It began in a Shanghai college dormitory in 1946, where two young students formed a friendship that would quietly shape the future of one of America’s most powerful political families.

Decades later, that friendship reached from Beijing’s inner circle to the halls of Washington. Chinese state-owned shipyards built the vessels. Chinese banks helped finance them. The Chao family fortune grew, while Elaine Chao and Mitch McConnell rose to the highest levels of American power.

Was it simply business, family loyalty, and old connections—or something much more consequential?

This is the hidden story of the Chao–McConnell empire, and the bridge one family built between Beijing and Washington.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9oD59jRIg8

Washington, D.C. – .... Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke on the Senate floor commemorating Senator Lindsey Graham’s life and career in public service. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

My prayers and those of my family are with Senator Graham’s family, staff, and friends after his sudden, sudden passing yesterday. We see the white roses on his desk, and we think of Lindsey.

Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Passing Of Senator Lindsey Graham

Senator Graham devoted much of his life to public service, first in the military, then in Congress, where he represented South Carolina for more than three decades.

Former US Coronavirus czar Dr. Anthony Fauci was hauled before Congress on Wednesday to testify on the origins of Covid-19. Fauci repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to silence, but RT kept the receipts.

Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in a hearing orchestrated by Senator Rand Paul. A Kentucky Republican and vocal critic of Fauci’s handling of the pandemic, Paul released thousands of pages from Fauci’s personal diaries over the weekend, which suggested that the Covid chief knew the virus did not originate in a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan, China, but insisted in public that it did.

Former US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has also released documents suggesting that Fauci pushed the wet market theory in meetings with the intelligence community, before denying under oath that he ever held such discussions.

Two major stories regarding the United States and Israel in recent days represent profound watershed moments in the history of the relationship between both countries. 

The first incident occurred on July 8 when U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) and his delegation were detained by armed, illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. 

US-Israel Rot Is Deeper Than AIPAC

July 29, 2026

[While Israel’s impunity for conducting unbridled violence is cracking in the U.S., politicians’ habit of tying career survival to Tel Aviv persists in traditional power structures, writes Ramzy Baroud.]

I was talking to an investor friend the other day, asking whether I should get into one of these price-lock arrangements with the people who supply our heating oil. He usually has sound answers to these kinds of questions, but this time I could practically hear him shrug over the telephone as he said in anxious tones, “How’s Trump going to end this!? He has no way out. It’s rattling the markets now. What’s the way forward? Nobody can see an exit plan.” 

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Only One Way Out for Trump

July 27, 2026

[The question ahead of the latest summit with Netanyahu on Tuesday is what the U.S. president will lose — either a war, on the one hand, or on the other, the global economy and the American electorate.]

Donald J. Trump can’t either, it seems. 

In April 2024 international news sources circulated a video of a talk delivered by a senior Israeli military official during a tech conference at Tel Aviv University about a year earlier. The speaker, whose face is not shown, introduces himself only as “Colonel Yoav,” the head of data science and AI for Unit 8200, an elite outfit within Israel’s intelligence directorate. He is there to talk about the force’s embrace of artificial intelligence for the purposes of, as one slide in his presentation puts it, “finding new terrorists.”

Moloch, the God of Israel, later called Satan by many, Still a Big Hit

Two weeks before the US’s anniversary, The Associated Press published a poll that captured the depth of American anxiety about the ruling class and life in general in the country. The numbers were grim. More than two-thirds (70%) of Americans no longer consider their country the greatest nation on Earth, while 64% believe American democracy is in danger. And 38% don’t believe the United States will survive another 250 years as a single country.

Almost half of skilled migrants are working below their qualification level, while Australia’s complex recognition system leaves urgently needed teachers, nurses, engineers and tradespeople underused.

There is wasted talent right across the Australian workforce. It is estimated that 44 per cent of Australia’s skilled migrants are employed below their skill level.

John Menadue

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has said he is not currently aiming to regain control of Crimea, but suggested the issue could be revisited later.

He made the remarks in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, who asked whether the peninsula, which joined Russia in 2014, was “back on the table” amid Kiev’s refusal to make territorial concessions.

“It’s a pity. No. Or not yet. We will see, I don’t know,” Zelensky replied. He said Crimea remained “very important” to Ukraine but suggested that “not losing people” was the more immediate priority.

I'm launching my own YouTube channel as a platform to expand on topics, issues, and ideas that sometimes get shortchanged during my appearances on other shows or that I have otherwise not addressed on other shows. Future videos will cover:

It’s funny the things that get to you when you’ve been at this for a while. 

Today the thing that smacked me upside the head and made me lay my face in my hands for a minute was a viral video clip of Canadian politician Bill Oliver accidentally reading out text from the AI chatbot which had authored his speech before the New Brunswick legislature.

We’re Being Plunged Into Dystopia When We Could Be Living In Paradise

It’s not just all the war, injustice, ecocide and dystopia that hurts. It’s knowing it didn’t have to be this way. It’s knowing what could have been.

Caitlin Johnstone

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has reshaped life in frontline cities, where economic hardship has pushed some women into sex work. Lyudmila, who entered the trade at 18 after struggling to find employment, says many soldier clients seek conversation and emotional support as well as intimacy. Aid workers warn of rising violence against sex workers, including assault and rape, linked to the pressures of war.

Ukraine: Sex work near the front lines

Australia’s most influential STEM research increasingly depends on collaboration with China, yet excessive security settings risk pushing universities and researchers away from work that serves the public good.

News that the National Science Foundation – the US counterpart to the Australian Research Council (ARC) – has proposed to ban grant recipients from nearly all collaboration with China is bound to send chills down the spines of Australia-based researchers in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) areas.

Multi-day European heat waves with temperatures topping 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) are increasingly leaving their mark on Germany's famed Autobahn — buckling concrete slabs, deforming asphalt and forcing temporary speed limits.

In early July alone, seven stretches of the country's highways had to be shut down completely for a time.

Why is Germany building roads for yesterday's climate?