Slingshot News: ‘Commit To Us’: Dim GOP Senator Katie Britt Makes Trump Nominees Promise To Provoke War With China In Confirmation Hearing
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Washington Post: ICE begins immigration crackdown in Massachusetts, DHS says
The Trump administration has launched an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Massachusetts, saying it would target what it called “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens” in the state.
The Department of Homeland Security provided few details on the scale of the latest operation, called Patriot 2.0. But in a statement Saturday, the department said that it followed “the success of Operation Patriot in May.” The earlier ICE raids resulted in nearly 1,500 arrests across Massachusetts, including dozens of migrant workers on Martha’s Vineyard.
“If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return,” the statement said.
The Massachusetts operation comes as the Trump administration has signaled it is preparing to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago — a move that local leaders have strongly opposed.
On Thursday, the administration sued Boston and its leaders for allegedly refusing to cooperate with immigration authorities, adding to a string of similar lawsuits against so-called “sanctuary cities.”
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has defended the city’s laws, describing the lawsuit Thursday as an “unconstitutional attack on our city.” The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ICE operation Saturday.
In its statement Saturday, DHS said “sanctuary policies like those pushed by Mayor Wu not only attract and harbor criminals but also place these public safety threats above the interests of law-abiding American citizens.”
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan vowed last week to increase immigration enforcement across sanctuary cities, saying the administration was planning to “flood the zone” with thousands of agents.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem has repeatedly said that immigration officers are arresting the “worst of the worst.” But a Washington Post analysis of ICE data from June found the administration is increasingly targeting unauthorized immigrants with no criminal record as it ramps up arrests.
Federal authorities said the Massachusetts arrests in May included an alleged MS-13 gang member and someone described as a “child sex offender.” But according to community members, most of the migrants had no criminal record and were stopped on their way to work.
Slingshot News: ‘It Would Be Different’: When Donald Trump Lied To His Supporters, Claiming He Would Get Rid Of The Income Tax At The White House
Daily Mail: Tom Hanks snubbed from West Point event after Trump’s order
A West Point alumni event honoring Tom Hanks was scrapped on the day President Donald Trump officially changed the name of the Department of Defense back to the Department of War.
Trump explained Friday that he instituted the rebrand because the Pentagon got ‘very politically correct or wokey’ and the U.S. was not winning wars.
That day, a West Point alumni group announced the cancelation of an awards ceremony that was meant to have taken place September 25 to garland Hanks, who is a veterans advocate but never served in the the military himself.
The prize he would have gotten was the Sylvanus Thayer Award, which the West Point Association of Graduates gives to non-alumni who ‘draw wholesome comparison’ to the military academy’s motto: ‘Duty, Honor, Country.’
Retired Army Col. Mark Bieger, the president and CEO of the organization, announced in an email to members that they were scuttling their tribute to Hanks – who was recently slammed on social media for portraying a Trump supporter as a dimwitted racist on Saturday Night Live.
‘This decision allows the Academy to continue its focus on its core mission of preparing cadets to lead, fight, and win as officers in the world’s most lethal force, the United States Army,’ he wrote, according to the Washington Post.
The president signed an executive order – his 200th – making the rebrand official on Friday afternoon, flanked by Pete Hegseth, now called the War Secretary, and the Chairman of Joint Chiefs, Gen. Dan ‘Razin’ Caine.
The name change had been floated for weeks.
‘It has to do with winning,’ Trump explained. ‘We should have won every war. We could have won every war. But we really chose to be very politically correct or wokey and we just fight forever.’
‘We just fight to sort of tie,’ the commander-in-chief continued. ‘We never wanted to win wars. Every one of them we could have won easily with just a couple of little changes.’
‘We just didn’t fight to win. We didn’t lose anything, but we didn’t fight to win,’ the president added.
The original War Department name lasted from 1789 to 1947, with President Harry S. Truman changing the name in the aftermath of World War II when he merged the Navy, Air Force and War Departments.
‘And you know we had it,’ he said of the name. ‘And we won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything before and as I said, we won everything in between.’
As Trump was making the announcement, the department’s social media pages changed – at one point with the Pentagon’s X account calling it both the Department of War and the Department of Defense.
The president was asked why bring back ‘war’ when he was publicly seeking a Nobel Peace Prize.
‘Well I think I’ve gotten peace because of the fact that we’re strong,’ the president answered.
Trump ran in 2024 on erasing ‘wokeness’ in the military.
He’s done that in some ways by changing naming conventions.
In December 2020, Trump vetoed a defense spending bill because it included provisions to change all the names of U.S. bases that were named after Confederate generals.
The renaming process took place during President Joe Biden’s four years in office, but once Trump returned he immediately tried to get the names changed back.
The base was originally named Fort Bragg in 1918 after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg.
That Bragg was a slaveowner – but he was also so inept that he helped the Confederacy lose the Civil War to U.S. forces.
In a Pentagon release in February, Fort Bragg will now be named after Roland L. Bragg.
A Pentagon spokesperson described Bragg as a World War II fighter ‘who earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his exceptional courage during the Battle of the Bulge.’
Slingshot News: ‘That’s Why They Lost It’: Trump Admits He Relocated Space Command To Punish Colorado Over Mail-In Voting During Oval Office Tirade
‘That’s Why They Lost It’: Trump Admits He Relocated Space Command To Punish Colorado Over Mail-In Voting During Oval Office Tirade
Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders days ago in the Oval Office, the most important of which is renaming the “Department of Defense” back to the “Department of War.” During his gaggle with the press, Trump brazenly admitted that he relocated the Space Command from Colorado to Alabama because of mail-in voting. Trump stated, “Colorado just went to all mail-in voting. That means they cheat… that’s a big reason why they just lost the whole Space Command situation that is going to Alabama.”
Guardian: Texas attorney general wants students to pray in school – unless they’re Muslim
Ken Paxton, who is running for US Senate, is urging schools to say the Lord’s Prayer as a Republican law goes into effect
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general running for US Senate, has long believed in school prayer. Now, he’s prescribing precisely what type of prayer he wants the state’s 6 million public school students to recite.
“In Texas classrooms, we want the Word of God opened, the Ten Commandments displayed, and prayers lifted up,” Paxton said in a statement on Tuesday, encouraging students to say “the Lord’s Prayer, as taught by Jesus Christ”.
The press release included the full text of the Lord’s Prayer as it is written in the King James version of the Bible, the latest example of Paxton and other Texas officials seeming to endorse Christianity over other faiths.
“Twisted, radical liberals want to erase Truth, dismantle the solid foundation that America’s success and strength were built upon, and erode the moral fabric of our society,” Paxton said. “Our nation was founded on the rock of Biblical Truth, and I will not stand by while the far-left attempts to push our country into the sinking sand.”
Paxton’s statement was released as Senate Bill 11 went into effect across Texas; it’s a piece of Republican legislation allowing schools to set aside time for “prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious texts” during the school day. Critics have condemned the bill as an attempt to imbue a secular public education in the state with the practice of Christianity, in violation of the US constitution’s separation of church and state.
“They’re blowing right through separation of church and state,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
“They have no respect for other faiths. And in fact, that includes a lot of Christians who don’t agree with this far-right version of Christianity. They’re trying to indoctrinate children into this agenda and it’s outrageous, and it’s breaking one of the most important constitutional principles we have in this country with the first amendment and the separation of church and state.”
Beirich added that Paxton, along with figures in Washington DC, such as the House speaker, Mike Johnson, were “people who believe that this country is a Christian nation, that Christianity should have primacy”.
Paxton’s office did not respond to a request for comment about whether he was trying to push Christianity on Texas’s public school students.
It is instructive, however, to revisit how Paxton once reacted to a report of Muslim students praying in a Dallas-area school. In 2017, the attorney general’s office published an open letter to the superintendent of schools in Frisco, Texas, expressing “concerns” over Muslim students at Liberty high school using a spare classroom to pray during school hours.
“It appears that the prayer room is ‘dedicated to the religious needs of some students’,” the letter stated, quoting an article in the school’s newspaper, “namely, those who practice Islam.”
In a subsequent press release, Paxton’s office stated: “Recent news reports have indicated that the high school’s prayer room is … apparently excluding students of other faiths.”
Again, “recent news reports” seemed to refer to a single article in the high school newspaper.
But that article, written by an 11th-grader, made no mention of the room being off-limits to students of other faiths. Rather, the article quotes the principal observing how “the trademark of what makes Liberty High so great” is the “diversity” of the faiths and cultures on campus.
“As long as it’s student-led, where the students are organizing and running it, we pretty much as a school stay out of that and allow them their freedom to practice their religion,” the principal said.
Had Paxton’s office checked with the school district before publishing its open letter, school officials would have noted the spare classroom was available for all students – not just Muslims – to practice their faith.
Paxton, it seemed, had tried to create a culture-war controversy out of thin air.
“It is unfortunate that our state’s top law enforcement officer would engage in a cheap Islamophobic publicity stunt that could very well result in increased bullying of Muslim students and the creation of a hostile learning environment,” the Texas chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (Cair) said in a statement at the time.
That Paxton once fearmongered about Muslims praying in class but is now encouraging students to say the Lord’s Prayer is consistent with his particular brand of Christian nationalism or dominionism, which seeks to erode any wall between church and state, establishing a government run according to a far-right interpretation of Christian scripture.
During his time in public office, Paxton has received considerable financial support from a coterie of ultraconservative west Texas billionaires who, as ProPublica reported, have made the state into “the country’s foremost laboratory for Christian nationalist policy”.
On Thursday, Paxton announced he would appeal a “flawed ruling by a federal judge” that stopped another Christian nationalist piece of legislation from going into effect, this one requiring Texas schools to display the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
“The Ten Commandments are a cornerstone of American law, and that fact simply cannot be erased by radical, anti-American groups trying to ignore our moral heritage,” Paxton seethed in another statement.
“There is no legal reason to stop Texas from honoring a core ethical foundation of our law, especially not a bogus claim about the ‘separation of church and state,’ which is a phrase found nowhere in the Constitution.”
Paxton’s wife publicly accused him of disobeying the seventh commandment – “Thou shall not commit adultery” – earlier this summer while stating in a divorce petition that he had had an extramarital affair.
His Christian nationalist statements this week, Texas political observers have noted, might be an attempt to repair his reputation, and to shore up ultraconservative support in his battle to unseat John Cornyn in the US Senate.
If his agenda, and the GOP’s broader Christian nationalist agenda, is allowed to move forward, Beirich said, it will be “absolutely punishing for people of other faiths”.
In a statement to the Guardian, the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was wary of Paxton’s insistence that students say the Lord’s Prayer in public schools: “Although protecting religious freedom in schools would be a noble pursuit, Attorney General Paxton’s rhetoric and his history of anti-Muslim bigotry raises the obvious suspicion that his embrace of religious liberty will not extend beyond his own claimed faith.
“If Attorney General Paxton wants schools to set aside time for praying and reading scripture, that must include time for Texas Muslims to read the Quran, Jewish students to read the Torah, and on and on,” the group added.
“Only if students of all faiths can freely worship on the same terms without any coercion or favoritism from the government will the Constitution be upheld.”
Texas attorney general wants students to pray in school – unless they’re Muslim
Ken Paxton, who is running for US Senate, is urging schools to say the Lord’s Prayer as a Republican law goes into effect
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/07/texas-ken-paxton-christians-muslims
2 paragraphs: GOP Congressman Releases Epstein Poll Results, “This Is Not a Hoax”
U.S. Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) is among the few House Republicans who is pushing for a complete release of documents held by the federal government related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Massie has been trying to get more Republicans to sign his discharge petition to force a congressional vote on the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act he co-sponsored with Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna of New York. The bill would compel the release of the full cache of Epstein-related records.
MAGA-aligned Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Nancy Mace (R-SC) have signed the petition while House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has, according to Axios, “urged his Republican members to steer clear of the petition, arguing that Oversight’s probe will ultimately yield more information.”
[Note: The Oversight probe Johnson refers to leaves the distribution and disclosure of Epstein files content to the sole discretion of Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY), a devoted Donald Trump supporter, in a situation critics say is unlikely to produce real transparency.]
While President Trump, a former friend of Epstein, continues to refer to the Epstein Files as “a hoax” that was “made up” by former FBI Director James Comey, among others, Massie conducted a poll this weekend on X.
Massie posed the question: “Is it a hoax that Jeffrey Epstein was involved in underage sex trafficking, and there is unreleased evidence that would likely expose rich and politically connected perpetrators to indictments or convictions?”
With the results below (94 percent replied, “No, Release Epstein file”), Massie wrote: “The people know this is not a hoax (see poll), and as the survivors said this week, calling this a hoax dehumanizes the victims.”
On Wednesday, Massie led a press conference on the steps of the Capitol with some of the victims of Epstein and his former partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, whom President Donald Trump’s assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche recently interviewed in prison in Florida and then had moved to a lower security facility in Texas.
The conference was interrupted by a flyover of U.S. fighter jets, which one of the victims at the press conference responded to with a profane hand gesture.
According to Massie, misinformation on X followed his press conference — including a rumor it was attended by attorney Gloria Allred, who during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, represented three women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct-claims which Trump has denied.
One Trump supporter on X (“Gettysburg Obsessed”) replied to Massie’s poll: “Having Gloria Allred there says it may be a hoax.” Massie replied to the comment: “Allred was not at our press conference. I’m sorry you fell for that.”
Note: Allred appeared last month at a press conference with one of her clients, Alicia Arden, who says she filed a police report against Epstein in the late 1990s, after he allegedly committed sexual battery against her. At that press conference she called on the Trump administration to release the Epstein files.
Slingshot News: ‘Honestly, I Think They’re Crazy’: Donald Trump Loses It On Democrats For Making His Life Difficult In Oval Office Meltdown
‘Honestly, I Think They’re Crazy’: Donald Trump Loses It On Democrats For Making His Life Difficult In Oval Office Meltdown
Donald Trump gave remarks from the Oval Office several days ago. During his gaggle with the press, Trump had a meltdown in which he ranted about Democrats for constantly opposing him and his disastrous policies. “Honestly, I think they’re crazy,” Trump bemoaned.
GO Banking Rates: Trump Said He’d Lower Grocery Prices on Day 1: See Where They Stand Now
During President Donald Trump’s campaign before winning the 2024 presidential election, he promised on his first day of office to “immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One” for groceries — but that hasn’t happened so far.
Average food prices in the United States have increased by 2.9% in the 12 months ending July 2025, according to U.S. inflation calculator. It’s a few ticks higher than the 2.7% inflation rate across all categories. The Federal Reserve’s preferred core inflation metric shows a 3.1% year-over-year increase, since it doesn’t include volatile food and energy prices. Trump has done well with energy, as those prices have dropped by 1.6% year-over-year.
He’s shown an ability to follow up on promises and even has lower energy prices, but grocery prices still remain elevated. There are a few reasons why that’s the case, and some of them are connected to Trump’s policies.
Tariffs Are a Key Component
After some false starts and negotiations with trading partners, tariffs are now in effect, and they have been contributing to higher food prices. Grocery stores like Walmart and Whole Foods have to hike their prices to keep up with the tariffs.
Although critics may question why Walmart, a global retailer that reported more than $7 billion in consolidated net income in Q2 FY26, has to raise prices, it makes sense. Despite Walmart’s vast retail presence and high profits, the company only operates on a 2.5% to 4% net profit margin, depending on the quarter. If prices go up by 10%, Walmart has to respond to the higher prices to preserve a positive profit margin.
The Tax Foundation projects that nearly 75% of all U.S. food imports will be affected by Trump’s tariffs. If tariffs linger or get higher in the future, it can lead to a short-term price hike in food prices. That short-term price hike would only decrease if some tariffs got negotiated away or the U.S. produced enough food to balance the supply-and-demand dynamics.
Beefy Price Hikes
The grocery bill looks different for each person based on what they buy, but if you like to eat beef, grocery inflation will show up more for you.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that retail beef and veal prices increased for the seventh month in a row from June 2025 to July 2025. Beef and veal prices increased by 2.5% month-over-month and are up by 11.3% year-over-year. The USDA anticipates beef and veal prices going up by 9.9% in 2025. Tight supplies of beef and veal are playing a role in the elevated prices.
Beef and veal are the main headliners, but other food categories are also due for higher prices. Eggs, sugar and sweets, and nonalcoholic beverages are also expected to grow faster than their 20-year historical average rate of growth.
If you’re looking for a deal, you might want to shop around for other meats, fats and oils and fresh vegetables. Those are the food items the USDA expects will see price cuts.
It’s More Expensive To Eat Out
While it’s been known for a while that eating out is more expensive than prepping your own meal, it even applies to inflation rates. The USDA found that grocery store and supermarket food purchases had a 0.1% month-over-month price hike compared to the 0.3% month-over-month price hike for restaurants and other food service providers.
The USDA also shared in research published on Aug. 25 that groceries are up by 2.2% year-over-year, while restaurant food and similar services are up by 3.9% year-over-year. Food as a whole is predicted to become 2.2% more expensive in 2026. The rate of inflation is only expected to be 1.2% for groceries, while dining will cost an additional 3.3% in 2026.
These forecasts do not suggest an immediate solution to rising food prices. Trump still has time to reduce food prices, but tariffs and the USDA’s 2026 projections don’t paint a bright picture for lower food costs.
Trump Said He’d Lower Grocery Prices on Day 1: See Where They Stand Now
Has Trump fulfilled his campaign promises on grocery prices?
https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/economy/trump-lower-grocery-prices-day-1-where-they-stand-now
