- Thursday October 1st, 2026
- "It Is Not A Question of Who Is Right Or Wrong But What Is Right Or Wrong That Counts."
- --Geoff Metcalf
- Providing an on line Triage of the news since 1998
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World & Nation
Trump: 'Possible' US Will Increase Iran Strikes After Midterms
President
Donald Trump, while defending the United States' ongoing military
campaign against Iran, said that the conflict has extended into its
seventh month.
He said he
deliberately chose to go beyond his initial operational timeline
because he didn't want Iran to "come back in some different form."
He further said
in an extensive interview with Time magazine this week that it's
"possible" that the administration is considering increasing military
strikes on Iran following the midterms, while noting that the United
States has been actively replenishing its military stockpiles.
Iranian negotiators kicked out of US as talks stall, Trump lays out 'possible' timeline for more strikes
Secretary of State Rubio concluded Iranian officials had 'overstayed their welcome' after weekend talks stalled
Secretary of
State Marco Rubio abruptly ended talks and ordered the Iranian
delegation to leave the U.S. after negotiations stalled, yet again,
with no clear sign of a breakthrough more than seven months into the
conflict.
And now,
President Donald Trump is directly warning Iran it's "possible" he will
go harder with strikes in the Middle East after the midterm elections
in November and revealed the U.S. military has significantly rebuilt
its arsenal in recent months.
The latest
messaging from the White House and State Department signals an
increasingly strained diplomatic track, after days of negotiations
failed to close the gap between Washington and Tehran over the terms of
ending the war.
Trump handing 1 million Americans Obamacare refund checks in 30 states
Biden admin overcharged on user fees and residents in 30 states will get paid back
The Trump
administration is issuing refund checks to about 1 million Americans,
accompanied by a personal letter from President Donald Trump, to people
the administration says were overcharged for Obamacare.
An
administration official told Fox News Digital that the U.S. Treasury
began issuing $500 refund checks to more than 950,000 Americans across
30 states.
Each refund comes with a letter from Trump himself.
"For years, the
Biden administration overcharged you to fund the operation of
HealthCare.gov," the letter says. "That money belongs to hard-working
Americans, not the Government, and now I’m returning it to you!"
Trump Says He Regrets Nominating Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett
President
Donald Trump said in a new interview that he regrets nominating
Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the
Supreme Court, faulting them for ruling against his policies.
"Yeah. Yeah. What can I do? I put them in," Trump told Time magazine in an interview published Thursday.
"They voted
against me too often," he added. "I gave them the position of a
lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too."
Trump compared
the justices with others in the high court who were nominated by
Democrats, who he said "stick like glue" when they vote.
Supreme Court hands Trump major victory in stunning reversal
The Supreme
Court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to resume deporting
immigrants to countries other their own, including those with human
rights abuse allegations.
According to
multiple reports, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to
restart what are also known as third-country violations. Legal report
Chris Geidner reported that the court's Democratic appointees
dissented. The New York Times noted that the Trump administration can,
for the time being, resume rapid deportations to countries like
Equatorial Guinea, where deportees have been beaten by the police, as
well as countries like Liberia, Honduras and the Central African
Republic.
Encouraging signs from the Strait of Hormuz
We’ve all heard
the apocryphal Winston Churchill line about the Americans always doing
the right thing after exhausting all the alternatives.
That doesn’t
quite apply to the fight for the Strait of Hormuz, but after appearing
surprised by Iran’s effective closure of the strait early in the war
and then seeming powerless to reverse it, CENTCOM has largely reopened
the strait in what could prove a turning point in this latest chapter
of the conflict with Iran.
The U.S.
military created a safe passage hugging the coast of Oman and has been
providing military protection to ships transiting through it. At the
same time, the Gulf states came up with the ingenious idea of shuttling
oil through the risky waters of the strait with vessels often
controlled by the producers themselves, then pumping that oil onto
commercial tankers from the safety of the Gulf of Oman to be carried to
their ultimate destination — before repeating the process again.
Motorcycle patrols swarm Iranian cities, checkpoints rise as regime braces for unrest
Iranian
security forces have stepped up their presence in Tehran and other
cities, with motorcycle patrols, checkpoints and forces positioned
across major urban areas as authorities brace for possible unrest,
multiple sources inside Iran told Fox News Digital.
The security
buildup comes as university students have returned to the streets in
Tehran, protesting compulsory hijab rules, rising education costs and
political repression, videos published in Iran International show.
Sources inside
Iran confirmed to Fox News Digital that motorcycle units have been
operating across Tehran and other cities during events surrounding
Iran’s annual "Sacred Defense Week," while members of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, Basij and law enforcement have been
positioned at major squares and other locations.
Iran receives US feedback on seven-day trust-building plan, main issue is sequencing
Iranian Foreign
Minister Abbas Araghchi received US feedback via Qatari mediators in
Doha on Tuesday on a seven-day plan aimed at building trust between
Washington and Tehran, with sequencing the main sticking point, an
official, who was not Iranian butwas briefed on the talks, told Reuters.
Araghchi is expected to discuss the US response in Tehran on Wednesday, the official said.
Iran last week
presented a seven-day proposal under which Araghchi said the Strait of
Hormuz could be reopened and normal maritime passage restored if the
necessary conditions were met. US President Donald Trump subsequently
rejected the proposal, prompting further Qatari mediation.
The Qatari
mediators conveyed the feedback they had received from Washington on
Monday, meeting Araghchi and his team on their way back from the United
States, the official said.
Flydubai pilot was stabbed in head, had arm ‘split in two’ before flight saved by ‘superheroes,’ Netanyahu says
The Flydubai
pilot attacked in the attempted hijacking of his Israel-bound plane was
stabbed in the head and had his arm “split in two,” Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed Thursday — praising the
“superhero” passengers who saved the plane in drama like “Hollywood on
steroids.”
Heroic Captain
Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, was seen almost unconscious and
covered in blood after he was attacked Wednesday by his co-pilot, an
“Islamist radical” on a suicide mission to bring down their flight from
Dubai to Tel Aviv, Netanyahu told “Fox and Friends.”
“He was stabbed
in the head, and his arm was basically split in two, and there was a
lot of blood,” Netanyahu revealed of the horrific injuries the pilot
suffered.
Christa Pike likely has ‘brain injury’ after botched execution — here’s what went wrong: ‘Degraded’ drugs, damaged veins
Tennessee death
row inmate Christa Pike will likely have brain damage after her botched
execution, during which she chillingly lifted her head and asked if the
pain she was feeling was normal.
Pike, 50, was
rushed to the hospital Wednesday after the Tennessee Department of
Corrections administered two doses of the highly potent sedative,
Pentobarbital, but it failed to kill her.
The murderer,
who was sentenced to death for the monstrous 1995 slaying of a
classmate, was “being provided life-saving measures” in the hospital,
her lawyers said – but she likely has a brain injury as a result.
Harvard sued in alleged anti-white discrimination case, latest step in Trump crackdown on woke academia
The feds are
suing Harvard University for data related to allegations its hiring
practices discriminate against white men — the latest step in the Trump
administration’s crackdown on woke practices in academia.
In a lawsuit
filed late Tuesday in a Massachusetts federal court, the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission accused the university of failing to
comply with an investigation launched last year into what it called
“systemic discrimination” against white, Asian, male and heterosexual
workers.
In April 2025,
Trump-appointed EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas filed a civil rights charge
against Harvard, claiming its recruitment and promotion efforts
violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits
employer discrimination.
Don Lemon admits Trump has delivered ‘pretty much every promise’ he made on policy
TDS-addled Don
Lemon admitted that President Trump has delivered on “pretty much every
promise” he made on policy to American voters.
The
out-of-character remark came Wednesday as the former CNN anchor was
discussing how seriously he takes the commander-in-chief’s comments
about potentially running for a third term.
“I think you
always take the person who is the president of the United States
seriously and pretty much every promise that he has made – pretty much,
like, policy-wise – he has delivered,” Lemon said on the “Who’s With
Me?” podcast.
“Like he said,
‘Look what I’m gonna do with immigration, I’m gonna do this with taxes,
I’m gonna do this with healthcare,’ and he did all of them,” Lemon
continued, adding that the only thing Trump hasn’t been able to deliver
on is “pretty much the economy.”
7 Senate Races Within Margin of Error
Veteran
political analyst Charlie Cook says at least seven U.S. Senate races
are now polling within the margin of error, leaving control of the
chamber deeply uncertain with just weeks remaining before the midterm
elections.
"The Senate
battlefield is the more explosive of the two chambers," Cook wrote in
his latest Substack analysis, "Margin-of-error races as far as the eye
can see."
Five of those
closely contested seats are currently held by Republicans, Cook said.
Three involve GOP incumbents — Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Susan
Collins of Maine, and Jon Husted of Ohio — while Iowa and Texas feature
open seats.
Miranda Devine: The lynch mob is out for the ‘Cornell 7’ — proving we’ve learned nothing from past injustices
By Miranda Devine
The “Cornell 7”
gang rape case is descending into the same lynch-mob hysteria as the
notorious Duke lacrosse or “mattress girl” hoaxes of old — only with
social media making everything worse.
It seems we have learned nothing from past injustices.
A young woman
who goes by “Jane Doe” has filed a civil lawsuit two years after she
alleged she was gang-raped by seven men in a sordid, drug-fueled sexual
encounter at the Chi Phi fraternity house at the elite Cornell
University, where she was a student at the time.
Yet, according
to Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, citing Doe’s
sworn statement to campus investigators in November 2024, she
“described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as
voluntary, conscious and consensual.” When she told the young men to
stop, they did.
I escaped communism. America must not ignore the urgent warning signs
No communist revolution has delivered the justice, equality and prosperity it promised
By Gerson Moreno
I am an
immigrant from Colombia, a country that the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC) — a communist revolutionary group — spent half a
century tearing apart. FARC murdered thousands of Colombians through
sanctioned massacres, kidnappings, and terrorism, and the war the FARC
drove displaced over 7 million Colombians, resulting in one of the
largest internal displacement crises in the world. I am now a
naturalized citizen of the United States, a country that millions from
around the world are still trying to reach. So, I read the latest
polling on American capitalism with a particular kind of alarm.
This polling is
the result of a survey released by The Free Press using a method to
surface the opinions people keep to themselves. The finding: just one
in three Americans holds a positive view of capitalism. Not one in
three Democrats. One in three Americans.
Before the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) take a victory lap, consider the
rest. That same survey found that most Americans remain wary of
socialism, and Gallup found that while capitalism drew 54% approval,
free enterprise drew 81% and small business 95%, compared with 37% for
big business. Americans have not turned against free enterprise,
ownership or entrepreneurial risk. Yet DSA candidates keep winning
elections. The gap between Americans’ faith in free enterprise and the
DSA’s wins is a real vulnerability, and it deserves an honest question:
Why not communism?
