Multiple floors of the former Pfizer headquarters, which is under construction to be converted into 1,600 residential apartments, started caving in on Tuesday, prompting street closures and evacuations of nearby buildings. The building is reported as being unstable and at risk of collapse. “Around 8 a.m., construction workers noticed cracks inside the building. The FDNY say the workers spotted structural support beams beginning to buckle on the 21st and 22nd floors and self-evacuated,” ABC7 New York reports. “Officials say that caused the 21st to 26st floors of the 37-story building to start caving under the stress,” it added. “Fire officials said they received a call just before 8 a.m. about falling bricks near 235 East 42nd Street,” The New York Times noted. A high-rise Manhattan building at risk of collapse is the former headquarters of Pfizer that is being converted into apartments. Two columns buckled on the building’s 21st and 22nd floors, and several floors near the columns were sagging, officials said.… — The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) July 7, 2026 Watch below: FDNY Are Evacuating the Former Pfizer Headquarters Building in New York City Amid Reports of Structural Damage “Building inspectors are there at the scene investigating reports that a structural support beam was beginning to buckle.” pic.twitter.com/yq6MMvivoY — Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) July 7, 2026 ABC7 New York shared further: Multiple buildings have been evacuated, including a hotel and Kennedy International School. Mayor Zohran Mamdani advised anyone in the area to follow the instructions of first responders on the ground. “Now luckily there have been no injuries to report at this time, all workers are accounted for, the building has been evacuated, a number of tall buildings in the area are also being evacuated at this time, a school with about 400 children has also been evacuated,” Mamdani said. The FDNY said the following buildings have been evacuated: 815 Second Avenue 235 East 42nd Street 210 East 43rd Street 212 East 43rd Street 211 East 43rd Street 220 East 42nd Street 231 East 43rd Street 225 East 43rd Street 235 East 43rd Street Of the evacuated buildings, 231 East 43rd Street is the Hampton Inn Manhattan Grand Central and guests have been evacuated out of their rooms. Pedestrian and vehicular traffic is closed on East 42nd Street between Second and Third avenues. Second Avenue is closed from 38th to 44th streets and 43rd and 44th streets are closed between Second and Third avenues. FDNY told Newsweek that Department of Buildings (DOB) engineers were utilizing FDNY drone footage to examine the structure. Footage inside the building below: Video shows two columns buckled inside a Midtown building under construction. Dozens were evacuated and multiple streets were closed at the height of rush hour. See the full story : https://t.co/lgH632z6TN pic.twitter.com/7eYIZtJNPI — PIX11 News (@PIX11News) July 7, 2026 Newsweek has more: The DOB said the project has active construction permits and that inspections are ongoing. It was expected to provide additional updates at an 11 a.m. briefing on Tuesday. The tower at 235 East 42nd Street, once the global headquarters of Pfizer, is in the midst of what developers describe as the largest office‑to‑residential conversion in the United States. Led by Metro Loft and David Werner, with Gensler as architect, the project has been transforming the Midtown high‑rise into a luxury complex expected to hold between 1,500 and 1,600 apartments. Construction has been underway since 2024 across a multi‑building footprint that includes 219 East 42nd Street. The structural emergency that unfolded halted work abruptly, prompting widespread evacuations along East 42nd and East 43rd Streets as officials assessed the tower’s stability. This story is developing.  The post DEVELOPING: Midtown Manhattan High-Rise Building At Risk Of Collapse, Prompts Evacuations appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

President Trump touched down in Ankara, Turkey, on July 7, 2026 for the NATO Summit, and allied defense spending is once again the fight at the center of the room. This is the same argument Trump has been winning since his first term. For years, too many allies leaned on American taxpayers while pleading poverty on their own defense. Now the goalposts have moved, and they moved because Trump moved them. NATO members committed at the 2025 Hague Summit to invest 5 percent of GDP on defense annually by 2035. Trump arrived in Ankara to make sure nobody games that number. President Donald J. Trump arrives in Ankara, Turkey and is welcomed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ahead of NATO Summit. America is back on the world stage. pic.twitter.com/rAuG4x8GSL — The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 7, 2026 The New York Post reported July 7 that Trump planned to warn NATO countries against using “funny math” on defense spending as leaders gathered for the summit. The report put the warning inside the larger fight over whether allies are moving from the old 2 percent benchmark to the new 5 percent promise with real military spending, public proof, and timelines allies can be judged against. His concern is specific. Some countries pad their totals with non-military or questionable expenses so the top-line number looks respectable without buying real capability. The Post noted that all 32 NATO countries technically hit the old 2 percent target in 2025. That was the floor, and it took American pressure just to get everyone to the floor. The bigger 5 percent target is a different story. The report identified the UK, France, Italy, and Spain as lagging or resisting larger increases. Poland and the Baltic states are among the strongest spenders, driven by the Russia threat on their doorstep, while Germany has laid out a path to 5 percent by 2030. The distance between those two groups is exactly what Trump is pressing on in Ankara. The fight is practical: a spending pledge only helps the alliance when it turns into trained forces, ammunition, air defense, ships, aircraft, logistics, and industrial capacity that can survive a real crisis. The official NATO page lays out what the 5 percent actually requires, and it is more than one soft headline number. The commitment breaks into at least 3.5 percent of GDP for core defense requirements and up to 1.5 percent for broader defense- and security-related investments like critical infrastructure, networks, civil preparedness, resilience, innovation, and the defense industrial base. That 1.5 percent bucket is where the funny math can hide. Trump’s point is that the core 3.5 percent for real military capability has to be real. NATO says allies also agreed to submit annual plans showing a credible, incremental path toward the 3.5 percent core-defense goal. Plans on paper are how you prove the money is aimed at defense and not creative bookkeeping. The same NATO page shows the pressure is producing results. European allies and Canada increased defense expenditure by over $90 billion in 2021 prices, nearly $139 billion in nominal terms, in 2025 compared with 2024. They invested a combined total of more than $571 billion in defense in 2025 in 2021 prices. That money did not appear because allies suddenly discovered generosity. It appeared because Trump refused to let them freeload. Trump to warn NATO countries against using 'funny math' on defense – as key allies struggle to do the minimum https://t.co/KEqWvBv1aS pic.twitter.com/6nTK8D08A2 — New York Post (@nypost) July 7, 2026 The NATO Summit page lists the Ankara meeting as a July 7-8 gathering of NATO heads of state and government and key partners, with defense investment listed as a central issue. That official framing matters because the summit is built around the question of follow-through after last year’s Hague commitments, especially on defense investment and production. The official agenda says the summit is meant to review progress since the 2025 Hague Summit and set a roadmap to keep delivering on NATO objectives through the next phase of allied planning. It highlights defense investment, defense industry, and support for Ukraine, with a direct note that Ankara is about making sure allies are investing more and investing in the right capabilities. That setting matters because the Ankara meeting is where last year’s promises start becoming this year’s proof. The summit is about whether those totals turn into readiness, production, and credible plans allies can actually execute. “The right capabilities” is the phrase that matters. Trump is not chasing a bigger number for its own sake. He wants tanks, munitions, industrial capacity, and readiness, not line items that vanish under scrutiny. The White House lists the NATO spending deal among the administration’s national-security wins. The page frames the agreement as part of a broader national-security rebuild built around readiness, defense modernization, supply chains, defense industrial capacity, and alliance accountability after years of weak burden-sharing. It says Trump secured a transformational agreement requiring NATO members to raise defense spending from 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP, turning a long-running complaint into a concrete benchmark. The same page ties the second-term agenda to rebuilding readiness, modernizing defense capabilities, restoring the American defense industrial base, and demanding accountability across alliances so allies cannot treat U.S. protection as a blank check or a substitute for their own militaries. That is the Trump doctrine in one sentence: America can lead the alliance without being the alliance’s endless ATM. The page also puts the spending win inside a broader national-security push that includes readiness, defense modernization, supply chains, and industrial production. In other words, the administration is treating burden-sharing as part of a larger rebuild of deterrence, not as a diplomatic talking point to be filed away after the summit. Allies who want U.S. protection now have to show real money, real capability, and real plans. The old routine of flattering Washington while American taxpayers carried the load is under pressure. Trump forced the 5 percent commitment onto the books. Now he is in Turkey making sure allies deliver the capability behind it instead of dressing up soft spending to hit a headline figure. The post President Trump Lands In Ankara And Tells NATO The “Funny Math” Days Are Over appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

The Venezuelan man accused of murdering 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago student Sheridan Gorman was back in court on July 7 for a status hearing. The hearing landed one day after what would have been Gorman’s 19th birthday. Fox News framed the day around the illegal immigrant crime debate that has gripped Chicago, identifying the accused as the Venezuelan man charged in Gorman’s March killing. Gorman was a college freshman with her whole life in front of her. That is where any honest account of this case has to start. Sheridan Gorman’s alleged murderer is in court today as the illegal immigrant crime crisis takes center stage in Chicago. The Venezuelan man accused of killing the Loyola college student Sheridan Gorman in March is due in court today for a status hearing, one day after what… pic.twitter.com/kk8RlntXHy — Fox News (@FoxNews) July 7, 2026 Gorman was 18 years old and walking with friends near Tobey Prinz Beach Park, less than a mile from campus, when she was shot and killed in March 2026. The Department of Homeland Security says the man now charged in her death should never have been on that street. On July 7, DHS posted a video about Gorman and directly blamed sanctuary politicians, saying they released her accused killer two times before the murder. The department said it is committed to delivering justice. Sheridan Gorman had her whole life ahead of her before she was brutally murdered by a cold-blooded illegal alien killer. She was FAILED by sanctuary politicians who released her murderer TWO TIMES before he committed this heinous murder. We are committed to delivering justice… pic.twitter.com/RNyliQWuJd — Homeland Security (@DHSgov) July 7, 2026 That is DHS’s argument. The case remains pending, and the courtroom facts still have to move through the legal process. ABC News reported in March that DHS identified the man arrested in Gorman’s killing as an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela. That report supplied the early national baseline: the victim, the accused, the immigration status cited by DHS, the location near campus, the timing of the arrest, and the first-degree murder charge all in one place. The report named him as Jose Medina-Medina and said he was arrested and charged in connection with the shooting, including first-degree murder, after police connected him to the Rogers Park attack. ABC News also confirmed Gorman was 18 and had been walking with friends near Tobey Prinz Beach Park, less than a mile from the Loyola campus, when she was killed. That early report put the national immigration-policy question next to the local grief almost immediately. A young college student was dead, federal officials were identifying the accused as a Venezuelan national who was in the country illegally, and the case was already raising questions far beyond one Chicago crime scene. Court records fill in how Medina ended up in Chicago in the first place. ABC7 Chicago reported that Medina appeared virtually for a detention hearing and was ordered held. The local report is important because it tied the immigration timeline to court records rather than relying only on political reaction after the killing, giving the public a documented path into Chicago. According to that report, court records showed Medina was bused to Chicago from Texas in 2023 despite asking to be deported to Colombia, a detail that sits directly inside the sanctuary-policy debate now surrounding the case. The station tied the detention hearing to the March Rogers Park shooting death of the Loyola freshman and reported that prosecutors laid out the case for keeping him in custody while the murder charge moved forward. That local court-record detail cuts to the core of the sanctuary fight. A man asked to be sent out of the country and was instead moved deeper into it. It also gives the public a concrete timeline: Medina entered the migrant pipeline in 2023, ended up in Chicago, and by March 2026 stood accused in the killing of a freshman walking near campus. The charges did not stop with the murder count. ABC7 Chicago later reported that Medina faced an additional federal charge for illegal firearm possession tied to the case. The story took another turn inside Cook County Jail this spring. Chicago Sun-Times reported on June 1 that Medina, then 26, was found with a 6-inch shank while in custody inside Cook County Jail. The follow-up moved the case beyond the original March shooting and showed why the July 7 court date carried fresh public-safety weight for a city already arguing over migrant releases, sanctuary rules, jail security, victim-family outrage, and enforcement. The paper reported his next court date was July 7 and described the anger from Gorman’s family alongside the broader fight over Chicago’s sanctuary policies, which officials had spent months defending. It also kept the legal posture clear: Medina remained the accused shooter in Gorman’s death, and the case was still moving through court. The Sun-Times coverage placed the alleged jail weapon inside the same public-safety debate now surrounding the July 7 hearing. For Gorman’s family, the question was no longer only how the shooting happened, but how many warnings officials ignored before and after Medina entered custody. Fox News reported that jail staff recovered a sharpened piece of metal with a handle fashioned from medical tape out of Medina’s pants pocket. The account matched the Cook County Jail weapon allegation with the new felony contraband charge and kept the focus on what officials say happened while Medina was already in custody awaiting trial in the murder case. The report said the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office approved a new felony contraband charge over the weapon, adding another alleged offense to a case already carrying a murder charge and national immigration scrutiny. The alleged jail weapon moved the story from immigration paperwork to immediate public safety inside the very system that was supposed to keep the accused contained. The defendant in a high-profile murder case was allegedly found with a weapon while already behind bars, and prosecutors approved another felony charge while the murder case continued. Put the pieces together and the policy argument stops being abstract. A man who asked to be deported got routed into an American city instead. A young woman who did nothing but walk home with friends is gone. The July 7 status hearing keeps the case moving through the courts, and Medina is entitled to that process like anyone charged with a crime. But the sequence of releases DHS is pointing to is the exact policy debate Chicago has refused to have for years. Sheridan Gorman does not get another birthday. The least a serious city owes her is an honest look at how the man accused of taking her life stayed free long enough to be charged with it. The post Loyola Student’s Accused Killer Returns To Court As Chicago Sanctuary Policy Faces Reckoning appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

President Trump used his sit-down with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the NATO summit in Ankara to make a move Washington had resisted for years. He said the United States will lift the sanctions that had blocked defense sales to Turkey. And he signaled the F-35 door may not be closed after all. Trump said he is considering selling Turkey the F-35 stealth fighter again, while stopping short of announcing any finished deal. This is a decision he says the administration is still weighing. Trump lifts defense sanctions on Turkey, clearing way to give Erdogan F-35s – despite GOP, Israeli opposition https://t.co/CHe3p2c0Df pic.twitter.com/wwd3XVSL4p — New York Post (@nypost) July 7, 2026 The backstory here is Turkey’s 2019 purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense system. That buy got Turkey kicked out of the F-35 program and hit with CAATSA sanctions in 2020. The worry was straightforward: a Russian radar system sitting next to an American stealth jet is a data collection problem waiting to happen. Trump’s pitch is that you do not treat loyal allies that way. He praised Erdogan, said the two have good chemistry, and made a point that lands with anyone who watched the recent Iran conflict. Turkey, he noted, could have lined up on the other side. It did not. The New York Post reported from Ankara that Trump said Tuesday he would lift the sanctions restricting military equipment sales to Turkey. The Post tied the fight back to the S-400 purchase that pulled Turkey out of F-35 eligibility and triggered the CAATSA penalties. The issue has always been the same: Russian air-defense hardware sitting beside America’s premier advanced stealth fighter program. It also laid out the opposition. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox & Friends that Turkey should not get F-35s or the engines that power them because of the regional balance. Rep. Mike Lawler warned that Turkey’s conduct raises serious national-security concerns and questioned whether Ankara can be trusted as a strategic partner. The same report noted Trump’s argument for the move: Turkey stayed out of the Iran fight on the wrong side and remains a NATO ally whose cooperation still matters. Trump, for his part, said the U.S. does not want to sanction its friends. Trump says he will lift Turkey sanctions, decide on selling F-35s https://t.co/oSBoDyVvyn https://t.co/oSBoDyVvyn — Reuters (@Reuters) July 7, 2026 NOTUS reported that Trump hinted at both the sanctions relief and the F-35 reversal during the bilateral meeting ahead of the summit. According to that report, Trump described Turkey as more loyal than some countries Washington expects loyalty from, and framed the F-35 question as something the administration would consider rather than something already decided. Trump also said he worked the sanctions issue with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The legal path is more complicated than the political announcement. The F-35 ban and the CAATSA sanctions are woven into federal law, which means Congress and a certification process still sit on top of any full reversal. Lifting the sanctions is one lever. Clearing the jets is a heavier lift. NOTUS also noted the original American offer to Turkey: buy the Patriot system instead of the Russian S-400. Ankara went with Moscow, and the fallout has shaped the relationship ever since. Trump hinted at potential plans to lift U.S. sanctions and reverse a ban on the sale of F-35s to Turkey during a bilateral meeting Tuesday with the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.https://t.co/BgeQA7FKKw — NOTUS (@NOTUSreports) July 7, 2026 The Times of Israel reported that Trump said he would certainly consider selling the F-35s while sitting with Erdogan. Erdogan said he hoped for a positive result and claimed Trump had previously promised Turkey five of the jets. The Israeli concern runs deeper than one summit. Israel wants to protect its qualitative military edge in the region, a principle U.S. law has long required Washington to honor, and Erdogan’s anti-Israel posture makes handing Turkey top-tier American airpower a hard sell in Jerusalem. The report also floated one possible off-ramp discussed in recent weeks: moving the S-400 system to a third country. Nothing has been finalized on that front, and Russia’s end-user rules may complicate any transfer. It also underscored that the fight is diplomatic and legal. Congress wrote restrictions around Turkey’s S-400 problem, so any clean F-35 path would likely require proof that Ankara no longer possesses or operates the Russian system. Strip away the noise and the play is clear enough. Trump is using leverage to pull a NATO ally back into the American weapons lane, rewarding Erdogan for staying out of the Iran fight and testing whether Turkey can be brought back inside the tent after years of drifting toward Moscow. The sanctions are coming off. The F-35s are the open question, and that answer will say a lot about whether Erdogan is willing to give up the Russian hardware that started this whole standoff. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post President Trump Tells Erdogan the Turkey Sanctions Are Coming Off appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

A tanker caught fire near the Strait of Hormuz, and that is how a fragile understanding starts to come apart. U.S. officials say Iran attacked three commercial ships in 24 hours in and near the Strait of Hormuz. The reported strikes land less than three weeks after Iran signed on to halt exactly this kind of attack, and they put Tehran directly against President Trump’s pressure campaign. Axios updated its reporting on July 7 with a blunt headline: Iran attacked three ships in 24 hours, according to the U.S. Two U.S. officials told the outlet that Iran’s military fired at least two missiles at commercial ships transiting the strait on Monday night. Both vessels suffered significant damage, but a U.S. official said there were no casualties. A U.S. official said the IRGC then attacked a third commercial ship Tuesday morning. Axios reported the strikes threaten to unravel a memorandum of understanding signed less than three weeks ago, under which Iran agreed to stop attacks in the Strait of Hormuz. The attacks also came after a separate one-week U.S.-Iran halt on attacks expired, and after indirect talks in Doha ended without much progress. JUST IN: Iran resumes attacks in Strait of Hormuz, U.S. says. https://t.co/8jLwW9Q1Gc — Axios (@axios) July 7, 2026 The official maritime record backs up that something serious is happening in those waters, even as investigators work out the details. UKMTO Warning 080-26, issued July 6, reported an incident 8 nautical miles east of Limah, Oman. A tanker reported being hit by an unknown projectile on its port side, causing a fire as it traveled southbound. No casualties or environmental impact were reported. Authorities were investigating, and vessels were advised to transit with caution and report suspicious activity. UKMTO later reported another tanker in the strait struck by an unidentified projectile and believed to have structural damage, again with no casualties or environmental impact. A third UKMTO alert cited military authorities on a further tanker incident in the strait. That vessel was struck by an unknown UAV, took minor structural damage, and continued on to its next port. UKMTO WARNING 080-26 – ATTACK Click here to view UKMTO Products https://t.co/Oc7hGsk3Do#MaritimeSecurity #MarSec pic.twitter.com/uK8cm9a76M — UKMTO Operations Centre (@UK_MTO) July 6, 2026 One government is not waiting for the investigation to name a culprit. Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari posted July 7 that the targeting of the Qatari vessel Al-Rekayyat near the strait was an unacceptable attack on international maritime navigation and global energy supplies, and a grave violation of international law. Al Ansari said Qatar demands Iran stop practices that undermine regional security or threaten maritime navigation, and that Qatar holds Iran legally responsible for the attack and its consequences. Al-Rekayyat is the vessel now at the center of Qatar’s public condemnation, and the timing matters because Qatar has been a mediator in the U.S.-Iran negotiation track. The targeting of the Qatari vessel "Al-Rekayyat" while transiting near the Strait of Hormuz constitutes an unacceptable attack on the security & safety of international maritime navigation, the security of global energy supplies, & a grave & explicit violation of international… — د. ماجد محمد الأنصاري Dr. Majed Al Ansari (@majedalansari) July 7, 2026 The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most important routes for oil and LNG. Renewed attacks there hit energy prices, inflation, and global shipping all at once. The New York Post reported at least two missiles fired at commercial vessels, two ships significantly damaged with no casualties, and a possible British or Qatari tanker catching fire near Limah, Oman. The Post identified Al-Rekayyat as an LNG tanker tied to Qatar Gas Transport Company, and reported that the vessel was hit near the engine room in the Gulf of Oman. The Post also tied the attacks to the wider ceasefire fight, noting that recent U.S.-Iran peace talks ended without significant progress and that President Trump warned Iran the United States would either reach a deal or finish the job. That warning is the whole context for what Iran just did. Tehran signed on to stop attacking ships, let a separate halt lapse, and then U.S. officials say three commercial vessels were hit in 24 hours. Iran is testing the deal, the shipping lanes, and President Trump at the same time. The regime has now put a lot of chips on the table in the exact spot where American firepower already proved it can reach. Tehran may have just talked its way back into finding out. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post BREAKING: Iran Reportedly Hits Three Ships In Strait Of Hormuz After President Trump’s Ceasefire Push appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.