Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Wednesday, April 02, 2025

The last of the four American soldiers missing in Lithuania since last week was on Tuesday also found dead, the US Army said, without providing additional details. The three other soldiers were found dead on Monday after rescuers recovered their armoured vehicle from a swamp. Lithuanian authorities received a report last Tuesday that the soldiers went missing during a military drill at a training ground in the eastern city of Pabrade, near the border with Belarus. "The fourth US Army Soldier assigned to 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division was found deceased near Pabrade, Lithuania the afternoon of April 1," US Army Europe and Africa's public affairs office said in a statement. "The Soldier's identity is being withheld pending confirmation of notification of next of kin," it added.


HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (TNND) -- A sheriff's office in Texas is mourning the loss of four current and former deputies who died by suicide in just six weeks, according to officials. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez announced on March 19 that a Harris County Sheriff's Office (HCSO) retiree, later identified as William Bozeman, had "died from an apparent suicide," marking "three for us within the span of a week." Read more


United States Senator Cory Booker has broken the record for the longest speech in US Senate history with a marathon address railing against President Donald Trump. Booker, a Democratic senator for New Jersey, entered the annals of history on Tuesday after holding the Senate floor for more than 25 hours, shattering the previous record set by the late segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond. Read more


Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned there would be "catastrophic" consequences if the United States attacks Iran's nuclear infrastructure after a threat by President Donald Trump. Newsweek has reached out to the U.S. State Department and Iran's foreign ministry for comment.


A New Jersey state trooper faces multiple charges after allegedly shooting and killing his dog, fleeing his home, vandalizing a stop sign, and assaulting a local police officer. Authorities arrested Alexander Lark in Wayne Township. He is charged with aggravated assault, resisting arrest, criminal mischief, and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose. He also faces a municipal violation for discharging a firearm. Animal cruelty charges are pending. An affidavit of probable cause states that Lark appeared to be under the influence of an unidentified substance. An indictment is merely an accusation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Read more


Musk visited CIA HQ for talks on government efficiency. This is the first time Musk has visited the CIA since the establishment of DOGE. Unlike other government departments, DOGE isn't going to get unlimited access to CIA databases or internal systems because most of it is top secret. CIA has an internal DOGE team that was formed after Trump's executive order which includes CIA career officials. CIA officials didn't give Musk an intelligence briefing, but discussed with him "how the CIA is unique" in comparison to other government agencies. Musk visited NSA HQ a few weeks ago, where I'm sure they held their noses too. Read more


USSECDEF Pete Hellsbreath issued a secret memo outlining US military priorities which comes straight from the conservative Heritage Foundation, including some passages that are nearly word-for-word duplications of text published by the think tank in 2024. The memo outlines Trumpf's vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the US from threats in the "near abroad," which may include Greenland and the Panama Canal. Iran is mentioned several times as a powerful adversary. The author of the Heritage Foundation blueprint now works at the Pentagon. Archived: archive.ph Read more


Tuesday, April 01, 2025

Unprecedented turnout led to ballot shortages in Wisconsin's largest city Tuesday as voters cast ballots in "historic" numbers to decide a Supreme Court race pitting one candidate backed by President Donald Trump against another aligned with Democrats. The race for control of the court, which became a proxy battle for the nation's political fights, broke records for spending and was poised to be the highest-turnout Wisconsin Supreme Court election ever. Republicans including Trump and the world's wealthiest person, Elon Musk, lined up behind Brad Schimel, a former state attorney general. Democrats including former President Barack Obama and billionaire megadonor George Soros backed Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge who led legal fights to protect union power, abortion rights and to oppose voter ID.


China hawks in the United States have made what amounted to a Faustian pact with President Donald Trump. Anxious that Beijing's power was surpassing Washington's and critical of Democrats such as former President Joe Biden for failing to turn it back, Trump seemed to be the best option for a more robust approach to China.


Then new owners jacked up the rent by 365%. Residents of senior living facilities typically expect to live out their remaining years when they buy into a community. But a new dynamic in the industry is altering the deals these residents agreed to.


ormer first son Hunter Biden has agreed to give up his law license in Washington, D.C., according to an affidavit that was unsealed by the Board on Professional Responsibility on Tuesday. Biden's law license in D.C. was suspended last June after he was convicted of three felonies in Delaware, but he was pardoned for all crimes in December. The former first son has been an attorney in Washington, D.C., since 2007.


Newsmax stock (NMAX) soared as high as 173% Tuesday, extending its massive 735% gain on Monday following the conservative cable news outlet's IPO.


The world's billionaires have always been rich and powerful"but never more than now. That's particularly true in the United States, where Donald Trump was sworn in (again) as America's billionaire-in-chief in January. This time around, he's giving the billionaire class more control over the government than ever before. His right-hand man is the planet's richest person. His administration includes at least ten billionaires and billionaire spouses. And scores of billionaire execs"from Meta's Mark Zuckerberg to French luxury goods kingpin Bernard Arnault"have lined up behind Trump. The billionaire bonanza extends beyond the U.S., however. A record 3,028 people around the globe make Forbes' annual World's Billionaires list this year, 247 more than last year. It's the first time the billionaire population has crossed the 3,000 mark. Read more


A former North Dakota lawmaker was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. Ray Holmberg, 81, was a Grand Forks state senator for 45 years, and received a sentence that is longer than federal sentencing guidelines. U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland characterized Holmberg's conduct as "egregious and despicable" and said he didn't think the guideline sentence of more than three years was adequate. "From my perspective, this was not an isolated case and this is not a victimless crime," Hovland said. "It displays a pattern of very vile, sickening criminal behavior." Prosecutors allege Holmberg traveled to Prague in the Czech Republic 14 times between 2011 and 2021 to pay for sex with boys.
Holmberg, a Republican who held the powerful positions of Senate Appropriations Committee chair and head of Legislative Management, resigned from the Legislature in 2022.


A shooting involving a bus driver and passengers on a Miami-Dade Transit bus left two men dead early Sunday in a suburb north of Miami. "Preliminary investigation revealed the operator from the bus got into a verbal dispute and fired several rounds in the bus, striking and killing two passengers," Miami Gardens police said. The victims were airlifted to Aventura Hospital in critical condition and later pronounced dead from their wounds. In an average year, 3,038 people die and 6,358 are wounded by guns in Florida which has some of the loosest firearms laws in the US. These are wartime casualty figures. Between 7 Oct 2001 and 30 Aug 2021, the US lost a total of 2,459 military personnel in Afghanistan. The Sunshine State loses more people in one year to gun violence than the total 20 years of fighting the Taliban and HQN in Afghanistan. Read more


Monday, March 31, 2025

Musk's new mission is likely to create a lot of noise at Capitol Hill soon. A town hall attendee asked Musk whether DOGE had found any evidence of funds being transferred from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "They'll [the government] send the money overseas to one NGO [non-governmental organization], then they'll go through a bunch of them, and then I'm highly confident that a bunch of that money then comes back to the United States and lands in the pockets of the people you just mentioned," Musk replied.


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