Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear called on Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to resign unless he can verbally address his constituents and demonstrate his ability to serve in office. “I am addressing this letter to Senator McConnell under the assumption that he is capable of reading and responding verbally, and not incapacitated by means of consciousness or cognition. If the Senator is unable to respond for either of those or other conditions, consider this letter a demand for his Senate staff to be honest and transparent with the people of Kentucky,” a letter to McConnell and his staff read. “I understand anyone’s desire for privacy, but when you run for office and serve as one of a state’s two U.S. senators, you willingly abdicate much of your personal privacy. That’s the deal, and we all know it when we run,” it continued. “I am calling on you to directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign,” it added. KY Governor Andy Beshear sends new letter to McConnell: “I am calling on you to directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign.” pic.twitter.com/JYjXCtNsUi — TheBlaze (@theblaze) July 28, 2026 Full letter: Axios shared further: Under Kentucky law, Senate vacancies — which can occur due to resignation, expulsion or death — are filled by a special election. McConnell will retire after his term ends in January 2027. The letter, dated Monday, is the second that Beshear has sent to the senator’s office requesting updates on his health. McConnell is still recovering from a June fall at his home, according to a Monday statement from Congress’ physician’s office, which was released alongside a statement from the senator and a photo of him and his wife. The physician said McConnell has undergone “strenuous” physical therapy and rehabilitation, adding that the senator’s childhood bout with polio plays a “significant factor in his mobility.” “I’m still working hard to get back to my full schedule of work in the Senate and in Kentucky, keeping up with intense physical therapy per my doctors’ orders. Unfortunately, that means I won’t be able to make it to Fancy Farm, Kentucky this Saturday,” a statement from McConnell’s office on Monday read. “There’s no place I’d rather be on the first Saturday in August than with the good people of western Kentucky, feasting on pork and mutton. When I first attended forty-two years ago, Fancy Farm was a pretty lonely place to be a Republican. But, my, how times have changed. Today, western Kentucky is a conservative Republican sea of red. So I hate that I’ll miss the fun this year, but I’m sending my best wishes to the St. Jerome community for a successful picnic,” it continued. “As always, I appreciate all of your continued well wishes, and I’m looking forward to getting back to the Senate and to Kentucky soon,” it added. JUST IN – Mitch McConnell releases new proof-of-life photo, and statement, in an email from his press office. pic.twitter.com/grIcjrAjHb — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 27, 2026 CNN has more: In many states, the governor is empowered to fill a Senate seat before a special election is held, but the state’s Republican-dominated legislature has taken steps in recent years to reduce Beshear’s power. In 2021, the Kentucky legislature passed a law requiring the governor to appoint a replacement from a list of candidates provided by the outgoing senator’s party. Then, in 2024, they went even further and removed the governor’s ability to name a replacement at all, requiring the office to only be filled by a special election. However, it’s possible this law violates the state constitution, which gives the governor broad power to fill vacancies in “all offices for the State at large.” Complicating the matter further is the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which gives state legislatures the power to allow governors to appoint temporary replacements. University of Kentucky law professor Joshua Douglas called it a “contradiction,” which may have to be resolved by the courts. “The 17th Amendment [says] the legislature may authorize the Governor to appoint a temporary replacement, the Kentucky Constitution says the Governor appoints, and the Kentucky legislature says there must be a special election,” he said in an email to CNN. It’s also possible the seat just remains empty until the start of the next term. While the new law says the governor “shall” call a special election, it doesn’t appear to require him to do so within a certain period of time. The post Kentucky Governor Calls On Mitch McConnell To “Resign” Unless He Can Prove Specific Capacities appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

The Trump administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to fully implement an executive order signed by President Trump to ensure “citizenship verification and integrity in federal elections.” The administration filed the emergency application after a federal appeals court on Saturday blocked parts of the order. “The Federal Government has an unavoidable duty under Article II of the Constitution of the United States to enforce Federal law, which includes preventing violations of Federal criminal law and maintaining public confidence in election outcomes. To enhance election integrity via the United States Mail, additional measures are necessary,” the order read. “Secure ballot envelope identifiers provide a reliable, auditable mechanism to enforce Federal law without unduly burdening or infringing on the rights of eligible voters. Unique ballot envelope identifiers, such as bar codes, enable confirmation that only citizens receive and cast ballots, reducing the risk of fraud and protecting the integrity of Federal elections,” it continued. The order instructs the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to propose rules for mail-in ballots and directs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to compile “state citizenship lists.” Among other things, the order would propose “provisions specifying that the USPS shall not transmit mail-in or absentee ballots from any individual unless those individuals have been enrolled on a State-specific list.” In June, the USPS proposed rules seeking to comply with the order. The plan requires states to provide voter eligibility lists and unique bar codes to ensure ballots are sent only to approved recipients. JUST IN: President Trump Directs New USPS Rules That Could Have MAJOR Impact On Mail-In Ballots In Blue States! SCOTUSblog explained further: Under the order, the rules issued by the USPS must provide that the Postal Service can only send mail-in ballots to voters whose names appear on the state citizenship lists. A group of 23 states and the District of Columbia, led by California, went to federal court in Massachusetts to challenge the implementation of the order. They argued that the order conflicts with provisions in the Constitution that give states the power to determine voter eligibility and to set the “Times, Places, and Manner” of holding congressional elections. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani agreed and on June 25 issued an order that prohibited the federal government from implementing the mail-in ballot and state citizenship list provisions for the Nov. 3, 2026, elections in the states that had filed the lawsuit. In an order issued on Saturday, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit turned down the government’s request to intervene. If the order were “to take effect for the elections taking place” in the fall, the majority wrote, “it would sow confusion and threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters.” The Trump administration then came to the Supreme Court on Monday, asking the justices to step in. Sauer argued that the courts should not yet consider the states’ lawsuit because the agencies haven’t yet decided how they will implement the order. But even if it were appropriate for courts to consider their request, Sauer continued, Talwani’s ruling should be put on hold to avoid “serious irreparable harm.” “Even if the agencies’ implementation plans end up being entirely lawful,” Sauer wrote, “there is not enough time to obtain ordinary appellate relief from the injunction in order to carry them out before the November election, especially given that any such plans will need to be implemented well before November given the timing of election procedures concerning voter-roll verification and mail voting.” The Supreme Court asked the challengers to respond to the administration's emergency application by August 3. "We will not hesitate to defend New York’s election laws. We have beaten attempts to stop mail-in voting before, and we will do it again," New York Attorney General Letitia James commented. We will not hesitate to defend New York’s election laws. We have beaten attempts to stop mail-in voting before, and we will do it again.https://t.co/YENbdYbZ5Y — NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) July 28, 2026 More from The New York Times: The Supreme Court has shown skepticism of Mr. Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting. In late June, the justices upheld a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they are received up to five business days later, a rejection of the Trump administration’s efforts to overturn the statute. In that ruling, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberals, announcing that nothing in federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day provided they are cast by that day. Although the ruling focused on Mississippi’s law, it also appeared to leave in place similar laws in at least 18 other states and territories, including Nevada and California, that harbor battleground congressional districts in the midterm elections. After the decision was announced, Mr. Trump posted on social media, calling the ruling a “tremendous loss” and urging Congress to pass legislation that places restrictions on mail-in ballots and adds new voter identification requirements. The post Trump Administration Files Emergency Request To Supreme Court Over Mail-In Ballots appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

Southern Japan was still counting the damage from a massive earthquake when a second emergency erupted. The first shock struck the Kumamoto region late Tuesday afternoon, snapping roads, damaging buildings, starting fires and throwing parts of Kyushu into darkness. Then, after the shaking had stopped and an evacuation was underway, an explosion tore through one of the prefecture’s largest shopping malls. Rescue crews were searching the wreckage Tuesday night as workers remained unaccounted for and police warned that lives may have been lost. NHK WORLD’s first aerial look showed just how widespread the emergency response had become:   The Japan Meteorological Agency placed the quake at 4:27 p.m. local time on July 28. Its epicenter was in the Kumamoto region at a shallow depth of roughly 10 kilometers, or about six miles. JMA gave the earthquake a magnitude of 7.1 and recorded a maximum seismic intensity of 7 in Uki City and Hikawa Town. That is the highest point on Japan’s shindo scale, which measures the strength of shaking at a particular location rather than the total energy released by the quake. Strong shaking spread well beyond the epicenter. Kumamoto’s southern ward registered an upper 6, while multiple communities across Kumamoto, Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Fukuoka, Saga and Miyazaki reached levels capable of causing major damage. The agency issued a tsunami advisory for the Ariake and Yatsushiro Seas, then lifted it within two hours. No tsunami was observed from the inland quake. The U.S. Geological Survey reviewed the same event at magnitude 6.8, centered about three miles east of Uto at a depth of 10 kilometers. JMA’s detailed mechanism page also lists a moment magnitude of 6.8 alongside its domestic magnitude of 7.1. Those figures describe the quake through different measurement methods. They do not change what people on the ground experienced: the most severe level of shaking Japan’s intensity scale can record. USGS placed the event on its highest alert tier for likely economic losses. Its current ShakeMap concentrates the strongest modeled shaking around Uto, Uki and the southern side of Kumamoto. The reviewed location sits close to heavily populated communities and major transportation routes. Japan’s government moved quickly from assessment to emergency response. The Prime Minister’s Office of Japan said Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi had received reports of injuries, power outages and fires, along with damaged roads and bridges and collapsed buildings. She said the government had created an emergency task force and was putting lives first. Thousands of military personnel were being deployed to assist rescue operations while aircraft surveyed the hardest-hit areas. The government told agencies to collect damage information immediately, coordinate with local authorities and put rescue work ahead of everything else. Authorities also warned residents to stay away from damaged structures and prepare for more strong shaking. Rail service across Kyushu was halted for inspections, flights were grounded and sections of highway cracked or shifted. The earthquake itself was only part of the crisis. Reuters reported that an explosion rocked Aeon Mall Kumamoto after customers and employees had begun evacuating following the initial quake. One side of the roughly 200-store complex was ripped open, exposing steel beams and scattering debris across the parking lot. Fire officials said multiple people were trapped. NHK reported that roughly 20 to 30 workers were unaccounted for, while police told TBS that fatalities were feared. The exact cause of the blast was still unknown. The explosion happened in the quake’s aftermath, but officials had not established that the earthquake directly caused it. Hospitals were also treating scores of injured people. Reuters cited NHK reports that one hospital had received more than 50 patients and another about 40, including 10 people in serious condition. Video from inside the region captured the violent side-to-side motion as it happened: WATCH: Powerful shaking sends a building swaying side to side after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Kumamoto, Japan pic.twitter.com/NYeGx7ZCSS — Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) July 28, 2026 Kumamoto City reported that 181 shelters were open by 9 p.m. local time, housing 1,512 people from 858 households. Officials had ordered every city shelter opened as the damage assessment continued into the night. Power was out at more than 47,000 homes across the prefecture at that hour. Parts of the city also lost gas and water service, while emergency crews responded to fires, people trapped in elevators and a road crack that forced a closure near the Midorikawa River. The city applied Japan’s Disaster Relief Act across 21 municipalities because large numbers of people had been injured or faced an immediate threat to life and safety. Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority reported no abnormalities at three nearby nuclear power plants, removing one of the most feared possibilities from the early damage picture. Kumamoto knows how dangerous the next phase can be. A devastating earthquake sequence struck the same region in 2016. The larger shock arrived after an earlier major quake, a history Japanese officials invoked as they warned people not to assume the danger had passed. The first hours brought maximum-level shaking, widespread infrastructure damage, fires, blackouts, injuries and a mass evacuation. What followed at the mall turned an already serious disaster into a race against time. For the families waiting on word from rescue crews, the earthquake may have ended in seconds. The emergency did not. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post Powerful 7.1-Magnitude Earthquake Rocks Southern Japan — Crisis Deepens After The Shaking Stops appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte just put a number on the speed of his housecleaning at the nation’s top intelligence office. On Tuesday morning, Pulte announced a fifth round of terminations inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and described it as “near final.” The number that matters is how much smaller the office has become in only a few weeks: roughly 30 percent, by Pulte’s count. Good News! In addition to the Historic DECLASSIFICATIONS (Transparency!) by the President, we are, this morning, Executing a 5th and Near Final Round of TERMINATIONS, an approximately 30% Staff Reduction from Weeks Ago. The Intelligence Community must protect the American people,… — DNI Pulte (@DNIPulte) July 28, 2026 A 30 percent reduction over a matter of weeks amounts to a deliberate reset, not ordinary attrition. Pulte’s 30 percent figure appears to describe the cumulative reduction from a recent baseline, not the number of employees affected by Tuesday’s action alone. He did not disclose a position-by-position count or identify which offices were included in this round. President Trump tapped Pulte to lead ODNI on an acting basis after Tulsi Gabbard left the post. Pulte also remains director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, giving him two major federal roles during what may be a brief but consequential tenure atop the intelligence community. Less than one day before the fifth-round announcement, Pulte said his team had completed a fourth round of what he called thoughtful, measured layoffs. Since becoming Acting Director of National Intelligence, our team has been smartly, and carefully, reducing the size of ODNI, re-focusing ODNI on national security, the law, and the statute. As of this evening, we just finished a 4th round of thoughtful, measured layoffs. Thank… — DNI Pulte (@DNIPulte) July 27, 2026 Five rounds in such a compressed period signal more than a routine reorganization. Federal News Network reported after the fourth round that Pulte had not disclosed how many employees were affected, whether they had been fired or reassigned, or whether some were being returned to their home intelligence agencies. The outlet also cited reporting that about 200 ODNI employees had been laid off or reassigned since June 1. It said the office now has a little more than half of the roughly 2,000 employees who worked there at the start of the Trump administration. ODNI has not publicly confirmed those estimates. Pulte’s new statement is the clearest official update yet because it supplies a current benchmark: approximately 30 percent smaller than weeks ago. The downsizing did not begin with Pulte. In August 2025, an official ODNI release announced the ODNI 2.0 restructuring under Gabbard. The plan called for reducing the office by more than 40 percent and saving taxpayers more than $700 million per year. That release said the overhaul would eliminate redundant missions, functions and personnel while refocusing ODNI on intelligence integration, strategic guidance and oversight. ODNI was created after the September 11 attacks to make sure the country’s intelligence agencies shared information and closed dangerous gaps. Its job was to coordinate and oversee the wider intelligence community, not become another sprawling operational agency. The 2025 plan set its reduction target for the end of that fiscal year. At the same time, it called for preserving investments tied directly to the President’s national intelligence priorities and strengthening ODNI’s role as the central hub connecting 18 intelligence elements. Agency leaders also tied the restructuring to a broader trust problem. They said a smaller office would be better positioned to expose politicized intelligence, stop unauthorized leaks, hold bad actors accountable and deliver objective information to policymakers. That was the foundation Pulte inherited. His five-round sequence is moving the same overhaul forward at a pace that now can be measured against a weeks-old staffing baseline. That distinction sits at the center of the current fight. The administration’s position is that ODNI drifted far beyond its intended mission, layering bureaucracy over agencies already responsible for collecting and analyzing intelligence. Critics of the reductions argue that eliminating too much capacity could weaken coordination, cybersecurity, election security and other cross-agency functions. Congress has its own blueprint for a leaner office. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton has proposed legislation that would cap ODNI at 650 full-time employees. His plan would also transfer the National Counterintelligence and Security Center’s responsibilities to the FBI, move counterproliferation and biosecurity responsibilities to the CIA, and wind down the National Intelligence University. Cotton described the original ODNI concept as a lean coordinating organization, not a bureaucracy where layers of officials coordinate with still more coordinators. Nothing in Pulte’s announcement says Tuesday’s action was carried out under Cotton’s proposal. The legislation and the personnel decisions are separate tracks. But they are pushing in the same direction: a smaller central office, fewer overlapping functions, and more intelligence work placed back inside the agencies built to perform it. Important questions remain unanswered. Pulte did not say how many people were affected in the fifth round, which units lost positions, or how many employees were terminated outright instead of reassigned. He also did not say whether the remaining reduction will be completed before a permanent director takes over. For now, two facts are unmistakable. The fifth round is underway, and ODNI is approximately 30 percent smaller than it was only weeks ago according to the acting director responsible for the cuts. If “near final” means what it sounds like, the rapid shrinking phase may be approaching its endpoint. The next test will be whether a much leaner ODNI can deliver the focused, apolitical intelligence mission the administration says this overhaul is designed to restore. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post Acting DNI Bill Pulte Announces A “Near Final” Round Of Terminations appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

HHS Secretary RFK Jr. put a serious, previously undisclosed allegation about Anthony Fauci on national television Monday night. Appearing on “The Ingraham Angle,” the HHS secretary said Fauci suffered a pulmonary infarction roughly five months after receiving his COVID-19 vaccine in public. Kennedy accused the former NIAID director of never telling the country about it and suggested the medical event was connected to the shot. That is a startling allegation. It also requires one crucial line to be drawn clearly: a medical event occurring after vaccination is not, by itself, proof that the vaccine caused HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of failing to disclose a pulmonary health event following his COVID-19 vaccination and alleged Fauci misled the public on multiple aspects of the pandemic response, including masks, social distancing, natural immunity, and vaccine effectiveness. Fauci has consistently defended his public health recommendations and has denied allegations of intentionally misleading the public. Watch the clip:   The National Library of Medicine defines a pulmonary infarction as the death of lung tissue caused by an obstruction in its arterial blood supply. The most common cause is a pulmonary embolism, a blockage usually produced by a blood clot. So this was not a passing complaint about aches or fatigue. Kennedy was describing damage to lung tissue from interrupted blood flow, although he offered no details about Fauci’s symptoms, treatment or recovery. Kennedy did not hedge his accusation. He said Fauci’s diary showed the episode and argued that it was among the adverse events anticipated after COVID vaccination. His statement puts two separate questions on the table: whether Fauci experienced the condition when Kennedy says he did, and what medical evidence, if any, connects it to the vaccine. Those questions demand different kinds of proof. Three records establish what is known so far: the full Fox News interview, the official vaccination account from the National Institutes of Health and the Senate diary package released by Senator Rand Paul’s committee. Together, they confirm the allegation, the vaccination date and the scope of the newly public record, but not a causal link. In the seven-minute Fox segment, Kennedy tied the alleged episode directly to the private daily record Fauci kept during the pandemic. He used it as one example in a broader argument that Fauci’s public message did not always match what he recorded privately. NIH’s account confirms that Fauci received his first Moderna dose in front of cameras on December 22, 2020. Five months after that ceremony would place the alleged medical episode around May 2021, the same general period Kennedy identified on Fox. The 1,141-page public package covers Fauci’s meetings, media appearances, policy disputes and private reactions from December 2019 through December 2022. It does not establish that a vaccine caused a pulmonary infarction, and Kennedy did not present a physician’s finding or clinical record proving that connection during the interview. A major National Academies evidence review explains why the medical claim cannot be settled by a calendar alone. For both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, the committee found the available evidence inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship with deep-vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism or venous thromboembolism. “Inadequate to accept or reject” is not a clean bill of health, and it is not a finding of causation. It means the evidence reviewed by the committee could not support either conclusion. A pulmonary infarction also has other possible causes and risk factors that were not discussed during Kennedy’s television appearance. Without Fauci’s diagnosis, clinical history and treating physicians’ assessment, the cause remains unresolved. That leaves Kennedy’s allegation in a precise place. The timeline he described is possible, but the date sequence alone cannot carry the weight of a medical conclusion. 1/9 — My investigation uncovered that Anthony Fauci kept a diary.What he wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories. Today I’m releasing his entries from December 2019 through December 2022. pic.twitter.com/58LvmeYkCN — Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) July 25, 2026 Paul’s official reading room says the release spans December 2019 through December 2022, while the committee’s official hearing page lists Fauci as the sole witness for Wednesday morning. The diary release and the hearing now put Fauci’s private record directly in front of the public. Paul’s published summary focuses primarily on what Fauci wrote about the origins of COVID-19 and the debate over a possible laboratory accident. The senator argues that those private notes conflict with claims Fauci made in public. Kennedy’s medical accusation is separate from those origin disputes. It should rise or fall on medical evidence, not on whether another section of the diary proves embarrassing or contradictory. Wednesday’s hearing gives Fauci a direct opportunity to say whether he experienced a pulmonary infarction, when it happened, what doctors concluded about its cause and whether any formal adverse-event report was filed. Kennedy has now made the accusation in public, and Fauci’s answer will determine whether this is a genuine disclosure scandal or an unsupported leap from timing to causation. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post RFK Jr. Says Fauci Kept A Serious Medical Event From The Public appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.