Hamas Gets Hands On Dozens Of Drones That Israel Worries Could Be Used In Future Attacks

 At least 28 drones have successfully entered the Gaza Strip in recent months despite dozens of Israeli interception efforts, raising concerns among Israeli security officials that many of them could be used by Hamas terrorists.

Army Radio reported Wednesday that the drones crossed into Gaza through multiple routes, including from Egypt and from within Israel. According to the report, Israeli defense officials believe most of the drones that successfully entered the strip ultimately reached Hamas, though it remains unknown what cargo many of them were carrying.

Israeli officials say the drones themselves could become valuable operational assets even if they were not transporting weapons or other supplies. According to Army Radio, Hamas has increasingly used drones to observe Israeli troop movements and carry out attacks by attaching explosives to the aircraft.

The report said Israeli authorities have thwarted 89 drone smuggling attempts since January. Combined with the 28 drones believed to have entered Gaza, that represents at least 117 known drone smuggling operations during the first half of the year. Israeli officials also cautioned that the figures only include known cases, meaning the real number of attempted or successful smuggling operations could be higher.

“The IDF claims that all smuggling attempts intercepted so far contained drugs only,” Army Radio reported. “However, as noted, dozens were not intercepted, and these figures represent only the cases known to the military.”

The report added that Israeli officials acknowledge some drones may have entered Gaza without ever being detected. Security officials also said it is impossible to determine what the drones that reached Gaza were carrying, according to Israel National News.

Israeli authorities have recently stepped up efforts to disrupt the smuggling networks. In June, Israel Police and the Defense Ministry confiscated property linked to drone smuggling into Gaza, while Defense Minister Israel Katz imposed economic sanctions on individuals accused of participating in the operations.

“Anyone who smuggles weapons, equipment, or funds to terrorist organizations in Gaza is part of the terrorist network itself and will pay a heavy price,” Katz said in a statement.

The concerns come as Israeli military leaders continue to warn about the growing role of drones in modern warfare. Hamas is reportedly studying Hezbollah’s use of explosive drones in Lebanon, where such attacks have killed 16 Israeli soldiers and wounded many more in recent months, according to the Jerusalem Post.

In May, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir described Hezbollah’s first-person-view drone capabilities as “a challenge” but said the military already has “operational and technological solutions” in development to counter the threat.

“The drone threat is a challenge, but we will overcome it,” Zamir said. “The battlefield is unpredictable and always will be, but we are dedicating the IDF’s best resources, minds, and capabilities to this issue.”

Israeli officials have increasingly pointed to drones as one of the evolving threats facing the military, both from Hezbollah in Lebanon and from Hamas in Gaza, as armed groups continue adapting commercially available technology for military purposes.

Trump Reveals Host City For First Ever Midterm Convention In September

 

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Republicans will make history this September by holding the party’s first national convention during a midterm election year, an unprecedented gathering designed to energize voters and showcase the administration’s accomplishments ahead of November.

The Republican convention will take place September 9-10 in Dallas, marking the first time the GOP has staged a national convention outside of a presidential election cycle.

“BIG NEWS! For the first time ever, the Republican Party will hold a MIDTERM CONVENTION,” Trump announced on Truth Social. Calling it a “truly Historic Event,” Trump said Republicans will celebrate what he described as the “Great American Comeback” and the successes of his America First agenda.

The president said the convention will feature “hardworking Americans, our Great Innovators, Entrepreneurs, Manufacturers, First Responders, and Job Creators,” alongside entertainment and what he promised would be “a RALLY like none other.”

Although Trump first floated the idea last year, Tuesday’s announcement confirms that the event is officially moving forward after the Republican National Committee approved rule changes earlier this year that allow for a national convention outside the traditional four-year presidential cycle.

The convention comes as Republicans defend a razor-thin House majority and a narrow Senate majority, where even a handful of losses could hand Democrats control of Congress for the remainder of Trump’s term.

Historically, the president’s party almost always loses seats during midterm elections, and Republican strategists have acknowledged the challenge of motivating voters without Trump’s name appearing on the ballot. The convention is intended to help counter that trend by putting Trump himself at the center of the campaign and nationalizing congressional races around his administration’s record.

In his announcement, Trump highlighted a list of administration priorities he said Republicans will celebrate during the convention, including tax relief, border security, lower costs, increased domestic energy production, and what he described as the country’s “Golden Age.”

Holding the event in Texas also places a national spotlight on one of the country’s most consequential battlegrounds. Texas will feature multiple competitive House races, while Republicans also are defending a closely watched Senate seat between Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democrat Texas state Representative James Talarico. The state also remains central to Republican efforts to preserve and expand their congressional majority following this year’s mid-decade redistricting fight.

While Republicans move forward with the historic gathering, Democrats ultimately abandoned discussions about organizing a similar midterm convention of their own, despite reportedly considering the idea earlier this year.

The timing of the event is also notable. The convention will conclude on Sept. 10, the first anniversary of the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, whose death last year became a defining moment for many conservatives and prompted renewed discussions about political violence in America. Whether that date becomes part of the convention’s messaging remains to be seen.

Record-High Cases Of Rare Tick-Borne Virus Reported Across U.S.

 Cases of a rare tick-borne illness have been on the rise in the United States in recent years, decades after the disease was first identified in 1958. 

Powassan virus is a potentially fatal disease transmitted by the bite of an infected woodchuck tick or deer tick. The virus can cause symptoms such as weakness, fever, headache, and vomiting, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

There are currently no treatments or vaccines for Powassan virus.

The CDC also said it can cause meningitis or encephalitis. As the illness progresses, severe symptoms can include seizures, confusion, difficulty speaking, and loss of coordination.

The first known case of Powassan, named after a town in Ontario, was in 1958 when a 4-year-old boy named Lincoln Byers fell ill and died from an unidentified virus. Years later, researchers identified the same virus in a tick collected from a dead squirrel, helping establish the source of the infection, the Boston Globe reported. 

Even though the virus is rare, reported cases in the United States increased in recent years, and headlines have featured cases from New Jersey and New Hampshire, according to the Washington Post. A CDC chart shows reported cases increased from seven in 2015 to 76 in 2025.

Most infections occur during the late spring through mid-fall, when tick populations are the most active. 

“One of the most dangerous aspects is its rapid transmission,” Dr. Jorge P. Parada, a Chicago medical adviser at the National Pest Management Association, told Fox News Digital. 

“Powassan can be transmitted in as little as 15 minutes after the infected tick bites, while Lyme disease usually requires a 36- to 48-hour attachment time for transmission.”

Why The Birthright Citizenship Decision Was Wrong

 The Supreme Court has ruled that if you are born in the United States, you are a citizen.

If your parents traveled here to drop a baby, you are still a citizen.

If you spend five minutes here your entire life after your parents drop you here and then take you home, you are still a citizen.

Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case, was decided 6-3, with Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority and Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissenting.

 

 

Now he, along with the liberals on the court, is claiming that the Constitution of the United States under the 14th Amendment mandates that if you’re born in the United States under pretty much any circumstances, you automatically become a citizen.

We’ve been living with that rule in the United States for a long time. That is how the legal authorities have interpreted citizenship in the United States.

But the real answer here is that the Constitution, the 14th Amendment, and the Equal Protection Clause never contemplated that the Citizenship Clause would be used this way.

The explosion of illegal immigration over the last few decades is absolutely unprecedented in U.S. history, and it underscores how much this bad legal take on citizenship has totally screwed the United States.

Congress abdicated; multiple presidents abdicated. And so when you let in literally millions, possibly tens of millions of people who then have babies in the United States, you radically change the composition of the country because of bad legal interpretations such as birthright citizenship.

The opinion by Justice Roberts is a bad opinion. That’s because it is rooted in a really bizarre interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and its history. It’s a narrative that starts in Britain, takes a weird detour into the Reconstruction Era, and then returns to the British view after United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898. It doesn’t make much legal sense.

To start at the very beginning, the governing law for citizenship in the United States is the 14th Amendment. It states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The key phrase is “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” It seems superfluous, does it not? If we just wanted to say that if you are born or naturalized in the U.S., you are therefore a citizen, then you don’t need the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” It’s already stated that if you’re born in the United States, you’re a citizen. But then it says “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

What exactly does that mean? That is the subject of the case.

Justice Roberts writes:

The story of citizenship in the United States begins with the English common law. Before the Revolution, the American colonists—like all in the British Empire—were considered subjects of the sovereign. … Because the sovereign’s power (and thus his duty) was limited in various respects, so too was the scope of this rule. He could not demand allegiance from—for he could not protect—those born in lands that he did not control.

That arose not from royal fiat, but from what the common law conceived as the relationship between the sovereign and the people. The story of citizenship in the United States begins with the English common law. Before the revolution, the American colonists, like all in the British Empire, were considered subjects of the sovereign because the sovereign’s power, and thus his duty, was limited in various respects. So too was the scope of this rule. …

In all other respects, however, the sovereign’s power—and his claim to the people’s allegiance—was complete. A foreign mother could enter the British Isles, give birth, and leave with her child the very next day, and that child would remain a British subject. Why? Because the child owed an implied allegiance to the sovereign who protected him at his birth—no matter how “momentary and uncertain” his presence in the King’s realms.

There’s one problem with this. As Justices Thomas and Alito note, the American Revolution did not believe in the idea that the King had dominance over his subjects because we are citizens, not subjects. We fought a whole revolution in order not to be British.

Roberts continues, “This view crossed the Atlantic with the colonists — and was adopted with little fanfare after the Revolution, as ‘subject[s]’ of the sovereign became ‘citizens’ of the States. He says that after the revolution, as subjects of the sovereign became citizens of the state, it was the same as being a subject of the king.

That is totally and absolutely wrong.

Every immigration-status question focuses on the status of the parents. If you are born a child of an ambassador, we are not focused on your status; we are focused on your parents’ status.

What the court held in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, according to Roberts, was simple: the Citizenship Clause incorporated the common law and granted citizenship to nearly all children born in the United States. 

But Justice Thomas says no. When it says “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” you have to be domiciled in the United States, and you have to have allegiance to the United States. No foreign allegiance.

The opinion of the Court is that if you’re born in the U.S., you’re a citizen, and that goes all the way back to the British Empire, because we basically just picked up the British idea of citizenship and dumped it wholesale into American law.

As Thomas’ dissent points out, this is a terrible take on the actual history, and it’s a terrible take on the law.

Thomas is obviously super-ticked off — and for good reason. He pretty much says, “Listen, your interpretation here is just crap. This Roberts’ majority opinion is rooted in ahistorical nonsense.”

He says the court’s account makes no sense. He notes that the post-ratification evidence against the court’s view begins not nearly two decades after the 14th Amendment’s ratification, but immediately. All three branches of the federal government had already rejected this view of birthright citizenship. He points out that there are many indicators of original public meaning supporting the domicile requirement. He notes that if the Court were right about birthright citizenship, then there would have been a huge increase in dual nationality, which nobody would have accepted in the 19th century.

Justice Alito follows hard on all of that. He points out that what the court is really doing here is avoiding the real problem, illegal immigration; that they are afraid that if they rule that birthright citizenship is not legal, you’d end up with millions of people in limbo.

Alito says that is not a reason to leave bad law in place and make the law worse in the process. He is raging mad; he writes:

This is one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court, and in my judgment, the Court has made a serious mistake. As interpreted by the Court today, the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on virtually everyone who happens to be born in this country, including the children of “birth tourists,” women who come here solely for the purpose of giving birth to a child and then promptly return home. Careful analysis of the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the process that led to its adoption shows that it does not degrade the concept of United States citizenship in this way. Instead, the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on only those children who, at birth, owe allegiance solely to this country.

“United States citizenship is precious. Anyone who has attended a ceremony where citizens are naturalized can see that message on the faces of those who take the citizenship oath. Before saddling the Nation with a medieval rule, we had better be certain the Constitution requires it,” he declares.

He continues:

The Court’s account of the birthright-citizenship rule in American law is roughly as follows. After American independence, the British rule of birthright subjecthood was modified in just one way (to take account of Indians who lived under tribal governance), but otherwise the rule was transplanted intact to American soil. As modified, the rule was that a child born in this country is automatically an American citizen unless the child is born to tribal Indians or to a diplomat with immunity from legal process.

During the period before the Civil War, the rule’s status was firm. After the war, Congress codified the rule in §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. And in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, this Court issued a binding precedent confirming what Congress had done. Every step of this story is incorrect. The Declaration of Independence repudiated the foundation on which the British rule was based.

The outcome of the case is this: Congress and the presidency must handle their business on immigration. The decision makes the immigration issue that much more pressing.

It must happen soon because, for the foreseeable future, birthright citizenship will be the law of the land.

6 Killed in German Mass Shooting: Turkish Muslim Opens Fire at Youth Welfare Facility Over Custody Dispute

 

German Ambulance via Wikimedia Commons

Six people were killed Monday in Germany after a Turkish gunman opened fire at a youth welfare facility in Stade, Lower Saxony, in what authorities believe was a custody-related massacre involving his three-month-old daughter.

The attack, according to reports, took place at a mother-and-child facility,, a place meant to protect vulnerable women and children from danger. Instead, it became the scene of one of Germany’s deadliest shootings in recent years.

Police said five victims died at the scene, while a sixth died later in hospital. The dead were four women and two men, all employees of the facility or connected youth welfare authorities.

The suspected gunman, a 45-year-old man from the Hanover area, was arrested shortly after the attack. German reporting has described him as German-born with Turkish citizenship or dual nationality.

Authorities believe the shooting grew out of a custody dispute involving the suspect’s infant daughter. A meeting related to the child’s care and custody had reportedly been scheduled for the same day. 

The child and her 34-year-old mother were at the facility at the time of the attack. Police said neither was among the victims, and both were brought to safety.

The facility provides supervised accommodation for pregnant women and young mothers with children. According to reporting, the suspect’s daughter had previously been removed from the family and later returned to her mother under conditions requiring them to live at the Stade facility rather than at home in Hanover.

Because the father was reportedly considered problematic, the custody-related meeting was attended by a larger group of staff than usual. Those workers appear to have become the targets of the attack.

Lower Saxony Interior Minister Daniela Behrens described the shooting as an “extremely cold-blooded violent crime” that apparently stemmed from a custody dispute. Investigators have stressed that the exact sequence of events remains under review.

The suspect was known to police, including in connection with alleged threats. But officials said he had not been classified as a violent offender.

He also did not have a firearms license. Investigators are still trying to determine how he obtained the weapon and whether more than one firearm was used.

After the shooting, the suspect allegedly fled in a grey Mercedes. Police intercepted the vehicle and arrested him along with a woman described by investigators as having a close connection to his family.

Witnesses told German media that police opened fire on the fleeing car after it failed to stop. Officers later recovered a weapon from the vehicle.

Two additional people were taken into police measures or questioning as investigators worked to clarify whether anyone helped the suspect before, during or after the attack. A murder commission has taken over the case because of the scale and complexity of the crime.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the killings had shaken the country. “The news from Stade shakes us to the core,” he wrote, adding that people “who wanted to help and protect” had lost their lives or been injured.

Merz expressed sympathy for the victims and their relatives and thanked police officers for their rapid response. But official sympathy is not enough for a country that keeps repeating the same pattern of shock, mourning and denial.

The Stade massacre has revived questions Berlin’s ruling class works hard to suppress: immigration, clan crime, imported social conflicts, failed integration and the state’s inability to protect even its own welfare institutions.

German outlets NDR and WDR have reported that the suspected gunman belonged to the Miri clan, a large extended-family network associated in Germany with organized crime. Police have said the shooting appears to have been an isolated family-related act rather than a clan-directed operation.

That distinction may matter legally, but it does not settle the political question. Germany has allowed foreign-rooted clan structures to entrench themselves in its cities while citizens were told that raising the issue was xenophobic.

The Miri network has long been associated by authorities and media with organized crime, including drug trafficking, weapons offenses, extortion, money laundering and violent crime. One of its best-known figures, Ibrahim Miri, accumulated numerous convictions before being deported to Lebanon in 2019, illegally returning, and being deported again.

Stade itself has previously seen violence connected to clan disputes. A 2024 conflict linked to competing shisha businesses reportedly escalated into attacks, drive-by shootings and a fatal stabbing involving members of the Miri and Al-Zein networks.

Stade represents yet another grim warning about a state that polices speech more aggressively than it dismantles foreign clan power. Germany’s rulers monitor dissidents, stigmatize border-control voters and lecture citizens about diversity, yet repeatedly fail to confront the criminal structures that have been allowed to flourish under their watch.

The remigration argument is becoming unavoidable. Foreign criminals must be deported, dual nationals who commit grave crimes should face citizenship consequences where legally possible, and clan networks must be dismantled before they become permanent power structures inside Germany.

If a person with foreign citizenship or deportable status commits serious violence, the response cannot be another candlelight vigil or another speech about tolerance. It must be prosecution, removal, border enforcement and a serious reversal of the immigration policies that brought these problems into German life.

Stade is now grieving six people who went to work in a facility meant to protect women and children and never came home. Their deaths should force Germany to confront what its elites have spent years denying, namely that mass immigration without assimilation, weak law enforcement and political cowardice have a human cost.