Master Lock, the United States-based padlock manufacturer, is reportedly set to close its factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, next year with plans to outsource over 400 American employees’ jobs.

Officials with the United Auto Workers (UAW), who represent many of Master Lock’s employees, said Master Lock executives have informed employees that the Milwaukee plant will shutter by the end of March next year and that their jobs will be outsourced to other existing North American plants.

Americans at the Milwaukee plant produce parts for locks that are then sent to a plant in Mexico where the locks are assembled.

A subpoenaed FBI informant file links President Joe Biden to a bribery scheme worth five million dollars, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) publicly disclosed.

Comer revealed the size of the alleged bribe Wednesday in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, who continues to stonewall Comer’s subpoena to obtain the unclassified document from the bureau. In the letter threatening action, Comer pledged to hold the FBI in contempt of Congress if Wray does not provide the file.

The two men scheduled a meeting next week to discuss the dispute.

In addition to the sum of the alleged bribe, Comer’s letter revealed the date of the whistleblower’s tip to be June 30, 2020. Comer issued the subpoena following legally protected disclosures by a whistleblower to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) office.

Based on the timing of a cash bribe allegedly offered in Ukraine, the New York Post speculated a link between the Biden family’s deals in Ukraine and the alleged bribe:

There’s much talk about whom the 2024 Republican presidential nominee should be. Would Donald Trump pass voter muster? Florida governor Ron DeSantis? Someone else? Who can win?

The answer is, well, no one — according to a new report.

That is, unless Republicans radically change how they approach swing-state politics. This is for a simple reason, avers Jay Valentine, a fractal-technology expert with electoral integrity entity Project Omega:

Maintaining the status quo ensures that the swing states in 2024 will swing only one way — toward vote fraud.

America's biggest home insurance company has announced it will no longer insure houses in California, saying that the risk from wildfires was too great and the cost of rebuilding too high. 

State Farm, the nation's biggest car and home insurer by premium volume, said existing customers would not be affected.

But from Saturday, no new home insurance policies will be issued. The company will continue offering auto insurance.

State Farm said it 'made this decision due to historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market.' 

Walgreens Boots Alliance is to layoff 504 corporate employees as financial obligations for opioid litigation and other legal matters pile up.

Earlier this month, the drugstore giant settled a lawsuit with the city of San Francisco, agreeing to pay it $230 million over its sales of opioids that have contributed to the Bay Area city's drug crisis.

Most of the cuts will be made at the drugstore giant's Deerfield, Illinois headquarters or its Chicago office. 

The layoffs represent about 10 percent of the company's corporate workforce.

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors has been quietly let go from her Warner Bros TV deal after producing no content. 

Cullors, 39, signed the deal with the media giant in 2020 to much fanfare but it ended in secret in October 2022, it emerged on Friday. 

'The deal, unfortunately, did not result in any produced shows,' a source told the New York Post. 

Cullors claimed in January 2022 that she was working on a documentary about how reparations were similar to the idea of landback, where Native Americans got back their lands, and another about black social mobility. 

Ukraine's defence ministry has claimed Russia is planning to simulate a major accident at Europe's biggest nuclear power station in an attempt to thwart a long-planned Ukrainian counteroffensive to retake territory occupied by Russia.

The Zaporizhzhia plant, which lies in an area of Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, is Europe's biggest nuclear power station and the area has been repeatedly hit by shelling that both sides blame each other for.

The defence ministry's intelligence directorate said Russian forces would soon shell the plant and then announce a radiation leak. This would force an investigation by international authorities, during which all hostilities would be stopped.

Webmaster addition: I think it is more likely that Ukraine will stage a false-flag event to blame on Moscow.

Unbeknown, it seems, to most people in Peru and the US (considering the paucity of media coverage in both countries), US military personnel will soon be landing in Peru. The plenary session of Peru’s Congress last Thursday (May 18) authorised the entry of US troops onto Peruvian soil with the ostensible purpose of carrying out “cooperation activities” with Peru’s armed forces and national police. Passed with 70 votes in favour, 33 against and four abstentions, resolution 4766 stipulates that the troops are welcome to stay any time between June 1 and December 31, 2023.

The number of US soldiers involved has not been officially disclosed, at least as far as I can tell, though a recent statement by Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador, who is currently person non grata in Peru, suggests it could be around 700. The cooperation and training activities will take place across a wide swathe of territory including Lima, Callao, Loreto, San Martín, Huánuco, Ucayali, Pasco, Junín, Huancavelica, Iquitos, Pucusana, Apurímac, Cusco and Ayacucho.

Special counsel John Durham will appear before Congress for two hearings in June after he released a devastating report this month revealing the FBI wrongly opened its investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion.

Durham will testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on June 21 at 9:00 a.m. and will also appear before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence the day before, but behind closed doors, according to committee spokesmen.

Durham is expected to discuss the recently published report, which revealed how the FBI failed to uphold certain standards during the high-profile Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

The investigation, which was promoted heavily by Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Rep. Adam Schiff (CA), was based on now-debunked allegations that the Trump campaign was working with Russian political operatives during the 2016 presidential election.

Nearly all House Democrats, along with eight House Republicans, helped tank an effort to override President Joe Biden’s veto of a bipartisan plan that would have restored United States tariffs on China-made solar panels.

In June 2022, Biden announced a 24-month tariff moratorium on solar panel imports from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Commerce Department officials suspect that the solar panels are actually made in China but have been routed through the four southeast Asian nations to avoid U.S. tariffs on China-made solar panels.

The suspension of tariffs came even as Biden’s Commerce Department found that BYD Hong Kong rerouted its production through Cambodia, Canadian Solar and Trina through Thailand, and Vina Solar through Vietnam for the sole purpose of avoiding the tariffs.

A Utah Target has been evacuated and a bomb squad has been called in after multiple threats were made against stores across the state and five in Ohio after the company's annual Pride collection sparked fury. 

A Layton Target - located at 810 West 2000 North - was evacuated after receiving multiple bomb threats. A bomb squad and a K9 unit were deployed to the store around 1pm, according to KUTV. 

All staff and customers were directed to the parking lot. 

Police said stores in Layton, Salt Lake, Taylorsville and Provo were threatened. Authorities became aware of the threats after local news stations received emails threatening danger and referencing the company's new controversial Pride collection. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Friday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that extreme MAGA Republicans want to crash the economy because they believe “it will be in their political benefit in 2024.”

Jeffries said, “We certainly are only a few days away from this manufactured default crisis, which is very real right now. We shouldn’t be in this situation, because America should always pay our bills and do it the in had a manner consistent with what has been done under Democratic presidents and Republican presidents without partisanship. We are in this place now, thankful for President Biden and his team of designees who are working hard to avoid a default in the face of a group of individuals, some of whom clearly would take the position that blowing up the economy, crashing it, and triggering a recession apparently they have concluded, is their political benefit. We’re hopeful cooler heads will continue to prevail over the next day or so, we can arrive at a bipartisan agreement that makes sense, that’s consistent with democratic values, and we can pass this dangerous default crisis.”

Webmaster addition: "I didn't screw up the economy; it's the GOP's fault. Honest!" -- Official White Horse Souse

Twitter has withdrawn from a voluntary European Union agreement to stamp out disinformation online, a top EU official said late Friday.

"Twitter leaves EU voluntary Code of Practice against disinformation. But obligations remain," EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton wrote on Twitter.

"You can run but you can't hide. Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under #DSA as of August 25. Our teams will be ready for enforcement," Breton added, referring to the EU's new Digital Services Act which takes effect in less than two months.

Amid a culture-war storm that has hit several American companies in recent weeks, including Bud Light and Target, LGBTQ+ rights advocates and anti-trans activists are now focusing on Walmart's approach to the debate and putting the company's marketing strategy under increased scrutiny.

After calls to boycott Target over its trans-friendly products—part of its Pride season's collection—the American retailer announced on Tuesday that it was removing some items in its Pride collection.

The decision was seen as a small victory by anti-trans activists, which have appeared galvanized by the retailer's move and eager to put another company that sells Pride-related merchandise—Walmart—under the same amount of scrutiny.

Democrats are lashing out at President Joe Biden for not being a strong enough leader in the face of the debt ceiling crisis.

Democratic lawmakers are frustrated that Biden is allowing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to shape the narrative about the negotiations, essentially allowing Republicans to win in the court of public opinion, as evidenced by polling.

Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter recently suspended an illustrated novel project about “defying transgenderism” after the campaign was fully funded.

The author of the project, Hans G. Schantz, stated that his comic was canceled by Kickstarter after initially being reviewed and approved by the company. It was not until after the illustrated novel reached its $3,000 crowdfunding goal that the project was booted from the website.

Schantz said that he increased the novel’s goal to $6,000 before the project reached its May 31 deadline, but Kickstarter shut down the campaign, claiming that it had violated the site’s community rules.

The illustrated novel, “The Wise Heart,” follows the story of a biology teacher who is “thrown in jail for defying transgenderism” and subsequently “faces a show trial amid a media circus.”

A California Powerball winner is accused of stealing a lottery ticket worth more than $2 billion. The lottery winner was served with lawsuit papers at his newly purchased mansion in Hollywood Hills, California.

Last year, Edwin Castro won the Powerball lottery jackpot of $2.04 billion after purportedly purchasing the winning ticket from Joe’s Service Station in Altadena, California, on Nov. 7, 2022.

As previously reported in TheBlaze, Castro elected to take home the lump sum prize money of $997.6 million in February 2023.

Castro used the lottery winnings to purchase two multimillion-dollar California homes and a vintage Porsche convertible reportedly worth $250,000.

In the same month, a lawsuit was filed in California claiming that the winning lottery ticket had been stolen.

A college program that received taxpayer funds from the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security equated conservatives and Christians to militant neo-Nazis, according to watchdog group MRC Free Speech America.

Documents obtained by the conservative media watchdog revealed that the DHS’ Office of Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention doled out $352,109 in fiscal year 2022 to a University of Dayton program that aimed to “develop and implement modules on the risks of and protective factors for radicalization to violence related to media literacy and online critical thinking for students,” the New York Post reported.

The DHS awarded 80 grants totaling nearly $40 million under its Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program to establish “media literacy and online critical thinking initiatives.” In an internal memo obtained by MRC, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas referred to the grant program as a “high priority.”

The possible transfer of nuclear weapons to Ukraine from the West will cause a preemptive strike by Russia, said Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council.

The statement was made during his visit to Vietnam.

Medvedev explained that the allies of Ukraine can put into service not only F-16 fighters, which is no longer excluded, but also nuclear weapons.

As reported by the Hal Turner Radio Show in a Subscribers-Only report on 23 May, debate within NATO over supplying Ukraine with F-16's centers around the United States INISISTENCE the planes be a specially-modified model capable of carrying the U.S.  "B-61" free-fall nuclear bomb.  The U.S. is also insisting that NATO countries train Ukraine pilots on how to utilize such nuclear bombs.  (That original Subscribers-Only story appears HERE)

This has caused a gigantic rift within NATO. The United States, Great Britain, Poland, and Germany are in favor of this idea, while Turkey, Greece, and Hungary are against it.

US stocks rose early Friday as traders weighed the reports of an emerging deal against strong economic data pointing toward another Federal Reserve interest-rates increase. Yields on Treasury bills maturing in early June tumbled, a sign investors are regaining confidence in on-time repayment during the window when a US default would be likely without a deal.

The two sides have narrowed differences in talks over recent days, according to the people, though the details agreed to are tentative and a final accord is still not in hand. The two sides have yet to agree on the amount of the cap.

Under the terms of the emerging agreement, defense spending would be permitted to rise 3% next year in line with President Joe Biden’s budget request.

Early Friday, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo warned that payments to Social Security beneficiaries, veterans and others would be delayed if there’s a default. But he said he’s gaining some confidence an agreement will be reached.

According to the study:

“Retinal vein occlusion (RVO) is the second most prevalent cause of visual loss related to retinal vascular diseases, after diabetic retinopathy. RVO is related to thromboembolism caused by vessel compression, vasospasm, or degeneration of vascular walls.”

The study included 7,318,437 people from the TriNetX network divided into vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, and they concluded that “individuals with COVID-19 vaccination had a higher risk of all forms of retinal vascular occlusion in 2 years after vaccination, with an overall hazard ratio of 2.19 (95% confidence interval 2.00–2.39).”

This is one of the first large scale studies published that examined COVID-19 vaccination side effects which are continuing more than 2 years following a COVID-19 injection.

The cumulative incidence of retinal vascular occlusion was significantly higher in the vaccinated cohort compared to the unvaccinated cohort, 2 years and 12 weeks after vaccination. The risk of retinal vascular occlusion significantly increased during the first 2 weeks after vaccination and persisted for 12 weeks.

Frustration is brewing within Democratic ranks as President Joe Biden is criticized for not exerting more vital leadership during the current debt ceiling crisis.

Party members voice dissatisfaction that Biden is permitting House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to control the narrative surrounding the negotiations, effectively granting Republicans a perceived victory in the eyes of the public, as suggested by recent polls.

Politico has reportedly conversed with multiple Democrats who expressed discontentment over Biden's approach. They are concerned that if Biden addresses the issue publicly, it might not be forthcoming. His schedule includes a weekend trip to Camp David on Friday and a visit to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Sunday. Such news has provoked an uproar among some Democrats.

A leaked audio clip from the secret DeSantis donor strategy meeting held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami on Thursday has surfaced, shedding light on key aspects of Governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign plans.

A black woman who was fired as a personal trainer from an Equinox fitness center for allegedly being late 47 times in 10 months, sued for discrimination – and won!

Earlier this week the Dodgers apologized to and re-invited anti-Catholic ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’ trans nuns to pride night.

Joe and Jill Biden on Friday hosted a ceremony for the Louisiana State University Tigers Women’s Basketball team to celebrate their 2022-2023 NCAA Championship season.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent a letter Friday afternoon to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) that extends the debt ceiling deadline from June 1 to June 5. The letter comes as negotiations remain deadlocked as Joe Biden heads out of town for the holiday weekend. With no deal in sight, McCarthy told the House to go home until he calls them back for a vote, which he has said will abide by the 72 hour rule for members to review the deal.

A crazed passenger on aboard a South Korean flight on Friday sparked a horrifying scene of chaos after opening an emergency door before the plane landed.