A Russian cruise missile struck eastern Poland early Thursday after violating the country’s airspace during a massive Russian missile barrage against Ukraine, according to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The Russian-made Kh-101 cruise missile crashed into an undeveloped field near the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia, about 57 miles from the Ukrainian border, leaving a crater approximately 33 feet wide, the BBC reported. No casualties were reported. “Last night, during the massive missile attack on Ukraine, one of the cruise missiles Kh-101 violated the Polish airspace and fell 50 km away from the town of Lublin,” Tusk said. “The missile was armed. In all probability it was Russian. I would like to thank all EU and NATO leaders for their solidarity and readiness to help.” The Kh-101 is a long-range air-launched cruise missile that is exclusively in Russia’s inventory and has been used extensively throughout Moscow’s war against Ukraine. According to the Financial Times, citing an analysis by Ukraine’s Office of the President, Russia increased production of the Kh-101 nearly eightfold — from about 56 missiles annually before the full-scale invasion to roughly 420 missiles in 2023.  The incident occurred during one of Russia’s largest overnight attacks on Ukraine, with missiles and drones targeting Kyiv, Lviv, and other cities across the country. According to the BBC, at least eight people in Ukraine were killed and dozens more wounded, including six members of one family in a village near Kryvyi Rih. Lviv, located near Ukraine’s border with Poland, was also among the cities struck. The incident came just hours after Tusk met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Lublin, where the Ukrainian leader stopped on his way back from talks with President Donald Trump.  Poland, which borders Ukraine, is a NATO member, meaning an attack on its territory has broader implications for the alliance’s collective security. Although Polish officials have not suggested the missile was intentionally aimed at Poland, any Russian military object entering NATO airspace raises the risk of escalation. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, several Russian drones and at least one unarmed Russian missile have landed in Poland, but Thursday’s incident involved what Tusk identified as an armed Kh-101 cruise missile. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said he spoke with Tusk following the incident, writing on X that Poland and the alliance activated their air and ground defenses after the missile violated Polish airspace.  “This incident is yet another reckless act by Russia and a dangerous consequence of its war against Ukraine,” Rutte wrote. “I condemn last night’s deadly strikes across Ukraine. NATO continues to provide essential support so Ukraine can defend itself. Our commitment is unwavering.” Poland’s military said it had been tracking Russia’s overnight assault on Ukraine for hours before the impact.  National and allied surveillance systems detected heavy activity from Russia’s long-range aviation, prompting the country to raise the readiness of its air defense systems and scramble fighter jets along with an airborne early warning aircraft, according to the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces in a statement. At least a dozen missiles over western Ukraine that could have posed a threat to Polish airspace were tracked on radar, including one missile that came within roughly three miles of the border before turning back east, the statement said. Then, at 3:40 a.m. local time, Polish radar detected another object traveling westward inside the country’s airspace. An F-16 was dispatched to identify and intercept it, but the object disappeared from radar before the fighter could make visual contact. A military helicopter later located the apparent impact site near Tarnawa-Kolonia, where search and recovery teams were sent to secure the area, the statement went on. Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz described it as “an extremely tough night” for the country’s air defense, surveillance, and threat detection systems, thanking military personnel for monitoring and responding to the overnight barrage.  He said authorities were continuing to investigate the object that fell.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump suggested Thursday that he might pull the confirmation of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche until two Republicans blocking Blanche’s confirmation have departed the Senate. Blanche would remain as acting attorney general, the president shared on Thursday morning, slamming Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) for refusing to vote for Blanche. Cornyn and Tillis have expressed apprehensions about Blanche, saying they would not vote to confirm Trump’s DOJ appointee until their concerns have been addressed. Two sources familiar with the matter told The Daily Wire on Thursday evening that the DOJ had submitted a written response to both senators that addressed their concerns. But Trump’s post on Thursday morning indicated the response had not been good enough — and that he’d figure out another way to circumvent the senators. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appears at his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill July 15, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) “Remember, both Cornyn and Tillis voted for Merrick Garland, and others, too numerous to mention,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office.” The president described Blanche as a “star” with the “potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time.” Trump also criticized Cornyn and Tillis for refusing to vote for Blanche, saying he had destroyed their political careers. Cornyn had threatened to derail Blanche’s nomination over the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, a plan the DOJ said it had abandoned after pushback from lawmakers. On Wednesday, Cornyn told Punchbowl News that the DOJ’s written proposal did not satisfy his demands. “They know what they need to do, but they simply refuse to do it,” Cornyn said, sharing that he had cancelled a scheduled meeting with Blanche. After Clinton-appointed Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a temporary restraining order on the Anti-Weaponization Fund on May 29, Justice Department officials ultimately complied and dropped the matter. “We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche testified at the time. Trump tore into the Republicans who opposed the fund, telling the Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese from the Oval Office: “Well, Congress didn’t want it. You have to talk to Congress. The Republican senators, some of them, got very weak knees. They didn’t have the stomach for the fight.”

President Trump’s hand-picked candidate to succeed the late South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is facing growing trouble in the upcoming Republican primary, according to new polling and Republican strategists. Darline Graham entered the U.S. Senate race on July 20 following Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement, with the president encouraging Lindsey Graham’s sister to “RUN, DARLINE, RUN!” South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster appointed her to serve out the rest of her brother’s term earlier this month.  “I’m in,” Nordone told Fox News, acknowledging “a tremendous amount of pressure” around the decision. “I have been praying a lot, talking to my family, but with the love of my family, with the support of his staff, I know I’m a hard worker… I worked for almost 30 years for the people of this state, I feel like I can do it,” she said.  Her optimism, however, is running up against new polling and growing skepticism that enough South Carolina Republicans are comfortable with Graham’s experience and policy credentials to send her to the U.S. Senate for a full six-year term. “This is a woman who no one heard of at all before, and I think that that hurts her in a certain way,” Republican political consultant Ryan Girdusky said in an interview with The Daily Wire. “She’s a largely unknown entity. I mean, no one really knows her except the fact that she’s Lindsey Graham’s sister.”  In a new campaign ad, Graham attempted to dispel those concerns, touting her pro-life beliefs, backing the SAVE America Act, and calling for a ban on biological men competing in women’s sports. “I am a conservative Republican,” she said, touting Trump’s endorsement. “I approve this message, and I’m ready to serve.”  New Emerson College polling released Thursday shows Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) leading the crowded Republican field with 22% support. Darline Graham Nordone trails at 19%, followed by Rep. Russell Fry (R-SC) at 12% and former GovernorMark Sanford at 11%. Nine candidates have been certified for the August 11 primary, while roughly 25% of voters remain undecided, according to the survey. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will advance to an August 25 runoff.  The poll also suggests that President Trump’s political clout may not be enough to carry Graham over the finish line. A majority of voters — 53% — said Trump’s endorsement would have no impact on their vote, while 29% said it made them more likely to support Graham. Another 18% said the endorsement made them less likely to back her candidacy. “You’re only going to have hyper-engaged people showing up. That doesn’t always speak well for the president’s base, which can be very high level, high levels of low propensity [voters] in the mix,” Girdusky said. “If Darline Graham is counting on solely the president’s supporters to carry across the finish line, it’s a very tough, tough road.”  Rep. Ralph Norman, who endorsed Nikki Haley in the 2024 presidential primary, has a long track record in South Carolina politics. He was first elected to Congress in a special election in 2017 and served as a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 2005 to 2007 and again from 2009 to 2017.  “There’s nothing enormously special about him. But he, you know what you’re going to get. He is a solid conservative voter,” Girdusky said. Norman has lined up endorsements from conservative Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Mike Lee (R-UT), along with several Upstate sheriffs, the Washington Post reported. Fry has won the support of 40 Republican state legislators.  Darline Graham earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the College of Charleston and a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling from South Carolina State University. She later worked as a vocational rehabilitation counselor and served as head of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind. If elected, she would be the first woman from South Carolina to be elected to the upper chamber.  Her brother, Lindsey, unexpectedly died earlier this month at his Capitol Hill home in what the medical examiner’s office believes was an aortic dissection. Before collapsing, Graham reportedly told a staffer he was experiencing chest pain. Graham had easily won his Republican primary in June before his sudden death upended the race.  “I think that the president was really in a state of grief. He loved Lindsey Graham,” Girdusky said. “And he picked her, you know, very, very, very quickly.” The Cook Political Report rates the seat as Solid Republican going into November.

Most members of Congress know that the government’s $39 trillion debt may trigger a financial crisis as it continues soaring. But lawmakers keep hiking spending, with increases currently in the pipeline for defense, farm subsidies, and transportation. Why does Congress spend so much? Members are lobbied to spend, of course, but they are also naively optimistic about government. They seem to think they can solve every problem in society by enacting programs and then flooding the zone with cash. The reality is that program benefits are nearly always lower than planned, and the taxpayer costs are higher. The government is a leaky bucket — many of the dollars it scoops up for the federal budget spill out as waste and policy mistakes. The Trump administration is cracking down on program fraud, but fraud is only one of 10 inefficiencies or leaks in the federal budget bucket. 1. Fraud and Errors. Hundreds of billions of dollars in spending are lost to fraudulent and erroneous payments every year. Whether it is food stamps, health care programs, or the earned income tax credit, improper payments range from about 5 to 25% of social program spending. Military spending is also rife with fraud and cost overruns. 2. Administration. Part of spending goes to bureaucrats, not to program recipients. The administrative share of spending is 10% for food stamps, 12% for Supplemental Security Income, 17% for community development, and about 35% for the crop insurance program. 3. Poor Targeting. A lot of spending goes to people who claim benefits legally but were not supposed to be targeted for help. Programs aimed at poor communities — such as aid for schools and community development — often benefit wealthier areas of the nation. And subsidies to boost industries, such as broadband, often go to projects that companies would have funded themselves. 4. Bureaucratic Failures. Congress assumes that federal agencies will expertly implement the programs it designs, but the bureaucracies screw up all the time. We’ve seen headline-making failures over the years in disaster response, presidential security, air traffic control, pandemic aid, and many other activities. 5. Logrolling. Congress passes spending in large packages that include funding for hundreds of programs and projects. Policymakers do not perform cost-benefit analyses on each item to ensure that it will create net value. Rather, bills are passed by horse-trading, and many low-value activities that do not have broad support get funded. 6. Central Planning. Congress allocates trillions of dollars each year to individuals, businesses, and nonprofit groups. How do lawmakers know which activities will create the most benefits? They don’t. Lawmakers use wild guesswork to allocate cash between food stamps, fighter jets, farmers, and a myriad of other things. They often make mistakes, fund faulty programs, and resources get entrenched in wasteful activities for years. 7. Program Conflicts. When Congress designs programs, it often includes provisions that work at cross purposes. In infrastructure bills, for example, rules that favor domestic purchases and rules that favor labor unions inflate costs. The result is that taxpayers get fewer infrastructure facilities than they’ve paid for. 8. Behavioral Changes. Government spending induces recipients to change their behavior in unproductive ways. Welfare induces recipients to stay on the couch rather than work, and corporate welfare induces businesses to waste resources on lobbying rather than on making better products. 9. Crowding Out. Government spending displaces private and voluntary activities. As welfare programs grow, self-help and private charities decline. As Social Security grows, private savings for retirement shrink. And during the 20th century, as government subsidies for airports and urban transit expanded, previously private provision of these services disappeared. 10. Tax Damage. Raising tax revenue for the federal budget causes collateral damage, including increased tax paperwork costs and reduced incentives for production. The result is that taxes impose costs on the private sector beyond the revenues they raise. If Congress raises taxes by $100, economists estimate that it costs the private sector about $150, which includes $100 transferred to the government and $50 in collateral damage. Here is former Council of Economic Advisers Chair Michael Boskin on the government’s leaky bucket: “The cost to the economy of each additional tax dollar is about $1.40 to $1.50. Now the tax dollar … is put into a bucket. Some of it leaks out in overhead, waste, and so on. In a well-managed program, the government may spend $.80 or $.90 of that dollar on achieving its goals. Inefficient programs would be much lower, $.30 or $.40 on the dollar.” My new Cato Institute study with Ryan Bourne argues that most federal programs fall into Boskin’s “inefficient” category, in which costs far exceed benefits. These programs are dragging down the economy and pushing up debt. Fraud is a big problem, but most federal programs are leaking resources and wasting them in many ways. *** Chris Edwards occupies the Kilts family chair in fiscal studies at the Cato Institute.

Abdul El-Sayed has campaigned on reaching across the religious divide with an appeal to Christians and Muslims alike, and he boasts that over two dozen Christian leaders back his bid to replace Michigan Senator Gary Peters. Those leaders include a pastor who suggested conservative activist Charlie Kirk deserved to be shot and the senior pastor of a church that hosted a drag event for kids. El-Sayed, who once hoped to be America’s first Muslim governor, is locked in a competitive primary race with Democrat Rep. Haley Stevens. While many of his positions on topics from abortion to so-called “gender-affirming care” directly conflict with the Bible, that has not deterred some Christians from backing his campaign. Included among El-Sayed’s supporters is Larry Davis, the pastor of Christian Tabernacle Baptist in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Davis, who believes that President Donald Trump faked the multiple assassination attempts, had no kind words for Charlie Kirk after his murder. “He is being held as a hero. We shouldn’t be happy that he got killed. But we shall embrace that you REAP what you SOW,” Davis posted on Facebook alongside an anti-Kirk meme the day after the popular conservative activist was gunned down at an event at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.   Larry Davis Facebook. In another post, Davis shared a clip of Kirk criticizing DEI and asked, “Would you give a racist out of his own mouth the medal of freedom.” On September 19, the pastor again spread his message that Kirk reaped what he sowed. “No man should take it on himself to take the life of another. But the scriptures says be not deceived God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man show [sic] that shall he also reap,” Davis said alongside an AI-generated image of Kirk and Jesus Christ. The Daily Wire sent a message to Davis to ask about his support for El-Sayed. His church, which has no listed email address, did not answer multiple phone calls. Pastor Terrance Johnson, another religious leader who endorsed El-Sayed, shared a similar animus toward Kirk. He suggested that he was not sad about Kirk’s assassination because he was a “racist bigot.” “You will accept a black man refusing to mourn his own father but you wil [sic] not accept a black man refusing to mourn a racist bigot because….. We all know why,” Johnson posted in a long screed quoting Tupac song lyrics a day after Kirk’s killing.   When someone commented on his post, “is this the heart of Christ,” Johnson responded by saying, “what is the heart of Christ.” In another post, Johnson claimed that ICE was equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan. “So ICE is the KKK rebranded. Still wearing mask it’s just that the badges are now out instead of being hid under the sheets,” he said. Johnson’s Church, Second Missionary Baptist Church in Monroe, Michigan, recently hosted El-Sayed for an event. In a Facebook post, the church said the event was for the Democrat to share “why he’s running for office.” During the appearance, El-Sayed claimed to attendees that he was the only candidate who could “guarantee you healthcare” and attacked America’s history as “sordid,” according to a video posted by the church. “We just commemorated 250 years. And I know there’s a lot of sordid history in those 250 years, but I also know what my life would have been had I been born in a place that I was supposed to be born. But for an accident of history, I get born here,” El-Sayed said. “Are we willing to put ourselves back in to correct that system so that the next 250 look a lot better than the last ones did?” “It is the many versus their money. We got a choice. Do we want them to come in and buy an election?,” he added.   Facebook: Second Missionary Baptist Church. “Second Missionary Baptist Church of Monroe does not endorse or oppose any political candidate or party,” the church posted on July 17. “Our prayer is that every voter takes time to seek wisdom, research the candidates, and make an informed decision at the ballot box.” Another pastor backing El-Sayed’s campaign is the ultra-woke Nathan Dannison of Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, which recently hosted a “queer prom” for adults and youth that featured “12 drag performances.” Dannison, who recently said that psychedelics have been part of his “spiritual discipline” for the last twenty years, said that abolishing ICE is a baseline position any candidate supported by him needs to take. In recent Facebook posts, Dannison has defended El-Sayed over his strong anti-Israel positions. Dannison said that he’s “pretty horrified by a lot of the anti-Abdul posts I’m seeing from center-left Michigan voters that are obviously mashing the ‘fwd:fwd:fwd’ button or the copy-pasting ad copy from astro-turfed emails/sms/etc from defense lobbyists.” “Dr. El-Sayed is not antisemitic. To the contrary, one of the reasons I support him is because he understands the real and present dangers facing Jewish Americans who are being blamed for foreign policies and wars that have absolutely nothing to do with their religion and history in this country,” he added. Fountain Street Church raises funds for women to end the lives of their unborn children and says it is “proud to be the State’s longest standing abortion fund.” Other pastors backing El-Sayed’s campaign included Detroit Rev. Horace Sheffield III of New Destiny Christian Fellowship and Rev. Keith Whitney of Sanctuary Fellowship Baptist Church. Sheffield, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2014 and appeared in the anti-white documentary “White With Fear,” sells anti-Trump t-shirts on his ministry website that say “I will take Biden in a wheel chair over Trump standing up.”   Whitney is the president of Moses Action, an advocacy group that pushes for left-wing criminal justice reform and supported a ballot initiative to make the right to end the life of your unborn child a constitutional right. “Throughout black history, government officials — most of them white men — have made decisions about black women’s bodies and health that have been harmful, traumatizing, and often deadly. Granting our current lawmakers the ability to dictate personal health decisions feels like a dangerous step backwards,” the group said in a statement. Several of the pastors listed on El-Sayed’s campaign website, including Bishop Alan Evans and Pastor Parris McMurray, appear to be affiliated with the Church of God In Christ, Inc. The denomination adopted a “sanctity of life” resolution in 2019 that “abortion is the killing of the innocent” and describes abortion as “genocide.” The denomination did not respond to questions about its pastors endorsing the pro-abortion El-Sayed. El-Sayed wants to codify the right to an abortion in federal law and suggested he will fight back on efforts to crackdown on abortion pills. “Everyone has the right to make personal decisions about their healthcare,” his campaign website says. “That includes reproductive and gender-affirming care. I’ll fight to codify the rights once protected by Roe v. Wade into federal law.” Earlier this month, El-Sayed earned the endorsement of the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity, which said it supported his emphasis on “affordability” and “human dignity.” It did not respond to questions about El-Sayed leftist advocacy on social issues. “Pastors attend to their communities in the best and worst of times, and their support is about trusting me to show up in those moments with them,” El-Sayed said. “Together, we’re building a Michigan that brings people together across faiths, regions, and backgrounds in the work of offering dignity, opportunity, and respect for every Michigander.” The Democratic primary is on August 4.