Global
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
On Thursday night, Donald Trump told the country that U.S. election systems are vulnerable to electronic manipulation and that Americans have been lied to for years.
Election security experts have been testifying to Congress about this for decades, and we’ve been investigating and writing about it for the last 18 months.
Which means a portion of Trump’s unhinged Thursday night speech contained a kernel of truth.
Please watch this two-minute video to understand how he gave away the game:
“This reporting included precise details about methods the regime developed to digitally alter vote totals in ways that could not be detected, even with an audit, no matter how deep they went…”
For context, Trump was talking about Venezuela and the method of manipulation supposedly used to put Maduro in power in 2020.
When crafting a book review, each author is faced with the unenviable task of writing just enough to pique the reader’s interest while resisting the temptation to delve too deeply for fear that doing so will quench the reader’s thirst and dampen any enthusiasm one might have had to purchase the book or check it out at the local library.
An original piece of scholarship, Jack Marchbanks has produced a tour de force. In this seven-chapter book of more than 300 pages readers learn about the intersection between the world of jazz, literature, and the modern civil rights movement.
The book’s first sentence sets the stage for all that follows. Marchbanks writes, “this book tells the story of how a select group of jazz musicians and jazz-admiring writers used their creative gifts to raise their audiences’ awareness of the social, economic, and political forces affecting African Americans” (p. 1).
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Observers Report Brooklyn Board of Elections Mixing Copies of Ballots with Actual Ballots After Defying Court Order in Tight State Senate Primary
NEW YORK, July 15, 2026 —Election observers watching the ballot sorting for the recount of New York’s State Senate 22nd District Republican primary say that, on Tuesday, copies of ballots were intermingled with actual ballots at the Voting Machine Facility where preparations for a close primary race were taking place. On July 2nd, during the audit that preceded the hand count, observers reported that the Brooklyn Board of Elections (BOE) prevented them from viewing ballot handling even after a New York State Supreme Court judge ordered the BOE to allow observers to stand “four feet away from where the ballots are being counted.”
Haga clic aquí para español - Click here for Spanish
Keep your eyes on the Bab el-Mandeb, or Strait of Tears, the narrow strait at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
Twenty-five percent of the world’s container shipping passes through this vital strait. This is the mandatory passage on the fastest route from Europe and the Mideast to Asia. The alternative is the lone, long passage from Europe around the vastness of the African continent, thence around the Cape of Good Hope, and then across the Indian Ocean to the heart of Asia – China, Japan, Singapore and Korea.
On March 1, 1945, only six weeks before his death, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered an address to Congress that pointed toward a sweeping transformation of international relations.
With the Axis powers tottering toward defeat in World War II, Roosevelt reported that the recently concluded Yalta conference of Allied leaders had agreed upon “a common ground for peace.” It would “spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries―and have always failed.” These approaches would be replaced by “a universal organization,” a “permanent structure of peace upon which we can begin to build . . . that better world in which our children and grandchildren . . . must live, and can live.”
We are witnessing the latest iteration of a tired, dark performance. In the 1830s, Thomas "Daddy" Rice—the so-called "Father of Minstrelsy"—popularized a stage persona that relied on mockery, exaggerated buffoonery, and a calculated distortion of reality to entertain audiences at the expense of others. Today, we see that same spirit of performative deception in the rhetoric of Mr. Trump. It is a political theater built on the same foundations of distraction, distortion, and denial.
As a voice for the Fifth Estate—the independent journalists, organizers, and truth-seekers operating outside traditional media gates—we are here to pull back the curtain on this act. The script, however, is starting to wear thin.
The Broadcast Tantrum:
In his recent performance, Trump demanded that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoke the broadcast licenses of NBC and ABC. He accused these networks of being complicit in a "plot" simply because they refused to air his latest speech.
Police at Valley Fair Mall, outside Salt Lake City, Utah, said that Peter Michael Larsen approached a kiosk employee, asked about his religion, and then repeatedly stabbed him after learning he was Muslim. According to police and court documents, the suspect later told investigators that he had targeted the victim because of his religion and said he "intends to kill Muslims."
The victim survived after emergency surgery, and bystanders intervened, disarmed the suspect, and restrained him until police arrived. Prosecutors are pursuing attempted murder and related charges, and officials are treating the case as a suspected hate crime.
The attack occurred on Monday afternoon when the suspect, 48-year-old Michael Larsen, approached a kiosk worker inside the mall, asked personal questions, and then stabbed him 15 times. The victim, identified as Syed Sohail Uddin, was working at a jewelry kiosk at the time, according to the Times of India.
Here is the bottom line: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of leaving Gaza, either before Israel’s general elections—likely to be held in October—or after. Conceding an inch from the roughly 70 percent of the territory his army currently occupies in Gaza will be considered a weakness by the majority of Israeli voters and would result in an open revolt within his extremist coalition.
He has made his intentions clear time and again. Recent statements by Israel's political leadership have only reinforced that reality, with officials insisting that Israel must maintain indefinite military dominance over the Strip and explicitly rejecting any framework that requires a full withdrawal of troops. To Netanyahu, the military footprint in Gaza is a permanent fixture, not a temporary bargaining chip.