7 Awe-Inspiring Signs of God’s Majesty in the World Around Us

New intel shows Iran’s nuclear capability is “severely damaged” – despite media reports and the Ayatollah’s claims. RFK Jr. pulls funding from a global vaccine group he says is ignoring the science. And New York is still reeling from a political earthquake after a self-styled socialist’s victory in the Democratic primary for mayor. It’s Friday, June 27, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Morning Wire is available on video! You can watch today’s episode here:  If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below: Iran Intel & More Peace In Middle East Topline: New details have emerged on the severity of U.S. airstrikes on Iran, as the White House hints at new peace deals with Middle Eastern adversaries. Ayatollah Khamenei hadn’t been seen or heard from since before Saturday, as he refrained from any electronic communication for fear of being targeted himself. But on Thursday, he released a video where he struck a defiant tone, declaring victory over the U.S. and Israel and threatening to “take action again” if necessary. Khamenei assured his people that the American strikes “were unable to do anything important” and that President Trump had “exaggerated” their effectiveness — those claims have been mirrored by some elements of the legacy media. The war in Iran might have ended, but the fighting is still going on in Washington, with the White House going to battle with the media over the state of Iran’s nuclear program. Knocking out Iran’s nuclear program could end up being one of the president’s signature accomplishments, and he wants credit. Almost immediately after the strikes, which the president said totally obliterated the Iranian nuclear program, the media began reporting otherwise, saying the program had only been set back a few months. A leaked damage assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency reportedly claimed Iran could have their nuclear program up and running by the new year and that the three nuclear sites struck by the United States had potentially sustained only “moderate” damage. Democrats and the legacy media jumped on that report, saying it was proof the strike was actually a failure and that Trump was lying to the public. The White House is disputing this, saying the assessment in question was one of multiple preliminary estimates and that newer intelligence from the CIA and others has revealed the damage to be significantly more severe. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the press failed to report that the leaked document reported “low confidence” in its own assessment and had not been coordinated with the intelligence community more broadly. “For people with common sense, everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “Complete and total destruction and obliteration.” On Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, seemed to agree with the White House, saying Iran’s nuclear program “suffered enormous damage.” According to the agency’s director, “there’s a lot of debate about the degree of annihilation, total destruction, and so on. What I can tell you, and I think everyone agrees on this, is that very considerable damage has been done.” The president has also suggested that other Middle Eastern countries might join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel in the coming days. RFK Withdraws Funding For International Vaccine Organization Topline: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the United States is withdrawing funding for an international vaccine organization that he says has lost the public’s trust. Gavi is a global vaccine alliance that works to provide vaccinations to low-income people worldwide. It was founded by Bill Gates, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the World Bank back in 2000. Gavi has received more than $8 billion from the U.S. government since 2001 and claims to have vaccinated more than one billion children, saving millions of lives.  RFK Jr.’s assessment of the group was not entirely negative: he commended Gavi for some of its work – particularly for keeping medicine affordable – when he announced that the United States would halt its financial contributions until Gavi could prove itself to be science-focused and transparent. Kennedy also stated that Gavi helped censor dissenting voices during the COVID pandemic and “ignored the science.” “The World Health Organization and Gavi partnered together during the COVID-19 pandemic to recommend best practices for social media companies to silence dissenting views, to stifle free speech and legitimate questions during that period,” Kennedy said. “When vaccine safety issues have come before Gavi, Gavi has treated them not as a patient health problem, but as a public relations problem.” Kennedy said Gavi must re-earn the public’s trust before the U.S. financial contribution continues. He advised Gavi to “consider the best science available, even when the science contradicts established paradigms.” The Gates Foundation, in reaction to RFK Jr.’s remarks, has already pledged to give $1.6 billion over the next five years to support Gavi. New York City’s New Frontrunner Topline: Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani shocked New York – and many in the Democratic Party – by rising out of seemingly nowhere to win the city’s Democratic primary for mayor. A left-wing New York assemblyman, Zohran Mamdani, 33, won an upset victory in the NYC Democratic primary against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, 67. Despite recent polling suggesting it would be a close race, Mamdani overperformed in the early returns with a decisive enough lead that Cuomo conceded within hours. “Mamdani pulled it off by increasing the turnout among mostly white progressives,” Ryan Girdusky, host of the “It’s a Numbers Game” podcast, told The Daily Wire. “Cuomo’s turnout was not high enough among black voters. And at the same exact time, Mamdani’s voter turnout was absolutely like general election turnout. And that, along with being able to siphon off support from the Asian community — he had an immense amount of Asian outreach despite being against SATs. And the growing Muslim population certainly helped him. And then his last part of his coalition was he was able to splinter a sizable chunk of the Hispanic vote who do not live in the Bronx. He lost the Bronx terribly. But among other Hispanic communities, he did very, very well.” Mamdani is a self-described socialist who has campaigned on rent control, government-owned grocery stores, raising taxes on the top 1% of New Yorkers, and offering sanctuary to illegal aliens. He has also been highly critical of the state of Israel, which he has described as “an apartheid state” that committed “genocide” in the Gaza Strip. While many prominent New Yorkers, from billionaire Bill Ackman to rapper 50 Cent, have come out against Mamdani since his victory, he remains the favorite to win the general election. While he is not likely to win a majority of voters, Mamdani will likely face off against three other candidates who are likely to split much of the conservative-to-moderate electorate: incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who chose to run as an independent this election after previously being elected as a Democrat, Cuomo, who despite losing the Democratic primary is also registered to run as a third-party candidate, and Republican Curtis Silwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels crime prevention group. All three other candidates have their own baggage – Governor Cuomo resigned in disgrace after a sexual harassment scandal, Adams was accused of accepting bribes in a federal investigation that has since been dropped, and Silwa, a former radio host and eccentric conservative, faces an uphill battle in a city that favored Democrats over Republicans by more than 2:1 in the last presidential election. Adams and Silwa are currently set on staying in the race, while Cuomo is presently “weighing his options.” Girdusky told The Daily Wire that if one or more of the other candidates dropped out and allowed their supporters to coalesce, “they could probably beat him. I don’t know if anyone’s ego is small enough to allow that to happen.”

Zookeepers at the Topeka Zoo & Conservation Center completely flummoxed their lion the other day. It didn’t seem to require much effort. They simply repositioned the lion’s favorite log. Enrichment for animals in captivity is an integral part of maintaining their physical and mental health. Habitats are designed to replicate their natural environments as closely as possible. Apparently, you aren’t supposed to rearrange the furniture in the wild. @topekazoo Sometimes enrichment comes in the form of the slight re-arranging of a habitat to keep it interesting & mind-blowing! #mindblown #lion #africanlion #malelion #funnyanimals #curiouscat #bigcat #lion #topekazoo #fyp ♬ Animal’s daily life. Daily songs in a slightly blurred atmosphere – Sumochi Upon noticing the change, the lion approached the log with caution, standing on a large rock. First, he sniffed. It smelled like his log. He ventured forward with a wary step. Nope. He backed off, returning to the rock for another sniff. The lion remained undecided for a short time. He finally stepped out onto his log, but was still hesitant. Like other animals from the Saharan plains, the African lion faces threats in the wild due to habitat loss and poaching. A pride typically has one male lion and several females with their offspring. Surprisingly, females in a pride do most of the hunting while the male defends the pride’s lands and members from other male lions. When they are born, cubs have spots which act as camouflage. Female cubs tend to stay with the pride, while male cubs move on when they reach two to four years of age. Although life in the zoo is a little different for these wild animals, zoo staff do try to mimic their natural environment. Image from Instagram. Zookeepers try to provide enrichment activities for the animals. These keep their reflexes and instincts sharp. The log is similar to a fallen tree and gives the lions something to climb. The lion’s confusion is probably because logs in the wild don’t move. Please share. You can find the source of this story’s featured image here. The post Lion Discovers His Log Has Been Moved And Is Absolutely Flabbergasted appeared first on InspireMore.

John Prine’s music spoke truth in a language everyone understood, blending humor, heartbreak, and humanity into stories that resonated deeply. His roots were planted in Maywood, Illinois, a blue-collar suburb of Chicago, where he grew up absorbing the rhythms of everyday life that would later color his songwriting. His early experiences as a mail carrier and his service in the U.S. Army stationed in West Germany gave him perspectives that vividly surfaced in his poignant lyrics. Prine’s professional music journey took flight in the late 1960s on Chicago’s bustling folk scene. He began performing at clubs like the Fifth Peg The post Complete List Of John Prine Songs From A to Z appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

From the Jersey Shore comes the story of a parasail operator rescuing a kayaker and her dogs as fast as the wind which capsized them was blowing across the water. It was Thursday evening in Sea Isle City and Brennan Bollard wasn’t working. A storm was forecasted and at around 7:00 p.m. it hit the […] The post Parasail Operator Turns Rescuer After Storm Hits the Jersey Shore appeared first on Good News Network.

In South America, the nation of Guyana is under threat. Just next door, its socialist, autocratic neighbor Venezuela is actively attempting to lay the foundation for a guerrilla war over the region of Essequibo. Essequibo makes up about 160,000 square kilometers of Guyanese territory, about two-thirds of the country’s total landmass, and is home to vast reserves of natural resources like gold, diamonds, bauxite, and, most notably, oil. Thanks to strategic cooperation with American companies like ExxonMobil, Guyana has been able to tap into these vast natural resources, making it the fastest-growing economy in the Western Hemisphere. But this rapid development has not gone unnoticed.Venezuela has long claimed the Essequibo region as part of its national territory, rejecting the legitimacy of the 1899 Arbitral Award, which first settled Guyanese-Venezuelan borders in the eyes of international law. Having failed to stop Guyana from enshrining its claim’s legitimacy in the eyes of international courts, and still eyeing Essequibo’s newly developed oil wealth, Nicolas Maduro’s regime has increasingly turned to threats of military force against Guyana. Recently, this aggression has intermittently boiled over, with incidents ranging from the use of state-backed criminal gangs to assault Guyanese troops to the sending of a Venezuelan warship to demand information from an ExxonMobil oil facility in Guyana’s exclusive economic zone. At the same time, Venezuela has been building up its military forces along the shared border.These incidents signal that Maduro—needing to drive up domestic support to counteract his own destruction of Venezuela’s economy—increasingly seeks to dominate Venezuela’s neighbor. Venezuela has the military capacity to do just that. And to build up its military capabilities even further, it’s recently looked overseas to China, Russia, and Iran. For the last five years, it’s relied on China and Russia for arms, using them to modernize and expand its military forces via access to an arsenal of weapons from small arms to surface-to-air missiles to anti-drone devices.Beyond this, Venezuela remains one of the most militarized states in Latin America, maintaining a relatively large and competent force. It has access to an extremely mobile force equipped for the kind of jungle warfare that would be encountered in an invasion of Guyana, including extensive forces of rangers, jungle battalions, and an array of aircraft and patrol boats. In the face of this much larger potential adversary, the current Guyanese Defense Force would likely fare poorly in a conventional conflict. While Guyana has developed close cooperation with regional partners like the U.S., Brazil, and France, it currently lacks the capability to stop Venezuelan aggression for long enough to allow its allies to mobilize.Guyana has made some steps in the right direction, with a 2025 defense budget that marks an almost 121 percent increase from only two years prior. Unfortunately, though, its current approach—an attempt to build up conventional forces—will manifest slowly and at significant cost, and Venezuela may be tempted to act long before these investments pay off.But there’s a better solution. To capitalize on its increased defense spending and successfully deter Venezuelan aggression, Guyana should focus on developing cheap, asymmetrical warfare capabilities in the short term and on expanding its conventional ground forces in the long term.On the ground, the Guyanese Defense Force should prioritize developing its antiair and anti-tank capabilities. All of Guyana’s principal security partners—the U.S., Brazil, and France—have developed extremely robust and time-tested weapons in this field. And Venezuela maintains a largely mechanized force with supporting aircraft—making these systems essential for Guyana’s defense. On the sea, the Guyanese Defense Force should prioritize developing a larger force of multipurpose patrol boats like the Mark VI, capable of switching between riverine and littoral waters. In the air, Guyana should develop its drone capabilities. Unmanned aerial vehicles serve a dual purpose; they offer a way to enhance Guyanese surveillance over Essequibo while also developing Guyanese strike capabilities without the expense of maintaining a large manned air force.By focusing on these shorter-term affordable, adaptable, and asymmetrical warfare capabilities across land, sea, and air, Guyana can maximize its defense budget and complicate Venezuelan operational planning, thereby enhancing deterrence. At the same time, Guyana can build out its conventional forces as part of its long-term deterrence against Venezuelan aggression. The post How Guyana Can Deter Its Socialist Neighbor appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The decisions of the Supreme Court reverberate throughout the nation, defining the limits of government power and often directing our culture. The 2024-2025 term of the Supreme Court is now coming to a close, bringing with it a wide range of cases. I spoke with Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, on the latest episode of “Heritage Explains.” He is the host of the weekly Heritage legal podcast, “Case in Point,” which discusses important cases in the news affecting politics, culture, and everyone’s daily lives. Listen to the full episode or read a lightly edited transcript below. Mark Guiney: We want to talk about some of the highlights that have happened this past year, especially vis-à-vis the Trump administration. Hans von Spakovsky: Let me devise into two areas. One is the substantive decisions that have come down and we’ve had some pretty good decisions. In one case out of Ohio, a woman sued the state of Ohio. She was a state employee saying, “I was discriminated against because I’m not gay.” It’s kind of reverse discrimination. The lower courts imposed a higher standard of proof on her than if she’d been gay, basically saying, “Well, because you’re a heterosexual and therefore you’re part of the majority, you’ve got a higher standard of proof.” The Supreme Court unanimously said, “No, the same standard of proof applies in any kind of discrimination case like that.” It was a very good, very fair decision and an easy decision because of the way the statute’s written.  Another great case for the Second Amendment, and frankly gun owners across the country, is the fact that the government of Mexico sued what I call the seven sisters, the seven major gun companies in America. In essence, Mexico sued saying, “You’re responsible for all the criminal violence in Mexico.”  The Supreme Court came back again unanimously and said, “No, there’s a federal statute that bars that kind of liability. You cannot sue.” This was actually a great example of the Mexican government trying to blame somebody else for the fact that it can’t do anything about the cartel violence down there. Another terrific win was a case involving Catholic Charities. The state of Wisconsin refused to give them a tax exemption that goes to church organizations because basically they said, “You’re not churchy enough in your charitable work. For example, when you’re helping poor people, you don’t proselytize, you don’t try to convert them. Obviously, the state doesn’t understand Catholicism since it’s part of the creed, part of the beliefs that you should help people regardless of who they are and what their potential religious beliefs are. Again, the Supreme Court came in and said, “You can’t do that. The state cannot make that kind of a judgment on a church or religious organization.” Not quite as important, but something that’ll make people feel good is they ruled in favor of a family whose house was mistakenly destroyed by an FBI SWAT raid that went wrong. They went to the wrong place, and the federal government refused to pay for it, saying, “Oh, we’re immune, you can’t make us pay it.” The Supreme Court came back and said, “No, this fits with one of the exceptions to what’s called the Federal Tort Claims Act. And yes, you can sue the government for the damages they caused to your home.” Given how often in this country people are now experiencing this kind of thing because cranks or people who don’t like them politically will call and the police will show up mistakenly because of that, that’s actually a good thing. Of course, we also got a really important decision, U.S. v. Skrmetti. That was out of Tennessee. Tennessee passed, frankly, a law to protect kids and it was followed by about two dozen other states saying, “You can’t engage in, basically, surgical mutilation and abusive drug treatments to try to make someone look like a different gender.” The American Civil Liberties Union sued and again, the Supreme Court said, “No, that that’s within the protective authority of a state to protect minors under something like that.” … I interviewed Tennessee’s solicitor general, Matt Rice, about it. That was his first argument for the U.S. Supreme Court, and he won. The other thing that’s been really more active than usual is what they call the emergency docket. The emergency docket is when the Supreme Court isn’t making substantive decisions the way it did in these cases. They have gotten a lot of emergency appeals filed by the Trump administration because of these nationwide injunctions that have been issued all over the country.   In fact, just this past Monday, the Supreme Court issued an emergency stay of an injunction that had been issued by a judge in Massachusetts. Folks will recall that the Trump administration detained and removed a whole passel of illegal alien criminals—child rapists, murderers, etc. and took them to Sudan even though they’re not originally from Sudan. This judge said, “Oh, you can’t do that” and issued an injunction. The Supreme Court just issued a decision staying that injunction, which means basically suspending it. [That] means that the Trump administration can restart deporting aliens to third countries, in other words, not the country that is the native country of that alien. Those are the kind of emergency appeals that we’ve been getting, and the Trump administration has been pretty good at winning those. Guiney: What is the state overall of a lot of these injunctions? Do you expect that we’ll continue to see the Supreme Court challenge them? Do you think it’s going to be a mixed bag? What’s the state of play there? von Spakovsky: We have a bunch of important decisions that we’re still waiting on, including a case involving pornography out of Texas, a case involving a school board in Maryland where they refuse to let parents opt their kids out of gender propaganda and DEI education. One of the other cases we’re waiting for that’s important to this is a case on birthright citizenship. Now the substantive issue is not before the court. The court is not going to decide whether or not President Trump’s interpretation of birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment is correct or not. What’s up before the court again is part of this emergency docket. The Department of Justice filed an emergency appeal asking the court to stay or suspend three nationwide injunctions that have been issued by three different judges in three different courts. That’s what the fight is about. Frankly, what a lot of people are hoping, including me, is that when the Supreme Court issues its decision in that case, it will issue very strict rules on nationwide injunctions—not just in this case, but in general—that will hopefully restrict judges from issuing these all over the country. Guiney: Based on what you’ve seen this term, is this a divided or partisan or compromised Supreme Court? von Spakovsky: Just a week or so ago, we had one unanimous decision after another, and even in the cases that weren’t unanimous, we had some strange combinations of a liberal and generally conservative justice, for example, dissenting. The places you see the divide are in the cases over immigration and over what are considered social issues, like the Skrmetti case … [and] stopping that injunction against the removal of criminal aliens. In a lot of the other cases, you don’t get that kind of a split. I think that says a lot about the court and anybody who thinks it always divides up between the liberal justices on the court and those who are generally considered conservative, obviously haven’t looked at the record of the court. Guiney: Is there anything that you might expect to see coming down the pike? von Spakovsky: Well, back to the emergency dockets, we’ve had one immigration case after another. We’ve had one case after another involving what the president has been doing in trying to lay off federal employee, what DOGE has been doing. Many of those have gone to the Supreme Court, but only on the emergency basis where the Trump administration is asking for a stay of a nationwide injunction issued by a lower court judge. Those cases are going to work their way through the courts and finally get up back to the Supreme Court on the substantive issues. Did the president, for example, have the power to lay off lots of employees in particular departments? I expect those cases probably will work their way through the summer—while the Supreme Court is off—at the lower courts, the district courts, courts of appeal, and they will start arriving at the court when the new term starts, which is October of this year. Also, the other case that’s sure to be back is birthright citizenship, but this time, not just on the nationwide injunctions, but on the substantive question of, “How do you interpret the 14th Amendment on that?” The post How Did the Supreme Court Do This Year? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Can Eric Adams Save New York City?