National

On Friday, the 31st anniversary of the massacre of Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, the ATF issued new regulations that make it more difficult to comply with federal laws regulating gun dealing and background checks. Since the 1930s, federal law has required gun dealers to be registered as Federal Firearms Licensees (FFL). The requirements hinged on the meaning of "engaged in the business of" gun dealing. This language has always been ambiguous, and there has never been (even after the announcement of the new rules) a true "bright line" that distinguishes when one graduates from selling a few guns from one’s personal collection into full-fledged gun dealing.

I’ll confess. Sometimes I get so many emails I can’t read them all. The downside to that is I am sure I have missed several great artists. But thankfully, I did open Taran’s Smith email when she pitched Nicolette & the Nobodies to me.

Although the Badger State is 2000 miles away from Mexico, the fallout of Biden's open border bleeds into the American heartland, literally so in many cases. In reality, the Biden-Harris open borders agenda transforms every jurisdiction in America into a border town, including small villages like Whitewater, Wisconsin. That previously tranquil small town of 15,000 in southern Wisconsin has been flooded with about 1,000 new migrants during Biden’s term, mostly from Nicaragua and Venezuela. Such a mass influx places intense strain upon public resources, including schools ill-prepared to handle so many new students, many of whom do not speak English. Whitewater city council member Brienne Brown told Wisconsin PBS that "we are a poor town that has limited resources."

Even as Americans grow increasingly pessimistic and agitated about their personal finances, Congress is about to ask struggling families to cover the cost of more funding for Ukraine. The $95 billion foreign aid package adopted Saturday by the House and facing near-certain passage in the Senate includes an additional $61 billion for Ukraine. Once added to the money already appropriated for Ukraine since 2022, the United States will have spent approximately $173 billion.

A county judge dismissed 140 cases against migrants charged with rioting at the U.S. southern border, finding there was no reason to arrest them. El Paso County Court at Law 7 Judge Ruben Morales on Monday found no probable cause from Texas Department of Public Safety state troopers to restrain the 140 migrants who were arrested earlier this month for rioting, according to the El Paso Times. The charges stemmed from an incident on April 12 when a group of migrants in El Paso’s Lower Valley cut through concertina wire at the border and then rushed into the U.S.

Jury selection has begun in the New York City “hush money” trial of Donald Trump, who is charged in a 34-count indictment with falsifying business records of the Trump Organization.  This case is part of a Democrat-led effort to engage in lawfare on various Progressive battlefields.

The military could seek to formally punish service members for refusing to use another service member’s preferred pronouns under existing policy, according to military experts. A 2020 Equal Opportunity law opened the door for commanders to subject someone who refuses to affirm a transgender servicemember’s so-called gender identity to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) for charges related to harassment, Capt. Thomas Wheatley, an assistant professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Such a move would likely infringe on a servicemember’s constitutional rights to uphold their conscience, but it might not prevent leaders from employing more subtle ways of disciplining service members.

A Jewish Yale student was reportedly stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag during a pro-Hamas protest on campus over the weekend, the latest incident highlighting the ongoing tensions on college campuses since the Hamas terror group attacked Israel Oct. 7 and ignited an ongoing war. Amidst ongoing calls for violence, lawmakers have ramped up calls for accountability for the taxpayer-funded universities as well as groups supporting Hamas, which the State Department has officially labeled a terrorist organization.

In the movie The Perfect Storm, George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg are among the crew of a boat off the Northeast coast that is caught in the convergence of multiple powerful storms. The combination of tempests ultimately takes down the craft and its crew. We should all hope one of our nation’s most vital industries doesn’t succumb in similar fashion as it is caught in a perfect storm of ideological rigidity, bureaucratic arrogance, and regulatory overreach.

President Joe Biden has taken every part of the federal government and transformed it into his personal reelection machine, creating a hyper-partisan election apparatus out of supposedly neutral federal agencies. And American taxpayers pay for all of it. Just since the beginning of April, several explosive revelations have surfaced that show the extent to which Joe Biden has weaponized the federal government in election matters. This should come as no surprise, as the administration continues to unfairly weaponize the federal courts against January 6 defendants, and state and federal courts maliciously prosecute Donald Trump, his rival in the presidential election.

National political reporter Neil W. McCabe said the scene of former President Donald Trump visiting a bodega in West Harlem last week “absolutely” resonates with Hispanic and Black voters, which ultimately makes the left “very concerned.”

MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos predicted on Monday that there is a possibility for a mistrial in the case Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought against former President Donald Trump. Trump is currently on trial for 34 felony counts pertaining to a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence regarding an alleged affair, and all 12 jurors were selected on Thursday. Two jurors were initially excused before the full jury was seated, which Cevallos on “Morning Joe” said indicates the possibility of forthcoming issues that could cause a mistrial.

The terrorist Iranian regime's unprecedented recent attack on Israel, which included 185 drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 110 surface-to-surface missiles, is an unambiguous casus belli—an act of war—under international law. Of course, Iranian proxies spread across the Middle East, such as Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Yemen-based Houthis, have committed countless previous acts of war against Israel. But last weekend was something different entirely: For the very first time since fanatical Islamists overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and took power in 1979, Iran launched such attacks directly from its own soil.

The House Judiciary Committee on Monday launched a formal inquiry into federal agents’ fatal shooting of an Arkansas airport executive during the execution of a gun case search warrant at his home, demanding the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) explain why it carried out the search without knocking and without using required body cams. The ATF’s fatal shooting last month of Bryan Malinowski, an administrator at the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, has reignited concerns about the agency’s enforcement of gun laws and regulations under President Joe Biden as well as prompted a criminal investigation by Arkansas authorities.

Pressure is mounting in Washington to finally pass a bill requiring TikTok's China-based parent company to divest of the popular social media app amid new revelations that the company is much closer to the Chinese government than it has previously claimed. Now, the House has passed a comprehensive foreign aid package which included a revised TikTok divestment bill. This makes it more likely to become law sooner rather than later as the Senate is set to consider the legislation.