EXCLUSIVE Trump defector tells me why Ghislaine Maxwell must now testify. It's time to name names... or else they're ALL going down: KENNEDY
'If she's willing to testify, we have to call her into the Judiciary Committee and put her under oath and have her testify,' Judiciary subcommittee chairman Josh Hawley told reporters on Tuesday.
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Daily Mail
9 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Walmart forced to lock up items amid shoplifting surge
Walmart was once praised by consumers for being one of the few retailers that did not lock up its merchandise, but it is now increasingly being forced to do so in the face of out-of-control shoplifting. Alarming pictures of a Walmart store in Happy Valley, a suburb of Portland, Oregon, have shocked customers who claim shopping in person is now a dreadful experience. Portland, known for its liberal politics, has seen areas of the city suffer terrible decline after a failed attempt at drug decriminalization. The city has been overrun by theft — 10,000 cases were reported to police last year, triple the number from three years ago — forcing retailers including Walmart to close stores that cannot sustain the losses. A series of viral images posted to Reddit show row after row of Walmart stock, from children's toys and gadgets to frozen food and batteries, behind locked glass cases. Retailers including CVS and Walgreens have resorted to such extremes in areas where shoplifting is so rampant, such as in downtown New York and San Francisco, that it damages stores' bottom lines. The system — which forces customers to call an attendant to open the case every time they wish to add something to their basket — is loathed by consumers. Businesses have also admitted that it does not actually help, as stores which employ the tactic often see sales plummet. 'What is even the point of shopping in-person anymore?' one Walmart customer seethed about the Happy Valley store on Reddit. 'If theft is that bad they're willing to lock up everything they might as well make it a pickup center,' another agreed. Another shopper argued that Walmart is deliberately making it difficult to shop there as they are more keen on boosting their online business. 'They don't want you in the store. They want you to order it online instead,' the Walmart customer alleged. 'Stores don't want you in there, it costs them money. Walmart would rather be Amazon.' Retail experts have suggested the scale of theft must be significant for Walmart to even consider locking its products behind glass. 'Walmart has run the numbers. If they're willing to sacrifice convenience — their second biggest competitive advantage after price — the theft losses must be substantial,' retail analyst Carol Spieckerman told Spieckerman argued that the inconvenience for consumers will undoubtedly have an impact on the store's bottom line. 'Price alone isn't enough if shopping becomes a hassle,' Spieckerman explained. 'The problematic locations must drive enough business to warrant keeping the doors open despite the friction.' Like San Francisco, Portland's 'doom loop' accelerated in the years following the pandemic. Big firms cutting back on office space hurt local businesses who rely on workers' footfall. As they too pulled back, the homeless population expanded with theft and rampant drug use proliferating. Last year, Oregon was forced to end the state's decriminalized drug laws after overdose rates soared. Portland's new mayor Keith Wilson is also considered to be more pro-business and his district attorney, Nathan Vasquez, tougher on crime. Walmart has also resorted to permanently closing stores in Portland because of the scale of theft. It is not the only chain that has been forced to do so, with beloved outdoor store Next Adventure recently closing all of its Oregon locations amid historic crime rates.
The Guardian
26 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Pete Hegseth is skirting law by bringing back Confederate names of army bases
Since Donald Trump returned to office this year, his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has ripped the new names off a series of US army bases and brought back their old traitorous Confederate names. His actions have angered Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress, prompting a rare rebuke of the Trump administration by the Republican-controlled Congress last Tuesday. The GOP-led House of Representatives Armed Services Committee voted on 15 July to block Hegseth from renaming the bases after Confederates. Two Republicans voted with the Democrats on the committee to pass the measure, which was an amendment to the Pentagon's budget bill. 'What this administration is doing, particularly this secretary of defense, is sticking his finger in the eye of Congress,' said Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican representative who voted to stop Hegseth. Hegseth's move elicited bipartisan anger because it flouted the law; Congress passed legislation in January 2021 to create a commission to choose new names for the bases named for Confederates and mandated that its recommendations be implemented by the Pentagon. That law was passed over a veto by Trump in the final days of his first term, and the name changes were later implemented by the Pentagon during the Biden administration. The law is still on the books, and so in order to return to the old Confederate names, Hegseth has openly played games with their namesakes. The secretary claims he has renamed the bases after American soldiers from throughout US history who were not Confederates. But they all conveniently have the same last names as the original Confederate namesakes of the bases. For example, Fort Bragg is now supposedly named for Roland Bragg, who was an army paratrooper in the second world war; Fort Benning is now supposedly named for Fred Benning, a soldier who served in the army in the first world war. Before the House vote, Hegseth's efforts to skirt the law were also challenged in the Senate. In a hearing in June, Angus King, a senator from Maine, told Hegseth that he was returning the bases to the names of 'people who took up arms against their country on behalf of slavery'. Hegseth insisted that the Pentagon had found non-Confederates with the same names to stay within 'the limits of what Congress allowed us to do'. But during the same hearing, Hegseth briefly dropped the pretense that he wasn't returning to the original Confederate names. He argued that 'there is a legacy, a connection' for veterans with the old names. King replied that Hegseth's actions were 'an insult to the people of the United States'. Above all, Hegseth's actions show a troubling ignorance of the lives of the original Confederate namesakes; their easily-researched backgrounds reveal what terrible role models they make for modern American military personnel. Braxton Bragg was one of the most incompetent Confederate generals of the civil war. His subordinates repeatedly and clandestinely tried to get him fired, with one writing to the Confederate secretary of war that 'nothing but the hand of God can save us or help us as long as we have our present commander'. Bragg finally lost his command after he was out-generaled by Union General Ulysses S Grant and his army was routed at the Battle of Chattanooga in 1863. One of the few biographies written about him is entitled Braxton Bragg, the Most Hated Man in the Confederacy. And yet Bragg lives on today as the namesake of the largest and most important military base in the United States Army. Fort Bragg, in Fayetteville, North Carolina was originally built in 1918, as part of a rushed effort by the army to construct new bases after the United States entered the first world war. The site offered the army cheap and abundant land, and it quickly built a base and surrounding military reservation totaling 251 sq miles. Eager to win local white support, the army agreed to name the new base after a Confederate; Bragg was chosen because he was originally from North Carolina. By the time the base was built, the civil war had been over for more than 50 years, yet the south was still in the grips of the 'the Lost Cause' theory of the war, which romanticized the civil war and held that the south had fought for state's rights, not slavery, and that the Confederacy had fielded better officers and men and had only lost because of the overwhelming resources of the north. By 1918, when Bragg's name was attached to the base, the generation of Confederate officers who hated him were gone, along with the memory of his military blunders. That pattern held for a series of major bases built throughout the south during the first and second world wars. Fort Benning was also built in 1918 near Columbus, Georgia. At the request of the Columbus Rotary Club, the army named it for Henry Lewis Benning, who was best known as a pro-slavery political firebrand from Columbus who helped draft Georgia's ordinance of secession. Benning was one of the pre-eminent white supremacists of his day, and he openly admitted that his state seceded because of slavery, not states rights. In one speech, he said that his state seceded because of a 'deep conviction on the part of Georgia that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery … If things are allowed to go on as they are … we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. Is it supposed that the white race will stand for that?' Benning served in the Confederate army, but it was his political role as a proponent of a southern slavocracy that first brought him fame and prominence. By the 21st century, there were still 10 army bases that were named for Confederates, and the Pentagon repeatedly resisted efforts to change their names, arguing that tradition outweighed the fact that the bases were named for traitors who had fought to preserve slavery. The Confederate base names were finally changed after the 2020 George Floyd protests; Fort Bragg became Fort Liberty, while Fort Benning became Fort Moore, named for Vietnam War hero Hal Moore and his wife, Julia Moore. (Mel Gibson played Hal Moore and Madeleine Stowe played Julia Moore in the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers.) But those new names didn't survive Trump's return to office. Hegseth hasn't stopped with army bases. The Pentagon has announced it will strip the name off the US navy ship Harvey Milk, which was named for the gay rights pioneer who was assassinated in 1978, and rename it for Oscar V Peterson, a sailor who won the Congressional Medal of Honor during the second world war. But one thing is certain: Braxton Bragg's civil war contemporaries would be shocked to discover that a man so widely derided as a loser and a martinet during his lifetime is still at the center of a national debate 160 years after the war ended. During the war, one Confederate newspaper editor described him as a man with 'an iron hand and a wooden head'. Grant, the man who so badly beat Bragg during the war, took great pleasure in making fun of Bragg and his ridiculous behavior when he later wrote his memoirs. Grant recounted one infamous episode involving Bragg from the time before the civil war when both men served in the small, pre-war US army. 'On one occasion, when stationed at a post … (Bragg) was commanding one of the companies and at the same time acting as post quartermaster … As commander of the company he made a requisition upon the quartermaster – himself – for something he wanted. As quartermaster he declined to fill the requisition and endorsed on the back of it his reasons for so doing. As company commander he responded to this, urging that his requisition called for nothing but what he was entitled to, and that it was the duty of the quartermaster to fill it. As quartermaster he still persisted that he was right … Bragg referred the whole matter to the commanding officer of the post. The latter exclaimed: 'My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarreled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarrelling with yourself!' In his memoirs, Grant wrote that Bragg was 'naturally disputatious'. So maybe Braxton Bragg would fit in perfectly with Donald Trump after all.
Daily Mail
39 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
The REAL reason the Epstein 'client list' is never getting released
Jeffry Epstein's rumored 'client list' will never be released to the public by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), according to a former agent. John Kiriakou, an ex-CIA officer who was jailed for nearly two years in 2012 for sharing the agency's interrogation techniques to the press, shared his views on the controversial pedophile - including his opinion on the alleged list of clients. Kiriakou, who sat down for an episode of Patrick Bet-David's podcast, told the media personality that he believes the alleged list will not see the light of day because it holds incredibly valuable intelligence information that the CIA would never hand over simply because the public demanded to see it. The CIA whistleblower specifically said he believes that Epstein, 66, was employed by Israel's intelligence service, Mossad - and that is why the list will not come out. 'I believe that he was a Mossad access agent. It makes perfect sense to me,' Kiriakou said. It has never been established that Epstein had ties to Mossad. 'Jeffry Epstein, in my view, is a textbook case of an access agent. I've said this before, but I think it's important and it bears repeating,' he told Bet-David. 'If you are a foreign intelligence service and you want information from Bill Clinton, or Bill Gates, or Alan Dershowitz, or important people, you want secret information from them—you're not going to recruit them. 'They don't need anything from you. They don't have any financial vulnerabilities. So you do the next best thing: you recruit someone who has access to them, and you finance this person... he has a private island.' He went on to mention Virginia Giuffre, who led the fight to bring Epstein to justice and claimed she was trafficked to have sex with Prince Andrew. Giuffre died by suicide at the age of 41 in April. In response to Bet-David's question on who Kiriakou thinks has seen the alleged list, the former agent replied: 'I think it's actually more than most people realize.' 'Virginia Giuffre and five other young women in their statements, in their lawsuit, told us there were rooms with banks of monitors... monitoring every room and every bathroom,' he continued. 'So if there were clients—and I believe there were—and they were having sex with minors—and I believe they were—every single person who was hired to monitor those screens would have known. 'I believe there was a list, a client list. There had to have been. We know there was a black book—it sold at Sotheby's for heaven's sake. So where is it? Was it destroyed? And even if it was, why didn't Ghislaine Maxwell try to use it to save herself?' In recent weeks, Donald Trump 's administration has faced increasing scrutiny for their handling of the 'list' and the release of videos from inside New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Epstein was housed until his death in 2019. The scandal and alleged 'cover up', has prompted a rebellion in the MAGA world, as many of Trump's loyal supporters believe Attorney General Pam Bondi should be fired after promising to release all Epstein-related files. Bondi came under fire a couple weeks ago after the Department of Justice said Epstein's 'client list' never existed. She also squashed speculation that Epstein's 2019 jail cell death was anything other than a suicide. Following the memo from his DOJ, which sparked a MAGA civil war, Trump became irate and said during a cabinet meeting that everyone should move on. He has now called his supporters 'weaklings' for believing a Democrat-run 'hoax.' When asked about the president going back and forth on the issue, Kiriakou said he does not believe the rumor that the administration is holding the files back because the president is implicated in them. 'I don't believe that for a second,' he said. Kiriakou isn't the only one who believes Epstein allegedly worked for Mossad, as Tucker Carlson made the same claim earlier this month. The former Fox News host issued the conspiracy theory that Epstein was an Israeli agent who blackmailed US politicians. 'The real question is, why was he doing this, on whose behalf, and where did the money come from?' Tucker asked about Epstein's mysterious fortune while speaking to a crowd of young voters in Florida. 'And those are the questions that need to be answered. And I think it's entirely fair to ask them.' Carlson denounced the DOJ's findings, going on to share his own theory about Epstein's sinister scheme. Carlson questioned where all of the billionaire's wealth came from, going from a math teacher to 'having multiple airplanes, a private island, and the largest residential house in Manhattan.' 'And no one has ever gotten to the bottom of that because no one has ever tried. And moreover, it's extremely obvious to anyone who watches, that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government,' he claimed. He said the reason Epstein's connection to the Middle Eastern nation is not discussed publicly was because 'we have been somehow cowed into thinking that's naughty.' 'There is nothing wrong with saying that. There is nothing hateful about saying that. There's nothing anti-Semitic about saying that. There's nothing even anti-Israel about saying that,' Tucker asserted. 'And the effect of making that off-limits has been to create a lot of resentment and I'll say it, hate online, where people feel like they can't just say, 'What the hell is this? You have the former Israeli prime minister living in your house?"' Carlson was likely referring to Epstein's close ties with the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak met with him dozens of times - and even allegedly stayed over at Epstein's place - starting in 2013. 'You have all this contact with a foreign government. Were you working on behalf of them? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government?' he asked the stunned listeners. Carlson also claimed that 'every single person in Washington DC' shares his sentiment, and none of them 'hate Israel.'
