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‘Obama Phone’ Scam: Florida CEO Headed to Prison, Must Pay $128 Million Fine After Defrauding Government.

TAMPA, FLA - The owner of a Florida telecommunications company will spend the next five years in prison and his firm must pay a hefty fine regarding an “Obama phone” scam.

Q Link Wireless LLC and its owner, identified as CEO Issa Asad, previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud and steal federal funds from the Lifeline program that began in the 1980s, Fox News reported Sunday.

The program offers subsidized cellphone services to lower-income people. In 2012, a video emerged of a protester outside a Mitt Romney event who claimed her neighbors received an “Obama phone,” Breitbart News reported at the time.

When asked why she supported Obama, the woman said, “Everybody in Cleveland low minority got Obama Phone. Keep Obama in President, you know? He gave us a phone, he’s going to do more.”

The clip shows the woman standing with other protesters on the side of a roadway while holding signs. Click here to read more.

 

Trump’s Justice Dept. shuts down dark web child abuse sites that had 120,000 members and millions of files

When FBI agents arrived outside William Spearman's home in the quiet suburb of Madison, Alabama, in November 2022, they were prepared for danger.

Their search warrant was so important to the bureau that it was approved by the FBI director himself. When the agents breached Spearman's door with tactical explosives, Spearman fought back, tussling with the agents as three of his handguns remained barely out of reach. The FBI managed to handcuff and arrest Spearman, a high-value arrest, in what a top Justice Department official called "one of the most successful" prosecutions of its kind.

Spearman went by the nickname "Boss" and was labeled by the Justice Department as "one of the most significant" purveyors of child sex abuse material in the world. His arrest in 2022, his guilty plea a year later and his eventual life sentence were part of an unprecedented takedown of a prodigious child abuse network. Click here to read more.

 

Parents claim funeral home gave them dead son’s brain in a box, lawsuit says

ATLANTA, GA - A couple in Pennsylvania has filed a lawsuit against two funeral homes after their son’s brain was allegedly given to them in a box by accident.

According to the suit, the pair’s son, Timothy Garlington, died on Nov. 15, 2023, while living in Georgia.

The family hired the funeral homes, Philadelphia’s Nix & Nix Funeral Home and Marietta’s Southern Cremations & Funerals, to ship their son’s body to Pennsylvania and handle his affairs.

About a week after his death, the couple went to Nix & Nix Funeral Home to pick up his personal items, which included an unmarked red box inside a larger cardboard box. Click here to read more.

 

Michigan AG Dana Nessel sues Trump to keep taxpayer-funded benefits flowing to illegal immigrants

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is suing President Donald Trump’s administration for the 25^th time, this time to stop the government from verifying immigration status for taxpayer-funded benefits.

Nessel on Monday joined 20 other attorneys general who filed a lawsuit in the U.S DIstrict Court of Rhode Island over a policy from the departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Labor, and Justice that restricts states from using federal funds for illegal immigrants. Click here to read more.

 

Lawsuit Against School District Which Secretly Transitioned Tween Girls Added to SCOTUS Docket

The America First Policy Institute asked the Supreme Court to hear the case of two families whose daughters were exposed to transgender ideology behind their backs.

In 2021, Erin Lee’s 12-year-old daughter was invited by her art teacher to come to art club after school in the Poudre School District in Fort Collins, Colorado. Little did Lee know, it was a Gay Straight Awareness club where a guest speaker told her daughter if she’s “not 100% comfortable in her female body, she’s transgender.”

The 12-year-old girl, who was new to the middle school, then adopted a transgender identity and was affirmed by the art club. The guest speaker, Kimberly Chambers, director of SPLASH Youth, an LGBTQ group open to kids as young as 5 years old, told students parents aren’t safe and encouraged them to lie to their parents to attend the club. Chambers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lee said she called 40 lawyers to take her case, and they all declined because the art club didn’t use a formal gender transition plan, until she found America First Policy Institute. Click here to read more.

 

 

Michigan faces $890M bill looming for food stamp program

President Donald Trump signed a spending bill into law on July 4 that will shift responsibility for about $890 million of food stamps to Michigan. The state can’t pay the bill, according to Michigan’s top executive.

A change Congress could make to the program that feeds about 1.5 million Michiganders would be “unacceptable,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a June 4 post.

"In Michigan, we will fight to make sure our kids and families are fed, but we need Republicans in our congressional delegation to step up for their own constituents who need SNAP and Medicaid to survive," Whitmer said in a statement made public June 4. “If these cuts are signed into law, more Michiganders will go to bed with a pit in their stomach. That’s unacceptable.”

The federal government funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which the state administers. Click here to read more.

 

A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem

These days, everyone seems to have an opinion about A.I. companions. Last year, I found myself joining the debate, publishing a paper—co-written with two fellow psychology professors and a philosopher—called “In Praise of Empathic A.I.” Our argument was that, in certain ways, the latest crop of A.I.s might make for better company than many real people do, and that, rather than recoiling in horror, we ought to consider what A.I. companions could offer to those who are lonely.

This, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not go over especially well in my corner of academia. In the social sciences and the humanities, A.I. tends to be greeted less as a technological advance than as a harbinger of decline. There are the familiar worries about jobs—ours and our students’—and about the ease with which A.I. can be used for cheating. The technology is widely seen as the soulless project of Silicon Valley billionaires whose creativity consists mostly of appropriating other people’s. But what really rankles is the idea that these digital interlocutors are a plausible substitute for real friends or family. You have to be either credulous or coldhearted, many people believe, to think so. Click here to read more.

 

First US Rare Earth Minerals Mine in 70 Years Will Lessen Dependence on China

Last week on the Senate floor, I hailed the opening in Sheridan, Wyoming, of the Brook Mine—the first rare earth elements mine to break ground in the U.S. in 70 years.

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright recently joined me in Sheridan for its opening and deemed it a “landmark moment” for America’s energy independence.

Here’s what I said on the Senate floor about it:

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Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed into law a historic economic plan. This new law unleashes American energy—and with it, American prosperity. It makes it easier to produce oil, natural gas, and coal here at home. It opens up energy production onshore, offshore, and in Alaska. It means lower prices and more savings for the American people. Click here to read more.

 

Publicly owned grocery stores are a bad idea

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani recently made headlines by proposing five government-owned grocery stores — one in each borough — as a kind of “public option” for food. His pitch echoes familiar progressive talking points: the stores wouldn’t pay rent or taxes, they wouldn’t aim for profit, and their mission would be to offer lower prices in a market supposedly dominated by greed.

But the idea of publicly owned grocery stores isn’t just flawed for New York City. It’s flawed everywhere. While Mamdani’s plan might be the most high-profile example, experiments with government-run food retail have taken place in rural towns and small cities across the country. They’ve all failed. The results are overwhelmingly clear: public grocery stores are inefficient, unsustainable, and ultimately counterproductive especially when the private sector is already doing the job.

Take Baldwin, Florida. When the town’s only grocery store shut down, the city stepped in to fill the gap with a government run-store. It was hailed as a bold solution to a food desert. But less than five years later, the store closed. The store was unable to break even despite being owned outright by the city and subsidized with public dollars. Click here to read more.

 

Troy Likely Violating First Amendment with City Council Commentary Rules

TROY, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The city of Troy is violating the First Amendment with its restrictive policies it has in place for commentary during city council meetings, according to a free speech watchdog group.

Troy’s commentary rules state: “Please direct your comments to the City Council as a whole rather than to any individual. Please do not use expletives or make derogatory or disparaging comments about any individual or group. If you do, there may be immediate consequences, including being muted and having your comments omitted from any re-broadcast of the meeting. Please abide by these rules in order to minimize the possibility of disrupting the meeting.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech watchdog, said Troy’s rules have Constitutional issues.

“Bans on derogatory/disparaging comments violate the First Amendment because they discriminate based on viewpoint, allowing praise but not criticism,” said Stephanie Jablonsky, a senior program counsel with FIRE. “As for Troy’s requirement that comments be directed to the council ‘as a whole rather than to any individual,’ a similar policy was invalidated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Ison v. Madison Local School District Board of Education, which banned ‘antagonistic,’ ‘abusive,’ and ‘personally directed’ comments at public meetings.” Click here to read more.

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Claims about Medicaid work requirements ignore facts, fuel fear.

Debates over Medicaid policy are intensifying across the country, with rhetoric often running far ahead of reality. In Michigan, that’s playing out in real time — with alarming claims and overblown numbers drowning out thoughtful discussion.

Rather than give in to fear-based talking points, we need to get back to basics: Medicaid is meant to be a safety net, not a substitute for self-sufficiency. Work and community engagement requirements for able-bodied adults are one tool to keep that promise.

A widely circulated quote, citing numbers from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, warns that “Republican cuts will strip away healthcare for 730,435 Michiganders in Wayne County.” That figure is mathematically impossible — and dangerously misleading.

Michigan’s total Medicaid enrollment is approximately 1.9 million. Wayne County accounts for only about 518,000 of those enrollees. Click here to read more.

 

‘Missing’ 9-year-old girl found dead after father falsely reported her abducted, police say

TICONDEROGA, N.Y. - A 9-year-old girl was found dead after her father reported her missing, according to authorities.

New York State Police say just before 10 p.m. Saturday, Warren County 911 received a call from Canadian resident 45-year-old Luciano Frattolin reporting his 9-year-old daughter Melina Frattolin missing in a possible abduction, leading to an AMBER alert being issued.

On Sunday, hours after the alert was issued, Melina was found dead. Her body was found north of Lake George village, near state border with Vermont.

Troopers say as the case progressed, law enforcement found inconsistencies in the father’s account of events and the timeline he gave. Click here to read more.

 

Michigan paid more in fraud than it would cost to fix Bridge cards

Criminals stole at least $14 million in food stamp benefits from Michigan’s most vulnerable residents last year — and the state shows no interest in pursuing a relatively low-cost fix for this growing problem.

The state loads money onto cards used by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which recipients can use to swipe at grocery stores, farmers' markets, and gas stations. It could solve part of the problem by switching from magnetic cards that are easily cloned to more secure chipped cards. Switching to chipped cards would cost Michigan $8 million, and the federal government would pay $8 million, Michigan Capitol Confidential reported in May.

SNAP fraud in Michigan jumped by nearly 400% from 2023 to 2024, CapCon exclusively reported in May. The state mailed more than 269,000 replacement Bridge cards in 2024. Click here to read more.

 

Whitmer’s Michigan: Unemployment continues to outpace national average

Michigan’s job market showed signs of modest improvement in June, according to a recent release from the state’s Department of Technology, Management and Budget. The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dipped slightly to 5.3%, down one-tenth of a percentage point from May. This marks the second consecutive month of decline, with the number of unemployed Michiganders falling by approximately 6,000.

Despite the improvement in the unemployment rate, total nonfarm payroll jobs declined slightly in June. However, over the broader second quarter of 2025, Michigan recorded a net gain of more than 10,000 jobs, suggesting underlying momentum in the labor market. The data reflect a complex but generally stabilizing employment landscape.

Wayne Rourke, director of Michigan’s Center for Data and Analytics, noted that the decrease in unemployment was “a sign of labor market stabilization during the second quarter,” adding that “Payroll jobs also declined this month but recorded a solid second quarter gain of over 10,000 jobs.” Click here to read more.

 

Elon Won’t Cooperate With France’s ‘Politically Motivated’ Investigations Into X

Elon Musk announced on Monday that he would not cooperate with French authorities in their “politically motivated criminal investigations” against his social media platform, X.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office opened a probe against X in June in response to allegations by politician Eric Bothorel that the platform was performing “fraudulent data extraction” for “foreign interference purposes.”

A separate complaint said that X “now offers an enormous amount of hateful, racist, anti-LGBT+ and homophobic political content, which aims to skew the democratic debate in France.”

Musk has dismissed the allegations as “completely false” and says the probe “egregiously undermines X’s fundamental right to due process and threatens our users’ rights to privacy and free speech.” Click here to read more.

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