Israel says that it will “annex” the buffer zone in Gaza if Hamas does not accept its latest proposal. What is the buffer zone? It is the perimeter that Israeli soldiers admit to deliberately bulldozing at the beginning of the war. It was once an industrial zone with agriculture and factories but now it is rubble. Israeli officials say that it will belong to Israel if Hamas rejects its ceasefire offer, which Israeli officials expect that they will. Haaretz reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had proposed the idea of annexing Gaza to appease Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is threatening to quit the government over the small amount of aid Israel has allowed into Gaza. US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is reportedly heading to the Middle East to try to broker a ceasefire, although, as Antiwar reports, “there’s no sign the US was putting any pressure on Israel to make concessions to reach a deal.” Meanwhile, the Senate voted against a bill to halt all weapons sales to Israel. The majority of Democrats voted for this bill though, including Senators Bernie Sanders who introduced the bill and Senator Raphael Warnock, suggesting that support for Israel is waning in Congress amongst Democrats. Not so with Republicans: every GOP Senator voted to keep the weapons flowing. While some House Republicans did vote to halt the sales, it wasn’t enough to carry the measure. The post Israel to Take More Gaza Land—With Full Backing of the U.S. Senate appeared first on Redacted.

The Trump economy grew at a stunning annual rate of 3.0 percent in the second quarter of 2025, surpassing expectations and delivering what the White House has called “an absolute blockbuster.” What’s stunning is that the growth is NOT driven by new government jobs or spending. During the Biden years, the government bragged about economic growth but most of it was due to government expansion and spending. On the contrary, in Q2, there were 104,000 new private sector jobs and government spending declined slightly. Unemployment sits at 3.4%, near a historic low, while wage growth has begun to outpace inflation for the first time in nearly three years. Small business optimism is also up, according to the NFIB’s July survey. Some analysts caution that the full effects of Trump’s tariffs haven’t yet hit, and a slowdown in imports could drag on future growth. That may be—but for now, the Trump administration can take a victory lap on these encouraging numbers. The post Trump’s Economy Defies Expectations appeared first on Redacted.

President Trump announced a national digital health records system, together with Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Google, and OpenAI. He says that the goal is to “kill the clipboard.” They present this to you as a way to keep your records easier. Scan yourself in, any provider can access your records. Many countries in Europe already have this. But… convenience comes at a cost. What they’re not saying is that putting all your sensitive health information into a centralized, digitized system—especially one linked with AI firms and tech giants—creates a goldmine of data vulnerable to hacking, misuse, and surveillance. Who controls it? Who gets to see it? What happens when your health profile determines your insurance, your job, or even your freedom of movement? How do we know this data won’t be used to restrict access to the world? Want to board a plane? Sorry—you’re missing your second chickenpox vaccine. Need to renew your driver’s license? Looks like you skipped your annual wellness check. Patients at private insurance may be allowed to opt out of this but Medicare and Medicaid patients surely won’t given that the initiative is being spearheaded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid. The pharmacratic state will have its pound of flesh. The post Digital Health Records appeared first on Redacted.

Two gay men in Pennsylvania posted a video celebrating the birth of their surrogate baby—and it went viral when viewers discovered that one of the men is a registered child sex offender. In 2016, he was arrested for trying to solicit sex from a 16-year-old boy—one of his own students at the high school where he taught chemistry. Pennsylvania Senator Doug Mastriano responded, saying the couple acquired the child “through what appears to be a loophole in our legal system.” He added that lawmakers are “working to ensure that every authority is doing its part to protect this child and uncover exactly how this could happen.” But one thing he didn’t say: whether the child is still in the custody of the convicted offender. His post conspicuously avoids answering that. The couple crowdfunded their surrogacy journey through GoFundMe—without disclosing to donors that one of them was legally prohibited from unsupervised contact with minors. This case exposes a massive gap in surrogacy oversight. Unlike adoption, which involves rigorous state screening, private surrogacy arrangements often face little to no regulation. Pennsylvania’s adoption law prohibits sex offenders from adopting or fostering children but gestational surrogacy circumvents those laws. A surrogacy advocate group told Reduxx that “this is not the first case of a sex offender procuring a child from a surrogate mother that we have come across; we fear this is the tip of the iceberg. Vetting of commissioning parents in surrogacy is virtually nonexistent and is not comparable with checks we see in adoption.” It isn’t clear which of the fathers donated sperm to father the child but in Pennsylvania, both parents can register as the parents of the baby while the baby is still in utero giving them both equal parental rights to the baby. Mastriano says he’s now “drafting legislation to close this loophole so that sick, perverted individuals can never again exploit flaws in our legal system to gain access to innocent children.” But how do you close a loophole that allows people to biologically reproduce? The post Convicted Sex Offender Gains Parental Rights Through Surrogacy appeared first on Redacted.

What is a “sea drone”? The U.S. Navy issued a call for a new fleet of them within the next 18 months. A sea drone is an unmanned surface vessel. Like a ghost pirate ship only remote controlled by humans and not crewed by demons! They are designed to operate without a crew, carrying out missions ranging from surveillance to missile strikes. The Navy is asking weapons-makers to make three classes of sea drones with varying speeds, ranges, and payloads, capable of being outfitted with weapons, radar, or communication systems. And here’s the thing — this tech isn’t theoretical. Companies like Saildrone and Exail already make advanced uncrewed surface vessels that can cross oceans, collect data, and operate autonomously for months. The Navy’s call isn’t to invent sea drones — it’s to turn them into armed war machines and fast. The urgency reflects a shift in naval warfare, shaped in part by Ukraine’s use of explosive sea drones to damage Russian warships. The U.S. wants prototypes quickly, suggesting these systems could soon be patrolling contested waters alongside traditional ships as part of a hybrid fleet. But what if they’re hacked? These remote-controlled, weaponized ships are essentially floating computers — and if someone breaks in, they don’t just crash. They shoot. It sounds like the plot of a Mission: Impossible movie — because it is. In Ghost Protocol, a Russian warship is hacked and tricked into launching a nuclear strike that turns on its own crew. Now imagine that warship was unmanned and armed to the teeth. That’s what we’re building. The post Floating Computers With Missiles: What Could Go Wrong? appeared first on Redacted.