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U.S. Secret Service report finds multiple failures before first Trump assassination attempt

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1 year ago

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From The Center Square

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A report from the U.S. Secret Service said multiple communication and operational failures happened on the day a lone gunman shot at former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania in July.

A summary of the agency’s investigation pointed to a cascade of errors that preceded the attempt on Trump’s life while he spoke at a rally on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania. One of the gunman’s shots struck Trump’s ear.

“It is important that we hold ourselves to account for the failures of July 13 and that we take the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another mission failure like this again,” Acting Director Ronald Rowe said.

Rowe said the agency needs “a shift in paradigm in how we conduct our operations.” That will include more people, equipment and technology.

The internal report, which is separate from other congressional investigations, first pointed at communication failures. For example, the report noted that some local police didn’t know there were two separate communications centers on site and mistakenly thought the Secret Service was directly receiving their radio transmissions.

Another communication problem was that the local tactical team, operating on the second floor of the AGR building where the shooter attacked from the roof, had yet to contact Secret Service personnel before the rally.

“Multiple law enforcement entities involved in securing the rally questioned the efficacy of that local sniper team’s positioning in the AGR building, yet there was no follow-up discussion about modifying their position,” according to the report.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, shot at Trump from a nearby rooftop. U.S. Secret Service agents returned fire and killed Crooks. A firefighter attending the rally was killed and two others were injured.

The report noted concerns about the July 13 rally’s venue at the Butler Farm Show site. An advance team recognized those concerns, but measures to address those problems weren’t taken.

“There was a lack of detailed knowledge by Secret Service personnel regarding the state or local law enforcement presence that would be present in and around the AGR complex,” according to the report. “There was also a lack of knowledge regarding the specific footprint of resources that would buttress the secure area of the venue and separate it from the AGR complex, which was outside of the site’s secure perimeter.”

The internal report said communication problems were the cause of the failures. It said, “different radio frequencies used at the Butler Farm Show venue were not conducive for quickly sharing real-time information.”

“The failure of personnel to broadcast via radio the description of the assailant, or vital information received from local law enforcement regarding a suspicious individual on the roof of the AGR complex, to all federal personnel at the Butler site inhibited the collective awareness of all Secret Service personnel,” the report said.

Better communication could have made a difference.

“If this information was passed over Secret Service radio frequencies it would have allowed [Trump’s] protective detail to determine whether to move their protectee while the search for the suspicious suspect was in progress,” according to the report. “Vital information was transmitted via mobile/cellular devices in staggered or fragmented fashion instead of being relayed via the Secret Service radio network.”

An advance drone team reported technical problems that could have spotted Crooks before the rally.

“It is possible that if this element of the advance had functioned properly, the shooter may have been detected as he flew his drone near the Butler Farm Show venue earlier in the day,” according to the report.

The agency will finalize the report in the coming weeks.

 Download PDFSecret Service July 13 report
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Canada invests $34 million in Chinese drones now considered to be ‘high security risks’

Published on December 8, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s fleet of 1,200 drones, 79% pose national security risks due to them being made in China

Canada’s top police force spent millions on now near-useless and compromised security drones, all because they were made in China, a nation firmly controlled by the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) government.

An internal report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to Canada’s Senate national security committee revealed that $34 million in taxpayer money was spent on a fleet of 973 Chinese-made drones.

Replacement drones are more than twice the cost of the Chinese-made ones between $31,000 and $35,000 per unit. In total, the RCMP has about 1,228 drones, meaning that 79 percent of its drone fleet poses national security risks due to them being made in China.

The RCMP said that Chinese suppliers are “currently identified as high security risks primarily due to their country of origin, data handling practices, supply chain integrity and potential vulnerability.”

In 2023, the RCMP put out a directive that restricted the use of the made-in-China drones, putting them on duty for “non-sensitive operations” only, however, with added extra steps for “offline data storage and processing.”

The report noted that the “Drones identified as having a high security risk are prohibited from use in emergency response team activities involving sensitive tactics or protected locations, VIP protective policing operations, or border integrity operations or investigations conducted in collaboration with U.S. federal agencies.”

The RCMP earlier this year said it was increasing its use of drones for border security.

Senator Claude Carignan had questioned the RCMP about what kind of precautions it uses in contract procurement.

“Can you reassure us about how national security considerations are taken into account in procurement, especially since tens of billions of dollars have been announced for procurement?” he asked.

The use of the drones by Canada’s top police force is puzzling, considering it has previously raised awareness of Communist Chinese interference in Canada.

Indeed, as reported by LifeSiteNews, earlier in the year, an RCMP internal briefing note warned that agents of the CCP are targeting Canadian universities to intimidate them and, in some instances, challenge them on their “political positions.”

The final report from the Foreign Interference Commission concluded that operatives from China may have helped elect a handful of MPs in both the 2019 and 2021 Canadian federal elections. It also concluded that China was the primary foreign interference threat to Canada.

Chinese influence in Canadian politics is unsurprising for many, especially given former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s past  admiration for China’s “basic dictatorship.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, a Canadian senator appointed by Trudeau told Chinese officials directly that their nation is a “partner, not a rival.”

China has been accused of direct election meddling in Canada, as reported by LifeSiteNews.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, an exposé by investigative journalist Sam Cooper claims there is compelling evidence that Carney and Trudeau are strongly influenced by an “elite network” of foreign actors, including those with ties to China and the World Economic Forum. Despite Carney’s later claims that China poses a threat to Canada, he said in 2016 the Communist Chinese regime’s “perspective” on things is “one of its many strengths.”

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Business

The EU Insists Its X Fine Isn’t About Censorship. Here’s Why It Is.

Published on December 8, 2025

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By Christina Maas

Europe calls it transparency, but it looks a lot like teaching the internet who’s allowed to speak.

When the European Commission fined X €120 million on December 5, officials could not have been clearer. This, they said, was not about censorship. It was just about “transparency.”
They repeat it so often you start to wonder why.
The fine marks the first major enforcement of the Digital Services Act, Europe’s new censorship-driven internet rulebook.
It was sold as a consumer protection measure, designed to make online platforms safer and more accountable, and included a whole list of censorship requirements, fining platforms that don’t comply.
The Commission charged X with three violations: the paid blue checkmark system, the lack of advertising data, and restricted data access for researchers.
None of these touches direct content censorship. But all of them shape visibility, credibility, and surveillance, just in more polite language.
Musk’s decision to turn blue checks into a subscription feature ended the old system where establishment figures, journalists, politicians, and legacy celebrities got verification.
The EU called Musk’s decision “deceptive design.” The old version, apparently, was honesty itself. Before, a blue badge meant you were important. After, it meant you paid. Brussels prefers the former, where approved institutions get algorithmic priority, and the rest of the population stays in the queue.
The new system threatened that hierarchy. Now, anyone could buy verification, diluting the aura of authority once reserved for anointed voices.
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However, that’s not the full story. Under the old Twitter system, verification was sold as a public service, but in reality it worked more like a back-room favor and a status purchase.
The main application process was shut down in 2010, so unless you were already famous, the only way to get a blue check was to spend enough money on advertising or to be important enough to trigger impersonation problems.
Ad Age reported that advertisers who spent at least fifteen thousand dollars over three months could get verified, and Twitter sales reps told clients the same thing. That meant verification was effectively a perk reserved for major media brands, public figures, and anyone willing to pay. It was a symbol of influence rationed through informal criteria and private deals, creating a hierarchy shaped by cronyism rather than transparency.
Under the new X rules, everyone is on a level playing field.
Government officials and agencies now sport gray badges, symbols of credibility that can’t be purchased. These are the state’s chosen voices, publicly marked as incorruptible. To the EU, that should be a safeguard.
The second and third violations show how “transparency” doubles as a surveillance mechanism. X was fined for limiting access to advertising data and for restricting researchers from scraping platform content. Regulators called that obstruction. Musk called it refusing to feed the censorship machine.
The EU’s preferred researchers aren’t neutral archivists. Many have been documented coordinating with governments, NGOs, and “fact-checking” networks that flagged political content for takedown during previous election cycles.
They call it “fighting disinformation.” Critics call it outsourcing censorship pressure to academics.
Under the DSA, these same groups now have the legal right to demand data from platforms like X to study “systemic risks,” a phrase broad enough to include whatever speech bureaucrats find undesirable this month.
The result is a permanent state of observation where every algorithmic change, viral post, or trending topic becomes a potential regulatory case.
The advertising issue completes the loop. Brussels says it wants ad libraries to be fully searchable so users can see who’s paying for what. It gives regulators and activists a live feed of messaging, ready for pressure campaigns.
The DSA doesn’t delete ads; it just makes it easier for someone else to demand they be deleted.
That’s how this form of censorship works: not through bans, but through endless exposure to scrutiny until platforms remove the risk voluntarily.
The Commission insists, again and again, that the fine has “nothing to do with content.”
That may be true on a direct level, but the rules shape content all the same. When governments decide who counts as authentic, who qualifies as a researcher, and how visibility gets distributed, speech control doesn’t need to be explicit. It’s baked into the system.
Brussels calls it user protection. Musk calls it punishment for disobedience. This particular DSA fine isn’t about what you can say, it’s about who’s allowed to be heard saying it.
TikTok escaped similar scrutiny by promising to comply. X didn’t, and that’s the difference. The EU prefers companies that surrender before the hearing. When they don’t, “transparency” becomes the pretext for a financial hammer.
The €120 million fine is small by tech standards, but symbolically it’s huge.
It tells every platform that “noncompliance” means questioning the structure of speech the EU has already defined as safe.
In the official language of Brussels, this is a regulation. But it’s managed discourse, control through design, moderation through paperwork, censorship through transparency.
And the louder they insist it isn’t, the clearer it becomes that it is.
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