Federal Judge Makes Unprecedented Move
In Maduro Torture Case
Posted By: Mercedes44, 7/15/2026 4:13:00 AM
Well, here's something that doesn't happen too often. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles in Miami awarded $314 million in damages to three U.S. citizens who were imprisoned and tortured by Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela before being freed in a 2023 prisoner swap. The three men were Jerrel Kenemore, a Texas computer scientist who'd moved to neighboring Colombia to be with a woman he met. He was kidnapped by paramilitaries in 2022 while visiting a grocery store near the Venezuela-Colombia border and held for over 600 days before being charged with "espionage" and "counterintelligence activities."
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Mercedes44"
Wealthy Investor and Podcast Host Reveals
What Cured Him of His Trump Derangement Syndrome 9 replies
What Cured Him of His Trump Derangement Syndrome 9 replies
Chamath Palihapitiya is an investor who manages a portfolio worth billions of dollars. He also co-hosts the ‘All In’ podcast with David Sacks, Trump’s Bitcoin Czar.
Despite his relationship with Sacks, he was not a fan of President Trump, and now admits that he suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
During an appearance on CNBC this week, he explained how he changed his mind about Trump and offers his story as advice for others.
CHAMATH PALIHAPITYA: There are enough people that I hear who are lazy and reductive, and they’re going to end up where they’re supposed to end up—in a little cul-de-sac of their own making.
Well, here's something that doesn't happen too often.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles in Miami awarded $314 million in damages to three U.S. citizens who were imprisoned and tortured by Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela before being freed in a 2023 prisoner swap. The three men were Jerrel Kenemore, a Texas computer scientist who'd moved to neighboring Colombia to be with a woman he met. He was kidnapped by paramilitaries in 2022 while visiting a grocery store near the Venezuela-Colombia border and held for over 600 days before being charged with "espionage" and "counterintelligence activities."
House Votes to Lock the Clock - for Good
11 replies
As my colleague Ward Clark reported on Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives moved the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make Daylight Saving Time permanent throughout the United States, from committee to the House floor for a vote. On Tuesday, the full House voted and passed the Act, 308-117. This is performative theater and nothing more. There are more pressing issues for our country and on the House docket, like national security appropriations, bills to combat fraud, and government controls over AI and data centers. But fresh off the House's July 4th recess, this was first up for consideration. According to Independent Rep. Kevin Kiley (CA-03),
The world that we’re looking at today is radically different than that of just five years ago, radically different in the sense that it is much more in the interest of the United States. And I know that seems controversial because [President Donald] Trump is written off as someone who is too fluid and volatile.
His tweets, his verbiage, can put people off, but that’s the art-of-the-deal unpredictability of his nature. Some of it can be a drawback, some of it an advantage, but overall, it doesn’t help analysis to just look at what he says. It’s more important to see what he’s done.
Oil producers in the Persian Gulf are making plans to bypass the Strait of Hormuz with new pipelines and a new port after Iran has repeatedly attacked ships and blocked traffic.
The idea is to minimize Tehran’s leverage on the waterway that once saw 20% of the world’s oil pass through it as the war stretches into its fifth month.
Iran has already insisted that it will impose tolls on the strait, which could cost tens of billions of dollars. And in some cases, it is extracting millions of dollars of protection money per oil tanker. Two such projects are already underway in the United Arab Emirates and Iraq —
Actress and Filmmaker Justine Bateman
Writes EPIC Response to Shrieking, Angry
Rep. Rashida Tlaib 7 replies
Writes EPIC Response to Shrieking, Angry
Rep. Rashida Tlaib 7 replies
People all over the political spectrum are getting tired of the antics of people like Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Every time the woman speaks, it’s a fire and brimstone diatribe about the evils of America.
She doesn’t talk like a member of congress. She sounds more like the unhinged leader of an invading force, threatening to take down the very country she claims to represent. Everyone is sick of it.
Actress and filmmaker Justine Bateman is not a conservative. If anything, she is a centrist, yet even she has had it with this. You will want to read what she wrote in response to Tlaib.
Bateman was reacting to this video:
In 2024, 24% of births in the EU were to foreign-born mothers. This figure exceeds 30% in Germany, Belgium, Spain, Austria and others, and reaches 68% in Luxembourg. Within five to ten years, Luxembourg will cease to exist as a country furthering Western values.
Assimilation of immigrants has not taken place.... When one imports the Third World, one becomes the Third World.
Under the influence of green ideology and European policy commitments such as the Green Deal and carbon taxes, Europe has voluntarily sabotaged its energy markets.
In the coming years,
It’s a move obscene on so many levels: Members of the City Council are looking to vote themselves a fat pay hike.
Just days after they approved a gargantuan $126 billion city budget, they took up a measure to boost their salaries more than 18% retroactive to Jan. 1 — plus automatic 2% hikes every year thereafter.
The hikes would push members’ pay to $175,500, upper middle-class income territory and more than twice the city’s median income ($81,228).
So the move shows complete contempt for city voters, who the pols plainly think won’t notice, as well as for the City Charter, which sets out an entirely different procedure for upping their pay.
A top conservative legislator in the U.S. House of Representatives is pushing a bill to require hospitals to report the immigration status of Social Security recipients after allegations of illegal immigrants and unlawful residents have risen in recent years.
The Illegal Alien Reporting Act, introduced by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, would “amend title XI of the Social Security Act to require hospitals participating in Federal health care programs to report certain information related to immigration status.” “For too long, Washington has ignored the financial impact that illegal immigration has on our nation’s health care system,” Roy told the Daily Signal.
Was George W. Bush Treated Unfairly?
33 replies
If you look at George W. Bush, people—his reputation has gone up a little bit because he broke with [Donald] Trump, the next Republican. I’m not sure he voted for Trump, and he made his peace with [Barack] Obama.
There were three things that people fault Bush for. I’m not sure he was responsible. No. 1 was the Iraq War. No. 2 was the Afghan War. No. 3 was the 2008 financial meltdown. I think he was the most conservative Republican president that we have had since forever.
He was much more conservative than his father, George H.W. Bush. He tried to do a lot of things.
On Thursday night, President Donald Trump will reveal newly declassified intelligence reports that claim foreign countries interfered in the 2020 presidential election, MS Now first reported. CIA Director John Ratcliffe, acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin will join the president for the address, according to MS Now.
Trump posted on Truth Social that he would be “making a speech to the nation on Thursday evening, at 9 p.m. Eastern.”
The president has long said that he believes the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was rigged.
Tehran’s proved its promises mean nothing: No sooner had the prez threatened serious consequences if Iran failed to declare the Strait of Hormuz open than it defiantly attacked a commercial ship and declared it closed.
“They agreed to a deal yesterday,” Trump reported Sunday. “No nuclear, no this, no that . . . And then within an hour, they launched a drone at a ship.”
But let’s be clear here: The goal is to enforce the right to free navigation of international waters.
That is, safe passage for commercial ships and no tolls by anyone, including the United States.
Tehran is claiming it owns the Strait. Iran’s leaders—
Most Active Articles (last 48 hours)
Was George W. Bush Treated Unfairly?
33 replies
If you look at George W. Bush, people—his reputation has gone up a little bit because he broke with [Donald] Trump, the next Republican. I’m not sure he voted for Trump, and he made his peace with [Barack] Obama.
There were three things that people fault Bush for. I’m not sure he was responsible. No. 1 was the Iraq War. No. 2 was the Afghan War. No. 3 was the 2008 financial meltdown. I think he was the most conservative Republican president that we have had since forever.
He was much more conservative than his father, George H.W. Bush. He tried to do a lot of things.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett recounted the threats against her life after the leak of the Dobbs decision during a Tuesday hearing.
The Supreme Court asked Congress to provide an additional $14.6 million for security in the fiscal year 2027 Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) funding bill. During a House Appropriations FSGG Committee hearing, Barrett described being sent home in a bullet proof vest after the decision in Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization was leaked in May 2022.
“They have required me [and] my children to think about and see things that children should not have to see or think about,” Barrett said. “One example is when
New York has spent years aggressively taxing its wealthiest residents in the name of fairness, and the results are now in. Suffice it to say, they’re not pretty.
A new study released Monday by the Citizen Budget Commission (CBC) reveals the state’s share of America’s millionaires has dropped sharply since 2010, triggering a nearly $11 billion shortfall in tax revenue in a single year as high earners quietly packed up and left for lower-tax states.
The analysis shows New York’s share of millionaires fell from 12.7% in 2010 to just 8.7% in 2022 — the steepest decline of any state in the country.
As a direct result,
William Kristol, the NeverTrump icon and supporter of President George Bush, wants to destroy the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that protects Americans from nation-changing, wage-slashing mass migration.
“Abolish ICE. Now,” Kristol posted on Monday, prompting a vigorous response from ordinary Americans. On Tuesday, Kristol celebrated the news that the Department of Homeland Security has temporarily halted the detention of migrants in vehicle stops, following the second fatal shooting of an illegal-migrant driver:
If ICE is telling the truth here, the lesson should be not be to declare victory (ok, take one minute to enjoy the victory), but to redouble pressure on the whole indecent mass deportation regime.
Kristol was an establishment
The Mexican government is using lawyers to block ICE’s repatriation of migrant Mexicans back to Mexico, according to Reuters.
The news service reported:
Mexico has begun filing criminal complaints with state prosecutors in the United States over the deaths of its citizens in U.S. immigration custody and during enforcement operations, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
Mexico’s government has also sent cease-and-desist letters to U.S. detention centers where Mexican nationals have died, the ministry added in a statement.
“I don’t think this situation appears acceptable to anyone,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Monday. “This is an issue for all Mexicans,” she said, portraying the legal intervention as a nationalist cause for Mexicans.
A bipartisan push to make Daylight Saving Time permanent is heading for a chamber-wide vote after clearing a key House hurdle. The House Rules Committee on Monday teed up a floor vote on the Sunshine Protection Act, which would allow states to enact Daylight Saving Time year-round — with an option to opt out. The committee approved the rule in a 6-4 vote. The measure has the support of many coastal lawmakers and President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly urged Congress to make Daylight Saving Time permanent and end the twice-a-year ritual of changing clocks
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) hosted a Marxist, virulently anti-Israel conference last weekend which openly celebrated terrorism, introduced fledgling activists to "the growing BDS movement," and called on its members to support Iran’s "axis of resistance" and prepare for violence against the United States and Israel. "We are all here to toughen our knuckles," Ryan Delaney, chair of communications for Jacksonville Palestine Solidarity Network, told attendees at the conclusion of events Saturday.
"I hope that everybody leaves here ready to fight when they get home," he told roughly 200 cheering attendees.
Sara Flounders, a member of the Secretariat of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party, thundered to the crowd
It’s a move obscene on so many levels: Members of the City Council are looking to vote themselves a fat pay hike.
Just days after they approved a gargantuan $126 billion city budget, they took up a measure to boost their salaries more than 18% retroactive to Jan. 1 — plus automatic 2% hikes every year thereafter.
The hikes would push members’ pay to $175,500, upper middle-class income territory and more than twice the city’s median income ($81,228).
So the move shows complete contempt for city voters, who the pols plainly think won’t notice, as well as for the City Charter, which sets out an entirely different procedure for upping their pay.
House Votes to Lock the Clock - for Good
11 replies
As my colleague Ward Clark reported on Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives moved the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make Daylight Saving Time permanent throughout the United States, from committee to the House floor for a vote. On Tuesday, the full House voted and passed the Act, 308-117. This is performative theater and nothing more. There are more pressing issues for our country and on the House docket, like national security appropriations, bills to combat fraud, and government controls over AI and data centers. But fresh off the House's July 4th recess, this was first up for consideration. According to Independent Rep. Kevin Kiley (CA-03),
Want to make banker money without stepping foot on Wall Street? Try plumbing for the New York City Housing Authority.
From July 2024 through June 2025, NYCHA plumber supervisor Jakub Markowski earned $465,000, including $332,000 for nearly 2,600 hours in overtime — more than the mayor and City Council speaker make combined.
While he collected these checks, Markowski also operated two private plumbing companies.
The Buildings Department is now investigating him.
As the city’s ascendant socialist left pushes for more housing in public or nonprofit hands, NYCHA’s history presents a sordid tale of dysfunction and corruption, with Markowski the latest apparent example.
Lest we forget, Shola Olatoye, NYCHA’s chairwoman under Mayor Bill de Blasio,
Wealthy Investor and Podcast Host Reveals
What Cured Him of His Trump Derangement Syndrome 9 replies
What Cured Him of His Trump Derangement Syndrome 9 replies
Chamath Palihapitiya is an investor who manages a portfolio worth billions of dollars. He also co-hosts the ‘All In’ podcast with David Sacks, Trump’s Bitcoin Czar.
Despite his relationship with Sacks, he was not a fan of President Trump, and now admits that he suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
During an appearance on CNBC this week, he explained how he changed his mind about Trump and offers his story as advice for others.
CHAMATH PALIHAPITYA: There are enough people that I hear who are lazy and reductive, and they’re going to end up where they’re supposed to end up—in a little cul-de-sac of their own making.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are being instructed to end "most" vehicle stops nationwide in a major policy shift, effective immediately. According to multiple federal sources, ICE agents will cease making traffic stops, which have played a significant role in the agency’s operations until now. A federal source told Fox News that ICE will continue conducting vehicle stops only for those considered to be the most egregious targets with serious or violent criminal histories.
This comes after two people were killed in ICE officer-involved shootings in Maine and Texas in the last week.
A senior ICE source remarked to Fox News that the change is "horrible but needs to happen."