Aurum Resources (AUE:AU) has announced Boundiali extends strike and depth at BDT3 and BST1
Download the PDF here.
Aurum Resources (AUE:AU) has announced Boundiali extends strike and depth at BDT3 and BST1
Download the PDF here.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced in a letter on Saturday that ‘all’ Epstein files have been released consistent with Section 3 of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member Dick Durbin, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin was obtained by Fox News Digital.
‘In accordance with the requirements of the Act, and as described in various Department submissions to the courts of the Southern District of New York assigned to the Epstein and Maxwell prosecutions and related orders, the Department released all ‘records, documents, communications and investigative materials in the possession of the Department’ that ‘relate to’ any of nine different categories,’ the letter read.
The letter includes a list of more than 300 high-profile names, including President Donald Trump, Barack and Michelle Obama, Prince Harry, Bill Gates, Woody Allen, Kim Kardashian, Kurt Cobain, Mark Zuckerberg and Bruce Springsteen.
The letter adds, ‘No records were withheld or redacted ‘on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”
The document outlines the broad range of Epstein-related materials the Justice Department says are encompassed, including records concerning Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell; references to individuals—up to and including government officials—connected to Epstein’s activities; and documents tied to civil settlements and legal resolutions such as immunity deals, plea agreements, non-prosecution agreements, and sealed arrangements.
It also includes information on organizations and networks allegedly linked to Epstein’s trafficking and financial operations across corporate, nonprofit, academic, and governmental spheres, as well as internal DOJ emails, memos, and meeting notes reflecting decisions about whether to charge, decline, or pursue investigations.
The documents also cover records addressing potential destruction or concealment of relevant material and documentation surrounding Epstein’s detention and death, including incident reports, witness interviews, and medical examiner/autopsy-related records.
The letter adds, ‘No records were withheld or redacted ‘on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”
‘Any omissions from the list are unintentional and, as explained in the previous letters to Congress, a result of the volume and speed with which the Department complied with the Act,’ the letter states. ‘Individuals whose names were redacted for law-enforcement sensitive purposes are not included.’
The letter says the redaction process was ‘extensive’ including consultation with victims and victim counsel, to redact ‘segregable portions’ that contain information identifiable to victims, such as medical files that could jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution, or depict/contain images of death, physical abuse, or injury.
‘Any omissions from the list are unintentional and, as explained in the previous letters to Congress, a result of the volume and speed with which the Department complied with the Act,’ the letter states. ‘Individuals whose names were redacted for law-enforcement sensitive purposes are not included.’
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, saying that President Donald Trump ‘wants a solution that ends the bloodshed once and for all.’
‘Met with Ukrainian President @ZelenskyyUa on Ukraine’s security and deepening defense and economic partnerships,’ Rubio wrote in an X post in which he shared a photo of him shaking hands with the Ukrainian leader. ‘President Trump wants a solution that ends the bloodshed once and for all.’
Earlier Saturday, Zelenskyy revealed he had spoken with Rubio and Trumpenvoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner ahead of talks in Geneva, which he said his government expected to be ‘truly productive.’
I had a conversation with envoys of President Trump @stevewitkoff and @JaredKushner, ahead of the trilateral meetings in Geneva,’ Zelenskyy wrote on X. ‘We count on the meetings being truly productive.’
Zelenskyy said they also discussed ‘some developments following the meetings in Abu Dhabi, which were held at the end of last month and the beginning of this month.
‘Not everything can be shared over the phone, and our negotiating team will present Ukraine’s position next week,’ the Ukrainian president added.
After the Abu Dhabi talks, Zelenskyy told reporters the U.S. had set a June deadline for Moscow and Kyiv to strike a peace agreement.
‘The Americans are proposing the parties end the war by the beginning of this summer and will probably put pressure on the parties precisely according to this schedule,’ Zelenskyy said at the time, according to The Associated Press.
Zelenskyy added at the time that if the June deadline is not met, the Trump administration would likely put pressure on Moscow and Kyiv to meet.
On Saturday, he also thanked the U.S. for its ‘constructive approach’ to ending the war.
‘We greatly appreciate that America consistently maintains a constructive approach and is ready to assist in protecting lives,’ Zelenskyy wrote. ‘I thank President Trump, his team, and the people of the United States for their support.’
Rubio on Saturday also said he had discussed peace between Ukraine and Russia at the Munich Security Conference with his G7 counterparts.
‘Met with my @G7 counterparts in Munich to advance @POTUS’s vision of pursuing peace through strength,’ Rubio wrote. ‘We discussed ongoing efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war, promote stability in Venezuela, and address global threats to achieve international peace and prosperity.’
The talks between the U.S., Russia and Ukraine are expected to start Tuesday in Geneva.
The head of the Justice Department’s antitrust unit said Thursday she is leaving the role, effective immediately, at a critical moment for corporate mergers in America.
Gail Slater, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Antitrust Division, wrote on X: ‘It is with great sadness and abiding hope that I leave my role as AAG for Antitrust today.’
Slater continued, ‘It was indeed the honor of a lifetime to serve in this role. Huge thanks to all who supported me this past year, most especially the men and women of’ the Department.
The White House referred questions to the Justice Department.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement, “On behalf of the Department of Justice, we thank Gail Slater for her service to the Antitrust Division which works to protect consumers, promote affordability, and expand economic opportunity.”
Slater is leaving just as media giants Netflix and Paramount Skydance battle for control of Warner Bros. Discovery.
President Donald Trump had said he was going to get involved in reviewing whichever Warner Bros. deal proceeds, an uncommon occurrence in antitrust matters.
But in an interview with NBC News, Trump slightly changed his tune. ‘I’ve been called by both sides, it’s the two sides, but I’ve decided I shouldn’t be involved,’ he said.
‘The Justice Department will handle it.’
Trump has met with executives from both of Warner Bros.’ bidders.
The Justice Department will also head to court in weeks in a bid to challenge concert venue manager Live Nation’s ownership of Ticketmaster.
Shares of Live Nation jumped as much as 5.8% after Slater announced her departure. By 1 p.m. ET, the rally had abated to around 2.5%.
When the Senate confirmed Slater, 78 senators from both sides of the aisle voted in her favor. Only 19 opposed her confirmation.
This week, her deputy in the Antitrust Division also departed.
Mark Hamer, deputy assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division, wrote on LinkedIn, ‘Decided the time is right for me to return to private practice.’ He praised Slater as a ‘leader of exceptional wisdom, strength and integrity.’
Gold and silver were having a fairly quiet week until Thursday (February 12), when both precious metals experienced steep drops early in the day.
The gold price, which had been steady above US$5,000 per ounce, and even briefly breached US$5,100, tumbled by over US$100, bottoming out around US$4,900.
Meanwhile, silver sank from above US$80 per ounce to below US$75.
Market watchers have presented various reasons for these declines, with a mainstream talking point being that the precious metals were moving in line with the broader stock market.
Thursday brought declines in major US indexes as investors reportedly reacted to concerns that various industries could be negatively impacted by AI automation.
Of course, with gold and silver it’s always possible that there’s more going on beneath the surface. Many of our popular YouTube channel guests reacted to this week’s price drop on X, with some, including Willem Middelkoop and Craig Hemke, suggesting manipulation was at play.
I’ve also read that a Russian memo seen by Bloomberg may have had a dampening effect on gold — the report details proposals sent by the Kremlin that could see the country return to the US dollar settlement system as part of an economic partnership with the Trump administration.
Whatever the reason for the decrease was, gold and silver had bounced back by Friday (February 13), with silver getting back above US$77 and gold closing at the US$5,043 level.
The rebound came despite slightly cooler than expected US consumer price index data, which eased inflation concerns and boosted interest rate cut expectations from the US Federal Reserve.
Looking forward, I want to emphasize again that the broad consensus among the experts I’ve been speaking to continues to be that the run in gold and silver prices isn’t over.
However, that doesn’t mean the path will be straight up. I heard this week from Keith Weiner of Monetary Metals, who spoke about the importance of weathering volatility:
‘I mean, we’re in dollar bear market for reasons. And so people better be prepared for the volatility, because as things go off the rails, which is what’s happening to the dollar, yeah, there’s volatility. And there’s days when people can’t sell the dollar enough, and there’s days when they’re desperately, urgently trying to grab as many fistfuls of dollars as they can, and the dollar is extremely well bid — you’ll see that as the price of gold falling. So you’re going to get it both ways, but the trend is clear and the drivers are clear.’
Keith is calling for US$6,000 gold in 2026 and a silver price of US$120 by the end of the year. The US$6,000 number is in line with recent projections from BNP Paribas and CIBC, whose forecasts indicate that major banks also still see strength in gold.
Merger talks between commodities giants Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO,NYSE:RIO,LSE:RIO) and Glencore (LSE:GLEN,OTCPL:GLCNF) have fallen through, nixing what would have been the mining industry’s biggest-ever deal, but M&A activity in the space continues to heat up.
A new survey from TD Cowen identifies IAMGOLD (TSX:IMG,NYSE:IAG) as the year’s top takeover candidate, with close to 20 percent of the 58 respondents pointing to the company.
Artemis Gold (TSXV:ARTG,OTCQX:ARGTF) was in second place at 11 percent, while Arizona Sonoran Copper Company (TSX:ASCU,OTCQX:ASCUF) was third at 7 percent.
Almost all of the respondents, who included institutional investors and mining executives, said they expect to see more gold, silver and copper M&A in 2026 compared to last year.
We’ll have to wait and see how any potential deals play out, including Barrick Mining’s (TSX:ABX,NYSE:B) planned initial public offering for its North American gold assets.
Newmont (NYSE:NEM,ASX:NEM), Barrick’s partner at the Nevada Gold Mines joint venture, said it is concerned about the management of the operation, and wants to see improvements — a clash between the two miners could end up disrupting Barrick’s plans.
Securities Disclosure: I, Charlotte McLeod, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., alleged at the Munich Security Conference on Friday that U.S. aid to the Jewish state enabled a genocide by Israel. AOC’s attack on the Jewish state in Munich unfolded in the birthplace of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement that carried out the worst genocide in human history.
AOC’s assault on Israel’s war campaign to defeat the U.S. and EU-designated terrorist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip sparked outrage and intense criticism from academic military and Middle East experts.
During the town hall event in Munich, the Squad member said, ‘To me, this isn’t just about a presidential election. Personally, I think that the United States has an obligation to uphold its own laws, particularly the Leahy laws. And I think that personally, that the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense. I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza. And I think that we have thousands of women and children dead that don’t, that was completely avoidable.’
She continued, ‘And, so I believe that enforcement of our own laws through the Leahy laws, which requires conditioning aid in any circumstance, when you see gross human rights violations, is appropriate.’
The Leahy Laws prohibit the Department of Defense and the State Department from funding ‘foreign security force units when there is credible information that the unit has committed a ‘gross violation of human rights.’ Former Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT., introduced the bill in 1997.
Tom Gross, an expert on international affairs, told Fox News digital that ‘AOC has flown all the way to Munich — infamous as the city in which Hitler staged his Nazi Beer Hall Putsch that marked the beginning of the road to the Holocaust — in order to smear the Jewish people further with a phony genocide allegation.’
Gross added, ‘Such preposterous allegations of ‘genocide’ form the bedrock of modern antisemitic incitement against Jews in the U.S. and globally. This shocking ignorance and insensitivity by Ocasio-Cortez should rule her out of any potential presidential bid or other high office.’
Military experts and genocide researchers have debunked the allegation that Israel carried out a genocide against Palestinians during its self-defense war against the Hamas terrorist organization that started after Hamas terrorists attacked communities in parts of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that saw over 1200 Israeli and foreign nationals killed and 251 brutally kidnapped and taken into Gaza by Hamas and other terrorists.
Danny Orbach, a military historian from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and co-author of ‘Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7 2023, to June 1, 2025,’ told Fox News Digital that Ocasio-Cortez accusation that Israel committed genocide is an ‘accusation that is incorrect both factually and legally. Under the Genocide Convention, genocide requires proof of a special intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or in part, and as a baseline condition, an active effort to maximize civilian destruction.
‘The evidence shows the opposite: as demonstrated in our multi-author study Debunking the Genocide Allegations, Israel undertook unprecedented measures to mitigate civilian harm, including establishing humanitarian safe zones that independently verified data show were approximately six times safer than other areas of Gaza.’
Orbach added, ‘Israel also issued detailed advance warnings before strikes and facilitated the entry of over two million tons of humanitarian aid, often at significant cost to its own military advantage, including the loss of surprise and the sustainment of an enemy during wartime.’
He concluded, ‘These measures were taken despite Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, its systematic use of human shields and hospitals for military purposes, and a tunnel network exceeding 1,000 kilometers — an operational challenge without historical precedent. Finally, no credible evidence demonstrates the kind of unambiguous, exclusive genocidal intent toward Palestinians that international law requires and that cannot be reasonably interpreted otherwise.’
The conservative commentator Derek Hunter posted on X. ‘Imagine going to Germany to complain about a fake genocide by Jews…in Munich, of all places. @AOC is about as smart as clogged toilet.’
In Dec. 2024, Germany joined the U.S. in rejecting the allegations that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
We also break down next week’s catalysts to watch to help you prepare for the week ahead.
The Nasdaq Composite (INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC) ended in the green on Monday (February 9) despite a weaker open.
A rally in tech companies drove US stocks higher ahead of an economic data release, while Asian indexes also rose, led upward by Japan’s tech‑heavy Nikkei 225 (INDEXNIKKEI:NI225).
It hit new record highs after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party secured a landslide victory in the Lower House, clearing the path for tax cuts and higher defense spending.
Tax planning and wealth management stocks fell on Tuesday (February 10) after financial software provider Altruist unveiled an artificial intelligence (AI) tool for creating tax strategies, echoing last week’s selloff in legal software stocks following the debut of a lawyer-focused AI platform.
Broader tech‑driven weakness and softer‑than‑expected retail‑sales data dragged the Nasdaq down in Tuesday’s session. The index rose again on Wednesday (February 11) after January data showed labor market stability, potentially allowing the US Federal Reserve to keep interest rates steady as it monitors inflation.
Software stocks resumed their slide, with Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) at one point down more than 2 percent, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) falling over 2.5 percent and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) slipping about 1 percent.
Personal computer makers also fell after Lenovo Group (HKEX:0992,OTCPL:LNVGF) warned of shipment pressure from a memory chip shortage. HP (NYSE:HPQ) and Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) each lost about 4.5 percent.
After a muted close, investors turned their AI disruption fears to yet another corner of the market on Thursday (February 12). This time, it was logistics and trucking stocks, which plummeted after AI logistics firm Algorhythm Holdings (NASDAQ:RIME) said it has scaled freight volumes by 300 to 400 percent without increasing headcount.
This event showed traders that AI is now affecting sectors previously thought to be resistant to automation and AI‑driven efficiency gains, leading to selloffs that also spilled into real estate and drug distribution.
All three major indexes closed lower, with the Nasdaq hit hardest.
A softer-than-expected US consumer price index report released on Friday (February 13) morning reinforced beliefs that the Fed is likely to cut interest rates this year, while global concerns about potential AI-driven disruptions kept investors cautious. European and Asian indexes lost ground, tracking Wall Street’s losses.
While the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) closed slightly ahead on the day, mega-cap tech stocks dragged on the Nasdaq, which closed the week 1.77 percent below Monday’s open.
Cybersecurity firm Cloudflare saw its share price surge after its sales guidance for the current quarter exceeded expectations. Shares closed 13.07 percent higher for the week.
Applied Materials, a provider of materials engineering solutions for the semiconductor sector, saw its share price rise sharply after reporting better-than-forecast quarterly financial results. Shares advanced 10.05 percent.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company rose after D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria gave it a ‘buy’ rating with a US$450 price target and called it a top AI foundry name. Shares advanced 5.02 percent.
Cloudflare, TSMC and Applied Materials performance, February 9 to 13, 2026.
Chart via Google Finance.
Tech exchange-traded funds (ETFs) track baskets of major tech stocks, meaning their performance helps investors gauge the overall performance of the niches they cover.
This week, the iShares Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXX) advanced by 2.56 percent, while the Invesco PHLX Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXQ) advanced by 1.89 percent.
The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SMH) also increased by 2.19 percent.
Tech stocks face a quieter earnings backdrop next week, with no mega‑cap AI giants reporting; instead, the sector will be trading on macro cues and any guidance hints from mid‑tier semis and software names.
Key US data includes jobs‑related releases and consumer confidence surveys.
Securities Disclosure: I, Meagen Seatter, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Here’s a quick recap of the crypto landscape for Friday (February 13) as of 9:00 p.m. UTC.
Get the latest insights on Bitcoin, Ether and altcoins, along with a round-up of key cryptocurrency market news.
Bitcoin (BTC) was priced at US$68,987.01, up 5.2 percent over the last 24 hours.
Bitcoin price performance, February 13, 2026.
Chart via TradingView.
A constructive scenario over the next three to six months depends on gradual improvement in global liquidity, moderation in yields and steady exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows.
According to Tran, if financial conditions tighten or additional liquidity stress occurs, the market may need another washout to rebalance leverage. Ultimately, the return of confidence, reflected through durable and sustainable capital inflows, is what matters most for the transitional phase.
Ether (ETH) was priced at US$2,054.76, up by 7 percent over the last 24 hours.
Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN) reported a fourth quarter net loss of US$667 million as falling crypto prices weighed on its revenue and the value of its investment portfolio. The company’s revenue came in at US$1.78 billion, below analysts’ expectations, making a 22 percent decline from a year earlier.
The firm attributed much of the loss to a US$718 million drop in portfolio value, largely unrealized, alongside weaker transaction activity. Shares slid ahead of the release and have fallen more than 55 percent over the past six months as cryptocurrencies retreated. Despite the surprise slide, CEO Brian Armstrong sought to reassure investors, saying the firm remains “deliberately well capitalized” with US$11.3 billion in cash and equivalents.
He added that retail customers are largely holding rather than selling, even as volatility persists.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw US$410 million in outflows on Thursday (February 12), extending a rocky stretch that has drained nearly US$1.5 billion over two weeks.
The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (NASDAQ:IBIT) led the pullback, followed by Fidelity and Grayscale products, as institutional investors recalibrated positions amid macro uncertainty.
US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent urged Congress to pass the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act this spring, arguing that it will provide stability to markets rattled by volatility.
Speaking on CNBC and later before the Senate Banking Committee, Bessent said the bill will give “great comfort to the market,” and warned that parts of the crypto industry are resisting what he called “very good regulation.”
“There seems to be a nihilist group in the industry who prefers no regulation over this very good regulation,” he told lawmakers, drawing support from Senator Mark Warner.
The legislation has stalled amid disputes over stablecoin yield, DeFi oversight and token classifications, with critics — including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong — raising objections. Bessent cautioned that a bipartisan coalition backing the bill could fracture if Democrats retake the House in November. Warner, meanwhile, stressed unresolved concerns around illicit finance and national security risks tied to DeFi.
BUZZ High Performance Computing (HPC), a Hive Digital Technologies (TSXV:HIVE,NASDAQ:HIVE) platform, announced that it has signed customer agreements valued at approximately US$30 million over two year fixed terms for artificial intelligence (AI) cloud contracts. The new contracts will support the initial phase of BUZZ’s AI-optimized GPU deployment at its Canada West location in Manitoba, with compute capacity expected to be online during the quarter ending on March 31, 2026. This phase consists of 504 liquid-cooled Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) server-based GPUs.
This initial phase is expected to generate about US$15 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) to BUZZ’s cloud business once fully operational, increasing HIVE’s total annualized HPC segment revenue to roughly US$35 million.
HIVE said it aims to scale its HPC GPU AI cloud business toward approximately US$140 million in ARR over the next year. The company is using vendor financing and strategic partnerships to scale efficiently and pursue a “dual-engine strategy” of hashrate services and GPU-accelerated AI computing across its facilities in Canada, Sweden and Paraguay.
Taurus, a Swiss fintech firm that provides digital asset infrastructure for banks and financial institutions, announced an agreement with blockchain infrastructure company Blockdaemon that will allow banks to offer staking yields to their clients without having to move those assets out of tightly controlled, regulated custody.
Taurus will integrate Blockdaemon’s staking infrastructure into its custody product, Taurus‑PROTECT, which is designed to keep digital assets safe inside banks’ own systems under financial regulator rules.
Taurus also has an agreement to provide digital asset custody, tokenization and node management technology that State Street uses to power its full‑service digital asset platform for institutional investors. Additionally, BNY Mellon (NYSE:BK) is broadening its digita asset platforms by partnering with infrastructure providers, including Blockdaemon.
Securities Disclosure: I, Meagen Seatter, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Securities Disclosure: I, Giann Liguid, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Too often, watching the ladies on ABC’s ‘The View’ is like finding the five more partisan Democrat accounts on Instagram or X. You’ll get every Democratic National Committee talking point, with an emphasis on how the left is amazing and the right will end democracy as we know it.
This week, ‘The View’ crew repeatedly gushed over the allegedly marvelous Super Bowl halftime show of Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, because he hates President Donald Trump and ICE. The fact that it was almost entirely in Spanish (except for a Lady Gaga interlude) was a point of pride and proved that Americans are backward people. ‘This country seems to be one of the only countries in the world that is so proud of being monolingual and not being able to communicate in more than one language,’ Co-host Sunny Hostin complained. ‘And, the fact of the matter is, in about 20 years, multi-ethnic people will be the majority in this country! So, if you don’t understand Spanish, maybe start taking a little Duolingo course!’
Co-host Joy Behar added disdain to the Bad Bunny critics: ‘These are not exactly the same people that go to the opera where they speak Italian and French. But let’s not go there. The country, in my opinion, has a misplaced set of values.’
Try to imagine Behar feeling morally superior as she goes to the Metropolitan Opera in New York to see the new woke version of Bizet’s ‘Carmen,’ where the setting is MAGA – ‘an industrial American town’ in flyover country – and the villains are ICE agents. Then it doesn’t matter if it’s in French.
The only hope in the coming weeks is that Alyssa Farah Griffin’s maternity leave results in a little more conservative dissent on this remarkably one-sided program. Already, fans of the show are up in arms that Elisabeth Hasselbeck is going to pop in, as if she was unacceptably ultraconservative in her decade on the show. It’s easier for the liberals to feel smart when nobody calls them out for sounding stupid.
On Thursday, after Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before Congress, Hostin accused Bondi of ruining the Department of Justice, which had supposedly never been a partisan agency under Democrat Presidents Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or Joe Biden. ‘The Justice Department is in shambles. So, the people of the United States have that person who is deeply unqualified, who is deeply unserious as their protection, as the person that is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America! I am so disgusted! I am so saddened by what is the destruction of one of the biggest and strongest institutions in our country!’ Nobody pushes back on these speeches.
Then Behar typically came unglued: ‘By the way, you know, just a little history, during the Watergate scandal President Nixon did not go to jail but John Mitchell did. John Mitchell was his attorney general. So, at the end of the day, Miss Bondi, you’re looking at some prison time.’ For what? Who needs to look it up? Emotion in search of an applause line is everything.
Minutes later, she played historian again, in the fight between Trump and Democrats in Congress like Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, who nudged military personnel to defy Trump: ‘Again, I hate to bring up history again but there’s something called the Nuremberg defense, which basically states that acting under orders, illegal orders does not relieve a person of responsibility under international law.’ They always have to compare Trump to Hitler and his Nazi underlings.
She continued: ‘These people were saying, you do not have to obey an illegal order. And the illegal orders are the following,’ she said, reading from a paper. ‘Telling generals to send members into major cities to use them as training grounds. Suggesting that troops shoot protesters in the legs. Ordering unlawful military strikes on boats in international waters…. the Nuremberg Trial proved that going against an illegal order is legit.’
Nobody should want these ladies as their experts on history or politics or culture. But they are reliable robots on the social-media memes and themes that the Democrats use in their efforts to win every news cycle. It’s shocking that this show is under the ABC News umbrella, because there’s nothing in this show that sounds like journalism.
With little time and no deal in sight to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a partial government shutdown by midnight is all but guaranteed.
The battle to prevent the third government shutdown under President Donald Trump in less than six months was lost in the Senate on Thursday. Now, with Congress scattered across the U.S. and several senators headed abroad, there’s no chance that a shutdown will be averted.
Senate Republicans were unable to smash through Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Democrats’ unified front to pass a full-year DHS funding bill, nor were they able to do yet another short-term, two-week extension.
‘The idea of not even allowing us to have an extended amount of time to negotiate this suggests to me, at least, that there isn’t a high level of interest in actually solving this issue,’ Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said.
The final fight on the floor Thursday wasn’t with every lawmaker present, but between Sens. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., over giving lawmakers a little more time to keep the agency open while negotiations continue.
Senate Democrats argued that Republicans offered their legislative proposal in the dead of night, giving little time to actually move toward a compromise.
‘We had plenty of time to get a deal in the last two weeks,’ Murphy said. ‘And the lack of seriousness from the White House and from Republicans not getting language until last night has put us in the position we are in today.’
And with the expected shutdown, Democrats’ main targets — Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — won’t see their cash flow dry up because of billions injected into the agency by Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill.’
Instead, agencies like TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and several others will suffer the brunt of the shutdown.
‘There is no way that you can’t say we’re working in good faith. We want to continue this conversation,’ Britt said on the Senate floor. ‘But yet you’re penalizing a TSA agent. A TSA agent is going to go without a paycheck. Why? So that you can posture politically? I’m over it.’
‘Everybody on that side of the aisle knows that ICE and CBP will continue to be funded,’ she continued. ‘They’re going to continue to enforce the law just as they should. Who’s going to pay the price?’
The final floor argument was a microcosm of what the week had devolved into. Senate Republicans argued that Democrats had burned too much time producing their list of demands, while Senate Democrats contended that they weren’t given enough time by the White House.
And as is typical during the string of shutdowns in the last several months, it has devolved into a public blame game. When asked about the effects a shutdown would have on the agencies not involved in immigration enforcement, Schumer pointed the finger at the GOP and the White House.
‘Talk to the Republicans, OK? We’re ready to fund everything,’ Schumer said. ‘We’re ready to have good, serious proposals supported by the American people. They’re not; they’re sort of dug in the ground, and they’re not moving forward.’
But neither side is willing to divulge publicly what the exact sticking points are in their ongoing negotiations. And Senate Democrats now appear to be considering a counteroffer to the White House, a sign that negotiations aren’t totally dead in the water.
‘Negotiations will continue, and we will see in the course of the next few days how serious they are,’ Thune said.
