The Patriot Post® · Thursday Executive News Summary
Additional attacks on Iran
For a second day, the U.S. military struck Iran, hitting targets near Tehran and in the southern region of the country near the Strait of Hormuz. The strikes were in response to Iran’s downing of a U.S. Apache helicopter a day earlier. Iran responded with a number of missile launches that targeted neighboring nations, including Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain. Prior to the U.S. strikes, President Donald Trump, who has been pursuing a deal in which Iran gives up its nuclear weapon development program, blasted Iran, stating, “We were really close to a deal, but they keep tapping us along. They keep playing us for suckers.” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also warned prior to the strikes, “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs. And we’re very good at it. Nobody better in the world.”
ActBlue leader invokes the Fifth
ActBlue is the largest fundraising platform for the Democrat Party, and on Wednesday, CEO Regina Wallace-Jones invoked the Fifth Amendment in order to avoid testifying before Congress. Wallace-Jones had been compelled to appear before Congress over allegations that the organization had allowed foreign donations on its platform. The ActBlue CEO pleaded the Fifth in response to the very first question posed to her by the House Administration Committee. Chairman Bryan Steil, in his opening remarks, highlighted the foreign donations, the platform’s alleged lies to Congress, and withholding documents in response to a subpoena, concluding, “All three of those actions are illegal.” ActBlue has accused the Trump administration of partisan attacks and declared that invoking the Fifth Amendment is not an admission of guilt.
Karmelo Anthony too poor to hire counsel despite massive fundraiser
Karmelo Anthony was convicted of the murder of Austin Metcalf on Tuesday and sentenced to 35 years in prison. In an appeal filing after the judgment, Anthony claimed to be a “penniless, destitute, and indigent person, too poor to employ counsel.” This claim is remarkable since a GiveSendGo fundraiser set up after he murdered a fellow teenager raised over $600,000 for him and his family. That fundraiser did come with some fine print, stating that while legal costs were part of the fundraiser’s purpose, it would also be used for “basic living costs,” moving houses, and “transportation.” It seems that the Anthony family was living large on their big payday and failed to set aside funds to keep their supposedly beloved son from spending the rest of his life behind bars.
Crockett the fool
Following the guilty verdict in Karmelo Anthony’s murder trial, Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett blasted the jury’s decision. She ridiculously asserted that “black women … live in fear and agony every single day … that I promise you the Metcalfs probably never spent a day living.” She argued, “We’re going to have to have just some real conversations about race in this country.” Crocket also claimed the knife Anthony used to stab and kill Metcalf didn’t qualify as a “deadly weapon” and suggested the jury should have considered “one stab versus a gazillion.” Crockett called on black people to get on juries to save black kids because otherwise, juries “don’t even see their humanity nine out of 10 times.”
Birth tourism ring busted
U.S. embassies are revoking visas for sophisticated fraudsters who planned to travel to the U.S. to exploit birthright citizenship. Two embassies in West and North Africa each canceled more than 100 visas obtained with fraudulent documents or for the purpose of giving birth to American citizens during their travel. Another embassy in Europe identified over 400 cases of birth tourism since 2024, which have been linked to six companies that coach applicants on interviews, help set up housing in the U.S., and arrange for childbirth in the U.S. The State Department is taking these cases seriously, reiterating, “A U.S. visa is a privilege, not a right.” Of course, birth tourism is still the tip of the iceberg when it comes to issues with birthright citizenship.
Trump signs ICE bill
On Wednesday, President Trump signed the Secure America Act, the $70 billion immigration bill that congressional Republicans passed via reconciliation. The legislation narrowly passed the House on Tuesday by a vote of 214 to 212. The bill funds ICE and Border Patrol for the next three years, effectively removing from Democrats an issue they had used to block DHS funding. Trump praised Speaker Mike Johnson for getting the bill through the House given the Republicans’ slim majority. He noted that the bill “provides crucial funding for domestic law enforcement investigations and combating child exploitation, continuing our work to restore law and order across our nation.” The bill does not contain the controversial “anti-weaponization of government” fund, which Trump had touted for victims of the Biden administration’s unlawful targeting of individuals for political reasons.
Team Biden’s unvetted caregivers for child migrants
The Trump administration has put a premium on finding the illegal immigrant children who entered the U.S. alone and were quickly lost by the Biden administration. Now, in addition to simply losing track of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable kids, many of whom were victims or became victims of human trafficking, we have learned how poor the vetting process was for adults entrusted to watch over these kids. DHS released a report on Wednesday detailing the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s failures. Between September 2021 and August 2024, the ORR conducted 176 of 256 required visits to check unlicensed housing facilities in Texas and Florida. Children were placed in the care of staff at these facilities who may not have had criminal background checks run on them. For a time, COVID madness overwhelmed ORR, and officials stopped conducting in-person checks at all.
Red states rebrand “Pride Month”
Alabama has become the latest state to push back against the LGBTQ “Pride Month” promotion, as it will now recognize June as “Strong Families Month.” Other red states have taken similar action, with Arkansas and Utah officially designating June as “Fidelity Month,” while Indiana and Tennessee have dubbed it “Nuclear Family Month.” Recent polling shows that Americans have tired of the incessant LGBTQ push, with a recent Gallup survey finding that support for “gay marriage” has declined to 62% from a high of 71% in 2022, while the belief that one can change their gender fell from 46% in 2021 to 38% this year. Conspicuously, President Trump has not issued a “Pride Month” proclamation.
Louisiana passes anti-vagrancy law
Louisiana’s legislature passed a bill called the Homelessness Court Program that would require vagrants to either enter a 12-month treatment program or face jail time, a $500 fine, or both. The program includes mental health treatment, addiction treatment, job training, and housing aid. The reward for completing the one-year regimen is having charges dropped, while those who don’t will face criminal penalties. There is some leeway built into the bill, under which local authorities are not required to run their own Homelessness Court Program. They can simply choose to arrest and penalize vagrants. Local jurisdictions also have the option to create a designated homeless area, but only if the shelters are full, and as long as it’s not endangering children, near a residential area, or damaging property values.
Gates tells House that Epstein blackmailed him
Bill Gates was the 15th high-profile person to be interviewed in a closed-door panel of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is investigating the Epstein case. The Microsoft cofounder told lawmakers on Wednesday that Jeffrey Epstein used his knowledge of Gates’s extramarital affairs with a Microsoft employee and two Russian women “to pressure me to reengage with him.” Epstein initially lured him into engaging with him on the promise that Epstein had several wealthy donors who would pour money into Gates’s global health organization. When those didn’t materialize, Gates said he broke off contact with Epstein in 2014. He claimed that Epstein attempted to blackmail him after that, but it didn’t work. He insisted that he didn’t go to Epstein’s island, his ranch, or his Florida home, and that he “never victimized anyone.”
Headlines
Jeanine Pirro’s prosecutors probe big banks for alleged debanking (WSJ)
Fraudster Ilhan Omar named “Global Somali Person of the Year” (Not the Bee)
Meta and Google denied new trial after landmark verdict in youth social media addiction case (NY Post)
NASA chief defends selection of all-male crew for Artemis III mission (CBS News)
The Executive News Summary is compiled daily by Jordan Candler, Thomas Gallatin, Sterling Henry, and Sophie Starkova. For the archive, click here.