International
Julian Assange breaks silence, slams Mike Pompeo for wanting to assassinate him

From LifeSiteNews
By Stephen Kokx
The WikiLeaks founder told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that ‘the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and assassinate me within the Ecuadorian embassy in London and authorized going after my European colleagues.’
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is standing by his assertion that the U.S. Deep State sought to assassinate him while he was detained.
🇪🇺JULIAN ASSANGE: THE CIA TARGETED MY WIFE AND SON
"By March 2017, WikiLeaks had exposed the CIA's infiltration of French political parties; its spying on French and German leaders.
CIA director Pompeo launched a campaign of retribution.
It is now a matter of public record… https://t.co/0GB83xT1JO pic.twitter.com/CEezku6ZKI
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 1, 2024
Assange, 53, was in Strasbourg, France today making his first public appearance after being released in June from London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison, where he had been confined for five years.
Speaking to representatives of 46 countries at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Australian journalist reiterated that Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s CIA director, planned on killing him.
“It is now a matter of public record that under Pompeo’s explicit direction, the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and assassinate me within the Ecuadorian embassy in London and authorized going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks, and the planting of false information,” Assange said.
“My wife and my infant son were also targeted,” he continued. “A CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife, and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my 6-month-old son’s nappy. This is the testimony of more than 30 current and former U.S intelligence officials speaking to the U.S. press, which has been additionally corroborated by records seized in a prosecution brought against some of the CIA agents involved.”
After founding WikiLeaks in the mid 2000s, Assange came under intense scrutiny from Western governments after he helped expose war crimes committed in Afghanistan and Iraq. He sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in the U.K. beginning in 2012.
In total, Assange spent 14 years of his life as a political prisoner until he struck a plea deal this summer with the U.S. government, which had charged him with 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act. He says that he chose to make the deal as the likelihood he would ever receive justice was nearly impossible.
“The CIA’s targeting of myself, my family, and my associates through aggressive, extrajudicial, and extraterritorial means provides a rare insight into how powerful intelligence organizations engage in transnational repression,” Assange said Tuesday. “I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pleaded guilty to journalism.”
Reports of the CIA’s plan to take Assange out surfaced in 2021, when Yahoo News revealed that intelligence agents had stated that Pompeo had been looking into possible methods of assassinating Assange following his release of “Vault 7” in 2017, which the agency described as “the largest data loss in CIA history.”
Last year, an uncomfortable Pompeo told libertarian journalist John Stossel that it “would have been illegal” for him to draw up plans to kill Assange, who he said is simply “trying to save his tuchus.”
In November 2023, Tucker Carlson announced on X that he had visited Assange at Belmarsh. A photo he posted to the platform showed Carlson walking with Assange’s wife Stella, who was at the event in Strasbourg today.
Visiting Julian Assange at Belmarsh Prison this morning pic.twitter.com/5XR51QTZgy
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 2, 2023
Among other notable moments in WikiLeaks history is its releasing of emails from high-ranking American political actors, including longtime Clinton associate John Podesta. Podesta’s bizarrely worded emails about “President Obama,” “hot dogs,” and “cheese pizza” are believed by some to be coded messages about Washington elites engaging in pedophilia and human trafficking. Other Podesta emails indicate he had an extensive plan to liberalize core teachings of the Catholic Church under the auspices of a “Catholic Spring.”
In August 2016, Assange implied that one of his sources was slain Democratic Party staffer Seth Rich, who was found dead on the streets of Washington, D.C. in 2016 at 4:20 a.m. after being shot in the back. Some contend that the 27-year-old Rich, who was a Bernie Sanders supporter, was murdered for leaking emails about how the party rigged the presidential primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. Rich’s family – perhaps under pressure from clandestine forces to remain quiet – have stated that such accusations are untrue.
Assange and his supporters have repeatedly maintained he has done nothing wrong, stating that he is a journalist and that the public has a right to know what their corrupt leaders are doing. Governments have maintained that the data he published is top secret and that his actions did and does endanger lives.
Business
Musk Slashes DOGE Savings Forecast By 85%

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Thomas English
Elon Musk announced Thursday that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is now targeting $150 billion in federal savings for fiscal year 2026 — dramatically scaling back earlier claims of slashing as much as $2 trillion.
Musk initially projected DOGE would deliver $2 trillion in savings by targeting government waste, fraud and abuse. That figure was halved to $1 trillion earlier this year, but Musk walked it back again at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, saying the revised $150 billion projection will “result in better services for the American people” and ensure federal spending “in a way that is sensible and fair and good.”
“I’m excited to announce we anticipate saving in FY ’26 from a reduction of waste and fraud a reduction of $150 billion dollars,” Musk said. “And some of it is just absurd, like, people getting unemployment insurance who haven’t been born yet. I mean, I think anyone can appreciate — I mean, come on, that’s just crazy.”
The announcement marks the latest in a string of revised projections from Musk, who has become the face of President Donald Trump’s aggressive federal efficiency agenda.
“Your people are fantastic,” the president responded. “In fact, hopefully they’ll stay around for the long haul. We’d like to keep as many as we can. They’re great — smart, sharp, finding things that nobody would have thought of.”
Musk originally floated the $2 trillion figure during campaign appearances last fall.
“I think we could do at least $2 trillion,” Musk said at the Madison Square Garden campaign rally in November. “At the end of the day, you’re being taxed — all government spending is taxation … Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Efficiency is going to fix that.”
By January, he softened expectations to a “really quite achievable” $1 trillion target before downsizing that figure again this week.
“Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars,” Musk told Fox News’ Bret Baier “Looked at in total federal spending, to drop the federal spending from $7 trillion to $6 trillion by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse … Which seems really quite achievable.”
DOGE’s website, which tracks cost-saving initiatives and contract cancellations, currently calculates total federal savings at $150 billion.
Health
RFK Jr. promises to identify cause of autism ‘epidemic’ by September

From LifeSiteNews
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained that autism rates continue to climb, and are now expected to impact 1 in 31 children, up from ‘1 in 10,000 when I was a kid.’
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that his agency has undertaken a multinational study involving “hundreds of scientists around the world” to identify the causes of the growing incidence of autism in children.
“We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world,” Kennedy told President Trump during Thursday’s White House Cabinet meeting. “By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”
Kennedy explained that autism rates continue to climb, and are now expected to impact 1 in 31 children, up from “1 in 10,000 when I was a kid.”
“It’s a horrible statistic,” Trump said of the latest autism rate figures. “There’s got to be something artificial out there that’s doing this.”
“There will be no bigger news conference than when you come up with that answer,” predicted the president.
As recently as 2000, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) research showed that 1 in 150 children were diagnosed with autism.
While many mainstream autism researchers adhere to theories that the rising rate of autism is due to “increased awareness” and an evolving, broadening definition of autism, Kennedy holds to that belief that the cause will be found primarily in environmental factors, eating habits, and currently accepted standard medical protocols.
“We’re going to look at vaccines, but we’re going to look at everything. Everything is on the table, our food system, our water, our air, different ways of parenting, all the kind of changes that may have triggered this epidemic,” the HHS head told Fox News.
“It is an epidemic,” Kennedy insisted. “Epidemics are not caused by genes. Genes can provide a vulnerability, but you need an environmental toxin.”
“We know that it is an environmental toxin that is causing this cataclysm,” said Kennedy, “and we are going to identify it.”
Kennedy is known for vehemently opposing vaccines, a stance he adopted after the mothers of vaccine-injured children implored him to look into the research linking thimerosal to neurological injuries, including autism. He went on to found Children’s Health Defense, an organization with the stated mission of “ending childhood health epidemics by eliminating toxic exposure,” largely through vaccines.
The federal government spent more than $300 million on autism research in 2023, according to a report by The Hill.
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