Ultra-Orthodox (Haredim) parties have threatened to bolt the Netanyahu coalition over the lack of a draft exemption law for Israel’s Haredi community. According to Israel’s Channel 13, Huckabee is working to help resolve the coalition crisis and has held recent conversations with Haredi politicians.
The report said that during those conversations, Huckabee told them that “government stability is important for addressing the Iranian issue.”
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid responded to the report, saying it would amount to interference in Israel’s internal politics if it were true.
“Since I have no doubt that Ambassador Huckabee respects Israel’s independence and its democracy, I hope and believe that the report that he is interfering in Israel’s internal politics and trying to help Netanyahu [deal with] the ultra-Orthodox in the military draft law crisis are not true. Israel is not a protectorate,” Lapid wrote on X.
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Alleged would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh’s rifle misfired when tested by his defense team last month, the Justice Department confirmed Monday.
According to a DOJ court filing, Routh’s proposed defense expert Michael McClay—a former National Guard pilot and Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy who now works for American Airlines—test-fired his rifle on May 13. When he did so, the rifle was able to fire the first round—but would not feed the subsequent rounds into its chamber, according to McClay’s report.
“As the bolt went forward to cycle the second round from the magazine, the cartridge misfed and jammed at the throat of the chamber. McClay verbally announced a misfeed, rendered the rifle safe, and confirmed the misfeed with the FBI Agent,” a report from Routh’s defense team states.
“McClay then removed the magazine and the misfired cartridge from the rifle. … McClay retrieved two new rounds to repeat the process. The same action occurred with the firing of the first cartridge and the same type of misfeed on the second cartridge.”
🚨NEW: Court filings confirm that alleged would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh's rifle indeed MISFIRED when tested. The rifle worked for the first round, but didn't feed the next round into the chamber. The rifle was tested by Routh's proposed expert witness: Michael McClay, a… https://t.co/ClIhj3aDrPpic.twitter.com/XzI7ZkuDOz
The defense’s findings contradict an FBI lab report, which said the rifle “functioned normally” when tested last September. The defense previously noted that the FBI disassembled the rifle before they could examine it—with agents having removed the scope, which appears to have been fastened by electrical tape.
However, while the rifle may have misfired after its first shot, the DOJ says that’s irrelevant to the charges Routh is facing: attempted assassination, possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number, and assault on a Secret Service agent. The DOJ is seeking to exclude McClay’s analysis from being presented to a jury.
“What possible relevance could McClay’s testimony about his test-fire have other than to suggest improperly that Routh might not have been able to succeed in killing President Trump if he had required a second shot to do so?” the DOJ said in its Monday filing.
“We have now moved past the idea that the gun would not have fired at all – so we are well and truly beyond any good faith connection between the rifle’s operability and Routh’s intent,” the DOJ added.
“Testimony casting doubt on the ability of the rifle to fire multiple rounds has no relevance legally to our charges, which of course do not require any degree of firearm operability at all, or the firing of a gun. It is quite frankly hard to conceive how this testimony could aid Routh in any way.”
Routh’s lawyers have yet to respond to the DOJ’s motion to exclude McClay’s findings. Routh is still scheduled to stand trial in September.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) While accounting rules are intended to foster transparency and facilitate accurate financial reporting, they can also mask the true financial state of an organization.
Today, a commonly used accounting trick could be obscuring risks in the U.S. banking system by papering over the significant devaluation of commercial bank bond portfolios.
When a company buys bonds such as U.S. Treasuries, it has the option of classifying them as “hold to maturity” (HTM). In principle, this signals an intention to hold such bonds until they mature. They are recorded on the balance sheet at their original cost. If the market price for the bonds rises or falls, unrealized losses or gains are not recorded on income statements.
If the company wants to retain the option of selling the bonds before they mature, they’re supposed to categorize them as “available-for-sale” (AFS). These are recorded on the balance sheet at their current fair value, with unrealized gains and losses reflected in the income statement.
This accounting sleight of hand enables banks to mask massive potential losses that are lurking on their balance sheets.
I’ll use a $100 bond as an example.
If the bond is available for sale (AFS), it would be recorded on the balance sheet in year one as a $100 asset. If the market value of the bond fell to 90 dollars the following year, it would be recorded at that price on the balance sheet with a corresponding $10 unrealized loss on the income statement for that year.
But if the bond is marked HTM, it would remain a $100 asset on the balance sheet in year two despite the dip in market value. The company is only required to include information about the change in fair market value in the footnotes to their financial statements, and there would be no entry on the company’s income statement for that year.
The Fed’s Books Reflected Staggering Unrealized Losses
As Treasury prices dropped and yields rose (bond prices are inversely correlated with yields) after the Federal Reserve hiked rates to battle price inflation, many banks used HTM accounting to mask the significant devaluation of their bond portfolios.
For instance, the Fed recently reported $1 trillion in unrealized losses on its security holdings last year. That was an increase from the $948.4 billion in paper losses reported in 2023.
As an article published by Yahoo Finance pointed out, this doesn’t have any practical impact on the operation of the central bank, because it will almost certainly hold its securities until they mature, meaning it will never realize these significant losses.
“These paper losses do not affect monetary policy operations and are not an issue of note given that the Fed holds its bonds to maturity.”
However, many commercial banks are in the same position, and their declining bond values could potentially impact their operation.
Accounting Tricks and the Silicon Valley Bank Failure
While a bank may initially have every intention of holding certain bonds to maturity, they have no way of knowing whether or not it may need to liquidate some or all of its portfolio to cover unforeseen operating costs.
Companies are allowed to change the accounting basis from HTM to AFS to liquidate the securities. In other words, unlike the Fed, commercial banks could potentially realize their unrealized losses. Marking bonds “hold-to-maturity” on their balance sheets masks this potentially significant risk.
Unrealized losses turning into realized losses is exactly what did in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) back in 2023.
Things started to unravel when Silicon Valley Bank sold a large portion of its bond portfolio to raise cash… at a $1.8 billion loss. At the time, SVB CEO Greg Becke said the bank made the sale “because we expect continued higher interest rates, pressured public and private markets, and elevated cash burn levels from our clients.”
The bank bought the bonds when interest rates were low. As a result, the bank’s $21 billion available-for-sale bond portfolio was not yielding above cash burn. Meanwhile, rising interest rates caused the value of the portfolio to fall significantly. The plan was to sell the longer-term, lower-interest-rate bonds and reinvest the money into shorter-duration bonds with a higher yield. Instead, the sale dented the bank’s balance sheet and caused worried depositors to pull funds out of the bank in what amounted to a good old-fashioned bank run.
Signature Bank and First Republic Bank failed for similar reasons. The Federal Reserve was forced to set up a bank bailout program in order to protect other banks from a similar fate.
Before it decided to sell its devalued bonds, SVB had substantial unrealized losses on its HTM portfolio, as did Signature and First Republic. Had these unrealized losses been reported, observers might have realized the banks were in trouble earlier.
As the CPA Journal explained, “Factoring in the increases in unrealized losses from 2021 and 2022 into these entities’ income statements would have material negative effects on inferred earnings per share (EPS).”
The CPA Journal went on to assert that “shortcomings” in the HTM accounting method “may have, in hindsight, obscured the risks these banks faced in the prevailing interest rate environment.”
The Problem Hasn’t Gone Away
Fast-forward to today. Many banks remain burdened by significant unrealized losses. Whether they’re being accurately reflected in the accounting remains a significant question.
Unrealized losses are a ticking time bomb underneath U.S. commercial banks. As of December 31, 2024, there were roughly $482 billion in unrealized losses across both AFS and HTM bond portfolios. However, much of this is hidden on individual bank income statements because they have marked their bonds “hold-to-maturity.”
This isn’t really a problem – until it is. If banks face any kind of sudden stress, they could be forced to begin liquidating these undervalued bonds, sparking more bank failures. And as we saw in 2023, a banking crisis can happen suddenly and unexpectedly.
Florida Atlantic University finance professor Rebel Cole recently warned about this ticking time bomb.
“All it takes is one bad news story about any of these banks, and we could have another banking crisis like we had in March of 2023. I’m amazed we haven’t had one since then.”
To put it bluntly, HTM facilitates financial window dressing and deception. That means the U.S. banking system may be facing far more risk than most people realize.
Mike Maharrey is a journalist and market analyst for Money Metals with over a decade of experience in precious metals. He holds a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a BA in journalism from the University of South Florida.
(Headline USA) The House Homeland Security Committee’s chairman, Republican Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, announced Monday that he will retire from Congress once the House votes again on the sprawling tax and budget policy bill backed by President Donald Trump.
In a statement, Green said he was offered a private sector opportunity that was “that was too exciting to pass up” so he informed House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday of his retirement plans. The move comes more than a year after Green announced he wouldn’t run again in 2024, but changed his mind when fellow Republicans implored him to stick around.
Green voted for Trump’s sweeping legislation when it passed the House last month. The bill is now in the Senate’s hands, and would need to return to the House for agreement on any changes. Trump wants the bill on his desk for his signature by July 4.
Green’s delayed departure could help with the GOP’s narrow margins in the House. Republican leaders need every vote they can get on their big tax bill, which they managed to pass last month by a single vote and will have to pass again once changes are made in the Senate. They now have a 220-212 majority.
“It was the honor of a lifetime to represent the people of Tennessee in Congress,” Green said. “They asked me to deliver on the conservative values and principles we all hold dear, and I did my level best to do so.”
Green’s seat will be decided in a special election. The timing will depend on when he leaves office.
Ahead of his 2024 reelection, Green had announced that February 2024 he would not run again. The decision was revealed a day after the impeachment of then-President Joe Biden’s Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
But many fellow Republicans had called on him to reconsider, and he jumped back into the running just two weeks later.
He was unopposed in the Republican primary and then defeated Democrat Megan Barry — the former Nashville mayor who resigned in 2018 in scandal — by more than 21 percentage points in November 2024.
Green, 60, has served since 2019 in the 7th Congressional District, which was redrawn in 2022 to include a significant portion of Nashville. The city was carved up three ways in the 2022 redistricting so Republicans could flip a Democratic district in Congress that had covered Music City, which they successfully did.
Green previously served as an Army surgeon and in the state Senate and is from Montgomery County.
Green flirted running for governor in 2017, but suspended his campaign after he was nominated by former President Donald Trump to become the Army secretary. He later withdrew his nomination due to criticism over his remarks about Muslims and LGBTQ+ Americans.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg pushed a conspiracy theory about the public feud between President Donald Trump and tech mogul Elon Musk.
On Monday’s episode of The View, Goldberg claimed—without evidence—that the public fight was a scheme to distract Americans from other issues.
“I love that you all brought into it. I do believe it’s fake,” Goldberg claimed during a segment about the feud, which began after Musk criticized Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
“You do?” co-host Sunny Hostin asked, taken aback.
“Yes, I do! Yes, I do!” Goldberg replied. “It’s too strategic. I just feel like, oh yeah, now suddenly everybody’s upset about stuff. I’m sorry, no! This is another distraction to keep us talking not about the stuff we’re talking about, but the stuff they want us to do.”
Goldberg said she could not believe the feud was real “because they lie,” though she offered no evidence.
Goldberg suggested the feud was meant to distract from the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national known as the “Maryland man,” who was deported over suspected MS-13 ties but later ordered back by a federal judge in Maryland.
Garcia had entered the U.S. illegally around 2011 and unsuccessfully applied for asylum later, far past the one-year deadline required, which prompted his request to be denied.
An immigration judge granted Garcia withholding of removal in 2019, a form of protection that blocked his deportation and allowed him to remain and work temporarily in the U.S.
In March 2025, ICE detained Garcia near an Ikea in Maryland’s College Park neighborhood. He was deported to El Salvador shortly thereafter.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Garcia was inadmissible to the U.S. given his alleged affiliation with MS-13, a designated foreign terrorist organization.
In a nonsensical remark, Goldberg appeared to address Garcia’s return:
“They brought a man back. They brought a man back. At first, look at his hands — we got these gang signs. Now he’s been running people out of the country. He’s been, you know, trafficking people. It’s like, okay, what else? Bring me more. Because I don’t believe anything they say anymore. They have shown themselves not to be the most trustworthy people you want.”
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A Minnesota lawmaker’s shocking admission that she is an “illegal” alien has sparked questions about possible voter fraud and other immigration-related offenses.
During a special legislative session to codify MinnesotaCare for illegal aliens, Democrat state Rep. Kaohly Vang Her admitted her family “broke the law” to enter the U.S. — and that she is here illegally.
“I am illegal in this country,” she said. “My family broke the law to come here. I never knew that. I just learned that. My family was just smarter in how we illegally came here.”
🚨 BREAKING: A Minnesota State Representative just admitted to being an illegal immigrant on the MN House Floor just now.
She admitted that her family used what appeared to be falsified immigration documents to gain entry.
The Democratic lawmaker claimed her father, a former U.S. Consulate worker, falsely listed her grandmother as the mother of an uncle who worked at USAID.
At the time, refugee status was only granted to children of USAID or CIA employees. Her said that misrepresentation allowed the family to gain entry.
It remains unclear whether she has since become a U.S. citizen.
Minnesota law bars foreign nationals, even green-card holders, from serving in elected office such as the State Legislature where Her currently sits.
Potentially troubling are Her’s social media posts in which she admits to voting in several U.S. elections, despite her own admission of being in the country illegally.
“Voted early today w/ my parents,” Her said weeks before the 2024 general election, alongside family photos. “It’s our first time together. The journey they traveled & the hardships they persevered through is why I have the freedom to be a part of this great democracy.”
Headline USA can also confirm that Her confessed that she voted in Minnesota’s 2021 and 2023 local elections, and again in the 2022 primary and midterms.
The lawmaker’s office did not respond to requests for comment from Patchand Fox News.
In her Monday remarks Her did not clarify whether she has since naturalized or secured legal status.
The Democrat’s campaign biography says she was born in Laos and entered the U.S. as a refugee at age 4.
HOLY CRAP
Minnesota State Rep who admitted to being an illegal alien, VOTED in our elections.
(Headline USA) A California union leader has been charged with conspiring to impede an officer during a demonstration over President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, authorities said Monday.
David Huerta, 58, is being held in federal custody in downtown Los Angeles and is expected to attend a bond hearing later Monday, federal prosecutors said.
Huerta is president of Service Employees International Union California, which represents thousands of janitors, security officers and other workers in the state.
Federal agents were executing a lawful judicial warrant at a LA worksite this morning when David Huerta deliberately obstructed their access by blocking their vehicle. He was arrested for interfering with federal officers and will face arraignment in federal court on Monday. Let… pic.twitter.com/GIFD34LIcF
— U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) June 7, 2025
The SEIU held a large rally in downtown Los Angeles Monday in support of Huerta and to stand up for his right to observe and document law enforcement activity. Union leaders from across the state led the crowd in chants of “Free Huerta now!”
Demonstrations were also planned in at least a dozen cities, from Boston to Denver.
The union has been a strong Democratic supporter, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and California’s two Democratic senators wrote a letter to federal officials demanding answers regarding Huerta’s arrest. California Sen. Adam Schiff was at the court ahead of Huerta’s hearing.
Huerta was arrested Friday when law enforcement officers were executing a federal search warrant at a Los Angeles business suspected of hiring illegal immigrants and falsifying employment papers, a special agent for Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in a court filing.
A crowd of people including Huerta gathered outside the business yelling at the officers. Huerta sat down in front of a vehicular gate and encouraged others to walk in circles to try to prevent law enforcement from going in or out, the agent wrote, adding it was clear “he and the others had planned in advance of arrival to disrupt the operation.”
A law enforcement officer approached Huerta and told him to leave, then put his hands on Huerta to move him out of the way of a vehicle, the agent wrote. Huerta pushed back and the officer pushed Huerta to the ground and arrested him, according to the filing.
“Let me be clear: I don’t care who you are—if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted,” Bill Essayli, U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, said in a post on X. “No one has the right to assault, obstruct, or interfere with federal authorities carrying out their duties.”
Messages left for Huerta’s attorney, Marilyn Bednarski, have not been returned.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) An appeals court reversed a lower court’s temporary injunction that had forced President Donald Trump to include the Associated Press in restricted White House spaces, including the Oval Office.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 on Friday that Trump retains full discretion over which news organizations enter those privileged areas.
“We grant in part the government’s motion for a stay pending appeal,” Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao wrote, as quoted by ABC News. “The White House is likely to succeed on the merits because these restricted presidential spaces are not First Amendment fora opened for private speech and discussion.”
They affirmed that the White House has “discretion to determine, including on the basis of viewpoint, which journalists will be admitted.”
Trump asked the appeals court to freeze the lower-court order forcing AP into the so-called press pool—a once-coveted group of privileged reporters—and the panel agreed.
Without the stay, the judges warned, “the government will suffer irreparable harm because the injunction impinges on the president’s independence and control over this private workspaces.”
The White House took control of the pool to admit outlets previously banned or blocked by the Biden administration and the White House Correspondents’ Association.
In February, Trump expelled the AP from the pool after the outlet refused to update its Stylebook to reflect his renaming of the “Gulf of Mexico” to the Gulf of America.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt hailed the decision on X:
VICTORY!
As we’ve said all along, the Associated Press is not guaranteed special access to cover President Trump in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and in other sensitive locations.
(José Niño, Headline USA) In the latest twist of the Jeffrey Epstein saga, lawyer Alan Dershowitz is urging the Trump administration to consider a pardon or commutation for his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, arguing she has become a scapegoat in the wake of Epstein’s death.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for her role in recruiting and trafficking underage girls for Epstein.
Speaking to the Daily Mail earlier this month, Dershowitz argued that Maxwell’s sentence was “way, way, way in excess of anything she was alleged to have done,” and described her as “in part a victim of Epstein.” He claimed that Epstein’s death had made Maxwell a primary target for prosecutors, leading to what he considers an unjustly harsh punishment.
Maxwell’s conviction in late 2021 followed a high-profile trial in New York, where she was found guilty of five out of six counts related to her involvement in Epstein’s abuse network. Prosecutors portrayed her as a key enabler, but Dershowitz has consistently maintained that she did not receive a fair trial and that the media and public have unfairly scapegoated her in the absence of Epstein himself.
Dershowitz’s advocacy is not new; he previously lobbied Trump for a pre-emptive pardon during the final days of his first administration, though no such action was taken.
Headline USA has previously reported on Dershowitz’s questionable connections to Epstein.
On one occasion he stated that he kept his underwear on during a massage from one of Epstein’s purported sex slaves, described as an older Russian woman named “Olga.”
On top of that, reporter Nick Bryant reportedly uncovered that Dershowitz falsely stated he had never flown on Epstein’s jet without his wife.
“I put a number of Epstein’s flight logs and Black Book on the internet. Epstein’s flight logs show that Dershowitz accompanied Epstein on a December 1997 flight from Palm Beach to New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, and they were accompanied by one unidentified ‘female,’ as well as a ‘Hazel,’ a ‘Claire,’ and Maxwell,” Bryant wrote in a hard-hitting July 2022 piece where he explored Dershowitz’s connections to Epstein.
“A 2005 flight log shows Epstein and Dershowitz traveling from Massachusetts to Montreal with a ‘Tatianna,’ et al. Dershowitz’s wife is noticeably absent on those flights and others.”
According to Bryant, Dershowitz played a key role in securing Epstein’s 2008 plea deal, which resulted in just 13 months in county jail, despite the Justice Department having identified 32 victims. A subsequent DOJ report concluded that former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta showed “poor judgment” in his handling of the case while serving as a top federal prosecutor in Florida.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
