Billionaire Tax Officially Heads to Nov. 3 Ballot

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Billionaire Tax Officially Heads to Nov. 3 Ballot

(, The Center Square) The controversial union-backed billionaire tax in California is officially heading to the Nov. 3 ballot.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced the California Billionaire Tax Act exceeded the number of signatures it needed to qualify for the general election.

The initiative aims to impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on the Golden State’s billionaires to generate $100 billion in revenue. The tax would apply to assets like art, stocks and bonds. That money would be used to help backfill reductions in federal funding to K-12 schools, health services provided by Medi-Cal and aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as CalFresh in California, according to previous reporting by The Center Square.

Representatives from the advocacy group Billionaire Tax Now and the union backing the tax, Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West, did not respond to The Center Square before publication time.

However, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle spoke to The Center Square on Thursday about the tax measure advancing to the midterm election ballot in November.

“If you want a budget deficit in perpetuity, pass this,” Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, told The Center Square. “What happens is, these folks are now going to Florida and everywhere else, and not only are they leaving, but they are the ones investing in a lot of these jobs. Those jobs now are fleeing California, and we’re going to lose them, dramatically, going forward.”

The Golden State’s billionaires will take their billions and create jobs in other parts of the country – not in California, Strickland added.

“The minute this passed, we would be in a budget deficit in perpetuity,” Strickland said. “If you care about funding education, if you care about funding health care, if you care about funding transportation infrastructure, you’ll vote no on this initiative, because we won’t be able to fund essential services in California.”

California’s ongoing budget deficit, which the Legislative Analyst’s Office recently projected would amount to $16.9 billion, is largely due to expenditures exceeding revenues under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s most recent budget proposal. That was in spite of the fact that Newsom attempted to solve the state’s budget deficit through 2028, according to previous reporting by The Center Square.

While some, like Strickland, see the potential passage of the billionaire tax making the state’s budget woes worse, there is still support for the measure.

“I agree with the proposal overall,” Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Pasadena, told The Center Square. “I agree overall with the idea that billionaires and corporations need to pay their fair share. We’ve seen inequality grow in an alarming way, and frankly, I think most Californians are sick of it.”

No one was available from Billionaire Tax Now or Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West to answer questions about the ballot measure’s progress. When asked if anyone was available to answer questions, a representative from Billionaire Tax Now sent a press release via email.

According to previous reporting by The Center Square, even the potential passage of the tax has sent some billionaires packing who previously called California home. Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought a mansion in Florida. Other billionaires also relocated to other states, including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Palantir Technologies and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and venture capitalist David Sacks.

A February 2026 report from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation found that the mere proposal of the wealth tax could be costing the state $1 trillion in revenue with the departure of multiple billionaires already. One economist predicted that passage of the tax could eventually cost the state $25 billion in revenue, The Center Square previously reported.

However, a healthcare worker who advocate for the measure previously told The Center Square that if billionaires leave the state, they are only showing their own greed.

“We need to put humanity first over greed,” Debru Carthan, a radiologic technologist for Kaiser, told The Center Square in March. “This is about being our brothers’ keeper. Those who leave California – they are showing their greed. They’re showing their selfishness. And the very patients who will die are the ones who helped them make the billions that they have now.”

According to Business Insider, there are more than 200 billionaires who live in California.

SUV Gunman Hits 12 People in Drive-By Chicago Shooting

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SUV Gunman Hits 12 People in Drive-By Chicago Shooting

(Headline USA) At least 12 people in a crowd on a Chicago street suffered gunshot wounds after an SUV pulled up and two people inside started shooting, police said.

The SUV drove away from the South Side neighborhood, leaving two people, both male, in critical condition following the shooting late Friday, police said in a news release. One suffered a gunshot wound to the thigh.

The eight men and four women in the group ranged in age from 17 to 47. They were being treated at four hospitals.

Police said another man suffered unknown injuries and refused medical treatment.

Police initially responded to a call of one person shot, and found a woman with two gunshot wounds to her back and a man with four graze wounds to his back. Both were listed in fair condition.

Detectives were investigating.

Further information was not immediately available.

Police reported at least 21 people shot in the city since Friday evening, resulting in four deaths.

The shootings happened on Juneteenth, a holiday that celebrates the end of slavery in the U.S. Earlier Friday, former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama welcomed the first visitors to his presidential center on the South Side.

Pastor Donovan Price, a local advocate for gun crime victims, told CBS News that seeing a mass shooting like this on the holiday is a tragedy.

“It should be celebrating,” he said. “Fireworks should not turn into gunshots.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Muslim Man Charged with Terrorism, Supporting Hamas

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Muslim Man Charged with Terrorism, Supporting Hamas

(Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) Another Muslim man has been charged with terrorism tied to a range of alleged crimes associated with claiming to raise support for charities and instead using the money to fund the Islamic terrorist organization Hamas.

Reda Mazen Rida Sabassi, residing in San Diego, California, appeared before a federal judge in the Southern District of California Wednesday after being arrested the day before. He is charged with terrorism, sanctions-evasion, wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements as part of a scheme to divert funds raised through purported charitable campaigns to Hamas, according to an unsealed complaint. The case is being prosecuted in New York.

“As alleged in the complaint, the defendant exploited the barbaric acts of terror perpetrated on October 7, 2023, to attract donors to his fraudulent ‘humanitarian’ causes,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said. “He allegedly raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through this scheme, which he then funneled to Hamas to help finance that group’s terror and violence and to line his own pockets.”

“From within the United States, Reda Sabassi is alleged to have solicited and diverted funds to the known foreign terrorist organization, Hamas, which committed the brutal October 7, 2023, massacre” in Israel, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York said. “Hamas promotes attacks against the U.S. and has murdered dozens of Americans through acts of terror.” His arrest “demonstrates our whole-of-government commitment to prosecute those who provide financial support to a malign terrorist regime that hates America.”

Sabassi is listed as the chief executive officer, chief financial officer and secretary of Ikram, an Arab Charity Foundation headquartered in Sacramento. The organization was founded in 2022 and listed as a nonprofit corporation with the California Secretary of State’s Office.

His arrest comes as the greatest number of antisemitic incidents occurring in the U.S. are in New York and California, with incidents increasing exponentially after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack against Israel. Last year was the most violent year on record for Jews in the United States, The Center Square reported. Perpetrators cite Hamas as inspiration.

A designated terrorist organization by the Department of State in 1997, Hamas holds a majority in the Palestinian government in Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority, run by the Palestinian Legislative Council, has been controlled by a Hamas majority since 2006.

The PA created a prisoner and martyr fund in support of terrorism. For nearly 30 years, billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money were sent to Gaza and the West Bank under the guise of humanitarian aid but were instead used to support Hamas, a lawsuit filed in Texas two years ago argues, The Center Square reported.

President Donald Trump, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and others have taken measures to prevent U.S. funds from inadvertently supporting Islamic terrorism overseas, as well as strengthening sanctions and punishments for those who support it in the U.S.

Over the last four decades, Hamas has claimed responsibility for numerous large-scale terror attacks resulting in Americans’ deaths. Its stated mission is to create an Islamic Palestinian state by eliminating the state of Israel through violent holy war, or jihad.

Founded in 1987, the preamble of Hamas’ 1988 Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement states, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.’”

Reda Mazen Rida Sabassi has publicly supported Hamas online and has raised money for Hamas using online donation platforms, the charges allege. Examples include him creating an hour-long propaganda video of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, and posting it in several social media posts, according to the charges.

Since at least 2022, he’s also used social media accounts, crowdfunding websites, Ikram and Gaza Now to solicit donations worldwide, including from New York residents and nationwide, the charges allege. Sabassi claimed in fundraising appeals that he was raising money to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians but was “actually raising funds for Hamas,” the charges alleged. He also joked about naming the fundraiser after Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, investigators say.

These online fundraising campaigns brought in roughly $600,000 in a two-month-period in early 2024. He then sent roughly $116,000 to a Hamas member, according to the charges. He also attempted to convert approximately $382,000 of the cash he raised into cryptocurrency to send to Hamas through Gaza Now, according to the charges.

If convicted of all charges he faces up to 85 years in prison.

The case is the latest among others where crypo is being used to fund terrorism. Last year in the District of Columbia, two major terrorism cases involve charges brought against alleged funding of Hamas. In one case, cryptocurrency valued at roughly $200,000 was seized after authorities learned its intended purpose was to support Hamas.

The funds were traced from fundraising addresses purportedly controlled by Hamas to launder more than $1.5 million in virtual currency, authorities allege. Seized accounts were registered in the names of Palestinians living in Turkey and elsewhere, the DOJ said.

In another case, roughly $2 million in digital currency was seized allegedly connected to a Gaza-based money transfer business involved in financially supporting Hamas.

Ship’s Chief Engineer Charged in 2024 Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse in Baltimore

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Ship’s Chief Engineer Charged in 2024 Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse in Baltimore

(Headline USA) Prosecutors have filed a criminal charge against the chief engineer of a cargo ship involved in the deadly 2024 collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, accusing him of failing to notify the U.S. Coast Guard of hazardous conditions on the ship.

Karthikeyan Deenadayalan was charged in U.S. District Court in Maryland on Monday with one count of violating the federal Port and Waterways Safety Act. Deenadayalan’s attorneys did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Prosecutors also filed notice of a “deferred prosecution agreement” with the court, but did not provide details about the terms of that deal. Deferred prosecution agreements are typically used when a defendant has agreed to meet certain conditions — such as providing testimony, or paying restitution — in exchange for the charges against them being dropped.

Prosecutors say in court documents that Deenadayalan was the chief engineer of the container ship when it was in the Port of Baltimore in the days before the deadly bridge collision, and that Deenadayalan willfully failed to notify the U.S. Coast Guard that an improper fuel pump without a backup system was being used to power two of the ship’s generators.

The Dali, bound for Sri Lanka, lost power twice in a four-minute span as it moved to sea from the Port of Baltimore, causing it to crash into the Key Bridge in the early hours of March 26, 2024. Investigators say a loose wire in a switchboard likely caused the first power loss that led to its steering failure.

But after regaining power, the ship found itself in trouble again, prosecutors say, because the fuel pump used on the two generators was not designed to automatically restart after the first blackout. That caused a second blackout to occur, and the vessel crashed into a supporting column of the bridge, killing six construction workers who had been filling potholes on the structure. The toll bridge first opened in 1977 and is traveled by millions of cars every year.

The Singapore-based ship operator and another employee were indicted on criminal charges in May, accused of relying on the improper pump and then lying about it to investigators. Synergy Marine Pte Ltd. and Chennai, India-based Synergy Maritime Pte Ltd. and the ship’s former technical superintendent Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair, 47, are charged with conspiracy, misconduct causing death, failing to immediately inform the U.S. Coast Guard of a hazardous condition, obstructing the National Transportation Safety Board and making false statements.

A trial in the case against the ship’s operator and the technical superintendent has been scheduled for October 2027.

After the indictment, Synergy Marine expressed disappointment and accused the U.S. Justice Department of turning an accident into a crime. Nair’s lawyer, David Gerger, had a similar response, saying in May that his client “thinks about this accident every day, but he certainly did not cause it.”

In April, a $2.25 billion settlement was announced between the state of Maryland, Synergy Marine and Grace Ocean Private Limited, the Singapore-based ship owner. Grace Ocean hasn’t been charged with any crimes related to the collapse.

Earlier this month, a federal judge agreed to postpone a civil trial over the collapse after a flurry of last-minute settlements resolved most of the remaining claims, including deals resolving all pending claims over the deaths of six construction workers.

Virtually all of the unresolved claims are alleging economic losses by businesses and local governments. None of the remaining parties were asking to start the trial as scheduled this week.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press. 

Judge Denies Biden’s Bid to Block Release of Transcripts Linked to Special Counsel Inquiry

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Judge Denies Biden’s Bid to Block Release of Transcripts Linked to Special Counsel Inquiry

(Headline USA) A federal judge on Friday rejected former President Joe Biden’s attempt to block the Trump administration from releasing to a conservative group the recordings that Biden made with a ghostwriter.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich found that the public interest in the material outweighed whatever privacy rights Biden had.

The recordings were obtained by special counsel Robert Hur in the course of his investigation into whether Biden improperly retained classified documents while a senator and vice president. Republicans in Congress demanded them after Hur declined to file charges against the then-president.

Biden’s Democratic administration refused to turn over the 2017 recordings and transcripts, leading congressional Republicans to hold his attorney general, Merrick Garland, in contempt.

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice authorized the release of the materials. That led Biden last month to sue to seek to block the release to a staffer at the conservative Heritage Foundation who had formally requested the records.

Biden objected to the release as an invasion of privacy, saying the recordings included him discussing sensitive personal matters such as the death of his older son, Beau Biden. But Friedrich found that the administration redacted that material.

The judge wrote that the materials “contain no mention of highly sensitive topics like illness or death, nor do they mention any non-public persons, including members of Biden’s family.”

Representatives for Biden did not immediately comment but asked Friedrich to bar release of the material while they appeal her decision. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Friedrich was nominated by Trump, a Republican, in 2017.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press. 

Report: Secret Service Funds Redirected to Pay for White House Ballroom

Ken Silva
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Report: Secret Service Funds Redirected to Pay for White House Ballroom

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The Secret Service received $1.17 billion last year to hire more agents and improve its security, but about $352 million of that amount is being redirected to pay for the White House ballroom construction project, according to the Washington Post.

“The administration’s budget office on Friday disclosed in a public database that it was redirecting $340.8 million and $10.8 million in Secret Service money for “White House Security Measures,” the Post reported Thursday.

A White House spokesman reportedly justified the transfer on the grounds that the ballroom will make President Donald Trump and future presidents safer.

“The East Wing Modernization Project is inextricably tied to the security of the President, the White House grounds and the certain security infrastructure assets,” spokesman Davis R. Ingle reportedly wrote in a statement. Trump has previously said that the military is building a “massive complex” underneath the property.

The $1.17 billion Secret Service budget increase came from the “Big, Beautiful Bill” passed by Congress last year.

In January, the Post reported that the service aims to expand its special agent ranks from about 3,500 to about 5,000, hire hundreds of officers to its uniformed division, and add “additional support staff.”

Such a plan would increase the size of the agency by about 20% and bring it to more than 10,000 employees for the first time in its history.

However, it’s unclear how the budget transfer will now affect the Secret Service’s hiring plans. The agency didn’t respond to requests for comment from the Post.

The Post, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the July 2024 Trump shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, ran a retrospective on New Year’s Eve 2024 that pointed the finger at bureaucratic and resourcing problems for the Secret Service’s failures.

According to that Post article, the Secret Service had a goal in 2021 to increase its workforce from 7,896 that year to 9,595 in 2025. But as of 2024, the agency’s staff had actually shrunk to roughly 7,700 due to high attrition rates. And while its budget ballooned from $2.3 billion in 2017 to $3.1 billion in 2024, so too did its responsibilities. The Post reported at the time that there was a “30 percent increase in security details” during that same time—though it didn’t explain how that increase translated in terms of costs.

“Since 2015, agents with more than a decade on the job have resigned at alarming rates rather than stay until their 20-year retirement mark,” the newspaper continued. “In 2015, veteran agents with 11 to 15 years of experience made up nearly one-third of the Secret Service agent workforce … They now make up just 8 percent.”

Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

MAGA Influencer Civil War Erupts Over Foreign Cash

Jose Nino
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MAGA Influencer Civil War Erupts Over Foreign Cash

(José Niño, Headline USA) A bitter feud has erupted among the social media personalities who helped propel Donald Trump back to power, with former allies now trading accusations about who is secretly taking money from foreign governments, according to the Daily Mail’s investigation.

The group of content creators that once operated as a unified force promoting Trump’s agenda has splintered into rival camps drowning in mutual suspicion. Insiders told the Daily Mail that prominent figures openly wonder whether their counterparts post authentic opinions or purchased propaganda.

West Wing officials have taken notice and quietly compiled a list of the most troubling offenders.

“I just have utter contempt for them, there’s a whole group of them, they share business, they refer each other, they inflate their connections, and they travel in packs,” a source close to the White House told the Daily Mail. “Some have made it their entire identity.”

Red flags went up inside the administration when several high profile accounts immediately savaged Trump after his May announcement about a possible Iran peace agreement, even though specifics remained undisclosed. Parallel suspicious campaigns emerged targeting the president’s tariff policies toward India and his effort to ban soda purchases through food stamps.

Sources identified CJ Pearson, Rob Smith, Arynne Wexler, Emily Wilson, and Students for Trump co-founder Ryan Fournier as names appearing on the White House’s negative list.

Brad Parscale, the digital operative credited with engineering Trump’s 2016 victory, sits at the hub of this paid influence network. Federal documents reveal his company secured $15 million from Havas Media Network, a firm contracted by the Israeli government. Those same records indicate Parscale could receive another $4.5 million each month through October, bringing the total haul to $46.5 million.

Alex Bruesewitz, a White House communications figure, issued a public warning to influencers that their activities were being monitored. “We are aware of multiple foreign influencer campaigns and are actively tracking both the intermediary companies receiving these funds as pass-throughs and the influencers who are failing to disclose their compensation,” he wrote.

Conservative activist Laura Loomer rejected insinuations that she accepts foreign payments. “How does supporting Israel, like being in support of Israel’s right to defend itself, make me a foreign agent? I don’t take money from foreign governments,” she told the Daily Mail.

Government transparency filings exposed that Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs earmarked up to $900,000 for communications outfit Bridges Partners to execute the “Esther Project,” an initiative designed to spread pro-Israel messaging. While recruiting firms must register with federal authorities, the actual influencers receiving payments remain anonymous.

“You’re not getting a check directly from Qatar or the state of Israel, but through intermediaries that give you plausible deniability,” one influencer acknowledged.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla. confirmed the foreign influence findings and pledged to file legislation mandating greater transparency for paid online advocacy.

Bruesewitz insisted his concerns apply universally. “If Qatar is doing it I want it to stop, if Israel is doing it I want it to stop, if India, Russia, China is doing it, I want it to stop, that’s my position.”

José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino 

Registered Israeli Agent Controls Charlie Kirk’s Media Network

Jose Nino
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Registered Israeli Agent Controls Charlie Kirk’s Media Network

(José Niño, Headline USA) The media operation built by Charlie Kirk and his organization Turning Point USA now operates under Israeli directed control, The Grayzone reported Thursday.

A federally registered agent of Israel charged with spreading Zionist messaging through American media now handles distribution of The Charlie Kirk Show. Brad Parscale, who served as chief of staff for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, secured a $46 million yearly contract with the Israeli government for this purpose. The Grayzone characterizes this arrangement as possibly the largest lobbying deal in the history of foreign influence campaigns targeting America.

Utah man Tyler Robinson is accused of shooting Kirk on Sept. 10 at Utah Valley State University during the opening stop of his American Comeback Tour. 

Just eight days afterward, Parscale filed paperwork registering as a foreign agent of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, taking charge of a propaganda campaign “tailored to Gen Z audiences across platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, and other relevant digital and broadcast outlets.”

This arrangement brought The Charlie Kirk Show, distributed through Salem Media Network since 2020, under an Israeli foreign agent’s supervision. Parscale became Salem’s Chief Strategy Officer, and the contract stipulates that Parscale’s Clock Tower would “integrate its pro-Israel messaging into Salem Media Network properties.”

Erika Kirk, who assumed the TPUSA CEO position after her husband’s death, claims she and Charlie were always Israel supporters. She has declined to say how her late husband would have viewed the Iran conflict.

“My husband isn’t here to say whether or not we should be at war with Iran,” Erika Kirk stated at a May 2026 TPUSA gathering. “I would love for him to be here right now and tell us if we should or should not.”

Yet Kirk made his stance abundantly clear before his assassination. During one of numerous outbursts against military action on Iran, he called Senator Lindsey Graham and fellow war proponents “pathologically insane,” cautioning that regime change conflict inevitably “creates a quagmire. And then there is civil war.”

Andrew Kolvet, the longtime TPUSA communications director who took over hosting The Charlie Kirk Show, tried to dismiss allegations of Israeli ties by claiming the program airs through Steve Bannon’s Real America’s Voice instead of Salem. But Kolvet himself publicly expressed gratitude to Salem Media for maintaining distribution following Kirk’s death, and the show still appears on the Salem Podcast Network website.

After Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., queried Grok about whether a registered Israeli foreign agent distributes The Charlie Kirk Show, the AI system confirmed “Yes, there’s a substantive connection here worth noting,” adding that “the distributor (Salem Media) has direct high-level overlap and active collaboration with a registered Israeli foreign agent.”

José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino 

 

Tulsi Gabbard Dumps Fauci Docs on Her Last Day as Nat’l Intelligence Director

Ken Silva
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Tulsi Gabbard Dumps Fauci Docs on Her Last Day as Nat’l Intelligence Director

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) On the eve of her last day as National Intelligence Director, Tulsi Gabbard released a trove of documents detailing former COVID czar Anthony Fauci’s efforts to suppress the theory that coronavirus originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.

“These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research,” Gabbard, who is leaving office because her husband has cancer, said in a press release Thursday night.

The records include a long-buried May 2020 report from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which determined that there was an equal chance that COVID-19 emerged from a lab as there was that it came from nature. Despite that report and others, the Fauci-led medical regime engaged in a censorship campaign against anyone who pushed the lab-leak theory for roughly the next four years.

The records also included emails in which Fauci recommended a number of his own friends and colleagues to participate in a study ordered by then-President Joe Biden about the origins of COVID. As has been widely documented, the CIA was initially going to side with those agencies. But after Fauci influenced the agency, the CIA decided to stay neutral. So when Biden was briefed on the matter in August 2021, no proponents of the lab leak theory were present.

Gabbard’s document dump sparked renewed calls online for Fauci’s prosecution. Fauci received a pardon from Biden via the autopen, but officials such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., argue that the DOJ should charge him anyway to test whether the pardon is valid.

One of Fauci’s former aides, David Morens, has been indicted over the matter. According to the DOJ, Morens and other co-conspirators purposely used private email to avoid public disclosure obligations that come with government communications.

Friday’s disclosure also follows Gabbard releasing documents last week that detail the U.S. funding dangerous biolabs throughout the world, including over 40 in war-torn Ukraine.

The records include a map of Ukraine that shows the location of various U.S.-funded biolabs. Some of them are in territory now occupied by Russia. The ODNI said they could “be at risk of compromise due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.”

They also include the initials “BW”—seemingly a reference to bioweapons. One record says that biolabs in Ukraine were used to work on potential bioweapons and disease-causing pathogens such as anthrax, tularemia, tuberculosis, Swine Fever, New Castles Disease, MERS, SARS, Marburg, Ebola, Lassa, the Plague, and Rickettsia.

Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

Whistleblower Who Exposed Kids Being Sent to MS-13 Sues Gov’t

Ken Silva
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Whistleblower Who Exposed Kids Being Sent to MS-13 Sues Gov’t

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The whistleblower who exposed the Biden administration for allowing migrant children to be sent to MS-13 gang affiliates has sued the Department of Health and Human Services for reneging on a settlement they allegedly agreed to earlier this year.

HHS whistleblower Tara Rodas said in her lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in federal court, that she first reported unaccompanied migrant children being sent to MS-13-affiliated sponsors in September 2021. Within 20 days, she was removed from her job.

Rodas would go on to testify to Congress and provide records to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that supported her allegations.

According to the records, which were released by Grassley in 2024, in September 2021 the HHS sent one female unaccompanied minor to a sponsor who had a romantic partnership with an MS-13 gang member. Then, the HHS also sent the same sponsor’s unaccompanied minor son to the same household.

“The boy’s father was an official member of the MS-13 gang and had received a lengthy prison sentence for gang-related crimes,” Grassley said in a press release.

According to the records and whistleblower testimony, HHS again rejected staff members’ concerns when transferring both minors to the MS-13 home. The records also show that immigration case managers felt intimidated when processing the MS-13-connected migrants.

In January, Rodas began negotiating with the Trump administration to settle claims of whistleblower retaliation. According to her lawsuit, the parties struck an agreement by Jan. 20.

“Then, three months later after long delay and repeated representations that they were working on the written settlement agreement memorializing the terms, HHS took it back,” her lawsuit says.

“On March 5, 2026, to Ms. Rodas’ surprise, HHS informed Ms. Rodas that the material terms previously agreed upon during mediation were ‘off the table’ and that HHS intended to propose materially different settlement terms.”

Rodas seeks a court order enforcing the original terms of her settlement agreement, as well as legal fees and other costs associated with her lawsuit.

“This is a case about what happens when a federal employee tells the truth about children in danger—and the government spends years making her regret it,” she said.

The HHS has yet to respond to her complaint, which was first reported by Court Watch.

Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

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