A poster on the FBI Reddit thread warned FBI leakers on evading DOGE and his team (see post below). It’s unclear if the poster is connected to the FBI or just trying to be helpful to any agent stupid enough to leak this carelessly. The Reddit poster also shared information on this link. In other […] The post Warning to FBI Leakers? appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

For those who don’t spend their Sunday mornings glued to the television — and their Sunday afternoons attempting to dig through a week’s worth of network and cable news media spin — The Daily Wire has compiled a short summary of what you may have missed. With the futures of several of President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees still hanging in the balance, legacy media outlets jumped on every possible narrative that could be highlighted or spun to cast doubt on his administration as it nears the end of its second week. Trump’s comments about the horrific plane crash at Reagan National Airport — namely his implication that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives played a role in putting fewer or under-qualified individuals into positions that may have put lives at risk — were a popular topic of conversation across the Sunday morning talk shows. Hosts either brought in Democrats who would criticize Trump’s assessment of the situation, or brought in Trump allies and then presented the topic in an adversarial manner. On ABC News’ “This Week,” Donna Brazile claimed that diversity included “every American” and argued that “it was just a low moment, again, for President Trump.” She criticized the president for not waiting for the results of an official investigation, and attacked him for suggesting that former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and their policies had anything to do with the crash. Pres. Trump sparked criticism for claiming, without citing evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives were partly to blame for the D.C. plane crash. Former DNC chair @DonnaBrazile and former RNC chair @Reince Priebus weigh in. https://t.co/H3mth1HBYB pic.twitter.com/riThRqTSNT — This Week (@ThisWeekABC) February 2, 2025 On CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” host Margaret Brennan brought in “CBS Evening News” anchor John Dickerson to talk about “the tone” of Trump’s comments on the issue. Unsurprisingly, Dickerson’s assessment was that the scope of the tragedy would ensure that Trump’s words would stick with the American people — and that the message they got would be that he did not believe minorities were capable of handling certain positions. In the wake of the deadly plane-helicopter collision near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people, @CBSEveningNews co-anchor @jdickerson shares some thoughts on the tone of responses out of the Oval Office following moments of tragedy. pic.twitter.com/TRhoksvxUY — Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) February 2, 2025 Brennan then brought in Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) to address Trump’s comments, highlighting the Trump administration’s policy regarding equal opportunity particularly for those who have “targeted disabilities.” Mast, who lost his legs when he stepped on an improvised explosive device (I.E.D.) while serving in Afghanistan, made it clear that he was not going to bite: “There are things that I am suited to do, no doubt, but flying an aircraft, to stick with the subject at hand, would not be one of them … Systemically, is there a big hiring problem across all federal agencies, to include the FAA, where they made the priority diversity and inclusion instead of excellence and performance? Yes, that’s the case.” Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), who lost two limbs serving in Afghanistan, says he takes "no offense" to President Trump's remarks linking the deadly aircraft collision to DEI initiatives. “There are things that I am suited to do, no doubt, but flying an aircraft, to stick with the… pic.twitter.com/8eEEQb7O7b — Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) February 2, 2025 On “State of the Union,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper tried to corner Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy — who had only been confirmed to his post one day prior to the crash — saying, “I just don’t know of any evidence… that DEI had anything to do with the tragedy itself.” Duffy pushed back, noting that DEI initiatives had impacted the application process until the Trump administration had put an end to them. “I just don't know of any evidence… that DEI had anything to do with the tragedy itself.”@jaketapper challenges Transportation @SecDuffy to back up Trump’s claims that diversity hiring initiatives played a role in the midair collision in DC that claimed the lives of 67 people. pic.twitter.com/JQkUK3vG8D — State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) February 2, 2025 Duffy also commented on Trump’s federal hiring freeze, saying that those employees who held “critical safety positions” as air traffic controllers would be exempt: “We’re going to keep all our safety positions in place.” "We're going to keep all our safety positions in place."@SecDuffy tells @jaketapper that air traffic controllers and "critical safety positions" are exempt from Trump’s hiring freeze and buyout offer for federal employees. pic.twitter.com/KQAEVmypNS — State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) February 2, 2025 Tapper also brought in Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who appeared only too happy to take a shot at the man who ended his 2016 run for the vice presidency. “The president weighing in while bodies were still being recovered, blaming this on DEI, and when pressed he has no evidence to suggest it, was absolutely stomach turning.” Kaine went on to accuse Trump of race-baiting, and added, “I think the president didn’t want to be asked tough questions like, ‘Why did you let Elon Musk force the FAA administration to resign?’ When this crash happened, there was no FAA administrator because he had clashed with Elon Musk.” "Absolutely stomach-turning." @SenTimKaine to @jaketapper after Trump blamed DEI for the DC air collision. pic.twitter.com/6AIGoU4Vsr — State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) February 2, 2025 In addition to Trump’s comments on DEI, media outlets also targeted his actions with regard to implementing tariffs against several nations — with some going so far as to accuse him of intentionally starting a trade war that would necessarily escalate. “If you’re going to pick a fight in a bar… scope the exits,” Rep. Jaime Herrera-Beutler (D-WA) said on “State of the Union.” Former Rep. @HerreraBeutler on Trump's new tariffs: "If you're going to pick a fight in a bar… scope the exits."@YassaminAnsari, @BradOnMessage and @Bakari_Sellers join CNN's @JakeTapper to break down the looming trade war. pic.twitter.com/PpCMnJxMNc — State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) February 2, 2025 On NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” newly-confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem assured anchor Kristen Welker that the tariffs would primarily impact Canada, Mexico, and China. DHS Sec. Kristi Noem says Canada, Mexico and China ‘will feel pain’ of tariffs: Full interview https://t.co/MfYqncZKiZ — Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) February 2, 2025 The official X account for CBS’ “Face the Nation” posted the following caption, effectively declaring Trump guilty of setting off an economic chain reaction. “President Trump launched a trade war over the weekend, enacting sweeping tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, with all three countries already vowing to retaliate with countermeasures. ‘We should anticipate there could be a tit-for-tat here, because the orders that the president signed Saturday night give him the authority to keep raising tariffs on the three countries if they respond in kind, and that could contribute to an uptick in inflation,’ @edokeefe reports.” President Trump launched a trade war over the weekend, enacting sweeping tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, with all three countries already vowing to retaliate with countermeasures. "We should anticipate there could be a tit-for-tat here, because the orders that the president… pic.twitter.com/BKhzNLTkPH — Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) February 2, 2025 On ABC’s “This Week,” host George Stephanopoulos spoke with Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. Kristen Hillman, who voiced her disappointment in the newly-enacted tariffs. “This is not something that Canada wants to do,” she said of the tariffs. “We are actually interested in continuing to be your best customer.” Amid the ongoing tariff battle, Canadian Amb. Kirsten Hillman tells American consumers: "This is not something that Canada wants to do … We are actually interested in being and continuing to be your best customer." https://t.co/tg0rfjRdnV pic.twitter.com/UqWxhlaWvg — This Week (@ThisWeekABC) February 2, 2025

If you are not already familiar with an animal called the ermine, then you are in for an absolute treat. Heck, that’s the case even if the ermine is already your favorite animal. This adorable creature comes from the same family as weasels. There are a few differences between a weasel and an ermine, however, including their size and color. Their difference in color is especially highlighted during the winter months. While ermine tend to be a brownish color during spring and summer, they’re totally white when it’s cold. Yes, that is right — their fur can actually change colors! This helps the ermine to better blend into their surroundings. That said, white fur didn’t stop the ermine in the video below from being spotted while they hopped around in the snow! “Found a mountain friend yesterday,” Logan Smith, the person who captured this sweet moment, writes in the caption of his post. The white fur is meant to help the ermine blend into their surroundings. And, for the most part, it gets the job done. That said, it’s pretty funny to see how much it stands out when it hops around like that! If their jumps seem impressive, it’s because they are. In fact, ermine are known for these extra bouncy jumps. This Video of a White Ermine Bouncing in the Snow Will Make You Want One of Your Own When ermine move, they tend to do so in a zigzag manner, leaping up to 20 inches off the ground. For such little guys (they weigh around 0.7 pounds), this is especially impressive! As you’d expect, folks online absolutely adore this cute ermine, with many comparing them to creatures in Pokémon. Though, if you were to capture an ermine, it’s best to either let them live in the wild or to contact wildlife professionals! You can find the source of this story’s featured image here! The post White Ermine Prances Through The Snow In Adorable Footage appeared first on InspireMore.

Things just got a lot worse for New York sports fans

It felt more like 1965 than 2025 for a brief moment last night when the Beatles and The Rolling Stones both won Grammy Awards. And that, for the most part, was the only rock and roll presence at the 2025 Grammys. But once what was the dominant force in music has been long overshadowed by Hip-Hop, Rap, R&B, and even Country. Nonetheless, the 2025 Grammys lit up Los Angeles with a blend of triumph, tribute, and an unwavering spirit of resilience. Against a backdrop of recent wildfires that had rocked the city, the show transformed the traditional awards ceremony into The post Beatles And Rolling Stones Win Grammys At 2025 Awards Show appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

This is Ruth Slenczynska, the 100-year-old, last living pupil of Sergei Rachmaninov who still performs wearing the Fabergé egg necklace the legendary Russian musician gifted her. Despite her age, Ruth continues to play—recently at the Chopin International Festival and Friends at the Polish embassy in New York City in 2021. During COVID-19 lockdowns, she recorded […] The post 100-Year-old Piano Prodigy Is Last Surviving Pupil of Rachmaninov–She Even Dropped an Album at 97 appeared first on Good News Network.

Two years after a train derailment exposed residents of East Palestine, Ohio, to hazardous chemicals, the new leader of the Environmental Protection Agency is making the village his first official visit Monday. Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman from Long Island, won his Senate confirmation vote Wednesday afternoon, spent Thursday and Friday meeting with agency employees, and now heads with Vice President JD Vance to the Ohio community still reeling from the catastrophic train crash on Feb. 3, 2023. Zeldin invited The Daily Signal and a half-dozen other reporters to the EPA’s headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue last week to preview his plans for the agency. It took then-President Joe Biden more than one year to visit the community of East Palestine. Vance and Zeldin will mark the somber anniversary with Ohio leaders Monday. Speaking with Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo, the Ohio-born vice president praised Zeldin. “People would always ask, ‘Is the water clean to drink? Is the air clean to breathe?’ And luckily, we now have a great EPA administrator who I think can answer those questions and fix the problems on the ground,” Vance told Bartiromo. “We’re going to do a little fact-finding, talk to people, and see what’s happening.” East Palestine is just one stop Zeldin is planning to make early in his tenure at EPA. He told The Daily Signal he’ll also soon visit hurricane-damaged North Carolina and fire-ravaged California. The wildfires in Los Angeles have created risks for residents returning to their homes, and Zeldin said the EPA has about 1,000 staff who are on the ground to help, educating individuals about handling everything from batteries to paint. Before hitting the road for Monday’s visit to East Palestine, Zeldin spent his first full day at the EPA with career staff, soliciting their input and listening to their ideas. He said it’s part of his open-door approach to management. “We’ve hit the ground running,” Zeldin said. Like all agencies in the federal government, Zeldin is following through on President Donald Trump’s directive on in-person work. Many government offices resorted to telework during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving buildings empty and raising questions about productivity. “I believe the COVID remote work era is over,” Zeldin said. It’s time to come back into the office and collaborate and to be productive in a way that the American public can be proud of to the max.” Even as he made his way around the EPA building Thursday, Zeldin observed entire areas devoid of workers. “And it wasn’t that I just passed by an office or two. I went through an entire wing where no door was open and no one was inside. I went to other offices where there were lots of people there, working hard,” he recalled. “We’re occupying a beautiful, historic, massive building. And we shouldn’t have hallways that are that are this quiet. The American people pay us to work for them.” Zeldin defended the Office of Personnel Management’s “Fork in the Road” email to federal employees, offering them severance through Sept. 30 if they resigned this month. “If you consider yourself to be the best, brightest talent that the EPA has, then I would encourage you to come help us accomplish our mission,” Zeldin said. “If you feel that your time is best spent no longer working for the federal government, and that your best days are behind you as far as your service with the EPA, that’s a personal choice for them to make.” Picking up on a theme of his predecessor Andrew Wheeler, who served as administrator during Trump’s first term, Zeldin said he would prioritize permitting reform at the EPA. After Trump announced his nomination in November, Zeldin said he received a call from Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., who told him about a European-based business that wanted to relocate to Oklahoma but was hesitant to do so given the bureaucratic process in Washington. “It would be an investment of billions of dollars. The big deterrent for this company is that they would have to spend so much money that would take too many years, with great uncertainty, that even if they went forward with the process, they’re not even sure, at the end of the time and investment that they would even get the permits,” Zeldin said. “There have been a lot of stories like that.” Zeldin said he would also pursue policies to ensure the United States is “the AI capital of the world,” supplying the required energy to make that possible. The post Lee Zeldin Hits the Ground Running at EPA appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In the first week of February, Washington, D.C., will play host to the International Religious Freedom Summit, the largest annual non-profit-led gathering of religious freedom advocates globally. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio should take the opportunity to quickly reorient religious freedom policy so that it is once again an American foreign policy priority. Trump, in his first term, elevated international religious freedom in a way not done since the passage of the seminal International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. His State Department held two International Religious Freedom Ministerials in 2018 and 2019, the largest ever human rights gatherings held in the Washington D.C. neighborhood of Foggy Bottom, and he met directly with survivors of persecution. He established the International Religious Freedom Alliance, bringing together dozens of countries to work together outside of dysfunctional international organizations to advance religious freedom worldwide. And Trump signed the first ever executive order on Advancing International Religious Freedom, to ensure this fundamental right was fully integrated within U.S. foreign policy structures. Rubio, throughout his career, has been one of the strongest advocates in the Senate for international religious freedom. He spearheaded and advanced multiple pieces of legislation that placed real consequences, through sanctions, on China for its genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. And he has stood up to dictatorial regimes across the world, from Nicaragua to Iran, and fought strongly for prisoners of conscience, including those imprisoned for their faith. Rubio did this all with a strong sense of the foundational principles of freedom that America stands on, and has already carried that viewpoint to the State Department, where he has stated that he will ensure all State Department actions stay true to advancing American interests. Protecting religious freedom is surely amongst those interests, not just because it represents our highest ideals against tyrannical regimes, but because authoritarian regimes and terrorist groups attack religious freedom in order to spread their own influence. China and Vietnam, for example, have both focused on engaging in transnational repression in Thailand to force fleeing Uyghur Muslims and ethnic Christians to be sent back to their countries, where they would likely face imprisonment and torture. Terrorists of all stripes have found a new base throughout sub-Saharan Africa, where they destabilize their struggling countries, and murder Christians by the thousands annually, as in Nigeria. Trump and Rubio have especially emphasized a renewed vision of the importance of free speech and opposition to any attempts to censor Americans. But at institutions like the U.N., nefarious regimes have renewed their attacks on free speech under the guise of opposing “religious hatred” or “blasphemy.” The Western world has weakened its ability to defend against these regimes by themselves promoting censorship of so-called “hate-speech,” “misinformation,” and “disinformation.” These global censorship regimes will inevitably have an impact on Americans—and much religious speech—if they aren’t reversed, as social media and other platforms operate globally. Trump and Rubio have already made good use of their first few weeks in office to begin righting the ship against policies that place faddish and dangerous trends like diversity, equity, and inclusion and aggressive censorship above the importance of advancing core American interests and foundational values. They can continue the necessary course correction in a number of ways. First, putting religious freedom at the top of the State Department’s priority list will correct the Joe Biden administration’s repeat deprioritization of international religious freedom in favor of dubious faux “human rights.” In its final year in office, the Biden administration failed to release its designations of the worst countries for religious freedom, even though required by longstanding statute to do so. This failure was unprecedented, following years of problematic decisions, such as keeping Nigeria off the Country of Particular Concern list. Trump and Rubio should immediately fix this problem and make these vital designations. Second, Trump and Rubio can bring real accountability back to foreign aid, having paused foreign assistance programs while they review their effectiveness and alignment with American interests and values. Dozens of U.S. Agency for International Development officials have been placed on administrative leave, after years of complaints that religious freedom issues were being ignored to promote special interests. The House Foreign Affairs Committee has uncovered disturbing evidence of State Department-led grant programming that was designed to promote atheism in Nepal, of all places. In his 2020 International Religious Freedom executive order, Trump called for a minimum of $50 million a year in programming for international religious freedom purposes, but Biden admitted shortly before he left office that his administration had only spent half of what the executive order called for, even though he kept it in place. When the foreign aid pause and review ends, Rubio should ensure that spending is directed back to core international religious freedom priorities and that the wasteful special interest spending is ended. Last, Trump should swiftly name a nominee for ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom. His first appointee, Sam Brownback, the former Kansas governor and senator, transformed and elevated the role. The earlier this appointment is made, the faster and more thoroughly can the refocus of foreign policy on core American values be fully realized. A great part of American strength lies in our foundational values, and religious freedom is at the heart of those values. The protection and promotion of international religious freedom demonstrates to the world what sets America apart from tyrants, dictators, and terrorists, and helps combat the efforts of authoritarians to make our world, and America, less free. It is in the best interest of America and the entire world if Trump and Rubio once again assert international religious freedom as a top foreign policy priority for the United States. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Trump and Rubio Should Come Out Swinging on International Religious Freedom appeared first on The Daily Signal.