Hazardous air conditions continue on East Coast as U.S. rushes firefighters to Canada. Here’s what to know . . . Some East Coast and Midwestern states continue to face hazardous and unhealthy air quality levels early Thursday, with residents in the Washington and Baltimore regions awakening to their worst air quality in years — noxious haze from Canada’s wildfires continuing to cross the border. President Biden ordered the deployment of all available federal firefighting assets to respond to the fires in Canada. Washington Post

Russiagate: The Scandal That Became Business as Usual . . . 
Special Counsel John Durham may have issued his final report last month, but the Russiagate scandal is far from over. This is not because there is no more to learn about the years-long effort by the Democratic Party, the FBI, CIA, and major news outlets to advance the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump teamed with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election. Rather it’s because Russiagate never ended. Unlike political scandals of the past – from the XYZ Affair to Watergate and Iran-Contra – it is not a discrete set of events with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it has become a form of governing in which the entrenched forces of the Washington bureaucracy punish their enemies, protect their friends and interfere in elections with impunity. RealClearPolitics

Republicans Revolt on House Floor, Hand Speaker McCarthy a Historic Humiliation . . . The conservatives blocked bills from reaching the floor on Tuesday and pledged to continue doing so after a dozen voted with all Democrats to defeat a GOP rule to bring four measures, related to gas stoves and regulatory reform, up for a full vote. Conservative Brief

Video | Biden tried to answer reporters questions but his staff shouted over him

Biden's Energy Department Counts Chinese Solar Industry Rep as Diversity 'Ambassador' . . . Abigail Hopper's trade association includes Chinese solar companies tied to slave labor. Free Beacon

Perhaps they are ensuring that the slave labor includes diverse populations.

California, Texas make legal moves against Florida migrant flights . . . Florida officials are facing potential legal peril over GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’s migrant relocation moves. The Hill

FBI director Christopher Wray agrees to release document on Biden foreign national bribery charge . . . The FBI has caved into the House Oversight Committee's demands to release documents that claim Joe Biden was involved in a $5million bribery scheme when he was vice president. The agreement ends a standoff that began on May 3, when Director Christopher Wray was issued with a subpoena to hand over the document. DailyMail

Plainclothes cops at Capitol during Jan. 6 riot, one on video exhorting crowd, key lawmaker says . . . According to Loudermilk, a body cam video that leaked onto the video platform Rumble is authentic and confirms that officers in plain clothes were at the riot. “Why is an officer encouraging people to climb the scaffolding and go into the Capitol? And secondly, why did the MPD Metropolitan Police support department decide to put undercover officers in the crowd? Was there intelligence that they had that was or was not passed on to the Capitol Police and what did the Capitol police do with that evidence, if they got it?” he added. Just the News

Newsom proposes constitutional amendment to restrict gun rights . . . Fox News

Given what the radical politicians have done to your rights and freedoms, imagine what they will do after they disarm you.

LGBTQ representation in government hits fresh high . . . The Hill 

DeSantis Launches Coalition of States to Strengthen Border Security . . . Meeting with sheriffs from four states—including several in national leadership positions—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the formation of a coalition of states to fight the border security battle without federal leadership on the cause. Epoch Times

The dangerous cost of China's Ukraine trick on Team Biden . . . By Rebekah Koffler.  Tricking leaders in Washington is what Beijing has been doing. China’s recent diplomatic charm offensive aimed at positioning itself as a peacemaker in Ukraine is nothing but a Sun Tzu-inspired gimmick. Its purpose is to divert Washington’s attention from China’s real target – Taiwan, buy time to finalize the PLA’s war preparations, and then launch a surprise attack on Taiwan. The peacemaker charade, including a 12-point peace plan, is intended to catch the Pentagon off guard, leaving U.S. forces to scramble. Fox News

Cuba to Host Secret Chinese Spy Base Focusing on U.S. . . .
 China and Cuba have reached a secret agreement for China to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island, in a brash new geopolitical challenge by Beijing to the U.S., according to U.S. officials familiar with highly classified intelligence. China agreed to pay billions for this spying post. An eavesdropping facility in Cuba, roughly 100 miles from Florida, would allow Chinese intelligence services to scoop up electronic communications throughout the southeastern U.S., where many military bases are located, and monitor U.S. ship traffic. Wall Street Journal

Russia for years has had a SIGINT listening post in Cuba, targetting the US.

China is already at war with America and the Biden administration is ignoring the signposts - Rebekah Koffler | Fox News

Massive NATO air drill to simulate attack on member nation: 'our red line' . . . NATO is set to launch its largest-ever air force deployment in its history in a training scheme intended to stimulate an attack on an allied nation, officials said Wednesday.

The drill – dubbed Air Defender 23 – will take place Monday over Germany and involve 10,000 participants and 250 aircraft from 25 countries, including 100 aircraft and 2,000 personnel from the U.S. The exercises are meant to ensure a coordinated response from NATO allies under Article 5 of the alliance's charter, which states that an attack on a NATO member nation is considered an attack on all the members. Fox News

Putin will almost certainly not attack a NATO country as it will trigger the deployment of US/NATO forces into Ukraine to fight Russia. He is not suicidal. He will highly likely authorize a nuclear strike, if Russian intelligence detects signposts of NATO troop deployment into the theater.

Nato members may send troops to Ukraine, warns former alliance chief . . . A group of Nato countries may be willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine if member states including the US do not provide tangible security guarantees to Kyiv at the alliance’s summit in Vilnius, the former Nato secretary general Anders Rasmussen has said. Rasmussen has been acting as official adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Ukraine’s place in a future European security architecture, has been touring Europe and Washington to gauge the shifting mood before the critical summit starts on 11 July. The Guardian

This is the potential escalation that has always been a huge danger from abetting this war. Sounds like everything is moving into that direction. Biden must have decided to send US troops into a nuclear furnace to defend Ukraine from Russia. 

A US-Russia war over Ukraine would be catastrophic - Rebekah Koffler | Fox News

NATO leaders converge on Washington ahead of Vilnius summit, as Ukraine presses for membership commitment . . . SUNAK MEETS BIDEN: After a day of meeting with U.S. congressional leaders British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meets in the Oval Office with President Joe Biden this morning for wide-ranging talks that will include discussions of Ukraine’s future with NATO. “Of course, Ukraine and Russia will be top of mind and discussed, said press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at yesterday’s White House briefing. Washington Examiner

Ukraine does not qualify to be a NATO member now, as one of the requirements is absence of aa on-going conflict and territorial integrity. It also is the top corrupt country in Europe, right up there with Russia. If NATO makes a exception and grants membership to Ukraine, then Article 5 Collective Defense will automatically kick in, obligating the US and NATO to deploy forces into the theatre. Then the US and Russia are in a direct war, which will inevitably go nuclear. We had war-gamed dozens of times in the intel community.

Biden administration under fire for Iran nuke and hostage deal that could net regime billions . . . State sponsor of terrorism Iran reportedly stands to gain $17 billion in new deal. Fox News

Iran Unveils 'Fattah' Hypersonic Missile . . .  This Maneuverable Missile Can Easily Penetrate And Target Air Defense Systems MEMRI

Space Force to reveal draft for commercial satellite ‘reserve’ service soon . . . "The capacity needed during times of crisis or conflict will exceed our steady state peacetime demand," said Col. Rich Kniseley, who leads Space Systems Commands Commercial Space Office. BreakingDefense

And therein lies the problem for civilians. China and Russia have developed anti-satellite weapons and counter-space doctrines to attack our satellites in wartime and in some cases in peacetime, in the run-up to a conflict with the US. As satellites power up everything from your gas pumps, ATMs, to bloodsupplies in hospitals, the effect will be catastrophic.

Ukraine Launches 'Full Scale Offensive' in Zaporizhzhia . . . 
Kyiv's forces have started their long-awaited counteroffensive to recapture occupied territory, according to Russian sources on social and state media. Newsweek

Ukraine’s Zelensky Visits Flood-Hit Kherson as Kyiv Presses Counterattack . . .  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Kherson to call for international help after the Nova Kakhovka dam was destroyed on Tuesday. He said the situation was ‘absolutely catastrophic.’ Wall Street Journal

UK to host major AI summit of ‘like-minded’ countries . . . Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson denied G7 members were trying to set up an alliance against China and Russia. PoliticoEU

Money

Euro zone slips into recession after Germany, Ireland revisions . . . The euro zone economy was in a technical recession in the first three months of 2023, data from European statistics agency Eurostat showed on Thursday, after downward revisions of growth in both the first quarter and the final quarter of 2022. Reuters 

Fox News Considers Legal Action Against Tucker Carlson For Launching Twitter Show . . . Gateway Pundit

Why did USAID fund the Wuhan lab? . . . Taxpayers financed the creation of deadly pathogens. Unheard

The Truth About ‘Puberty Blockers’ . . . The FDA hasn’t approved them for gender dysphoria, and their effects are serious and permanent. The fashion for transgenderism has brought with it a new euphemism: “gender-affirming care,” which means surgical and pharmacological interventions designed to make the body look and feel more like that of the opposite sex. Gender-affirming care for children involves the use of “puberty blockers”: one of five powerful synthetic drugs that block the natural production of sex hormones Wall Street Journal

Doctors who do this to children must be prosecuted. I wonder how many of these greedy charlatans do this stuff to their own kids.

US Foreign Aid Used to Push Abortion, Gender Ideology Around the World . . . The United States spends more than $40 billion a year on foreign assistance. For decades, there has existed in Congress bipartisan support for humanitarian relief and other forms of foreign assistance, but that consensus is now threatened as federal agencies and the nongovernmental aid organizations they work with are increasingly promoting a far-left ideology and agenda in their programs—including climate change, abortion, and radical LGBTQ and gender ideology. Daily Signal

Vessel buildup grows at West Coast ports as maritime supply chain begins to break, echoing Covid chaos . . . The number of vessels due to dock at the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach is increasing as labor slowdowns at West Coast port terminals have impacted supply chain operations, from trucks to rails and ocean carriers. On Wednesday, six vessels were delayed at the Port of Los Angeles, while two vessels at the Port of Long Beach were at anchor on arrival — unable to interface with the port operations, according to a vessel update announced by the Marine Exchange of Southern California & Vessel Traffic Service, Los Angeles and Long Beach. CNBC

Whistleblower Edward Snowden says 2013 surveillance ‘child’s play’ compared to technology today . . . Edward Snowden has warned that surveillance technology is so much more advanced and intrusive today it makes that used by US and British intelligence agencies he revealed in 2013 look like child’s play. The Guardian

AI voice-cloning scams are on the rise, here's how you can protect yourself . . . Experts say the scams are disturbing but they work. Fox Business

Soon you'll be able to have a conversation with yourself!

Chinese dominance in AI would result in 'no freedom, no representative government' warn experts . . . If China were to win the AI race, its actions would impact the U.S. societally, militarily and culturally, putting Americans at their mercy  Fox News

Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin . . .A former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin. The information, he says, has been illegally withheld from Congress, and he filed a complaint alleging that he suffered illegal retaliation for his confidential disclosures, reported here for the first time. TheDebrief

Air quality in NYC worst since 1980s — worse than after 9/11: forecaster . . . New York City’s air quality was the worst since at least the 1980s Wednesday afternoon, as thick wildfire smoke blowing down from Canada dimmed the city into an orange haze. NY Post

Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson dies at 93 . . . Fox News

Pentagon Struggling To Explain All 437 Earth Genders To Aliens . . . Interstellar peace talks broke down Wednesday after Pentagon officials were unable to adequately explain the intricacies of all 437 Earth genders to aliens from outer space.

"Okay, for the last time," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during the third hour of talks with extraterrestrials. "Demigender are people who identify partially with one gender at the same time as another. This is totally different from Bigender, which is when a person identifies as two genders and can switch between them. Do you understand now?" Babylon Bee

Shake Up In CNN Leadership Reveals The Left Has Completely Lost Its Sense Of Reality . . . Chris Licht stepped down as CEO of CNN effective immediately, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery announced Wednesday. The announcement came on the tail end of Licht’s first year in the role — a “year of crisis” according to NPR, which ultimately led to him being “ousted” by David Zaslav, chief of Warner Bros Discovery. The “crisis” derived from Licht’s greatest sin: trying to break through the mob mentality the media helped create during the Trump years. Daily Caller