missouri, President Mun Choi stated that the school will be shutting down its DEI office in compliance with state law, which the school actively opposed. Tellingly, Choi noted that the school’s outgoing DEI head will work with the school in seeking ways to keep DEI alive.
Florida school board suspends employee who allowed
transgender daughterson to play girls volleyball (AP)
Immigration
Illegal alien entries outnumber American births: The number of illegal aliens entering America exceeded the number of American births this past year for the first time ever. This latest data point serves to show just how bad illegal immigration has gotten under Joe Biden. While the Leftmedia claims that The Great Replacement is a nativist, far-right, racist conspiracy theory, the actual facts on the ground say otherwise. Monthly illegal migrant crossings have spiked under Biden, hitting 400,000 last December. Biden’s de facto open border is by design, with the aim to build up and boost a new Democrat voter base. Hence the Democrats’ repeated and ridiculous objections to election integrity laws such as voter ID. When Kamala Harris was tagged by Biden as his border czar, she claimed her role was to tackle the “root causes” that drive migration. Given the steady increase of illegal migrations, her failure in this endeavor is undeniable.
Federal court rules Texas can keep its floating border barriers in place (Daily Caller)
World
Venezuela’s military chief backs Maduro, calls protests a coup as new unrest expected over disputed election (CBS News) | Venezuela cuts diplomatic ties with countries questioning its election results (RedState)
Twenty-two cops injured in clash with protesters near site of UK stabbing attack that killed three girls (NY Post)
Italy’s Meloni vows to “relaunch” relations with China (Politico)
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