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International

Lawmakers call for changes at Secret Service after second assassination attempt

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From The Center Square

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“If Trump had a full USSS security detail following J13, the shooter at Mar-a-Lago wouldn’t have gone unnoticed for 12 hours”

U.S. lawmakers are calling for changes in how the U.S. Secret Service protects former President Donald Trump after a second assassination attempt Sunday.

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was able to hide outside a golf course where Trump was golfing. Authorities say Routh pointed the barrel of an assault-style rifle through a chain-link fence toward the golf course, was spotted by an agent, who fired at Routh. The suspect was soon arrested after fleeing the scene.

Routh reportedly waited for 12 hours outside the golf course but was only spotted just in time, raising ongoing concerns about the Secret Service’s work and Trump’s safety.

“If Trump had a full USSS security detail following J13, the shooter at Mar-a-Lago wouldn’t have gone unnoticed for 12 hours,” U.S. Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, one of several lawmakers to call for an increase to Trump’s security detail.

The near-miss encounter comes just two months after Trump was nearly fatally shot July 13 in Butler County, Pennsylvania, when a shooter was able to get on a rooftop overlooking the former president’s position and fired several shots. Trump was grazed in his ear, one rally attendee was killed and two others were wounded. The Secret Service’s handling of that incident – from allowing the shooter to get a direct line of sight to the poor pre-planning to the nearly nonexistent communication with local officers – was widely criticized across the political spectrum and led to the resignation of the agency’s head.

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., called for Trump to receive the same protection as President Joe Biden, given the circumstances.

“While we are still awaiting more details about this horrific event, I am thankful that the perpetrator was unsuccessful and the Secret Service agent acted swiftly to ensure that the former president is safe,” Blackburn said in a statement. “But one thing is abundantly clear: within the span of a mere two months, there have been two assassination attempts against a major presidential candidate and former president in the United States of America. It is unfathomable and unacceptable that this incident occurred.”

A coalition of Senators sent a letter to Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe calling on him to allocate more resources to Trump.

Previous Trump requests for more security have reportedly been rejected.

Since Trump is not currently president, he does not receive as large of a team of agents as Biden. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Congress after the first assassination attempt that Trump’s threat-level status would be increased.

Security experts have echoed that concern. Chris Ragone, owner of Virginia-based Executive Security Concepts who has worked with the Secret Service on presidential security in the past, told The Center Square that if a full presidential-level team of Secret Service agents had been assigned to Trump, they would have found the suspect much faster.

“If they were taking this threat serious… the entire perimeter should have been checked, and they would have found this guy,” Ragone told The Center Square. “You know, if he had parked his car 30 minutes before and got out, OK, but we now know that guy was there for 12 hours, which means there were no resources that checked that entire perimeter. And that’s always the first thing we do is check a perimeter and lock it down.

“I think it wasn’t noticed it because it was a manpower issue,” he added.

As The Center Square previously reported, President Joe Biden told reporters that the U.S. Secret Service “needs more help” though he failed to give specifics when asked.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called on Vice President Kamala Harris to support presidential-level security for Trump as well.

“Two attempted assassinations in 64 days, two failures by Secret Service for having woefully insufficient personnel,” Cruz said on his show, “The Verdict” Monday. “If President Trump wins in November, less than two months away, he will instantly get full presidential Secret Service protection on Election Day. Given that fact, and given the threats and the failures we have seen, the only reasonable and rational thing to do is assign President Trump right now, a full presidential detail that includes the perimeter coverage so that you can’t get a sniper that close, and if Joe Biden doesn’t do it, and by the way, if Kamala Harris had any sense at all, she would join in the call to do this.”

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Business

Trump’s Initial DOGE Executive Order Doesn’t Quite ‘Dismantle Government Bureaucracy’

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Thomas English

President Donald Trump’s Monday executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) presents a more modest scope for the initiative, focusing primarily on “modernizing federal technology and software.”

The executive order refashions the Obama-era United States Digital Service (USDS) into the United States DOGE Service. Then-President Barack Obama created USDS in 2014 to enhance the reliability and usability of online federal services after the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov, an insurance exchange website created through the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Trump’s USDS will now prioritize “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize efficiency and productivity” under the order, which makes no mention of slashing the federal budget, workforce or regulations — DOGE’s originally advertised purpose.

“I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (‘DOGE’),” Trump said in his official announcement of the initiative in November. “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess government regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”

The order’s focus on streamlining federal technology and software stands in contrast to some of DOGE’s previously more expansive aims, including Elon Musk’s claim that “we can [cut the federal budget] by at least $2 trillion” at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in November. Musk now leads DOGE alone after Vivek Ramaswamy stepped down from the initiative Monday, apparently eying a 2026 gubernatorial run in Ohio.

The order says it serves to “advance the President’s 18-month DOGE agenda,” but omits many of the budget-cutting and workforce-slashing proposals during Trump’s campaign. Rather, the order positions DOGE as a technology modernization entity rather than an organization with direct authority to enact sweeping fiscal reforms. There is no mention, for instance, of trillions in budget cuts or a significant reduction in the federal workforce, though the president did separately enact a hiring freeze throughout the executive branch Monday.

“I can’t help but think that there’s more coming, that maybe more responsibilities will be added to it,” Susan Dudley, a public policy professor at George Washington University, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Dudley, who was also the top regulatory official in former President George W. Bush’s administration, said the structure of the new USDS could impact the recent lawsuits against the DOGE effort.

“I think it maybe moots the lawsuit that’s been brought for it not being FACA,” Dudley said. “So if this is how it’s organized — that it’s people in the government who bring in these special government employees on a temporary basis, that might mean that the lawsuit doesn’t really have any ground.”

Three organizations — the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), National Security Counselors (NSC) and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) — separately filed lawsuits against DOGE within minutes of Trump signing the executive order. The suits primarily challenge DOGE’s compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), alleging the department operates without the required transparency, balanced representation and public accountability.

The order also emphasizes not “be construed to impair or otherwise affect … the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.”

“And the only mention of OMB [Office of Management and Budget] is some kind of boilerplate at the end — that it doesn’t affect that. But that’s kind of general stuff you often see in executive orders,” Dudley continued, adding she doesn’t “have an inside track” on whether further DOGE-related executive orders will follow.

“It’s certainly, certainly more modest than I think Musk was anticipating,” Dudley said.

Trump’s order also establishes “DOGE Teams” consisting of at least four employees: a team lead, a human resources specialist, an engineer and an attorney. Each team will be assigned an executive agency with which it will implement the president’s “DOGE agenda.”

It remains unclear whether Monday’s executive order comprehensively defines DOGE, or if additional orders will be forthcoming to broaden its mandate.

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Crime

Former UK MP says ‘nothing was done’ with child trafficking information given to police, MI5

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From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Andrew Bridgen says UK security agencies ignored detailed information about child trafficking, including names of people involved and where the children were being taken.

A former UK Member of Parliament says the top security agencies of Britain, including the police and MI5, are refusing to act on detailed information they’ve been given about child trafficking into the country.

Andrew Bridgen, who served as a popular Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire from 2010 until 2024, told Infowars founder Alex Jones in a Friday interview how he had raised concerns while in Parliament about “a number of individuals” who were evidently pedophiles.

“It was always passed to the police, to the National Crime Agency, and it involves senior politicians, very senior police officers, and nothing was ever done about it,” Bridgen told Jones.

He had explained that early in his career he had seen London police quash an investigation into child prostitution — and so this appeared to be a repeating pattern of cover-up of child sex crimes.

A former policeman named Jon Wedger had discovered that “children were being taken from children’s homes in the UK and prostituted on the weekend,” and were returning “under the influence of drugs and often with terrible venereal diseases, and the people at the homes were doing nothing about it.”

Upon further investigation, Wedger “wrote a report he sent to his superiors pointing out that child prostitution in London had not been investigated for decades.” However, instead of attempting to protect the children and stop the abuse, the police “threatened” Wedger, told him to retract the report, and fired him from the police force “on false pretenses,” according to Bridgen.

Later, Bridgen met a man who conducted a two-year investigation into sex abuse by pedophile and deceased Prime Minister Edward Heath. The police concluded that, were Heath alive, “he would have been arrested and charged with pedophilia.”

“If a former MP could have been a pedophile and it was covered up, then anything is possible,” Bridgen remarked.

He then told how last year a source approached him with “information about child trafficking into the UK,” including “detailed names of people involved on the ground; where the children were being brought in; where they were being taken; where their photographs were being taken; and the name of the company that was instrumental in laundering the money” used to buy these children.

“Meaning they were tipped off,” Jones noted.

Bridgen told how the source had recorded all of his phone calls with MI5, the police force, and the National Crime Agency, and when they failed to act, Bridgen “sent a file with all the information to senior politicians.”

“Eventually, all I got back was, ‘Take it to the police.’ I pointed out this had already been to the police, and it had been to MI5. There actually was an MI5 officer who had been very sympathetic and realized how important this evidence was. And he tried to push it. He was removed from the service. That’s how deep the corruption runs.”

In a June 2024 interview on the Resistance Podcast, Bridgen elaborated, “And then when you see the names, you see why. They are known names.”

He shared further horrifying details about the final end of the children who are trafficked and abused.

“They use them in the sex trade for about three years and then when they’re worn out they organ harvest them,” Bridgen shared.

“No one’s interested. No one wants to talk about it. No one wants to talk about a lot of things.”

Bridgen believes this demand for child trafficking is an explanation for the drive to continue wars around the world, including the war in Ukraine, because the conflicts present “a huge opportunity for child trafficking.”

Jones pointed out it was publicly admitted that decades ago, sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein entered war zones in Kosovo and Serbia and bought “nine- and 10-year-old girls” in order to sell them into sex slavery in the U.S. The father of Epstein’s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was one of the main directors of the “blackmail pedophile operations” of “MI6 and Mossad,” according to Jones.

“Ultimately, I think it’s the glue that holds the self-proclaimed elites around the world together, because once they’re involved in pedophilia or profiting from child trafficking, it’s the ultimate blackmail,” Bridgen said. “There’s no way out of the club for them. They all have to go down together.”

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