David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement

In a fiery declaration, President Donald Trump announced he is designating Antifa a terrorist organization. Some experts say he lacks the authority to do so and will struggle to enforce such a move, while others warn it could give him sweeping license to target groups or individuals he disfavors.

“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday evening. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

As many have noted, Antifa is not an organized group. It simply means “anti-fascist,” or “anti-fascism.”

But Trump has taken the step anyway. Here’s what some experts say.

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BBC News reports that some legal experts have called into question Trump’s legal authority to declare Antifa a terrorist organization.

“The existing rules do allow the government, specifically the State Department, to make a list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ which makes it a crime to give funds or other ‘material support’ to those groups.”

“But the key word here is ‘foreign,'” BBC notes, “and those experts we have spoken to pointed out that free speech rights under the US constitution’s first amendment would limit Trump’s ability to ban – or restrict funding for – domestic movements like antifa.”

Rumen Cholakov, an expert in US constitutional law at King’s College London, “told us that if the government were to use its powers against them in the US their actions would be ‘potentially susceptible to constitutional challenges’ in court for violating these rights.”

Professor David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University, told BBC Verify, “Under the First Amendment, no one can be punished for joining a group or giving money to a group.”

Meanwhile, other experts have also weighed in.

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Attorney and MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski observed, “Since Antifa is now designed as a terrorist organization it will be interesting to see how they determine who is a member and how they prove it is an organization.”

Politico senior legal affairs correspondent Kyle Cheney noted, “Trump says he’s designating ‘antifa’ a terrorist group and launching a probe into finding of antifa activities. The FBI has long said antifa doesn’t really have a centralized structure or leadership.”

U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), an attorney, told CNN Wednesday night that “there is no Antifa organization.”

He added, “the point” is that Trump is “using the Charlie Kirk murder as a pretext to go after people that he disagrees with. He, on the very night of Kirk’s murder, you will remember, accused the left of committing the murder — when the murderer had not even been caught or identified. This is all a pretext, and it’s a shame, I think … that Charlie Kirk actually stood for free speech. And instead, they’re using his memory to attack free speech.”

Political scholar Dr. Michael Mackey issued this warning: “‘Antifa’ is an artifact of Russian information warfare and the Kremlin-sponsored MAGA cult. No such entity exists in American civil society. Trump is owned by Putin.”

Intelligence and foreign policy analyst Malcolm Nance, a terrorism expert, said, “You cannot designate an idea as a terrorist group.There is no organization called ANTIFA. There is no leadership or funding path. There is no membership.”

“What he is doing is setting the stage to designate ANY American as a terrorist,” Nance alleged. “That’s Fascism.”

CBS News national security coordinating producer Jim LaPorta, an award-winning journalist, wrote: “It’s unclear how Pres. Trump could designate a group inside the U.S. as a domestic terrorist group. The U.S. does not have a federal crime of domestic terrorism. Additionally, it’s been understood that the Govt. would run into 1st and 4th Amendment issues.”

But those hurdles aside, experts are still issuing warnings.

Olga Lautman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), an expert on Russia, and creator and co-host of the Kremlin File podcast series, expressed concern.

“So Trump is designating Antifa as a terrorist organization,” she wrote. “Problem is he thinks all Democrats are this so called antifa. He is following Russia’s playbook step by step to crush opposition. Hope everyone wakes up.”

On Substack, Lautman expanded her warning.

She pointed to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s remarks on Monday, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Calling the “radical left” a “vast domestic terror movement,” Miller said: “With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people.”

“It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name,” he vowed.

“Where have I heard this before?” Lautman said of Miller’s statement. “In Russia, where the Kremlin seizes upon every terrorist attack, bombing, protest, or act of violence (some of which they carry out in false flag operations) to justify new crackdowns, laws, and the systematic destruction of any semblance of independent opposition.”

Lautman continued her stark warning, writing, “what makes the current moment in America so perilous is how closely it now echoes this Soviet/Russian script, with the killing of Charlie Kirk already being transformed from an individual crime into the cornerstone of a supposed vast conspiracy of leftist violence — again, without evidence — a pretext for sweeping crackdowns that will not stop at violent actors but extend to protesters, grassroots organizers, and the infrastructure that sustains them.”

“Groups like Indivisible and MoveOn, platforms like ActBlue, that fund Democratic candidates,” she predicted, “will all be recast as pipelines of extremism, stripped of their democratic role.”

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A House Democratic lawmaker blasted the right’s narrative that extremist violence comes largely — or exclusively — from the left, a claim contradicted by evidence, including a Justice Department study recently scrubbed from its website. The motive and political ideology of the shooter remain largely unknown.

President Donald Trump has been leading the charge on the right in suggesting that left-wing violence is prevalent.

“For years,” Trump said in an address from the Oval Office the night of Charlie Kirk’s killing, “those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans, like Charlie, to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

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White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller on Monday declared there is “a vast domestic terror movement,” CNBC reported, noting that he was specifically “speaking of left-wing political organizations.”

“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” Miller also said. “It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday declared, “Yes, who killed Charlie [Kirk]? Left-wing radicals. And they will be held accountable.”

U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz on Wednesday tore into House Republicans.

“I want to caution my colleagues on, you know, one-sided violence in this country,” the Florida Democrat began.

“We just heard that there were no riots on the right. We’re literally sitting in the building where there was a giant riot by supporters of the president, the right,” he said, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, which many have deemed an insurrection.

“We also heard that only leftists have said that Trump is a ‘Nazi.’ In 2016, the current Vice President of the United States said, ‘Trump is either a cynical a– or he’s America’s Hitler’.”

READ MORE: Navarro Demands Left Face ‘Accountability’ for MAGA’s Own Misdeeds—and Kirk Assassination

Moskowitz lamented having to “say this garbage. But you want me to sit here and get painted with one brush—the whole left. No, no, there are extremes on the left, and there are extremes on the right. And we collectively should tackle that.”

“But to come here and just look at us and say, ‘we all support what’s going on in the extremes,’ is why we can’t solve anything in this building.”

On Wednesday, NBC News reported that Miller’s “suggestion that a secret network of violent left-wing extremists was behind the killing” of Charlie Kirk, “stands in contrast to the evidence that law enforcement officials presented on Tuesday in Utah, where Kirk was fatally shot. There was no indication presented Tuesday that the suspect, Tyler Robinson, was a member of a group or that he fell under the sway of a particular leader. The investigation is ongoing.”

On Monday, as The New York Times reported, President Trump, “who has downplayed violence from right-wing or other supporters, said that he would like to designate a range of groups, including the loosely affiliated group of far-left anti-fascism activists, known as ‘antifa,’ as domestic terrorists and bring racketeering cases against people funding protests.”

The Times added that “other officials, from Vice President JD Vance on down, made it clear on Monday that they believed that political violence was a liberal problem and not a conservative one,” and announced “that they would be cracking down on what they called leftist nongovernmental organizations, and that they would use every available lever of the federal government to do so.”

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Senior Trump White House Counselor Peter Navarro is raging at “they” — seemingly Democrats and the left — for consequences he and fellow MAGA allies have brought on themselves, including prison time. And he appeared to blame the left for the assassination of Charlie Kirk as well.

In a Fox Business interview, Navarro, who has promoted conspiracy theories, highlighted on Tuesday his prison sentence and that of Steve Bannon, both for contempt of Congress. Both were sentenced to several months in prison.

But Navarro’s long litany of complaints went further. He blasted the disbarment recommendation of coup memo author John Eastman, and that of Jeff Clark—who reportedly “tried to help Trump subvert the 2020 election.”

He also suggested that “they” attempted to “bankrupt” former Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.

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And he appeared to blame the assassination of conservative commentator and activist Charlie Kirk on the left.

“As you know, ‘I Went to Prison, So You Won’t Have To’— it’s the book I wrote, and it’s just a warning,” Navarro told host Maria Bartiromo.

“Everybody involved in my imprisonment was a Democrat,” Navarro alleged, claiming he was a “political prisoner.”

“I’ll tell you this, this is the age of accountability, okay?” he declared. “If we don’t hold these people accountable, they’ll do it again.”

Navarro said that his book is “a warning to everybody in America that if they didn’t come for me and Donald Trump, put the Bannon in prison, bankrupt Rudy Giuliani, take away the law cards of Jeff Clark and John Eastman and kill, kill, kill Charlie Kirk, and try to kill President Trump — twice.”

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“There has to be accountability, ’cause they’re just gonna keep doing it,” Navarro declared, not specifying who “they” are, while having talked about Democrats.

Bartiromo chimed in, saying, “I mean, the level, the level that they have stooped to is so extraordinary, and it’s unbelievable. I mean, truly is unbelievable.”

She also did not explain who “they” are.

Navarro is also one of many on the right who appear to be placing blame on the left, as an entity, for the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

The Trump administration, and especially the president, has directly or indirectly blamed the “radical left” for the assassination of Charlie Kirk, even as the suspected shooter’s motives and political beliefs, if any, remain unclear.

“For years,” Trump said in an address from the Oval Office the night of Kirk’s killing, “those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans, like Charlie, to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

Vice President JD Vance echoed Trump’s remarks on Monday, saying, “We have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years, and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday declared, “Yes, who killed Charlie [Kirk]?” Left wing radicals. And they will be held accountable.”

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A prominent Democratic congressman is threatening to vote to shut down the federal government in response to President Donald Trump’s threat to target a journalist over a question about hate speech.

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl asked the president about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s claim that she will target those who engage in hate speech, which is largely constitutionally protected. Trump suggested the administration could go after the reporter.

“We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart,” the president told Karl.

The federal government is again poised to shut down unless Speaker of the House Mike Johnson can pass legislation to fund the government. The bill, a 91-page continuing resolution, was published Tuesday afternoon. It pushes a shutdown deadline from Oct. 1 to Nov. 21.

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According to Politico, the bill would “provide $30 million for lawmaker security and a total of $58 million in security assistance the White House requested for the Supreme Court and executive branch.”

“While GOP leaders plan to call a floor vote later this week, it’s still unclear whether Democrats will vote in support of the bill, with President Donald Trump calling on congressional Republicans to stiff-arm the minority party in government funding negotiations.”

In response to Trump’s comment, U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell asked, “How can we fund this? I am being asked this week to fund a government that locks up a reporter Trump doesn’t like. This isn’t a close call folks.”

The Trump administration has not yet actually locked up a reporter because the president does not like them, but critics, including California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, appeared to suggest that was the implied threat that Trump was making.

“Donald Trump says he will send the DOJ after the press if they say things he doesn’t like,” Newsom declared.

CNN chief political analyst David Axelrod asked, “So is the AG going to go after journalists who displease the @POTUS?”

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Parents who homeschool their children are the largest demographic to delay or reject childhood vaccinations, followed by parents who are white and very religious, according to a new Washington Post-KFF poll. One in six parents now reject the vaccination schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The poll — the most detailed recent look at the childhood vaccination practices and opinions of American parents — shows that 1 in 6 parents have delayed or skipped some vaccines for their children, excluding for coronavirus or flu,” according to The Washington Post. For those two diseases , the compliance rate is far less.

Only about two out of five (41%) of parents vaccinated their children for flu last year. 52 percent did not. And just about 13 percent of children who were eligible received the coronavirus vaccine last year.

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Ninety-five percent of a community needs to be vaccinated for herd immunity to take over, but less than that — just 92.5% — of children have received the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR).

Nearly half (46%) of homeschooling parents skipped or delayed any number of vaccines, the study shows, placing them at the top of the list of those most likely to delay or not vaccinate. That same group of parents was most likely (33%) to delay or skip the MMR or polio vaccine.

White, very religious parents closely followed in both categories. 36% delayed or skipped any number of vaccines, and 23% of them delayed or skipped the MMR vaccine.

Republican parents were the next most likely group: 22% for any vaccine, and 12% for MMR. (12% of white parents also delayed or skipped the MMR vaccine for their children.)

READ MORE: Death Penalty to Prayer: Nancy Mace’s Shifting Positions on Kirk’s Alleged Killer

“Democrats and Asian parents are some of the least likely to skip or delay any vaccine for their children besides coronavirus or flu, with 8 percent and 5 percent doing so, respectively,” the Post noted.

Among parents who delay or skip vaccines, the overriding reasons include concerns about side effects (67%), lack of trust in vaccine safety (53%), disagreement with necessity of recommended vaccinations (51%), not wanting multiple shots at once (42%), and a belief they can keep their children healthy in other ways (34%).

With anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now at the helm of the CDC, “at least 4 in 10 parents say they don’t know enough to say whether” his claims about vaccines causing autism or chronic disease are true or false.

“More than half of Republican parents (54 percent) and 36 percent of parents overall say they trust Kennedy to provide reliable information about vaccines, and of those, 22 percent skipped or delayed a vaccine for their child. Several interviewed by The Post said they felt he was giving them a voice.”

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Over the course of two days, U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) has taken starkly shifting positions on the alleged assassin of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk—repeatedly blaming Democrats, calling for the death penalty, then urging prayer for the suspect to find Jesus Christ.

When news broke on Wednesday that Kirk—who had a large following on the right, and was close with President Donald Trump and his family—had been shot and had died, Mace declared, “They killed Charlie Kirk.” She did not specify who she thought “they” were.

Two hours later, Mace wrote, “It’s time to bring back the death penalty.” By late Thursday morning, she charged, “The Left owns what happened yesterday.”

She also posted a video of herself from Wednesday, before Kirk had been pronounced dead, saying she was “devastated.”

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Using a slur for transgender people, she said that Kirk, when he was shot, was talking about mass violence.

“I hope that every single Democrat across the country will stand up and acknowledge that they have a problem within their party,” she urged. “So when are my colleagues on the left side of the aisle, the Democrats, going to own the violence that’s happening in this country against Republicans and against conservatives?”

“It’s only going to get better if Democrats step up to the plate and take responsibility for what’s happening in this country—the threats that are happening—and come together.”

“Democrats own this. Democrats own this,” she said. “Democrats own this 100%.”

Less than two hours after that post, echoing her earlier claim, she added: “Let me say this as nice as I can: DEMOCRATS OWN THIS.”

On Thursday, responding to now-retracted reports that the alleged shooter might have been transgender or pro-transgender, Mace posted video of her telling reporters, “Enough is enough.”

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Again using a slur for transgender people, she said it “sounds like” the shooter was transgender or pro-transgender.

“The left, the Democrat Party, has allowed this stuff to happen,” she also charged.

Late Friday morning, Mace posted an image of the alleged assassin, about whom little was known, and wrote: “Bring back the death penalty.”

Also on Friday, amid reports that the alleged shooter, identified as Tyler Robinson, had turned himself in to law enforcement, Congresswoman Mace wrote: “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ. We will try to do the same.”

Less than one hour later, she added, “We truly believe if Tyler Robinson had ever sat down across from Charlie, the great debater, the man of faith and grace he was, Tyler wouldn’t have pulled the trigger.”

Friday afternoon, she concluded, “Some crimes are so evil, the only just punishment is the death penalty.”

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Eric Trump railed against “radical left lunatics” in a tirade of grievances—parroting the same rhetoric his father used in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk—as he hawked his new memoir, “Under Siege.”

“As to what the radical left lunatics were trying to do to our family, what the movement that we created, and it’s a movement of good. It’s exactly what Charlie epitomized,” the president’s son declared to podcaster Benny Johnson.

“You know, we’re all watching, and we see exactly what happened to Charlie,” he explained.

“That is us being under siege,” he told Johnson. “That is our party, that is our movement.”

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“That is God being under siege,” he declared. “That’s our Constitution being under siege. That’s our American flag being under siege. That’s our family unit in this country being under siege. That’s our democracy being under siege. Everything that we love, everything that we fought for.”

“It’s every one of those college kids that’s indoctrinated,” he complained. “It’s all of them being under siege. It’s a revisionist history that they teach in our schools.”

Trump said he will donate part of the proceeds of the book to Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, “because here’s what you and I and all the other people can never allow happen: We cannot allow his mission, you know, to ever die, it won’t.”

He also claimed that “the bullets are only going one way,” suggesting that the left, not the right, is responsible for violence.

Trump went on to describe where he was when his father’s attempted assassination took place in Butler, Pennsylvania. He also invoked the 2017 shooting of Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, and “what almost happened to [Brett] Kavanaugh. And then we see what happens to Charlie Kirk.”

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“I mean, the bullets are only flying one way, and yet I get to hear the nonsense, and I get to watch all these networks every night,” he said.

“I mean, how is it that you know, the decorum is only going one way in this country, and yet we’re the ones that are labeled as the ‘fascist’? Isn’t that kind of ironic?”

“You know, hey, the Republicans in this country are generally the ones that have the guns. We’re the ones that believe in the Second Amendment. You know, they’re not doing this shooting.”

On Friday morning, in a social media post with a photo of his book, Trump wrote, “Like all of you, I have been deeply impacted by Charlie’s life. His story is not over. This movement is not over, and there is still so much more to be done. In honor of Charlie’s life and his incredible legacy, I will be donating a portion of the proceeds from Under Siege to Turning Point USA to continue their amazing work.”

Pointing to that post, The Daily Beast wrote that Trump was using Kirk’s death “to sell his book.”

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President Donald Trump has declared inflation “solved” as Americans are paying more for everyday goods like gas and groceries.

“I’ve already solved inflation,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Friday morning. “Costs are down.”

Inflation is now the highest it’s been since January, according to CNBC.

“Look at the energy costs,” he added. “You’re gonna have $2 gasoline pretty soon.”

The national average price of gas as of Friday is $3.19, according to AAA. Nationwide, prices are as high as $4.65 and as low as $2.71.

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The president went on to boast, “I’ve solved just about every problem.”

But statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor show Americans are paying more—in some cases far more—at the pump and at the checkout line.

“Inflation inched higher last month as Americans closed out the summer paying more for both groceries and gasoline,” NPR reported on Thursday. “Consumer prices in August were up 2.9% from a year ago, according to a report Thursday from the Labor Department. That’s a sharper annual increase than the previous month, when inflation was clocked at 2.7%.”

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed to lower prices “on day one.”

Yet, due in part to his sweeping tariffs, “Virtually all major grocery categories are now more expensive than they were a year ago, some substantially so,” according to Axios. “This was the biggest month-over-month increase since August 2022, the tail end of a year of huge monthly increases in grocery prices.”

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The price of coffee is up nearly 21%, the price of uncooked beef steaks is up nearly 17%, apples are up nearly 10%, and bananas are up almost 7%.

Overall, the cost of groceries in August was up 0.6% over July’s prices, and the price of gas jumped 1.9% in just one month, according to NPR.

READ MORE: ‘Fascist Playbook’: Trump Blasted for ‘Gas on the Fire’ Kirk Assassination Address

House and Senate Republicans are lashing out at Democrats en masse, blaming them for rhetoric they say led to Wednesday’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

U.S. Rep. Bob Onder (R-MO), in a speech Thursday on the floor of the House of Representatives, attacked the left, charging that even those who are “well-meaning” abide by an ideology of “hate” that mirrors communist authoritarians and revolutionaries.

“Well, everything has changed,” Onder claimed. “If we didn’t know it already, there is no longer any middle ground.”

“Some on the American left are undoubtedly well-meaning people. But their ideology is pure evil,” he charged. “They hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful, and embrace the evil, the false and the ugly.”

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“And they literally will kill those with whom they disagree just as their predecessor leftists—Marx, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Pol Pot, and Fidel Castro, did. “We must know that.”

Onder is not the only GOP lawmaker on Capitol Hill attacking the left in the wake of Kirk’s killing, despite the killer having not yet been identified or captured.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) told Newsmax on Thursday morning that “what we are finding is that when you do have those strong conservative voices speaking truth to power you will find that when the left can no longer debate it, they can’t deny the truth, the only way they can silence those voices is through violence.”

U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) went even further, vowing to use “Congressional authority” to “cancel” anyone who “belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk.”

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“I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination,” he wrote.

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) declared on Wednesday that “Democrats own what happened today.”

“Some raging leftist lunatic put a bullet through his neck,” she declared.

As of now, there is no suspect in custody, and the FBI has announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to a suspect’s arrest.

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Two former top Trump officials from his first administration sounded the alarm after Russia attacked Poland Tuesday night, as several critics assailed the President for years of insisting Putin would never have dared attack Ukraine if he were in office.

Russia launched more than a dozen drones into Poland, which “prompted NATO forces to launch warplanes overnight,” according to The New York Times.

But NATO reportedly did so without help from the U.S.

“It’s notable that the NATO response to Russia’s drone incursion across the border into Poland makes no mention of US military assistance to defend Poland,” reported Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte “mentions Polish F16s, Dutch F35s, Italian AWACS, and German Patriots. Russia’s testing of NATO airspace to test NATO’s response comes just days after the Pentagon informed NATO Allies bordering Russia that the US will halt training and security funding to them.”

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The attack occurred as Trump dined at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab in D.C., with his Secretary of State and his Secretary of Defense. He was besieged by protestors caught on camera (video below).

Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton slammed President Putin and invoked Trump’s Alaska Summit as well.

“Putin has acted like he has a free hand since the Alaska summit,” Bolton wrote on Wednesday. “He’s ignored any further conversation on a ceasefire, the Russian military is expanding its operations, and he’s received the political support of his friends Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, and Kim Jong Un.”

Political science professor Maria Popova responded: “American weakness always fuels russian aggression.”

Former Trump Vice President Mike Pence urged U.S. action.

“As Russian drones violate Polish and NATO airspace and Russia continues to escalate it’s brutal attacks on civilian populations across Ukraine, it’s time for renewed military support for Ukraine and allies in Eastern Europe and harsh new sanctions on Russia. Peace comes through strength,” Pence wrote.

His remarks also came days after the Pentagon announced it will no longer be supporting programs that help America’s European allies stave off attacks from Russia, as The New York Times reported last week.

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Meanwhile, critics blasted Trump for what they see as weakness and a lack of action.

Alexander Vindman, a former Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC), wrote: “Trump right now getting ready with: if I were president Russia never would have attacked Poland/NATO. @realDonaldTrump‘s weakness has been encouraging Russian aggression.”

Attorney George Conway, a well-known Trump critic, wrote: “None of this would have happened on any day if virtually anyone other than Donald Trump were president.”

Russian expert Julia Davis, a Daily Beast columnist, responded: “It will get worse,” to which Conway agreed.

So far, Trump has said nothing on his Truth Social account about Russia attacking Poland, but the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, wrote: “We stand by our @NATO Allies in the face of these airspace violations and will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being criticized and mocked for his latest take on mass shootings, suggesting that video games and psychiatric medicines could be to blame, despite numerous studies that largely show otherwise.

The secretary, an attorney with no medical training who is widely regarded as a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist, appeared to dismiss existing research on the potential effects of video games and psychiatric medications—studies that have found no link to mass shooting violence.

“Oh, there are many, many things that happened in the 1990s that could explain these” mass shootings, Kennedy claimed.

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“One is the dependence on the psychiatric drugs, which is in our country, is unlike any other country in the world,” he alleged. Studies have shown that most teenage mass shooters had not been prescribed psychiatric drugs.

Kennedy also said that “there could be connections with video games, with social media, a number of things, and we are looking at that at NIH.”

Video games, however, have been found not to have a causal effect on mass shootings.

Brady, the nonprofit working to prevent gun violence, responded to Kennedy, writing: “Access to guns is the problem. Not mental illness. Not SSRIs. Not video games. Not transgender communities. These are hateful and dangerously misguided distractions from the only real solution: gun reform.”

Kennedy, in his remarks, noted that “Switzerland has a comparable number of guns as we do, and the last mass shooting they had was 23 years ago. We’re having mass shootings every 23 hours.”

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Kennedy’s claim about Switzerland’s gun ownership is questionable, but reports have shown that a large number of Swiss residents rely on guns for hunting, sport, and prior military service.

He also declared that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now conducting studies “to look at the correlation and the connection, potential connection between over medicating our kids and this violence.”

Critics jumped on Kennedy’s remarks.

Journalist Jane Coaston mocked the Secretary, writing, “finally, we’re back at ‘video games did it,’ I love the 90s.”

“I am 28 years old,” wrote journalist Matthew Cardenas, “and have played games like Call of Duty, Halo and Gears of War since I was a teenager. Not once have the video games motivated me to commit a mass shooting. This is such a lazy argument.”

“This is no different than asking a random person why shootings occur,” observed Robert E. Kelly, a professor of political science. “He’s obviously not read any work on the issue. He’s just grasping Trump’s refusal to choose people w/ topical expertise is maddening.”

Former defense journalist Kevin Baron blasted Kennedy, urging him to “just Google it.”

See the video and social media post below or at this link.

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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed President Donald Trump’s controversial remarks about domestic violence, saying that domestic violence crimes are not crimes but “made-up” statistics to undermine his work.

Leavitt was asked, “What crimes was the president referring to?” when Trump said: “If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say, ‘This was a crime,’ see?”

She responded that the President “wasn’t referring to crimes.”

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“That’s exactly the point he was making,” she continued, “but the president is saying, and that is that these crimes will be made up and reported as a crime to undermine the great work that the federal task force is doing to reduce crime in Washington, D.C.”

“I think the president has every reason to believe that, given the efforts of many reporters in this room, who actively seek to undermine the president and what he’s doing in our nation’s capital,” Leavitt claimed.

“We all know that deep inside, you all agree with this,” she added, apparently referring to federal troops occupying Washington, D.C., "because you all live here, and I’m sure you are very grateful for the administration’s efforts to make the city, which we all reside in, much safer for ourselves and our families.”

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Trump’s full remarks included this statement:

“Things that take place in the home, they call crime, you know, they’ll do anything they can to find something,” he said on Monday at a meeting of his Religious Liberty Commission. “If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say, ‘This was a crime,’ see?”

Calling Trump’s comment “alarming,” HuffPost on Tuesday reported that Trump was “suggesting that officials in the city were unfairly manipulating crime statistics to make him look bad.”

On Monday, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, now a professor of law and MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst, responded to the President’s comment:

“Domestic abuse is a crime. Marital assault and marital rape are both criminal conduct and anyone who commits them should be prosecuted. Full stop.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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Texas has just moved to make it easier for parents to exempt their children from school vaccination requirements — just weeks after the worst measles outbreak in a generation ended.

762 people contracted measles over the summer. Two unvaccinated children died, and 100 people had to be hospitalized, according to PBS News.

“West Texas was the nation’s measles epicenter for months. The virus started spreading there in close-knit, undervaccinated Mennonite communities in Gaines County,” PBS reported. The outbreak was declared over in mid-August.

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This week, the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) began allowing parents to download a form to request that their children be exempt from any or all required vaccines. Previously, parents had to request the form, which was then mailed to them, according to The Texas Tribune.

Calling this new system “empowering,” Rebecca Hardy, executive director of Texans for Vaccine Choice, said: “The previous mailed, hard-copy process for requesting vaccine exemption affidavits was outdated, costly to taxpayers, raised privacy and tracking concerns, and created unnecessary barriers for families seeking to exercise their rights.”

DSHS also published a form telling parents the benefits and risks of immunization, but the form is not attached to the exemption request form.

Requests for exemption forms have risen dramatically.

“Since 2018, the requests to the Texas Department of State Health Services for a vaccine exemption form have doubled from 45,900 to more than 93,000 in 2024,” the Tribue reported. “Even before the new form became easier to access, the state received 17,197 requests for a vaccine exemption form in July, 36% higher than the number reported in July 2023.”

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Texas has more kindergarteners unvaccinated for measles than any other state in the nation, and falls below the 95% immunization rate required to achieve herd immunity.

In what is being called a “public health disaster,” Florida is now in the process of banning all vaccine mandates for children.

It’s not just Texas and Florida.

On Thursday, CNN reported that support for childhood vaccines being mandatory has plunged from 81% in 1991 to just 51% in 2024.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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