AI deepfake AI-generated video of Trump sucking Elon Musk’s feet, with the caption “Long live the real king,” played in a US HUD office, mocking their relationship. Videos of the hacked screens were posted on Monday morning to social media. It is not known who was behind the hack. This comes after the Trump administration […] The post HUD Employee(s) Showed a Vulgar AI Deepfake of Trump appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

U.S. Supreme Court justices found what Justice Neil Gorsuch called “radical agreement” in a case involving a straight white woman who claimed she was denied promotion in favor of less-qualified gay candidates. The justices heard arguments from plaintiff Marlean Ames, who alleges that her homosexual supervisor at the time denied her a promotion and later demoted her in favor of far less qualified gay candidates at the Ohio Department of Youth Services, per ABC News. At issue was the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dismissing Ames’s case out of hand, claiming that a straight, white plaintiff such as Ames does not meet the “background circumstances” required for a discrimination case. Ames argued that the qualification of “background circumstances” is an unfair burden placed on her simply for being straight and should not affect the enforcement of Title XII. At the conclusion of oral arguments on Wednesday, the court seemed in near-unanimous agreement to reverse the lower court ruling. Brett Kavanaugh said, “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, whether it’s because you’re gay or because you’re straight, is prohibited, and the rules are the same whichever way that goes.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s most liberal justices, called the circumstances behind Ames’s demotion “suspicious,” more than warranting a chance to present her case in lower courts. “We’re in radical agreement today on that, it seems to me,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said regarding the need for the court to equally apply Title VII protections. The anticipated decision would not only allow Ames to present her discrimination but potentially set a precedent that makes courts much more likely to take similar cases in the future. Jonathan Segal, an employment lawyer and partner at Duane Morris LLP, suggested the decision “will reinforce to the public that the law prohibits discrimination equally against majority and minority groups alike.” He added, “This likely will increase in all circuits the already increasing number of claims by members of so-called majority groups.” Additionally, Segal said, “Of course, the Ames decision cannot be viewed in isolation … A finding of ‘reverse discrimination’ may subject an employer’s DEI programs to federal and state investigations.” A final decision is expected by the end of June.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio conducted a thorough review of grants and awards at the State Department and USAID that has resulted in $60 billion in savings for taxpayers, a source within the Department tells The Daily Wire. “The State Department evaluated over 9,100 grants worth over $15.9 billion,” an internal government document obtained by The Daily Wire reads. “At the conclusion of an exhaustive review led by career FSOs and reviewed by senior political leadership, including the Secretary, over 4,100 grants worth nearly $4.4 billion were identified for elimination — a 28 percent reduction in total grant value over the course of the 15-day review.” More than 6,000 multi-year awards were reviewed within USAID that had more than $58 billion left in value waiting to be paid out. “At the conclusion of a process led by USAID leadership, including tranches personally reviewed by the Secretary, nearly 5,800 awards with $54 billion in value remaining were identified for elimination — a 92 percent reduction,” the document added. The cuts came after a 90-day review of foreign assistance at the Department and USAID led by Rubio that aimed to gut wasteful spending within the government. However, despite objections from the political Left and the media, not all programs were cut from USAID. The secretary retained programs critical to protecting U.S. interests overseas, including food assistance; life-saving medical treatments for HIV, TB, and malaria; and critical support for nations like Lebanon, Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, and others. The Department now plans to work directly with Congress to reform how the United States delivers foreign assistance. The effort will balance genuine humanitarian relief with the need to use taxpayer dollars wisely to advance American interests at home and abroad. All spending will be run through a filter that asks if it makes America “safer,” “stronger,” and “more prosperous.”

A new ad from the pro-woman brand XX-XY Athletics calls out the NCAA for a new transgender policy that women’s sports advocates warn will still allow a possible loophole for trans-identifying males to continue to compete in women’s sports. The ad — shared by Riley Gaines on X — from the company’s founder Jennifer Sey, showcases female athletes who’ve lost out on opportunities because of male trans-identifying athletes and those who have faced attacks for standing up for themselves and other girls. “We see you NCAA,” the ad starts out. “You announced a new policy after [President Donald] Trump’s executive order, this policy does not protect females. It sets no clear boundary.” “This policy does nothing to ensure women’s sports are for women only,” the athletes added. “You said you were going to comply with federal law, but you didn’t. Your policy is based on a birth certificate. That’s the proof required. But it’s no proof of sex.” The new NCAA policy is in direct conflict with President Trumps beautifully written Executive Order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”. We see you, @NCAApic.twitter.com/6QHTXozSVr — Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) February 26, 2025 Gaines and others in the ad point out that in 44 states birth certificates can be altered. The ad closes with a call to the NCAA to go back to the drawing board and fix the policy, warning the governing body that athletes and women’s sports advocates can see right through what it appears the NCAA is attempting to do. “We see you [NCAA President] Charlie Baker,” the female sports players concluded. “We see you NCAA. We see you … you tried to silence us but we are not going away. Young athletes are depending on us. Depending on you. And if you won’t stand up for female athletes, we will.” Gaines, Sage Steele, and other women’s sports advocates recently warned that there was a loophole in the NCAA policy that could be exploited to allow trans-identifying male athletes to compete against women. Speaking to Fox News, the former collegiate female swimmer said that the new policy is “explicitly in conflict” with Trump’s executive order, which asserts an outright ban on biological men competing in women’s sports. NCAA announced its new policy for “student-athletes ‘assigned male at birth’ and their participation on women’s teams” following Trump’s EO, which uses “gender identity” language instead of male and female definition for sex. It is that “gender identity” language that has Gaines and other advocates for girls sports concerned. “No. 1, first and foremost, this policy removes all accountability from the NCAA, which, of course, is something that has been on their minds for a long time,” Gaines said. “It provides loopholes for both states and schools because it does not define sex, which we have seen now is a problem, unfortunately.” “I mean, it’s wild we have to define sex-based terms like male and female, but we’ve seen what happens when we don’t,” she added, noting that all but 6 states in the U.S. allow birth certificates to be altered. A spokesperson for the NCAA told the outlet, “The policy is clear that there are no waivers available, and athletes assigned male at birth may not compete on a women’s team with amended birth certificates or other forms of ID.” Despite NCAA comments, Gaines expressed concern and said “the policy is as clear as mud.” Related: Riley Gaines, Sage Steele Warn About Possible NCAA Loophole For Trans-Identifying Male Athletes

While President Trump’s winning streak continues, it doesn’t just continue because of President Trump. It is also continuing because Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is doing an extraordinary job in the House, where he has an unbelievably slim margin. His margin is somewhere between one and three votes, depending on who actually shows up for the vote. Yet, somehow, he was capable of pushing through a gigantic House budget bill on Tuesday night. Now, there are all sorts of problems with these gigantic bills. The biggest problem, of course, is that no one in power ever has any interest in serious cuts to what matters in American government. Instead, they sort of shovel those cuts off down the road. They make commitments to commit. All of that has just been a regular feature of American government from Republicans and Democrats for as long as I’ve been alive, which is why the line in terms of national debt keeps going up and to the right. However, this budget bill enshrines the Trump tax cuts of 2017 and provides additional funding to defense, which is absolutely necessary. It provides additional funding to the border, which is necessary, and it pledges to actually take a look at cuts that will offset some of the loss of tax revenue theoretically to be achieved by the Trump tax cuts. Last night, there was all sorts of consternation about whether House Republicans would be able to get it together. Originally, it seemed as though there were some House Republicans who were going to object to the House budget bill and not get on board with it because they believed that it didn’t cut enough. A lot of these people were fiscal conservatives. I agree with them on principle, but I also understand that the only way a bill gets done, with Republicans in purple districts and an incredibly slim margin, is with more spending than is wanted. This was Mike Johnson’s entire proposal as speaker of the House. The reason he pursued one “big, beautiful bill” is because he figured that if all of these issues were separated, they would become separate bills that would never pass because of the many purists and many issues who would be able to sink the boats. Instead, he wrapped it up in one big ballot to make people vote up or vote down. That was the strategy. If you don’t like it, then you need to elect more Republicans to Congress. The GOP has a very slim majority. Thus, any bill that comes out is likely to be more “moderate” in its approach than if you had a much larger majority where you could lose a few moderates in the vote and still maintain a majority. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show Republicans were very split on this. Democrats were already celebrating the prospective loss of this bill. But somehow Johnson cobbled everyone together. For all the talk about how Johnson is “inexperienced” at this position and simply a “stand-in” for Trump, Johnson is actually quite good at this. He’s very good at this. The reality is that Johnson is also significantly more conservative on pretty much every policy issue that any Speaker of the House has been since Newt Gingrich. Originally on Tuesday night, it appeared that the vote was going to go down to defeat, and Democrats were preemptively celebrating. But Johnson made it happen. He put out a statement after the passage of the budget. His statement, along with Steve Scalise and the House GOP chairwoman, Lisa McClain, said: Today House Republicans move Congress closer, delivering on President Trump’s America first agenda, not just parts of it. This momentum will grow as we work with our committee chairs and Senate Republicans to determine the best policies within their respective jurisdictions to meet budgetary targets. We have full confidence in their ability to chart the best path forward. While there is still much more to do, we are determined to send a bill to President Trump’s desk that secures our border, keeps taxes low for families and job creators, restores American energy dominance, strengthens America’s standing on the world stage, and makes government work more effectively for all Americans. Speaker Johnson’s job is exceptionally difficult. There is no American consensus on restructuring the entitlement programs that are the systemic drivers of our national debt. I wish reality were not what it is, but that is the case. It is a fundamental reality that Trump understands, which is why he and JD Vance ran on the prospect of never touching Social Security and Medicare, among other gigantic entitlement programs. Those are systemic drivers of the national debt. They’re not touching them because they understand the American people don’t want them touched. Let’s be clear about what’s going to happen to America fiscally over the course of the next 10 years. America is going to lurch toward precisely the same sorts of austerity measures that Europe had to put in place because the United States is heading toward national bankruptcy. We are. That’s just where we are at. Here’s what you can do about that. You can push outsized growth. You can try to outgrow the debt. You can essentially grow the economy so fast that as a percentage of GDP, the national debt shrinks. Or you can radically increase taxes, which is going to sink the American economy and probably won’t solve the national debt. You can’t really tax your way out of a $37 trillion national debt right now. And it’s going to get much larger over the coming years. Or you could restructure the entitlements. The American people and their elected congresspeople always forever prefer to kick that can down the road. This budget is probably the best thing that can be done with what people are willing to do. Now it goes to the Senate. The Senate has already voted for a couple of different bills that cover much of this area. There’s going to be a plan to reconcile the Senate with the House bills, try and come up with some sort of workable compromise, and then go back to the Houses, the respective Houses, for a revote. For all the talk about how there was going to be an ineffective Republican majority in the House, Speaker Johnson has proved that wrong. He’s played this about as well as you can possibly play an incredibly difficult hand. And in the Senate, I believe that the majority leader, Senator John Thune, is going to do a good job of working with Speaker Johnson to come up with a bill that Trump will sign and that is going to provide some quiescence to the markets. It is going to make people feel as though the tax regime is not going to change any time in the near future, which is a good way of getting people to feel comfortable in their investments. It is a triumph for Johnson and for Trump to get this budget passed through such a narrowly divided Congress. Give credit where credit is due: Against heavy odds, Johnson pulled it off.

It’s always interesting when the news media, whose job is supposedly to keep us informed, fails to even mention one of the most important stories that’s unfolding in the country. As we’ve seen, the press will devote days of coverage to the plight of federal bureaucrats who can’t respond to a simple email. The idea appears to be that these bureaucrats, as government employees, are entitled to special protections, simply by virtue of working for the government. But for reasons that no one has explained, these same mainstream media outlets have demonstrated no sympathy — or even the slightest interest — in the ongoing shutdown that’s unfolding in New York’s state prison system. Corrections officers in virtually every single one of New York’s prisons are now on a so-called “wildcat” strike, meaning a strike that’s not approved by the union or allowed by law. This is a strike that’s now in its second week. Nine out of ten corrections officers in the state have walked off the job, saying the working conditions have become extremely unsafe. Prison guards are now constantly being assaulted, and they’ve had enough. As a result, the National Guard has been called in, as part of a desperate bid to prevent a deadly prison takeover, like the one that led to mass casualties in Attica back in the 1970s. Some of these National Guard units are currently staying in the cells at these prisons in New York. And as of now, it seems likely they’ll be there for a while. Even though New York has offered to double the overtime pay of any correctional officer who goes back to work, it doesn’t look like many of them are taking the government up on that offer. So how did we arrive at a situation where government employees are encouraged to complain on CNN about an email from Elon Musk, while government employees who say their lives are in danger every time they go to work are being ignored? That doesn’t quite make sense. And it’s especially confusing when you consider the fact that, ordinarily, the fact that corrections officers are refusing to report to duty at roughly 38 of New York’s 42 prisons would be exactly the kind of story that the news media would be interested in. It’s clearly the setup for a potentially significant disaster, and normally the media loves a story like that. But not this time. Why might that be? If you look into what these correctional officers are demanding, the media blackout starts to make a little more sense. But before I get into the specifics, I want to provide some context first. And I’ll do that by asking a simple question: If you had to guess the average life expectancy of a correctional officer in this country, what would you estimate it to be? For reference, the life expectancy for the general population is around 77 years, which is already relatively low, and it’s still dropping. Law enforcement officers, as a category, have a life expectancy of around 66 years. And that’s obviously pretty bad. But for correctional officers, life expectancy is even lower. In fact, it’s much lower. The average life expectancy for a correctional officer in this country is just 59-years-old. A major reason for that is the stress that the job entails, which leads to a very high rate of suicide. So already, the baseline is not good. The work conditions, in general, are not exactly ideal. But instead of addressing those work conditions in any meaningful way, in 2022, New York passed something called “The Human Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act,” or HALT Act. This is a law that had its origins in the George Floyd era, and it makes it far more difficult for prison guards to confine dangerous inmates to solitary confinement. WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show In particular, the law completely prevents prison guards from putting anyone aged 21 or younger into solitary confinement, for any reason. Yes, they consider 21-year-olds to be a “special population,” as if they’re children. So they can’t be locked away by themselves. That would be unthinkable. Additionally, no matter how old an inmate is, the law states that the maximum amount of time an inmate can be placed in solitary confinement is just 15 days. In other words, even if you’re a 25-year-old gangbanger in peak physical condition, and you’ve decided to constantly assault prison guards and shank other inmates, then you won’t be put in solitary confinement for more than two weeks. After that, you’re free. New York Democrats passed this law on the theory that solitary confinement is a form of “legalized torture.” Of course, if you’re a sane person, then the idea of being forced to interact with other inmates in a New York state prison, outside of solitary confinement, probably sounds a lot like torture. And also, keep in mind, we’re talking about an extremely dysfunctional group of people here. The only people going into solitary are criminals who ended up in prison, and then committed additional offenses after they were incarcerated. No one is “torturing” these people. We’ve simply run out of places to put them. But New York’s political leaders disagreed. They decided that it’s more important to have “compassion” for criminals than compassion for prison guards, or for anyone else. And the results have been clear. In the three years since the HALT Act was passed, inmate-on-inmate assaults have increased by nearly 170%. There’s also been a 75% increase in attacks by inmates against prison staff. That’s why, during this strike, the correctional workers have said that their top priority — their main demand — is repealing the HALT Act. Watch: We give government employees a hard time — rightfully so — but these are government workers who actually perform a necessary job. In fact, it’s not just necessary. Civilized society can’t exist without these people. These correctional officers are not putting together mandatory DEI training sessions at the Pentagon. They’re not auditing people over $600 they received on Venmo. They’re nothing like the government workers we talked about yesterday. They’re our last line of defense that’s keeping extremely dangerous criminals locked up, far away from the rest of us. And yet they’ve been ignored and, it seems, completely abandoned by the leadership in their state. If anything, the state has been actively sabotaging their ability to do their jobs. And they’ve had some help along the way. In fact, local news stations in New York are still producing sob stories for these criminals. Just the other day, a local news station in Buffalo aired this segment about a convicted murderer who says that the prison guards are wrong, and that we really need the HALT Act to remain in place. Here’s his reasoning. This is one of the most deranged segments you’ll ever see on a news station. Watch: Notice how the reporter just kind of casually slips in the whole “second-degree murder” thing in the middle of the segment. They introduce Jerome as this reasonable guy who’s upset with solitary confinement. He says it’s comparable to getting his fingernails pulled out. He calls it torture. Then they drop the fact that he’s killed another person, just to get it out of the way. They also don’t mention anything he did while he was incarcerated, which might explain why he was placed in solitary. Instead, they just move right along to the analogy he makes, where he says that normal people wouldn’t want to live in their bathroom for any amount of time. The logic is pretty solid, right up until you realize that Jerome Wright has committed murder, manslaughter, robbery and burglary. Once you kill another human being, along with a slew of other very serious crimes, then you don’t get to complain about your accommodations in prison. On the other hand, if you don’t murder another human being, then you don’t have to live in your bathroom. You can live anywhere you want. It’s one of the perks of being a non-murderer. That’s how the system works. We don’t want to encourage people to commit murder. We want to discourage it. And one of the ways we do that is by placing murderers in places they don’t want to be. (And by the way, when Jerome Wright was paroled, he tested positive for cocaine during a drug test, then signed a confession admitting he had used cocaine. But we’re supposed to believe that was all a big misunderstanding as well. The Washington Post wrote up a whole sob story about it. So this guy is never responsible for anything that happens to him, essentially. While he’s busy killing people and failing drug tests, it’s our job not to disappoint him. And we just keep failing.) On the bright side, I can think of one solution that would solve Jerome Wright’s problem, and the problems created by many other murderers like him. It turns out that no one — not a single person — has been executed in the state of New York since 1963. The state has essentially abolished the death penalty. That means that all of the worst, most violent people in the state just stay in the system forever until they die of old age. If we actually had a sensible system of capital punishment that we used on the worst kinds of criminals, then the chaos in our prisons could be greatly reduced, at the very least. Certainly people like Jerome Wright wouldn’t complain about their bathroom-sized cells anymore. And prison guards wouldn’t be assaulted every day. Seems like a win-win. Then again, no one’s floating that as a possible solution here — just like no one in the mainstream press is talking about this prison strike at all. And they’re not talking about the strike because it’s yet another example of how so-called “criminal justice reform” is, in fact, a disaster waiting to happen. Once again, we’re seeing how “compassion” for criminals, in the end, causes suffering for innocent people. That is the lesson of the HALT Act, and the ongoing crisis unfolding in New York. And before criminals completely seize control of the prison system in one of our largest states, it’s a lesson more people in power need to learn — and quickly. 

'Repugnant to public policy'

'Shipped back home'

'Working toward a full repeal of the underlying statute'

Editor’s note: The following is prepared testimony to the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from Max Primorac, a former senior official at the U.S. Agency for International Development and now a senior research fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation. Primorac served at the USAID during the Trump administration, performing the duties of the deputy administrator and leading the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. Over the past few weeks, we have been treated to a daily litany of examples of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer funded foreign aid. The U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State used foreign aid as a global platform to push radical and even obscene ideas that have shocked and angered the American people. One cannot help but ask, was there anyone in the room raising their hand to say, “Maybe this is not a good idea, maybe this will risk our bipartisan support in Congress, maybe this will lose us the trust of the American people?” Yes, foreign aid should be a tool to advance our national security interests. In the past it did. Today it does not. Frankly it has been doing harm. While spending more and more money on aid, there is nevertheless  more world poverty and hunger today, more political instability, and developing countries are more beholden to our adversaries. While I was at USAID, during the previous Trump administration, I co-chaired an inter-agency working group that put all of our aid projects through a counter-China lens. That was dismantled. Instead, the Biden administration wasted billions of dollars on a global green agenda that forced poor countries to rely on China for its energy needs by focusing on solar and wind renewable energies. These countries wanted more trade with and investment from America in order to bind our countries more closely together but instead they got transgender, diversity, and abortion programs that have alienated billions of people. Despite what we may hear in the media, there is no connection between how we do aid and our national security. South Africa has received billions of American aid dollars yet the country is China’s main African partner (South Africa is the “S” in BRICS). It supports Hamas and Iran and opposes us at every turn at the United Nations. Last summer, Mozambique and Tanzania, other large aid recipients, conducted two-week military exercises with the Peoples Liberation Army, expanding Communist China’s power projection to the lip of our Atlantic Ocean. Nineteen of the top 20 USAID recipients are members of China’s Belt & Road Initiative. While acting chief operating officer at USAID, I approved strong vetting policies for our humanitarian assistance in countries swarming with terrorists. That too was ignored by the Biden administration. Since I left the agency, vast sums of U.S. money were diverted to fund terrorists in Gaza, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] have indeed been hit with heavy fines for violating our anti-terrorism financing laws, but closer scrutiny is warranted for the problem is endemic within our aid culture. Last year, USAID launched its $45 million global civil society program, based on the social theories of an Italian Marxist. Literally we have been funding radical NGOs around the world that oppose capitalism, democracy, NATO, and Christianity. None of this is counter-China, this is counter-America. Again, a resounding “Yes” that foreign aid can be a powerful tool of diplomacy to promote freedom, prosperity, and peace in accordance with our national interests and values. But not as an instrument of progressive imperialism. Regardless of which party controls the executive branch, U.S. government aid officials must ensure that every single foreign aid program can pass the middle America smell test on waste, fraud and abuse. Aid decisions must always secure bipartisan support. There must be full transparency on who is being funded and for what, not only for all members of Congress but especially for the American people who pay for it. The fiduciary failure of our aid officials over the past four years has done tremendous damage to foreign aid’s credibility and America’s standing in the world. Let’s pray that President [Donald] Trump will restore the public trust in America’s foreign aid efforts. The post America Last: How Foreign Aid Undermined US Interests Around the World appeared first on The Daily Signal.