Security

• Russia-U.S. prisoner swap frees Gershkovich and Whelan: The U.S. and Russia have agreed to a prisoner swap that will send Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, whom a Russian court had just sentenced to 16 years in prison, and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan back to the U.S. It is being reported as the biggest swap of political prisoners since the Cold War. According to The Wall Street Journal, “The sweeping deal involved 24 prisoners and at least six countries, and came together after months of negotiations at the highest levels of governments in the U.S., Russia and Germany, whose prisoner, Russian hit man Vadim Krasikov, emerged as the linchpin to the arrangement.” The good news for Gershkovich and Whelan is that they will soon be back home with their families.

• Iran orders attack against Israel: In the wake of Israel’s righteous and deadly retaliatory strikes against its terrorist enemies — including a particularly bold one in Tehran that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh — Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is calling for his country to strike back at Israel directly. As The New York Times reports, “Khamenei gave the order at an emergency meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on Wednesday morning, shortly after Iran announced that Mr. Haniyeh had been killed.” The nature of the ayotollah-ordered strike is unknown, but Iran is again walking a tightrope between measured response and all-out war. Joining Haniyeh in paradise are Hezbollah senior military commander Fuad Shukr, who was eliminated in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, and Muhammad Deif, the “Osama bin Laden of Gaza,” whom the Israel Defense Forces confirmed was taken out in a July 13 strike in southern Gaza.

• No death penalty for 9/11 mastermind: It’s said that punishment doesn’t tend to deter unless it’s both swift and severe, and neither is the case concerning Khalid Shaikh Mohammad. As CBS News reports, “The alleged architect of [the 9/11 attacks] has reached a plea deal, according to the Department of Defense, along with two of his alleged accomplices.” KSM, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi were all captured in 2003, “but their cases have faced years of legal delays over whether the evidence extracted during their interrogations was admissible in court.” According to The New York Times, the trio of cutthroats “have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and murder charges in exchange for a life sentence rather than a death-penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. … Prosecutors said the deal was meant to bring some 'finality and justice’ to the case.” We wonder, though: How do the families of the nearly 3,000 Americans who died there in Manhattan and at the Pentagon and in that field in Shanksville feel about this “finality and justice”?

• Chilling new footage from July 13 sniper victim: James Copenhaver nearly lost his life on July 13 when he was gravely wounded by Thomas Crooks during the Trump assassination attempt. And now, thanks to cellphone video he took during the minutes just before the attack, we can see what things looked like from his perspective. Chillingly, the footage, which cuts off just before the shooting began, shows the assassin scurrying across the roof in plain view to the naked eye. Trump is speaking, and he’s completely unaware of the threat that’s unfolding. But how could Crooks’s movement have been missed? Indeed, the footage presents us with yet another stunning example of the catastrophic failure of the Secret Service that day.

Politics

• CNN shuts down opinion section (The Hill)

• United Auto Workers union endorses Kamala Harris for president (Fox Business)

• MIA Kamala: If it worked for Joe Biden, then why not for Kamala Harris? A week and a half ago, Democrat leadership anointed Harris as their presumed presidential nominee. Since then, the Leftmedia has been schilling for Harris as if she were Franklin Delano Roosevelt risen from the grave. Yet despite all this positive near-fanboy media coverage and gaslighting of her abysmal past record, Harris has yet to hold an unscripted press conference. While she has been on the campaign trail, she has avoided interviews. And yesterday, Harris avoided making a showing at the National Association of Black Journalists, where Donald Trump did make a showing and fielded questions from hostile leftist journalists. Of course, this is a strategic move by Harris’s team to protect her from being exposed for her radical policy positions, her long history of flip-flopping on a wide array of issues, her disastrous record as border czar, and her vacuous ramblings. It will be interesting to see how long Harris goes without holding a press conference. But don’t expect to hear any objections from the mainstream media.

Second Amendment

• Harris would radically target legal gun owners: If you thought Joe Biden was bad on 2A rights, things will only get worse for gun owners under a Kamala Harris administration. As Crime Prevention Research Center President John R. Lott observes, Harris is as radical as they come. She wants not only to ban so-called “assault weapons” but also force law-abiding gun owners to sell any firearm she deems problematic to the government. Furthermore, in order to accomplish this forced confiscation, Harris has vowed to use an executive order to establish a national gun registry if Congress fails to pass legislation doing so. Being radically anti-Second Amendment is nothing new for Harris — back in 2008, she argued in a SCOTUS amicus brief that there is no constitutional right to self-defense. She also wants to “eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability,” mandate owners lock up their firearms, and require background checks for all gun transfers. Under a Harris presidency, the Second Amendment would face an assault like never before.

• New Jersey AR-15 ban ruled unconstitutional by federal judge (Washington Examiner)

Big Tech

• Meta settlement: On Tuesday, Facebook parent company Meta agreed to a $1.4 billion settlement to resolve a lawsuit brought against the Big Tech company by the state of Texas for allegedly illegally using facial recognition technology to collect biometric data on millions of users without their consent. The suit was launched in 2022 using Texas’s 2009 biometric privacy law, which exacts a $25,000 fine per violation. After the settlement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said it demonstrates the state’s “commitment to standing up to the world’s biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans’ privacy rights.” That said, despite the settlement, Meta denies that it violated any law. The big picture is that this represents a big win for consumer rights against the ongoing abuses of Big Tech and Facebook in particular. But this is not the first time Meta has settled a lawsuit targeting its facial recognition program. Back in 2019, the company agreed to a $650 million settlement with the state of Illinois for violating a similar biometrics privacy law in that state.

Rainbow Mafia

• Chromosomally advantaged Olympic boxers are free to pound females: It was over quickly, and mercifully so. Just 46 seconds into her Olympic boxing match with Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer with male chromosomes, Italy’s Angela Carini dropped to the canvas after being hit twice in the face. Thus ended another abominable sporting event between a woman and a biological male. As the New York Post reports, Carini yelled “this is unjust!” toward her corner and slammed her headgear on the canvas. Indeed, it is unjust, as the differences between men and women are most glaringly displayed in combative events like boxing, wrestling, and the martial arts. Never fear, though. According to a statement from the International Olympic Committee prior to the Games, “All athletes participating in the boxing tournament of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations, as well as all applicable medical regulations.” As The Daily Wire reports, Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu ting had been “disqualified from the Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi last year after their chromosome tests came back as XY.” Apparently, that disqualification wasn’t good enough for the Rainbow Mafia types who run the Olympic Games. It will be unfortunate if this controversy causes danger to Khelif back home in Muslim Algeria, but that responsibility will rest with the IOC for having allowed this to happen, not with fair-minded people for having objected to it.

Update: We originally reported Khelif as “transgender” rather than as having male chromosomes.

Immigration

• Illegal Jordanian migrants who “tried to breach” Quantico base allowed to walk free after posting bail (NY Post)

• Illegal migrant who shot Texas cop was set to be deported, but a judge gave him until 2026 to roam the country (Not the Bee)

• Illegal immigrant accused of running over Virginia grandma with her own car (Not the Bee)

Economy

• Powell says September rate cut “on the table” if inflation data continues to cool (CNBC)

• Bidenflation finally takes a bite out of McDonald’s (PJ Media)

• Delta CEO says CrowdStrike-Microsoft outage cost the airline $500 million (CNBC)

• Boeing taps a new CEO to correct its course (Morning Brew)

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