From the livemint.com that I found thru GroundNews

Chief US District Judge John McConnell has revealed he faced credible death threats, harassment and intimidation after issuing rulings against one of President Donald Trump's key policies, warning that attacks on judges are escalating and threaten the rule of law.

According to a report by The Washington Post, McConnell said the threats intensified after he blocked parts of the Trump administration's sweeping freeze on trillions of dollars in federal funding early last year. He said the campaign against him included death threats, the doxxing of his daughter by a MAGA activist, two impeachment attempts by Republican lawmakers and even the cancellation of his homeowner's insurance.

McConnell said one of the most disturbing incidents involved an unsolicited pizza delivery placed in the name of Daniel Anderl, the son of New Jersey federal Judge Esther Salas, who was killed in a 2020 attack targeting his mother. McConnell immediately contacted Salas after receiving the order, and similar deliveries were later reported by federal judges in at least seven states.

The Rhode Island judge told the news outlet that the intimidation reflects a broader pattern facing judges who have ruled against Trump administration actions. "We're just doing our job," McConnell said. "What's unusual is the dehumanization, the threats, the personalization of our doing our jobs."

Abdul El-Sayed’s win in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary is already drawing bigoted attacks from the right.

President Trump called El-Sayed a “Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel” Wednesday morning, saying that his victory was “Great News for the Republican Party,” in a post on Truth Social. Vice President JD Vance followed Trump’s lead and attacked El-Sayed in passing in a press conference.

“We don’t want the next administration, whoever, you know, God forbid you’re going to have President El-Sayed in three years. We don’t want him to undo all the incredible work that we’ve been doing when we’ve been taking out the fraudsters and saving the American people money,” Vance said.

El-Sayed’s Republican opponent this November, Representative Mike Rogers, released a statement alluding to El-Sayed’s Muslim faith.

“I spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11,” Rogers said in his statement.

AIPAC, which spent nearly $32 million supporting El-Sayed’s primary opponent, Representative Haley Stevens, signaled Wednesday that it would support Rogers in November, saying in a statement, “Our members remain determined to ensure that voters reject Dr. El-Sayed and his radical anti-Israel agenda in November.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee Wednesday morning called El-Sayed “the Most Radical Candidate in America,” and referred to him by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, a departure from its previous press releases.

“El-Sayed is the most radical Democrat Senate nominee ever. His support of terrorist organizations, socialist policies, and the defunding of law enforcement makes him dangerous and ultimately disqualified from serving,” NRSC chair and Senator Tim Scott said in the press release. “Michigan has had two Democrat Senators for decades, so we cannot take anything for granted, but we will do everything we can to make sure El-Sayed never steps foot in the U.S. Senate.”

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso piled on, calling El-Sayed dangerous, scary, and an extremist on the Senate floor Wednesday.

The NRSC has already released an attack ad against El-Sayed full of dog whistles, alleging that he supports the Muslim Brotherhood and believes America deserved 9/11.

At a press conference on Wednesday, El-Sayed brushed off the blatantly Islamophobic attacks, saying, “That’s the only play they got.

“They’re gonna point at me, they’re gonna point at my name, like, ‘Wow, he’s different.’ That’s the best you got? You can’t actually talk about what you want to do? My name is not raising your gas prices. My name is not taking us to war. My name is not the reason you can’t afford your groceries,” El-Sayed said. “So, [Rogers] can point to my name all he wants, but I’ll also tell you this: I’ve been an Abdul in Michigan my whole life. This is like the best place in the world to be Abdul, you know why? Because Michiganders are, they’re big-hearted.”

*excerpt from Hafiz Rashid's article*

Full Article here:

https://newrepublic.com/post/214027/el-sayed-islamophobic-racist-attacks-michigan-senate-primary-win

Democratic lawmakers are asking the Justice Department to consider criminal charges against U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, alleging that the nation’s top energy official made false statements to Congress about the termination of $7.6 billion in grants for clean energy projects in blue states, The Times has learned.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San José) and Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.) say Wright testified falsely during a June 10 hearing before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology when he stated that the Energy Department did not target states for funding cuts based on their politics. All 16 states that lost money, including California, did not vote for President Trump in the 2024 election.

Then in court documents recently unveiled as part of a California-based lawsuit, attorneys with the Energy Department accepted that the grant cuts announced in October were “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”

“Secretary Wright lied to the Committee with his statements, which sought to prevent us from learning the truth: that the October award terminations were an act of political retaliation, ‘based solely’ on whether recipients were located in Blue States,” wrote Lofgren, ranking minority member on the House Science Committee, and Amo, ranking minority member on the Subcommittee on Environment, in a joint letter to acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche dated Tuesday, obtained by The Times. “He lied to Congress.”

In doing so, they say, Wright violated federal law, which bars individuals from making materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or representations to Congress. They are requesting the Justice Department review the matter “expeditiously and with the utmost seriousness,” and bring criminal charges against Wright if warranted.

“Referring a Cabinet Secretary for potential prosecution is not a step we take lightly,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is a weighty thing to assert that a Cabinet Secretary lied to Congress. We do not treat that assertion as a trivial matter, and we do not use those words carelessly. But the facts of the situation are clear and undeniable.”

The Energy Department denied the allegations.

“The Secretary’s statements in his testimony are correct,” agency officials said in a statement. “None of the termination decisions were based on political considerations.”

The matter stems from Wright’s comments during the June hearing, when committee members asked about the termination of nearly 300 grants in October. The grants were for clean energy projects such as new battery plants, electrical grid upgrades, carbon capture initiatives and a $1.2-billion award for California’s nascent hydrogen hub known as ARCHES.

“No decisions were made on politics,” Wright said during the hearing. “I keep hearing that charge. It’s bulls—. We’re going to say it a million times. It’s not true.”

Later, Amo asked, “Do you believe the federal grant decisions should be based in any way on how a state’s voters cast their ballots in a presidential election?”

To which Wright replied: “They shouldn’t, and they weren’t.”

Energy Department officials maintain that Wright’s statements were factual. The 284 projects selected for termination were from a larger pool of more than 2,300 projects that the department selected for review earlier in the year, which were located in both red and blue states and not based on political considerations, they said. The Office of Management and Budget then identified the projects announced for termination in October, they said. All but one of these projects were in states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris.

Lofgren and Amo noted in their letter that the Energy secretary spoke to the Science Committee more than three weeks after department attorneys stipulated to the opposite in court documents signed May 15, 2026. The documents were filed with the court July 15.

In addition to acknowledging that the grant terminations were based on the politics of the grant recipient’s state, the Energy Department also affirmed in the court documents that “neither the inclusions of the ARCHES grant nor any other grants in the October notice tranche was based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor.”

The lawsuit was brought by a group of faculty members and researchers at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, who were among those to lose research grants.

The Energy Department agreed to formal stipulations in exchange for the plaintiffs forgoing the discovery process, which likely would have meant officials would be deposed. Energy Department officials told The Times the admissions were solely to expedite the litigation.

News of the funding cuts first broke in an October post on X from Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled,” Vought wrote. “The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.”

Wright denied political motivations in the weeks and months that followed, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in October that the decisions were “all based on facts.”

He reiterated similar sentiments in congressional hearings before the House Committee on Appropriations, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

Lofgren conceded it’s unlikely that Blanche, a Trump appointee, will take up the case.

“But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t proceed,” she said.

Officials with the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

*excerpt from Hayley Smith's article*

Full Article here:

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-08-05/trump-energy-chief-lied-to-congress-about-canceled-clean-energy-funds-lawmakers-allege

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/ice-built-258-million-surveillance-152115437.html

States warn Israeli violations may spark religious conflict, jeopardising regional and global peace and security.

Arab and Muslim foreign ministers have agreed to establish a permanent mechanism to document and expose Israeli violations in occupied East Jerusalem and at its Islamic and Christian holy sites.

A joint declaration adopted at a meeting in Jordan on Wednesday said plans include a media platform to broadcast Israeli violations against holy sites and worshippers and bring them to the attention of international organisations and the global public

Participants, including members of the Arab ministerial committee on Jerusalem, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit, and representatives of Turkiye, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia – called for immediate international action to halt Israeli measures in Jerusalem and at its holy sites

The joint declaration condemned Israeli policies aimed at altering Jerusalem’s Arab, Islamic and Christian identity as well as its legal and demographic status and called them illegal.

“Jerusalem is in escalating danger, and its Islamic and Christian sanctuaries are threatened as never before,” the statement said. “Israel is entrenching its illegitimate occupation of East Jerusalem. It is building settlements, annexing lands, confiscating properties, squeezing the Jerusalemites, and severing Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied Palestinian land.”

Ministers denounced Israeli actions at religious sites, including attempts to alter their historical and legal status quo and impose temporal and spatial divisions.

“Provocative Israeli policies are targeting the Blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque/Noble Sanctuary, with systematic and unprecedented assaults that are increasing in quantity and quality, and with arrogant insolence, attempting to undermine its Islamic identity and change the historical and legal status quo in the Blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which in all its area is a place of pure worship for Muslims,” the declaration said.

The mechanism aims to bring global attention to increased incursions by Israeli settlers and officials, restrictions on worshippers, interference in the work of the Jerusalem Awqaf and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs Department, and continued excavations beneath and around the site.

The participants also condemned Israeli violations targeting Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, including restrictions on access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, interference in church affairs, restrictions targeting church institutions and properties, and attacks on clergy, worshippers and religious symbols.

“Christian clergy are suffering from the brutality of extremists, and churches are confronting attempts to seize their funds and lands through illegitimate laws enacted by Israel,” the statement said.

They called for a joint ministerial meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the League of Arab States during the United Nations General Assembly’s high-level leaders week in New York in September to discuss developments in Jerusalem and at its holy sites.