iftttwall

Authored by Ana Kasperian via RealClearInvestigations,

Francesca Padilla was awakened by the sound of screaming people and breaking glass. Soon she could hear the tortured howls of her neighbor’s dog Togo as the bungalow right next to her Venice home was engulfed in flames.  

“It was yelping so loud–the sound isn’t the usual dog sound–it was suffering,” another neighbor told a local newspaper. “It was suffering.” The homeowner, Dr. Courtney Gillenwater, a pediatrician, was at work when the fire started around 3 a.m.  Her neighbors tried and failed to break into her bungalow to rescue Togo. But the Husky-mix ultimately died, and Gillenwater’s home in this Los Angeles neighborhood was destroyed.

Gillenwater suspected that drug addicts from the growing homeless encampment nearby started the April 2021 fire because she had asked city officials to remove a dumpster behind her house where they would congregate. 

Her neighbor, Padilla, also believes the homeless were the culprits. “Anyone can see the correlation between homeless encampments and the rise of fires,” she said. “We have people cooking drugs out in the open right across the street. Is that not a recipe for disaster?”

Initially, firefighters with the Los Angeles Fire Department also suspected arson, telling reporters candidly at the time that they believed someone threw something over Gillenwater’s fence to start the fire. But soon the department issued a statement declaring in euphemistic bureaucratese that “there is no evidence that indicates the involvement of a person experiencing homelessness.” Four years later, the cause of the blaze remains officially unsolved. 

The 2021 fire is now viewed by some Los Angeles residents as a symbol of the city’s failure to control the spread of homeless encampments that have become a major cause of fires in the city. While LA’s leaders have been quick to point to climate change and faulty power lines for the recent historic fires that razed large swaths of the city, critics say they have intentionally downplayed the role played by the city’s swelling homeless population.

A new investigation by KCAL News using LAFD data found that since 2019, the number of fires connected to a homeless person has increased by the thousands. In 2024 alone, there were nearly 17,000 such fires.

A separate investigation by NBC4’s I-Team tallied nearly 14,000 homeless fires a year earlier. The report found that some of the fires were sparked as a result of encampments illegally tapping into the city’s electrical system to power items in their tents. Regardless, the upward trend in these types of fires is clear. The 13,909 homeless fires in 2023 were nearly double the number in 2020 when 43% of all citywide fire incidents involved a homeless person. Today, more than half of the fires do, even as the homeless account for less than 1% of the city’s population.

Gigi Graciette, a reporter for Fox 11 television, says fire officials have been advised to evade questions about homeless fires from local journalists.  “Even when [high-ranking fire officials] know for a fact how a fire … was indeed connected to an encampment or to an unhoused individual, they are not to say that,” Graciette said during a February 21 broadcast. “They are just to say it’s under investigation,” she continued.

Graciette noted that “many chiefs, many battalion chiefs, many captains are extremely frustrated to see their men and their women risking their lives on fires” at the same encampments repeatedly, including one whose squatters have taken over an abandoned office building in the working class neighborhood of Van Nuys. “It was there that a battalion chief told me ‘we’ve been to this one building ten times and I’m not allowed to speak about it,’ “ Graciette said. “That’s just the politics at play here.”

Fire officials do speak up from time to time, as did Capt. Freddy Escobar, president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, last June after fire crews responded to a homeless encampment fire that has recurred at the same site in the Sepulveda Basin. In highlighting the department’s frustration with city leadership, Escobar described how fire crews were expected to respond to the same encampment fire over and over again. “It was caused by the homeless and we nearly lost a firefighter over this,” he said. “I’m asking the city of Los Angeles, where is the outrage for what’s happening in the city? Because what we’re doing today is not working.”

A dozen firefighters were injured due to a sudden explosion as they battled the blaze. One member of the fire crew sustained severe injuries, including head trauma and a severed ear, which had to be reattached by doctors after he was airlifted to a nearby hospital. The Los Angeles Police Department later confirmed that multiple suspicious devices were found at the encampment where the fire started, preventing fire crews from returning. Instead, a helicopter was used to douse the fire with water and extinguish the blaze.

Located in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, the Sepulveda Basin is surrounded by parks, fields for competitive sports and a long bike path. The area is also home to the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve, a favorite among local birdwatchers due to its diverse variety of avian species. 

Last June, San Fernando Valley Audubon Society treasurer Pat Bates told the Los Angeles Daily News that her organization had been worried about the fire risk posed by the makeshift multi-story structures, propane tanks and construction materials they’ve discovered throughout the wildlife reserve. She and her colleagues estimated that roughly 150 people were living there, with some in desperate need of mental health treatment. 

The president of the SFV Audubon Society even recalled witnessing a screaming man waving a machete during a recent field trip for around a dozen third-grade students. No one was harmed. But the incident highlighted what Escobar put bluntly: what the city is doing is not working. Bates agrees. “We are very frustrated,” she said. “Why is anybody allowed to bring construction materials in and live there?”

Bates isn’t the only one asking such questions. Business owners and residents alike have been lobbying local leaders to be proactive and do something about the risks associated with the open fires commonly seen in encampments. Among the critics is commercial property owner John Alley, who is furious that open fires continue to be an issue in Santa Monica and Westlake, where the city’s notoriously crime-ridden MacArthur Park is located.

“Every night, on the sidewalks across MacArthur Park and in MacArthur Park, there’s two types of fires,” Alley says he told L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. “There’s the fires which are used to cook meth and the others are used to stay warm,” Alley continued. 

Bass called Alley on January 4, mere days before massive wind-fueled fires tore through and leveled the Pacific Palisades and Altadena. “I said [to Bass] there’s going to be a problem there, and if these fires burn buildings and people die, it’d be very embarrassing for you Mayor to have to come back early.”

Alley secretly recorded his exchange with Bass and felt justified in doing so because he “felt my life and the safety of my tenants and their hard-working employees were in danger.” Alley says the crime in the area, including drug trafficking, shootings and stabbings, has gotten so bad that police often refuse to escort firefighters in MacArthur Park for protection. “If firefighters don’t have their backs covered, they’re not going to be safe,” Alley asserted. “But the problem is the police … are staying two and three blocks away from the park at night. The police are afraid, not enough of them.”

Mayor Bass did not respond to RealClearInvestigations’ request for comment for this article.

Alley’s claims have been brushed off by anti-police activists as nothing more than paranoid musings. In reality, the gang MS-13 has had a foothold in MacArthur Park for years, and several transgender sex workers have been stabbed to death by gang members seeking to rid the area of them. But they’re not the only victims. For decades, gang members have been charging a weekly fee to street vendors, drug dealers, sex workers, homeless individuals and even legal business owners in the area. In 2021 the Los Angeles Times detailed a horrific incident involving the killing of a 3-week-old baby who was struck by gunfire after 18th Street gang members opened fire on a street vendor who refused to pay them $50. 

A 2023 report commissioned by the LAFD detailed the challenges facing the Fire Department in dealing with its the high volume of homeless-related calls. Aside from battling blazes, the LAFD also responds to medical emergencies throughout the city, which has proven to spread their resources thin in the context of an ever-expanding homeless population. 

“Over the course of late 2021 and into 2022, the City and County rolled out a pilot project for the delivery of alternative, non-urgent patient care—including mental health and homeless program diversion; however, this is not enough,” the report stated. “The alternative response program needs to scale massively and quickly to lower the workload placed on fire units back down to moderate and serious emergencies.”

Two Calls Per Hour

To highlight how homeless-related emergency calls were overburdening the LAFD, the report cited that “in 2020, Fire Station 9 in the east downtown area responded to 18,986 incidents—an average of 52 per day, or two per hour,” and recommended that the city “shift low-acuity EMS incidents from firefighter-staffed rescue ambulances in very high-incident-demand areas to non-firefighter-staffed, low-acuity units to include medical, mental health care, and homeless resources.” 

Further, the report recommended that “well over 100 new non-firefighter personnel must be hired” for homeless response measures. Two years later, data show that the LAFD continues to be more severely understaffed than almost any other major city, with only one firefighter for every 1,000 residents. By comparison, other major cities like Chicago, Dallas and Houston have closer to two firefighters per capita. 

“This is a woefully understaffed fire department,” Escobar said during a tearful interview with CNN last January. “We’re either going to have a fire department that’s going to reflect 2025, or we’re going to have a fire department that’s going to reflect the 1960s.” 

Ironically, data show that the LAFD was actually better-staffed back then. In a December 2024 memo that has since been deleted from the city’s website, former Fire Chief Kristin Crowley drew attention to the fact that the city has fewer fire stations today than it did in 1960 despite the population growing from 2.5 million to 4 million by 2020. 

Bass faced fierce backlash after having slashed more than $17.5 million from the Fire Department’s operational budget months before January’s devastating wildfires. But she still denies the cuts despite overwhelming evidence otherwise. 

In fact, the Mayor originally proposed trimming LAFD funding by $23 million for fiscal year 2024-2025. But that plan was never adopted. Later, a leaked memo City Hall sent to division fire chiefs and captains, following a tense meeting between Bass and Crowley one day before the fires, communicated that the Mayor was looking for an additional $49 million in cuts. The memo suggested that as many as 16 fire stations could shutter, but also clarified that “this is a worst-case scenario and is NOT happening yet.” 

Nevertheless, the eventual $17.5 million cut from the department’s operational budget did hamper the LAFD’s response to the fires. It resulted in firings of civilian workers, for example, including mechanics who repair fire trucks. In announcing Crowley’s demotion later, Mayor Bass claimed that “a thousand firefighters could have been on duty the morning the fires broke” but “were sent home.” Bass did not mention the department’s 75 fire trucks that were sitting idle because mechanics were not available to repair them. 

Burning Acreage, and Money for Homeless

The city has endured annual increases in both the number of fires and acres burned, but Bass has consistently dedicated more taxpayer resources to nonprofits serving the homeless than to the LAFD, which is tasked with protecting millions of people. While $837 million was budgeted for the fire department in fiscal year 2023-2024, $1.3 billion was allocated for the homeless. As with the fire budget, funding for homelessness was also reduced in the 2024-2025 budget, but its amount was still higher than that of the LAFD.

Also of concern is how the city’s homeless funding is being spent. A new audit commissioned by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter shows that the city has failed to track the performance of homeless programs that received a total of $2.4 billion in grants. Auditors argue that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which chooses grantees, lacked “uniform data standards and real-time oversight” and that “increased the risk of resource misallocation and limited the ability to assess the true impact of homelessness assistance services.”

The audit maintained that LAHSA’s missing data and lack of oversight “made it challenging” to determine how program funds were used and “whether they achieved the intended outcomes.”

One example highlighted in the audit was a nearly $2.1 million contract LAHSA head Va Lecia Adams Kellum approved for Upward Bound House’s housing assistance program. Adams Kellum breached ethics rules by approving the contract because her husband holds a senior position with the organization. But LAHSA made two amendments to the organization’s existing contracts to increase the grant amount to $2.4 million. The latest judge-mandated audit found that LAHSA had no performance reports for Upward Bound House.

Bass has little to show for the many billions she has poured into alleviating the homeless crisis. A federally mandated annual count found that 75,312 people were homeless on any given night across the county in January 2024. That represented a slight 0.3% improvement from the year before when the homeless tally totalled 75,518 people. And while the fire department was suffering from chronic underfunding, city comptroller Kenneth Mejia discovered that $513 million of the $1.3 billion in homeless funding was never spent. 

LAFD’s Honorary Fire Chief Paul Scrivano speculated that the city’s failed approach was not the bug but a feature of their leadership. “If the problem goes away, the money goes away,” Scrivano said on the Wisenuts Podcast. “So, the problem will never go away. This is an industry.”

A little over a year after the Venice fire took the dog Togo’s life, in October 2022, one hundred firefighters battled for more than 80 minutes to put out another fire in Venice that locals say was started by the homeless. A home that was under renovation was completely destroyed and five others sustained serious damage. Neighbor Glenn Searle says he personally witnessed several homeless individuals entering the property that was being renovated. “I can say that all day before there were homeless living in here and using the toilet all day,” he revealed to CBS. When asked if the Fire Department had any suspicion that the blaze was started by a homeless person, an LAFD spokesperson had “no comment.”

Pilots of a Delta flight that crashed spectacularly at Toronto’s Pearson Airport last month received a critical warning of a rapid descent less than three seconds before slamming onto the runway and flipping upside-down in a fiery wreck, new findings reveal.

The dramatic crash occurred Feb. 17 when Delta Air Lines Flight 4819 – operated by regional carrier Endeavor Air – made a catastrophic landing at Pearson after arriving from Minneapolis, according to a preliminary report by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB).

All 76 passengers and four crew members managed to survive the terrifying incident, though 21 were injured and hospitalized. Miraculously, everyone was released within days.

Investigators revealed Wednesday that the plane’s ground proximity alert system sounded a frantic warning just 2.6 seconds before touchdown, registering an alarming descent rate of 1,100 feet per minute – above Transport Canada’s maximum allowable rate of 1,000 feet per minute for commercial landings.

The aircraft was hurtling toward the runway at roughly 250 kilometers per hour (136 knots) just moments before disaster struck.

Upon impact, the plane’s landing gear collapsed, ripping off a wing and triggering a dangerous jet-fuel leak that instantly ignited, engulfing the craft in flames as it skidded violently down the runway. The plane then rolled sharply onto its right side and flipped upside-down, shearing off a significant portion of its tail.

“The flight crew had to exit through the emergency hatch located on the ceiling of the cockpit,” TSB lead investigator Ken Webster revealed in a chilling video update.

Seconds after emergency responders cleared the plane of all passengers, a powerful explosion erupted near the left wing. Investigators are still probing its mysterious cause.

Initial inspections uncovered no obvious mechanical defects or issues with flight controls. The TSB’s continuing investigation will focus on metallurgical analysis of the damaged wing, pilot training, landing protocols, cabin safety procedures, and passenger evacuation.

“This investigation will take some time, as many questions remain unanswered,” Webster admitted, adding “The TSB will continue to work toward determining the full sequence of events that led to the accident.”

In response to the harrowing ordeal, Delta has offered survivors $30,000 each in “no strings attached” compensation. But the drama doesn’t stop there—at least two lawsuits have already been filed stateside, with a Canadian law firm reporting multiple passengers have hired them seeking further damages.

The TSB’s investigation—backed by the FAA, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, Delta’s incident response team, and Mitsubishi (the aircraft’s manufacturer)—continues, promising more explosive revelations in the weeks to come.

Authored by Selena Zito via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Small businesses have been the backbone of the United States since its founding. The Hotel Saxonburg, which has also been known as the Vogeley House, the Belvedere House, the Laube House and the Central Hotel, opened in 1835 and has lasted most of our nation’s existence.

Yesterday, the new owners abruptly closed the hotel after purchasing it two years ago. This not only shuttered the historic restaurant and hotel that served as a cultural touchstone for nearly 200 years, but it also caused people to lose their jobs.

Because the business was small, those job losses, likely around 50 people total, were a statistic that didn’t gain attention from the national press. However, when you consider that more people in the U.S. work for small businesses than any other sector, those numbers start to add up.

According to the Small Business Administration, which draws its data from the U.S. Census Bureau, over 60 percent of U.S. businesses are small businesses. They range from employing a handful of people (think your favorite food truck) to 100 people (think a local machine shop).

Before 2020, most Americans worked for small businesses that employed under 500 people. The last four years have upended that number. Now, only 53 percent of Americans work for businesses with 500 or more workers.

In short, the U.S. is no longer a nation of small businesses. In February, the Business Dynamics Statistics from the Census Bureau showed that shift. It also showed that the biggest change of all has been the increase in the number of people working for companies with 10,000 or more workers and the decrease in the number of people working at firms with under 100 workers.

Case in point: Last year, there was a story about a local independent grocery, Ferri’s, that closed after 70 years in a snowball effect that began with the unexpected shuttering of the small independent pharmacy located inside the grocery.

The beloved family grocery posted a note on the building’s large glass front windows and on Facebook, saying they were closing “with a heavy heart” after serving as “a cornerstone of our community and … fostering connections that have spanned generations.”

Ferri’s general manager, Gary Silvestri, said the loss of rent and traffic from the pharmacy had a significant impact, as it was 20 percent of the grocer’s business.

Another factor was the economic pressure of Target being located a couple of miles to the east, Walmart a few miles to the west, and Giant Eagle, a massive local grocery store chain, within a half mile of Ferri’s. All three of those companies employ well over 10,000 people and have the buying-power advantage to lower prices over a mom-and-pop grocery.

Jeff Hastings of Wholesale Central, the leading publisher of content for the wholesale merchandise industry, wrote that ever since the dawn of the big-box store in 1962, the year Walmart, Kmart and Target all opened their doors, small local businesses, from hardware stores to clothing and shoe stores to pharmacies and groceries, have struggled to compete.

He cited the 2006 Walmart move into the west side of Chicago as an example. Eighty-two local stores went out of business and cost an estimated 300 retail jobs in neighboring ZIP codes.

It isn’t just groceries, restaurants or hotels that are falling to larger entities with 10 to 100 employees. Small local gas stations, clothing stores and even small insurance companies that either close or merge with larger companies are also losing ground as big companies expand.

Locals in Saxonburg were sad that the hotel closed and that people lost their jobs, but they also felt confident that someone would come along and revive the historic hotel and restaurant as a gathering place for the community and visitors.

The good news for small businesses, and why many economic experts expect a turnaround, is the surge in construction, manufacturing, retail, and service industries in January of this year. Optimism levels exceed the 51-year average, according to the latest Small Business Economic Trends survey from the National Federation of Independent Business Research Center.

That quarterly report revealed that the overall small business population is signaling renewed confidence despite persistent economic challenges. That just might turn around this current trend.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

The US might also share India’s concerns that a hidden Pakistani hand is playing a role in all of this…

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sparked a scandal when she recently told Indian media during her trip to the country that Trump 2.0 is concerned about the persecution of minorities and growing caliphate threats in Bangladesh. That country’s interim authorities predictably denied that either is a problem, which prompted a State Department spokesman to remind them that “We’re watching.” This back-and-forth shows that the future of their ties is no longer as clear-cut as before.

Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, many Indian observers, and a sizeable number of foreign ones believe that the US played a role in Bangladesh’s regime change sequence last summer. 

Trump claimed that “There was no role for our deep state” when asked about this last month during Modi’s visit, but regardless of whether he’s taken at his word, Tulsi’s comments show that the US is no longer giving Bangladesh’s new rulers a blank check. They might even sanction them if the situation deteriorates.

Their interests in minority rights there might stem from a desire to repair the damage that the last administration dealt to bilateral ties by championing what’s now India’s top cause in Bangladesh, which is in spite of possibly pressuring it on tariffs and trade, while the caliphate one is of more direct importance. Hasina was a heavy-handed secular leader who was overthrown by Islamist-instigated street violence and the “Arab Spring” precedent shows that such regime changes usually end badly with time.

Bangladesh has long struggled to contain radical Islamist sentiment within its society, but the new authorities no longer share their predecessors’ threat assessment of such movements, instead partnering with them to legitimize the new order that came to power after Hasina fled to India. That’s problematic from the US’ perspective and is made all the more worrying by reports that Bangladesh has since improved its ties with Pakistan, including in the military and possibly also intelligence domains too.

Readers can learn more about this from the BBC’s recent article here. 

Its relevance to Tulsi’s comments is that the caliphate part could be connected to allegations that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which has a history of cultivating radical Islamist movements across South Asia, might be plotting to use Bangladesh as a launch pad for waging another Hybrid War on India. If true and anything tangibly comes of it, then this could worsen Indo-Bangladeshi ties, destabilize the region, and complicate US policy.

It’s beyond the scope of this analysis to describe India’s vulnerability to externally exacerbated identity conflicts, which often take terrorist and separatist forms, but it’s enough for casual observers to know that Bangladeshi-based groups have a history of stirring trouble in West Bengal and the Northeast. India also believes that past iterations were tied to the ISI’s activities in Bangladesh that were tacitly approved by its former Islamo-nationalist governments as a means of jointly balancing India in asymmetrical ways.

The way in which last summer’s regime change unfolded and the nature of the interim authorities that came to power have rekindled these concerns, which Trump 2.0 also takes seriously as proven by Tulsi’s comments. So-called “rogue activity” by Pakistan, which includes its long-range missile program and cultivation of radical Islamists in Bangladesh who persecute minorities with impunity, won’t be tolerated. Continued movement in this direction risks further complicating already difficult US-Pakistani ties.

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

An FBI agent who accused the bureau of political bias during President Donald Trump’s first administration has been arrested on charges related to the alleged unauthorized disclosure of confidential information.

Johnathan Buma, a 15-year veteran of the FBI, was taken into custody on Monday at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport while waiting to board a flight out of the country, according to his charging documents filed on Tuesday.

According to court filings, Buma allegedly shared internal documents and other sensitive information when he circulated a draft of a book about his career as an FBI agent among his associates.

“The book draft contained information that Buma obtained through his position as an FBI Special Agent that relates to the FBI’s efforts and investigations into a foreign country’s weapons of mass destruction program,” a criminal complaint reads.

The complaint alleges that beginning in October 2023, Buma “printed approximately 130 files from the FBI’s internal network,” some of which contained classified details from confidential informants. Several of these documents were “clearly marked with warnings” indicating they were protected information.

Buma also printed nine documents containing text that had been “copied and pasted from reports” that were marked as protected information and contained information from confidential informants, the complaint alleges.

After obtaining the materials, Buma allegedly informed FBI supervisors of his intention to take unpaid leave before departing from his office. Authorities said that in the ensuing months, he circulated a draft of his book via email to several individuals assisting him in negotiating a book deal and purported to authorize them to share confidential information.

The charges were filed in the U.S. Central District of California, where Buma has a home.

Buma spoke out against the FBI prior to the alleged misconduct. In July 2023, he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, accusing senior bureau officials of suppressing intelligence related to his investigations into Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani and claimed he faced retaliation as a result.

“I do not fully understand why I have been singled out for this treatment nor who exactly is driving it,” Buma said in a testimony to the Senate committee. “But my strong suspicion is that one or more of my sources provided truthful, accurate information that is harmful to a person or persons that higher-ups in the Bureau are trying to shield.”

In a September 2023 interview with Business Insider, Buma recounted an incident from four years earlier when he had presented information to a supervisor at the FBI’s Los Angeles field office regarding potential criminal activity in the business dealings of Hunter Biden, son of former President Joe Biden, with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Buma said his boss was “very interested” and “adamant” about pursuing the case.

In the same meeting, according to Buma, his supervisor immediately shut him down after he suggested that Giuliani might have been “compromised” in a Russian counter-influence operation.

In November 2023, the FBI searched Buma’s California home as part of an investigation into his handling of classified information. Scott Horton, an attorney representing Buma at the time, denied any wrongdoing and insisted that the search yielded no classified materials.

Buma’s attorney in this case could not be immediately reached for comment.

The U.S. Department of Justice didn’t respond to a request for comment by publication time.

On Thursday Russia’s southern Saratov region suffered its largest drone attack of the war from Ukraine, with the  Engels-2 airfield being impacted by another direct hit.

The base which is known for hosting Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers has been targeted several times since the war began in 2022. Photos to emerge of the fresh attack show a large fireball lighting up the sky.

“Due to a fire at the [Engels] airfield, residents of a nearby farming co-op are being evacuated for safety reasons,” Saratov region Governor Roman Busargin announced.

Busargin further characterized it as the “largest ever” drone assault on the Saratov region since the war began. Other regions of Russia were also hit.

In total Russia’s defense ministry said the military intercepted 132 Ukrainian drones overnight across six regions and Crimea, also including shoot-downs of 54 over Saratov alone.

The overnight strikes happened not long after Presidents Zelensky and Trump help a phone call Wednesday, where in the Ukrainian leader said he’s open to a partial ceasefire. 

Russian Telegram channels report this morning that Engels-2 airbase—home to Russia’s Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers, which regularly launch missile attacks onto the people of Ukraine—is now facing serious difficulties. pic.twitter.com/6uijALSmNq

— SPRAVDI — Stratcom Centre (@StratcomCentre) March 20, 2025

However, both sides are still accusing the other of stalling tactics at this point:

Mr. Zelensky has characterized some of the Kremlin’s proposals as stalling tactics to maneuver for military advantage and a better deal from Mr. Trump. On Thursday morning, he suggested the same in noting that Russian attacks had not stopped.

“Every day and every night up to a hundred drones and missile attacks also do not stop,” he wrote on Telegram. “With every such strike Russia shows the world its real attitude to peace.”

As for damage at Engels, the regional governor has described that 30 residential homes were damaged in the attack. The base and town are located some 500 miles southeast of Moscow. The damage is so significant as an ammunition depot was believed struck.

Russian Telegram channels report the largest drone attack on Russian Engels and Saratov, according to the local governor.

It is reported that evacuation was announced in the area of the local airfield (it hosts Russian strategic bombers that attack Ukraine). pic.twitter.com/SyqnzQQ4tH

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) March 20, 2025

“Footage from the attack showed a huge plume of smoke rising from the base and an intense blaze,” Newsweek describes “Other footage showed that the blast completely destroyed some homes, tearing off roofs and blowing them across the street.”

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that a federal judge who blocked the Trump administration from invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to remove illegal immigrants has “no right” to ask questions on flights carrying deported individuals.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg had given the Trump administration until Tuesday to respond to his questions about deportation flights carrying alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which was designated by the administration as a foreign terrorist organization last month, over the past weekend following an order that he issued to suspend deportations after the administration invoked the 1798 law. He extended the deadline for another day, giving the government until Thursday to respond.

But Bondi told Fox News on Wednesday that such questions are inappropriate and that the judge has “no right” to ask those questions and “no power” to order the government to return those flights back to the United States, adding that she believes “liberal” judges are issuing orders on matters they have no jurisdiction over.

“They’re meddling in foreign affairs. They’re meddling in our government,” she told the outlet. “And the question should be, why is a judge trying to protect terrorists who have invaded our country over American citizens?”

Bondi: This judge has no right to ask those questions. The judge had no business, no power to do what he did. This judge had no right to do that.. pic.twitter.com/0dqgakyVym

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 19, 2025

On Wednesday, with the deadline nearing, Bondi said Boasberg had no “business, no power” to order the administration to return the flights. She said it has been a “pattern” from liberal judges to order things they have no jurisdiction to do.

The attorney general said that the Trump administration will continue to carry out deportation flights of Tren de Aragua members who are illegally inside the United States.

“We are going to deport them, and we’re going to continue to deport them. We will honor what the court says, but we will appeal, and we will continue to fight terrorists within our country,” Bondi said, adding that Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys “are working on this” case and “will answer appropriately” to Boasberg’s questions.

Her remarks on Wednesday are the latest development in a showdown between the federal government and the judge, who temporarily blocked deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. President Donald Trump has called for the judge’s impeachment, while other administration officials have said that the judge has exceeded his authority in preventing the government from dealing with what it described as national security matters and foreign policy.

The judge has questioned whether the Trump administration ignored his court order on Saturday to turn around planes with deportees headed for El Salvador, which has agreed to intern them in a prison. A post issued by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on X indicated that his government received the deportees, saying, “too late,” in reference to the judge’s original order.

In court papers submitted Wednesday, the DOJ said it was considering invoking the “state secrets privilege” to allow the government to withhold some of the information sought by the court.

“The underlying premise of these orders … is that the Judicial Branch is superior to the Executive Branch, particularly on non-legal matters involving foreign affairs and national security. The Government disagrees,” DOJ lawyers wrote. “The two branches are co-equal, and the Court’s continued intrusions into the prerogatives of the Executive Branch, especially on a non-legal and factually irrelevant matter, should end.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed to reporters during a Monday news briefing that 261 people were deported, including 137 under the Alien Enemies law.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Trump White House has continued moving fast on gaining the release of imprisoned Americans from rival or enemy states throughout the world. 

On Thursday an American who had been imprisoned for more than two years by the Taliban in Afghanistan has been released. The release, mediated by Qatar, was confirmed in a statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“Today, after two and a half years of captivity in Afghanistan, Delta Airlines mechanic George Glezmann is on his way to be reunited with his wife, Aleksandra,” Rubio said in the statement.

The 66-year old American was abducted by the Taliban as he traveled through Afghanistan in December 2022. The US government declared him to be wrongfully detained the following year.

Zalmay Khalilzad, a top US envoy to Afghanistan, described that the he Taliban government agreed to free him as a “goodwill gesture” to President Trump and the American people.

Glezmann is the third American to be released from Taliban custody this year, after Ryan Corbett and William McKenty were freed earlier this year in exchange for a detained Taliban member in US custody.

Khalilzad hailed that Trump has “made the freedom and homecoming of Americans held abroad a high priority. It is an honor to assist in this important effort.”

According to the circumstances of Glezmann’s trip and capture:

He had traveled to Afghanistan for a five-day trip “to explore the cultural landscape and rich history of the country,” according to US Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, who campaigned for Glezmann’s release.

The two lawmakers said last July that Glezmann was held in “a nine-foot by nine-foot cell with other detainees and has been held in solitary confinement and underground for months at a time.”

In the period up to July 2024, Glezmann had not been granted any consular visits by US officials and had “only seven phone calls totaling 54 minutes with his family,” the senators said.

He had set out on his journey a mere 16 months after the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan. The US State Department has long had a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory on its webpage, describing that the risk of detention is very high.

US hostage negotiator, Adam Boehler @aboehler met with the Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Kabul alongside @realZalmayMK.@SecRubio confirms the release of US national George Glezmann detained by the Taliban over 2 years ago in #Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/x8445nAkeT

— Bashir Ahmad Gwakh (@bashirgwakh) March 20, 2025

“Do not travel to Afghanistan due to civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping, and limited health facilities,” the alert says. Some swathes of the central Asian, war-torn country, actually remain essentially lawless – sometimes ruled by various competing tribes and Taliban-connected warlords. 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has notified a court that it wants a lawsuit against a Texas immigration law dismissed.

“Plaintiff the United States of America hereby voluntarily dismisses the above-captioned action,” lawyers for the DOJ said in a March 18 filing.

The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.

Under President Joe Biden, the DOJ in 2024 sued Texas over a state law that enabled state police officers to arrest and deport illegal immigrants.

“Texas cannot disregard the United States Constitution and settled Supreme Court precedent,” Brian M. Boynton, the principal deputy assistant attorney general at the time, said in a Jan. 4 statement on the suit. 

“We have brought this action to ensure that Texas adheres to the framework adopted by Congress and the Constitution for regulation of immigration.”

Senate Bill 4, the law, created state crimes for illegally entering the United States, authorized state judges to order the deportation of some illegal immigrants, and required state officials to carry out the orders.

The legal challenge resulted in the law being blocked as courts weighed the case brought by the DOJ.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra, who entered an injunction against the statute, said in his February 2024 order that states under the U.S. Constitution “may not exercise immigration enforcement power except as authorized by the federal government.”

More recently, on Jan. 31, Ezra said that in light of developments, Texas law enforcement is permitted “to cooperate with and act under the direction of Federal authorities in the apprehension, arrest, and detention of undocumented persons found within the borders of the State of Texas without legal authorization from the United States Government.”

He also said that Texas judges and officers still cannot deport illegal immigrants and that other portions of the injunction remain in effect.

The developments included two executive orders from President Donald Trump, one of which stated that it was his administration’s policy to deter and prevent illegal immigrants from entering the United States and promptly remove all immigrants who illegally enter or are in the country in violation of federal law.

The other said that the U.S. secretary of homeland security will work with state and local officials to apprehend and deport illegal immigrants.

The DOJ previously dropped Biden-era lawsuits that challenged state immigration laws in Oklahoma and Iowa. Similar to the Texas case, officials under Biden had said that the laws violated the U.S. Constitution because they created state-level immigration systems that ran afoul of the federal system.

*  *  *

Down to our last few green Waxed Canvas Hats!

*  *  *

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Major corporations are choosing to not sponsor San Francisco’s 2025 Pride parade and street fair, the event organizer said.

“This year, many long-time corporate sponsors have withdrawn their support, leaving a critical gap in funding,” said Suzanne Ford, executive director of San Francisco Pride, in a statement on the organization’s website.

Scheduled for June 28 and 29, the 55th Pride celebration is part of an annual event that hosts “the largest LGBTQ+ parade in the world.”

Companies including Comcast, Anheuser-Busch, alcoholic beverage company Diageo, Benefit Cosmetics, and wine company La Crema have decided not to sponsor the event this year, Ford told local Fox affiliate KTVU in an interview published March 15.

While the businesses cited a lack of funds, Ford suspects the real reason is the country’s political climate under President Donald Trump, KTVU reported.

In January, Trump rolled back diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and programs and declared that the federal government would recognize only two sexes.

He also directed the military to exclude individuals with a gender identity inconsistent with their sex from service, which was blocked in a preliminary injunction on March 18 by a federal judge.

Ford told KTVU the five companies’ donations accounted for approximately $300,000 of the $1.2 million fundraising goal. 

Pride organizers are now scrambling for new sponsors for this summer’s festivities, which include parties, concerts, and the parade.

The Epoch Times reached out to the companies and San Francisco Pride and did not hear back by publication time.

The first installment of San Francisco Pride took the form of a small march on Polk Street and a gathering in Golden Gate Park in June 1970.

Major companies that participated in the 2024 parade include Hilton, Visa, Apple, IKEA, Merck, eBay, and Amazon, according to the organizer.

Earlier this month, the Pride organization also announced that it had terminated its relationship with Meta, the Menlo Park-based company that owns Facebook and Instagram, after company representatives made it clear they no longer wanted to be involved, Ford said.

“I’m both proud and sad that we don’t have a relationship with Meta,” Ford told ABC7 on March 4. “That was discontinued last year. So, at this moment, and I don’t see it being rectified, Meta will not be included.”