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Princess Anne dusts off 42-year-old dress for royal banquet
My go-to COSRX snail mucin is still on sale after Prime Day
Erika Kirk set to face husband’s accused killer Tyler Robinson in court for first major test of evidence
How Janet Jackson honored late brother Michael with her BET Awards 2026 outfit
How Janet Jackson honored late brother Michael with her BET Awards 2026 outfit
Lionel Richie’s ex-wife gives update on singer’s health days after being rushed to hospital
Lionel Richie’s ex-wife gives update on singer’s health days after being rushed to hospital
Deion Sanders declares himself ‘cancer-free’ a year after bladder removal
Israeli defense chief blames Trump for halting all-out Hezbollah push in Lebanon
NYC honors Knicks with temporary street signs – but don’t expect them to last long: ‘Gone by 11:58 tonight’
Paris official blames Americans and their air conditioning for Europe heat wave that has killed 1,300 people
Hormuz Tanker Traffic Plunges After Fresh US-Iran Strikes
Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz tumbled since late last week, as ship owners and operators froze up amid the renewed hostilities between Iran and the US over the weekend.
The Thursday attack on the container ship Ever Lovely prompted some shipowners to pull back and wait for additional information about how safe transiting the Strait is. The U.S. military on Friday carried out strikes on Iran in response to the attack on the vessel.
Then, on Friday and Saturday, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted strikes against multiple targets in Iran, in response to attacks on two vessels near the Strait of Hormuz. On Saturday, an Iranian attack on a Panama-flagged oil tanker, Kiku, while it was transiting the Strait of Hormuz prompted additional strikes by the U.S. forces. Kiku was carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude oil, the U.S. armed forces said.
“After yesterday’s U.S. strikes in response to the Iranian attack on M/V Ever Lovely, Iran was given a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement but elected not to when its forces launched a one-way attack drone that hit M/T Kiku this morning at 4:30 a.m. ET,” CENTCOM said on Saturday.
The attacks on commercial vessels and the U.S. retaliatory attacks on Iran continue to test not only the fragile ceasefire, but also the willingness of shipowners and operators to press on with transits through Hormuz.
Since a weekly peak of vessels transiting Hormuz on June 24, traffic has materially eased, both in the outbound and inbound directions, according to ship-tracking data by Kpler compiled by Bloomberg.
After the flare-up this weekend, the U.S. and Iran have reportedly agreed to cease attacks ahead of tentatively planned new talks this week.
Although traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has resumed and more vessels are openly broadcasting their position, a return to normality is far from certain and far from near amid persistently volatile operating conditions in the Middle East and its key shipping lane.
Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 15:40"You're Next!": Democrats Discover The Mob Has A Mind Of Its Own
“You’re next!”
This chant, at the victory celebration of the Democratic Socialists this week, was a message not for the oligarchs or the billionaires, but for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and the Democratic establishment. They were threatening that Jeffries would be the next to lose his House seat to a socialist candidate.
It was a scene that has recurred throughout history, as establishment leaders are overtaken by the very mobs they sought to use for their own purposes.
For years, Jeffries has joined other Democrats in fueling the rage on the left in the hopes of becoming the next House Speaker. Whether calling for supporters to “fight in the streets,” denouncing the Supreme Court as “illegitimate” or posting an image of himself brandishing a baseball bat, Jeffries sought to portray himself as a class warrior worthy of the mob’s support.
Other Democratic leaders followed suit — especially Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. It was Schumer who yelled threats at conservative Supreme Court justices in front of the court. A deranged man triggered by such rhetoric in the media later attempted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Schumer and others portrayed their opponents as Nazis who threaten the very existence of democracy, and they stoked class conflict to inspire resentment for the wealthy.
Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison — now Minnesota’s attorney general — celebrated that Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump and his supporters.
Figures like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) (who is reportedly worth half a billion dollars due to his wife’s inherited fortune) have attempted to ride the rage wave by advocating a billionaire’s tax that is presumptively unconstitutional.
By the time these establishment figures realized their armchair-revolutionary rhetoric would not convince the mob, it was too late.
Jeffries and figures like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had endorsed candidates such as Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who perhaps more than anyone else personified the problem. He was the attack dog of the establishment, fueling rage and promising a spate of impeachments. But what the left saw was a trust-fund baby who had inherited a fortune, owns three houses, and has publicly pledged to use his inheritance to fund his reelection. He came across as the Democratic Richie Rich, and he lost on Tuesday by more than 30 points.
In my book Rage and the Republic, I discuss how these Democratic leaders are following the same self-destructive pattern of prior establishment figures in history who thought that they could use mobs against their opponents while hoping that they would be overlooked.
The American and French Revolutions were contemporary movements based on Enlightenment principles. But whereas our Revolution went on to become the world’s oldest and most stable republic, the French Revolution became the blood-soaked Terror. The French Revolution was not some spontaneous uprising of the proletariat or underclass. It was led by relatively affluent figures on the left, from aristocrats to journalists to lawyers. Maximilien Robespierre, who would later declare terror a virtue, was a lawyer who helped organize the revolutionary Jacobins.
These educated and affluent figures turned to working-class radicals as their muscle to terrorize their opponents. And not long after executing aristocrats and clergy, the radicals turned on the Jacobins themselves. “Moderates” were sent to the guillotine by Robespierre and his henchmen as they clung to power. But eventually, the mob came for them, too.
After the Terror, French writer Jacques Mallet du Pan wrote, “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.”
After candidates endorsed by socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani easily swept aside the establishment candidates in Jeffries and Schumer’s backyard, politicians and pundits began to panic. They never imagined the mob would turn on them.
Even liberal media figures such as Ezra Klein and pandering academic figures have become targets of the left. Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who has called for the effective trashing of the U.S. Constitution, had law students staging protests in his own home.
Others have sought to stay at the front of the mob. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) denounced the lengthy sentences handed down to nine violent Antifa figures in Texas for their roles in the ambush and attempted murder of a police officer who had responded to the disturbance they were creating at an ICE facility. The officer, Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross, barely survived a bullet to the neck.
In the meantime, the mob is continuing its rush toward socialism and communism. One of those elected in New York, Democratic Socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier, bragged about how she wiped her hands on the American flag as her fellow victors pledged to tear down core institutions, including the Supreme Court.
In Michigan, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is soaring in popularity after campaigning with virulent anti-Semite and extremist Hasan Piker. Piker was on hand to celebrate the recent victories as speeding along the socialist agenda to end capitalism and has promised the mob that “the American empire is going to inevitably fall.”
For some of us who predicted the rise of the American Jacobin movement, there is little joy in seeing Democratic establishment figures consumed by their own mob. They have been feeding a rage addiction in this country. Now they express surprise as protesters celebrate the assassination of Charlie Kirk and display guillotines at protests for those deemed enemies of the people.
After starting a brush fire, they have found themselves engulfed in the same flames with their targets. With Democratic voters now expressing support for socialism in record numbers and politicians pledging radical changes to our political system, they have proven again to be what Soviet communists called the “useful idiots” of the American left.
If history is any measure, we may soon find ourselves in the same position as Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes, who was considered the Thomas Paine of the French Revolution. When asked what he had done during the Revolution, the old abbot pondered the question and answered: “I survived.”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.“
Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 15:25Supreme Court: Lisa Cook Keeps Job - For Now, Lets Trump Fire FTC Commissioners
The Supreme Court on Monday handed President Trump a significant defeat - ruling 5-4 that his attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook was procedurally invalid and that the Fed's century-old independence from presidential removal-at-will remains constitutionally intact. That said, it isn't over for Cook - as the Court said she can stay in her job for now - while she fights in lower courts against Trump's bid to oust her over allegations of mortgage fraud.
In a majority opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts and joined by an unlikely coalition spanning Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Jackson, the Court denied the administration's application for a stay, leaving in place a lower court injunction that keeps Cook on the Board of Governors pending full litigation.
Concurring
Roberts
Kavanaugh
Jackson
Sotomyaor
Kagan
Dissenting
Alito
Gorsuch
Barrett
Thomas
The Court's decision rests on procedure; Trump didn't give Cook notice or a deadline to respond - as it was done via tweet. That, the majority held, is insufficient to terminate a presidential appointee serving a 14-year term on the body that controls the cost of money in the United States. The ruling leaves open whether the mortgage fraud allegations - two simultaneous primary-residence mortgage commitments signed just 14 days apart - would constitute adequate cause for removal once proper process is followed.
"At minimum, Cook was entitled to some explanation of the evidence at issue, some avenue for a response, and a deadline by which a response would be due," the decision reads.
So, it's not quite over - she just gets to keep her job, for now.
As I have repeatedly said, I believe Lisa Cook will be indicted for mortgage fraud.
— Pulte (@pulte) June 29, 2026Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, has remained in her position despite Trump's attempt to remove her in August 2025 - citing allegations of mortgage fraud that Cook has strongly denied. No president had previously fired a sitting Fed governor in the central bank's 112-year history.
She was initially nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2022. Biden renominated her in 2023 for a full 14-year term expiring in 2038. Under the Federal Reserve Act, members of the Board of Governors can be removed by the president only "for cause," a protection intended to safeguard the central bank's independence from political pressure.
FTC Commissioners F'dAnd while the Fed can now remain 'independent' - The Supreme Court also ruled on Monday that Trump's firing of a Democrat Federal Trade Commission member was legal - greatly expanding a president's powers over the government and overturning the Court's 1935 precedent that had recognized the authority of Congress to protect leaders of various regulatory agencies from being removed at will.
Overruling a landmark 1935 decision in a case called Humphrey's Executor v. United States, the justices, in a 6-3 decision, invalidated tenure protections for FTC members enacted by Congress more than a century ago. Trump dismissed Rebecca Slaughter over policy differences. -Reuters
The ruling reversed a lower court which had blocked Trump's 2025 dismissal of Rebecca Slaughter over policy differences - with the lower court citing protections for FTC members via the 1935 ruling.
Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter testifies on the "Oversight of the Federal Trade Commission" before the U.S. Senate Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance and Data Security Subcommittee in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, U.S., November 27, 2018. REUTERS/Leah MillisSlaughter, a Biden appointee, was one of two Democrat FTC members removed by Trump in March 2025.
A divided US Supreme Court expanded the president’s power to fire top government officials in a blockbuster decision that puts the White House firmly in control of potentially dozens of agencies that have long operated independently. https://t.co/xXqbyyQTgX pic.twitter.com/5rGAZdWPLe
— Bloomberg Law (@BLaw) June 29, 2026Trump, reacting to the Slaughter ruling, wrote on Truth Social:
BIG WIN just moments ago at the Supreme Court, in the Slaughter Case, confirming Presidential Power in our Country to remove Executive Branch Officers and Agency Appointees, or Representatives, under Article II. This Decision was long sought by United States Presidents, dating all the way back to the 1930s. It is such an Honor to be the sitting President who won this Historic and Unprecedented Ruling, one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Back To the Cook CaseIn a letter posted to Truth Social, Trump accused Cook of making false statements on mortgage applications prior to her Fed service, describing the actions as "deceitful and potentially criminal." Cook and her legal team have rejected the claims, provided rebuttal evidence, and argued that she was never given an opportunity to contest the allegations or receive due process. She has never been charged with any crime related to the matter.
In September 2025, the Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into the mortgage allegations, issuing grand jury subpoenas related to properties in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Atlanta, Georgia. The probe remains active as of May 2026 with no charges filed against Cook.
Cook filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., challenging the removal as unlawful. On September 9, 2025, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb issued a preliminary injunction blocking the firing, finding that Cook made a strong showing that the removal violated the Federal Reserve Act's for-cause provision. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the injunction on an emergency basis, allowing Cook to participate in Federal Open Market Committee meetings.
The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which on October 1, 2025, declined an emergency request to immediately remove Cook but scheduled full oral arguments for January 21, 2026. Cook has continued serving on the Board throughout the litigation.
Meanwhile, last September the DOJ opened a Grand Jury criminal investigation into Cook over the allegations.
Key Legal IssuesTrump v. Cook, centers on two core questions:
- Whether the president has broad authority to interpret and apply the "for cause" standard unilaterally, or whether courts can review such removals.
- The broader implications for the independence of the Federal Reserve and other independent agencies with similar statutory protections.
During oral arguments on January 21, 2026, justices across the ideological spectrum expressed skepticism about the administration's position, questioning the lack of due process for Cook and the potential risks to central bank independence. Observers noted the Court appeared likely to side with Cook, at least on keeping her in place pending full resolution.
New Leadership at the FedThe case unfolds against a major leadership transition at the Federal Reserve. Last month, the Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh as the new Chair of the Federal Reserve, succeeding Jerome Powell. Warsh, a former Fed governor and Trump nominee, has advocated for a "regime change" at the central bank, signaling a potential shift toward policies more aligned with administration priorities, including greater focus on lowering interest rates where appropriate while maintaining independence in decision-making.
Warsh has largely stayed out of the Cook litigation during his confirmation process, declining to comment directly on the removal effort or pledge to defend her position. His ascension marks a new direction for the Fed amid ongoing debates over monetary policy, inflation pressures, and institutional independence.
According to Cook supporters, allowing at-will removals by the president could politicize monetary policy, undermining market confidence and economic stability. The administration has contended that the president retains ultimate executive authority under Article II of the Constitution. Cook, meanwhile, has described the case as determining whether the Fed will continue to set policy based on evidence and independent judgment or face political pressure.
Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 15:15